Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia: Networks of Masters, Texts, Icons 9789814695091

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
CONVENTIONS
1. Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes, 7th–13th Century ad
PART I: MONKS, TEXTS, PATRONS
2. Coronation and Liberation According to a Javanese Monk in China: Bianhong’s Manual on the abhiṣeka of a cakravartin
3. Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia
4. Traces of Indonesian Influences in Tibet
5. The Politics of Esoteric Buddhism: Amoghavajra and the Tang State
6. (Spi)ritual Warfare in 13th-Century Asia? International Relations, the Balance of Powers, and the Tantric Buddhism of Kṛtanagara and Khubilai Khan
PART II: ART, ARCHITECTURE, AND MATERIAL CULTURE
7. Images of Devotion and Power in South and Southeast Bengal
8. Borobudur’s Pāla Forebear? A Field Note from Kesariya, Bihar, India
9. Imagery, Ritual, and Ideology: Examining the Mahāvihāra at Ratnagiri
10. Seeds of Vajrabodhi: Buddhist Ritual Bronzes from Java and Khorat
11. Archaeological Evidence for Esoteric Buddhism in Sumatra, 7th to 13th Century
12. The Tale of Sudhana and Manoharā on Candi Jago: An Interpretation of a Series of Narrative Bas-reliefs on a 13th-Century East Javanese Monument
PART III: BAUDDHA-ŚAIVA DYNAMICS
13. Once More on the ‘Ratu Boko Mantra’: Magic, Realpolitik, and Bauddha-Śaiva Dynamics in Ancient Nusantara
14. Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java: Lord Kumbhayoni and the ‘Rag-wearer’ Paṁsukūlika Monks of the Abhayagirivihāra
15. A Śaiva Text in Chinese Garb? An Annotated Translation of the Suji liyan Moxishouluo tian shuo aweishe fa
APPENDIX A: The Names of Nāgabuddhi and Vajrabuddhi
APPENDIX B: Notes on the Alleged Reading vālaputra on the Pikatan Funeral Stele
THE CONTRIBUTORS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

ESOTERIC BUDDHISM IN MEDIAEVAL MARITIME ASIA

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The Nalanda-Sriwijaya Series, established under the publishing programme of ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore, has been created as a publications avenue for the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre. The Centre focuses on the ways in which Asian polities and societies have interacted over time. To this end, the series invites submissions which engage with Asian historical connectivities. Such works might examine political relations between states; the trading, financial and other networks which connected regions; cultural, linguistic and intellectual interactions between societies; or religious links across and between large parts of Asia. The ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute (formerly Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued more than 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.

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ESOTERIC BUDDHISM IN MEDIAEVAL MARITIME ASIA Networks of Masters, Texts, Icons

Edited by A N DR E A AC R I

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First published in Singapore in 2016 by ISEAS Publishing ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. © 2016 ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the authors and their interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the publishers or their supporters. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia : Networks of Masters, Texts, Icons / edited by Andrea Acri. 1. Buddhism—Asia. I.  Acri, Andrea, 1981– BQ266 E77 2016 ISBN 978-981-4695-08-4 (soft cover) ISBN 978-981-4695-09-1 (e-book, PDF) Cover image: c. 9th century seated Vajrapāṇi statue from Central Java; gift of John and Evelyn Kossak, The Kronos Collections, 1984. Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (www.metmuseum.org) Typeset by Andrea Acri Printed in Singapore by Mainland Press Pte Ltd

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For Roy Jordaan

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

ix

List of Abbreviations   

xi

Conventions

xiii

1. Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes, 7th–13th Century ad Andrea Acri

   1

PART I: MONKS, TEXTS, PATRONS 2. Coronation and Liberation According to a Javanese Monk in China: Bianhong’s Manual on the abhiṣeka of a cakravartin Iain Sinclair

29

3. Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia Hudaya Kandahjaya



 67

4. Traces of Indonesian Influences in Tibet Jan A. Schoterman

         113

5. The Politics of Esoteric Buddhism: Amoghavajra and the Tang State Geoffrey Goble

   123

6. (Spi)ritual Warfare in 13th-Century Asia? International Relations, the Balance of Powers, and the Tantric Buddhism of Kṛ tanagara and Khubilai Khan David Bade



141

PART II: ART, ARCHITECTURE, AND MATERIAL CULTURE 7. Images of Devotion and Power in South and Southeast Bengal Claudine Bautze-Picron

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    163

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viii

Contents

8. Borobudur’s Pāla Forebear? A Field Note from Kesariya, Bihar, India Swati Chemburkar



9. Imagery, Ritual, and Ideology: Examining the Mahāvihāra at Ratnagiri Natasha Reichle

        191

10. Seeds of Vajrabodhi: Buddhist Ritual Bronzes from Java and Khorat Peter D. Sharrock & Emma C. Bunker

       211        237

11. Archaeological Evidence for Esoteric Buddhism in Sumatra, 7th to 13th Century John Miksic

     253

12. The Tale of Sudhana and Manoharā on Candi Jago: An Interpretation of a Series of Narrative Bas-reliefs on a 13th-Century East Javanese Monument Kate O’Brien

    275

PART III: BAUDDHA-ŚAIVA DYNAMICS 13. Once More on the ‘Ratu Boko Mantra’: Magic, Realpolitik, and Bauddha-Śaiva Dynamics in Ancient Nusantara Andrea Acri 14. Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java: Lord Kumbhayoni and the ‘Rag-wearer’ Paṁsukūlika Monks of the Abhayagirivihāra Jeffrey R. Sundberg 15. A Śaiva Text in Chinese Garb? An Annotated Translation of the Suji liyan Moxishouluo tian shuo aweishe fa Rolf W. Giebel APPENDIX A: The Names of Nāgabuddhi and Vajrabuddhi Iain Sinclair

323

 349

     381 389

APPENDIX B: Notes on the Alleged Reading vālaputra on the Pikatan Funeral Stele Jeffrey R. Sundberg

 393

The Contributors

 395

Bibliography

  399

Index

        441

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I sincerely thank the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre (NSC) at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, and especially Director Tan Chin Tiong and Deputy Director Ooi Kee Beng, for having generously supported this project. I am also grateful to Derek Heng and Terence Chong who, in their capacities as NSC Heads, facilitated the completion of this volume. I would naturally hope that this book will further stimulate the study of Buddhism, Tantric traditions, and intra-Asian connections at the NSC and, more generally, in Singapore. A word of thanks is also due to Ng Kok Kiong and Stephen Logan at ISEAS Publishing, who handled the publication process in a most professional manner. I am most grateful to Rolf Giebel, Arlo Griffiths, Roy Jordaan, Nicolas Revire, Iain Sinclair, and Jeffrey Sundberg for their feedback and/or assistance on several aspects of this volume, including my own Chapter 1 and Chapter 13. I extend my thanks to John Guy, who facilitated the procurement of the image of the Vajrapāṇi statuette kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, reproduced

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on the book cover. A number of indivduals and institutions need to be credited for kindly granting permission to reproduce pictures, drawings, or artworks under their copyright, namely: the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Archaeological Survey of India, Joachim Bautze, Osmund Bopearachchi, Sven Bretfeld, Birgit Breitkopf, Ven. Rangama Chandawimala, Swati Chemburkar, Pia Conti, Véronique Degroot, Michael Flecker, Goh Geok Yian, Alexander Götz, Yves Guichard, John and Susan Huntington, the Leiden University Library, the Leiden Museum of Ethnology, the National Gallery of Victoria, Mori Masahide, Gerd Mevissen, and Ulrich von Schroeder. Jongwook Kim and Sarah Chay are to be credited for consolidating the general bibliography, while Shaashi Ahlawat, Pritha Mukherjee, and especially Azad Hind Nanda, for helping me to create the Index. Last but not least, I express my gratitude and appreciation for the contributors who, besides sharing their knowledge, endured with patience the rather long and complex editorial process.

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ABBREVIATIONS

AKR = Amoghapāśakalparāja ASI = Archaeological Service of India APP = Adhyardhaśatikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra (Nayasūtra) Chin. = Chinese CUL = Cambridge University Library DDB = Digital Dictionary of Buddhism ed. = editor, edited, edition EI =  Epigraphia Indica EMC = Early Middle Chinese 中古漢語  (http://eastling.org/tdfweb/midage.aspx) GNP =  Gaṇapatitattva GST = Guhyasamājatantra GSMV = Śrīguhyasamājamaṇḍalavidhi GSVV = Śrīguhyasamājamaṇḍalopāyikāviṁśa tividhi J. = Japanese JS = Japasūtra JTS = Jiu Tangshu 舊唐書 K = Khmer inscription (as per Cœdès’ nu    meration) KS = Kriyāsaṅgraha KSP = Kriyāsaṅgrahapañjikā LOr = Leiden Oriental (manuscript)

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MDJ = Mikkyō daijiten 密敎大辞典 → Mikkyō Gakkai (1983) MJ = Mikkyō jiten 密敎辞典 → Sawa 1981 MMK = Mañjuśrī- (or Mañjuśriya-)mūlakalpa MMoA = Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (http://met-museum.org) MVA = Mahāvairocanābhisaṁbodhi-sūtra or -tantra [also: VAT] SDP = Sarvadurgatipariśodhana SHK = Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan SHKAS = Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānan Advayasādhana SHKM = Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānan Mantranaya Skt = Sanskrit STTS = Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha SV = Sarvavajrodaya T = Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新修大 藏經 Tōh. = Tōhoku Catalogue nos. of the Derge Canon TC = Tibetan Canon tr. = translator, translated, translation VAT = Vairocanābhisaṁbodhitantra [also: MVA] VŚ = Vajraśekhara XTS = Xin Tangshu 新唐書

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CONVENTIONS

Romanization of Asian languages follows the systems commonly used in the contemporary scholarly community, viz. (unaccented) Pinyin for Chinese, revised Hepburn for Japanese, Wylie for Tibetan, etc. Sanskrit follows IAST, with the variants included in the international standard ‘ISO 15919:2001 Information and documentation— Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters’; the same standard, with some upgrades, is used for the romanization of Old Javanese (cf. Acri and Griffiths 2014). For East Asian languages, traditional unsimplified characters are used; modern simplified characters are provided in the bibliography for the names

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and works of scholars, as per the original sources. Reconstructions of (doubtful) Sanskrit words and proper names are preceded by an asterisk (e.g., *Maṇicinta­na). A general, unified bibliography is provided at the end of this volume, while primary sources in Asian languages are listed at the end of each chapter. Common abbreviations, such as titles and editions of primary sources, are noted in each chapter as well as in a unified section on p. xi. The copyright for the reproduction of images has been sought whenever possible. In cases where this was not possible, common guidelines established for the fair use of images that are intended solely for scholarly and research purposes have been followed.

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Chapter 1

Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes, 7th–13th Century ad a n dr e a acr i

I

n their introduction to a recent special issue of History of Religions devoted to (Esoteric) ‘Buddhist Visual Culture’, Jinah Kim and Rob Linrothe (2014) encouraged ‘a geographically wide framing of almost every question that can be asked about Esoteric Buddhism’. They argued: Yunnan, Java, Japan, and the Tibetan regions of the Indian Himalayas can be as important as Bodh Gaya, Chang’an, or Lhasa, and an overly narrow focus limits the prospects for fruitful comparison. The Ekādaśamukhadhāraṇī, for example, seems to have found purchase from Gan­ dhāra to Nara, Gilgit to Palembang. It is the deprovincializing and simultaneous decentering of any particular locale and any particular type of evidence (texts, epigraphical records, or visual art) that must occur in order for the study of Esoteric Buddhism to generate greater insights. (p. 2)

Espousing an analogous wide-ranging perspective, this volume studies the genesis, development and circulation of Esoteric (or Tantric) Buddhism throughout the vast geoenvironmental area that may be defined as ‘Maritime Asia’, from the 7th to the 13th centuries ad. In doing so, it upholds a trans-regional approach laying emphasis on the mobile networks of human agents (‘Masters’), textual corpora (‘Texts’), and visual/architectural models and artefacts (‘Icons’) through which Esoteric Buddhist discourses and practices spread far and wide across Asia. This extensive Introduction proposes several issues for consideration in surveying recent scholarly literature and in contextualizing the religious, historical, and socio-political dynamics—intervening on a local/regional as well as cosmopolitan/supralocal scale—that shaped these networks as they moved across different geographical and cultural contexts.

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Maritime Asia, encompassing ‘Monsoon Asia’1 as its core, spans the eastern littorals of the Indian Subcontinent (and their hinterlands) in the west to the South China Sea littorals (and their hinterlands), the Philippine islands, Korea and Japan in the east;2 its geographical fulcrums are the littorals of peninsular and mainland Southeast Asia, and the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago. Spreading across the superimposed geopolitical boundaries of modern nation states, and transcending such equally arbitrary and historically constructed geographical divisions as South/Southeast/East Asia, this largely maritime expanse was influenced by similar environmental and climatic factors, such as the seasonal monsoons. Being the theatre of circulation of people, goods, languages and ideas through sea routes since time immemorial, Maritime Asia may be theorized as forming—just like Eurasia—one interconnected network, and arguably even an integral cultural ecumene with a shared background of human, intellectual, and environmental history. During the period that concerns us here, which is defined by way of convention as ‘mediaeval’,3 1. What Reynolds (2006: x) calls the ‘geoenvironmental metaphor of Monsoon Asia’ inspired early 20th-century French savants, such as Paul Mus, Sylvain Lévi, Jean Przyluski, and George Cœdès; see in particular Mus 1933. 2. Inner continental (North) India and China, Tibet, as well as Korea and Japan may be considered as ‘appendices’ or ‘edges’ of Monsoon Asia, linked to the sea- and landbased networks of trade, cultural, and religious exchange that collectively shaped Maritime Asia. Similarly, the Eurasian continent may be conceptualized as ‘core’, and the Mediterranean and North Africa as ‘edges’ (Wang Gungwu in Ooi 2015: 121). 3. This is the widely used periodization referring to the post-Gupta period of South Asian history (especially as per

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Maritime Asia may be conceptualized as a ‘sociospatial grouping’ or world region (Lewis and Wigen 1997) constituted by a pattern of ever-changing relations dominated by basic underlying affinities. This region comprised a web of coastal and inland polities connected to each other through a network of cosmopolitan port-cities across the Bay of Bengal/ Indian Ocean and the South China Sea/Western Pacific Ocean, forming a ‘single ocean’ (Wolters 1999: 44–45) or, rather, a ‘Two-Ocean Mediterranean’ (Wang Gungwu in Ooi 2015: 57–93). Following an increasing recognition of the predominant role played by the sea routes (the so-called ‘Maritime Silk Roads’)4 in shaping premodern intra-Asian connectivity, it seems appropriate to study both regional and cosmopolitan manifestations of Esoteric Buddhism, not just on their own terms but also for their participation in complex circulatory processes involving economic/mercantile, diplomatic, and religious networks moving across the ‘Southern Seas’.5 Cutting across the natural boundaries and barriers of continental topography, sea-based routes formed a network of conduits that led to the forDavidson 2002; cf. 2015: 372–73). I extend the application of ‘mediaeval’ to the wider area of Maritime Asia, as done by Sprengard and Ptak (2004: vii), and also by Wong and Heldt (2014: 16) with respect to China, ‘as a gesture to a more global history’; compare Abu-Lughod’s (1989) and Pollock’s (2006) application of the term to the Eurasian world. 4.  Sen (2014a: 39) argues that the labels (Maritime/Overland) ‘Silk Road(s)/Route(s)’ are misnomers, for ‘Silk from China was neither the earliest nor the most commonly traded commodity. The early history of maritime trade indicates the prevalence of beads, precious stones, and pearls as the main merchandise; during the later periods, bulk goods, such as incense, pepper, spices, and porcelain dominated the trading activity’ (cf. Whitfield 2007: 208–10). However, since the terms ‘Silk Road(s)/Route(s)’ have become part of the modern global parlance, I will not refrain from using them here. 5.  Advocating a maritime focus in the study of intra-Asian connectivity, Ray (2013: 13) rightly notes that ‘though the seas have been important for the five millennia of human history, they are also the most glossed over in historical discourse, which has tended to focus on predominantly land-based national histories’. For a similar critique against a land-based approach in the spread of Buddhism across Asia, see Sen (2014a: 40); on the fundamentally interlinked nature of overland and maritime routes, see Whitfield 2007: 206–8.

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mation of a mediaeval global Buddhist Asia. The Indian Ocean trade network emerged as a ‘largely coherent structure, and has been a space which served as a huge stratum connecting the various kingdoms and cultures adjacent to it, causing interchanges in all possible fields and certainly mutual influences’ (Kauz 2010: 1). By the middle of the 7th century ad, factors such as a radical expansion of commercial maritime routes connecting South with East Asia contributed significantly to the exchange not only of mercantile goods but also, and more importantly, of ideas, beliefs and ritual practices, and artistic styles.

defining esoteric buddhism: its genesis, and its relationship with śaivism Esoteric Buddhism is a phenomenon of enormous importance for the religious and cultural history of Asia. Esoteric Buddhism favoured the transmission of cults and philosophical ideas, ritual technologies, artistic motifs, material culture, political paradigms, and scientific notions across the Buddhist ecumene; at the same time, it partook of, and had an impact on, the imaginaries and related practices characterizing the Sanskritic continuum that shaped many sociocultural contexts in Maritime Asia and its bordering regions from the 7th to the 13th century and beyond. Yet its genesis, development and circulation remain poorly understood.6 The very terms ‘Esoteric/esoteric Buddhism’ and ‘tantric/Tantric Buddhism’ (or ‘Tantra’) are still contested,7 and none of the emic labels of Mantranaya (‘Method of 6.  Authoritative histories of Esoteric Buddhism are remarkably few. Recent works focusing mainly on the Indian Subcontinent and Tibet include those by Wedemeyer (2013), Sanderson (2009, esp. 70–243, which also encompasses Southeast Asia, and 1994), Davidson (2002), and Tribe (2000); cf. also the now classic, yet still seminal, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism by Snellgrove (1987). For studies focusing on Central and East Asia, see my n. 31. 7.  For an overview of the problems and a survey of the relevant secondary literature, see especially McBride 2004; Orzech, Sørensen and Payne 2011: 3–10; Lehnert 2012: 247, n. 2. A promising shift in focus from the etic terms used to describe the traditions to the actual content of ritual practice may be found in the text-historical study of early Mantranaya literature by Shinohara (2014).

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Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes Mantra’), Vajrayāna (‘Diamond/Thunderbolt Way’) and Mantrayāna (‘Way of Mantra’)—though legitimate and attested in primary textual sources—can be used as a single catch-all label for the diverse array of strands, orientations, and historical trends of Esoteric Buddhism.8 In dealing with a broad range of Buddhist traditions over an extensive geographical area and timespan, this volume adopts the descriptor ‘Esoteric Buddhism’ widely employed in contemporary Buddhological scholarship—being fully cognizant of the fact that any etic catch-all category unavoidably entails some level of essentialization and generalization. While this general label in many instances may be considered as virtually coterminous with ‘Tantric Buddhism’,9 it also extends to the whole 8.  Vajrayāna, first attested in the late 7th century (Tribe 2000: 196), refers to a specific strand of vajra-centred Mantranaya Buddhism, while Mantranaya is a more neutral term encompassing a variety of (early) Esoteric Buddhist traditions; Mantrayāna is a rather late usage (11th century ad, see de Jong 1984: 92–93). Kapstein (2001: 236) differentiates the philosophical and exegetical literature on Vajrayāna, or ‘the developed Tantrism that becomes prominent only during the last few centuries of Indian Buddhist history’, from the practice of mantranaya, ‘as it was conducted in the monastic universities in India during the midfirst millennium’. To Linrothe (1999: 58), the term ‘Tantric Buddhism’ ‘may be used to designate within Mahāyāna the ritualized use of dhāraṇī and certain imagery shared with more developed forms of Esoteric Buddhism’. Orzech (2006a: 148), discussing a Song Buddhist catalogue of ad 1013, notes that all texts are classified as belonging to the Hīnayāna, the Mahāyāna, or the ‘esoteric portion of the Mahāyāna Scriptural Collection’ (大乘經藏秘密部); this fact suggests that ‘“esoteric” (秘密) was a well-understood and frequently employed taxonomic term and a distinct subdivision within the Mahāyāna’. 9.  I consider the descriptor ‘Tantric Buddhism’, and the related adjectives ‘pre-/proto-Tantric’, as legitimate alternatives to ‘Esoteric Buddhism’, for a number of reasons. First, the word tantra is firmly established in Buddhism (and Śaivism) by the 8th century: for instance, tantra designates texts such as the Susiddhikara and Vairocanābhisaṁbodhi in Sanskritic discourse, and Śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasiddhi (ca. 750–80) refers to numerous Buddhist Tantras; moreover, many of the beliefs and practices found in the ‘mature’ Tantric scriptural corpus had already been around since at least the 5th century. The unwillingness of many modern scholars to adopt this descriptor may reflect a (subconscious) tendency to avoid the label ‘Tantric’ because of its (projected) monothetic association with radical, eroticized,

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gamut of ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’ texts, practices and teachings from around the 4th to the 10th century and later that characterized certain orientations of Mahāyāna Buddhism, especially in East and Southeast Asian contexts. Admittedly, it is often difficult to reduce or pin down Esoteric Buddhism exclusively to specific and distinct textual corpora, lineages, or ‘schools’, for many religious, social and institutional phenomena occurring in lay milieux across the Buddhist, Śaiva, Vaiṣṇava, and Jaina divide since the early mediaeval period were increasingly dominated by Tantric orientations. These orientations, which were not in each and every instance ‘esoteric’, ‘secret’, or initiatory, may include (e.g.) ritual violence, transgressive devotional practices, the use of mantras and magical formulas (for both this-worldly and other-worldly purposes), sorcery, possession and exorcism, and different genres of sacred performance. Thus, by applying a polythetic approach, one may argue that some of the distinctive features of elite Esoteric Buddhist milieux penetrated— through some sort of ‘trickle-down effect’—the extended social fabric; conversely, many ‘popular’ cults and practices influenced high-cultural/textual manifestations of Esoteric Buddhism.10 A key area of contention has focused on whether there was a clearly defined and self-consciously distinctive stream of Esoteric Buddhism that developed in the Indian Subcontinent in the first few centuries of the Common Era that preceded the more markedly Mantranayic/Vajrayānic developments from the 7th century onwards. According to and transgressive forms of Buddhism. On the other hand, the cognate label ‘Tantric Śaivism’ is widely accepted, even to indicate the mainstream, ‘soft core’ currents of the Mantramārga, such as the Śaiva Siddhānta. 10.  For instance, the striking similarities shared by some (both premodern and contemporary) ritual dances and performances in Tibet and Nepal (i.e., caryānṛtya, bhairab naach), Bali (topeng pajegan and the masks Sidha Karya, Barong, and Rangda), and Japan (sanbasō dance and the mask Okina) have been ascribed to a common Tantric Buddhist source by Coldiron (2005: 240–44) and Emigh (1996); cf. Acri 2014. Wedemeyer (2013: 257–58, n. 130) considers performances like the caryā dance as the historical descendants of earlier Tantric ceremonies dominated by the ritual logic and ‘elite ideology’ of esoteric fringe practitioners.

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one representative scholarly opinion, Esoteric Buddhism ‘evolved gradually, becoming a distinctive stream within the late Mahāyāna closely connected with dhāraṇī practice’ (Orzech, Sørensen and Payne 2011: 6).11 Even though the use of magical formulas (dhāraṇī, mantra, vidyā) is not per se a marker of Esoteric Buddhism (as these formulas were widely used in exoteric, mainstream Buddhist milieux for this-worldly purposes), dhāraṇī-practice may account for the genesis of early Mantranaya Buddhism within the Mahāyāna, emphasizing as it does the efficacy of mantras for soteriological purposes; over time, the practice of reciting spells became more complex, incorporating elements of image worship and visualization (Shinohara 2014: 194). Thus, many strands of Esoteric Buddhism may be seen as special trends or ‘fashions’ of (esoteric or secret, and therefore superior) ritualism, magic and meditation, which ‘encompassed a variety of different sub-movements and doctrinal and ritual innovations within (primarily Mahāyāna, or bodhisattva-oriented) Buddhism, beginning in the early-mid first-millennium’ (Wedemeyer 2013: 9–10). As such, Mantranaya—as opposed to the exoteric Pāramitānaya—was often perceived as an esoteric salvific path within the Mahāyāna. Its advocates regarded this path as superior, and in any event faster and easier, than other Buddhist paths. 11.  Prior to the development of a self-conscious esoteric Mahāyāna movement distinct from the exoteric Mahāyāna, the dhāraṇī-texts that were translated into Chinese from the 4th century onward formed the matrix out of which the Vidyādhara Collection (Chimingzhou zang 持明 咒藏; Vidyādharapiṭaka) was compiled during the mid-7th century (see Gray 2009: 2–3, Davidson 2002: 24, and the seminal study by Hodge, 1992; cf. Shinohara 2014). The Vidyādharapiṭaka itself was perceived as the precursor of later extensive Tantric collections such as the Vajraśekhara/ Māyājāla (see Dalton 2005: 122). These prototypical esoteric varieties of Buddhism may already have been in existence by the 5th and 6th centuries, as suggested among other things by the iconography of early cultic sites in Maharashtra. Early Śaiva (proto-)Tantric scriptures, such as the core of the Niśvāsatattvasaṁhitā (prob. ad 450–550), attest to the same stock of beliefs and practices—vetāla-rituals, possession, initiation, and the acquisition of supernatural powers through mantras, elixirs, or magical procedures— that are also found in slightly later Buddhist texts, such as the Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa.

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A distinguishing feature of mediaeval Esoteric Buddhism was initiation (abhiṣeka). The practitioners of this path—both monastic and lay—underwent an initiation ceremony bestowed by a master in order to pursue a fast process of liberation, or fulfill mundane goals, with the assistance of psycho-physical techniques (sādhana, upāya) such as yogic meditation and visualization, maṇḍalas, mantras, magico-ritual procedures, and worship of (Esoteric) Buddhist icons. Esoteric Buddhism, and especially the Vajrayāna strand, had in its central practices and discourses an element of initiation by a vajrācārya, transgression, empowerment, divinization, worship of wrathful deities, and secrecy.12 Esoteric Buddhism shared significant common elements with Tantric Śaivism, to the extent that the two religions participated in an interdependence of discourse in such disparate domains as philosophy, soteriology, ritual, and iconography. This complex phenomenon of dialectic influence and interchange has triggered a wide range of etic interpretations. While the formative phase of the non-dual and transgressive Vajrayāna Buddhism and its foundational texts (labeled Yoganiruttaratantras in the Tibetan tradition) is still a matter of debate as only a fraction of ‘proto-Tantric’ Buddhist (and Śaiva) textual corpora have survived for us, scholars generally agree on the view that the whole canon was the result of a synthesis with a corpus of Sanskrit texts of antinomian character called Yoginītantras or Ḍākinītantras, which began to appear in South Asia by the 7th or 8th century. Sanderson (1994, 2001), hypothesizing a direct influence from Śaiva milieux of the Mantramārga (‘Way of Mantra’) where mantra-related salvific and/or mundane practices rose to prominence during the 6th and 7th centuries, argues that the Yoginītantras were originally of Śaiva persuasion, and reflected the transgressive rhetoric and practices of such marginal groups as the Kāpālikas, the ash-smeared, skull-bearing devotees of the terrifying Bhairava/Mahākāla. Conversely, Davidson (2002) maintains that in the early siddha milieux of composition and circulation of such corpora the boundaries between Buddhism and Śaivism 12.  For a description of ‘eight significant features of Tantric Buddhism’, see Tribe 2000: 197–202.

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Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes were not clear-cut, and the vectors were subaltern individuals or (tribal) ethnic groups living at the margins of the Brahmanical social order. Another position, advocated by Seyfort Ruegg (1964, 2008), posits an early ‘pan-Indian religious substratum’ or common cultic stock that would ex hypothesi form the endogenous common source and cultural background from which both Śaiva and Buddhist traditions derived, and to which they ultimately owe their shared common elements.

consolidation and spread of esoteric buddhism: ‘royal’ vs. ‘mercantile’ paradigms A widespread scholarly opinion views the development of Esoteric Buddhism as an eminently royal affair. According to Ronald Davidson (2002: 23), one of the main exponents of this paradigm, ‘esoteric Buddhism has a very strong political element which is occluded in the modern Buddhist apologia’. To Davidson, Esoteric Buddhist ideology, even the monastic one, is a mirror of Indian mediaeval life (2002: 115): When the Mantrayāna becomes culturally important outside India, it is principally through the agency of official patronage, either aristocratic or imperial. Given these circumstances, it would be extraordinary if the military and political culture of early medieval India had not shaped esoteric institutions, doctrines, literature, rituals, and iconography, at least to some degree.… Esoteric Buddhism is the form of medieval Buddhism that internalized, appropriated, reaffirmed, and rearranged the structures most closely associated with the systems of power relations, ritual authentication, aesthetics, gift-giving, clan associations, and sense of dominion that defined post-Gupta Indian polities.

According to Davidson, what ensured the consolidation and expansion of Esoteric Buddhism was its alignment to state interests, effected through monastic agents who entered the royal courts and secured the support of the elites, often competing with the ritual specialists of what was the most popular religion and ritual technology of their time over large portions of South and Southeast

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Asia: Śaivism. Thus, the relationship between Esoteric Buddhist ritual specialists and royal elites seems to be coterminous with one that existed between Brahmanical purohitas and the courts they served.13 By acting as royal chaplains, religious preceptors (rājaguru), subduers of demons,14 magicians, thaumaturges, and even courtly advisors, Buddhist monks whose ritual practice adhered to ‘esoteric’ traditions provided warring monarchs with rituals geared towards the obtainment of what was most sought after by them: power. Through the invocation of powerful entities, the proffering of mantras and spells, and the enactment of royal initiations, those masters promised kings the safeguarding of their kingdoms, victory against their enemies, invincibility in battle,15 and indeed divinization of their body (see Flood 2006: 11). White (2012: 165) captures the translocal dynamics involved in this process by noting that besides trade, warfare, and political expansion, the contacts and exchanges favouring the spread of (Indic) adstratal Esoteric Buddhist (and Tantric Śaiva) traditions took place at the hands of religious and magico-ritual spe13.  Linguistic evidence supporting this inextricable connection between politics and religious/ritual ideology is provided by the use of terms pertaining to the ritual sphere in the mediaeval Indic political domain (and vice versa), such as the important terms maṇḍala or mantrin (‘possessor of [secret] spells’: Davidson 2002: 143–44); the latter, indicating the king’s counselors, has remained in use in modern Hindi, Indonesian, and Malay with the meaning of ‘minister [of state]’ (compare the Chinese and English ‘mandarin’: see Strickmann 1996). 14.  On the importance of demonology and ‘exorcism’ as vectors of transregional transfer and adoption of Buddhism (and Śaivism), see Strickmann 1996: 149, White 2012: 150, and Giebel, this volume. 15.  To be sure, the employment of monks in warfare is not exclusive to this period: witness the Chinese military campaigns that started in the 4th century (Sen 2003: 36). However, the Esoteric Buddhist signature of the martial rituals carried out by Amoghavajra at the Tang court is miles apart from the ‘true Buddhism’ claimed by Xuanzang, who turned down an offer by Emperor Taizong to accompany him in his Korean campaign (ibid.: 37). Much has been written on the topic of ‘war magic’ and Esoteric Buddhism in India and beyond (besides the contributions by Acri, Bade and Goble in this volume, see Sinclair 2014, White 2012, Sanderson 2004, Davidson 2002, and Lokesh Chandra 1992a, 1992b).

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

the turn to Mantrayāna in Java in the 780s and cialists enjoying royal or imperial patronage—‘a 790s is hard to square with such a notion, as prime example being the battlefield sorcerers whose is ninth-century Southeast Asian support for magical devices and counter-devices were cona monastery in Nālandā. Only merchant netsidered to be choice weapons in battle’. Through works could have sustained the contacts with rituals, whether internalized or enacted, these Bengal and Sri Lanka that made possible the agents offered the courtly elites an easy path to the movement of monks and the transfer of texts. mainstream Buddhist ideal of personal salvation on It is hard to see why the territorial and defenthe one hand, and to the Tantric ideal of divinizasive aspects of the Mantrayāna, so connected tion on the other. By the same token, they ensured in Davidson’s mind with official patronage, need be thought incompatible with merchant a broader support for their cause by providing lay values. Indeed, bonds among merchants in householders with equally powerful means—ritual, widely separated ports could well have been magical, meditative, and devotional—to achieve enhanced by beliefs in secret codes, despite difboth their mundane and supramundane goals. ferences in language and ethnicity, much as a An alternative view lays emphasis on traders— cluster of mandalas exhibits alternate paths to who were among the original propagators of Buda single unified goal. dhism in its early stage—as the main agents of the dissemination of ‘Maritime Buddhism’ across Recent scholarship has unveiled the multi-direcAsia (see, e.g., Bopearachchi 2014, Dayalan 2013, tional connections existing between Buddhist Lancaster n.d.).16 While the success of Buddhism centres, tied to each other by overlapping networks (in both its exoteric and esoteric forms) overseas of relations that were religious as much as economic, has been too often simplistically perceived as the diplomatic, and political in nature.18 Therefore, to unique result of economic and social forces con- understand the establishment (and disruption) of nected to a mercantile class-ideology, characterized complex networks, an eclectic, rather than ‘single by an inherent dynamism and opposed to a ‘static’ model’, approach is required. To better grasp such Brahmanism, it is undeniable that lay householders a multifaceted, trans-regional phenomenon as the active in trade, crafts, and warfare played a role in patterns of Buddhist transmission across Maritime patronizing and spreading—e.g., through pilgrim- Asia, which was shaped by socio-political, economage, travel, or migration—Esoteric Buddhist cults.17 ic, and perhaps even environmental factors, one Hiram Woodward, criticizing Davidson’s model for may try to apply, as was done by Neelis (2011: 10) failing to make a place for the ‘link’ between courts with respect to South, Central, and East Asia, a and monasteries on the one hand, and between ‘networks approach’ or ‘networks model’. As Neelis monasteries and society at large on the other (2004: (2011: 319) persuasively puts it: 332), questions Davidson’s assumption that ‘a factor Multidirectional movement by agents of Budin the rise of the Mantrayāna or of institutional dhist transmission … who selectively left esoterism … was the loss of mercantile support traces of their journeys in literary texts, inand the rise in official patronage’ (2004: 353; cf. scriptions, and material artifacts indicates Davidson 2002: 82–83, 167). Trying to bridge the more complex patterns of transmission than gap between the ‘royal’ and ‘mercantile’ model, an oversimplified flow of influence in a single Woodward rightly argues that direction along a fixed route. As they consol16.  By contrast, Sen (2014a: 42–43) discusses evidence of ‘antagonistic encounters’ between Buddhist monks and (Hindu?) merchants plying the overland and maritime commercial routes. 17.  See Szántó 2012: 34–35 on the readership of the Catuṣpīṭhatantra, and his n. 47 for a summary of Pāla evidence of Buddhist patronage by members of the above-mentioned social groups; cf. Mishra 2011 on the ‘vertical’ spread of Vajrayāna in mediaeval Odisha (formerly: Orissa).

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idated multifaceted links between religious, economic, and political nodes along multiple

18.  On the intersection between trade, diplomacy, the emergent Esoteric Buddhist networks in the 7th century, and their integration in the wider Asian Buddhist world in the 8th century, see Sen 2003; cf. Hall 2010 on the (inter-) regional trade networks of insular Southeast Asia in the 9th and 10th centuries, in the light of archaeological evidence from shipwrecks and epigraphy.

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Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes lines of communication, they formed their own parallel exchange networks, thus enhancing possibilities for cross-cultural contact and transfer.… It remains to be seen if trade networks played comparative roles as catalysts for long-distance transmission in other Buddhist geographical and historical contexts that were beyond the scope of this inquiry: Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.

This approach individuates the nodes, conduits, and hubs that facilitated the dynamic processes of exchange, thus going beyond the metaphors of cultural ‘flows’ and ‘influences’ that have so far characterized the scholarly discourse. To fully appreciate how religious, mercantile, and diplomatic networks acted as catalysts for transmission of Esoteric Buddhism far and wide across Asia, it is necessary to adopt a geographically wider ‘Maritime Asian’ perspective, and take into account the maritime vectors linking together the nodal centres in the Buddhist ecumene.

placing esoteric buddhism in mediaeval maritime asia As is shown by scriptural, epigraphic, and art historical materials, esoteric cults, doctrines, and ritual technologies flourished across the mediaeval Buddhist ecumene. Vajra-accoutrements, icons of Esoteric Buddhist deities, and dhāraṇīs based on Esoteric Buddhist texts in Sanskrit have been recovered across a vast swathe of both the continental landmass and island territory of Maritime Asia.19 Networks of Buddhist clerics of different ethnicities adhering to novel Tantric developments began to emerge in the 7th century in disparate locales, moving along the maritime routes connecting South, East, and Southeast Asia. Those sea routes, established over the centuries—if not millennia—by a steady flow of traders and seafarers, 19.  Evidence from insular areas, which is rarely accounted for in studies on Esoteric Buddhism, has been found in Sri Lanka (see Mudiyanse 1967; Chandawimala 2013), the Maldives (see Gippert 2004, 2005), the Indonesian Archipelago (see Nihom 1994, 1998a; Sundberg 2003; Kandahjaya 2009, this volume; Griffiths 2011b, 2012, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c; Griffiths, Revire and Sanyal 2013; Cruijsen, Griffiths and Klokke 2012; Long 2014; Hall 2010; Miksic, this volume), and the Philippines (see Orlina 2012).

