The two textual traditions of the Vedas and the Agamas are the foundation of the vast range of development in the domain of Indian culture in all its phases, said Roop Kishor Shastri, Director of Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Vedavidya Pratishthan.
Delivering the keynote address at the inauguration of a three-day national seminar on ‘Veda and Agama: meeting grounds and developments’ at the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) here on Monday, he said that the Vedas and the Agamas had influenced the formation of popular religious practices and moulding their development in the course of centuries.
Mr. Shastri pointed out that while much research and study had been devoted to the Vedic corpus in the preceding centuries, not much had been done in the field of Agama studies.
The Agamas and, particularly the Saiva Agamas, are a parallel tradition to the Vedas, which are considered to elaborate the main Vedic elements without being contradictory to them.
The seminar is aimed at bringing scholars in the field of Vedas and Saiva Agamas to discuss mutual influences and individual specialities of these two great textual traditions of India.
A pioneer
The IFP, since its inception six decades ago, has taken up the task of delving deep into the domain of the Saiva Agamas and it is a pioneer in the Saiva Agama studies and research. It has also collected an enormous amount of palm-leaf manuscripts which has been acclaimed by the UNESCO in its Register Memory of the World.
After collecting an enormous number of palm leaf manuscripts, the institute started the task of critically editing the unpublished Agamas.
The IFP has so far critically edited and published a dozen original Saiva Agamas of the Saivasiddhanta system contributed by great scholars in the Agamas, he said.
The pioneering work should continue in future without any disruption so that the collection of manuscripts could serve the purpose of its existence and be valid, he added.
T. Ganesan, senior researcher of Department of Indology, said that after having collected more than 8,000 palm-leaf manuscripts from every nook and corner of Tamil Nadu and adjoining areas, the department had now taken up the task of fundamental research activities such as cataloguing them and editing some of the Saiva Agamas for the first time.
