Vac and the Theology of Mantra

Padoux's best known book, Vac: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras, examines how the Tantric traditions of Kashmir Shaivism and related Shakta schools understand vac, speech or the Word, as the creative power through which the absolute manifests the entire universe, with mantra functioning not as symbolic language but as that creative power condensed into a repeatable ritual utterance. The book worked closely through primary Sanskrit sources on mantra theory that had barely been translated before, giving Western readers a technical rather than impressionistic account of why Tantric practice treats sound and recitation as ontologically productive rather than merely devotional.

Padoux continued this close textual work across a long bibliography, including a critical edition and study of the Yoginihrdaya, a foundational text of Shri Vidya Tantric practice, and later synthetic overviews such as The Hindu Tantric World aimed at bringing the technical field to a wider readership. His scholarship remains a standard reference point for later students of Tantra, cited for its combination of philological precision with genuine engagement in the traditions' own theological self-understanding rather than treating them purely as anthropological curiosities.