Understanding Mantras

by Harvey P. Alper

Understanding Mantras explores the origin, nature, function, and significance of mantras within the bounds of the hindu tradition. It analyses the use of mantras in the Vedic age in the great theistic movements of Saivism and Vaisnavism, and in Tantra. A brief introduction by Alper outlines the major controversies in Western scholarship concerning the nature of mantras and gives an insightful and suggestive paradigm for resolving the issues. The essays provide enlightenment into the Indian mantric tradition, and into Western attempts to understand that tradition. They also discuss the issues surrounding the debate over whether mantras should count as instances of language. Of immeasurable worth is the comprehensive bibliographical and methodological essay and list contributed by Professor Alper. This essay covers more than 1600 items and situates mantra contextually in Indian history, society, and culture. It approaches a bibliography on all of Hinduism and will serve as an invaluable tool for future research.

546 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Andromeda]

This is a highly scholarly and erudite work that has explored the genesis, importance and function of Hindu mantras in general. The essayists, who are secular scholars with impressive academic credentials, have analysed the history and nature of mantras principally from the linguistic perspective.

They have studied mantras in general in the context of different Hindu traditions. In this work, the authors have endeavoured to show the differences between the mantras.

None of the 10 professors, each an expert in his chosen field of work, has (as correctly pointed by Andre Padoux, one of the 10) given the readers a definition of a mantra (pg. 300). Many came quite close to defining it, but none of them did.

To a certain extent, it is an objective work on a subject matter that has never attracted the attention of people outside the purlieu of spirituality. It, therefore, naturally lacks the spiritual insight.

The feeling that one gets reading the book is akin to reading a work on chocolate --- when it gets to the part of how chocolate tastes and how one can eat it, there is no mention of them there.