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were also plied by pilgrims and religious specialists who crossed oceans and lands in search of esoteric knowledge, rare Sanskrit scriptures, relics and icons, powerful spells, and rituals of maṇḍalic initiation (abhiṣeka) imparted by renowned ācāryas, as well as in search of political sponsors. Esoteric Buddhism coexisted in many contexts with varieties of mainstream exoteric Mahāyāna or Pali Buddhism(s). Gaining momentum in the 8th century, in what could indeed be described as a ‘Tantric turn’, it eventually became a nearly pan-Asian phenomenon. Its expansion was initially driven by a handful of exceptional masters endowed with a remarkably cosmopolitan vision and ‘international’ ambitions, who gained the support of the ruling elites of their time. Kings who either sponsored or granted direct recognition as state religion to Esoteric Buddhism during its ‘first wave’20 of pan-Asian expansion belonged to such prominent, and roughly coeval, Asian dynasties as the early Candras (r. ca. 850–1050) and Pālas (r. ca. 750–1199) in the northeastern Indian Subcontinent, and the early Bhauma-Karas in Odisha (r. ca. 825–950); the Yarlung dynasty in Tibet (r. ca. 618–842); the early Second Lambakaṇṇas in Sri Lanka (from the late 7th to the mid-9th century, up to Sena I); the Śailendras and cognate Śrīvijayan rulers in Java, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula (r. ca. 7th–13th centuries);21 the Chinese Tangs (r. 20.  Linrothe (1999) has elaborated a schematic model encompassing three phases of Esoteric Buddhism on the basis of the iconographical and doctrinal developments carried by each one of them. While pointing out that some of the stages after the 8th century may be contemporaneous and contiguous, he argues that ‘Phase One dominates the period between the late sixth to the eighth centuries, Phase Two presides from roughly the eighth to the late tenth century and Phase Three from the late tenth century through to the twelfth’ (ibid.: 13). Although this model may retain its usefulness when analysing wider-ranging historical or soteriological aspects of Esoteric Buddhism, here I would rather use the term ‘wave’ as a metaphor for the spread of esoteric fashions far and wide across Asia, and identify two main waves: the first from around the 7th to the early 10th century, the second from around the late 10th to the 13th century. Each of these waves appears to have been characterized by new religious networks, socio-political configurations, scriptural canons, and iconographic fashions. 21.  The issue as to whether the Śailendra Buddhist kings belonged to a distinct dynasty—of either Javanese, South-

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

618–907), especially under Emperors Xuanzong (r. 712–56) and Daizong (r. 762–79); the later Silla dynasty in Korea (r. 661–935); and the Japanese imperial dynasty in the Heian period (r. 794–1185). Having suffered a sudden decline in royal support, if not outright persecution, in locales as disparate as Tibet, Sri Lanka, Central Java, and China in the middle of the 9th century,22 Esoteric Buddhism picked up momentum again in the 11th century (the ‘second wave’) and remained vital through the 12th and 13th centuries across much of Maritime Asia. Major royal figures of that period who elected Esoteric Buddhism as their personal and official cult, or supported Tantric rituals as a means of achieving their political ends, are Jayavarman VII in Cambodia (r. ca. 1181–1220), Kṛtanagara in East Java (r. 1268–92), and Kublai Khan in China (r. 1260–94). Having virtually died out in the Indian Subcontinent by the late 13th century, it continued to live or even thrive—in its localized adaptations— until the 15th century in Java and Sumatra (e.g., under King Ādityavarman, r. ?–1375), and to the present day in Nepal, Tibet, Bali, and Japan. Early, if rare, Esoteric Buddhist vestiges are found in Western India, as evidenced e.g. by im­ east Asian, or even South Asian origin—that reigned in Java up to ca. ad 850, and was followed by a Javanese line of Śaiva kings, has been the object of a longstanding controversy among scholars; among the supporters of a dual-dynasty theory are Jordaan (2006, and Jordaan and Colless 2009) and Long (2014), while Sundberg (2011, this volume), along with the majority of archaeologists and historians of premoden Java, opt for a single-dynasty theory. As this introduction is not the right place to discuss this complex issue in detail, suffice it to say that in Java from the mid-9th century we note a prevalence of royal support for Śaivism instead of Buddhism, and no more mentions of Śailendra monarchs, whereas in Sumatra Buddhism continues to thrive, and we find references to ‘Śailendra’ monarchs and a ‘Śrīvijaya’ polity. For a useful survey of the literature, and a balanced approach favouring a ‘Javanese multi-dynastic’ model, see Zakharov 2012. 22.  Apart from socio-political contingencies, such paradigm-shifts may have occurred as the result of religious ‘reforms’ that promoted a turn towards non-Esoteric varieties of Buddhist traditions (as happened, e.g., in Sri Lanka [see Sundberg, this volume] and, at a later date, in Myanmar and Cambodia with respect to the prevalence of Theravāda/Pali Buddhism over Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna) or even different religions (as happened, e.g., in Central Java).

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ag­ery from Buddhist caves in the Western Dec­ can, such as Ellorā (Malandra 1996), Aurangabad (Brancaccio 2010) and Kānherī, where Tārās and (esoteric) Avalokiteśvaras are found as early as the 6th–7th centuries (Pandit 2015; Bopearachchi 2014: 164–67).23 By the 9th century, a Buddhist monastery hosting a famous caitya and a Tārā temple was located in Mahābimba in Koṅkana (the Konkan coast of western India); the well-known illustrated Nepalese manuscript of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā-Prajñāpāramitā dated ad 1015 (CUL ms. Add. 1643, f. 193r), presenting a visual documentation of divinities and renowned centres across Buddhist Asia, mentions Mahāviśva (a corruption of Mahābimba?) as the seat of a famous Lokanātha (cf. below, n. 57; Szántó 2016: 2), and links a significant number of other Buddhist sites to Koṅkana (see Kim 2014: 48). It is generally acknowledged that major centres of Esoteric Buddhism (and of Tantrism in general) were found in the northeastern areas of the Indian Subcontinent, roughly corresponding to modern Bihar (itself the cradle of Buddhism since the time of the Buddha), West Bengal, and Bangladesh. Bihar was the seat of such prestigious institutions of Buddhist learning as Nālandā, Vikramaśīla, Somapura, and Uddaṇḍapura (Otantapurī), where esoteric fashions seem to have become popular from the late 8th through the 12th century;24 the whole northeastern region hosted major masters of Mantranaya and Vajrayāna Buddhism, and several Tantric works stem from there. It is now increasingly recognised that Odisha (Oḍra) played a significant role in the formation of Esoteric Buddhism and its spread to Southeast Asia. This region, part of which was formerly known across the Indic world as ‘Kaliṅga’, boasted important monastic centres and sacred pilgrimage sites, such as Ratnagiri, Udayagiri, and Lalitagiri, which were connected to the maritime networks via the 23.  Malandra (1993: 116) has noted a similarity between the depiction of the eight Bodhisattvas on the exterior of the Central Javanese Candi Mendut and some of the Ellorā caves; a possible iconographical influence stemming from Ellorā on the sculpted triptych of Mendut has been hypothesized by Revire (2015a). 24.  On the Pāla-sponsored monasteries as centres of Tantrism, see Saran 1981, Tanaka 2008, Sanderson 2009: 87–108, Delhey 2015: 4, Decleer n.d.: 15–16.

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Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes ports of Kaliṅgapatana and Puri.25 An evocative locale in the pan-Asian Tantric world across the Bauddha-Śaiva divide was Śrīśailam/Śrīparvata in Andhra Pradesh.26 Some have identified this as the ‘Vajraparvata’ mentioned in the 14th-century Sri Lankan chronicle Nikāyasaṅgraha as a seat of the heretic Vājiriyavāda and Nīlapaṭadarśana monks who introduced varieties of Tantric Buddhism on the island in the 9th century, while others have linked it to the early Buddhist site of Nāgārjunakoṇḍa—another source of Mahāyāna and perhaps also Tantric cults.27 This area, connected 25.  See Malandra 1996: 186 n. 12, 204; Sadakata 1997; Donaldson 2001; Ray 2008: 130–33; Sanderson 2009: 80–83; Mishra 2011; Reichle, this volume. Szántó (2016: 4) reports that the Saṁvarodayā­—the to date only surviving initiation manual of the Saṁvara cycle, copied on a Nepalese ms. dated 1054 ad—was written by a certain Bhūvācārya at Ratnagiri. On the important role of Odisha in the spread of (Esoteric) Buddhism overseas, see Patra 2013, several papers in Patnaik 2014, and Tanaka 2014, who describes some dhāraṇīs unearthed at Udayagiri II that have not been found anywhere else in India, but versions of which are extant in Sri Lanka, Tibet, China and Japan (the same documents provide evidence of the connection between Śubhākaradeva of the Bhauma-Kara dynasty and Uda­ yagiri). On the hypothesis (now largely abandoned) of a connection between the Javanese Śailendras and Indian dynasties, such as the Śailodbhavas of 7th-century Odisha or the Ikṣvākus of Śrīśailam/Śrīparvata of Andhra, see Majumdar 1937; Sarkar 1985a, 1985b; Lokesh Chandra 1995a. On the identification of the Tantric seat of Oḍḍiyāna with Odisha (rather than the Swat valley), see Donaldson 1995: 174, 2001: 8–16. On the possible influence of Tantric practices from Odisha on the demonic figures of Balinese dance-drama, see Emigh 1996. 26.  See Yamano 2009 and White 1996: 60–61, 110–12. White discusses the close associations of Śrīśailam/Śrīparvata with the siddhas and esoteric/alchemical traditions (including those stemming from Nāgārjuna) in both Buddhist and Śaiva lore, and points out that there may have been two separate toponyms—the one being in the Kurnool district of the central Deccan plateau, the other one sixty miles to the east, near Nāgārjunakoṇḍa (White 1996: 375, n. 47, referring to an earlier work by Arion Roşu). On the esoteric features of some early Buddhist sites in Andhra, see Ray 2008: 128–30. 27.  Lokesh Chandra (1993a: 500) links Śrīparvata to Vajraparvata on the grounds of the former’s close association with Vajrayāna. On the introduction of Esoteric Buddhism in Sri Lanka by a monk of the Vajraparvata ordination lineage (vajraparvvata-nikāyavāsīvū bhikṣu), and its adoption by Matvalasen (i.e., King Sena I, r. 834–54),

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to the important seaport of Viśakhapatnam, was ‘a launching point for missionaries to Kashmir, China, Bengal, and Sri Lanka’ (White 1996: 60). Other South Asian locales that are at present not commonly associated with Buddhism, such as the prevalently Śaiva South India (Kāñcī and Nākappaṭṭiṉam in Tamil Nadu in particular),28 or that are now associated with Theravāda/Pali Buddhism, such as Sri Lanka,29 are also being recognised as prominent centres—if not cradles, indeed—of Esoteric Buddhist activities in the early mediaeval period. Scholarly investigations of archaeological remains confirm the information, found in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese textual sources, that both South India and Sri Lanka once hosted important lineages of Esoteric Buddhist masters and repositories of Tantras, and acted as hubs for the spread of esoteric traditions to Southeast Asia and beyond. Foundational scriptures, such as the Mahāvairocanatantra and Sarvatathāga­ ta­tattvasaṅgraha, may have been compiled there (Hodge 2003: 11–12). According to Esoteric Buddhist hagiography, Nāgārjuna—one of the Mahāsiddhas often associated with South India in mediaeval Sanskrit sources—received his revealed texts from Vajrasattva in an iron stūpa, and later transmitted them to Nāgabodhi (a.k.a. Nāgabuddhi; see Apsee Sankrityayana 1934: 214–16; Mudiyanse 1967: 9; Lokesh Chandra 1993a and 1993b: 118–26; Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 215, n. 168; Chandawimala 2013: 117. Interestingly, the Nikāyasaṅgraha contains a list of early Esoteric Buddhist scriptures followed by the Vajraparvata-dwelling monks, such as the seminal Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha, Māyājāla, Paramādya, Cakra­śaṁvara, etc. (Lokesh Chandra 1993b: 125; ). 28.  Lokesh Chandra (1993a: 500–502) has stressed the importance of Kāñcī—which he connects to Oḍḍiyāna—for overseas (and especially insular Southeast Asian) Esoteric Buddhism (see also Guy 2004 and, on Buddhism in Tamil Nadu, Monius 2001). 29.  Although Sri Lanka was one of the early recipients and exporters of Theravāda/Pali Buddhism, recent studies have underlined the numerous vestiges of both Mahāyāna and Esoteric Buddhism existing on the island. These includes images of Vajrasattva and Tārā, sealings with Vajrayāna elements, the fragments of Ratnakūṭa Sūtra found in the Ceṭiyagiri Monastery, the Dhāraṇīghara mentioned in the Mahāvaṁsa, the dhāraṇīs from Abhayagiri and those found in the Great Book of Protection (see Mudiyanse 1967; Sundberg 2004; Sundberg and Giebel 2011; Chandawimala 2013).

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pendix A) in South India (Orzech 1995); monks of the place of southeast asia in the the caliber of Puṇyodaya, Amoghavajra and Prajña esoteric buddhist ecumene travelled from China to South India and/or Sri Lanka to get hold of some rare esoteric texts and A series of recent, monumental works on Esoteric receive initiation from local consecration masters. Buddhism in South, Central, and East Asia has Many of the Southeast and East Asian locales re- dramatically improved our knowledge of these ceived their Buddhism(s) via high-profile diplomat- traditions in their regional contexts, and laid out ic and commercial contacts entertained with South the basis for an exploration of the connections— Asian entrepôts that doubled as centres of Bud- mostly across the overland Silk Roads—that linked dhist diffusion. In these cosmopolitan entrepôts, the opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass.31 Yet Buddhism coexisted alongside Śaivism, being scholarship needs to move beyond the paradigm either sponsored, or at least benignly tolerated, by envisaging a ‘diffusionist’ spread of Esoteric Budpredominantly Śaiva dynasties.30 These strategic dhism from a South Asian ‘heartland’ or ‘mothercrossroads of mercantile and political power con- land’ to East and Southeast Asian ‘peripheries’, for stituted the ‘nodes’ that probably played a crucial cults were transmitted from multiple centres, and role in the genesis and development of Buddhism in by no means followed a mono-directional pattern. general, and Tantric traditions in particular, insofar According to Sen (2003: 11), during the Tang period that they supported prestigious centres of learning, Chinese Buddhist monks ceased to suffer from a sponsored monastic congregations and institutions, ‘borderland complex’: hence, China ceased to be or housed ancient relics visited by pilgrims coming a ‘frontier’ and became a terminus, and centre of from all over the Indic world. Think, for instance, diffusion, of Buddhism in its own right.32 Similarof Nālandā and Vikramaśīla in northeastern India, ly, Skilling (2009: 42) re-evaluates the important Abhayagirivihāra at Anurādhapura in Sri Lanka, participation of premodern Siam in a much wider the Buddhist institutions of higher learning in world of Buddhist cultural interchange than is Sumatra alluded to by Yijing, and the Buddhist usually assumed at present, questioning ‘whether ‘‘India’’ should always be the ‘‘centre’’, Siam the monumental complexes of Central Java. periphery—a passive recipient of ‘‘influence’’’. Southeast Asia—and large areas of what are now 30.  Such as the Pallavas in the Tamil country, who did the Malay peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelnot oppose Buddhism. Gillet (2013: 115) argues that Bud- ago in particular—played an important, Asia-wide dhism played a major role in the construction of Pallava role as both a crossroads and terminus of Buddhist iconography through dynamics of assimilation, yet the alleged ‘silence’ of this dynasty regarding Buddhism ultimately suggests a counter-acting strategy through inclusion. Singh (2014: 56) regards this attitude as an ‘incorporative kingship within a polytheistic or monolatrous context’ dictated by reasons of realpolitik. For instance, the Pallava may have acted out of diplomatic politeness when dealing with other Buddhist powers, as suggested by the protection enjoyed by Vajrabodhi in Kāñcī, and by their religio-diplomatic links with contemporary pro-Buddhist dynasties such as the Tangs, the Śailendras, and the Lambakaṇṇas. Around ad 1019 a Buddhist temple, the Śailendra-Cūḍāmaṇivarmavihāra, was founded at Nākappaṭṭiṉam by Cūḍāmaṇivarman, king of Kaṭāha (Kedah in the Malay Peninsula), with the support of staunch Śaiva King Rājarāja Cōḻa I. In a similar fashion, the Pālas were early adopters of Mahāyāna Buddhism and its Mantranaya and Vajrayāna developments, but at the same time patronized Śaivism, especially in its Atimārga branch (see Sanderson 2009: 87–88, 108–15; Bagchi 1993: 13; Davidson 2002: 85).

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31.  See, e.g., Kapstein and van Schaik 2010, Dalton 2011, Meinert 2016 (Central Asia and Tibet); McRae and Nattier 2012 (India, Central Asia and China); Orzech, Sørensen and Payne 2011 (East Asia). 32.  For instance, while the 3rd-century Gaṇḍavyūha locates the original seat of Mañjusrī at Nāgārjunakoṇḍa, Yijing considered Mount Wutai in China to be the adopted home of that Bodhisattva (Lamotte 1960: 84–85), and this is the very reason why Indian monks Prajña and Vajrabodhi travelled to China (Copp in Orzech, Sørensen and Payne 2011: 361; cf. Sen 2003: 76–86); ms. CUL Add. 1643 of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā-Prajñāpāramitā mentions a mahācīne mañjughoṣaḥ [‘Mañjuśrī in (Greater) China’] (Kim 2014: 49, 67). Mediaeval Sanskrit and Tibetan sources speak about the traditions of Mahācīna- or Mahācīnakrama-Tārā and a (markedly transgressive) Chinese mode (cīnācāra) of worshipping Tārā (see N.N. Bhattacharyya 2005: 98, 106, 110; Bühnemann 1996).

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contacts. With the exception of a handful of recent the contribution of insular Southeast Asian masters studies dealing with aspects of (Esoteric) Buddhism to Vajrayāna Buddhism in Tibet, also through the in the context of Southeast Asia and maritime handful of texts composed in ‘Suvarṇadvīpa’ that connectivity,33 much of previous scholarship has were introduced into the Tibetan canon (e.g., the tended to either display a bias towards (reified Durbodhāloka by Dharmakīrti), is acknowledged and/or constructed) manifestations of Theravāda by the Tibetan tradition from the 11th century, and and exoteric Mahāyāna Buddhism in the area, or confirmed by modern scholarship (see Schoterperceive it as a consumer rather than a ‘genera- man, this volume, and below, p. 19). Transmission tor’ of Esoteric Buddhism. As a consequence, the of Buddhist ideas from Sumatra and/or Java to the creative and constitutive force of Southeast Asian Himalayan region has been suggested on the basis agents and milieux in the transfer, transformation, of artistic and architectural similarities between and ‘translocation’ of people, texts, notions, and the Tabo monastery in Himachal Pradesh, which artefacts remains to be fully appreciated. The ex- Atīśa visited in 1042, and Borobudur (Wayman istence of a Sinhala monastic complex in Central 1981: 140–42; Nihom 1994: 72, n. 192; cf. Kimmet Java, a Śailendra-Śrīvijayan monastery at Nālandā, 2012: 98–99 and Lokesh Chandra and Singhal 1999). and a Śailendra‐Cūḍāmaṇivarmavihāra at Nākap- Be this as it may, it is difficult not to concur with paṭṭiṉam; the survival, besides the Chinese reports, Skilling (1997: 188) that ‘the composition of Durof Sanskrit and vernacular textual materials (from bodhāloka presupposes the existence and study epigraphic as well as manuscript sources) of Man- in Śrīvijaya of the abstruse Prajñāpāramitā and tranaya and Vajrayāna persuasion, some of which Abhisamayālaṃkāra literature; of a high level of contain quotations traceable to Sanskrit Tantras; scholarship; and of royal sponsorship’. This sceand the significant remains of statues, ritual im- nario is also suggested by the figure of Shihu (施護, plements, and monuments, all conjure up the role *Dānapāla, d. 1018), an exceptionally prolific South of insular Southeast Asia as a recognized seat of Asian monk-translator who in the late 10th century esoteric cults in a highly interconnected Buddhist reached China with a good knowledge of the lancosmopolis rather than a remote and backward guages of Sanfochi (Śrīvijaya) and Shepo (Java) (see periphery.34 Recent epigraphical studies by Grif- Sen 2003: 384; Orzech 2011a: 449–50). fiths have underlined ‘the pan-Asian character of Both Sumatra and Java are likely to have acted Buddhism and the integral place the Indonesian Ar- as important places in the development of (esochipelago once held in the ancient Buddhist world’ teric fashions in) the cults of Mañjuśrī and Tārā, (2014a: 137). Woodward (2004: 353) has advanced an which had an inherent ‘maritime’ aspect insofar argument for ‘treating Indonesia and India as an that they were tutelary deities of travellers, and integral unit well into the ninth century’, making ‘a seafarers in particular (Hanneder 2008, Ray 2012: case for possible influence of Borobudur Buddhism 56–60, Bopearachchi 2014); the popularity of those upon subsequent developments in India’, yet at the deities in Sri Lanka, mainland Southeast Asia, Java, same time admitting that ‘there is little evidence of Sumatra, and China suggests the existence of strong inhabitants of Southeast Asia participating in the Buddhist connections between those locales by the creation of the Yogini Tantras’. On the other hand, 9th century.35 As pointed out by Chou (1945: 321) 33.  See Woodward 2004; Kandahjaya 2004 (esp. 40–112); Sundberg and Giebel 2011; Sharrock 2012, 2013a; Sen 2014a; Long 2014. 34.  These data would seem to lend some support to Tāranātha’s claim—however exaggerated it may be—that, from the time of king Dharmapāla (late 8th–early 9th century) on, there were in madhyadeśa many students from Southeast Asian kingdoms, and during the time of the four Senas about half of the monks of Magadha were from Southeast Asia (see D. Chattopadhyaya 1982: 330).

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35.  On Java and Sumatra as early seats of Mañjuśrī and Tārā cults, as well as the possible connection between forms of Tārā, the Javanese Nyai Loro Kidul, and the Chinese Guanyin, see respectively Miksic 2006 and Jordaan 1997, 1998. On the pan-Asian cult of Mahāpratisarā—a female deity not unrelated to Tārā—and especially its Javanese attestations, see Cruijsen, Griffiths and Klokke 2012. Sundberg (2004: 114–16) has postulated the presence in Java of Chinese Buddhist personalities on the basis of a lintel-piece from Candi Sewu, which depicts among many

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and Sundberg and Giebel (2011: 152), according to an account by Yuanzhao compiled into the Zhenyuan xinding shijiao mulu, and also to the Japanese master Kūkai, Vajrabodhi (a.k.a. Vajrabuddhi; see Appendix A by Sinclair) first met Amoghavajra in Java, which should have displayed evidence of theological sophistication because it likely ranked among the locales suitable for a well-educated Indian religious adept like Vajrabodhi to occupy his time, instead of energetically resuming his approach to his intended destination of China. Indeed, Java had for centuries been an exponent of Indian Sanskritic culture, in both Śaiva and Bauddha strains, and some locations on the island must have been perceived as hospitable ground for Vajrabodhi.

Java under the Śailendras, with such majestic and exquisitely crafted Buddhist monuments as Borobudur, Candi Sewu, Plaosan, and Mendut, must have ranked among the great sacred centres of Buddhism. This may be inferred, e.g., from the mid 9th-century Siddhamātṛkā inscription unearthed at Candi Plaosan in the Prambanan area (de Casparis 1956: 188–89, 202), which describes the worship of a Buddha-temple (jinamandira) by pilgrims continuously arriving from Gurjaradeśa (Gujarat, or the dominions of the Gurjara-Pratihāras in North India?). The illustrated manuscript of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā-Prajñāpāramitā CUL Add. 1643 dedicates a vignette to (an image of the Buddha) Dīpaṅkara in Java (f. 2r). As argued by Sinclair (this volume, p. 31) on the basis of the Tantric geography exposed by the Manjuśriyamūlakalpa (51.636–640), ‘by the late eighth century Kaliṅgoḍra, the ‘‘Maritime Kәliṅ’’, had been accorded Buddhavacana-level recognition in the Sanskritic world’. Given its strategic geographical location, the Malay Peninsula, where the domains of Śailendra/ Śrīvijayan Buddhist rulers were located, acted as an important intersection in the traffic of pilgrims bearded figures one of distinctive Sinitic appearance (cf. Klokke 2011: 20–21). Woodward (1977) has discussed some Chinese silk patterns on the decorative motifs of Candi Sewu, hypothesized a Chinese (Daoist) influence on the numerological patterns of Borobudur’s upper terraces (1999), and argued that the Javanese Bianhong, who studied in China under Huiguo, might have been the ‘mastermind’ of Borobudur (2009).

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plying the maritime routes. Testimony to this fact are the many sealings found at multiple sites in the period from the 6th to the 12th century; some of these objects display (esoteric) Mahāyāna iconography and are inscribed in northeastern Indian scripts, suggesting that they could have belonged to pilgrims from the Subcontinent (Jacq-Hergoualc’h 2002: 47). Manuscript CUL Add. 1643 (f. 120r) mentions a Lokanātha on Mount Valavatī in Kedah (Kaṭahadvīpa).36 The exquisitely crafted late 8th-century bronze Avalokiteśvaras found in the Chaiya district of modern Thailand and in Bidor (Perak, Malaysia) show close similarities with the Avalokiteśvara found at Wonogiri in Central Java, suggesting a link between those locales (see Sharrock and Bunker, this volume). As attested to by epigraphic and archaeological evidence, the Cam and Khmer domains were fully integrated in the web of intra-regional Southeast Asian networks connecting the mainland and the Malay Peninsula to Java, Sumatra, and China between the 7th and 10th centuries. Those locales hosted Esoteric Buddhist masters (such as Kīrtipaṇḍita and Puṇyodaya),37 and were the seats of monastic institutions or temples devoted to the worship of esoteric Mahāyānic Lokeśvaras.38 36.  See Kim 2014: 49, 63, 65 (who erroneously locates Kedah in Indonesia rather than Peninsular Malaysia). 37.  An inscription of the reign of Jayavarman V (r. 968–ca. 1000) tells us that Kīrtipaṇḍita, an adept of the Buddhist Yogatantras, acted in the capacity of royal guru, teaching the Tattvasaṅgraha and its commentaries (Sanderson 2003–4: 427, n. 284, 2004: 238; Green 2014: 84–85). Puṇyodaya travelled from India to China and then back to mainland Southeast Asia (see Lin 1935, Woodward 1988, 2004). On peninsular Southeast Asian traces of Vajrabodhi, see Sharrock (2012, 2013a, this volume). 38.  A stele found at An Thái village in Vietnam’s Quảng Nam province, dated ad 902, documents an example of a monastery built primarily as a site of Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna worship (Sinclair 2012). Chutiwongs (2005: 80–81) has hypothesized a connection between doctrinal elements featuring in the inscription and the Sanskrit-Old Javanese text Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan. Sanderson (2009: 117–18) discusses a few inscriptions from the 9th and 10th centuries that record the installation of esoteric Mahāyānic Lokeśvaras—and, at the same time, Śaiva deities—along with the construction and support of associated vihāras, e.g., the Đông Dương stele of 875 and the Nham Biền stele of 908. The latter inscription relates that the courtier Rā-

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Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes Several iconographic features of Wat Phra Maen in Nakhon Pathom, as well as related Buddhist statuary from Dvāravatī, display esoteric overtones, suggesting that esoteric forms of Mahāyāna Buddhism may have evolved there in Theravāda guise.39

the ‘first wave’ of esoteric buddhism (ca. 7th–early 10th century ad) The early networks that initiated the expansion of an ‘Esoteric Buddhist package’ from the 7th century were constituted by monks affiliated to related esoteric orders,40 who travelled—often alongside, or even in the capacity of diplomatic envoys41—along the paths opened by long-distance traders that favoured the quick exchange of goods, peoples, and ideas.42 Thanks to textual evidence, and especially jadvāra made two trips (siddhayātra, either pilgrimages or diplomatic missions) to Java (Mabbett 1986: 302, Green 2014: 80–83). Green 2014 and Schweyer 2009 are surveys of the relevant epigraphic and (art-)historical evidence. On the iconography of Đông Dương and its relationship with the Tantric Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra, see Woodward 2011. 39.  See Revire 2010. For the worship of Bodhisattvas Avalokiteśvara and Vajrapāṇi in central Thailand, perhaps as early as the second half of the 7th century, see Boisselier 1965: 149; Chutiwongs 1984: 221, 256–57; Revire 2010: 98. For a khakkhara finial and several other bronze ritual objects that have close parallels with Esoteric Buddhist material found in Central Java and beyond, see Revire 2009, 2015b: 139, n. 22). 40.  All the major figures in the transmission of Esoteric Buddhism to China and Southeast Asia up to the 8th century were monks. However, a category of non-monastic, householder vajrācāryas seems to have become more important than vajrācārya monks in South Asia during the late phase of Vajrayāna in South Asia (modern Balinese ‘Bauddha Brahmins’ may be considered the heirs to this category of householder-practitioners: see Sinclair 2012). A current scholarly desideratum remains to identify the networks of non-institutionalized practitioners, including siddhas and low-caste ritual or performance specialists, who contributed to the spread of forms of Tantrism overseas (see Acri 2014). 41.  See Sen (2003: 37–44) on the Tang-sponsored Buddhist diplomatic missions in the 7th century, and further, Sundberg and Giebel (2011) on the diplomatic connections of Vajrabodhi’s journeys. Sinclair (this volume, p. 48) speculates that the diplomatic lines of communication between the Tang capitals and insular Southeast Asia might have been used by Buddhist monks Bianhong and Prajña. 42.  P.C. Chakravarti (in Majumdar 1971: 662), citing Pliny

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the Sino-Japanese biographies of early masters, we are now able to reconstruct, albeit with an element of uncertainty, the probable pedigree and social circle of those prominent individual agents. Those charismatic personalities, more often than not associated with a vigorous activity of translation, commentarial work, and initiation of pupils, travelled—at times tracing the footsteps of their master(s)—both eastwards and westwards along the sea routes between the Indian Subcontinent and Japan. It is probably this network of masters and their disciples that acquired, transformed, and propagated images, texts and devotional practices connected with Buddhist divinities ranging from the Bodhisattvas and Goddesses that were popular in both exoteric and esoteric Mahāyāna milieux, such as Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, Vajrapāṇi, and Tārā, to the ferocious forms of Vajrapāṇi/Vajrasattva and Heruka (and his hypostases Hevajra and Saṁvara) that became predominant in Phase Two/ Three Vajrayāna. That the 7th- and early 8th-century networks were crucial for the formation and consolidation of Esoteric Buddhist cults and practices across Maritime Asia is suggested by the ‘archaic’ nature of the theological and ritual framework of major Esoteric Buddhist traditions outside of the Indian Subcontinent. As White (2000: 21) points out: What we find, in fact, is that the historical time frame in which the transmission (to China, Tibet, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia) of various Indian Tantric paradigms occurred has invariably proven definitive for the structure and content of the ‘export’ Tantric tradition in question. It is as if the original revelation reand the account by Chinese pilgrim Faxian, notes that the journey by merchant ship from the Pāla port-city of Tāmralipti to Sri Lanka (en route to Southeast Asia and China) took only a fortnight. Yijing recounts that thirty-seven out of the sixty Chinese monks who went to the Indian Subcontinent travelled by sea on merchant ships; further, he states that his own journey from Canton to Sumatra took a month, while the remaining leg from Kedah in Peninsular Malaysia to the Nicobar islands took ten days, and from there to Tāmralipti it took fifteen days (Ray 2008: 124). But according to other sources, because of the prevailing direction of monsoon winds, it was nearly impossible to make a return voyage between China and the Indian Subcontinent in one year (see Jordaan and Colless 2009: 112).

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mained fossilized, like an insect in a block of amber, in the export tradition. This is manifestly the case, for example, with Japanese Shingon—founded by Kūkai (774–835 C.E.)—whose core revelations are the seventh-century C.E. Mahāvairocana-sūtra and the Tattvasaṅgraha-sūtra.… Shingon practice remains, in many respects, a preserved specimen of those enshrined in seventh-century Indian paradigms, but with a Japanese overlay.… Similarly, Tibetan Buddhism, with its preponderance of Vajrayāna practice based on revelations found in what would later be classified as the Tantras of Yoga and Supreme Yoga, preserves the Tantric status quo of eighth-century India, from which it was introduced into Tibet by the legendary Vimalamitra and Padmasambhava.

Analogous considerations have been made by Nihom (1994: 189) with respect to Buddhist data preserved on Java and Sumatra. Reflecting a doctrinal situation preceding 8th-century systematizations, they may greatly aid us in attempting to reconstruct the intellectual history of the Tantras in India itself by providing a control relative to the much better known, preserved and studied traditions of Central and East Asia’.43

Among the early prominent monks are the Central Indian Atikūṭa (fl. 650s) and Puṇyodaya (Chin. Nati 那提, fl. 650s), the Chinese Yijing (635–713),44 Baosiwei (寶思惟, Skt. *Maṇicinta­ na/*Maṇicinta or *Ratnacinta, d. 721), and the South Indian Dharmaruci/Bodhiruci (d. 727). The vectors and initiators of a systematic, fully developed form of Esoteric Buddhism are ‘three great ācāryas’ of the mid-Tang period, namely the Indian Śubhākarasiṁha (Chin. Shanwuwei 善 43.  See Acri 2011a: 12–15 for analogous remarks on the archaic theology informing Śaiva texts from premodern Java and Bali, which also seem to predate the mature Saiddhāntika systematizations. 44.  Although the status of Yijing as an Esoteric Buddhist monk is debated, his biographies suggest that he trained with Śubhākarasiṁha and was acquainted with the teachings of the Vajraśekhara and Guhyatantra, besides writing a commentary of the Mahāvairocanasūtra (see Keyworth in Orzech, Sørensen and Payne 2011: 342–43; Shinohara 2014: 147–67).

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無畏, 637–735),45 Vajrabodhi (Chin. Jingangzhi 金 剛智; 671–741),46 and Vajrabodhi’s ordained pupil Amoghavajra (Chin. Bukong 不空; 704–74; probably

a native of Samarkand).47 This triad, which inspired various generations of pupils,48 was bound to be associated with a ‘canon’, as it were, of revealed scriptures, commentaries, ritual manuals and their connected practices49 for many centuries to come. Among the 8th- and 9th-century figures related to this triad, and especially to its last member Amoghavajra, were Nāgabodhi (Chin. Longzhi 龍 智),50 whose biography remains obscure but who is

45.  He was probably the eldest son of King Buddhakara, the alleged ancestor of the Bhauma-Kara dynasty kings of Odisha (Chou 1945: 251–52, n. 3; Pinte in Orzech, Sørensen and Payne 2011: 340; cf. Tanaka 2014). 46.  According to an account by Zanning, he was a Brahman from South India (Malayakūṭa), whose father served as purohita at the royal court of Kāñcī (Orzech 2011c: 346). Conversely, Lü Xiang’s biography reports that he was the third son of Īśānavarman (yeshanawamo 伊舍那靺摩), the kṣatriya king of a Central Indian dynasty (i.e., the Maukharis), and ‘because he was later recommended to the [Chinese] emperor by Mizhunna (米准那), the general of the king of a South Indian kingdom, he ended up being called a South Indian’ (trans. Giebel, in Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 134). (On the rendering of Chin. Jingangzhi 金剛智 as Vajrabuddhi, see Appendix A). 47.  Chinese biographies of Amoghavajra present contradictory information, describing him as either the son of a Brahman or a merchant from Central Asia. Chou (1945: 322) argues that Amoghavajra’s biographers tried to conceal his embarrassing background as a merchant, which would be undignified for a monk of his rank. 48.  Orzech (2011c: 345) has noted that the three monks, who are traditionally referred to by later Chinese disciples and Japanese scholars as the founders of the Chinese Zhenyan school, did not represent themselves as such. 49.  These were the Mahāvairocanasūtra and Susiddhikaramahātantra (first propagated by Śubhākarasiṁha), the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha (propagated by Vajrabodhi), (versions of) the Guhyasamāja (already known to Nāgabodhi), Śrīparamādya, Sarvabuddha­samāyoga, ot-­ her revealed scriptures belonging to the Sarvatathāgata­ tattvasaṅgraha/Vajraśekhara cycle (Jingangding 金剛頂, summarized and propagated by Amoghavajra), as well as Amoghavajra’s Jingangding jing yuqie shibahui zhigui. 50.  The biographical material on this figure, who is said to have lived for one hundred years and counted among the Mahāsiddhas, is mostly of a supernatural or legendary nature—for example that he was instructed by the Mahāsiddha Nāgārjuna, and, like the latter, resided at Śrīśailam or

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Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes believed to have met Amoghavajra in Sri Lanka in the 740s, and previously Vajrabodhi; Amogha­vajra’s Chinese disciples Huilang (?–781) and Huiguo (745–806); the latter’s Javanese disciple Bianhong (辨弘, fl. late 8th century); Prajña (Chin. Boruo 般若, alt. Bolaruo 般剌若; ca. 744–810, likely from present-day Afghanistan), disciple of Amoghavajra’s prominent pupil Yuanzhao (d. 800); the Koreans Pulga Saui and Hyecho (both fl. 8th century),51 disciples of Śubhākarasiṁha and both Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra respectively); and the Japanese Kūkai (774–835, Huiguo’s and Prajña’s disciple).52 The networks of 7th- to 9th-century monks may be visualized on a map of Maritime Asia (Map 1.1, p. 16), where ‘Indian’, ‘Sri Lankan’, ‘Śailendra and Javanese’, ‘Chinese’, and ‘Korean-Japanese’ circles offer a telling picture of the extraordinary period of intra-Asian connectivity that became the hallmark of the rise and spread of Esoteric Buddhist traditions in the course of just two or three generations. The initial triad formed by Nāgabodhi, Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra had strong ties with Southern India and Sri Lanka, both of which areas acted as an important hub for the dissemination of Esoteric Buddhism to Southeast Asia. On account of the shared artistic styles and iconographical motifs, Holt (1991: 82) argued that the regions of Pallava South India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia ‘constituted a veritable cultural triangle from the seventh into the ninth century’. Noting the ‘panAsian influence of the cultural dyad of Pallava India and Śrī Laṅkā’ in the 8th century, Sundberg and Giebel (2011: 153) focus on the status of some Buddhist sects operating in Kāñcī and at the Abhayagirivihāra as custodians of esoteric texts and oral teachings that played a key role in shaping Kāñcī; yet, his historicity cannot be automatically discounted on those grounds. On this figure, whose Chinese name is variously rendered in secondary sources as Nāgabodhi, Nāgabuddhi, or *Nāgajñāna/Nāgajña, see Van der Kuijp 2007, Sundberg and Giebel 2011, and especially Sinclair’s Appendix A in this volume. 51.  On the extensive, and seemingly repeated, travels of Hyecho to India and Central Asia, see Deeg 2010. 52.  For a list of several other Indian monks who ‘came to the Tang and settled, taught, and translated texts’ in the course of the 9th century, such as Shi Mayue, Bodhivajra, Vajrasiddhi, Bodhirṣi, and Prajñacakra, see Orzech 2011b: 328–30.

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the mediaeval pan-Asian Esoteric Buddhist paradigm. King Narasiṁhapotavarman (i.e., Nara­ siṁhavarman II Rājasiṁha, r. 700–728) of Kāñcī granted Vajrabodhi special protection and sent his general ‘Mizhunna’ (Chin. 米准那) along with him to China on a diplomatic mission. So amicable were the relations between the Pallavas and the Tangs in that period that Narasiṁhavarman II built a Buddhist ‘Pagoda’ in Nākappaṭṭiṉam in honour of the Chinese emperor, allowing him to name it (Seshadri 2009: 109–18).53 It is, again, through a Pallava link that Vajrabodhi, on the occasion of his visit to Sri Lanka on the way to China, enjoyed the protection of King Mānavarman (‘Śrīśīla’ of Vajrabodhi’s biography), who prior to his coronation in 684 underwent a long exile in Kāñcī, serving as a general (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 145–46). As argued by Sundberg and Giebel (ibid.), Such repeated, persistent diplomatic intercourse may serve as an explanatory context for Vajrabodhi’s easy access to the inner sanctum of the Tang court. In fact, given the chronology, one surmises that the welcome arrival of Vajrabodhi or Mizhunna in Guangfu in 719 ce actually instigated the series of intense and cordial diplomatic interchanges between the Chinese and the Pallavas recorded to occur in 720. If so, their salutary effect paralleled the arrival of Amoghavajra in Laṅkā in 742, where the transmission of religious knowledge and texts between highly adept monks immediately stimulated a high-level religio-diplomatic interchange between the Buddhist Sinhalese king at Anurādhapura and the Tang emperor at Chang’an. A similar occurrence seemingly transpired some half a century later, when the Javanese kings became patrons involved in the Sinhalese dispensations, likely involving precisely this same style of interchange of Tantric texts and, in the Javanese case, a cadre of adept monks as well. 53.  Sen (2003: 26) argues that this alliance, and in particular the 720 diplomatic mission (and in general other post-Harṣa South Asian missions), might have had the purpose of contrasting contemporary Arab and Tibetan invasions of areas of the Subcontinent. Equally amicable relations between the Buddhist Tang and Kanauj could be evinced by the 7th-century Buddhist diplomatic missions (ibid.: 34–40), which Sen characterizes as ‘spiritual underpinnings of diplomatic exchanges’.

