PREFACE

Some words of explanation are necessary for releasing these texts for publication. The texts, as will be seen at once, were in a sad state. They are full of corrupt readings so much so that it is very often impossible to make out any sense. I could not get other manuscripts for collation and this is why it has been impossible for me to establish the correct readings. I have refrained from any corrections except in a few cases of palpable confusion of the copyists. It may be asked why I have been so anxious to publish the texts inspite of such difficulties. My only explanation is that they are associated with a teacher and a school, still little known, though they play the most important rôle in the history of medieval Indian mysticism. I think that the present texts inspite of their defects will be helpful in the study of the history and doctrines of that school.

As regards the language of these texts I do not, however, believe that it was ever completely satisfactory from a strict grammatical point of view. We are familiar with such a curious language from the Buddhist Tantras esoteric treatises and it seems that the same tradition was followed by writers of the school of Matsyendranātha. The motive probably was to write a kind of Sanskrit which would be accessible to all initiates even without any preparation in grammar. The Buddhist writers of later age publicly declared such a policy. See the Vimalaprabhā, the Commentary on the Kālacakra-Tantra quoted by H. P. Śāstrī in his Descriptive Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Government Collection, A. S. B. p. 78.

In order to ruin the practice of using literary words current amongst those who stand for the use of literary words, vulgar words have been used in certain sentences but keeping an eye on the meaning. Sometimes punctuation has been neglected, words used without any inflexion, the accentuation misused, long used for short and short for long.