SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

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11 INTRODUCTION
which hardly left the ripe Soul without the pabulum
that was
imperative for its upward growth or unfoldment, and eventual
Spiritual Freedom.
The object of the present Volume is to open
up some of these veins of the purest Agamic gold, in a style of
genial didactics and multi-coloured presentation, veins which,
although referred by our author for the most part to the Tamil
mines of Saiva literature, would, on a further following up, yet
prove to belong to a system of strata, more ancient in point
of time, more remote in point of place, and more precious in
point of composition and structure. The gold that is dug out
of the veins, is of remarkable quality, be it in the shape of
ores, nuggets or ingots, and the reader will be richly repaid
for diving into the book, since each paper
therein is devoted to
a central idea, which is consistently worked out and explained
with ample grace and ease of diction, and he
sure to emerge from its perusal,
may consequently be
palpably edified on many
of the
moot-points of the Hindu Philosophy, as conned with the aid of the
search-light of the Agamic dogmatics that is preserved
for us in
ancient and mediaeval Tamil. It is
by no means easy to enter into
the genius of the Agamanta,
if one is not conversant with its right
traditions which, by the very manner of their preservation and com
munication in India, are not of easy access to European scholars.
remarkable instance of failure to enter into the spirit of the Agamic
teaching, on account of this disability, is seen in the faulty interpretation
put by the Rev. Dr. G. U. Pope on the cardinal doctrine
of Agamic mysticism, Sakti-nipata. The late Oxford professor
of Tamil, clever as he was as a skilled translator of the Rural,
the Naladiyar and the Tiruvatagam, is quite wide of the mark
when he explains Sakti nipata as
cesssation of energy
A
in the
Introductory Essay prefixed to his edition of the Tiruva$agccw.
The explanation calls to mind an analogous instance in which a