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

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Intro 17-3-16 big map.indd 16

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Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes

17

It would appear that in the Sri Lankan Buddhist (2006), and Sundberg (2004, 2011, this volume), the milieux—i.e., in the Abhayagirivihāra itself—were Abhayagirivihāra-related structures of Ratu Boko found repositories of esoteric texts unavailable in share with their Sinhalese prototypes—that is to China, and perhaps even inaccessible to travellers say, some of the Abhayagiri peripheral structures to India. As argued by Sundberg and Giebel (2011: apparently populated by ascetic monks—common 148), it was the quest for these texts, and the desire architectural motifs, such as double meditation to receive abhiṣeka in a Sinhalese lineage seemingly platforms. associated with either Nāgabodhi or *Ratnabodhi The use of Siddhamātṛkā—a (north)eastern-In(Chin. Baojue 寶覺), that prompted Amoghavajra dian variety of script, native to Nālandā—in foreign to travel to Sri Lanka from China following the lands is well documented in extensive Esoteric footsteps of his teacher Vajrabodhi.54 Prajña too Buddhist textual corpora from China and Japan. returned to South India from China to look for The numerically small, but culturally significant, esoteric texts belonging to the Vidyādhara tradi- corpus of inscriptions using this script scattered tions (chiming 持明), and studied yogic techniques over disparate locales of Maritime Asia, besides under consecration master *Dharmayaśas (Chin. being a token of the networks of Esoteric Buddhist Damoyeshe 達摩耶舍: Copp in Orzech, Sørensen specialists who plied those routes, may constitute and Payne 2011: 360–61). ‘an attempt to be cosmopolitan, to connect with a So great was the religious aura and political respected cultural powerhouse, and implies the prestige of South Asian centres of Buddhism that rapid dissemination of knowledge and of religious the ‘peripheries’ (i.e., outer regions) of the Buddhist innovation’ (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 200, n. cosmopolis tried to link themselves to these centres, 126). Pāla-sponsored Nālandā in the northeastern thus becoming themselves centres with respect to part of the Subcontinent, apart from being an old the new peripheries that were being created as net- and illustrious centre of Buddhism, was also the works moved and the Buddhist frontiers extended— cultural centre that dictated the predominant rewhat Sen (2014b: xvii) has described as the emer- ligious and aesthetic paradigm in the Buddhist gence of ‘multiple centres of Buddhist discourse’. A cosmopolis from the 8th to the 13th century. As case in point is that of late 8th-century Central Java, documented by the dual Siddhamātṛkā/Grantha where a branch of the Sri Lankan Abhayagirivihāra, inscription of Narasiṁhapotavarman to his early apparently intended for the use of esoteric-mind- 8th century cave-temple Atiraṇacaṇḍeśvara and ed Sinhalese Buddhist monks, was established by in the Kailāsanātha, even a fervently Śaiva dynasty the Śailendras on the Ratu Boko promontory;55 such as the Pallava was eager to anchor itself to it by indeed, the area in the Kedu plain where Candi conforming to a certain ‘Nālandā idiom’ (Sundberg Sewu and the Prambanan temple complex were and Giebel 2012: 199, n. 126; Francis 2013). built appears to have been termed Laṅkapura by Nālandā, which by the 9th century was ‘the then, as if to recreate a local ‘replica’ of (Buddhist) center of a new Asia-wide Tantric network’ (Hall Sri Lanka.56 As shown by Miksic (1993–94), Degroot 2010: 21), constituted—alongside the South Indian Pallava realms and Sri Lanka—the common nexus (whether real or imagined) between many of the 54.  On p. 190 the authors, referring to the biography of Hanguang (T 2061.879b18), mention the Sinhalese *Sa- agents who played a role in shaping early Esoteric

mantabhadra as Amoghavajra’s ‘final’ initiator (cf. Chou 1945: 290–91; Lokesh Chandra 1993b: 114). Other biographies mention *Nāgajñāna (i.e., Nāgabodhi/Nāgabuddhi 龍智) and *Ratnabodhi (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 192–93; Sundberg 2014: 77). 55.  As is testified to by an 8th-century Siddhamātṛkā foundation inscription (see de Casparis 1950: 11–22, 1961, 1981; Lokesh Chandra 1993a; Sundberg 2004, this vol­ ume). 56.  See Griffiths 2011a, and compare with Acri 2010, arguing that Rāvaṇa’s defeat by Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa in

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Sri Lanka as described in the Sanskrit and Old Javanese versions of the Rāmāyaṇa represents an allegory for socio-political events of mid 9th-century Java—that is, the shift from an extended royal Buddhist favouritism to a new Śaiva course. See also Griffiths 2013 for a hypothesis concerning the existence of ‘multiple Abhayagiris in more than one part of Southeast Asia—southern Cambodia, southern Vietnam, peninsular Thailand, besides the one on Java’ (p. 75), and cf. Conti 2014: 384 and 394, n. 3.

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

Buddhist networks.57 It was in the milieu of Nālandā that Śubhākarasiṁha, Vajrabodhi and Prajña were instructed and received their ordination before undertaking the career of travelling masters; Vajrabodhi received royal patronage in Kāñcī and Sri Lanka. Influence from both the Pallava realms and Nālandā may be detected at the enigmatic Rājiṇāvihāra, a Pallava-style late 8th-century temple built in a locale just north of Kandy, which now bears the name of Nālandā. The temple (geḍigē) features erotic reliefs of transgressive character (Mudiyanse 1967: 71; Chandawimala 2013: 146–47), and Dohanian (1977: 26, 131, n. 27) refers to the existence of a short 9th-century Siddhamātṛkā inscription found nearby (cf. Sundberg, this volume, n. 13). The evocative name of Nālandā extended further to Southeast Asia: the Sumatran royal Bālaputradeva, who was seemingly involved in the dynastic struggle that took place in Central Java in the mid-9th century,58 is mentioned in an inscription issued by Devapāla at Nālandā, which records his sponsorship of a vihāra for the use of pilgrims from Śrīvijaya;59 a locale 57.  For a concise summary of the interactions between Sri Lanka and the centres of Tantrism patronized by the Pālas, see Sen 2014a: 53. It is noteworthy that, according to Tāranātha (D. Chattopadhyaya 1980: 18), the Sri Lankan Jaya­bhadra, one of the earliest exegetes of the Laghusaṁvara/Herukābhidhāna, was vajrācārya at Vikramaśīla (for a mid-9th century date, see Gray 2005a: 61, n. 61 and 62, n. 65; contrast Sanderson 2009: 159, who traces his tenure back to 880–92). The same Jayabhadra, at an earlier stage of his career, is recorded in the colophon of his Cakrasaṃvarapañjikā (ed. Sugiki, 2001) as having resided in the famous Buddhist establishment of Mahābimba in Koṅkana (the Konkan coast of western India; see Szántó 2016: 2 and cf. above, p. 8). Tāranātha reports the same information (see D. Chattopadhyaya 1980: 325; cf. 296). 58.  Sundberg (this volume, Appendix B) contests the reading vālaputra on the Śivagṛha inscription, which was at the basis of the dynastic theory proposed by de Casparis (1956). While his effort is valuable insofar that it highlights the need to re-edit and translate that important (and, regrettably, heavily withered) inscription, I remain unconvinced by his re-evaluation, and regard the reading bālaputra as the most likely. 59.  See H. Sastri 1923–24. Jordaan and Colless (2009: 28–40), having compared the Wanua Tengah III inscription with the Nālandā edict in the light of Jordaan’s revised chronology of the Pāla kings, argue that Bālaputra was already king in Sumatra before he came to Java, only to advance his claim to succession after Rakai Pikatan ascended the throne

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named Nālandā (nalәnda, nalanda) is mentioned, alongside Vārāṇasī, in two 10th-century Balinese inscriptions in connection with the Buddhist preceptor (upādhyāya) Dhanavan (Ardika 2015: 34; Goris 1954: 83, 86).60 As has long since been noted, Nālandā played a major role in the transmission of artistic motifs to Southeast Asia since the 8th century (Bernet Kempers 1933, Lunsingh Scheurleer and Klokke 1988). The period from the middle of the 9th up to the end of the 10th century has been characterized as a ‘dark age for Buddhism’ in China and Tibet (Matsunaga 1978: viii), and one also notes a reduced scale of Buddhist building activities in Southeast Asia, with the single exception of the temple of Đông Dương in Campā (Woodward 2011: 33). This predicament may have been related to the disruption of diplomatic, religious, and trade networks between locales where support for Esoteric Buddhism, or Buddhism altogether, by the ruling elites faded away, such as China under Emperor Wuzong (r. 814–46), Tibet under King Lang Darma (r. 838–41), Sri Lanka under Sena II (r. 854–89) and his successors (Sundberg 2014), and Java from around 850 onwards (see the chapters by in 847. This hypothesis suggests that the contacts between Bālaputra and the Pāla King Devapāla may have been not only of a religious and cultural nature. For instance, the possibility of a political alliance formed by Bālaputra, just a few years before his Javanese expedition, with the Pāla ruler would make perfect sense in the system of alliances among neighboring maṇḍalas as theorized in the Sanskrit Arthaśāstra (cf. Wolters 1999: 28–29 for Southeast Asian examples). A link between Java and northeastern India, i.e., a Śailendra effort to connect to Pāla-sourced Esoteric Buddhist doctrines, is also suggested by the mention, in the Siddhamātṛkā inscription of Kelurak (ad 782) found between Candi Sewu and Candi Lumbung in Central Java, of one Kumāraghoṣa, a royal preceptor (rājaguru) from Gauḍīdvīpa (modern Bengal) who installed an image of Mañjughoṣa (Mañjuśrī) at the request of Śailendra King Śrī Saṅgrāmadhanañjaya (Sarkar 1971 I: 37, 45). The word golapaṇḍitā (= gauḍapaṇḍitā) featuring in the undated Pasir Panjang rock inscription at Karimun Besar in the Riau archipelago has been interpreted as having been engraved by a monk from Bengal (i.e., Nālandā?) en route to mainland Sumatra or Java by Caldwell and Hazlewood (1994). 60.  As pointed out by Ardika (ibid.), those Balinese inscriptions indicate that roponyms associated with centres of Buddhism in the Subcontinent, such as Vārāṇasī, Nālandā and Amarāvatī, were transferred to local places.

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Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes Sundberg and Acri in this volume). Another factor may have been the contraction of the Pāla empire from ca. 850 to 977, which could have caused a decline in royal benefactions to Esoteric Buddhism in northeastern India (Sanderson 2009: 96–97) and a negative ‘cascade effect’ overseas, especially with respect to maritime trade.

the ‘second wave’ of esoteric buddhism (ca. late 10th–13th century ad) Nālandā-style imagery of Esoteric Buddhist divinities (re)appears in 11th- and 12th-century Angkor, Bagan, the Malay Peninsula, and East Java. As argued by Skilling (2007: 97), When we take into account other inscriptions and icons from the Malay Peninsula, together with epigraphic and iconographic evidence from Cambodia, we can conclude that in the eleventh century the Malay Peninsula and the Khmer lands participated in the intellectual, ritual, and iconographic world of Pāla culture, which at that time spread throughout the region, from India to Tibet and insular Southeast Asia.

Vestiges of Vajrayāna Buddhism in 10th- and 11th-century Java may be found in the groups of bronzes from Surocolo and Nganjuk, which have been suggested to represent esoteric maṇḍalas dominated by Vajrasattva, the central deity of Phase Two and Three Esoteric Buddhism.61 Sumatra hosted renowned centres of Buddhist activity and higher learning by the 7th century, as documented by Yijing’s account,62 yet the archaeological remains 61.  See Lokesh Chandra and Singhal 1995; Tanaka 2010: 339; Sharma 2011. On the popularity of Vajrasattva as Ādi­ buddha in Java and Cambodia, see Sharrock 2006, 2007, 2011a; cf. Conti 2014: 273–77 (note the mention of Vajrasattva as Ādibuddha in the Sab Bāk inscription). 62.  In 671, this Chinese monk praised the high level of Buddhist scholarship he found in Sumatra, where he stopped—en-route from Guangzhou to Nālandā and from there back to China—to read Sanskrit Sūtras. In the accounts of his travels he advised that ‘if a Chinese priest wishes to go to the West in order to hear (lectures) and read (the original), he had better stay here [i.e., in Sumatra] one or two years and practice the proper rules and then proceed to Central India’ (Takakusu 1896: xxxiv). Further, Yijing reports that Śākyakīrti, one of the five most distinguished

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and scant epigraphic evidence spread over disparate locales of the island—especially along the Batang Hari river (e.g., Muara Jambi and Muara Takus)—have yielded remains of Buddhist monuments and inscriptions that mostly date back to the 10th to 13th century, and which display Tantric features.63 Nearly contemporary Tibetan traditions explicitly link esoteric teachings and lineages of masters to Sumatra (suvarṇadvīpa): for instance, the South Asian *Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna, aka Atīśa/ Atiśa64 (980–1054) was believed to have resided in Suvarṇadvīpa for twelve years (ca. 1011 to 1023), where he received the teaching of the Kālacakratantra by a local master, known to the sources as Dharmakīrti, Dharmapāla, Piṇḍo/Piṭo, or Kalki Śrīpāla.65 Atīśa is said to have transmitted to Tibet the Durbodhāloka (a Sanskrit commentary on the Abhisamayālaṅkāra), composed in Southeast Asia by his teacher Dharmakīrti from Suvarṇadvīpa under King Cūḍāmaṇivarman, who around ad Buddhist teachers of his time, travelled far and large across the ‘Five Indias’ and finally settled in Śrīvijaya (Śrībhoja). 63.  See Woodward 2004; Reichle 2007; Griffiths 2014c; Miksic (this volume); Kandahjaya (this volume). Pointing out that Buddhism thrived in Sumatra until the 14th or even 15th century, Griffiths (2014c: 239) makes the following relevant point: ‘Despite being right across the Bay of Bengal from Sri Lanka, not to mention the proximity of Burma and Thailand, there is not a single written trace of influence of Pali Buddhism. On the contrary, we have evidence for the study and use of a variety of Sanskrit texts, both Mahāyānasūtras and Tantras’. 64.  Isaacson and Sferra (2014: 70–71, n. 51) note that while it has become standard practice to prefer the form Atiśa (from Atiśaya?), the form Atīśa is just as problematic; they venture the speculation that the latter might be a corruption or ‘transformation’ of Adhīśa, which has the merit of being attested as a name or epithet. Kano (2016: 83, n. 2) refers to an interlinear gloss in a Tibetan manuscript from the unpublished Tanjur Canon by Üpa losel (ca. 1270–1355), reading a dhe [or rhe] śa. 65.  Thus according to Newman (1991: 72–73), who identifies Suvarṇadvīpa with Java rather than Sumatra, whereas according to Skilling (1997: 190) the actual site might have been Kedah (contrast Schoterman, this volume, and Kandahjaya 2014). The Blue Annals assert that Piṇḍo (perhaps standing for paiṇḍapātika, a monk living on alms?) hailed from the Southern Seas, and was a disciple of Gser gling pa of Suvarṇadvīpa (Gnoli and Orofino 2006: 67). On Atīśa’s (largely imaginative) account of his eventful oceanic journey to Suvarṇadvīpa, see Decleer 1995.

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

1019 founded a Buddhist temple in Nākappaṭṭiṉam (Skilling 1997, 2007). Van der Kuijp (2003: 420, n. 6) identifies this Dharmakīrti with the author of a commentary to the Hevajratantra (Netravibhaṅga, Tōh. 1191). Both Atīśa and Dharmakīrti were fervent devotees of Tārā, a deity that was popular in insular Southeast Asia. A renewed focus on Esoteric Buddhism, no doubt triggered by royal patronage, can be detected between the 10th and 12th centuries in polities of mainland Southeast Asia, including the domains of the Cams along the Vietnamese littorals. Chutiwongs (2006) discusses information concerning the construction of a shrine to Heruka in Campā by Śrī Sūryavarmadeva towards the end of the 12th century, during Khmer occupation. The sanctuaries of Phimai and Si Thep, as well as several temples built at Angkor under the reign of Jayavarman VII, attest to Tantric iconographic programmes, as do the numerous bronze statues unearthed in the region.66 The temple of Abeyadana (late 11th century) at Bagan displays Tantric features, arguably as the result of contemporary religious links and marital relations between the rulers of Bagan and those of Paṭṭikerā in Bengal.67 As suggested 66.  For an up-to-date, synthetic overview of Esoteric Buddhism at Phimai, and in the Khmer domains in general, see Conti 2014; on Angkorean sites such as Si Thep, Angkor Thom, the Bayon, Banteay Chhmar, etc., see the studies by Woodward (1981, 2012) and Sharrock (2006, 2007, 2009, 2011a, 2012, 2013a, 2013b). The Vajrayāna character of the Sab Bāk inscription of ad 1067 (K. 1158), recovered near Nakhon Ratchasima, has been discussed by Prapandvidya (1990), Sinclair (2012), and Conti (2014). Besides mentioning the Guhyasamāja and betraying knowledge of that system, the inscription echoes a ‘signature verse’ by Vāgīśvarakīrti, a Guhyasamāja-exegete who flourished in eastern India in the early 11th century (see Szántó forthcoming, who argues that Vāgīśvarakīrti might have been the paramaguru (guru’s guru) of Vraḥ Dhanus, the author of the verse). 67.  Abeyadana, the chief queen of King Kyanzittha (r. 1084–1112), was believed to hail from Bengal, and to be a follower of Mantranaya Buddhism. Kyanzittha’s son, King Alaungsitthu (r. 1113–67), married a queen from Paṭṭikerā, which was an important centre of worship of the fierce goddess Cundā; Burmese literature and folk drama have preserved a memory of the romantic affair between the prince of Paṭṭikerā and Kyanzittha’s only daughter (S. Bhattacharya 1994: 264–65). Much controversy exists around the Buddhist sect of the Aris (or Araññavāsins), which is described by 18th and 19th century Myanmar chronicles

Intro 17-3-16 big map.indd 20

by Bautze-Picron (2014b: 107), images found at the Sumatran sites of Padang Lawas are integrated in a network that connects them to South Asia, East Java, Central Sumatra, Cambodia and Campā in the 11th and 13th centuries; overall, the sites show a kind of Buddhism that belongs to the same phase of Vajrayāna as what was present in Khmer and Cam domains between the 12th and 13th centuries, and in East Java and China in the 13th century, ‘when esoteric Buddhism was tightly intertwined with politics and when fierce characters like Mahākāla or Heruka/Hevajra were made the protectors of various kingdoms’ (ibid.: 123).68 The wild, ferocious character of the Esoteric Buddhist (and Tantric Śaiva) iconography that developed at the East Javanese courts of Kaḍiri, Siṅhasāri and Majapahit69 and scant epigraphic sources as a congregation of ‘debased’ monks devoted to sex, alcohol, dance and animal sacrifice, and worshipping local spirits (nat) and Hindu deities. Some scholars, such as Duroiselle, Ray and Luce, considered them followers of Tantric cults, whereas Than Tun (and most contemporary specialists of Myanmar) regard them as having little if anything to do with Tantrism (see S. Bhattacharya 1994). Championing the latter school of thought, Bautze-Picron (2003: 121–23, 199, 226 nn. 69, 70) has cast doubt on the view, advanced by earlier scholars mainly on account of the sexual nature of some of their friezes, that the Hpayathonzu (12th century) and Nandamanya (13th century) temples at Bagan were informed by a Tantric iconographic agenda. Further research is needed to clarify this issue. 68. The Hevajratantra appears to have enjoyed some popularity in Sumatra (and, conversely, Suvarṇadvīpa is mentioned by this text: see Schoterman this volume, p. 115). Besides the circumstantial evidence mentioned above attributing to Dharmakīrti from Suvarṇadvīpa the authorship of a commentary to the Hevajra, and the epigraphic evidence presented by Griffiths (2014c), must be considered the inscription of Saruaso II, which praises the crown prince Anaṅgavarman, son of Ādityavarman, the last line of which mentions his ‘daily meditation on Hevajra’ (Hevajra-nityāsmṛtiḥ). It would thus seem that Ādityavarman was following the same ideology and ritual technology adopted earlier by Kublai Khan and Kṛtanagara, who equated themselves to the central deity of the maṇḍalas of Buddhist Tantras such as the Guhyasamāja or the Hevajra (see Hunter in Kozok 2015: 324–27; Bautze-Picron 2014b; Reichle 2009: 139; O’Brien 1993). 69.  Besides the statuary and architectural vestiges, 14th-century Old Javanese literary sources, such as the kakavin Sutasoma, attest to Esoteric Buddhist cults. In his Deśavarṇana (80.1) Prapañca refers to the existence of two

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shares features with the Sumatran one, as attest- that certain regional contingencies and personal ed in Biaro Bahal and Muara Takus, and in the idiosyncrasies favoured the formation of actual synMahākāla statue attributed to Ādityavarman. The cretic cults uniting doctrinal and ritual elements wrathful deity Hevajra and his Heruka instantia- pertaining to distinct traditions—a paradigmatic tion are represented in a number of Khmer bronzes case being the ‘Śiva-Buddha cult’ inaugurated by, (Lobo 1994), and perhaps made into cult objects at and revolving around the figure of, East Javanese Banteay Chhmar and other sanctuaries (Sharrock king Kṛtanagara (r. 1268–92), who leaned towards 2006, 2013a; Conti 2014: 273–77; contrast Green Esoteric Buddhism while at the same time patron2013), while Tantric Yoginīs prominently feature at ised Tantric Śaivism.71 the Bayon and Phimai (Sharrock 2013b). Heruka/ Unfavourable international political developHevajra was part of the royal cults of the Mongol ments, and most notably the decline of Buddhism in Khans (Bade, this volume), while Mahākāla was northern India, may have triggered the rise of new worshipped by the elites of the Dali kingdom in networks at the turn of the 13th century. Nālandā and Vikramaśīla having been razed, scholars and Yunnan (Bryson 2012). It may be argued that the fierce, military-orient- artisans fled to Nepal and Tibet (von Schroeder ed iconography of Phase Two and Three of Esoteric 1981: 311), and possibly further afield to Southeast Buddhism represents an ‘antagonistic paradigm’ Asia.72 A Nepalese (Newar) influence on the Khmer reflecting socio-political contingencies. This par- architecture of that period has been noted by Fillioadigm, recently revisited by Verardi (2011), posits a zat (1969: 47) and Sharrock (2007: 252); as pointed hostility or antagonism between the two religions out by O’Brien (this volume), a diaspora of Newar as reflected in either actual historical events, such artisans existed in the Sino-Tibetan sphere, and as various forms of competition for royal support, these artisans became popular at Khubilai Khan’s devotees and resources, occasional interethnic court at a time that coincides with the reign of or interreligious violence, or iconographic rep- Kṛtanagara, Khubilai’s Javanese adversary, and resentations, such as Śaiva gods being trampled the patron of Candi Jago. Northeastern Indian or upon or subdued by Buddhist deities, and vice versa. Newar elements have long since been noted in the Whereas modern scholarship often emphasizes the statuary and decorative features of East Javanese ‘inclusive’ and ‘syncretic’ character of Buddhism, Buddhist art;73 similarly, the Nāgarī-inscribed Budwhether or not in its esoteric varieties, in many Asian contexts, much of the extant textual and ‘syncretism’ has often been (and continues to be) misused; archaeological evidence points to the existence of cf. Estève 2009. a clear divide between Buddhism and competing 71.  For a reevaluation of this cult in the East Javanese religious systems, at least in elite milieux (see, e.g., Siṅhasāri context, see Hunter 2007 and, for an added disMiksic 2010).70 Having said that, it is beyond doubt cussion on Majapahit and Bali, Acri 2015. A Bhairavika types of private Buddhist institutions, namely kavinayan and a (more prevalent) kabajradharan, and associates a locale named buḍur (Borobudur?) with the latter type of establishment (for a synthesis of relevant secondary literature, see Sinclair 2012). The Tantric legacy of Siṅhasāri and Majapahit appears to have been preserved by the Sanskrit sources used by Balinese Buddhist ritualists, which include fragments from several authoritative works of the Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna: Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana, and Advayavajra’s Kudṛṣṭinirghāṭana (Hooykaas 1973: 600–603). 70.  It goes without saying that in lay milieux the boundaries tend to become more porous, and lay devotion displays an inclusive attitude in many cultural contexts. Even so, I reiterate my argument that the (imprecise) category of

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priest and other categories of Śaiva clergymen as well as mainstream Brahmans are mentioned in the Mula Maluruṅ inscription associated with Kṛtanagara (see Sidomulyo 2010: 107–8). 72.  Tāranātha states that most of the Buddhist scholars of madhyadeśa fled to mainland Southeast Asia (i.e., the kingdoms of Pegu, Campā, Kamboja, etc.) after Magadha was invaded by the Turks (D. Chattopadhyaya 1980: 330). 73.  See O’Brien 1993: 252–55, this volume. Schoterman (1994: 168) noted that the five main statues of Bodhisattvas at Candi Jago were executed according to the teachings of the Sanskrit Amoghapāśasādhana, which was written by Śākyaśrībhadra in northern India around the year 1200, and may have reached Java shortly thereafter. Lunsingh Scheurleer (2008: 296–98) underlines the northeastern Indian influence on a sculpture of Java in the Siṅhasāri period and also of Sumatra in ad 1286 by Kṛtanagara,

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dhist statues from Candi Jago, and the occurrence of the words bharāla (‘god’) and bharālī (‘goddess’) in a number of inscriptions associated with Kṛtanagara, support a possible northeastern Indian, and especially Newar, link.74

summary of the contributions In dealing with various aspects and traditions of Esoteric Buddhism and intra-Asian maritime connections from the 7th to the 13th century, the fourteen essays in this volume are not grouped according to strictly chronological or geographical criteria, but follow a thematic and disciplinary arrangement, under the three headings of ‘Monks, Texts, Patrons’ (Part I), ‘Art, Architecture, and Material Culture’ (Part II), and ‘Bauddha-Śaiva Dynamics’ (Part III). Rather than focusing uniquely on region-specific manifestations of Esoteric Buddhism, whether bound to modern nation-states or not, this volume embraces a perspective emphasizing the (maritime) intra-Asian interactions—also intended as the dialectic encounters between cultures and religions, doctrines and practices, and their human carriers—that occurred across geographical and cultural boundaries in the course of several centuries. Within this framework, it reveals the limits of a historiography that is premised on landbased, ‘northern’ pathways of transmission of (esoteric varieties of) Buddhism across the Eurasian continent, and advances an alternative—actually, complementary—historical narrative that takes the ‘southern’ pathways, i.e. the sea-based networks, into due account. In harmony with this perspective, several studies in the present collection focus on what is now the Indonesian Archipelago—a strategic geographical area that has yielded significant which was reconsecrated around the mid 14th century by Ādityavarman (cf. Reichle 2007: 56ff). 74.  See Lokesh Chandra 1983, Kandahjaya 2004: 68–69, Sinclair 2012, and Griffiths 2014c, who discuss the attestation of the word forms bharāla and bharālī and their probable cognates bahāla, bahāra and bharāḍa () in order to illustrate the compiler’s (poor) literary capabilities. 103. zuisheng sanmodi-wang 最勝三摩地王, *vijayaḥ samādhirājaḥ: is described in the *Adbhutakalpa as the distinctive meditation of the *Ekākṣaracakravartin, the cause of all samādhis of all tathāgatas (T 953.286c19). 104. Zhongtai Yuan 中台院 (alternatively 中臺院): the central enclosure of the maṇḍala of the VAT, J. Chūtai Hachiyō’in 中台八葉院 (Snodgrass 1988 I: 162; Mammitzsch 1991: 179ff.), and of some ‘individual’ (J. besson) maṇḍalas. The name metonymically refers to the central deity, who sits on the pericarp (中台) of an eight-petalled lotus. 105. sanmeiye jie dao 三昧耶界道: unattested elsewhere. Apparently *samaya 三昧耶, ‘sacramental bond’, indicates the five-coloured border of the Genzu maṇḍala’s inner enclosure, as it is ‘particularly associated by tradition with initiation rituals’ (Snodgrass 1988 I: 214).

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[1.1.2 The Cakravartin] T 959.328a7–10 At the Buddha’s right side, seated beneath, paint the form of a Wheel-turning King [cakravartin, 2] seated upon a white lotus, made [by the artist] in the pose of gazing upon the Buddha. His body is golden in colour, haloed by refulgence. [He has] attained the seven treasures [of a universal ruler, among which] only the wheel treasure [2a] is haloed by light and is situated on a lotus. The remaining six treasures [elephant 2b, horse 2c, gem 2d, woman 2e, leader 2f and minister 2g108] are arranged in sequence.

[1.1.3. The Uṣṇīṣas] T 959.328a11–16 [In the] southeast corner: Pulverizing Crest [Vikiraṇoṣṇīṣa, 3], south: Victory Crest [Jayoṣṇīṣa, 4], 106. tianguo miao yi 天果妙衣: an abridgement of the original passage ‘fruit is fastened; handbells, bells are fastened; superb heavenly fruit is fastened’ 或繫果或繫 鈴鐸或繫天妙果 (T 950.198c6). Regarding 或 *vā, see the following note. 107. chui 或 *vā: combines rather than separates these qualifiers, in the sense of api or eva. 108. lun, xiang, ma, zu, nü ji zhuzang 輪象馬珠女兵及主藏 (cakra-, hasti-, aśva-, maṇi-, strī-, gṛhapati-, pariṇāyaka-ratna): the seven treasures of a universal ruler, a cakravartin, are well known from the āgamas, etc., and are not specified in the Chinese *Cakravartitantras. This enumeration is from a related text, T 948.190a28–b1. They may be understood to be arranged either on the eight petals of the central enclosure’s lotus, or at its sides and corners; both alternatives are illustrated in the Mandarashu 曼荼 羅集 (cf. MDJ 83, 85).

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southwest corner: Boundless Sound Crest [Anantasvaroṣṇīṣa, 5], west: White Parasol Crest [Sitātapatroṣṇīṣa, 6], northwest corner: High Extended Crest [Abhyudgatoṣṇīṣa?,109 7], north: Light-Multiplying Crest [Tejorāśi, 8] (seated on a white lotus, haloed by variegated light, amidst a blazing refulgence, with a golden body, hands holding a cintāmaṇi jewel), northeast

corner: Most Victorious Crest [Vijayoṣṇīṣa, 9], east: Tall Crest [Unnatoṣṇīṣa, 10] (appearance is like a great

king, seated on a white lotus, hand holding a citron, in the pose of a wheel[-turning] king). The foregoing is the Central Enclosure (ten Buddha-Crests are named).

[1.2. The Second Enclosure] T 959.328a17–b11 Next is the second enclosure, [bounded by] a single-pronged [vajra] pounder110 boundary path

(start painting from the northeast corner, finishing in the south). [In the] southeast corner [paint]: Law Per-

fection Bodhisattva [Dharmavajrī, 11], then GreatStrength-Attained Sound-Regarding Bodhisattva [Mahāsthāmaprāpta, 12], Leaf-Clad Sound-Regarding Bodhisattva [*Parṇaśabarī-lokeśvara,111 13], Duoluo Sound-Regarding Bodhisattva [Tārā, 14] (having adornments of various dressings, clothed in delicate silk. The usual form of her body is immaculate and carefree. The right hand holds a blue lotus, the left hand grants requests. [She is] seated on the pericarp of a flower. Create [her] in a light green colour), Avalokiteśvara Bo-

dhisattva [15], Pijuzhi Sound-Regarding Bodhisattva [Bhṛkuṭī, 16] (white, three-eyed and four-armed,

upper right hand holding a stick, upper left holding a vase, lower right holding a rosary, lower left holding a lotus, body calm and quiet), White-Clad Sound-Regarding Bodhisattva [Pāṇḍaravāsinī, 17] (body adorned with

109. Gaoguang Foding 高廣佛頂: unattested elsewhere. The name 極廣大 in the Chinese VAT apparently translates Atyunnatoṣṇīṣa, who is one of the Tathāgatoṣṇīṣas mentioned in MMK 1, together with Atyadbhuta- and Abhyudgata-uṣṇīṣa. 110. duguchu 獨古杵 (usually 獨鈷杵) *ekasūcikavajra: the boundary path is delineated with single-pronged vajras, as in the East Asian Vajradhātumahāmaṇḍalas (Snodgrass 1988 II: 577). 111. Yeyi Guanyin 葉衣觀音: Parṇaśabarī also appears in position 71. The Chinese names of the two figures differ, but they have the same Sanskritic name.

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a lotus garland, clad in a bejewelled silk upper garment,112 right hand holding a cintāmaṇi gem, left hand granting requests, seated upon a lotus. She is the mother of the entire lotus clan), Watching Spontaneity King Bodhisattva [Lokeśvararāja,113 18] (seated upon a lotus, hands clasped in the pose of reverence).

Southwest corner: Action Perfection Bodhisattva [Karmavajrī, 19], then Meditation Perfection Bodhisattva [Dhyānapāramitā, 20] (binding the meditation [gesture], the body itself...114 like gold), Patience Perfection Bodhisattva [Kṣāntipāramitā, 21], Giving Perfection Bodhisattva [Dānapāramitā, 22], Sky spell-consort [sic, Gaganagañja?,115 23] (form like a god, seated on a lotus, hands clasped in the pose of reverence), Discipline Perfection Bodhisattva

[Śīlapāramitā, 24], Spiritual Progress Perfection Bodhisattva [Vīryapāramitā, 25], Intelligence Perfection Bodhisattva [Prajñāpāramitā,116 26]. Northwest corner: Adamant Perfection Bodhisattva [Sattvavajrī, 27], then Suppressing Three Worlds Adamant Bodhisattva [Trailokyavijaya, 28] (bodily appearance as in the Yoga117), Adamant Warlord

112. jiaolao 角絡 ‘horn netting’: obscure. If read literally, the underlying Sanskrit could be śṛṅgāra (Monier-Williams: a ‘dress suitable for amorous purposes, elegant dress’). However, in Amoghavajra’s translation of the STTS (繒角絡披, T 865.218a8) the word translates Sanskrit vastrottarīya, ‘upper-garment-clad’. 113. Guanzizaiwang 觀自在王: the tathāgata corresponding to Amitābha in the Sanskrit STTS (cf. T 865.208b5 etc.). 114. 結定即身 如金: lacunose, and no parallel has been identified. 115. Xukong Mingfei 虛空明妃: corrupt; should be Gaganagañja or Ākaśagarbha 虛空藏, one of the aṣṭamahābodhisattvas present at the preaching of the *Cakravartitantras; the others are present in the maṇḍala (12, 15, 31, 37, 39, 41). Perhaps mingfei 明妃 was permuted from zang 藏 by homoteleuton with Jingangjiang Mingfei 金 剛將明妃 (29). 116. hui 惠: this word elsewhere renders mati, but here only prajñā (hui 慧) can be intended. Prajñāpāramitā also appears elsewhere in the maṇḍala (36) as a personification of the scripture rather than the perfection, as in the Genzu maṇḍala. 117. Yujia 瑜伽: short for Jingangding Yujia 金剛頂瑜伽, i.e. the STTS and related works (the back-Sanskritization *Vajraśekharayoga is misleading; see the introduction). There is little iconographic information on Trailokyavijaya in the STTS itself, however.

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Coronation and Liberation According to a Javanese Monk in China spell-consort [Vajrasenā,118 29], Adamant Warlord boy [Vajrasena, 30] ([depicted as a warlord] like the name; no other characteristics [are stated119]), Adamant-in-Hand Bodhisattva [Vajrapāṇi, 31] (right

hand holding a white fly whisk, left hand holding a vajra, seated upon a lotus), Adamant Mother Bodhisattva [Vajrakulodbhavā,120 32] (named Momozhi [Māmakī,121 whose] bodily appearance resembles a girl, indigo in colour, adorned with various necklaces, seated upon a lotus, abiding in the self-nature of prajñā,122 [her] right hand holding a Sanskrit scripture case, left hand holding a cintāmaṇi and in the pose of granting wishes, must not be tall.123 [Her] facial expression utterly pleases the mind. The mother of the vajra clan), Supohu boy Bodhisattva

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va [Maitreya, 37] (holding a white fly whisk in hand), Buddha Benevolent Bodhisattva [Buddhamaitrī,126 38], Buddha Eye Bodhisattva [Tathāgatalocanā, 39]

(form like a goddess, seated on a jewelled lotus, [having] various ornaments, the body resembling the colour gold, [one] eye surveying the multitudes, clad in a satin upper garment, right hand holding a gem, left hand granting requests, surrounded by a halo, of peaceful bodily appearance), Buddha Tuft Appearance Bodhisattva [Tathāgatorṇā, 40] (form like a goddess, colour and appearance the same as before, except the right hand holds a lotus, the left hand grants wishes; [her] radiance is the same as before, not different), Wenshu Bodhisattva [Mañjuśrī, 41] (the bodily appearance is golden in colour),

[Subāhu, 33], Noggin124 boy Bodhisattva [Mūrdhaṭa- Wishing Gem Bodhisattva [Cintāmaṇi,127 42]. ka, 34], same as the foregoing (wearing [his] hair loose). The above is the second enclosure (thirty two Northeast corner: Jewel Perfection Bodhisatt- deities are named). va [Ratnavajrī, 35], then Boreboluomi Bodhisattva [Prajñāpāramitā,125 36], Benevolence Bodhisatt- [1.3. Third Enclosure] T 959.328b12–c9

118. Jingangjiang-mingfei 金剛將明妃: unattested in other Chinese texts. According to Monier-Williams (1899), Senā is ‘also personified as wife of Kārttikeya’, i.e., Kumāra. 119. ru ming bie wu xiang 如名別無相: Vajrasena’s iconography is, however, documented in connection with the Genzu maṇḍala (Snodgrass 1988 I: 446). 120. Jingang-mu 金剛母: not *Vajramātṛ; the corresponding name in T 950 is Jingangzumu 金剛族母, Vajrakulodbhavā (cf. Snodgrass 1988 I: 323). 121. Momozhi 摩莫枳: Māmakī (75) and Vajrakulodbhavā are distinct in Amoghavajra’s *Cakravartitantra, and differentiated iconographically (T 950.199b14–18, b18–21). 122. Two parts of a passage in T 950.199b15–17 are conflated here: ‘[she] abides in the self-nature of prajñāpāramitā.... Māmakī abides in the Mahā-Āryaprajñāpāramitā’ 住般若 波羅蜜自性…大聖般若波羅蜜多住. 123. bu dei gao 不得高: the parallel reads ‘not too tall’ 不太高 (T 950.199b18). 124. Dingxing-tongzi 頂行童子: Giebel’s translation ‘Head-Goer’ (2001: 290) reflects the way it would generally be taken in Chinese. However, xing 行 was probably used to convey the sense of a ‘defining activity’ (cf. DDB) corresponding to Skt. -ta + diminuitive -ka, i.e. ‘Little One of the Head’ (Australian English: ‘Heado’). 125. Boreboluomi 般若波羅蜜: Prajñāpāramitā appears elsewhere in the maṇḍala (26) with a different Chinese name. This repetition also occurs in the Genzu maṇḍala, as Snodgrass explains (1988 I: 282) with reference to the Kyōdaiki (i.e., Kōdaiki 廣大軌, T 851.106b19–28), paraphrasing MDJ 1839. This position might otherwise be occupied by Samantabhadra, who in the corresponding passage in T 950 sits next to Maitreya (37).

