the form of worship and the way of life prescribed for those who desire to regulate their lives according to its teachings.
The late Sir John Woodroffe and his collaborators in Bengal have made valuable contributions to the critical study of Śaiva and Śākta Āgamas-specially of the latter--in a number of publications issued by them about two decades ago As regards the Vaisnava Āgamas, a great pioneering work in this field was accomplished by Dr F Otto Schrader, a past Director of the Adyar Library, when, in 1916, he published his monumental work entitled Introduction to the Pāñcarātra and the Ahırbudhnya Samhitā together with two volumes of the Samskrt Text of the Samhitā edited by the late Śrīman Devasikhamanı Ramanujacharya, the then Head Pandit of the Adyar Library (Nos 4 and 5 in the Adyar Library Series) “The publication of the Ahırbudhyna Samhitā” he then wrote “has been undertaken with a view to starting investigations in a branch of Sanskrit Literature which was once cultivated in countries as far distant from each other as Kashmir, Orissa and Mysore but is now practically extinct except in a very few places of Southern India where considerable remnants of it are still being preserved and partly even studied ” The position remains nearly the same even now' It does seem strange that the critical study of the works of this school as well as of the other schools of Āgama literature should still remain a comparatively unexplored field, for, as stated above, the day-to-day ritualistic life and temple-worship of the Modern Hindus are based mostly on the Āgama teachings and traditions, notwithstanding the almost universal esteem and veneration with which the Nigama or the Vedas are held as the revealed scriptures or the self-revealed Śruti For the past hundreds of years, the Vedic sacrifices or
