New Books in Tantric Studies

Four new works demonstrate the extent to which Tantric studies has broadened its scope and sharpened its methodologies. Tantric studies scholarship today ranges widely across historical periods into the present, employs a variety of methods from textual and linguistic to historical and cultural, and raises methodological issues for the study of religion. Urban’s The Path of Desire examines living tantra in present-day South Asia. In The Serpent’s Tale, Bokartaky-Varma and Foxen examine the tantric symbolism of the serpent across a range of cultural locations. Multilingualism and translation are the themes tracking through Fisher’s The Meeting of Rivers. And in Tantra Across the Buddhist Cosmopolis Payne examines the significance of tantra as a critique of the assumptions of the field of religious studies.