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Next, the third enclosure, [bounded by] the same128 boundary path as the second [enclosure]. Southeast corner: Song Offering Bodhisattva [Vajragītā, 43] (form and clothing all golden), then Wishing Wheel Bodhisattva [Cakravarticintāmaṇi, 44], When-Volition-Aroused Dharma-Wheel-Turning Bodhisattva [Sahacittotpādita-dharma-cakrapravartin, 45], Eight Holies Sound-Regarding Bodhisattva [*Āryāṣṭāṅgikāvalokiteśvara,129 46], Lotus Auspicious Bodhisattva [Padmaśrī,130 47], Lotus Suntuoli 126. Foci 佛慈: Buddhamaitrī appears in the company of Crest deities in the Susiddhikara (T 893.627c, 631c; cf. Giebel 2001: 279, 301, etc.), and personifies a mudrā in MMK 37. 127. ruyibao 如意寶: possibly an instantiation of the cintāmaṇi 真陀摩尼珠 in the maṇḍala of the VAT (T 848.6c28; cf. Giebel 2005: 29). In any case, this figure is different from 44. 128. tong 同: i.e., also delineated with single-pronged vajras (cf. §1.2). 129. ba sheng 八聖: the text is corrupt. The deity’s name might have dropped dao 道 ‘path’, i.e., of the āryāṣṭāṅgamārga 八聖道 observed in ceremonies centred on Amoghapāśa-avalokiteśvara. More probably ba bi 八臂 ‘eight arms’ is the original reading, as a Babi-Guanyin 八臂觀音 is attested, e.g., in T 901.838b10. Avalokiteśvara manifests with eight arms in the form of Amoghapāśa or (as she is named in the STTS) Padmanarteśvarī. 130. Lianhuajixiang 蓮華吉祥: one of the padmakula’s goddesses of attraction in the STTS (in the Song dynasty translation, e.g. T 882.401c25).

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Bodhisattva [Padmasundarī,131 48] (four-armed, first right hand holds a lasso, left hand holds an axe. The second right hand grants requests, the second left hand holds a fruit. [She is] seated on a lotus, radiant in the same way as before), Blue-Necked Sound-Regarding Bodhisattva

Dragon King [Anavatapta, 60] (holding a lotus garland, bent bowing with clasped hands), Muzhenlin Dragon King [Mucilindā,138 61] (also, the foregoing two Dragon

Kings are blue-coloured and black-coloured [respectively]. [Their] forms are feminine, seven-headed, in the pose of clasping hands in reverence. The former and latter are the same [in this regard]), Serpent Lady [Nāgakanyā?,139 62] (splendidly ornamented in appearance).

[Nīlakaṇṭha, 49], Lotus Curls Bodhisattva [*Padmamālā,132 50], Lotus Yaocha Bodhisattva [*Padmayakṣiṇī,133 51], Eleven-Faced Sound-Regarding Bodhisattva [Ekādaśamukha,134 52]. Northwest corner: Presenting Pleasure140 BoSouthwest corner: Dance Offering Bodhisattva dhisattva [Vajralāsyā, 63] (form, dress all golden in [Vajranṛtyā, 53] (form, clothing all golden), then Polijia colour), then Wuchusemo Adamant [Ucchuṣma, Dragon King [Balika,135 54] (Polijia is seven-hooded), 64], Adamant Trove Bodhisattva [Vajragarbha, 65], Enantuo Dragon King [Ananta,136 55] (these above two Ambrosia Junzhali Bodhisattva [Amṛtakuṇḍalin, Dragon Kings saw the Buddha. [They] have seven hoods, 66], Adamant Suntuoli Bodhisattva [Sundarī,141 [their] hands are clasped, [they] kneel upon the ground— 67] (this is a spell-consort, [having a] form like a goddess,

namely, the above Ananta [and] Balika. Only [one] holds a flower garland, which is the difference [between them]), Untainted River Spirit [Nirañjana, 56] (that is, the Nilian River spirit also sees the Buddha arrive, the body and form like that of Muzhilin [Mucilindā →61] Dragon King; further, no difference is apparent), Earth Deity [Pṛthivī, 57] (the body is white in colour, both hands offer up a basket of gem-blossoms, both legs kneel on the ground), Invincible Bodhisattva [Aparājita,137 58],

Invincible Consort [Aparājitā, 59], Unscorched

131. Lianhuasuntuoli 蓮華孫陀利: appears in the paṭavidhi of the *Cakravartitantras and of the Sanskrit AKR (in e.g., ed. part 6, p. 187 = 蓮華遜那利, T 1092.305a8ff). In the STTS, Padmakulasundarī is the padmakula’s counterpart of Vajradīpā (43). 132. Lianhuaji 蓮華髻: obscure. Padmamālā is the padmakula’s counterpart of Vajramālā (73) in the STTS and the personification of a mudrā in the MMK. Alternatively, she is Padmajaṭā, who in the AKR and MMK also personifies a mudrā. 133. Lianhuayaocha 蓮華藥叉: appears in the Padmakulasamayamaṇḍala of STTS 15. 134. Shiyiyimian 十一面觀音: this manifestation of Avalokiteśvara features in the same section of the STTS as Padmayakṣiṇī (51). . 135. Polijia 哩迦: corresponds to Kalika (Jialijia 迦 里迦) in Bodhiruci’s *Cakravartitantra translation, T 951.231a29. 136. Enantuo 阿難陀: the name in the parallel in T 951 is *Ānanda (Enanduo 阿難 ), one of the nāgas in the Mahāmāyūrī. 137. Wunengsheng-gou 無能勝 is the reading of the received text; the feminine suffix gou is inconsistent with the feminine suffix fei 妃 attached to Aparājitā (59), and may result from dittography. The Aparājitā marked with female

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adorned with various necklaces. The body is blue-coloured, the hand holds a lotus. [She] sits upon a jewelled mountain),

Adamant Affection Bodhisattva [Vajrarāga, 68], Adamant Fist Bodhisattva [Vajrasandhi, 69], Bestowing Fearlessness Bodhisattva [Abhayaṁdada, 70], Ponashemoli Bodhisattva [Parṇaśabarī, 71], Adamant Needle Bodhisattva [Vajrasūcī, 72]. Northeast corner: Garland Offering Bodhisattva [Vajramālā, 73] (the form [and] dress are all golden in colour), Tanwujie Bodhisattva [Dharmodgata,142 74], Tuoluoni Spontaneity Bodhisattva [Dhāraṇīśvara, 75], Momaji Bodhisattva [Māmakī, 76] (sits on the pericarp of a lotus. The form is feminine, the head wears a jewelled crown, the left hand holds a five-pronged vajra, the right hand grants requests, the body has a beautiful

gender, 59, is not mentioned in the *Cakravartitantras and is here borrowed from the Genzu maṇḍala. 138. Muzhenlin 目真鱗: the female Mucilindā appears in the Kāraṇḍavyūha and other scriptures. 139. Longnü 龍女: alternatively Nāginī, Nāgī, etc. 140. Xianxi 獻喜: in a consistent nomenclature Xigongyang 喜供養 would be expected. 141. Jingangsuntuoli 金剛孫陀利: there is no *Vajrasundarī in the *Cakravartitantras (only Sundarī 孫那 , T 950.199a12) or in the related Sanskrit corpus. The compiler here probably relies on Amoghavajra, who describes her as the vidyārājñī of the vajrakula (金剛孫那利 菩薩以 明妃 (T 903.899b22–23), i.e., a counterpart of Tārā (padmakula, 14) and Aparājitā (tathāgatakula, 59). 142. Tanwujie 談無竭: unattested elsewhere. Tan 談 is a homophone of tan 曇 in Tanwujie 曇無竭 (EMC *Dhɑmmio-ghyɛt), the transliterated name of Dharmodgata in the Chinese Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitās (T 224, T 227).

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Coronation and Liberation According to a Javanese Monk in China appearance, haloed in blazing light), Great Intelligence Bodhisattva [Mahāmati, 77] (the body resembles the making-prostrations pose, hands clasped. [He] sits on the pericarp of a lotus, golden in colour and endowed with beauty), Peaceful Bodhisattva [Śānta(mati143), 78] (same as the foregoing, [having] Great Intelligence’s appearance), Unsullied Intelligence Bodhisattva [Vimalamati,144 79] (same as the foregoing, [having] Peaceful’s appearance), Sky Immaculate Bodhisattva [Gaganāmala, 80] (same as the foregoing, [having] Unsullied Intelligence’s appearance), Ocean Intelligence

Bodhisattva [Sāgaramati, 81], Good Elephant Rage Bodhisattva [sic, Akṣayamati?,145 82]. Concluded: the foregoing third enclosure (forty deities are named).

[1.4. Fourth Enclosure: Outside the Vajradhātu] T 959.328c10–22 The Adamant Ones Outside The Adamant Realm,146 the [so-called] fourth enclosure, arranges gods and the like in order. [Starting] from the Outer Offering [Bodhisattva147 in the] southeast corner: Lamp Offering Bodhisattva [Vajradīpā,148 83] (both hands offer up 143. Jijing 寂靜: the name in the *Cakravartitantras is Śāntamati 寂靜慧. 144. Wugouhui 無垢惠: A Bodhisattva probably called Vimalamati is depicted in the paṭavidhi of the Sanskrit AKR (Mikkyō Seiten Kenkyūkai 2001: 6). 145. Shanxiangmeng 善象猛: doubtful; no Bodhisattva has a name resembling *Varagajamatta. The well-known Bodhisattva Gandhahastin 香象 appears in the Chinese *Cakravartitantras, but not in the paṭavidhi. The corresponding figure in the paṭavidhi is Akṣayamati (無盡慧, T 950: 無量慧, T 951), whose name may have been miscopied here. 146. wai jingang 外金剛, *bāhyavajrakulāni: common to the Genzu, Vajradhātu, and other maṇḍalas transmitted in East Asia. It is named ‘outside’ ‘because it is made up of converts from the “outer paths” (gedō [外道]) of the non-Buddhist and heretical religions, and because it defines the limits of the maṇḍala’ (Snodgrass 1988 II: 454). 147. wai gongyang 外供養, bāhyapūjā: outer worship is personified by the four vajra goddesses Dīpā, Dhūpā, Gandhā, and Puṣpā, while inner worship is personified by Lāsyā, Mālā, Gītā, and Nṛtyā (Snodgrass 1988 II: 626–29). 148. Denggongyang 燈供養: Vajrālokā and Dīpapūjā are the names used in the STTS, whereas the name Vajradīpā is usual in the later Sanskritic tradition.

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a lampstand.149 The bodily form and clothes are all red),

then Fire God’s Wife [Āgneyī, 84], Yanmo God King [Yamarāja, 85], at the gate: Adamant Bell Bodhisattva [Vajraghaṇṭā, 86], (the form and clothes are all green in colour. [She] rings a bell, residing at the gate), then Yanmo King’s Wife [Yāmyā,150 87], Luocha God Lord [Rākṣasādhipati, 88]. Southwest corner: Perfume Bodhisattva [Vajragandhā, 89] (the clothes and bodily form are yellow in colour), Luocha God’s Wife [Rākṣasī,151 90], Pishamen God Lord [Kubera,152 91], at the gate: Adamant Hook Bodhisattva [Vajrāṅkuśī, 92] (the form and clothes are blue. [She] holds a hook, the location is standard153), then Pishamen God’s Wife [Kauberī,

93], Wind God Lord [Vāyu, 94]. Northwest corner: Incense Offering Bodhisattva [Vajradhūpā, 95] (black in colour, both hands hold a censer), Wind God’s Wife [Vāyavī, 96], Water God King [Varuṇa, 97], at the gate: Adamant Lasso Bodhisattva [Vajrapāśī, 98] (the form and clothing are all yellow. [She] holds a lasso, positioned at the gate), Water God’s Wife [Vāruṇī, 99], Yishena God [Īśāna,154 100]. Northeast corner: Flower Offering Bodhisattva [Vajrapuṣpā, 101] (sits on a white lotus. [Her] clothes and face are coloured white, both hands holding a flower in the pose of worship), Yishena God’s Wife [Aiśānī, 102],

Dishi God King [Śakra, 103], in the gate: Adamant Chain Bbodhisattva [Vajrasphoṭā, 104] (the form and clothes are both red. [She] holds shackles, in the standard

149. tai 臺: perhaps a translation (or a misunderstood image) of a ‘wick’, *yaṣṭi, the deity’s characteristic cihna (Snodgrass 1988 II: 660 fig. 354). 150. Yanmowang-gou 焰魔王 : Yama’s consort in the VAT is called Yamī, according to Hatta (2002b: 133, 139). Snodgrass (1988 II: 472) gives the name Kālarātrī or even ‘Mṛiti’, sic (after MDJ 2185c, ‘Mṛityu’). 151. Luochatian-gou 羅剎主 : the name Rākṣasī is given in Siddhamātṛkā script in the VAT literature (Hatta 2002b: 133; cf. T 854A.168b8). Mahāvyutpatti 254.14: Nairṛtī. 152. Pishamentian 沙門天: a standard transcription of Vaiśravaṇa, but the corresponding name in the *Cakravartitantra is Kubera, Juweiluo 俱尾羅 (T 950.199c1). 153. zai benwei 在本位 lit. ‘in the original position’: perhaps a reference to the Bodhisattva’s corresponding position in the Vajradhātumahāmaṇḍala; also cf. 104. 154. Yishenā 伊舍那: Īśāna, according to Hatta (2002b: 133); Rudra, according to T 854.166a2: namaḤ samantabuddhānāṀ rudrāya svāhā.

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[way]), Dishi’s Wife [Aindrī,155 105], Fire God Lord

[Agni, 106]. Concluded: the foregoing fourth enclosure (twenty deities are named).

[1.4.1. Painting Hayagrīva and Aparājita] T 959.329a18–329b2

multicoloured blaze appearing from the mouth; the face on the right side is made with the expression of watchful gazing; the face on the left side looks down. The face on top of the head is made with the expression of watching the masses. [Aparājita] stands upon a jewelled lotus. Concluded: the foregoing painting of the two sacred ones on both sides outside the maṇḍala’s gateway.159

Paint the two great mantra kings with appearances as explained in the following. The venerable demeanour of the great Mantra King Heyeg’lifu [1.5. Fifth Enclosure] T 959.328c23–5 [Hayagrīva, 107]: the body is similar to the colour of fire, of furious form, the nose like an ape’s or Around this fifth, Enjoyable Path160 enclosure, monkey’s,156 with an ornamental snake necklace, [in the] four corners, paint a five-pronged [vajra] armlets, anklets [and] a garland of lotuses fastened pounder emblem161 with the dynamic appearance to the head. Make [Hayagrīva have] the expression of a blazing halo. The foregoing completes the maṇḍala of the of gazing and observing. Next, the Invincible Fury King [Aparāji- Wheel [Turning] King’s consecration rite, and ta-krodharāja, 108]: the body is white-coloured, the deities upon the maṇḍala within. Altogether four-armed, [four-faced,157] of furrowed brow, an- one hundred and twenty-two162 deities’ names are gry-faced, having a tiger pelt for a lower garment, reckoned. large snakes for earrings, Dechajia Dragon King [Takṣaka] for a girdle, Posuzhi Dragon King [2. Initiation Procedure] T 959.328c27–329a4 [Vāsuki] for a sacred cord, an indulged belly draped in an upper garment. The bodily form is somewhat The ācārya should give the disciple initiation dwarflike. Venomous snakes adorn the crown, the mouth gnaws the lower lip, the whole body is haloed by a fiery blazing light. The upper right hand holds large face has angry eyes, a gaping mouth’ 正中大面怒目 張口 (ibid.). a vajra, the lower right hand makes the threaten159. men 門: Not specified in the parallels. The usual loing gesture, the upper left hand holds a trident, cation of the initiands’ entrance is on the western side, as the lower left hand bears an axe. The front face is in the maṇḍalas of the MMK et al. (Tanaka 2010: 98–99ff.). made in the expression of aṭṭāṭṭahāsa laughter,158 a 160. shidao 食道 ‘food path’: obscure. This is a signature 155. Dishi gou 帝釋 : From the transliteration, Śākrā might be expected (see e.g., Monier-Williams 1899). However, Hatta (2002b: 127) reconstructs the deity’s mantra as indriye svāhā; yet the transliteration of the mantra clearly conveys aindriye (ai- 愛). 156. bi ru yuanhou 鼻如猿猴: this odd phrase in Amoghavajra’s translation (T 950.199a19) is unparalleled in Bodhiruci’s translation, which instead has: ‘the body is scarletviolet in colour, the face and eyes look angry, the right hand holds a hatchet, upright, beside the chest, the left (Ch. ‘right’ 右) hand arches over a lotus. [He has] a snake of lotus petals, stems, etc. for a necklace [*padmadalanālādisarpayajñopavīta]’ (T 951.231a6–7). 157. si mian 四面 ‘four-faced’: this attribute is mentioned in the parallel in T 950. 158. azhazhahesuo xiao 阿吒吒賀娑笑 (received text: po 𥬒): in Bodhiruci’s translation, ‘his proper, central,

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term of the Guhyatantra: ‘[For] the third [outermost] enclosure only white pigment is used to create the boundary path. It is the food enclosure and the walkway enclosure […] Flowers, as though falling, [are] over the food enclosure’ 第三外院唯用白色而作界道 其著食院及 行道院 […] 花若墮於食院之上 (T 897.765a13–14, 769c25). The underlying Sanskrit may derive from √bhoj, as in ‘enjoyment’ of the maṇḍala’s surroundings: ‘the outside border of flowers represents the garden surrounding the palace’ (Snodgrass 1988 II: 554). 161. qi 契 ‘agreement’: probably translates samaya, i.e. an emblematic (cihna) rather than a syllabic or anthropomorphic, etc., representation (Snodgrass 1988 I: 22ff.). 162. yiba ershier 一百二十二: The subtotals given by the commentator total to only 102 names (10 + 32 + 40 + 20). A total of 122 deities can be reached by adding the cakravartin’s seven treasures (2a–2g), the two gate guardians (107, 108), and Subāhu, Hayagrīva, Mūrdhaṭaka and the eight vināyakas described in §5.

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Coronation and Liberation According to a Javanese Monk in China beside163 the great maṇḍala.164 Facing towards the assembled deities, separately make [before it a quadrangular,165] smeared maṇḍala using white powder, three cubits in size. Throughout the centre, paint a lotus flower. Upon the central pericarp, paint a lion seat. Order the initiand to sit upon a cast flower. Order the disciple of the Singular Liberation Law166 to hold a parasol and a fly-whisk; recite auspicious words of praise steadily, without interruption. Fetching water in a vase, empower [it] a hundred and eight times. Teach the disciple [to] bind167 the Buddha Crest seal resting upon the head (the details are as copiously explained in the initiation manual168). Then blow a conch, beat a drum, make various musical sounds and so on.

[3. The five-part mantra of Vairocana] T 959.329b3–5 Next, visualise the five parts of the object of worship: a vi ra hūm ̐ khaṀ169 (it is also said that

Que170 [Akṣobhya], Jewel [Ratnasambhava], Measure [Amitāyus], Infallible [Amoghasiddhi], Pilu [Vairocana] are

163. ce 側 ‘side’: the reading of the parallel is better: ‘Then (ze 則), the ācārya, facing the maṇḍala...’ 則阿 梨對曼茶羅 前 (T 953.292a2). 164. da-mantuluo 大曼荼羅, mahāmaṇḍala: i.e., a painted maṇḍala in the fourfold maṇḍala typology (i.e., mahā-, samaya-, dharma-, karma-maṇḍala); see Snodgrass (1988 I: 22–28). 165. si fang 四方: mentioned in the parallel in T 953, ibid. 166. yijiefa 一解法: the parallel in T 953 lacks this phrase. The designation of the initiate as the *ekavimokṣadharma-bhikṣu 一解法比丘 occurs only in T 901.793a27–28. 167. jiao di zi jie 教弟子結: read ‘teach the disciple to bind...’, not ‘teach the disciple, bind...’, following the parallel in T 953, which uses ‘command’ 令 in place of ‘teach’. 168. guan ding yi 灌頂儀 *abhiṣekavidhi: unidentified. This might refer to the *sarvatathāgatoṣṇīṣamudrā taught in the VAT: ‘Then bring the fingertips of the right hand together and place them on the crown. This is the seal of all Buddha-Crowns’ 又以慧手指 聚置頂上 是一切佛頂印 (T 848.28c17; trans. Giebel 2005: 114). 169. benzun 本尊: i.e., Mahāvairocana, who is to be identified with Śākyamuni (→1). His omniscience is articulated with the mantra a vi ra hūm ̐ khaṀ (cf. Snodgrass 1988 II: 749–50); later variant: āḤ khaṀ vī ra hūm ̐ (Vajrāvalī 20.8 etc., ed. Mori 2009: 393). 170. que/que/jue 闕: a phonetic alternative for or a miscopying of chu in the common Chinese spelling of Akṣobhya, Achu 阿 .

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behind the crown [where the syllable khaṀ is located].171 The remaining [four syllables] are located from the forehead [downwards172]). a vi ra hūm ̐ khaṀ

(because grasped by diamond ground) (because moistened by the milky ocean of great merit) (because reared warmly by the lamp of samādhi insight) (because released by the wind of obstructionremoving gnosis) (because unobstructed by intrinsically unbounded space)

[3.1. The five-part mantra: appearance in yoga] T 959.329b6–16 Having set out the five parts, next is the explanation of [their] yogic appearances: The syllable a, true173 gold in colour, everywhere174 manifest [as] an adamantine circle, empowers the lower body; [it is] explained [that its] name is Yoga Seat. The syllable vi, silk-white moonlight located in dense vapour, empowers the navel [and] above; its name is Great Compassion Ocean. The syllable ra, first light of day, a red shape located in a triangle, empowers the heart [and is] called Gnosis Fire Majesty. The syllable hūm̐, the blaze of Aeon[-ending] Fire, daubed murky [black], similar to175 a disc of wind, empowers the white tuft of the forehead [and is] named Spontaneous Power. The syllable khaṀ, due to [being] the vast sky, contains every colour; [it] empowers the crown [and] above, so [it has the] designation Person Without Equal. 171. ding hou 頂後: it is a well-known convention that the five tathāgatas are located at the crown. 172. cong e 從額: i.e., a (lower body), vi (navel), ra (heart), hūm ̐ (brow), khaṀ (crown). 173. zhen ‘true’, ‘reality’; parallel: 遍 ‘fully’, ‘everywhere’. 174. pu 普 ‘everywhere’; parallel: 用 ‘use’. 175. tu xuan ruo 塗玄若: a miscopying of 色在 ‘black in colour, located in...’ from the VAT (T 848.52b25) or one of the manuals based on it (T 852, 853).

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[3.2. The five-part mantra: correspondences] T 959.329b7–28

(This says ‘unmoving like a diamond’. This dhāraṇī can compel whatever is visualized to be lossless.)

Next, the correspondence of the five limbs with om ̐ , spreading vajra!] ̐ spharaṆavajra180 [Om the maṇḍalas of earth, water, fire, wind, and space: (This says ‘pervasion like diamond’. This dhāraṇī can The syllable a is imagined underneath the seat. compel whatever is visualized to gradually expand, Having formed the adamantine seat, its colour and encompassing the dharma realm.) appearance resemble yellow gold, itself meaning ̐ , retract, vajra!] ̐ saṀhara vajra181 [Om the precepts. The maṇḍala’s appearance is square, om (This says ‘resolved182 like diamond’. This dhāraṇī and it is the maṇḍala per se.176 can compel whatever is visualized to be gradually The syllable vi is imagined at the navel, colournarrowed, just like the tips of hairs located at the end ed white, the water of merciful compassion, itself of a white hair tuft—whatever pleases the mind— meaning meditation. This maṇḍala’s appearance located at the tip of the nose.) is round. The outer maṇḍala is like a full moon. The syllable ra is imagined at the heart, its appearance and colour a deep red, signifying in- [4. Painting Subāhu and Mūrdhaṭaka] telligence. This maṇḍala has triangular form. The T 959.329c8–c15 outer maṇḍala is also a triangle. The syllable hūm ̐ is imagined between the Next, the painting of the boy Subāhu [→33] is brows, coloured the black of unimpeded wind, itself explained. [His] bodily form and his retinue’s [their] forms meaning liberation. This maṇḍala is imagined with venerable bodies resemble a boy, 183 golden in colour, like the name. Paint, afraid a blue form, like a half moon. The form of the outer and trembling, the Seven Luminaries surrounding maṇḍala is also the same. the venerable’s deportment: Mi, Mo, Yunhan, Di, The syllable khaṀ rests above the crown, trans184 Womeisi, Naxie, Jixuan [Mehr, Māh, Wahrām, forming into a point of vast space, itself meaning Tir, Ohrmazd, Anāhīd, Kewān]. Each one is similar the vision of liberating knowledge. This maṇḍala to the main form. Paint [them] staying beside resembles the meaning of the glyph: a point of Hayagrīva-vidyā[rāja →107], standing on a lotus. space [kha], colourless in appearance, capable of transforming actions. Such is the significance of the dhāraṇī(s).177 the corresponding mantra in STTS 3 (Horiuchi 1981 I: 262)

[3.3 The four vajra meditation mantras] T 959.329b28–c7 ̐  , subtle vajra!] om ̐ sūkṢmavajra [Om

(This says ‘subtle like diamond’. This dhāraṇī can compel whatever is visualised178 to originate.)

̐  , steady, vajra!] om ̐ tiṢṬha vajra179 [Om 176. er 耳: alternatively, and less probably, a is the ‘handgrip’ (*karṇa) of the maṇḍala. 177. ji shi tuoluoni 即是陀羅尼義也 *tadyathā mantranayam: the following four mantras belong to the exegesis of the *mahābinduśūnya (dakongdian 大空點) and the syllable kha. 178. suo guan 所觀: The parallel in T 917 was translated by Bagchi (1946: 155) as vipaśyanā. It rather seems to be a correlative, referring to a bimba, ālambana, etc. 179. dis’chafur’luo 底丁以反瑟姹二合 日囉 二合, tiṣṭha vajra:

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is vajra dṛḍha tiṣṭha, the last of the four mantras. The form tiṣṭha vajra, i.e. an irregular imperative followed by a vocative, is generally preferred over tiṣṭhavajra in editions of the Sanskrit parallels. 180. s’poluonafur’luo 薩頗二合 囉拏 日囉二合 spharaṇavajra: the corresponding mantra in STTS 3 is printed by Horiuchi (1981 I: 262) as sphara vajra (cf. 颯頗二合囉 日 囉, T 882.364a29). Hatta (2002a: 18) reads the mantra in Ṛtasaṁgraha 36 as spharavajra. Bagchi (1946: 155) has supra vajra (cf. 娑頗囉二合 日囉二合 , T 917.945c27). 181. sengheluo 僧賀囉 saṁhara: T 917.946a2 has the variant saṁhāra- 僧賀引囉. 182. liao da 了達: renders *adhi-√gā, -√gam, etc., according to DDB. 183. ru minghao 如名號: unclear. The boy’s name is likened to gold: *Suvarṇa, *Sudhana or the like (regarding which see MMK 53: subāhuḥ sudhanakhyāto mahendracandrasamas tathā), or may be a pun on ‘rich in gold’ (bahusuvarṇa). 184. Mi… Jixuan 密… 雞 : the deities of the seven days (saptavara), starting with Sunday, enumerated in a Central Asian language. See the Introduction, Table 2.3.

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Coronation and Liberation According to a Javanese Monk in China Next paint the boy Mūrdhaṭaka [→34]. [His] bodily form and his retinue’s venerable bodies are golden in colour, with dangling locks. The left hand holds a vajra. The right hand is akimbo. He is to be [portrayed] surrounded by eight vināyakas:185 Adamant Ornament, Adamant Dirt, Adamant Lasso, Adamant Axe, Adamant Extreme Laughter, Adamant Transformation Ornament, Adamant Peak and Adamant Pinnayeri [Vajrālaṁkāra, *Vajramala, Vajrapāśa, *Vajraparaśu, *Vajravikurvitālaṁkāra, *Vajrātihāsa, Vajravināyaka]. [Their] weapons are as allocated [in] the text.186 Concluded: the foregoing Crest-Wheel[-King] maṇḍala rite has been completely written down.

[Colophon] (The exemplar says:) Written on the first day of the

fifth lunar month of the inaugural year of Tengi [21 May 1053 ad]. Checked once: Monk Raishō.

t 959: revised chinese text 轉寫凡例 Ⓣ

SAT

大正新脩大藏經テキストデータベー 2012

x

曼荼羅尊號x (粗體)

(什麼什麼) 割注

什麼什麼 疑點

em.

emendation 改正

conj.

conjectural emendation 校勘

corr.

correction 訂正

≈

homoglyphic congruence 同余

頂輪王大曼荼羅灌頂儀軌

(In red ink:) Was this ritual really compiled by the

***

〈大正新脩大藏經〉第十九冊 No. 959 頁 327c23–329c

CBETA 〈大正新脩大藏經〉(中華電子佛典協會)

Conflated with the book held by Jichigen, monk of the Tendai [order]. —Tōji śramaṇa Dōkai. upādhyāya Benkō [Bianhong]? Both characters [with which the name may be written], ‘Ben 辨’ and ‘Ben ’, are interchangeable with each other. Produced by a pupil of the Qinglong [monastery’s] upādhyāya [Huiguo]. It is particularly to be used as a model.187

59

舊名：阿迦

188

新名 薩縛 娑

㗚婆

弘

底迦 吉祥

（并金剛界眾形色 東都聖善寺沙門 svastika189 吉祥集）

[0 序言] T 959.329a7–10 我今依經說

輪王畫像法

行190人具眾德191

作法方可為

如經廣稱述

白㲲192須頓方

五肘或三肘

[1 道場觀] T 959.329a11–18 185. ba pinnayejia 八頻那夜迦: this set of eight vināyakas is unknown in the extant Sanskrit corpus. They may be female (e.g., 八 那耶迦天女, T 397.368a03). 186. ru wenpei 如文配: unidentified. The iconography of these eight vināyakas is not specified in connection with the original passage in T 953, nor elsewhere in the Chinese canon. This remark might have been miscopied from the commentary into the text. 187. guimo 規模 ‘pattern’ in the sense of ritually authoritative, due to its famous compiler.

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畫聖者像。先從大海踊出須彌山王四寶所成(先

188. 189. 190. 191. 192.

Ⓣ 蘖 conj. svastika corr. buṇika.Ⓣ bu ṇi ka CBETA 行 conj. 近 Ⓣ 德 conj. 流 Ⓣ 㲲 em. 疊 Ⓣ

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北金。東白銀。南吠瑠185璃色青色。西頗胝迦寶色紅色)

(餘如經說也)。

[1.2 第二院] T 959.328a17–b11 次第二院、獨古190杵界道(從東北角、起首畫向南也)。 東南角：法波羅蜜菩薩11、次大勢至觀音菩

[1.1 中台院] T 959.327c27–28

薩12、葉衣觀音菩薩13、多羅觀音菩薩14(種種嚴

191 內院三昧耶界道中台院中、畫佛世尊1、坐師子座。 具莊嚴、著輕縠 衣。其身形不麤不細中庸形。右手 持青蓮花、左手施願、坐花台上、作淺綠色也)、觀 [1.1.1 佛世尊像] T 959.327c29–328a7 世音菩薩 、毘俱胝觀音菩薩 (身白色、三目四

15

16

其座種種寶莊嚴。聖者身坐白蓮華、身白金色、

臂、右上手持仗。左上手持瓶、右下手持念珠、左下

入最勝三摩地王相、結跏趺坐、作說法相。從一

手持蓮花。身儀寂靜)、白衣觀音菩薩17(以蓮花鬘

切身普遍出十二輻188金輪、熾盛光明、如輪圍

莊嚴身。用寶繒角絡被。右手持眞多摩尼寶、左手施

繞。從頂流出種種光明：青、黃、赤、白。具

願。坐蓮花上。此192是一切蓮花族母)、觀自在王菩

大仗夫相、倚菩提樹。其樹有種種葉如眞多摩

薩18(坐寶蓮花上。合掌作禮勢)。

尼。樹形於上繫種種繒綵、或繫吠琉璃寶、天

西南角：羯磨波羅蜜菩薩19、次禪波羅蜜菩

果、妙衣、或垂雲降雨、有種種芽。吉祥眾鳥

薩20(結定[印]即身□如金)、忍波羅蜜菩薩21、施

並坐其上、或於枝間種種寶葉已、成劫樹。世

波羅蜜菩薩22、虛空明妃19323(如天形。坐蓮花上。

尊兩肩後倚著其樹。

合掌作禮勢)、戒波羅蜜菩薩24、精進波羅蜜菩薩25、

[1.1.2 轉輪王像] T 959.328a7–10 佛右邊座下畫轉輪王2形、坐白蓮華、作觀佛勢。 其身金色周遍光明。七寶2a–2g成就。惟輪寶以 光圍繞、在蓮華上。餘六寶如次安之。

[1.1.3 佛頂像] T 959.328a11–16 東南角：摧碎佛頂3、南：勝佛頂4、西南角：無

惠194波羅蜜菩薩26。 西北角：金剛波羅蜜菩薩27、次降三世金剛 菩薩28(身相如《瑜伽》)、金剛將明妃29、金剛將 童子30(如名別無相)、金剛手菩薩31(右手持白拂。 左手持金剛杵。坐蓮花上)、金剛母菩薩32(名摩莫枳。 身相如童女、淡紫青色、種種瓔珞莊嚴、坐蓮花上、 住般若自性、右手持梵夾、左手持眞多摩尼、施願勢。

邊聲佛頂5、西：白傘蓋佛頂6、西北角：高廣佛 頂7、北：光聚佛頂8(坐白蓮花上。種種光圍繞。在

185. 186. 187. 188.

瑠 Ⓣ 琉 CBETA 正受 corr. (R.G.; parallel, T 953.292b) 正面 Ⓣ 輻 corr. 幅 Ⓣ 輻 corr. 幅 Ⓣ

Sinclair mockup copy3.indd 60

189. 睹 Ⓣ 瞻 conj. (parallel, T 950.198c) 190. 古 Ⓣ 鈷 corr. 191. 種種嚴具莊嚴、著輕縠縠 em. (parallel, T 950.199b) 種種嚴具莊著。輕縠□ Ⓣ 192. 此 em. 角此 Ⓣ 193. 明妃 Ⓣ 藏 conj. 194. 惠 Ⓣ 慧 corr.

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Coronation and Liberation According to a Javanese Monk in China 不得、高顏極令195悅意。是金剛族母)、蘇婆呼童子

菩薩33(作童子形)、頂行童子菩薩34、同前 (准被髮相)。

61

前後同)、龍女62(相端嚴)。

西北角：獻喜菩薩63(形服皆金色)。次烏芻 瑟摩金剛64、金剛藏菩薩65、甘露軍吒利菩薩66、

東北角：寶波羅蜜菩薩35、次般若波羅蜜菩

金剛孫陀利菩薩67(此是明妃、形如天女、種種

薩36、慈氏菩薩37(手執白拂)、佛慈菩薩38、佛眼

瓔珞莊嚴。其身青色、手執蓮花、坐寶山上)、

菩薩39(形如天女、坐寶蓮花、種種莊嚴、身如金色、 金剛愛菩薩68、金剛拳菩薩69、施無畏菩薩70、 目觀眾會。著輕縠196衣角被、右手持寶、左手施願、 197

圓光周遍、身相寂)、佛毫 相菩薩40(形如天母、

缽拏攝末里菩薩71、金剛針菩薩72。 東北角：鬘供養菩薩73(形服皆金色)、談無

色相同前、唯右手持蓮花、左手施願、光明同前

竭菩薩74、陀羅尼自在菩薩75、摩麼雞菩薩76

無異)、文殊菩薩41(身相金色)、如意寶菩薩42。

(坐蓮花臺、如女形、首戴寶冠。左手執五古杵、

已上第二院(三十二聖者名)。

右手施願。身相端嚴、圓光熾盛也)、大惠菩薩77 (身如作禮勢、合掌、坐蓮臺、金色、具端嚴)、寂靜

[1.3 第三院] T 959.328b12–c9 次第三院同第二界道。東南角：歌供養菩薩43 (形服皆金色)、次如意輪菩薩44、纔發心轉法輪 198

菩薩45、八聖 觀音菩薩46、蓮華吉祥菩薩47、

[慧201]菩薩78(同前大惠相)、無垢惠菩薩79(同前 寂靜相)、虛空無垢菩薩80(同前無垢惠)、海惠菩薩 202

81、善象猛

菩薩82。已上第三院(四十聖名號)

蓮華孫陀利菩薩48(四臂、右第一手持罥索、左手持

[1.4 第四院] T 959.328c10–22

鉞斧。右第二手施願、左第二手持果。坐於蓮花。

金剛界外金剛第四院、辦事天等。次第外供

光明同前)、青頸觀音菩薩49、蓮華髻菩薩50、

養從203。

蓮華藥叉菩薩51、十一面觀音菩薩52。 西南角：舞供養菩薩53(形服皆金色)。次嚩

東南角：燈供養菩薩83(二手捧燈臺、身形衣 服並赤)。次火天姤84、焰魔天王85、當門：金剛

哩迦龍王54(嚩哩迦七頭)、阿難陀龍王55(此上二龍

鈴菩薩86(形服並綠色。搖鈴、居本門)、次焰魔王

王、曾見佛、有七頭、合掌跪、地即上嚩哩迦 .

姤87、羅剎天主88。

阿難陀也。唯持花鬘有異也)、無染河天者56(即尼 199

西南角：塗香菩薩89(衣服身形黃色)、次羅

蓮河神也。並見佛來、身相如目止鄰[陀 ]龍王、

剎主姤90、毘沙門天王91、當門：金剛鉤菩薩92

更無別狀)、地天20057(身白色、以二手捧寶花籠子、

(形服青。執鉤在本位)、次毘沙門天姤93、風天主94。

二膝跪地)、無能勝姤菩薩58、無能勝妃59、無熱

西北角：香供養菩薩95(黑色、二手執香爐)、

惱龍王60(持蓮花鬘曲躬合掌)、目眞鱗龍王61

風天姤96、水天王97、當門：金剛索菩薩98(形服

(并前二龍王青色黑色、如女形、七頭、合掌作禮勢。

並黃、執索、當門位)、水天姤99、伊舍那天100。

195.

不得高、極令 不得、高□ Ⓣ

196. 197. 198. 199. 200.

em. (parallel: 不太高, T 950.199b)

東北角：花供養菩薩101(坐白蓮花、衣服面色 具白。二手持花。供養勢也)、伊舍那天姤102、

縠 em. (parallel, T 950.199a) 穀 Ⓣ

毫 em. (parallel, T 950.199b) 豪 Ⓣ 聖 Ⓣ 臂 conj.

