Ajitmahatantram
The Great Tantra of Ajita
(KMS No 47-51)

Edited and Translated by: NÊ. RÊ. BHAT, JEAN FILLIOZAT, PIERREÊ-SYLVAIN FILLIOZAT

2005,5 vols., xii+vi+vii+vi+xxi+277pp.(Vol. I),vi+383 pp. (Vol. II), vii + 419 pp. (Vol. III), vi + 420 pp. (Vol. IV), xxi + 185 pp. of illustrations (Vol. V) preface, intro. gloss., verse index, ISBN:81-208-1969-I(Vol. I), 81-208-1970-5(Vol. II), 81-208-1971-3 (Vol. III), 81-208-1971-I (Vol. IV), 81-208-1973-x (Vol.V), 81-208-1974-8 (set) Rs.4500 (HB).

The Hindu temple is the seat of a full culture including material commodities and services, arts ranging from cooking and flower decoration, to music and philosophy. To conceive, build, organise, manage, maintain such a privileged site of culture an authentic and well-thought out theory and guidance is required. Sanskrit Agamic literature plays this role. The Saiva religion is based on a set of twenty-eight Tantras. The Ajitamahatantra is the fifth in a traditional list, a lengthy text, which invites the reader to approach the Saiva religion in a form, which probably goes back to the Cola period and is definitely located in Tamilnadu. In eighty-nine chapters, it offers a systematic account of the installation of Linga starting from the selection of the stone and construction of the temple to the great ceremony of installation of the deity. Thereafter it deals extensively with the daily worship, festivals and occassional rituals, with iconography, subsidiary rituals, as well as the rites of atonement of faults and failures.

The present publication in five volumes is the second revised critical edition with English translation and annotation. Wherever possible, descriptions have been illustrated with theoretical drawings or photographs of actual monuments and icons. 

 
 

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