the logic of the argument

[SILK at AC.GRIN.EDU]

Just a brief clarification re: Rob Mayer's note:  The idea that tantra
belongs to some unrecoverable and hypothetical pre-Aryan layer, later
overlaid by Brahmanical ideology, rhetoric etc. is emphatically NOT "my
view."  I presented it only as a logical possibility which seemed to have
been overlooked in Mayer's first message on the subject.  Whether the view
is defensible on the basis of evidence I have no idea, and it is not a
field in which I have done any research or even reading.  I understand RM's
distinction between the Bon and Daoist cases and the Tantric one, and this
seems to be significant.  It also seems to be putting the cart before the
proverbial horse, however, to offer as a distinctive difference the "fact"
that Bon and Daoism existed before Buddhism, with the implication that
Tantrisim did not pre-exist Hinduism.  Is not it suggested by some that
Tantra in fact existed chronologically prior to, or at least sociologically
independently of, Hinduism (even if we take the starting point of this
tradition as the Vedas)?  I am not qualified to remark on the evidence of
these claims; What I wrote about was only the logic of the argument, with
which, I trust, RM does not disagree.
jonathan silk