目止鄰陀 corr. (parallel: 母止鄰陀, T 950.199b) 目止鄰 Ⓣ 地天 em. (parallel, T 950.199b) 地天供養 Ⓣ

Sinclair mockup copy3.indd 61

201. 寂靜慧 em. 寂靜 Ⓣ 202. 善象猛 Ⓣ 無盡慧 conj. 203. 天等。次第外供養從 corr. 天等次第。外供養從 Ⓣ

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

62

帝釋天王103、當門﹕金剛鎖菩薩104(形服並赤、

花了者坐上。令一解法弟子211持蓋及拂、

持鎖、本位中)、帝釋姤105、火天主106。

誦吉慶聲讚、徐徐不絕。取中瓶水、加持一百

已上第四院(二十天名號)。

[1.4.1 二大明王畫像] T 959.328a18–329b2

八遍。教弟子結佛頂印安於頂上(餘如灌頂儀中 廣說)。然須吹䗍212擊鼓。作諸音樂等。

畫二大明王、相如後說。尊儀賀野仡哩二合嚩大

[3 本尊五支觀] T 959.329b3–5

明王107：身如火色、忿怒形、鼻如猿猴。以蛇

次觀本尊五支也。阿尾囉吽欠(亦云：闕213 . 寶 . 量

莊嚴瓔珞、臂釧、膊釧、頭繫蓮華鬘。作瞻睹勢。 .不空 . 毘盧居頂後。餘從額配之) 次無能勝忿怒王108：身白色、四臂、頻眉

阿字(金剛寶地214所執持故)　

面嗔、虎皮為裙、蟒蛇為耳璫、得叉迦龍王以

微字(功德乳海所滋潤215故)

為腰縚204、婆蘇枳龍王以為神線205角絡被耽肚。

囉字(三昧惠炬所溫育故)

身形稍短。以毒蛇莊嚴髻冠、口咬下唇、遍身火

吽字(除障智風所216開發故)

焰熾盛圓光。右上手持金剛杵、右下手作期剋

欠字(無邊性空不障礙故)

勢、左上手持三古戟叉、左下手執鉞斧。 正面作阿吒吒賀娑笑206勢、從口火焰種種色相。 右邊面作觀瞻勢、左邊面下看也。頭上面作觀

[3.1 本尊五支觀] T 959 329b6–16 五支先布已次說瑜伽相。 阿字眞217金色

普218現金剛輪

加持於下體

說名瑜伽座

[1.5 第五院] T 959.328c23–5

微字素月光

在219於霧聚中

從此第五食道院四角畫五古杵契焰鬘威相成。

加持於齊220上

是名大悲海

囉字初日暉

形221赤在三角

加持於心位

稱為智火威222

大眾勢。於寶蓮華立也了。 已上二聖者於曼荼羅門外兩邊畫。

已上曼荼羅輪王大灌頂儀軌中上壇聖者。 都計一百二十二尊號。

[2 灌頂] T 959.328c27–329a4 阿闍梨與弟子灌頂、應於大曼荼羅、側對207聖眾 面前。別塗作曼荼羅、以白粉三208肘量。其209於 中畫蓮花。中台上畫師子座。令灌頂弟子、擲210

204. 205. 206. 207. 208. 209. 210.

腰縚 corr. 腰。縚 Ⓣ 神線 corr. 神。線 Ⓣ 笑 em.

Ⓣ ≈ 𥬒

側。對 Ⓣ 則對 conj. (parallel, T 953.292a) 三 em. (parallel, T 953.292a) 參 Ⓣ

其 conj. 普 Ⓣ 擲 em. (R.G.)

Sinclair mockup copy3.indd 62

Ⓣ

211. 令一解法弟子 corr. 令一解法。弟子 Ⓣ 212. 䗍 Ⓣ 蠡 CBETA, SAT 蜑螺 conj. 213. 闕 Ⓣ 閦 conj. 214. 金剛寶地 em. (parallel: 大悲地界。金剛座下金剛寶地, T 860.165c) 金剛寶地大悲地界 Ⓣ 215. 滋潤 conj. (parallel, T 860.165c) 資𨳝 Ⓣ 216. 所 Ⓣ 能 conj. (parallel, T 860.165c) 217. 眞 Ⓣ 真 CBETA 遍 conj. (parallel, T 848.52b) 218. 普 Ⓣ 用 conj. (parallel, T 848.52b) 219. 在 em. (parallel, T 848.52b) 匪 Ⓣ 220. 於齊 Ⓣ 自臍 conj. (parallel, T 848.52b) 221. 形 Ⓣ 彤 conj. (parallel, T 848.52b) 222. 威 Ⓣ 光 conj. (parallel, T 848.52b)

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Coronation and Liberation According to a Javanese Monk in China

63

吽字劫火焰

塗玄若223風輪

[4 蘇婆呼、頂行童子畫像] T 959.329c8–c16

加持白毫際

名為自在力

次說畫蘇婆呼童子。身形眷屬尊身如童子、

欠字由大空

含容一切色

加持於頂上

故號無等人

形225金色如名號。悚慄畫尊儀、七曜圍繞：密 . 莫 . 雲漢226 . 嘀227 . 嗢沒斯 . 那纈 . 雞暖228。各如本 形。畫229住賀野仡哩嚩明側立花上。 次畫頂行童子。身形眷屬。尊身金色。髻

[3.2 五輪塔] T 959.329b17–27 次五支從地、水、火、風、空配成及壇。 阿字想座下。金剛座已成。色相如黃金、 即戒義也。其壇相方。曼荼囉亦耳。 微字想於臍。色白慈悲水、即定義也。

髮下垂。左手持金剛杵、右手叉腰。八頻那夜 迦圍繞所為：金剛莊嚴、金剛塵、金剛索、金 剛鉞斧、金剛極笑、金剛成莊嚴、金剛頂、金 剛頻那夜釰。器仗如文配。 已上並是頂輪壇法具足寫了。

其壇相圓。外壇如滿月。 囉字想於心。其相色赤紅、為惠義也。 其壇三角形。外壇亦三角。

[落款] T 959.329c18–24 (書本云)天喜元年五月一日書了

吽字想眉間。色黑為無礙風、即解脫義也。

一交了　僧賴昭

其壇想青形如半月。外壇相亦同。 欠字安頂上。以成大空點、即解脫知見義也。

以天台實嚴僧正持本交合之 東寺沙門道快

其壇如字義、空點無色相。能成諸事業。即是 陀羅尼義也：

(朱筆)此軌者230弘和尚集歟？「辨 .

[3.3 四金剛眞言] T 959.329b28–c7 唵引 速乞灑二合摩嚩日囉二合

」兩字通

用之間。青龍和尚門人制作。尤以可為規模者也。

(此云微224細如金

****

剛。此陀羅尼能令所觀成就)

唵引 底丁以反瑟姹二合嚩日囉二合 (此云不動如金剛。 此陀羅尼能令所觀無失)

唵引 薩頗二合 囉拏嚩日囉二合 (此云周遍如金剛。 此陀羅尼能令所觀漸廣、量周法界)

唵引 僧賀囉嚩日囉二合 (此云了達如金剛。此陀羅 尼能令所觀漸略。猶如毫端、住白毫際、或住 鼻端。隨心所樂)。

223. 塗玄若 Ⓣ 黒色在 conj. (parallel, T 848.52b) 224. 微 em. 細 Ⓣ

Sinclair mockup copy3.indd 63

225. 226. 227. 228. 229. 230.

子、形 corr. 子 形。Ⓣ

漢 em. (parallel, T 1308.427c) 漠 Ⓣ

嘀 conj. 𠼬 Ⓣ

暖 em. (parallel, T 1308.427c)

≈㭸 Ⓣ

各如本形。畫 corr. 各如本形畫。 Ⓣ

≈ 𧦪 Ⓣ 辯 CBETA

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64

Primary Sources

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia Chinese titles: Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō (T)

Vol. 3 no. 159. Dasheng bensheng xindiguan jing 大乘 本生心地觀經. Prajña 般若 (translator/author?). Agnipurāṇa: ed. Mitra. Calcutta: Asiatic Society 8 rolls. of Bengal, 1879. Vol. 8 no. 224. Daoxing Bore jing 道行般若經 *Adbhutakalpa: T 953. (Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā). Lokakṣema Amoghapāśakalparāja: T 1092. 支婁迦讖 (tr). 10 rolls. Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā: T 224, 227. Vol. 8 no. 227. Xiaopin Bore boluomi jing 小品般 *Ekākṣaroṣṇīṣacakravartitantra: 若波羅蜜經 (Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā). Uṣṇīṣakalpas: T 950, 951, 952, 953, 954A, 954B (cf. Kumārajīva 鳩摩羅什 (tr). 10 rolls. Giebel 2011). Vol. 8 no. 261. Dasheng liqu liu boluomiduo jing 大 Ṛtasaṁgraha by Śubhākarasiṁha: ed. Hatta (cf. id. 乘理趣六波羅蜜多經. Prajña 般若 (chief trans2002a) → Ritasōgyara. lator). 10 rolls. Garuḍapurāṇa: ed. Pandey. Varanasi: Chaukhamba Vol. 13 no. 397. Dafangdeng daji jing 大方等大集經. Vidyabhavan, 1986. Sengjiu 僧就 (harmoniser). 60 rolls. Guhyatantra: T 897. Vol. 18 no. 848. Da Piluzhena chengfo shenbian Guhyasamājatantra: ed. Matsunaga (cf. id. 1978); jiachi jing 大 盧遮那成佛神變加持經 (VaiT 885 (not referenced here). rocanābhisaṁbodhitantra). Śubhākarasiṁha 善 Guhyasamājamaṇḍalopāyika-Viṁśatividhi by Nā無畏, Yixing 一行 (translators). 7 rolls. gabodhi: ed. Tanaka (cf. id. 2012). Vol. 18 no. 851. Da Piluzhena jing guang da yi gui *Cakravartitantra: T 950 (also: T 951, 952). 大 盧遮那經廣大儀軌. Śubhākarasiṁha 善無 *Jātakacittabhūmibhāvanā: T 159. 畏 (tr). 3 rolls. Nāgānanda by Harṣa: eds. M.A. Karandikar and Vol. 18 no. 852. Da Piluzhena chengfo shenbian jiachi S. Karandikar. Bombay, 1953. jing lianhua taizang bei sheng mantuluo guang Pradīpodyotana by Candrakīrti: ed. Chakravarti, da chengjiu yigui gongyang fangbian hui 大 盧 Guhyasamājatantrapradīpodyotanaṭīkāṣaṭkoṭī遮那成佛神變加持經蓮華胎藏悲生曼荼羅廣大 vyākhyā. Patna: Kashi Prasad Jayaswal Research 成就儀軌供養方便會. Faquan 法全 (compiler). Institute, 1984. Vol. 18 no. 853. Da Piluzhena chengfo shenbian jiachi Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa: ed. Ksẹmarāja Śrīkrṣṇạdāsa. jing lianhua taizang puti chuang biaozhi putong Mumbaī: Śrīveṅkaṭeśvara sṭīm yantrālaya, 1935. zhenyanzang guang da chengjiu yujia 大 盧遮那 *Mahāmaṇivipulavimānaviśvasupratiṣṭhitaguh成佛神變加持經蓮華胎藏菩提幢標幟普通真言 yaparamarahasyakalparājadhāraṇī: T 1005A. 藏廣大成就瑜伽. Faquan 法全 (compiler). 3 rolls. Mahāvyutpatti: ed. Sakaki (cf. id. 1916). Vol. 18 no. 861. Piluzhena wuzi zhenyan xiuxi yigui Mañjuśrī-mūlakalpa (or Mañjuśriya-): ed. Śāstrī 盧遮那五字真言修習儀軌 . Amoghavajra (cf. id. 1920–1925) 不空 (tr). 1 roll. 'Rasaratnasamuccaya by Vāgbhaṭa: ed. Bāpaṭa. Śrīmad Vol. 18 no. 865. Jingangding yiqie rulai zhenshishe Vāgbhaṭācāryaviracitaḥ Rasaratnasamuccayaḥ. dasheng xianzheng dajiaowang jing 金剛頂一切 Puṇyākhyapaṭṭana: Ānandāśramasaṁskṛta如來真實攝大乘現證大教王經 (Sarvatathāgagranthāvali 19, 1890. tatattvasaṅgraha). Amoghavajra 不空 (tr). 3 rolls. Vajrāvalī by Abhayākaragupta: ed. Mori (cf. id. 2009). Vol. 18 no. 866. Jingangding yujia zhong lüechu Vairocanābhisaṁbodhitantra: T 848. niansong jing 金剛頂瑜伽中略出念誦經 (SarSarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha: ed. Horiuchi (cf. id. vatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha). Vajrabodhi 金剛 1983); T 865, 866 (part), T 882. 智 (tr). 4 rolls. Samājasādhanavyavastholī: partial ed. Tanaka (cf. Vol. 18 no. 882. Foshuo yiqie rulai zhenshishe dasheng id. 2012). xianzheng sanmei dajiaowang jing 佛說一切如來 Subāhuparipṛcchā: T 895, 896. 真實攝大乘現證三昧大教王經 (SarvatathāgaSusiddhikaratantra: T 893. tatattvasaṅgraha). *Dānapāla 施護 (tr). 30 rolls. Sanskrit titles

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Coronation and Liberation According to a Javanese Monk in China Vol. 18 no. 893. Suxidijieluo jing 蘇悉地羯囉經 (Susiddhikaratantra). Śubhakara 囉波迦羅 (tr). 3 rolls. Vol. 18 no. 895. Supohu tongzi qingwen jing 蘇婆 呼童子請問經 (Subāhuparipṛcchā). Śubhakara 囉波迦羅 (tr). 3 rolls. Vol. 18 no. 896. Miaobi pusa suowen jing 妙臂菩薩 所問經 (Subāhuparipṛcchā). Fatiān 法天 (tr). 4 rolls. Vol. 18 no. 897. Ruixiye jing 蕤 耶經 (Guhyatantra). Amoghavajra 不空 (tr). 3 rolls. Vol. 19 no. 901. Tuoluoni ji jing. 陀羅尼集經. Atikūṭa 阿地瞿多 (tr). 12 rolls. Vol. 19 no. 917. Wuwei Sanzang chanyao 無畏三藏禪 要. Śubhākarasiṁha 善無畏 (author), Huijing 慧 警 (editor?). 1 roll. English translation: Bagchi (1946). Vol. 19 no. 948. Jinlunwang Foding yaolüe niansong fa 金輪王佛頂要略念誦法. Amoghavajra 不空 (tr). 1 roll. Vol. 19 no. 950. Putichang suoshuo Yizi Dinglunwang jing 菩提場所說一字頂輪王經 (*[Ekākṣaroṣṇīṣa-]Cakravartitantra). Amoghavajra 不空 (tr). 5 rolls. Vol. 19 no. 951. Yizi Fodinglunwang jing 一字佛頂 輪王經 (*[Ekākṣaroṣṇīṣa-]Cakravartitantra). Bodhiruci 菩提流志 (tr). 5 rolls. Vol. 19 no. 952. Wu foding sanmei tuoluoni jing 五 佛頂三昧陀羅尼經 (*[Uṣṇīṣa-]cakravartitantra). Bodhiruci 菩提流志 (tr). 4 rolls. Vol. 19 no. 953. Yizi qite foding jing 一字奇特佛頂經 (*Ekākṣarādbhutoṣṇīṣakalpa, *Adbhutakalpa). Amoghavajra 不空 (tr). 3 rolls. Vol. 19 no. 954A. Yizi Dinglunwang niansong yigui 一字頂輪王念誦儀軌(*Ekākṣaroṣṇīṣacakravartijāpavidhi). Amoghavajra 不空 (tr). 1 roll. Vol. 19 no. 954B. Yizi Dinglunwang niansong yigui 一字頂輪王念誦儀軌 *Ekākṣaroṣṇīṣacakravartijāpavidhi). 1 roll. Vol. 19 no. 959. Dinglunwang da mantuluo guanding yigui 頂輪王大曼荼羅灌頂儀軌. Bianhong 𧦬弘 (compiler). 1 roll. Vol. 19 no. 1005A. Dabao guangbo louge shan zhu mimi tuoluoni jing 大寶廣博樓閣善住祕密陀 羅尼經 (Mahāmaṇivipulavimānaviśvasupratiṣṭhitaguhyaparamarahasyakalparājadhāraṇī). Amoghavajra 不空 (tr). 3 rolls. Vol. 20 no. 1080. Ruyilun tuoluoni jing 如意輪陀羅

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尼經. Bodhiruci 菩提流志 (tr). 1 roll. Vol. 20 no. 1083. Guanshiyin pusa Ruyimoni tuoluoni jing 觀世音菩薩如意摩尼陀羅尼經. *Maṇicinta 寶思惟 (tr). 1 roll. Vol. 20 no. 1086. Guanzizai pusa Ruyilun yujia 觀自 在菩薩如意輪瑜伽. Amoghavajra 不空 (tr). 1 roll. Vol. 20 no. 1087. Guanzizai Ruyilun pusa yujia fayao 觀自在如意輪菩薩瑜伽法要. Vajrabodhi 金剛 智 (tr). 1 roll. Vol. 20 no. 1088. Ruyilun pusa guanmen yizhu mijue 如意輪菩薩觀門義注祕訣. Shiyi 失譯 (tr). 1 roll. Vol. 20 no. 1092. Bukongjuansuo shenbian zhenyan jing 不空罥索神變真言經 (Amoghapāśakalparāja). Bodhiruci 菩提流志 (tr). 30 rolls. Vol. 21 no. 1268. Dashi zhou fa jing 大使咒法經. Bodhiruci 菩提流志 (tr). 1 roll. Vol. 21 no. 1308. Qi yao rangzai jue 七 攘災決. *Kaṅkaṭa 金俱吒. 2 rolls. Vol. 21 no. 1311. Fantian huoluo jiuyao 梵天火羅九 . Yixing 一行 (compiler). 1 roll. Vol. 29 no. 1558. Apidamo jushe lun 阿 達磨俱舍 論 (Abhidharmakośabhāṣya). Ārya-Vasubandhu 尊者世親 (author), Xuanzang 玄奘 (tr). 30 rolls. Vol. 29 no. 1559. Apidamo jushe shi lun 阿 達磨俱舍 釋論 (Abhidharmakośabhāṣya). Vasubandhu 婆 藪盤豆 (author), Paramārtha 真諦 (tr). 22 rolls. Vol. 39 no. 1796. Da Piluzhena chengfo jing shu 大 盧遮那成佛經疏. Yixing 一行 (author). 20 rolls. Vol. 49 no. 2035. Fo zu tong ji 佛祖統紀. Zhipan 志磐. 54 rolls. Vol. 50 no. 2056. Da Tang gu dade zeng sikong dabian zhengguangzhi Bukong sanzang xingzhuang 大唐 故大德贈司空大辯正廣智不空三藏行狀. Xiaoqian 逍遷 (compiler). 1 roll. Vol. 50 no. 2057. Da Tang Qinglong-si sanchao gongfeng da dexing zhuang 大唐青龍寺三朝供奉大 德行狀. Anonymous. 1 roll. Vol. 50 no. 2081. Liangbu da faxiang chengshi zi fufa ji 兩部大法相承師資付法記. Haiyun 海雲. 2 rolls. Vol. 52 no. 2120. Dai Zong chao zeng si kong da bian zheng Guangzhi Sanzang heshang biao zhi ji 代 宗朝贈司空大辯正廣智三藏和上表制集. Yuanzhao 圓照 (compiler). 6 rolls. Vol. 52 no. 2134. Tang-Fan wenzi 唐梵文字 (*Cīnabrahmalekhākṣara [sic]). Quanzhen 全真 (compiler). Vol. 55 no. 2154. Kaiyuan shijiao lu 開元釋教錄. Zhisheng 智昇. 20 rolls.

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Vol. 59 no. 2216. Dainichikyōsho ennō shō 大日經疏 演奧鈔. Gōhō 杲寶. 60 rolls. Genzu maṇḍala 現 曼荼羅: cf. Snodgrass (1988 I: Vol. 74 no. 2373. Enmitsu nikyō myōmoku 圓密二教 183ff.), Mammitzsch (1991: 174ff.). 名目. Keichin 惠鎮. 1 roll. Kōbō Daishi zenshū 弘法大師全集 by Kūkai: ed. Vol. 75 no. 2391. Kongōkai daihō tsuiju ki 金剛界大 Kōbōdaishi Kūkai zenshū henshū i’in kai 法對受記. Annen 安然 (writer). 8 rolls. (1986). Vol. 75 no. 2400. Kongō sanmitsu shō 金剛三密抄. Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經 → T Kakuchō 覺超. 5 rolls. (Chinese titles). Vol. 84 no. 2702. Shittan zō 悉曇藏. Annen 安然. Vol. 55 no. 2161. Go shōrai mokuroku 御請來目錄. 8 rolls. Kūkai 空海. 1 roll. Vol. 84 no. 2706. Shittan yōketsu 悉曇要訣. Meikaku Vol. 55 no. 2165. Nipponkoku Shōwa gonen nittō 明覺. 4 rolls. guhō mokuroku 日本國承和五年入唐求法目 Taizō Zuzō 胎藏圖像: ed. Hatta (cf. id. 2002b). 錄. Ennin 圓仁. 1 roll. Nittō guhō junrei kōki 入唐求法巡礼行記 by Ennin: Vol. 55 no. 2174A. Shin shosha shōrai hōmontō tr. Adachi (cf. id. [1970]–1985) mokuroku 新書寫請來法門等目錄. Shūei 宗 . [Himitsu Mandarakyō] Fuhōden 祕密漫荼羅教付 1 roll. 法傳 by Kūkai. 2 rolls: ed. Kōbō Daishi zenshū Vol. 55 no. 2176. Sho ajari shingon mikkyōbu rui 諸 V.1 阿 梨真言密教部類總錄. Annen 安然 (com- Ritasōgyara gobu shinkan 哩多僧蘖五部心觀 by Śubhākarasiṁha: ed. Hatta (cf. id. 2002a). piler). 2 rolls. Japanese titles

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Chapter 3

Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia h u daya k a n da h jaya

R

esearch into the Sanskrit-Old Javanese Buddhist compendium Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan (hereafter SHK) has been going on for over a century.1 Despite the long history of scholarship, however, a number of pertinent questions still linger. We are yet to identify the date when this scripture was compiled. We also are far from being able to map its relationship with other Buddhist scriptures or to appreciate its role in the development of Buddhism, particularly in Indonesia. Suggested answers to these questions from previous studies are generally conflicting. The status quo is thus intriguing and urges this study to re-examine this unique Buddhist scripture. This time I will necessarily limit the report to providing preliminary answers to some key questions, namely the origins of the SHK, its date and relationship with other textual as well as visual materials, and its role in the development of Esoteric Buddhism in premodern Indonesia. My report is briefly sketched as follows. Having summarized the inherited issues on dating and origin of the SHK, I will retrace the prototypical

1. I have been fortunate to encounter Andrea Acri, a kalyāṇamitra, whose attention to detail and keen eyes have given me the opportunity not only to learn further even from my own paper but also to save me from embarrassing mistakes. I am grateful and deeply indebted to his efforts, which made this paper more legible. In the interim, Prof. Lokesh Chandra sent me his valuable review and encouragement; later, Hiram Woodward too provided me with many useful suggestions. Comments also came from Jeffrey Roger Sundberg. While I gratefully accepted the help of those scholars and revised this paper accordingly, because of all types of constraints, I was forced to leave many of their worthy suggestions for the future. So, despite all the feedback, errors may still remain and they are no doubt mine.

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sources from which the text drew its teachings. My reassessment individuates some Sanskrit texts that were previously not deemed to have any relationship with Buddhist developments in the premodern Indonesian Archipelago. Those newly identified sources help confirm the SHK’s claim that its own teachings came from Dignāga—perhaps through oral tradition. I will then argue that bits and pieces of data from the Indonesian Archipelago contribute in recovering a still poorly documented stage in the development of ‘hidden’ Buddhist teachings that, as sug­­­­gested by Chinese Buddhist sources, might have already started as early as the 3rd century ad. Having explored a range of possibilities with regard to the transmission of Esoteric Buddhist teachings to Sumatra and Java, I argue that the advanced ‘hidden’ teachings recorded in the SHK may be dated to the 8th century at the latest. Because of the long period of incubation occurring between the earliest attestations of those teachings and their appearance in the SHK, I venture to suggest that this text has preserved components of esoteric doctrines attributable to a Buddhist lineage that died out, and has thereby been forgotten ever since. Finally, in an attempt to recapture this lost tradition, I will compare some doctrinal features found in the SHK and other Esoteric Buddhist texts to features of the architectural plan and iconographic programme of Borobudur—the most magnificent, yet perhaps least understood, Buddhist monument in the world.

the discovery of the shk Jacob Kats was the scholar who made the SHK widely available through a critical edition accom-

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panied by a Dutch translation published in 1910.2 And yet, except for his reference to the information given by Jan Brandes in his monograph on Candi Jago, published in 1904, we find no further clarification about the discovery of the SHK. Brandes himself only mentioned Puri Cakranegara (on the island of Lombok, Indonesia) being the site from where in the year 1894 he obtained the lontar palm-leaf manuscript preserving this important Javanese Buddhist scripture, along with the famous Old Javanese historical records, the Deśavarṇana (formerly referred to as Nāgarakṛtāgama).3 While this was likely the earliest information about the manuscript of the SHK coming from the discoverer himself, the description was disappointingly brief. The obscurity is even more intriguing when we read the statement by Hendrik Juynboll in 1908 that the year of the discovery was 1895, which is not in agreement with Brandes’ description. Kats (1910: 4) did read and quote Brandes’ as well as Juynboll’s accounts,4 and yet surprisingly he did not try to explain how exactly the SHK was discovered, or—if he ever noticed the discrepancy—to reconcile the accounts by Brandes and Juynboll. It is from Juynboll that we get a sense for the first time that the discovery was related to an assault on Puri Cakranegara. Many decades later Theodore Pigeaud gave a more informative account of this event in his study on the Deśavarṇana, which was published in 1960. Even though he did not provide us with a source, Pigeaud (1960: xi) described the circumstances of the discovery of the manuscript of the Deśavarṇana as follows: 2.  See Kats 1910. A brief mention of the SHK was made earlier by H. Juynboll (1908: 56–61). 3.  See Brandes 1904: 94: ‘Not less remarkable is what one finds in a very important and remarkable Old Javanese Buddhist text, which was also found in 1894 in the puri at Tjakranagara, and which is titled Sang hyang Kamahāyānan (or Kamahāyānikan), i.e. ‘‘The Sacred Mahāyānistic Cathechism’’’ (my translation from original Dutch). 4.  Juynboll 1908: 56: ‘Among the descriptions of the collection of Old Javanese manuscripts that were looted in 1895 during the raid of the puri of Cakranegara, and that were incorporated in the Legatum Warnerianum in Leiden after the death of Dr. Brandes, I found a few manuscripts, from which better appears, what the ancient Javanese have known of Mahāyānism’ (my translation from the original Dutch).

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The old-Javanese manuscript written on palmleaves, now known as Codex Orientalis 5023 of the Legatum Warnerianum, Leyden University Library, was discovered on the 18th of November 1894 by Dr J. Brandes in the palace-compound of the Balinese King of Cakra Nĕgara, on the island of Lombok, one of the Lesser Sunda Islands to the east of Bali. By order of the Governor-General of the Netherlands East Indies, Dr Brandes, then Government linguist, was attached to the staff of the military forces engaged in the Lombok war, with a view to preserve from destruction all objects of cultural interest to be found, especially manuscripts.

Pigeaud’s description gives us a much better sense of what was going on and, more importantly, a clue as to where we would be able to acquire clearer understanding out of this vagueness. A detailed description of the Lombok War, and probably its earliest published account, was written by Wouter Cool, a Captain of Dutch Military Engineers. Cool (1896: 455–67) gives a full account of what happened when the soldiers of the Netherlands East Indies attacked Puri Cakranegara.5 His reconstruction leads us to believe that 19 November 1894 was most likely the day Brandes collected all manuscripts from Puri Cakranegara, and only later—probably in 1895—did he discover the SHK among them.6 The collection was essentially looted out of the Lombok War and in a way might suggest a reason for the terseness of the scholarly accounts.

inherited issues on dating and source Kats identified three versions of the SHK, which he named A, B, and C.7 He also clarified that the SHK consists of two sections. The first section is titled 5.  An English translation of this passage may be found in Cool 1897: 346–54. The summary by Wahyu Ernawati (2007: 195–96) in her study on the Lombok Treasure provides us with succinct, yet most relevant and revealing, information on the assault on Puri Cakranegara. 6.  This was probably the reason for Juynboll (1908: 56) to put the discovery in 1895 when he mentioned it in his ‘Nieuwe bijdrage tot de kennis van het Mahâyânisme of Java’. 7.  A recension of version C, which is in fact a Śaiva or ‘Śaivized’ text, was later published in full by Lokesh Chandra (1997: 7–101).

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānan Mantranaya (SHKM), meaning ‘The Mantra System of Mahāyāna’ (Kats 1910: 30). The second, as witnessed by version B, is called Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānan Advayasādhana (SHKAS), meaning ‘The Mahāyāna Method for Attaining Non-Duality’ (Kats 1910: 70). Version A, consisting of 65 palm leaves, is more complete than version B, which consists of only 27 palm leaves (Kats 1910: 5–6); both versions A and B contain Buddhist teachings, while C contains mostly Śaiva teachings. For this reason, both A and B are called the Bauddha version and C the Śaiva version. Out of the three, only version C can be dated with a terminus ante quem, because the colophon mentions the name Mpu Siṇḍok of the Īśāna dynasty (r. 929–47 ad). However, this did not stop further studies to determine the actual date of version C, as well as of the two other versions. Being a Śaiva recension derived from the Bauddha version, version C must have necessarily been written after the latter, which must have been compiled in an earlier period (Gonda 1976: 193); furthermore, its Sanskrit verses must have existed before the Old Javanese commentaries were written (de Jong 1974: 477). Roelof Goris suggested on philological grounds that the oldest Old Javanese commentary is that of version A, which possibly was already in existence in the Śailendra period: It is therefore not impossible that the older parts already existed during the Śailendra period [ca. 750–850 ad] as a commentary to a Sanskrit work, and that our A version with its younger parts might be dated before the time of Siṇḍok, whilst the C version, being a revision, might be considered Eastern Javanese and recorded during or after the time of Siṇḍok. (Goris 1926: 156, English trans. Stutterheim 1956: 35)

Kurt Wulff (1935: 9–10), while summarizing scholarly opinions on the date of the SHK which varied from before the first half of the 10th century to the 15th century, did not seem convinced by Goris’ suggestion. In due course, Jan Willem de Jong (1974: 477) aptly clarified that we need to address two dating problems at the same time: the date of the original composition of the Sanskrit verses and the date of their arrival in Java. Establishing himself mainly on the general history of the Adhyardhaśa-

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tikāprajñāpāramitāsūtra (APP)8 because its verses had already been found in the SHKM, de Jong (1974: 482), pace Goris, concluded that the Old Javanese text could not be older than the 10th century. This controversy clearly indicates that the dating issues surrounding the three versions of the SHK have not been resolved. Scholars began investigating the contents of the SHK soon after Kats published the text. Even more attention has been paid to the SHKM.9 Some attempted to improve the readings, while others tried to identify the sources of the Sanskrit verses.10 As we received it, the SHKM contains 42 Sanskrit verses provided with Old Javanese paraphrases. Early investigations discerned that some of these Sanskrit verses are found in Buddhist scriptures from the Indian Subcontinent, such as the Mahāvairocanābhisaṁbodhitantra (MVA), the APP, etc. Lokesh Chandra (1995: 297) has collected and tabulated the correspondences of all the 42 verses. Here his table is reproduced with minor modification for convenience (Table 3.1). Given the relationship existing between the SHKM and a variety of prototypical Esoteric Buddhist Sanskrit texts, it has been suggested that verses of the SHKM reflect some kind of Tantric initiation ritual (Lokesh Chandra 1995: 298–99). The MVA and APP alone supply a total of 32 verses to the SHKM. This is probably the reason why de Jong (1974: 467–68) seemed to consider these two scriptures the primary sources from which the SHKM obtained its teachings. And yet, if such was the case, there has been no adequate explanation as to why the compiler extracted those 32 particular verses and not the rest. In addition, since verses 23 to 25 have thus far never been identified, the MVA and APP cannot be the only primary sources for the SHK. The issue becomes even more problematic when we notice that the other text in the manuscript, the SHKAS—which, unlike the SHKM, has not received much scholarly attention—establishes, 8.  For extensive studies on this scripture, see Astley-Kristensen 1991; for a critical edition and brief summary, see Tomabechi 2009. 9.  De Jong (1974) provides us with a useful survey of efforts up to the early 1970s. Lokesh Chandra (1995: 295– 300) supplies additional notes up to the early 1990s. 10.  See de Jong 1974: 465–68; Lokesh Chandra 1995: 295–300.

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Table 3.1: Correlation of the SHKM with other texts SHKM

MVA (T 848)

1 2 3 4 5a 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Total

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

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STTS (T 865)

JS (T 866)

SV

KS

KSP

SDP

APP (T 244)

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉

◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉

◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

15

11

◉

15

2

14

8

4

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ 17

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia along with the SHKM, one whole set of practical teachings, so the two texts and their Buddhist textual sources should not be considered separately. Thus far, only two authors have attempted to unravel the mysteries of the SHK. Magetsari (1997)11 tried to exploit Goris’ suggestion on the early dating of the SHK in order to explain the doctrinal status quo that inspired the construction of Borobudur, but unfortunately employed an anachronistic classification of Buddhist currents into Pāramitānaya and Mantranaya.12 Lokesh Chandra (1995: 295–434) supported de Jong’s conclusion that the SHKM originated from the MVA and the APP, and continued to maintain that the SHKAS reflects both the Caryātantras and Yogatantras, with the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha being the primary source, but unfortunately did not elaborate on how the unique daśapāramitā and the catur- or the pañca-devī of the SHKAS came to exist.

newly identified sources Tadeusz Skorupski (2002: 3–4) recently published an English translation of the Kriyāsaṅgraha (KS), which a number of scholars consider to have been composed in the period between the 8th to the 13th century. This translation, which represents a version of the entire KS integrating all parts that earlier came under the title KS and Kriyāsaṅgrahapañjikā (Skorupski 2002: 1), opens up an option to merge the columns of the KS and Kriyāsaṅgrahapañjikā (KSP)13 in Table 1. By collapsing these two columns, there would be 17 verses of the KS matching with those in the SHKM. As such, the KS comes closer to the APP in terms of the number of 11.  This is a revision of the author’s dissertation (1982). 12.  The term pāramitānaya itself is well known from the Prajñāpāramitānayaśatapañcaśatikā, where it is not clearly put in contrast to mantranaya. The contrast or the pairing comes later. Magetsari (1982: 44), while insisting that the ‘Pāla synthesis’ described by Edward Conze was the key for analysing the SHK, anachronistically uses the later classificatory terminology of Pāramitānaya and Mantranaya—probably introduced by Nāropā or Advayavajra in the 10th or 11th century (Joshi 1977: 274)—and therefore detracts credibility from his own theory. In addition, the SHK itself never uses the term pāramitānaya. 13.  Skorupski (2002: 5) explains how these two titles got mixed up.

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verses contributed to the SHKM. In terms of range, however, the KS covers verses which originally were considered only parts of either the MVA or the APP. Upon further examination, instead of just 17 verses, I have found a total of 26 Sanskrit verses of the SHKM to be recorded in the KS. Those 26 verses are located among the first 32 verses of the SHKM (see Table 3.2). This indicates that the KS as a single text contains the most verses among the texts that have hitherto been matched against the SHKM. However, despite the significant number of correspondences, we may still question the source(s) for the last 10 verses of the SHKM, which are not attested in the KS. Guhyasamājamaṇḍala rituals A rare Sanskrit ritual text titled the Śrīguhya­ samājamaṇḍalavidhi (hereafter, the GSMV) has been recently discovered (Bahulkar 2010). According to the colophon of the manuscript through which it has survived for us, the text was composed by Dīpaṅkarabhadra. In the history of Vikramaśīla monastery, Dīpaṅkarabhadra was known as the second preceptor after Buddhajñāna. He was thus commonly considered to belong to the Jñānapāda or the Jñāna tradition of the Guhyasamāja. The two masters were active in this monastery towards the end of the 8th century (Gray 2005: 62). The text that we receive today carries only 436 verses, fewer than the total 450 mentioned in the last verse (ślokaiḥ śataiḥ sārddhacatuṣṭayaiḥ). More importantly, how­ ever, the GSMV contains 27 verses corresponding with those in the SHKM. These verses are spread rather evenly from the first up to the last verse. In other words, the GSMV includes most of the verses of the SHKM that were previously thought to be found either in two separate scriptures, as in the case of the MVA and the APP, or in a single text, i.e. the KS. There is another rare Sanskrit text which has also been recently discovered, titled the Śrīguhya­ samājamaṇḍalopāyikāviṁśatividhi (hereafter, the GSVV). The GSVV is ascribed to Nāgabodhi (a.k.a. Nāgabuddhi; see Appendix A), who is considered a member of the Āryapāda, or the Ārya tradition of the Guhyasamāja.14 According to this tradition, 14.  A series of articles related to Nāgabodhi’s GSVV has been published by Tanaka (2000, 2002, 2003a, 2003b, 2004).

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Table 3.2: Correlation of the SHKM with newly identified texts SHKM 1 2 3 4 5ab 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Total

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KS ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

GSMV ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

GSVV ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

◉

◉

◉ ◉ ◉

Guhyendutilaka

Gurupañcaśikhā

Ratnamegha

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉

◉

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

26

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ 27

◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉

◉ ◉ ◉ 24

1

6

1

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia Nāgabodhi received the teachings from Nāgārjuna and eventually imparted them to Vajrabodhi (a.k.a. Vajrabuddhi: see Appendix A). However, in contrast to the GSMV, the GSVV shares 24 verses with the SHKM, 7 of which are not found in the GSMV. At this point, we cannot determine if the difference reflects some sort of distinguishing feature between the two traditions, or is merely due to corruption in textual transmission. Interestingly, the title of the GSVV contains the phrase guhyasamājamaṇḍalopāyikā, and the colophon of the GSMV claims the same. If these two texts actually came from the same source, then we would have obtained the prototype containing all the 34 verses that the GSVV and GSMV together share with the SHKM, from the beginning to the end. Ratnameghasūtra Having identified the last 2 of those 10 verses, we are left with 8 unidentified ones. A question arises, again, as to how we are to explain these 8 verses of the SHKM that are neither in the GSMV nor in the GSVV. If we inspect Table 3.2, we see that 6 verses out of those 8 unaccounted ones correspond in one way or another with verses in one or more texts. Verses 7, 8, and 9 are recorded in the MVA; verse 15 in the KS; verse 19 in the SV; and verse 20 in the KS, MVA, JS, or SV. Thus, these 6 verses are recorded in the collection of texts that is somehow related to other SHKM verses. The last 2 of those 8, i.e verses 25 and 37, are problematic in terms of concept, origin, and date. Verse 25 of the SHKM in Sanskrit runs as follows: ye cānye samayadviṣṭāḥ samayabhraṣṭāḥ ye janāḥ / māraṇīyāḥ prayatnena buddhaśāsanapālane //

The śloka is followed by an Old Javanese commentary that in a way also translates the Sanskrit verse:15 15.  Ka: Hana vvaṅ dveṣa ri saṅ hyaṅ samaya, melik ri saṅ hyaṅ Mantrānaya; samayabhraṣṭāḥ ye janāḥ, hana vvaṅ samayabhraṣṭāḥ vih sampun kṛtasamaya, manaḍah upadeśa. Apa kunaṅ vivartika ta ya vәkasan? Kinasampayannya ta saṅ guru, inumpәtnya sira. Māraṇīyāḥ prayatnena, ikaṅ vvaṅ maṅkana nāṅ samayadviṣṭa mvaṅ sa-

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The meaning is: There are persons who [feel] aversion towards the Saṅ Hyaṅ Samaya, who dislike the Saṅ Hyaṅ Mantrānaya; samayabhraṣṭāḥ ye janāḥ, there are persons who are samayabhraṣṭaḥ, i.e. have already completed initiation (kṛtasamaya) and received teachings (upadeśa). Why have they turned away [from them] at last? They treat scornfully the reverend master, speak ill of him. Māraṇīyāḥ prayatnena, such persons that are samayadviṣṭa and samayabhraṣṭa, they should be ordered to be killed, they should not be an object of concern for the Lord; buddhaśāsanapālane, in order to protect the teachings of the Lord Buddha, and the respect of the Saṅ Hyaṅ Samaya, thus is the fruit of the killing of the samaya-haters, etc.

