The assemblage of papers that make up the present volume, records the harvest of twenty-years' ceaseless research in a field of philosophy and mysticism, by one who is acknowledged on all hands to be one of the most well-informed interpreters of the Tamil developments of the great Agamic school of thought. His translations into English of the Tamil redactions of the Šivajñāna-bodha and the Šivajñānasiddhi, and of the Tiruvarutpayan bring together a mass of explanatory and illustrative material that imparts a freshness and a purity to his performance, elements that we either totally miss, or descry with but exceeding dimness, in the parallel undertakings of the Rev. H. R. Hoisington and the Rev. Dr. G. U. Pope, and more recently of the Rev. H. A. Popley. The claims of Mr. J. M. Nallasvami Pillai are thus well established as an excellent student of Tamil letters, and a thoroughly reliable interpreter of the phase of the Āgamanta that is developed and perfected in the magnificent writings of the Tamil mediaeval scholastics, divines and saints, among whom Meykandān was, perhaps, the foremost in point of learning, spirituality and power of suasion.

Those mediaeval schoolmen were preceded by the earlier Teachers of eminence, like Vagisa, Sundara, Sambandha and Manivachaka, men who taught by example, rather than by pounding precepts and arid logomachy, as they took their stand on an actual knowledge of the "mysteries of the Spirit", and never on bare mental brilliance; while mighty spirits like Mala, combined in them the traits of exemplary ethical observance and compelling spiritual inculcation, which hardly left the ripe Soul without the pabulum that was imperative for its upward growth or unfoldment, and eventual Spiritual Freedom. The object of the present Volume is to open up some of these veins of the purest Agamic gold, in a style of genial didactics and multi-coloured presentation, veins which, although referred by our author for the most part to the Tamil mines of Šaiva literature, would, on a further following up, yet prove to belong to a system of strata, more ancient in point of time, more remote in point of place, and more precious in point of composition and structure.

The gold that is dug out of the veins, is of remarkable quality, be it in the shape of ores, nuggets or ingots, and the reader will be richly repaid for diving into the book, since each paper therein is devoted to a central idea, which is consistently worked out and explained with ample grace and ease of diction, and he may consequently be sure to emerge from its perusal, palpably edified on many of the moot-points of the Hindu Philosophy, as conned with the aid of the search-light of the Agamic dogmatics that is preserved for us in ancient and mediaeval Tamil. It is by no means easy to enter into the genius of the Āgamanta, if one is not conversant with its right traditions which, by the very manner of their preservation and communication in India, are not of easy access to European scholars. A remarkable instance of failure to enter into the spirit of the Agamic teaching, on account of this disability, is seen in the faulty inter-pretation put by the Rev. Dr. G. U. Pope on the cardinal doctrine of Agamic mysticism, Sakti-nipata. The late Oxford professor of Tamil, clever as he was as a skilled translator of the Kural, the Naladiyar and the Tiruvacagam, is quite wide of the mark when he explains Sakti-nipata as "cesssation of energy" in the Introductory Essay prefixed to his edition of the Tiruvacagam. The explanation calls to mind an analogous instance in which a European Sanskritist, unaware perhaps of the bearings of the expression, rendered the collocation 'Parama-hamsa' into 'great goose'. The strictly pedagogic purist may endeavour to justify such puerile versions on etymological grounds, but they stand self-condemned as mal-interpretations reflecting anything but the sense and soul of the original.

Such lapses into unwitting ignorance, need never be expected in any of the essays contained in the present collection, as our author is not only a sturdy and indefatigable researcher in Tamil philosophic literature illuminative of the Agamic religion, but has also, in his quest after Truth, freely utilised the services of those indigenous savants, who represent the highest water-mark of Hindu traditional learning and spiritual associations at the present-day.

It is a remarkable irony of circumstance that, beyond sporadic attempts of uncertain value, no serious endeavour has as yet been made to give to the educated public a connected conspectus of the length and breadth of the teachings contained in the Saivagamas. The Rev. Dr. G. U. Pope, the Rev. H. R. Hoisington, the Rev. T. Foulkes and Dr. Karl Graul of an earlier generation, and some English clerics of a more recent date, such as the Rev. H. A. Popley, the Rev. G. E. Phillips, the Rev. W. Goudie, the Rev. A. C. Clayton, and a few others, have now and again fried to expound the Tamil phase of the philosophy to the best of their lights, although unable to fully divest themselves of their Christian leanings and prepossessions. The bed-rock of the Agamic philosophy and mysticism, has to be delved into, through Sanskrit, and delvers for that purpose have, so far, been few and far between. Even in the otherwise pregnant treatise recently put forth in German by Dr. M. Winternitz on the History of Indian Literature, Geschichte der indischen Litteratur, Erster Band, the only mention that is made of the Agamas is in regard to the Sakta-tantras, which he simply calls 'Tantras'. In other words, he details a few Tantras which are Saktic, and though Saivagamas are not related to the Sakta-tantras by any organic community of thought or descent, such a detailing is, at any rate, indicative of the recent extensions made, by European scholars of light and leading, to the province of Indological research which hitherto has observed a sort of water-tight orthodoxy of scope.