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part of the ceremonial worship of most Eastern peoples. Dancing girls were attached to the Egyptian temples and to that of the Jews. David also, we are told, ‘danced before the Lord with all his might’. And to every temple of any importance in India we find a troup of Nautch or dancing girls attached.
“These women are generally procured when quite young, and are early initiated into all the mysteries of their profession. They are instructed in dancing and vocal and instrumental music, their chief employment being to chant the sacred hymns, and perform nautches before the God, on the recurrence of high festivals. But this is not the only service required of them, for besides being the acknowledged mistresses of the officiating priests, it is their duty to prostitute themselves in the courts of the temple to all comers, and thus raise funds for the enrichment of the place of worship to which they belong.
“Being always women of considerable personal attractions, which are heightened by all the seductions of dress, jewels, accomplishments and art, they frequently receive large sums in return for the favours they grant, and fifty, one hundred, and even two hundred rupees have been known to be paid to these syrens in one night. Nor is this very much to be wondered at, as they comprise among their number, perhaps, some of the loveliest women in the world.
“It has been said already that among the classes from which a medium for Sacti is selected, is the courtesan and dancing-girl grade; they are indeed more frequently chosen for this honour than the others before enumerated. A Nautch woman esteems it a peculiar privilege to become the Radha Dea on such occasions. It is an office indeed which these adepts are, on every account, better calculated to fulfil with satisfaction to the sect of Sacteyas who require their aid, than a more innocent and unsophisticated girl.
“The worship of Sacti (as already observed) is the adoration of POWER , 28 which the Hindus typify by the Yoni, or womb, the Argha or Vulva, and by the leaves and flowers of certain plants thought to resemble it. Thus in the Ananda Tantram, c. vi., verse 13, we find an allusion to the Aswattha, or sacred fig-tree (the leaf of which is in the shape of a heart, and much resembles the conventional form of the Yoni, to which it is compared) …
“In Ananda Tantram, cap. vii. 148, and other passages, reference is made to Bhagamala. She appears to be the goddess who presides over the pudendum muliebre, i.e., the deified Vulva; and the Sacti is thus personified.
“In the mental adoration of Sacti a diagram is framed, and the figure imagined to be seen inside the Vulva. This is the Adhamukham, or lower face, i.e., the Yoni, wherein the worshipper is to imagine (mantapam) a chapel to be erected. 29
“All the forms of Sacti Puja require the use of some or all of the five—Makaras, 30 Mansa, Matsya, Madya, Maithuna, and Mudra—that is flesh, fish, wine, women, and certain mystical twistings or gesticulations with the fingers.
“Such are some of the peculiar features of the worship of POWER (or Gnosticism) 31 and which, combined with the Linga Puja (or adoration of Phallus), constitutes at the present day one of the most popular dogmas of the Hindus.”
     
    Such was Sellon’s description of Tantricism. As far as the
Facts
of Tantric worship were concerned it was not too far from the truth, but Sellon’s failure to arrive at any faint conception of the inner philosophy of Tantricism completely invalidated his interpretation of the cult.
     

CHAPTER THREE
The Real Tantricism—Buddhist and Hindu
     
    In pre-Communist Tibet a strange story was told about the fifth Dalai Lama. The “Fifth”, who died
circa
1680, was unique among Dalai Lamas in that he was a libertine, a rake and a notorious womaniser. Until recently the love-songs he wrote were still popular with the common people of Tibet and, in Lhasa, certain houses, where tradition averred that he had held