I haven’t been able to find this verse anywhere thus far. However, according to Śantideva, the concept of permitting the killing of a person who is going to commit a deadly sin (ānantarya) is recorded in the Ratnameghasūtra: ‘In the holy Ratnamegha the slaying of a man who was intending to commit a deadly sin, is allowed’ (Bendall and Rouse 1922: 164).16 Gurupañcaśikhā The Sanskrit verse 37 of the SHKM and the translation of its Old Javanese commentary are as follows: nityaṁ svasamayācāryyaṁ praṇair api nijair bhajet / mayabhraṣṭa kinonaken ikā pejahana, tan patagvakna de bhaṭāra, buddhaśāsanapālane, yatanyan karakṣā śāsana bhaṭāra hyaṅ buddha, lāvan katvaṅana saṅ hyaṅ samaya, maṅkana phalanyan patyana ikaṅ samayavidveṣādi (Kats 1910: 25). 16.  Śikṣāsamuccaya: sphuṭaṁ cāryaratnameghe ānantaryacikīrṣupuruṣamāraṇānujñānāt (Bendall 1897: 168). On the other hand, the Sarvadurgatipariśodhanasūtra seems to suggest a different concept: ‘There are living beings who are desirous of all kinds of wealth, food, drink and pleasure, who are (potentially) Lords. They hate the pledge and are unable to aspire to the previously mentioned practice and the rest. But even they on entering here will gain complete fulfillment of all their hopes in accordance with their wish’ (santi bhagavantaḥ sattvāḥ sarvārthabhojanakāmaguṇagṛddhāḥ samayadviṣṭāḥ puraścaraṇādīṣṭāśaktās teṣām apy atra yathākāmakaraṇīyā praviṣṭānāṁ sarvāśāparipūrtir bhaviṣyati; see Skorupski 1983: 100, 284).

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adeyaiḥ putradārair vā kim punar vibhavaiś calaiḥ // The meaning is: Even life is to be given to the reverend Guru, its goal is to serve him; adeyaiḥ putradārair vā, let alone children and wife, all are to be offered to Bharāla Guru; dāsabhūtā, having become his servants, their task is to serve him, kim punar vibhavaiś calaiḥ, do not speak about possessions, like gold, jewels, garments, silver, all these are to be offered to the reverend Guru.17

When we do a further search, verse 37—and in fact the whole range of verses from 33 to 38—of the SHKM actually corresponds to verses 10, 15, 19, 21, 17, and 18 of the Gurupañcaśikhā (‘The Fifty Verses of Guru Devotion’). Guhyendutilaka Verse 23 of the SHKM provides one of the most fundamental arguments defending Tantric practices:18 nāsti kiñcid akartabyaṁ prajñopāyena cetasā / nirviśaṅkaḥ sadā bhūtvā prabhuṅkṣva kāmapañcakam // The meaning is: There is no work that you will not be able to do, even though the work appears as [the most] difficult in the triple world, which cannot be done by those in heavens, those among mankind, those in the underworlds. 17.  Ka: Hurip tuvi tinarimakan ri ḍaṅ guru, gumavaya kabyāpāran ira donya, adeyaiḥ putradārair vā, āstām ikaṅ anak rabi inarpaṇāken ikā kabeh i bharāla guru, dāsabhūtā, hulunan ira umyāpāra ri sira pakenanya, kim punar vibhavaiś calaiḥ, hayva ta vinuvus ikaṅ dṛvya ṅaranya, kady āṅgan iṅ mās maṇik dodot pirak pinūjākennikā kabeh i ḍaṅ guru (Kats 1910: 29). 18.  Ka: Nora gavai anuṅ tan ta kavenaṅa gavayan, ta yadyapin tribhuvanaduṣkara lviran iṅ karmma, tan kavәnaṅa ginave de saṅ hana riṅ svargga, manuṣya, pātāla, ikān maṅkana atiduṣkara nikaṅ karmma kavәnaṅ i taya ginave denta; prajñopāyena cetasā, ndan ikaṅ prajñā atah āmbәkakәnanta, nirviśaṅkaḥ sadā bhūtvā, lāvan tan kahilaṅana atah kita irika nissandehacitta sadākāla; prabhuṅkṣva kāmapañcakam, paribhogan taṅ pañcakāmaguṇa denta, salvir niṅ kaviṣayan hayva pinilihan paribhogan kabeh denta, āpan don ni kadi kita sādhaka, ndan hayvatah tan pakāmbәk ika nissaṅśaya (Kats 1910: 24).

Kandahjaya.indd 74

While such very difficult work can be done [by you], there is none done by you; prajñopāyena cetasā, that is the prajñā, which you should strive to attain with the mind, nirviśaṅkaḥ sadā bhūtvā, moreover you should not lose the state of a mind free from apprehension at all times; prabhuṅkṣva kāmapañcakam, objects of the five senses (pañcakāmaguṇa) should be enjoyed by you—do not give your preference to that which pleases [the senses only], [but] all [the objects] should be enjoyed by you, because [that is] the goal of a practitioner like you; do not cease to strive to attain that [state], without doubt.

Verse 23 is found in the GSVV, and also in the Tattvasiddhi.19 The latter text was ascribed to Śāntarakṣita, who is believed to be a renowned abbot of the Nālandā monastery in the 8th century. Śāntarakṣita, however, stated that the verse in question—like some adjacent verses in his Tattvasiddhi—as shown below, was quoted from the Guhyendutilaka. According to the Tibetan record The Blue Annals, there are three Tantric traditions out of eighteen that have had a significant influence on Tibetan Buddhism from the start. Those three are named after their foundational texts, i.e. the Guhyasamāja (‘The Secret Assembly’), the Guhyendutilaka (‘The Secret Moon Drop’), and the Buddhasamayoga (‘The Yoga of Buddha Equality’):20 Here the first three divisions of the eighteen great divisions of the Tantras of the Mantra school of the Old Believers (rNying ma pa): the Śrīguhyasamāja (dpal gsang ba ‘dus pa), the Candraguhyatilaka or Guhyendutilaka (zla gsang thig le), and the Buddhasamayoga (sangs rgyas mnyam sbyor). They are also called the Tantras 19.  As verse 2cd and 3ab. S.B. Dasgupta (1974: 179–98) devoted a whole chapter to the arguments produced by the Tantric Buddhists in defence of their yoga, in which he uses the Tattvasiddhi as one of his two main sources. On pages 186–87, Dasgupta gives the Sanskrit verse corresponding to verse 23 of the SHKM and its translation: ‘There is nothing not to be done by a man whose mind is equipped with Prajña and Upāya; he should always enjoy the five objects of desire most unhesitatingly’. 20.  Louis de la Vallée Poussin (1898: 146) lists five treatises: Guhyasamāja, Mayajāla [sic], Buddhasamayoga, Candraguhyatilaka, and Mañjuśrīkrodha.

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia of Mind, Speech, and Body (thugs gsung sku’i rgyud [kāyavākcittatantra]). Their preaching lasted long. (Roerich 1979: 102)

Among those just mentioned, the Guhyendutilaka is the most obscure, as we know next to nothing about the tradition it stems from. However, an interesting series of quotations may be found in the Tattvasiddhi (see Dvivedi and Śāsanī 1989: 35–36): aśeṣayogatantreṣu guhyendutilakādiṣu / nāsti kiñcid akartavyaṁ prajñopāyena cetasā // 2 nirviśaṅkaḥ sadā bhūtvā bhoktavyaṁ pañcakāmakam / oṣadhīcūrṇasaṁyogād uragasyeva bandhanam //3 kāmino nityaraktasya gītavādyaratasyaṁ ca / kāmasaukhyair atṛptasya sidhyate nātra saṁśayaḥ // 4 bodhicittaṁ dṛḍhaṁ yasya niḥsaṅgā ca matir bhavet / vicikitsā naiva karttavyā tasyedaṁ sidhyate dhruvam // 5 sunirūpya susañcintya praveśaṁ kārayed budhaḥ / anyathāgnipraveśo ’sya kalāṁ nārhati ṣoḍaśīm // 6 tattvaṁ vijñāya tattvena yo ’dhimuktiṁ niṣevate / sa sidhyaty anyathā tasya mahānirayapātanam // 7

As seen above, the half-verses 2cd–3ab of the Tattvasiddhi are practically the same as verse 23 of the SHK. Verse 5 of the Tattvasiddhi is also found in the Śikṣāsamuccaya, but here Śantideva says that this verse came from the Trisamayarāja (Bendall and Rouse 1922: 137).21 According to Stephen Hodge (2003: 9), the Trisamayarāja was one of the sources of the MVA. Indrabhūti quoted some verses of the Guhyendutilaka also in his Jñanasiddhi: sarvāṅgabhāvanātītaṁ kalpanākalpavarjitaṁ / mātrābindusamātītam 21.  Without having a complete text of both, we cannot determine if these texts are the same.

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etan maṇḍalam uttamam // sa caiva sarvabhāvena sarvadā samavasthitaḥ / anādinidhanaḥ sattvo vajrasattvaḥ paraṁ sukhaṁ // bodhicitthād ṛte nānyat saukhyam asti tridhātuke / bodhicittam ayaṁ saukhyaṁ sarvasaukhyaprasarpaṇam //

The first verse of the Jñānasiddhi cited above is found in the Pradīpodyotana, a commentary to the Guhyasamājatantra composed by Candrakīrti.22 But, there, Candrakīrti says that it came from the Bhagavatavyākhyātantra, perhaps a synonymous title for the Guhyendutilaka.23 Then, the Pradīpodyotana quoted another verse from the Guhyendutilaka, as follows:24 Utsṛjya ratnojvalapadmamadhyataḥ saṅguhya mūrtiḥ sakalaṁ jinānām / abhiṣiñcya mūrdhnāmalaratnavarṣair viśuddhavajrodbhavajñānatoyaiḥ //

A verse from the Guhyendutilaka is also retained in an early Tantric text, the Caryāmelāpakapradīpa by Āryadeva. Christian Wedemeyer (1999: 243) has translated the verse from the Guhyendutilaka in the Caryāmelāpakapradīpa as follows:25 Again, the aggregates and so on are each subdivided into five making one hundred; in the Secret Moon Drop it says: Families are taught to be hundred-fold; Briefly summarized, five. Correlated with body, speech and mind, they are also three-fold.

22.  See Chakravarti 1984: 45. A reference to this source is also mentioned by Campbell (2009: 72). 23.  Again, as in the case of the Trisamayarāja, without having a complete text of both, we cannot determine if these texts are the same, or if one is quoting the other. 24.  See Chakravarti 1984: 79. It is to be noted, though, that the title given here is Guhyendratilaka, which may be a typo. 25.  This comes from lines 12 to 15 in Chapter 2 of the Caryāmelāpakapradīpa: ete skandhadhātvādayaḥ punar ekaikaśaḥ pañcapañcākārair bhidyamānāḥ śatadhā bhavanti / kulāḥ śatavidhāḥ proktāḥ saṅkṣepeṇa tu pañcadhā / punas trividhatāṁ yānti kāyavākcittayogata iti / śrīguhyendutilake vacanāt //.

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia Yogāvatāra, Yogāvatāropadeśa, and Yogabhāvanāmārga

other Sanskrit recension attributed to Nāgārjuna, and this one was found under the title Prajñopāyaviniścayasiddhi by Anaṅgavajra.

The SHK presents us with a set of comprehensive The Yogāvatāra was commented by Dharmenpractical teachings that goes through four steps. dra, who was allegedly contemporaneous with They are: one, Mahā-mārga (the great path); two, Dignāga. Dharmendra’s commentary is titled the Parama-bodhi-mārga or Parama-mārga (the Yogāvatāropadeśa (Chatterji 1929: 249–59). There supreme path); three, Mahā-guhya (the great secret); are two significant messages in this commentary. and four, Parama-guhya (the supreme secret). The First, according to Dharmendra: first step, the Mahā-mārga, is described in the SHKM. The remaining three steps are explained in Any devoted and noble young man or woman the SHKAS. When we examine the paths explained whose character has been purified by śīlapāramitā and who thinks in his or her mind that all beings in the SHKAS, we find many unusual concepts are to be liberated in accordance with the preor terms that immediately attract our attention, scribed manner and begins to act upon the teachsuch as yoga and bhāvanā, and the daśapāramitā ings of yoga by means of the supreme knowledge, (ten perfections). Upon further examination, these obtains the said knowledge in this very life, being prove to be entry points that enable us to distincfired with enthusiasm, strong through discipline, tively identify potential sources. and ever irresistible. (Chatterji 1929: 258) A significant clue comes from a paragraph in the SHKAS telling us that the method for attainIn emphasizing the importance of meditation ing non-duality (advaya) was received from Ḍaṅ practice, Dharmendra quoted Tathāgata’s statement Ācāryya Śrī Dignāgapāda: in the Gambhīraśīla: ‘Those who have recourse to books only, foregoing the prescribed process, fail to Mahā-guhya is the method to be united with obtain success and to them come various miseries the Bharāla, viz.: yoga and bhāvanā. There are and mortifications’ (Chatterji 1929: 258). Secondly, four yogas, according to the instructions left Dharmendra points out that ‘now any subject that is by Ḍang Ācāryya Śrī Dignāgapāda, viz.: the appropriate, profound and not easily comprehensimūla-yoga, the madhya-yoga, the vasāna-yoga, ble should be learnt orally from the teacher’ (ibid.). and the anta-yoga.26 Dharmendra’s messages underline the imThis Dignāgapāda might be identified with portance of yoga, teacher, and oral teaching.27 the famous Buddhist philosopher Dignāga, who Dharmendra’s comment was well perpetuated by flourished in India circa ad 480–540. According Buddhajñāna (or Buddhaśrījñāna) when the latter to Hajime Nakamura (1980: 281): stressed the concept of mukhāgama—‘the tradition from the mouth’, or ‘from the mouth of one’s The teaching of yoga as was set forth in own guru’ (Wayman 1977: 95). All these elements Dignāga’s Yogāvatāra was elaborated on in resonate with what we find in the SHK, when the Ye-śes-zla-ba (Jñānacandra?)’s Yogācāryābhāvanātātparyārthanirdeśa and Ye-śes-sñiṅ-po SHKAS from the beginning emphasizes the prac(Jñānagarbha?)’s Yogabhāvanāmārga, and fitice of yoga, and when the SHKM cites six verses nally culminates in Kamalaśīla’s Bhāvanāyoverbatim from the Gurupañcaśikhā. gāvatāra. This information leads us to a small Jñānagarbha (ca. ad 700–760) was considered Sanskrit meditation text, titled the Yogāvatāra. the teacher of Śāntarakṣita (Hodge 1988). He comThe colophon says that the composer was posed the Yogabhāvanāmārga, which in many ways Dignāga. However, according to Vidhushekhais similar to the Yogāvatāra or Yogāvatāropadeśa, ra Bhattacharya (1928: 775–78), there was anputting emphasis on practical teachings. In his English translation of this text, Stephen Hodge 26.  Mahāguhya: ikaṅ kāraṇa ri kapaṅguhan bharāla, (1988: 34) indicates that the sources of some paslvirnya: yoga lāvan bhāvanā. Pāt lvir niṅ yoga, pavәkas ḍaṅ ācāryya śrī Dignāgapāda, lvirnya; mūla-yoga, madhya-yoga, vasāna-yoga, anta-yoga (Kats 1910: 45).

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27.  See also De La Vallée Poussin 1932: 416–17.

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia sages in Jñānagarbha’s writing were likely the Mahāvairocanatantra and the Guhyasamājatantra. Then, in explaining his meditation technique based on the formula śamatha-vipaśyanā, Jñānagarbha urged the mind of the meditator to abide in the brahmavihāra while wishing to guide beings. Yet because perceptions of things contrary to that may be encountered, a yogin should act without relinquishing his mindfulness that all dharmas are like space, therefore his mind will not become involved in the unwholesome. While abiding with the wish to guide beings, you should transmute all perturbations with the purity of the three elements [the purity of the agent, the action, and the recipient of the action], even regarding the wholesome. In that way, you should always abide in kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity [= the four brahmavihāras]. Yet without entirely fulfilling the accumulations of merit and awareness, you will not be able to acquire in this way the means to bring about the Enlightenment of infinite numbers of beings or the state of supreme Enlightenment. The two accumulations are summarized by the Six Perfections [i.e., merit (puṇya) is fulfilled by the first five Perfections, and awareness (jñāna) by the Perfection of Insight], and therefore, beginning with the Perfection of Generosity, you should be mindful that you should continually fulfil all aspects of it, and likewise for each of the six. (Hodge 1988: 36–37)

The combination of the six pāramitās and the brahmavihāras as stated in the Yogabhāvanāmārga turns out to be similar to the SHKAS’s unique definition of the daśa pāramitā (ten perfections) as a collection of the six perfections (ṣaṭ pāramitā) and the four perfections or immeasurables (catur pāramitā), corresponding to the four brahmavihāras (metrī, karuṇā, muditā, upekṣā): see Kats 1910: 42, 45. This tenfold arrangement is different from the ten perfections generally known in either Mahāyāna or Theravāda today. Bhāvanākrama Śāntarakṣita is known to have attempted to integrate Madhyamaka teachings from Nāgārjuna with teachings from the Yogācāra tradition introduced

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by Asaṅga. He too was considered one among the pioneers who brought Buddhism to Tibet. A famous disciple of Śāntarakṣita was Kamalaśīla. The debate between Kamalaśīla and the Chinese monk Heshang at Bsam yas Monastery in Tibet in the years 792 to 794 is well known. The debate was performed before King Khri Srong Lde Bstan, who reigned from 742 to 798. At the end of the debate, the king declared Kamalaśīla the winner. Kamalaśīla composed a text titled the Bhā­ vanākrama in three parts. If we meticulously examine the first part of the Bhāvanākrama, we find that some passages are related to the SHKAS (Kats 1910: 31, 42, 45, 64). The corresponding passages are tabulated in Table 3 (next page). The comparison shows that some basic concepts in these passages of the SHKAS correspond with those in the first part of the Bhāvanākrama. Both of them call the disciple an ādikarmika (adhikarmika in SHKAS, arguably a corruption) who follows the Mahāyāna path. Three practices to achieve the highest attainment are karuṇā, bodhicitta, pratipatti, which in the SHKAS are spelled out as asih (Old Javanese for ‘compassion’), puṇya, and bhakti. Another interesting correspondence is the concept related to the compound pāramitāpramāṇa, or the six pāramitās and the four apramāṇas, as stated in the Bhāvanākrama. This unique configuration parallels the definition of the daśapāramitā (‘ten perfections’) described in the SHKAS. The first part of the Bhāvanākrama was written by Kamalaśīla while he was still in India (Taniguchi 1992: 307). As displayed in Table 3.3, Kamalaśīla stated that the sources for the concept pāramitāpramāṇa were the Akṣayamatisūtra and the Ratnameghasūtra.28 Even though the concepts 28.  The Pāli Dhammapada 368 (also Aṅguttara Nikāya I.10) describes a meditation based on kindness (metta). The Mahāvastu describes the system mentioned in Dhammapada 368 together with compassion, joy, and equanimity. The Yogasūtra of Patañjali also explains the brahmavihāra, as follows: maitrīkaruṇāmuditopekṣāṇāṁ sukhaduḥkhapuṇyāpuṇya-viṣayāṇāṁ bhāvanātaś cittaprasādanam (1.33). The Akṣayamatisūtra likely refers to T 310(45), or the Akṣayamatiparipṛcchāsūtra, which together with the Kāśyapaparivartasūtra is considered the earliest core, already in existence by the time of Nāgārjuna, out of which the Mahāratnakūṭa was compiled (see Nakamura 1980: 210).

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Table 3.3: Correlation between the Advayasādhana and the Bhāvanākrama Advayasādhana Bhāvanākrama Nihan saṅ hyaṅ Kamahāyānasūtrāṇāṁ ya mahāyānikan ya ādikarmikasya caryānivarahakna mami ri kitaṅ yamaḥ / tathāgatakula jinaputra, tamadhikṛtya saṁkṣepād adhikarmika saṅ hyaṅ bhāvanākramas tv Mahāyāna, ya ta varaabhidhīyate // hakna mami ri kita. Nihan tattva niṅ triacireṇa sarvajñatāṁ parārtha kavruhana, prāptukāmaiḥ saṁkṣepatriparārtha ṅaranya: taḥ karuṇā, bodhicittam, asih, puṇya, bhakti. pratipattiś ceti triṣu sthāneṣu prayatitavyam / Papupul ni caturpāramitā sā ca pratipattir bodhisat-­ mvaṅ ṣaṭpāramitā, ­­tvasya pāramitāpramāṇa­ lvirnya: dāna, śīla, kṣānti, saṅgrahavastvādibhedena vīryya, dhyāna, prajñā, akṣayamatiratnameghā­dimetrī, karuṇā, muditā, sūtreṣu vistareṇa varṇitā / upekṣā. Ya tikā sinaṅguh daśapāramitā. Karuṇā ṅaranya: sā ca karuṇā sarvapīḍiparaduḥkhaviyogec ca, tasattvaduḥkhāvagamec ākāra niṅ jñāna saṅ satva chākārāsti / lokatrayasya viśeṣa ahyun hilaṅa ni sarvasattvānāṁ trividuḥka niṅ sarbva satva. dhaduḥkhatayā yathāyoTiga lvir niṅ duḥka niṅ gam atyantaduḥkhitatvāt para, pagavayan saṅ satva tadartha sarvasattveṣu sā viśeṣa karuṇā, lvirnya: bhāvanīyā / duḥka-duḥkatā, saṅskāraduḥkatā, pariṇāma­ duḥkatā. Nāhan lvirnyan tigaṅ duhka.

outlined in the SHK are not exactly the same as those found in the Bhāvanākrama, the resonances shown above suggest that both Kamalaśīla and the compiler of the SHK might have obtained their doctrines from a common Sanskrit source. This reminds us of the concept behind verse 25 of the SHKM, which according to Śāntideva was recorded in the Ratnameghasūtra. Since Śāntideva apparently inserted many quotations from the Ratnameghasūtra in his works, we can infer that this scripture was considered authoritative in that period. Unfortunately, no Sanskrit manuscripts of the Ratnameghasūtra have been found so far, and the text is known to us only through a Chinese translation dating back to as early as ad 503 (T 658).

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If the Sanskrit text employed by Śāntideva was the same as the one translated into Chinese, its doctrines must have been known in Indian Buddhist milieux from at least the 5th century. Piṇḍīkrama Verse 2 of the SHKM and the translation of its commentary are as follows: atītā ye hi sambuddhāḥ tathā caivāpy anāgatāḥ / pratyutpannāś ca ye nāthāḥ tiṣṭhanti ca jagaddhitāḥ // The meaning is: The Lord Buddhas, those of the past, those who attained perfect enlightenment in the former times, like the Lord Vipaśyī, Viśvabhū, Krakucchanda, Kanakamuni, and Kāśyapa, all of them are the Buddhas of the past. Tathā caivāpy anāgatāḥ: The Lord Buddhas of the future are those approaching to attain the perfect enlightenment, like those [in the series] starting with Lord Āryya Maitreya and ending with Samantaibhadra [sic], all of them are the Buddhas of the future. Pratyutpannāś ca ye nāthāḥ: In addition, the Lord Śrī Śākyamuni is the Buddha of the present: he is [worshipped as] your divine Buddha now [in our era], his teachings are what your heart is to follow. Tiṣṭhanti ca jagaddhitāḥ, they continuously strive after the happines of all beings, thinking about the release of all beings from rebirth, while making plans against the extinction by the total annihilation in this world.29

29.  Ka: Bhaṭāra hyaṅ buddha saṅ atīta, saṅ maṅ­ abhisaṁbuddha ṅūni riṅ āsitkāla, kady aṅgān bhaṭāra Vipaśyī, Viśvabhū, Krakucchanda, Kanakamuni, Kāśyapa, atīta buddha ṅaranira kabeh. Tathā caivāpy anāgatāḥ, kunaṅ bhaṭāra buddha saṅ anāgata, saṅ abhimukha maṅabhisaṁbuddha, kady aṅgān: bhaṭāra āryya Maitreyādi, Samantabhadra paryyanta, anāgatabuddha ṅaranira kabeh. Pratyutpannāś ca ye nāthāḥ, tumamvah bhaṭāra śrī Śākyamuni, vartamānabuddha ṅaranira, sira ta pinakahyaṅ buddhanta maṅke, śāsananira ikeṅ tinūt atinta. Tiṣṭhanti ca jagaddhitāḥ, tamolah ta sira kum[i] ṅkiṅ hitasuka niṅ sarbvasatva, umaṅәn-aṅәna kalәpasan ikaṅ rāt kabeh saka riṅ saṅsāra, duvәg kumirakira paḍәma niṅ mahāpralaya rike bhuvana (Kats 1910: 17).

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia The three categories of Buddhas of the past, present, and future are well known. But there are two aspects in the description here that attract our attention. First, in the SHKM, the name of one of the past Buddhas, i.e. Śikhin, is missing. It may be that the commentator or the scribe made a mistake, and yet this feature reminds us of the list inscribed on the stūpa of Bharhut. This stūpa is regarded as one of the oldest great Buddhist stūpas built around the 2nd century before the Common Era. Alexander Cunningham suspected that the railing inscribing the name Śikhin was missing.30 To date, however, there has been no confirmation, and therefore there is still a chance that the name was not there. If that was the case, it may suggest that there once existed a list containing no Śikhin and such was probably the one transmitted to the SHK. Secondly, the name Samantabhadra (in the SHKM: Samantaibhadra) is added behind Maitreya, both being the future Buddhas. Nicholaas J. Krom (1920 I: 609) was the first scholar to notice this peculiar list. In an earlier article about the Bodhisattvas at Mendut, Krom (1918: 419–37) argued that they belonged to the Eight Great Bodhisattvas of Esoteric Buddhism,31 and conformed to the list found in the Piṇḍīkrama of the Pañcakrama (ed. De la Vallée Poussin 1896: 3), as follows: paṭṭikāyāṁ nyaset pūrve maitreyaṁ kṣitigarbhakam / vajrapāṇiṁ khagarbhaṁ ca nyased dakṣiṇato vratī // 30 lokeśaṁ mañjughoṣaṁ ca paścimāyāṁ nyaset punaḥ / sarvāvaraṇaviṣkambhiṁ samantabhadrañ cottare // 31

These verses show that those Eight Great Bodhisattvas are assigned to the four cardinal directions, as follows (Table 3.4):

30.  See Cunningham 1879: 45–46 and Barua 1979 I: 50, II: 2. 31.  Following Krom’s identification, Bautze-Picron (1997) and Shōji Itō (1985) expanded and discussed the appearance of these Bodhisattvas as depicted in the Javanese Buddhist temples of Mendut, Borobudur, and Plaosan; among these temples, Mendut is considered the oldest and is usually dated to the 8th century.

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Table 3.4: Assignment of Eight Great Bodhisattvas to the four cardinal points Cardinal Points

Eight Great Bodhisattvas

East

Maitreya Kṣitigarbha

South

Vajrapāṇi Khagarbha

West

Lokeśvara Mañjughoṣa

North

Sarvanivaraṇaviṣkambhin Samantabhadra

Krom overlooked the arrangement in this assignment, but if we observe this list carefully, it is clear that the series of Eight Great Bodhisattvas begins with Maitreya and ends with Samantabhadra, thus corresponding exactly to the Old Javanese commentary to verse 2 of the SHKM. That commentary was possibly composed while bearing in mind this list, which begins with Maitreya and ends with Samantabhadra. Furthermore, in addition to the group of Eight Great Bodhisattvas, the Piṇḍīkrama provides yet another significant grouping: a group of six Bodhisattvas in relation to the six sense organs.32 The Piṇḍīkrama describes the grouping of six as follows (ed. De la Vallée Poussin 1896: 5): thlīṁkāraṁ cakṣuṣi nyasya kṣitigarbhaṁ vibhāvayet / oṁkāraṁ karṇayornyasya vajra-pāṇiṁ vibhāvayet // 61 oṁkāraṁ vinyased ghrāṇe khagarbhaṁ tu vibhāvayet / oṁkāraṁ rasane dhyātvā lokeśaṁ ca vikalpayet // 62 hūṁkāraṁ manasi dhyātvā mañjughoṣaṁ prabhāvayet / oṁkāraṁ sarvakāye ca dhyātvā viṣkambhiṇaṁ smaret // 63

32.  This text is an early source in which the two groupings appear together. Wayman (1977: 239, 247–48) shows the configuration for the group of six and a list of Eight Great Bodhisattvas.

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A similar systematization is recorded in the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa,33 the Sādhanamālā,34 and verse 16 of the Guhyasamājanidānakārikā.35 Verse 34 of the GSMV records the association as follows: kṣitigarbhādikāñ chaṭkāṁś cakṣurādisvabhāvajān / kṣiṁ jrīṁ khaṁ gaṁ ṣkam ity ebhiḥ saṁ bījāc ca yathākramam // 34

Table 3.6: Two dhāraṇīs associated with the Group of Six T 410.685b21: The Shilun jing (the Daśacakrasūtra)

This verse associates Kṣitigarbha with the eye-organ and with the syllable kṣiṁ. The correlations among the group of six Bodhisattvas, the six sense organs, and the seed syllables are tabulated in Table 3.5. Table 3.5: Correlation among the Group of Six’ Bodhisattva

Sense Organs (kāyaviveka/indriya)

Seeds (bīja)

Kṣitigarbha

Eye (cakṣuḥ)

kṣiṁ

Vajrapaṇi

Ear (śrotraṁ)

jaṁ

Khagarbha

Nose (nāsā or ghrāṇa)

khaṁ

Lokeśvara (Avalokiteśvara)

Tongue (jihvā)

gaṁ

Sarvanivaraṇaviṣkambhin

Body-surface (kāya or tvak)

ṣkaṁ

Mañjuśrī

Mind (manas)

saṁ

The Shilun jing (十輪經 or Daśacakrasūtra) is the earliest scripture related to Kṣitigarbha known in China. This scripture contains a dhāraṇī, which is shown on the left column of Table 6 below. A parallel dhāraṇī associated with Bodhisattva Ava­­lokiteśvara is shown on the right column. The 33.  Ed. Vaidya (1964: 315): kṣitigarbhasya mahāmudrā / mantraṁ cātra bhavati sarvaṁkarmikam—kṣiṁ / 34.  Ed. Bhattacharya (1925 I: 20): paścāt ṣaḍaṅganyāsaṁ kuryāt / bhagavato cakṣuṣorubhayoś candramaṇḍalaṁ tadupari kṣiṁkāraṁ śuklavarṇaṁ, śrotrayoś candramaṇḍalopari jaṁkāraṁ nīlavarṇaṁ, nāsāpuṭayoś candramaṇḍalopari khaṁkāraṁ pītavarṇaṁ, jihvāyāṁ candramaṇḍalopari gaṁkāraṁ raktavarṇaṁ, lalāṭacandramaṇḍalopari skaṁkāraṁ, śyāmavarṇaṁ, stanadvaye candramaṇḍalopari saṁkāraṁ śuklavarṇam iti ṣaḍaṅganyāsaṁ. 35.  Wayman (1977: 10, 238–39): sarvatathāgatakāyaś caturmudrayā mudritaḥ / cakṣurādyātmanā tatra kṣitigarbhādijinaurasāḥ.

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right-column dhāraṇī (T 1336.616c1) comes from the collection of 185 dhāraṇīs compiled during the Liang dynasty and translated by an unknown translator between 502 and 557.

T 1336.616c1 觀世音說滅一 切罪過得一切所願陀羅尼 (M10047) namo ratnatrayāya / tad yathā /

kṣobha kṣobha / saṁkṣobha / ākaśakṣobha / bhaskarakṣobha / akrakṣobha / barakṣobha / bajrakṣobha / ālokakṣobha / dharmakṣobha / bācamakṣobha / patyanirharakṣobha / byāvalokaśamakṣobha / upaśamakṣobha / nāyanakṣobha / prajñānasammuccaraṇaksobha / kṣanakṣobha / biśariyanakṣobha / śāstrabākṣobha /

cumbu cumbu / akṣa cumbu / bakara cumbu / java cumbu / bira cumbu / bakti cumbu / aloka cumbu / tama cumbu / satata cumbu / satinihara cumbu / avalokyata cumbu / upaśama cumbu / nanaya cumbu / baracasamuktirana cumbu / bidhiśriya cumbu / śastaba cumbu /

biatrasotamahile / yamayame / cakrase / cakramāśrīḥ / mili / kalpapravarte / śrīprabhe / paracarabandhani / ratne / baracacacaca / hilimili / āgaccha / duḥkhe / duḥkheruttaretare / hilimili / mocantakaṁ / kule mile / aṁkucittabi / are gire / pare gire / kutaśambari / ṭiṁke tiṁke / ṭiṅkule / hulu hulu hulu / kulutosmire / miritre miritre / paṣā / tahara / hare / huru huru /

payaṭamahritami / śami cani rasi / cani ramasri / caridhirihe kisvarabatati / hetra biprabatati /

rūpa pacabiśodhane svāhā / mahābhūtakaluṣatbiśodhane svāhā / kaluṣarabhabhiśodhane

rūpapasparśa / biśodhani svāhā / mahābuddha karuśa biśodhani svāhā / karuśa ucchabiśodhani

ratati caṭa caṭa / hili mili / ekadaki / takṣuru dahri dhari / mili manṭadanṭa / kuri miri akṣacita bimuri / prakrikuṭa cambari taṅki taṅkuri / śuru śuru krutu / mili mili cibhanṭa / daha rahri śuru śuru

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia svāhā / kaluṣa ojabiśodhane svāhā / sarvāśaparipūraṇi svāhā / sarvasaṁsyasaṁpadani svāhā / sarvatathāgata arthe svāhā / sarvabodhisattva arthe svāhā //

svāhā / sarva avaranibiśodhani svāhā / karuravabiśodhani svāhā / sarva aśaparapūrani svāhā / sarvatiṣṭha adhiṣṭhi svāhā / sarvabodhisattva adhiṣṭhiti namaḥ stuti svāhā //

tad yathā / munimūle / munigarbhe / munihṛdaya / muniruhabicale / munihṛde / munigame / śuklapakṣe / pālaśapakṣe / nīlapakṣe / saurisakṛte / toraṇakṛcale / pātākakṛte / kukunamile / apakṣasāre / anohakilpi munipathāpi svāhā //

The selected words for these dhāraṇīs provide us with another clue. The dhāraṇī from the Shilun jing uses kṣobha at the beginning, while the one for Avalokiteśvara uses cumbu. The Sanskrit word cumbu comes from the root cumb, meaning ‘to kiss’. We may surmise that this refers to the organ of themouth, or to the tongue. The kṣ in kṣobha does not seem to be arbitrary either, because this akṣara occurs in the Sanskrit words caksuḥ and kṣiṁ. Then, the word kṣobha is the opposite of akṣobha, meaning ‘unagitated, unmoved’, and the transformed word, akṣobhya, is known to be a Buddha name. The word kṣobha means ‘shaking, agitation, disturbance, tossing, trembling, and emotion’ (Monier-Williams 1899: 331). This word probably refers to the eye-organ. For this reason, these two dhāraṇīs are likely to have originated from a prototypical set that associated the six Bodhisattvas to the six sense organs, though unfortunately we have yet to find the remaining four dhāraṇīs. Nonetheless, from what we have obtained so far we may infer that they must be dhāraṇīs that circulated among those who practised the hidden early teachings of the Guhyasamāja tradition. Then, if the dating of the Chinese collection of the dhāraṇīs can serve as a guide, the Guhyasamāja tradition could have already been in existence in an embryonic form around the 5th or early 6th century.

