The Tantras or cabalistic works of modern times are all and every one of them no other than yoga sastras, containing directions and formulas for the adoration of innumerable deities for the purpose of their votaries’ attainment of consummation “_Yoga Siddhi_” through them. It is the Tántrika yoga which is chiefly current in Bengal, though the old forms may be in use in other parts of the country. It is reckoned with the heretical systems, because the processes and practices of its yoga are mostly at variance with the spiritual yoga of old. It has invented many _múdras_ or masonic signs, monograms and mysterious symbols, which are wholly unintelligible to the yogis of the old school, and has the carnal rites of the _pancha-makára_ for immediate consummation which a spiritualist will feel ashamed to learn (See Wilson. H. Religion). [Sidenote: The Hatha Yoga.] This system, which as its name implies consists of the forced contortions of the body in order to subdue the hardy boors to quiescence, is rather a training of the body than a mental or spiritual discipline of a moral and intelligent being for the benefit of the rational soul. The votaries of this system are mostly of a vagrant and mendicant order, and subject to the slander of foreigners, though they command veneration over the ignorant multitude. [Sidenote: The Sectarian yogas.] The modern sectarians in upper Hindustan, namely the followers of Rámánuja, Gorakhnáth, Nának, Kabir and others, possess their respective modes of yoga, written in the dialects of Hindi, for their practice in the _maths_ or monasteries peculiar to their different orders. [Sidenote: Yoga an indigene of India.] _Lux-ab-oriens._ “Light from the east:” and India has given more light to the west than it has derived from that quarter. We see India in Greece in many things, but not Greece in India in any. And when we see a correspondence of the Asiatic with the European, we have more reason to suppose its introduction to the west by its travellers to the east, since the days of Alexander the Great, than the Indians’ importation of any thing from Europe, by crossing the seas which they had neither the means nor privilege to do by the laws of their country. Whatever, therefore, the Indian has is the indigenous growth of the land, or else they would be as refined as the productions of Europe are generally found to be. [Sidenote: Its European forms &c.]