Law and a collaboration in Sanskrit studies
Woodroffe was born in 1865 and trained in law at Oxford and the Inner Temple. He worked at the Calcutta High Court, becoming a judge in 1904. His legal career ran alongside a sustained interest in Hindu religious thought and the study of Tantric texts.
Ghose’s collaboration was central to the publications issued under the Avalon name. Kathleen Taylor’s research reconstructs that partnership, placing the books within a network of Bengali scholarship. Woodroffe later returned to England and taught Indian law at Oxford. He died in 1936, leaving a body of publications that had helped generate wider interest in Tantra.
The layers of The Serpent Power
The Serpent Power presents the Shat-Chakra-Nirupana and Paduka-Panchaka with Sanskrit, translated commentary and an extended introduction. Its preface identifies Purnananda Svami with the first text and distinguishes Kalicharana’s commentary from modern explanatory notes. The chakra plates follow the descriptions in the Sanskrit text, giving letters, colours and forms a specified place in its symbolic vocabulary. Lumitheca holds the fifth enlarged edition, dated 1953 on its publication leaf. The pictures become more legible when read alongside the textual layers that explain them.