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dating of the shk Some concepts culled from a series of texts belonging to Dignāga’s line of teachings, ranging from the Yogāvatāra to the Bhāvanākrama, clearly echo those retained in the SHK. These correspondences corroborate and support the SHK’s claim that its set of teachings was received from Ḍaṅ Ācāryya Śrī Dignāgapāda, who lived in India circa ad 480–540 (Buswell and Lopez 2013: 259). While this does not automatically date the SHK to the 6th century, it nonetheless helps us to draw a terminus post quem: The SHK must have been compiled some time after ad 540. The following discussion attempts to determine the upper limit of the range and, if possible, narrow the range of the compilation time. In order to do so, some gruelling controversies surrounding the rituals, texts, events, and authors behind the newly identified sources of the SHK need to be addressed. To elucidate intricate points I shall draw upon Buddhist data from, or closely related to, insular Southeast Asia, which have been hitherto overlooked. My comparative analysis will hopefully cast a fresh perspective on the way Buddhism was transmitted to insular Southeast Asia, and possibly suggest a new view on how the process took place.

hidden teachings from sumatra In many past studies on Buddhism in Indonesia, the source for the story of the early transmission of Yogācāra teachings to the Archipelago was the Tibetan account compiled by 16th- to 17th-century Tibetan historian Tāranātha. The record relates that Dharmapāla, a disciple of Dignāga, having taught at Nālandā for more than thirty years, spent the end of his life in Sumatra (D. Chattopadhyaya 1980: 212–14). These events probably occurred in the second half of the 6th century.36 However, the validity of this claim depends on Tāranātha’s reliability.37 In fact, 36.  Nakamura (1980: 276), following Chinese accounts, fixed Dharmapāla’s life in India between the years 530 and 561. On the other hand, Takakusu (1966: lvii–lviii) suggested that Dharmapāla was a contemporary of Bhartṛhari and that he must have died before 635. So, if he ever moved to Sumatra, the event likely happened after 561. 37.  One source for his compilation was his guru, Buddhagupta, who travelled to many places, including Java

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a different picture is given by Chinese accounts, jra, as I have mentioned earlier, was closely related which regard Dharmapāla as having died young in to the Yogāvatāra. India (Buswell and Lopez 2013: 250). Confirming Cœdès also made a point—thereby supporting either one of these accounts is difficult, especially the earlier attempt by Krom—to relate the SHK to when data from Sumatra itself are not readily avail- Borobudur. He suggested that the development in able, controversial, or stem from a later historical Java was under the influence of Śrīvijaya. Although period (e.g., from the 11th to the 13th century). Thus, none seem to have ever heeded his advice, in the the status of Buddhism in 7th-century Śrīvijaya light of the newly identified sources related to the has been far from clear, since even the location SHK, the direction Cœdès has shown is worthy of this kingdom has until recently been contested of consideration. In fact, it is now easy to demon(see Jordaan and Colless 2009; Zacharov 2012). strate that the Talang Tuo inscription contains The transmission of Buddhism to Java is not clear many concepts akin to the instructions recorded either. However, this state of uncertainty is bound in the SHKAS. As pointed out earlier, the SHKAS to change after a careful re-examination of data contains an exceptional concept of daśapāramitā from Sumatra and Java. (ten perfections) combining the six pāramitās and (1) Talang Tuo Inscription. The earliest dated the four apramāṇas, which also occurs in teachevidence of Esoteric Buddhism in the Archipelago ings leaning towards Tantric Buddhism. Besides comes from the Talang Tuo Old Malay inscrip- the term vajraśarīra, elements of daśapāramitā of tion of ad 684. The inscription, discovered near the SHKAS appear in the Talang Tuo inscription, Palembang in 1920, was written when Dapunta thereby setting the teachings in this inscription Hyaṅ Śrī Jayanāśa was the king of Śrīvijaya. Ph.S. apart from those commonly found in Mahāyāna van Ronkel published a transcription along with its doctrine. Thus, cultivating brahmavihāra (maitrī) English translation in 1923; in 1930, Georges Cœdès in combination with the ṣaṭpāramitā (tyāga [= took notice of the term vajraśarīra inscribed in dāna], kṣānti, vīryya, samāhitacinta [= dhyāna], this inscription. He first elaborated on its signifi- and prajñā) while establishing vodhicitta and cance by pointing it out as a synonym to vajrakāya, producing the vajraśarīra for the attainment of meaning ‘diamond body’. Cœdès connected it to anuttarābhisamyaksaṅvodhi as recorded in the an earlier study on the kāyavākcittavajrasādhana Talang Tuo inscription echo the unique pattern of of Anuttarayoga by Louis de la Vallée Poussin, who teachings set in the SHKAS. explained that one who could successfully gener(2) Yijing on Dhāraṇī Practitioners, and His Resate the diamond body would be able to identify idence in Śrīvijaya. The transmission of Yogācāra Tathāgata in his body.38 This explanation comes teachings to the Archipelago is documented by from the Pañcakrama, a commentary to the Gu- Yijing (ad 635–713). But because of scholastic conhyasamājatantra. Because of the date of the Talang troversies surrounding the development of Tantric Tuo inscription, Cœdès connected the teachings in Buddhism and especially the controversy about the the inscription to coeval Tantric developments in existence of Śrīvijaya in Sumatra, few have paid Bengal, where Anaṅgavajra—who was a contempo- attention to Yijing’s information on Esoteric Budrary of Dapunta Hyaṅ Śrī Jayanāśa—composed the dhism39 and for this very reason we have missed a Prajñopāyaviniścayasiddhi. This text of Anaṅgava- piece of substantial evidence linking up Buddhist data from Sumatra with those from Java, India, and China. and Sumatra in the 16th century (see Tucci 1931: 684, 696, Yijing tells us that his teacher, Śākyakīrti, was 698–701, and Ray 1936: 81–86). Ray (1936), in his Stellingen one among the five most respected Buddhist no. VII at the end of his dissertation, indicated that ‘the masters of the time, matching Dignāga in his logical Tibetan tradition regarding the introduction of Mahāyāna Buddhism and allied cults into Burma, as recorded by skills and possessing an unrivalled knowledge of Tāranātha and Buddhagupta as well as in the Pag Sam Jon Zang, is in the main in accordance with the evidence of archaeological research’. 38.  De la Vallée Poussin 1898: 146; Wayman 1977: 94.

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39.  Among the few were Seyfort Ruegg (1981: 104) and Hodge (2003: 9–11).

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia the (Yogācāra) teachings of Asaṅga, Nāgārjuna, and Saṅghabhadra (Li 2000: 154). From Yijing’s perspective, Śākyakīrti was a very significant figure,40 who mastered a broad range of Buddhist teachings. If we consider that Yijing’s sojourn in Śrīvijaya41 occurred in the period within which the Talang Tuo inscription was inscribed in Palembang, the teachings as reflected from the inscription were probably within the range of Śākyakīrti’s. Additional information from Yijing’s accounts on the practice and stories associated with dhāraṇīs may provide evidence that embryonic forms of Tantric Buddhism had already been practised for some time in India as well as in other regions (Hodge 2003: 10). The following are relevant excerpts from Yijing’s accounts. The first characterizes the monks Daolin, Shanxing, Shibian, Bi’an, and Zhi’an (Lahiri 1986: 18, 45, 63–68, 83): 40.  Yijing’s estimate was in the ballpark, as Śākyakīrti’s work, the Shouzhang-lun 手杖論 or the Hastadaṇḍaśāstra translated by Yijing in 711, has survived for us as part of the Chinese Buddhist canon (T 1657). 41.  The location where Yijing resided during his sojourn in Śrīvijaya is not known. Yet, the empirical verification of astronomical events—the shadow on the sundial during different seasons and times of the day—recorded by Yijing while residing in Śrīvijaya, and confirmed through a preliminary empirical observation carried out by an Indonesian team, suggests that Muara Jambi was in all likelihood the location where Yijing resided (I am indebted to the Indonesian team leaders who readily volunteered and helped with the successful measuring of the shadow of a stick placed vertically on the ground of Muara Takus and Muara Jambi in 2011: Hermanto [Riau], Pak Hidayat and Rudy Zhang [Jambi], Pak Sudhamek and Heru Suherman Lim [Jakarta]). Archaeological sites such as that of Muarojambi and the area surrounding the River Batanghari have produced quite a number of Buddhist artefacts, a fact suggesting that there must have been lots of activities related to Buddhism in the past. In the site of Muarojambi alone, covering an area of around 26 square kilometres (around 10 square miles), more than eighty Buddhist temples (candis, or manapos) of different sizes have been discovered, marked, or identified, and some of them have been restored. The site is the largest Buddhist complex in the southern hemisphere thus far known. Although the majority of the artefacts and vestiges date back to a much later period, namely between the 11th and 14th century, some of them have been dated—albeit with some degree of uncertainty—to between the 7th and 9th century (Budi Utomo 2011).

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[Daolin] with a mendicant stick, reached the South Sea in a foreign ship and from there set sail for India. On his way he passed through copper pillar and arrived at Langka. He crossed Holing and Luoguo to reach India. He received very warm and affectionate welcome from the kings of those countries he passed through. He spent a couple of years there and then he reached Tāmralipti in East India. He spent three years there in studying Sanskrit language. The pilgrim spent much of his time in studying carefully Dhāraṇī Piṭaka…. Then he proceeded to West India where he spent hardly a year at Lāṭa country. There he established an altar [maṇḍala?], got acquainted with spells (vidyā). Sometimes he tried to explain the teachings of that Śāstra…. [D]ao-lin desired to protect his mysterious Sūtra. Because this Dhāraṇī Piṭaka says, ‘one may ascend to heaven sitting on the dragon-drawn vehicle, one may order hundreds of gods as one’s slaves. One’s desired object may be achieved only by reciting the mystic gestures and formulae.’ While Yijing was at Nālandā, he regularly went to the altar [maṇḍala?] and wholeheartedly tried to study this Sūtra; he worked quite hard but could not attain full success. His primary aim was to propagate this idea among a vast multitude of heterodox people. So he wrote down only a general outline. The priest Shanxing…. As he grew, he studied the rites on Discipline and expressed his feelings to learn Vidyāmantra, spells. Mild and humble, frugal and simple by nature, he became the disciple of Yijing and followed him to Śrīvijaya but always remembered his own country. When he got ulcer, he took a small boat and returned to China at the age of a little over forty. Dharmācārya Shibian, Śrī Kaśa … thoroughly studied the Sanskrit language and Vidyāmantra. Bi’an, Dharmācārya Nirvāṇa, and Zhi’an, napārin. Both these monks were the Jñā­ natives of Turfan. They went to the capital city cherishing the idea of becoming monks. They were anxious to visit Mid-India and to witness with their own eyes the transforming influence (of the Doctrine) that had taken place there.

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Then, Bi’an and Zhi’an with the Chinese envoy Wang Xuanguo boarded the ship. On board they fell sick and died. Many copies of Buddhist Sūtras and Śāstras in Chinese translation, texts on Yoga belonging to them were left in the country of Śrīvijaya.

Yijing also vividly narrated stories on Nāgārjuna and Dignāga in relation to Tantric Buddhism, as follows (Lahiri 1986: 65–68): Generally, the meaning of Vidyā in Sanskrit is Vidyādhara Piṭaka. Vidyā has been translated as Mingzhou…. Thus, it is called Vidyādhara Piṭaka. The Sanskrit text, it is told, contained 100,000 ślokas. It might have been translated into Chinese three hundred juans, (chapter, fasciculi). Now (at the time of Yijing) most of those translations were lost, only a few were extant. After the Mahāparinirvāṇa of the Great Sacred One (Buddha), Arya Nāgārjuna that is Nāgārjuna Bodhisattva preserved the true spirit of the Piṭaka. One of his disciples, known as Nanda, was a brilliant scholar, and was very much proud of his knowledge; he paid special attention to this text. He spent twelve years in Western India, wholeheartedly studied the Vidyā or Spell and acquired great knowledge of the mystic mantras. Every mealtime he chanted the mantras and food would fall from the sky. No sooner did he recite the mantras and ask for food with magic bowl than he obtained it from the sky. He could get all the desired objects with this magic bowl in his hand. Supposing the mantras were not chanted the bowl would vanish in no time. Therefore, the great monk Nanda was afraid that his knowledge of the Vidyā would be of no use if it was not practised regularly. He collected 12,000 ślokas which later on were compiled into a separate school of thought. Each and every word of the printed text was carefully compared. Although the language and the words of the book were same, the meaning and applications were completely different. Until it was expounded orally no one could understand and realise the significance of the mantras. Later on, when the Śāstrācārya Dinnāga studied his works, he was astonished to find his

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lofty and noble ideas, profound knowledge and his extreme attachment to the subject. Touching the Sūtra affectionately, he said with a deep sigh—‘If he (Nanda) attains perfection in Hetu Vidyā could I be compared any longer with him in scholarship? Not only a wise man could comprehend the range of his knowledge but also a stupid one could understand his profound scholarship’. This Dhāraṇī Piṭaka was never very popular in China.

Yijing’s account suggests five important points: (1) Yijing likely picked up his stories from those being commonly narrated during his stay in India or Sumatra. (2) In regard to Nāgārjuna and Dignāga, the accounts must be prevailing stories from India, and these stories clearly put them in direct connection with Tantric practices. Yijing’s stories appear to be first-hand accounts, and look different in comparison to Kumārajīva’s account of Nāgārjuna’s association with Tantric teachings (Corless 1995: 525–31). Yijing’s stories also predate any Tibetan records. (3) Yijing said that the Vidyādhara Piṭaka was already translated and known in China, but to his understanding it was lost and was never popular; yet, from accounts of Shanxing and Shibian we may infer that Chinese monks seemed to know the practice while they were still in China (Lahiri 1986: 18, 83). (4) Yijing apparently was not successful in mastering Tantric teachings. (5) Yijing’s statements that Nanda collected 12,000 ślokas that were later compiled into a separate school of thought, that their meanings and applications were completely different, and that until they were expounded orally no one could understand the significance of the mantras, suggest that there was a different type of manuscript production intended for a special audience, perhaps for the purpose of transmitting hidden meaning.

tantric transmission to java Having explored some Buddhist data from Sumatra, however briefly, I take the opportunity to roughly sketch the range of possibilities with regard to dates and patterns of the transmission of Esoteric Buddhist teachings to the Archipelago, and to Java in particular. The evidence gathered thus far allows us to surmise that early hidden teachings, e.g. those

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia that were related to the Guhyasamāja tradition, were already redacted and thriving in India in the 5th to 6th century at the latest. From there, those hidden teachings spread to regions outside. The two Chinese dhāraṇīs associated with the Group of Six dated to the 6th century corroborate development in outlying regions. The Talang Tuo inscription dated to 684 may provide additional clues on such development. When we now ponder over Buddhist data from Java, we must first of all keep in mind that this island was not a blank sheet while Sumatra was bustling with Buddhist activities. Chinese records on Faxian and Guṇavarman suggest that Buddhism in Java began in the 5th century at the latest.42 Early on, J.G. de Casparis (1956: 70) ascribed the appearance of eleven gold plates engraved with the complete texts of the Pratītyasamutpādasūtra, the Vibhaṅga, and the Upadeśa to the missionary activity of Guṇavarman, who disembarked in Java from his seaborne journey in the beginning of the 5th century. The appearance of the gold plates described above supports the report given by Yijing that there was a Buddhist centre in Java, called Kaliṅga (Heling 訶陵), in the 7th century.43 According to his story, a Chinese monk, Huining 會寧 by name, a native of Chengdu in Sichuan, travelled by the sea route and reached Kaliṅga in Java in the year 665, and then lived there for three years with a well-reputed monk, Jñānabhadra (Lahiri 1986: 36–38). In the Chinese canon, the name Jñānabhadra indeed appears as the translator of the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra.44 42.  See Kandahjaya 2004: 42–44, where I discussed the state of Buddhism in Java in relation to these two monks. 43.  See Lahiri 1986: 36–38. The Balinese Aṣṭa-mahā-bhaya-kliṅ contains the toponym Kliṅ (Kәliṅ), which has been identified as Java by Goudriaan and Hooykaas (1970: 311). It has been debated whether the name Heling 訶陵 refers to Kaliṅga, also the location of this toponym. Damais (1964), van der Meulen (1977), and lately Mahdi (2008) are among those who have contributed to the discussions. While the discussions on Heling may have pointed to a number of geographical locations, including Kaliṅga in India and the Malay Peninsula, the Chinese accounts from the Tang dynasty record descriptions of Heling unmistakably referring to Java (Groeneveldt 1960: 12–15). 44.  T 377: Daban niepan jing hou fen 大般涅槃經後分 (2 juans).

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Huining ordered his disciple monk Yunqi 運 期 to go back to China to present the Chinese

translation of the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra. Yunqi returned to Kaliṅga and spent more than ten years there. He was well acquainted with the language of the people of Kunlun (the South Seas) and acquired some knowledge of Sanskrit. Later on, he retired to lay life and lived in Śrīvijaya up to the time of Yijing. A sudden change took place in him; he was greatly moved by the Law of the Buddha and again he travelled across the island preaching the religion in the city. He propagated the religion among non-believers. He breathed his last when he was forty (Lahiri 1986: 38–39). While we do not have further information about Yunqi, this account reveals a truly significant clue about insular communication and transmission. It shows that Java and Sumatra were not secluded islands, and that a Chinese monk could acquire and speak the local language and even preach. Recently, a large Buddhist complex has been unearthed at Batujaya, Karawang, in West Java (Djafar 2010). Archaeological activities, which started in 1984, have identified thirty Buddhist temples within an area of around 5 square kilometres (around 2 square miles). The temples have been dated to the 5th to 8th century. In this area, the excavation unearthed clay votive tablets and gold leaf inscriptions at the Blandongan site. Some scholars believe that those clay votive tablets display a depiction of the miracles of Śrāvastī (Manguin and Indradjaja 2011). The inscriptions were dated on palaeographic grounds to the 6th to 7th century. These inscriptions contain passages similar to those discovered in the Malay Peninsula, and interestingly enough to those in Sungai Tekarek, Batu Pahat (West Kalimantan), which were palaeographically dated to the 5th century.45 45.  The Kedah inscription, Cherok Tokun inscription, Mahānāvika Buddhagupta inscription in the Malay Peninsula, and inscriptions from Sungai Tekarek, Batu Pahat, West Kalimantan, include lines which are similar to inscriptions from Blandongan (see Chhabra 1935, Hergoualc’h 2002: 213–15). The Sungai Tekarek inscription runs as follows: ajñānāc=cīyate karma janmanāḥ karma kāraṇam / jñānān=na kriyate karmma karmmābhāvān=na jāyate (‘Through ignorance karma is accumulated. The cause of birth is karma. Through knowledge karma is not

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Vajrabodhi, Amoghavajra and Prājña Besides the early indications of Buddhist influence described above, more definitive information on initial Tantric activities comes from Chinese accounts of Vajrabodhi, Amoghavajra, and Prājña,46 as well as the Kalasan and the Kelurak inscriptions from Central Java. All of these are dated to the 8th century. The sea route transported two prominent Esoteric Buddhist masters in the 8th century.47 They were Vajrabodhi, who travelled extensively in the South Seas before going to China, and his disciple, Amoghavajra. These two, together with Śubhāka­ rasiṁha, who reached China overland,48 were later considered to be the three founders of the Chinese Esoteric Buddhist school.49 Because of Vajrabodhi’s and Amoghavajra’s vital roles in the development of Esoteric Buddhism in China and other countries, their biographies have been subjected to repeated studies and at the same time have spurred scholarly debates. One of the controversies is related to whether or not these two monks met in Java in 719, or whether Amoghavajra took the sea route on his first trip from his native land to China.50 I agree accumulated. Through absence of karma one is not [re-] born’; trans. Chhabra). 46.  I conveniently borrow the writing of the accounts of Vajrabodhi, Amoghavajra, and Prājña from my own dissertation (Kandahjaya 2004). 47.  I am referring to records of Vajrabodhi disembarking on Java around 719 on the way to China (Chou 1945: 321) and of Amoghavajra disembarking on Java on the way to Sri Lanka around 742 (ibid.: 290). 48.  Śubhākarasiṁha himself reached Xian in China in 716 via overland route (see Chou 1945: 263). He was famous for his translation of the Mahāvairocanasūtra (T 848). 49.  See Soothill and Hodous 1977: 333. This school is often referred to as the True Word or Mantra School or Zhenyanzong 真言宗 in Chinese or Shingonshū in Japanese. Another term is the True Word or Mantra Vehicle or Zhenyancheng 真言乘. From the latter, one may get a back-translation Mantrayāna. 50.  For this debate, see, for instance, Orzech 1998: 140 and Sundberg and Giebel 2011. Amoghavajra’s native land is also a subject of debate, because one source said his native country is Sri Lanka (Pachow 1958: 17–18), and Weerasin­ ghe (1995: 27) even considered Amoghavajra a Sri Lankan Brahmin who was once sent to China as the king’s envoy; Chou (1945: 321) opted for Samarkand.

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with Raffaello Orlando (1981: 10) that even though Chou Yi-liang tried his best, Amoghavajra’s origin is not yet sufficiently established. However, by the same token, until it can be convincingly proven otherwise, the possibility of Amoghavajra taking the sea route to China and therefore meeting Vajrabodhi on the way to China cannot be dismissed. Regardless of this dispute, in addition to a number of scriptures which Vajrabodhi himself carried to China, Amoghavajra greatly expanded the collection of esoteric texts in China after gathering more scriptures in Sri Lanka (and perhaps also India) from 741 to 746. From his translations, we have inherited many Esoteric Buddhist texts of primary importance, such as portions of the Vajraśekharasūtra, which is often considered to be a collection of sutras that includes, for example, the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgrahasūtra.51 Considering Vajrabodhi a disciple of Nāgabodhi, the author of the GSVV, and Amoghavajra the successor of Vajrabodhi as well as a translator of many esoteric texts—which are nota bene all related to the identified sources of the SHK discussed previously—we now have a study by Sundberg and Giebel (2011) to reconsider their relation with Java beyond just a casual disembarkment. This relation is significant, as a Javanese monk named Bianhong became a disciple of Huiguo, the successor of Amoghavajra. Thus, Vajrabodhi’s meeting with Amoghavajra in Java in 719, and Amoghavajra’s possible disembarkation in Java in 742 on his way to Sri Lanka, might have provided a spur for further developments in Javanese Esoteric Buddhism. As a result, we could raise the lower limit for the range of the compilation time of the SHK to the year 719. Furthermore, when Amoghavajra was ap51.  T 865 was translated by Amoghavajra, T 866 by Vajrabodhi. On the relation between the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha and the Vajraśekhara, see Todaro 1985: 36–39. Amoghavajra also retranslated some sūtras, such as the Ghanavyūhasūtra (T 682) and the Renwangjing 經 (T 246). The complete title is Ren wang hu guo ban ruo bo luo mi duo jing 仁王護國般若波羅密多經. C.D. Orzech (1998) has already translated this text, the English title of which is The Scripture for Humane Kings. These two sutras were especially worth noting as Emperor Daizong wrote prefaces to them (Chou 1945: 296), which indicates both the intimate relationship between Amoghavajra and the emperor and the degree to which Buddhism had received royal patronage.

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia proaching his final days, one of the texts he greatly praised and talked about frequently was the Bhadracarī.52 Buddhabhadra had already translated this text (T 296), and afterwards Prājña translated it again for the third time. But, differing from the previous two translations in which the Bhadracarī appeared as a discrete text, the third translation by Prājña incorporates it—as its last chapter—in the 40-fascicle Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra (T 293), the text for which Prājña was especially famous. Prājña himself was probably the last notable Indian monk who used the sea route and whose final destination was China. Before arriving in Canton in 780, he travelled extensively in the South Seas (Pachow 1958: 19). His presence in the South Seas might be the source for the depiction of Prājña’s Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra at Borobudur, even though there was also a chance that Bianhong took a copy of that text back to Java from China (Kandahjaya 2009). Kalasan inscription The Kalasan inscription contains an opening passage (maṅgalācaraṇa) paying homage to Tārā (tārādevī), as follows (Sarkar 1971 I: 35): Namo bhagavatyai āryātārāyai // yā tārayaty amitaduḥkhabhavādbhimagnaṁ lokaṁ vilokya vidhivattrividhair upayaiḥ / sā vaḥ surendranaralokavibhūtisāraṁ tārā diśatvabhimataṁ jagadekatārā //

Two significant corollaries result from this passage. First, the maṅgalācaraṇa of the Kalasan inscription may relate the worship of Tārā to the teachings of Dignāga, because the Yogāvatāra opens with a homage to Tārā as well (namas tārāyai). Secondly, this inscription consecrated the construction of a temple for Tārā (tārābhavana) in the year ad 782. The date draws our utmost attention, as Stephen Beyer (1973: 6) considered it the oldest epigraphic evidence for the worship of Tārā. Furthermore, in addition to the characterization of Tārā being a goddess (tārādevī), the first adoration statement in this inscription bears the epithet Bhagavatī Āryātārā (‘Blessed Noble Tārā’), which is also found in the extended title of the Tantric manual 52.  See Chou 1945: 299. The text itself is T 297.

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Tārāmūlakalpa, and in the text itself.53 Thus, this inscription is by far the earliest evidence showing the appearance of Tantric Buddhism in Java. The Tārā cult may have been partially preserved in Bali, since her famous mantra for protection from the eight fears, the Aṣṭa-mahā-bhaya-kliṅ, is declared to have originated in Kliṅ (Kaliṅga, or Java) and is still being chanted in the Balinese living tradition.54 Kelurak inscription The Kelurak inscription, dated ad 782, consecrates an image of Mañjuśrī installed by Kumāraghoṣa, a guru from Gauḍīdvīpa (modern Bengal or Bangladesh). Its maṅgalācaraṇa is as follows (Bosch 1928: 18; Sarkar 1971 I: 42, 44): namo ratnatrayāya jayalokeśvarasugatapadākṣara jayabhadreśvarasugatapadākṣara / jayaviśveśvarasugatapadākṣara jaya - śvarasugatapadākṣara // Homage to the Triple Jewels. The victorious Lokeśvara, the imperishable Sugata; the victorious Bhadreśvara, the imperishable Sugata. The victorius Viśveśvara, the imperishable Sugata; the victorius - - śvara, the imperishable Sugata.

Attempts have not been lacking to identify this Mañjuśrī by resorting to this maṅgalācaraṇa. Yet, the last one in the list of Lokeśvara, Bhadreśvara, Viśveśvara, and - -śvara is missing two syllables and therefore hinders scholars from identifying the list right away. At the time of his reading, F.D.K. Bosch 53.  See Landesman 2008: 44–59 and Shaw 2006: 315. Marcelle Lalou (1936: 327–49) shows that these two texts are correlated. It is worth noting that the colophon of the manuscript preserving the Tārāmūlakalpa attributes this text to Atīśa, who according to Tibetan sources introduced (or, more likely, reinvigorated) the cult of Tārā in Tibet from Suvarṇadvīpa, which has been identified with Sumatra (see Schoterman, this volume). 54.  See Goudrian and Hooykaas 1971: 309–12. This mantra identifies the deity being the essence of all (sarvasattva). In the Kalasan inscription, Tārā carries the essence of spiritual power of heaven and human realms (surendranaralokavibhūtisāra).

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proposed Ratneśvara as the most likely reconstruction.55 There is ample reason to adopt Bosch’s suggestion, as Mañjuśrī is in fact often associated with the Tathāgatas. A relevant iconographic form for this is Mañjuśrī in the form of Arapacana. This form includes Vairocana, Ratnasaṁbhava, Amitā­ bha, and Amoghasiddhi.56 These four, as suggested by Bosch, may be related to Bhadreśvara (Samantabhadra), Lokeśvara (Padmapāṇi), Viśveśvara (Viśvapāṇi), and thus Ratneśvara (Ratnapāṇi). Verse 8 mentions a nīlotpala, suggesting that he holds a ‘blue lotus’ (blue water-lily)—one of the three principal symbols of Mañjuśrī (Sarkar 1971 I: 48). It is therefore likely that this Mañjuśrī belongs to the family of Akṣobhya,57 and thus may be identified as Vajrapāṇi, Mañjuvajra, or Vajreśvara. This form of Arapacana became more explicit later and was known to the Javanese.58 Moreover, the SHKAS corroborates this association when it says that the five Tathāgatas create the five Īśvaras.59 Later, King Kṛtanagara (1268–92) of the Siṅhasāri dynasty was consecrated as a Jina, Jñānabajreśvara, thus incorporating the name Vajreśvara. When he died, King Kṛtanagara was enshrined as Śiva-Buddha at Candi Jawi, where Akṣobhya was placed at the pinnacle of this tower temple. We obtain the identification of Mañjuśrī being Vajrapāṇi, or vice versa, from the Guhyasamājatantra. Verses 72 to 75 in Chapter 17 of this text identify 55.  See Bosch 1928: 44–45. This reconstruction is supported by Sarkar (1971 I: 47), but rejected by Lokesh Chandra (1995: 218). 56.  Bhattacharyya (1968: 120–21) describes Mañjuśrī in the form of Arapacana, while Foucher (1900: 40–41) describes Mañjuśrī depicted together with Vairocana, Ratnasaṁbhava, Amitābha, and Amoghasiddhi. 57.  See Bhattacharyya 1968: 102–23 and Foucher 1900: 40–41. None of the Tathāgatas belonging to the family of Amitābha holds a lotus (Bhattacharyya 1968: 49). 58.  Archaeologists discovered at least one copy of his image in Candi Jago in East Java. Unfortunately, we do not know exactly where this statue is now. See Kinney, Klokke, and Kieven (2004: 117): ‘An important statue of Manjushri dated 1343 was taken from Candi Jago to the Berlin Museum in 1861 and disappeared at the end of World War II. [Endnote: This sculpture along with other objects from Berlin museums is rumored to be in storage at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg]’. 59.  SHKAS, folio 54a: …Pañcatathāgata maṅdadyakәn pañceśvara…

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Vajrapāṇi as the supreme lord of all Tathāgatas (sarvatathāgatādhipati), Mahāvajradhara, as well as Mañjunātha, another name for Mañjuśrī, Mañjuvāk, or Mañjughoṣa.60 These verses also show the relationship between Vajradhara and the four goddesses (devī) of Locanā, Māmakī, Pāṇḍaravāsinī, and Tārā. In verse 51 of this chapter, the relationship is described via the five elements (dhātu), as follows: prthivī locanākhyātā abdhātur māmakī smṛtā / pāndarakhyā bhavet tejo vāyus tārā prakīrtitā / khavajradhātusamayaḥ saiva vajradharaḥ smṛtaḥ // 51 ity āha bhagavān sarvatathāgatabhuvaneśvaro mahāvajrasattvaḥ /

These correspondences are recorded in the GSMV as well as the GSVV. Verses 36 and 37 of the GSMV are as follows:61 60.  Matsunaga (1978: 110), basing himself on other witnesses and commentaries, attempts to emend the phrase mañjunātha, found in the Bhattacharyya or Bagchi editions, into adya nātha. While this is of course a possibility, it is important to remember that even if it is just nātha, the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṅgīti informs us that nātha is also an epithet of Mañjuśrī. See also Wayman 1977: 299–301. 61.  Pak Hidayat in Jambi brought my attention to a stone inscription discovered at Candi Bungsu in Muara Takus (Sumatra), which bears a viśvavajra motif and nine bījas in Nāgarī script (see Fig. 11.8 in Miksic, this volume, p. 270). Although this inscription has already been described by J.W. Yzerman (1891: 59) and recently by Griffiths (2014: 236), it has not been properly read or understood in terms of its meaning and role for Indonesian Buddhism. My reading of this inscription shows that the syllable in the centre is hūm ̐ (usually for Akṣobhya). Then, clockwise, starting from the eastern direction (in the middle on the far right ̐ (for Vairocana; side of the stone), the syllables are: kham contrast Griffiths’ ṇam ̐), on the southern direction below is om ̐ (for Ratnasambhava), on the western side is am ̐ (for Amitābha; contrast Griffiths’ tram ̐), and on the north at the top is hrīm ̐ (for Amoghasiddhi). On the four corners, beginning from the southeast, the syllable is tam ̐ (Tārā), on the southwest it is lam ̐ (Locanā), on the northwest it is mam ̐ (Māmakī), and on the northeast it is pam ̐ (Pāṇḍaravāsinī). All these syllables are enumerated in verses 36 and 37 of the GSMV, with minor variants (e.g., ā-s for the correlates to the Devīs). I have found similar series of bījas (i.e., in different order, in full or partial count) in many other sources, such as the Mañjuvajramaṇḍala in the first chapter of the Niṣpannayogāvalī, the Gurumaṇḍalapūjā, the Mañjuśrīsamaguhyānuttaradhyānamukhamahātantrarājasūtra, and the Hevajra[dākinījālasambara]tantra.

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Vairocana (Vajradhātvīśvarī) pṛthivī acts in accord with āgama bhakti Akṣobhya citta Saṅgha

Amitābha Dharmma vāk

puṇya

ṣaṭ pāramitā

ṣaṭ pāramitā

ya

Bajradhātvīśvarī

Vairocana

Amoghasiddhi Tārā ma upekṣā

bāyu

Amoghasiddhi

89

Tārā

Amitābha Pāṇḍaravāsinī Amitābha vaṁ muditā

Pāṇḍaravāsinī teja

Ratnasambhava Ratnasambhava Māmakī āpaḥ e

Buddha

kāya

Vairocana

asih

catur pāramitā

karuṇā

Māmakī

Akṣobhya Locanā Akṣobhya Locanā ya metrī

ākāśa

Devī Tathāgata Elements Devī Pāramitā Śīla

62.  See Bosch 1928: 19–20, Sarkar 1971 I: 41–48, and Chandra 1995: 218–24. The verses are as follows: kīrti­ stambho ’yam atulo dharmmasetur anuttaraḥ / rakṣārthaṁ sarvasatvānāṁ mañjuśrīpratimākṛtiḥ // atrabuddhaś ca dharmmaś ca saṅghaś cāntargataḥ sthitāḥ / dṛṣţavyo dṛśyaratne ’smin smarārāti nisūdane // ayaṁ sa vajradhṛk śrīmān brahmā viṣṇur mmaheśvaraḥ / sarvadevamayaḥ svāmī mañjuvāg iti giyate //. 63.  In support of the translation of dharmasetu as ‘bridge of religion’ I may refer to the Kalasan inscription dated to 778, which consecrated a statue of Tārā. This inscription also contains the term dharmasetu in verse 10, as follows: sarvān evāgāminaḥ pārthivendrān bhūyo bhūyo yācate rājasiṃhaḥ / sāmānyo yaṃ dharmmasetur narānāṃ kāle

Tathāgata

This peerless pillar of glory is an excellent bridge of religion.63 The image of Mañjuśrī is

Ratnatraya

The SHKAS contains parallel descriptions for all the pentads. The relationship between and among all the pentads is presented in Table 3.7. An echo of the Guhyasamāja may be found in the Kelurak inscription. Verses 13 to 15 run:62

Guhyasamājatantra

moharatīti āgneyāṁ kṛpopāyajanārthadā / kāyeśavat svarūpā syāl locanā svendumaṇḍale // 76 dveṣaratīti nairṛtyāṁ maitrī praṇidhikāmadā / citteśavad ratautsukyā māmakī candramaṇḍale // 77 rāgaratīti vāyavyāṁ modabalasamādhidā / vāgīśābhārthaśuddhā sā pāṇḍarā candramaṇḍale // 78 vajraratīti caiśānyām upekṣā jñānasādhikā / ratneśavat svarūpā syāc candre tārā manoramā // 79

Table 3.7: Correlations between and among the triads and the pentads

These are followed by a description that also includes the connection of each goddess with each of the four brahmavihāras:

Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan

locanādyās tu tā vidyāḥ pṛthivyādisvabhāvajāḥ / lāṁ māṁ pāṁ tām iti tv ebhir jagaddharmātmatattvajāḥ // 36 śāśvatādyāṁs tu saṁbuddhān rūpādiskandhasvabhāvajān / buṁ āṁ jrīṁ-bhiś ca khaṁ hūṁ-bhyāṁ sarvadharmān samutsṛjet // 37

Tathāgata

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90

for the protection of all beings. Here standing inside are the Buddha, the Dharmma, and the Saṅgha. They are to be seen in this beautiful jewel destroying the enemy Smara. This one, he, vajradhṛk, the auspicious one, is Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Maheśvara. This lord, made of all gods, is praised as Mañjuvāk.

Trivajrasamaya siddhyartha bhavet trikāya vajriṇaḥ / daśadik sarvabuddhānāṁ bhavec cintamaṇyodadhiḥ // 12.50 The three diamond samayas are identical to the triple diamond bodies, the ocean of cintamaṇi creates all Buddhas in the ten directions.

These verses state that Mañjuśrī is a lord made Compare the following passage:64 of all gods (sarvadevamayaḥ svāmī), and is identified with vajradhṛk (= vajradhara, and hence, as in atha vajrapāṇiḥ sarvatathāgatādhipatiḥ trivajra­ samayaṁ svakāyavākcittebhyo niṣcārayām āsa / the Guhyasamāja, Vajrapāṇi). The relation of the kāyavajro bhaved brahmā highest form of the Buddha—here Mañjuśrī—to vāgvajras tu maheśvaraḥ / the totality of divine manifestations finds a parallel cittavajradharo rājā in the SHKAS (Kats 1910: 59–61), where Bhaṭāra saiva viṣṇur mahardhikaḥ // 17.19 Divarūpa (Divine Light) is characterized as emThen Vajrapāṇi, the supreme lord of all Tabodying different divine forms, among which is a thāgatas, caused to appear to all Svakāyavākcittriad formed by the Buddha Śākyamuni, Lokeśvara, tas the three diamond samayas: and Vajrapāṇi, which is called Ratnatraya and repGranted the diamond-like body is Brahmā, the resents the triad of Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha. diamond-like speech is Maheśvara; Vairocana—who ultimately constitutes an emaLikewise, he, the king, the Vajradhara-like mind nation of the above triad—is said to be the source is Viṣṇu, the great power. from where all the gods and lesser beings emerge, namely the triad of Īśvara, Brahmā, and Viṣṇu, This identification is also attested in the Dale-jinwho ‘are ordered to perfect the Triple-World’ (sira gang-bukong-zhenshi-sanmeiye-jing-banruo-boluota kinon mamaripūrṇāknaṅ tribhuvana) and are miduo-liqushi 大樂金剛不空真實三昧耶經般若波 the ‘accomplisher of all deeds’ (sarvakāryakarttā) 羅蜜多理趣釋 translated by Amoghavajra (T 1003), on behalf of Vairocana. which is a commentary to his own Chinese transThus we find a commonality of ideas between lation of the Adhyardhaśatikāprajñāpāramitāsūtra this passage of the SHKAS and the verses of the (T 243: Dale-jingang-bukong-zhenshi-sanmeiye-jing inscriptions, which indicate that Mañjuśrī possesses 大樂金剛不空眞實三摩耶經). In the commentary, the Triratna (Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha) and is Amoghavajra said that the three brothers (三兄弟) also identical to the Trimūrti (Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and mentioned in the sutra are the three gods, Brahmā, Maheśvara). As unusual as it may have been from Nārāyaṇa, and Maheśvara, and they represent the perspective of ordinary Buddhism, a similar as- the Triratna and the Trikāya of Buddhism.65 It sociation with the triad of Brahmanical gods is also further identifies the Buddha with Vajrasattva, recorded in the Guhyasamāja (ed. Tripathi 1988: 44): the Dharma with Avalokiteśvara, and the Saṅgha with Ākāśagarbha.66 If we peruse and tabulate the associations kāle pālanīyo bhavadbhiḥ (‘The lion of kings again and again requests to all future kings. This bridge of religion related to all the triads mentioned in the SHK, we of all people should be protected by you at all times’). A find that the compiler of the Old Javanese text knew

dictionary of Chinese-Sanskrit compiled by Liyan 禮言 and dated to the Tang dynasty Fanyu zaming (T 2135 梵語雜名) lists the transcription for setu as xidu 細睹 (T 2135.1234b8) and the meaning as qiao 橋 (i.e., bridge). The term suggests that the Javanese of the time viewed the monuments of Kalasan and Kelurak as ‘equipment’ (i.e., a bridge) which ‘took one to the other shore’. However, since the Kelurak inscription also stated that Ratnatraya was identical to the Trimūrti, the term dharmasetu may as well be interpreted as a bridge between Buddhism and Śaivism.

Kandahjaya.indd 90

64.  See Tripathi 1988: 105; also Wayman 1977: 33, 106–7, 118–19, 218–19, 248–49. In the text the three Brahmanical gods are identified with Vairocana, Amitābha, and Akṣobhya, and further homologized with the tryakṣara consisting of oṁ, āḥ, and hūṁ (see also Wayman 1973: 177–82). 65.  T 1003.616b6: 此三天表佛法中三寶三身. 66.  T 1003.616b6-b8: 佛寶者是金剛薩埵. 法寶者觀自在菩薩. 僧寶者是虛空藏菩薩.

