Healing Through Yantra

Yantra-tantra flourished in eastern India until the beginning of the 13th century when the Muslim invaders destroyed the great Indian universities and the centers of Yantra-tantra. Many thousands of rare manuscripts, paintings and icons were destroyed and their professors and practitioners slaughtered. However, some managed to escape to Nepal, Tibet, Assam, Burma, South India, Ceylon and Java and took with them the knowledge of all this and also some manuscripts. This was the end of the golden age of Yantra-tantra in India. The original manuscripts therefore come to be preserved in Tibet, Nepal and remote areas of the Himalayas. The Chinese invaders of Tibet again caused widespread destruction of the Yantra-Tantra manuscript and icons in monasteries. The influence of Hinduism upon Yantra-tantra was most marked from the time of the Muslim invasion. The great sage Shankracharya had already strengthened and given life to the Brahmanic (Hindu) philosophy of the eighth century and his expounding of the Vajrayana philosophy in clear Hindu terms had brought about a great religious revival. The available Hindu Tantra texts written before the Muslim invasions indicate that Hinduism had assimilated these teachings after Buddhism started waning in India.