The archeological evidences and the literary sources are the two basic tools for historians to trace the history of any culture. As far as the origin of the Indian culture is concerned, the remnants of the great Indus valley civilization are the only earliest archeological evidences to trace its antiquity. Some of the cultural artifacts unearthed from these sites provide ample evidences of the cultural and social set up of that time. As regards the literary evidences of the pre-historic Indian culture Vedas are the earliest sources. From a historical point of view, the so called Vedic culture was given its shape by Aryans who invaded the subcontinent thousands of years ago . What they did after invading the Indian territory is that they established a new form of culture by conquering the existing pre-Aryan culture. The term Veda denotes not only a corpus of literature ranging from Vedas proper up to Purānas but also a particular stream of culture, more precisely Vedic sacrifices. India is a land of various cultures. It is not wise to say that the Indian culture is predominantly Vedic in nature even though it is believed so. But there were some other cultures parallel to it or even before it. Definitely, those streams of thoughts which emerged after the time of Vedas also have a tremendous impact on shaping the Indian culture. Tantrism is believed to be such a stream of culture having its origin back in pre-Aryan times. This paper is an attempt to trace the historical evidences of pre-Vedic origin of Tantrism. The definition of the word ‘Tantra’ The meaning of the word Tantra varies from discipline to discipline or culture to culture. It is used in Vedas in the sense of looming where as Kōśas* provide numerous meanings for the term including a particular branch of philosophy. It is used to denote particular branch of literature also. It holds true in case of Tantra because the tantric literature has some unique characteristics compared to Vedic and post-Vedic literatures. Etymologically, the word is derived from the root ‘tan’, meaning to expand. Here, the expansion of knowledge means both the intrinsic and extrinsic expansion. The intrinsic expansion refers to the expansion of consciousness i.e. from the consciousness of a human being to that of a supernatural awareness. Tantra as a Śruti Tantra is reckoned as a part of Śruthi. It is Kullukabhatta, a celebrated commentator on Manusmrti, who first refers to Tantra as a one of the two fold division of Śruti by quotingHārītasamhita*. It can be inferred from this statement that by his time Tantras were also accepted as authentic as Vedas. It is a historically proven fact that Tantras have been ignored or rejected completely by the upholders of Vedic religion. In course of time Tanrism grew stronger as a rival to authority of Vedas. The hope of surviving became lesser. When, it was felt that it is no longer possible for these religions to survive as two separate entities, a compromise was made by adopting materials from each other. By so doing, each group saved their position for once and forever without being extinct . At present, the state of interaction between these two religions have reached at a point where tracing the source of particular idea is becoming more difficult.