study of religion

A complex body of religious practices that spread throughout the Hindu,Buddhist, and Jain traditions; a form of spirituality that seemingly combines sexuality, sensual pleasure ,and the full range of physical experience with the religious life - Tantra has played a central yet conflicted role in the Western imagination ever since the first ''discovery '' of Indian religions by European scholars. Always radical, always extremely other, Tantra has proved to be a key factor in the imagining of India. This book offers a critical account of how the phenomenon came to be.