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Kandahjaya.indd 91

citta huṁ

vāk aḥ

kāya oṁ

Saṅgha

Viṣṇu

citta Viṣṇu

Saṁ­ bhoga Akṣobhya Dharma Maheśvara Amitābha

Dharmma Maheśvara vāk

Nirmāṇa kāya Brahmā Brahmā Buddha

Vairocana

kāya mūrti ratna

Mañjuśrī

Guhyasamājatantra Vajrapāṇi Mahāvajradhara Mañjunātha Mañjuśrī Mañjuvāk Mañjughoṣa Mañjuvajra vajra mūrti

67.  See K. 22(3), Nj. 23(3), or T 310(3) in Lancaster and Park (1979). 68.  T 310.80b25: 又復名曰如來祕要經法之品.

Kelurak Inscription

The three categories of Body, Speech, and Mind are commonly known from many early Buddhist texts. They are fundamental categories for actions (karma) and are critical for comprehending practical activities that go towards or come from enlightenment, or else force downward towards the realm of miseries. But then the nuance shifts if one considers them as three mysteries. The shift marks a significant change in Buddhism, when the emphasis was attached to secret or hidden aspects. Richard McBride II (2006 [2008]: 305–55) pointed out that the origins of the three mysteries or three secrets (triguhya) as related to the three mysteries of Body, Speech, and Mind first occurred in the Miji jingang lishi hui 密迹金剛力士會. This scripture was translated into Chinese by Dharmarakṣa (Fahu 法護) in ad 280. Its Chinese title has been variously retranslated into Sanskrit as the Tathāgatācintyaguhyanirdeśa or Tathāgataguhya(ka)sūtra.67 The latter is in fact mentioned as Rulai miyao jing 如來祕要經 in the scripture itself.68 The relationship between the latter text and the Guhyasamājatantra is still debated. Hara Prasad Shāstri (1917: 17–21) noted that a confusion between the Guhyasamāja and the Tathāgathaguhyaka occurred at some point. He believed that the manuscript with catalogue number 10765 is the original Tathāgataguhyaka and that the first book of Guhyasamāja and sometimes the second also are called Tathāgataguhyaka by

Table 3.8: Correlations between and among the triads

Miji jingang lishi hui

Commentary to the Adhyardhaśatikā Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan Deva Viśeṣa (God Par Excellence) Bhaṭāra Paramaśūnya Saṅ Hyaṅ Advaya Vairocana Saṅ Hyaṅ Advaya-jñāna Saṅ Hyaṅ Yogādi Parama Nairātmya Bhaṭāra Divarūpa Bhaṭāra Hyaṅ Buddha mūrti ratna kāya ratna Vairocana Īśvara oṁ Brahmā Buddha Vajrasattva Buddha Śākyamuni Brahmā Viṣṇu MaheśDharma Avalokiteśvara Dharmma Lokeśvara Amitābha aḥ vara huṁ Nārāyaṇa Saṅgha Ākāśagarbha Saṅgha Bajrapāṇi Akṣobhya

akṣara kāya

this identity. The identification of the Buddha with Vajrasattva is recorded in the SHKAS. Then the opening paragraph of the SHKM relates the three syllables (tryakṣara: oṁ aḥ hūṁ) to the three diamonds (kāya-, vāk-, citta-bajra), and then to the Triratna, and to the Trimūrti (see Table 3.8). By looking at the correlations among and between the triads, Akṣobhya is identified with Vajradhṛk, Sarvajñāna, and hūṁ, and in turn is identical to his procreator Vajrapāṇi, and to Śākyamuni, and ultimately to Bhaṭāra Divarūpa (which is likely a reference to divine clear light, or prabhāsvara).

91

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analogy. Unfortunately, Shāstri’s suggestion was Table 3.11 tabulates the opening statements of not taken up for further investigation. The follow- the Sanskrit Tathāgataguhyakasūtra, the Sanskrit ing analysis—while not exhaustive—attempts to Guhyasamājatantra, and T 310(3). This table shows demonstrate that Shāstri was probably right and that the opening line of the Tathāgataguhyakasūtra that we can suggest a clue for the gradual devel- and the Guhyasamājatantra is identical, while opment of the Guhyasamāja corpus. This is sum- the opening line in T 310(3) is different, being a marized in Table 3.9 through Table 3.11 (pp. 94–98). phrase commonly found in many Buddhist scripTable 3.9 tabulates sixty sounds as listed in tures. The discrepancy indicates that the extant Chapter 4 of the Tathāgataguhyakasūtra, titled the Sanskrit Tathāgataguhyakasūtra must have already Speech (Sound) Mystery (vākguhyaparivarta).69 The been modified vis-à-vis the Chinese version. This total in this table is not precisely sixty but this may modification was likely the cause of the confusion be because the exact sound names are not properly between the Tathāgataguhyakasūtra and the Guh­ recognized. However, this table attempts to corre- yasamājatantra. late the sound names in Sanskrit in the TathāgaAt this time, without the Sanskrit original, it taguhyakasūtra, the Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra, the is unlikely that we would be able to restore the Mahāvyutpatti, and their approximate corre- Chinese title Miji jingang lishi hui 密迹金剛力士會 sponding Chinese translations as they appear in to its former Sanskrit title. Nonetheless, having the Chinese Tathāgataguhyasūtra (T 310(3) Miji examined its relationship to the Tathāgataguh­ jingang lishi hui), as well as in Chengguan’s com- yakasūtra, or the Guhyakādhipatinirdeśa, it is now mentary (T 1736 Dafangguang fo huayan jing shu). clear that the original Sanskrit title for the Chinese The latter demonstrates that the Miji jingang lishi translation was likely the Guhyakādhipatinirdeśa. hui had truly been utilized in the past. Meanwhile, Then, considering that the Guhyasamājatantra in the commentary to the Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra, is indeed all about the secret assembly in which Vasubandhu explained that those sixty elements are Vajrapāṇi describes the mysteries of Tathāgata, it taken from the Guhyakādhipatinirdeśa;70 or in his is then likely that the Miji jingang lishi hui 密迹金 other work, the Vyākhyāyukti, he called the source 剛力士會 was one among the early versions of the the Tathāgataguhya (Nance 2012: 218). The correla- Guhyasamājatantra, or the Tathāgataguhyakasūtra, tion in this table establishes the connection among or the Guhyakādhipatinirdeśa. these texts. The correspondences also suggest that The previously mentioned suggestion, however, T 310(3) is likely a Chinese translation of one of the directly resurrects the dating problem of the Guh­ early recensions of the Tathāgataguhyakasūtra, or yasamājatantra. A lot of ink has been spilled on this its alias the Guhyakādhipatinirdeśa. Table 3.10 tab- problem. Until recently, scholars have assigned the ulates a couple of phrases from the Tathāgataguh­ latter half of the 8th century as the likely (formative) yakasūtra that are quoted by Śantideva and in his period when this scripture was fixed in its present Śikṣāsamuccaya (the first phrase from Chapter 14 form (Matsunaga 1978: xxvi). But this leads to an and the second from Chapter 1).71 This table does inconsistency when we take into consideration the not exhaust all of Śantideva’s quotations, as it is composition of the GSMV and the GSVV, and their merely an attempt to show that T 310(3) and T 312 compilers, Dīpaṅkarabhadra and Nāgabodhi. If are correlated with the Tathāgataguhyakasūtra, or Nāgabodhi was truly the teacher of Vajrabodhi, at least share similarities with the scripture referred and Vajrabodhi arrived in Luoyang, China, around to by Śantideva. 720, Nāgabodhi must have already compiled his GSVV at the beginning of the 8th century at the 69.  My study on the sixty sounds has grown over time. latest. Then if the GSVV is a ritual based on the Guhyasamājatantra, how could it be that the ritual I conveniently borrow the updated table and discussion inserted herein from my recent paper (Kandahjaya 2014: was composed while the Tantra itself had not been 196). completed? Or, do we now have to think about the 70.  Jamspal (2004: 156), following Sylvain Lévi, shows that ritual as the actual base from which the Tantra this list is also recorded in the Mahāvyutpatti. was written up? Else, we have to accept that the 71.  See Bendall 1897: 242, 7–8.

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia dating of the Guhyasamājatantra to the second half of the 8th century is incorrect. If such is the case, some Buddhist circles must have already known the hidden teachings as recorded in the initial version of this scripture in the 3rd century, as suggested by the translation date of the Miji jingang lishi hui 密迹金剛力士會. In other words, this also means that the historical development of Tantric systems did not seem to follow the famous four classification of Kriyā, Caryā, Yoga, and Niruttarayoga,72 and even less that the start of the systems should be dated to the 7th century or after.73 Evidence supporting the latter claim is available.74 72.  Dalton (2005: 152) suggests that Niruttarayoga is a better back-translation than Anuttarayoga. See Matsunaga (1978: xviii–xix) for a brief discussion on the chronology of the four classes of Buddhist Tantra. De Jong (1984: 93), reviewing Matsunaga’s Mikkyō kyōten seiritsushi-ron, shows that the four groups, kriyā, caryā, yoga, and anuttarayoga, came from the 13th century Bu-ston. 73.  Williams (2012: 144–45) suggests: ‘Yet to think of the third century as the starting point for tantric Buddhism is somewhat misleading. As a self-conscious tradition within the Mahāyāna tantric Buddhism probably does not appear until the mid to late seventh century…. From around the beginning of the eighth century tantric techniques and approaches increasingly dominated Buddhist praxis in India’. 74.  In discussing the Piṇḍīkrama above, I report that dhāraṇīs of the Guhyasamāja family were already in circulation around the 5th century. In this regard, I may suggest that the reason why we have been off the mark may have something to do with the underlying research paradigm. In strictly applying a modern scholarly methodology necessitating proof by material evidence (textual or visual), we may have neglected or even discounted the significance of oral teaching imparted by gurus, or non-material transmission. In some cases we may obtain hints to support this argument, namely: information documented by Yijing mentioned earlier; multiple references to ‘the tradition from the mouth’, or ‘from the mouth of one’s own guru’ (mukhāgama); and the prohibition of diffusing secret teachings, such as those promulgated in the SHK. All these elements show that particular teachings might have been intentionally disguised, or might have been required to be orally imparted and ‘decoded’ by a competent guru. For this reason, we may have to re-examine our research norms, as the requirement for orality may entail a number of factors to be seriously reconsidered. First, orality is part of legitimate tradition. Secondly, orality did not end when the tradition began to shift by employing script or visual objects. Thirdly, orality may be considered a silent agent of

Kandahjaya.indd 93

93

Saṅ Hyaṅ Tantra Bajradhātu Subhūti The colophon of the ‘Śaivized’ version of the SHK (version C) records the following:75 Hail to the Buddha! This is the Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan, the instruction of he who had accomplished siddhis, Hyaṅ Sarbvasiddhi (all siddhis); he was Śrī Sambhara Sūryāvaraṇa. He was the noble guru in Vañjaṅ. You have to keep in mind that your duty is [to study] the scriptures; you, Son of the Victor (jinaputra), are of the same lineage (vaṁśa) as him, who inherited the freehold [of] Vañjaṅ, which was an offering to this master (guruyāga) by [King] Śrī Īśāṇa Bhadrottuṅga[l] deva Mpu Siṇḍok, who had perfected the Saṅ Hyaṅ Tantra Bajradhātu Subhūti, who had mastered instructions in the esoteric teachings of Mahāyāna, the supreme secret, the culmination of the teachings of the Guru, for it is the essence of the teachings of Tantra, logic, and grammar. It is the quintessence of the holy possession (aveśa < Skt āveśa), and embodiment of the ultimate reality. It is right knowledge. That is the reason why the Jinaputra should be zealous when embracing the Saṅ Hyaṅ Pustaka Kamahāyānan; if [you do] so, clearly you will be blessed by Bhaṭāra Samyaksambuddhāya (= Samyaksambuddha?) himself.

change, as it allows teachings to shift over time. Fourthly, due partly to orality, we may never be able to fully recover earlier occurrences of doctrines that only by chance ended up being partially preserved in texts. Fifthly, we may be able to get a glimpse of what earlier masters might have said in their time through a series of treatises and commentaries that record their lives and teachings. 75.  Namo Buddhāya. Nihan saṅ hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan, pamәkas saṅ siddhagati hyaṅ sarbvasiddhi, sira Śrī Sambhara Sūryyāvaraṇa, sira Śrī aryya guru pāda ri vañjaṅ ya ta keṅәtaknanta dentāji denta, kita jinaputra, makādi savaṅśanira saṅ kumalilir iṅ sima vañjaṅ guruyaga Śrī Īśāṇa Bhadrottuṅga[l]deva mpu Siṇḍok, mvaṅ saṅ makabvatan saṅ hyaṅ tantra bajradhātu Subhūti, ya ta kumavaśākna saṅ hyaṅ samayopadeśa mahāyāna paramārahasya, vәkas iṅ varah saṅ guru sira, apan sira peh niṅ haji, tantra tarkka vyākaraṇa, sāri saṅ hyaṅ aveśa sira, pāvak niṅ paramārttika, pramāṇa sira, ya ta mataṅnyan hayva tan prayatna sira jinaputra tumәmva saṅ hyaṅ pustaka kamahāyanan sākṣāt hinanugrahan de bhaṭāra samyaksambuddhāya kita yan maṅkana (Kats 1910: 118–19 and Lokesh Chandra 1997: 10).

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Kandahjaya.indd 94

manoramā

śuddhā

vimalā

prabhāsvarā

valguḥ śravaṇīyā

anantā[anelā]

kalā

vinītā

akarkaśā

aparūṣā

suvinītā

karṇasukhā

kāyaprahṇā­danakarī cittaudvilyakarī

hṛdayasaṁtuṣṭikarī

manoramā

śuddhā

vimalā

prabhāsvarā

varṇa śravaṇīyā

anelā

kalā

vinītā

akakkarśā

aparuṣā

suvinītā

karṇasukhā

kāyaprahlādakarī cittodvillajanana

hṛdayasantuṣṭikarī

3

4

5

6

7

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

8

mṛdukā manojñā

mṛdukā manojñā

2

gladdening to the heart

physically satisfying mentally satisfying

pleasant to the ear

well-disciplined

without severity

without harshness

disciplined

melodious

unassailable

attractive worth hearing

luminous

stainless

pure

appealing

gentle beautiful

463. hṛdayasaṁtuṣṭikarī

461. kāyaprahlā­danakarī 462. cittodvilyakarī

460. karṇasukhā

459. suvinītā

458. aparuṣā

457. akarkaśā

456. vinītā

455. kalā (kālā)

454. anelā

452. valguḥ 453. śravaṇīyāḥ

451. prabhāsvarā

450. vimalā

449. śuddhā

448. manoramā

446. mṛdukā 447. manojñā

445. snigdhā

snigdhā

snigdhā

1

kindly

ṣaṣṭyaṅgasarvanāmāni

Sanskrit

vāk ṣaṣṭyākāra

English

Mahāvyutpatti

Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra

Tathāgataguhyakasūtra

【中】滲於心 【中】心生勇銳 【中】心中喜 【中】心喜

【中】堪敬 【中】樂聞 【中】不能 【中】無劣 【中】聞 【中】圓具 【中】柔善 【中】調順 【中】不粗俗 【中】無澁 【中】無惡 【中】無盡意 【中】極柔善 【中】柔善 【中】悅耳 【中】悅耳鼻 【中】適身

【中】如意 【中】悅意 【中】得意 【中】可樂聲 【中】真實 【中】清淨 【中】無垢 【中】離於垢聲 【中】明顯 【中】明亮 入耳甘美

【中】柔軟 【中】流澤 妙

六十種音

空悅音。

隨心時音。

身所吉和音。

安重音。

無憒音。

無亂音。

明聽音。

微妙音。

顯曜音。

離垢音。

悅意清淨音。

可樂音。

吉祥音。

柔軟音。

T 310(3)

Table 3.9: Correlation among the Tathāgataguhyakasūtra, Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra, Mahāvyutpatti, T 310(3), and T 1736

如如悅意音。

隨心隨時音。

身所吉利音。

安重音。

善順音。

無麤獷音。

無剛硬音。

無憒音。師父音。

無亂音。

明德音。

微妙音。

顯曜音。

離垢音。

悅意清淨音。

可愛樂音。

吉祥音。

柔軟音。

T 1736

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Kandahjaya.indd 95

ājñeyā

vijñeyā

viṣpaṣṭā

premaṇīyā

abhinandanīyā

ājñāpanīyā

vijñāpanīyā

yuktā sahitā

punarūktadoṣajahā

ājñeyā

vijñeyj

vispaṣṭā

premakaraṇīyā

abhinandanṇīy

ājñāpanīyā

vijñāpanīyā

yuktā sahitā

punaruktadāṣa

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

35

kinnarasaṅgītighoṣā

nāgendrarutā

meghasvaraghoṣā

meghasvaraghrṣā

34

sāgaragarjjitasvarā nāgendrarutā 36 kinnarasaṅgitighoṣā

nāgasvaraśabdā

nāgasvaraśabdā

33

ūhanī mohavidhama­ nī māragnasanī 32 siṁhasvaravegā siṁhasvaravegā

niḥparidāhā

niṣparidāhā

21

465. niṣparidāhā

475. punaruktadoṣajahā

473. yuktā 474. sahitā

472. vijñāpanīyā

471. ājñāpanīyā

470. abhinandanīyā

469. premaṇīyā

468. vispaṣṭā

467. vijñeyā

sounding like an elephant’s trumpeting sounding like the crash of thunder like the voice of the dragon-king like the kinnaras’ song

妙歌

【中】如龍音 【中】如龍王音

【中】如雲雷吼 【中】如龍音

【中】獅音力 【中】如獅子音 【中】如象音 【中】如龍音

【中】相連 【中】利益 【中】言無過 【中】離重複過失

【中】發喜樂 【中】悅樂 【中】無煩惱 【中】無熱惱 【中】周知 【中】如教令 【中】覺諸事 【中】善了知 【中】明諸事 【中】分明 【中】作意 【中】善愛 【中】現前喜 【中】令生歡喜 【中】遍知 【中】使他如教令 【中】普覺 【中】使他善了知 【中】如理

六十種音

480. gandharva­saṅgīti­ghoṣā 【中】如緊那羅

479. nāgendrarutā

478. meghasvara­ghoṣā

477. nāgasvara­śabdā

energetic as the lion’s roar 476. simhasvaravegā

without redundancy

reasonable appropriate

informative

authoritative

delightful

lovable

transparent

to be realized

eminently understandable 466. ājñeyā

not disturbing

464. prītisukhajananī

prītisukhasaṁjananī

prītisukhasaṁjananī

20

creative of joy and bliss

ṣaṣṭyaṅgasarvanāmāni

Sanskrit

vāk ṣaṣṭyākāra

English

Mahāvyutpatti

Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra

Tathāgataguhyakasūtra

真陀羅伎音。

海雷龍王音。

雨好音。

龍鳴音。

應師子音。

其響去穢音。

重了音。

和教音。

歡悅音。

意好音。

親近音。

識達音。

方正音。

無惱熱音。

與愛安想音。

T 310(3)

真陀羅伎音。

海雷龍王音。

好雨音。

龍嗚音。

應師子音。

其響去穢音。

重了音。

和忍音。

精勤音。

曉了音。

和雅音。

歡悅音。

意好音。

親近音。

識達音。

方正音。

無熱惱音。

天愛安想音。

T 1736

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Kandahjaya.indd 96

like Brahma’s cry 483. jīvañjīvaka­svararutā­ ravitā sweet as the voice of Indra 484. devendramadhura­ nirghoṣā

brahmasvararutaravitā

jīvaṁjīvakasvararuta­ ravitā devendramadhura­ nirghoṣā

grammatically impeccable 489. apaśabdavigatā

undaunted irrepressible

apaśabdavigatā

avikalā

alīnā

adīnā

avikalā

alīnā

46

47

pramuditā

prasṛtā

akhilā[sakhilā]

saritā

lalitā

pramuditā

prasṭatā

sakhilā

saritā

luḍitā madhurā sphuṭā darśanīya

49

50

51

52

53

48

45

immersed in language

sarvaśabdānupraviṣṭā

sarvvanavanatāvarāṣṭā apaśabdavigatā

44

playful

continuous

holistic

comprehensive

joyful

never fragmented

not lowly

anavanatā

anavanatā

43

【中】如天主妙音 【中】如天帝釋美 妙音 【中】鼓音 【中】如震鼓音

【中】響錢音 【中】如共命鳥音

497. lalitā

496. saritā

495. sakhilā

494. prasṛtā

493. pramuditā

492. adīnā

491. alīnā

490. avikalā

【中】無邪音 【中】無缺減 【中】無不備具 【中】無破壞 【中】無退縮 【中】無染汙 【中】無劣 【中】無希取 【中】具足 【中】令眾意歡喜 【中】莊嚴 【中】具足 【中】入 【中】說眾生心行 【中】長貪 【中】莊嚴 【中】連續 【中】顯示

【中】不滿足 【中】不高 【中】不低 487. anavanatā 【中】不下 488. sarvaśabdānupraviṣṭā 【中】隨諸音所入 【中】隨入一切音

486. anunnatā

anunnatā

anunnatā

485. dundubhisvarā

42

like the sound of the drum not haughty

dundubhisvarā

dundubhisvara

41

like the pheas­­ant’s call

六十種音

【中】頻伽鳥音 【中】如迦陵頻 伽音 482. brahma­svararutāravitā 【中】梵音 【中】梵王如音

481. kalaviṇka­svararutā

brahmasvararutaracitu 39 jīvañjīvakasvararuta­ racitā 40 devendramadhura­ nirghoṣā

38

like the kalaviṅka’s song

kalaviṅkasvararūtaravitā

kalaviṅkirutasvarā

37

ṣaṣṭyaṅgasarvanāmāni

Sanskrit

vāk ṣaṣṭyākāra

English

Mahāvyutpatti

Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra

Tathāgataguhyakasūtra

戒禁音。美甘 音。進行音。

具足音。

通暢音。

悅豫音。

無怯音。

無乏音。

去非時音。

普入響音。

不暴音。

不卒音。

雷震音。

鶴鳴音。耆域 音。英鳥音。

鷹暢音。

哀鸞音。

T 310(3)

戒禁音。甘美音。 進行音。

具足音。

通暢音。

悅豫音。

無怯音。

無乏音。

去非時音。

普入響音。

不暴音。

不卒音。

雷震音。

鶴嗚音。耆域音。 英鳥音。

鷹暢音。

哀鸞音。

T 1736

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Kandahjaya.indd 97

unchangeable unwavering resounds through all audiences endowed with the best of all forms

acañcalā acapalā sarvaparṣadanuravitā

sarvākāravaropetā

aninditā

56

acañcalā acapalā 59 sarvvaparṣadanura­citā, rāgaśamanī, doṣavinayanīī, mohavi­dharmanī, māragnasanī 60 sarvvākāravaropetā

【中】不欺 【中】無譏毀 【中】無輕轉

504. sarvākāravaropetā

【中】具足諸最勝 【中】諸相具足

【中】隨入一切 眾會

501. acañcalā 【中】無動搖 502. acapalā 503. sarvapariṣadanuravitā 【中】名稱普遍

500. aninditā

T 312 (1018–58 ad) 732c07║寂慧。譬如大樹若斷其根。即枝葉莖幹而 悉枯悴。此有身見亦復如是。若近止已諸煩惱亦 止。寂慧當知。 746b09║如何是佛出世。佛言大王。隨發菩提心即 是佛出世。王言。云何發菩提心。佛言。所謂大悲 出生。王言。云何大悲出生。佛言。謂即發起淨 信。王言。云何發起淨信。佛言。若發菩提心。即 是發淨信。王言。當云何發彼菩提心。佛言。深心 不退轉。是發菩提心。王言。云何是深心不退轉。 佛言。即是所起大悲。王言。云何能發大悲。佛 言。於一切眾生不生厭捨之心。即是大悲。王言。 云何於眾生得不厭捨。佛言。所謂不著己樂。王 言。云何是不著己樂。佛言。謂於三寶常不捨離。 王言。云何能於三寶不捨離邪。佛言。若能除去一 切煩惱。即於三寶而不捨離

66a21║猶如寂意。拔樹根株。莖節枝葉花實一時 并除永無有樹。行者如是。以消貪身便無諸見六 十二疑。以無貪身。

76b21║誰興佛乎。答曰。大王。能興篤信了本無 者也。又問。誰興篤信乎。答曰。若有能發菩薩 心者也。又問。誰發菩薩心乎。答曰。其有志性 定不亂者也。又問。誰有志性定不亂乎。答曰。 其行大哀未曾絕者也。又問。誰不絕大哀乎。答 曰。其不棄捨一切眾生者也。又問。誰不捨眾生 乎。答曰。其安己身并安一切者也。

不輕疾音。

無住音。

諸根無班音。

廣普音。

T 1736

宣諸德音。

宣諸德音。

響普入眾會音。 響聲普入眾會音。

不輕疾音。

無住音。

諸根無瑕音。

廣普音。

T 310(3)

From Chapter 1 (Bendall 1897: 7–8): asya punas tathāgataguhyasūtrasya ko ’bhiprāyaḥ? Yaduktam— kasya bhagavan bodhicittotpādaḥ? Āha—yasya mahārāja adhy­ āśayo ’vikopitaḥ / āha—kasya bhagavannadhyāśayo ’vikopitaḥ? Āha—yasya mahārāja mahākaruṇotpādaḥ / āha—kasya bhagavan mahākaruṇotpādaḥ? Āha—yasya mahārāja sarvasattvāparityāgaḥ / āha—kathaṁ bhagavan sattvā aparityaktā bhavanti? Āha—yadā mahārāja ātmasaukhyaṁ parityaktaṁ bhavatīti //

From Chapter 14 (Bendall 1897: 242): yathoktam āryatathāgataguhyasūtre—tadyathāpi nāma śāntamate vṛkṣasya mūlacchinnasya sarvaśākhāpatrapalāśāḥ śuṣyanti, evam eva śāntamate satkāyadṛṣṭyupaśamāt sarvakleśā upaśāmyantīti //

Śikṣāsamuccaya of Śāntideva

Table 3.10: Correlation between T 310(3), T 312, and the Śikṣāsamuccaya

satisfying to the faculties of all beings irreproachable

T 310(3) 密迹金剛力士會 (280 ad)

58

57

sarvasattvendriyasantoṣaṇī aninditā

sarvvondrayatoṣanī

55

六十種音

【中】諸音滿圓 【中】圓滿一切音 499. sarvendriyasaṁtoṣaṇī 【中】諸根滿足 【中】諸根適悅

498. sarvasvarapūraṇī

sarvasvarapūraṇī

sarvvasvarapūranī

54

fulfilling all words

ṣaṣṭyaṅgasarvanāmāni

Sanskrit

vāk ṣaṣṭyākāra

English

Mahāvyutpatti

Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra

Tathāgataguhyakasūtra

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

98

Table 3.11: Correlation among T 310(3), the Tathāgataguhyaka, and the Guhyasamāja T 310(3) 密迹金剛力士會

Tathāgataguhyaka

Guhyasamāja

Oṁ namaḥ śrīvajrasattvāy­a, oṁ namo buddhāya, oṁ namo dharmāya, oṁ namaḥ saṅghāya, 聞如是。 一時佛遊王舍城靈鷲山。

evaṁ mayā śrutam

evaṁ mayā śrutam /

ekasmin samaye bhagavān sarvatathāgata­­­ kāyavākcittaguhyahṛdayavajrayoṣidbhageṣu vijahāra /

ekasmin samaye bhagavān sarvatathāgata­ kāyavākcittahṛdayavajrayoṣid­­bhageṣu vijahāra /

anabhilāpyānabhilāpyaiḥ kāyasyārthāya hitāya sukhā[ya] devānāṁ ca manuṣyāṇāṁ ca yasya tathāgatam arthaṁ paripṛṣṭavyaṁ manyase /

anabhilapyānabhilāpyaiḥ sarvabuddha­ kṣetrasumeru­paramāṇurajaḥsamair bodhisattvair mahāsattvaiḥ /

The Tantra Subhūti is again mentioned in Canto 43.3 of the Deśavarṇana:76 But as he grew somewhat older he held to all sorts of esoteric rites; Mainly of course it was the Subhūti Tantra the essence of which he guarded and cherished in his heart. He applied himself to worship, yoga and meditation for the stability of the whole world, Not to mention the Gaṇacakra always accompanied by gifts, beloved of his subjects. (Robson 1995: 55–56)

The reference to the Saṅ Hyaṅ Tantra Bajradhātu Subhūti in version C of the SHK draws our attention as it mentions an important personal name, i.e. Subhūti, and the title of a scripture, i.e. Tantra Bajradhātu. Subhūti While exploring Javanese Tantric Buddhism, N.J. Krom mused whether whenever the Javanese texts mentioned the name Subhūti, they referred to Dhārmika-Subhūti. Krom went along with the lead by Sylvain Lévi who, following Tibetan accounts, attempted to identify Dhārmika-Subhūti with Aśvaghoṣa, whose name is mentioned as the author of the Gurupañcaśikhā, a text that is well 76.  Ndan riṅ vrәddha nireki mātra rumәgәp sarvva kriyādhyatmika, mukyaṅ tantra subhūti rakva tineṅәt kempәn rasanye hati, pūjā yoga samādhi pinrihiran amrih sthityan iṅ rāt kabeh, hastam taṅ gaṇacakra nitya madulur dānenivö hiṅ prajā.

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known among the adherents of Vajrayāna. Scholars have debated whether this name is the same as that of the famous author of the Buddhacarita, and Lévi’s idea was eventually rejected by Paul Mus.77 A current scholarly opinion thinks of two masters with the same name Aśvaghoṣa, because they were ascribed to two different sets of Buddhist teachings, i.e. Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna. Aśvaghoṣa, the author of the Gurupañcaśikhā, has been assigned to the 10th century (Buswell and Lopez 2013: 76), perhaps on account of the date of the Chinese translation done during the Northern Song dynasty in the 11th century. But, if such reasoning was correct, we should then assign Śantideva to the 10th century as well, because the Chinese translation of the Śikṣāsamuccaya was done during the same period, though evidently we know that such dating cannot be true. Furthermore, the fact that some Sanskrit verses of the Gurupañcaśikhā had already been recorded in the GSVV and the GSMV suggests that the dating of Aśvaghoṣa—the author of the Gurupañcaśikhā—to the 10th century must be considered an educated error. As Christian Wedemeyer (1999: 6, 27–73) demonstrated in his dissertation Vajrayāna and its Doubles, there is actually no sufficient evidence to support the view that prominent Buddhist authors such as Nāgārjuna, Candrakīrti, and Āryadeva, had ‘doubles’, or homonyms. It is therefore possible that the author of the Buddhacarita and of the Gurupañcaśikhā were the same Aśvaghoṣa. Further 77.  See Lévi 1928: 193–216; Mus 1939: 186–91; Seyfort Ruegg 1981: 119–21.

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research in the doctrinal outlook of the two texts the first year of Jianzhong 建中 (780 ad). By the is needed to throw light on the matter. For the time he arrived there, we are told that he already time being, it is difficult to judge with certainty mastered Esoteric Buddhism. The purpose of his to which figure the Subhūti mentioned in the Old visit to China was to study the MahāvairocanJavanese texts referred, as this name is known to amahākaruṇagarbha-mahāmaṇḍala 大毗盧遮那 have been ascribed to quite a number of texts. Yet, 大悲胎藏大慢荼羅法 from Huiguo:80 the possibility of Subhūti having a relation with the In the first year of Jiànzhōng (780), there was Gurupañcaśikhā is interesting since this text is one a monk from Kaliṅga [of Central Java], Bian78 of the sources of the SHK. On the other hand, it hong, [who] from his native country brought is important to note that a new twist in research a copper cymbal [and] respectfully presented on the Gurupañcaśikhā has occurred: Péter-Dániel it to the sagely Buddhist Monastery, [as well Szántó (2013) recently discovered a Nepalese Sanas] two conches [and] four copper … bottles … skrit manuscript of the Gurupañcaśikhā, whose [which he] respectfully presented to the Venerable Master [Huiguo]. He made offerings, and colophon attributes the authorship of the text to 79 earnestly sought for the great teachings of the Vāpilladatta. Tantra Bajradhātu An even more significant piece of evidence for the present study is the occurrence of Tantra Bajradhātu in the version C of the SHK. This name confirms that by the time that version was compiled, i.e. during the reign of Mpu Siṇḍok (929 to 947), Tantric teachings relating to vajradhātu—apparently the Vajradhātumaṇḍala—had already been circulated among Javanese Buddhists. In Shingon Buddhism, the Vajradhātumaṇḍala is considered a complement for the garbhamaṇḍala. This is significant as the latter maṇḍala is connected with Bianhong 僧辨弘, the Javanese Buddhist monk from Kaliṅga 訶陵國 who is said to have been initiated by Huiguo 慧果 and consecrated as ācārya for the garbhamaṇḍala. In Chinese records we read that Bianhong arrived at Chang’an 長安 in 78.  In Tibetan records we also find a Subhūtipālita (Su­ bhūtipāla) who was the teacher of Ānandagarbha. Ānandagarbha is one among the three most influential teachers of Tibetan Buddhism: Buddhaguhya, Ānandagarbha, and Śākyamitra (see Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba, Hopkins 2005: 18; Weinberger 2003: 83; Chandra Das 1907: 223). Su­ bhūtipālita was the pupil of King Prakāśacandra (Weinberger 2003: 3, 86): King Prakāśacandra received the Tattvasaṅgrahatantra descending onto his palatial roof; and that Ānandagarbha was the latest of the three: Buddhaguhya, Śākyamitra, and Ānandagarbha. Ānandagarbha wrote the Vajradhātumahāmaṇḍalopāyikāsarvavajrodaya (the same as the Sarvavajrodaya?). 79.  I thank Andrea Acri for bringing my attention to this new development, and Péter-Dániel Szántó for swiftly providing me with a copy of his article.

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garbhadhātu of Vairocana.

Huiguo was the successor to Amoghavajra and was considered one among the three founders of the Chinese Mantra school (zhen-yan 真言). While studying at the Green Dragon Monastery (Qinglong-si 青龍寺), Bianhong was accompanied by Huiri 慧日 from Korea, and Hongfa (J. Kōbō, or Konghai 空海, J. Kūkai) from Japan. The latter in turn became the founder of the Japanese Shingon school 真言 at Kōya-san 高野山, in Japan, and told the story of Bianhong as follows (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 130–31): Bianhong, a monk of the country of Heling, was while in his native land practicing the yoga of Cakravarticintāmaṇi and had attained some degree of spiritual power. On suddenly hearing that the teachings of Mahāvairocana’s Great Mandala of the Matrix of Great Compassion were to be found in South India, he fervently yearned to study them and set out for South India. On the way he suddenly met someone who asked, ‘Where are you going?’ He replied, ‘I have heard it said that the great teachings of the Matrix [of Great Compassion] are to be found in South India. I yearn in my heart to study them, and therefore I have equipped myself for a journey and taken to the road’. That person informed him, ‘Those teachings have been taken by the Ācārya Amoghavajra and transmitted to the land of the Great Tang, and 80.  T 2057.295b16–18: 建中年初。有訶陵國僧辨弘。從本國。 將銅鈸一具。奉上聖佛院。螺兩具。銅□瓶四。□奉上和上。充供 養。求援胎藏毘盧遮那大法。

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his pupil, the Ācārya Huiguo, is presently at Qinglong Temple (青龍寺) in Chang’an (長安), where he is giving instruction in them. If you go there, you will certainly be able to receive them together with others, but otherwise they will be difficult to obtain’. When he had finished speaking, he vanished. It is thus evident that he was a divine being. [Bianhong] turned back and set out for the Great Tang. He eventually visited Qinglong Temple, where he met His Reverence [Huiguo] and explained in detail the purpose of his visit, offering him one seven-gemmed initiation flask, one bronze bowl, three conch shells, and various famed aromatics. His Reverence held an initiation [ceremony] for him and conferred on him the great teachings of the Matrix [of Great Compassion]. Bianhong presently resides in Bianzhou (汴州), where he propagates the esoteric teachings [lit. ‘esoteric wheel’].

Kūkai’s account mentioning that Bianhong while in his native land had already practised the yoga of Cakravarticintāmaṇi and had attained some degree of spiritual power (訶陵國僧辯弘在 本國日誦持如意輪瑜伽稍得法力) is significant. The term for the practice is parallel to the term used in the SHKAS. In the cultivation to find the supreme secret (paramaguhya), the embodiment of Bhaṭāra Viśeṣa, or the Saṅ Hyaṅ Divarūpa, is summarized by the SHKAS as follows:81 When there is someone in pain, or even sorrow, your mindfulness should become like a wish-fulfilling jewel (cintāmaṇi); [then] the miseries are annihilated by it, because [when] your mind (jñāna) is touched by the spotless form (nirmmalākāra) in your own intellect (ri svacittanta), it becomes Saṅ Hyaṅ Divarūpa.

The cultivation involves seven concentrations (samādhi). One of these is called the mahāmunivaracintāmaṇisamādhi and is described as follows:82 81.  Yan hana vvaṅ alara prihati kunaṅ katuturananta kady aṅgan iṅ cintāmaṇi, hilaṅ ikaṅ duḥka denya, apan ikaṅ jñāna kita kәna nirmmalākāra ri svacittanta, atәmahan saṅ hyaṅ divarūpa sira (Kats 1910: 52). 82.  Dadi taṅ āmbәk ādibuddha ni ratu cakravartti huvus malahaken śatru sakti vәnaṅ aveh sakaharәp niṅ sarbvasatva, ikaṅ āmbәk maṅkana mahāmunivaracintāmaṇi­ samādhi ṅaranikā (Kats 1910: 57).

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Then the Ādibuddha-mind of the Cakravarti king after defeating powerful enemy is able to fulfil all wishes of all beings, hence such mind is called the mahāmunivaracintāmaṇisamādhi.

The parallel suggests that by the time Bianhong left for China around 780, the so-called teachings of the Tantra Bajradhātu Subhūti, as recorded in the SHK, had already been secured by Javanese Buddhists. On one hand, this explains the reason that compelled Bianhong to study the complementary set of teachings, the garbhamaṇḍala; on the other, it corroborates the fact that the teachings of the Kalasan inscription dated to 778 and the Kelurak inscription dated to 782 have a parallel with those of the SHK. The short time between the installations of these two inscriptions may, as rightly suggested by Roy Jordaan (1997), be due to the fact that they were instigated by the same royal guru, Kumāraghoṣa. We may therefore consider 782 as the date marking the upper limit by which the SHK had already been compiled or diffused by a Javanese Buddhist master, possibly during the period in between the arrivals of Vajrabodhi and Kumāraghoṣa. This inference first of all supports Goris’ early dating of the text. Then, we may also conclude that the compilation time of the identified sources of the SHK must naturally have been much earlier. As indicated by the Guanshiyinshuo mieyijiezuiguode yijiesuoyuan tuoluoni 觀世音說滅 一切罪過得一切所願陀羅尼, and further confirmed by the Miji jingang lishi hui 密迹金剛力士會, the hidden teachings related to the tradition of the Guhyasamāja might have started before the 6th century already. The fact that there are altogether 34 verses out of all 42 verses of the SHKM that can be traced back to a manual for an initiatory ritual (abhiṣeka) related to the Guhyasamāja is interesting. It may simply suggest that the SHKM originated from the Guhyasamāja tradition, especially when those 34 verses are spread evenly from the beginning to the end of the SHKM. On the other hand, it is clear that neither the GSMV nor the GSVV individually corresponds one-to-one with the SHKM, and even if we only select the corresponding verses, these ritual texts cannot make up the whole SHKM. There are also other peculiarities of the SHK, such as a different order of the verses, and a dissimilar

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia pairing of dhātu. Therefore, we may wonder if this again is just a matter of corrupt transmission, or if we are in fact encountering yet another lineage or tradition, or an earlier common source. The appearance of concepts parallel to the teachings in the Ratnameghasūtra in verse 25 of the SHKM, which is found neither in the GSMV nor in the GSVV nor in any other text, suggests that the Old Javanese text came from a different tradition, perhaps older, than that of Ācārya Dīpaṅkara­ bhadra, or even Ācārya Nāgabodhi. The archaic doctrinal outlook and the succinctness of the SHK in comparison with the GSMV and the GSVV may give the additional impression that that was probably the case.83 Since thus far we have two prominent names, i.e. Vajrabodhi and Kumāraghoṣa, related to Java, both have a chance of being the carriers of esoteric teachings. However, we are yet to find sources in East Asian Buddhist collections to indicate that Vajrabodhi, Amoghavajra, Huiguo, or even Śubhākarasiṁha, ever carried a ritual manual similar to the GSMV or the GSVV. In the absence of such evidence, it is difficult to justify Vajrabodhi being the carrier.84 On the other hand, as discussed earlier, the majority of newly identified sources of the SHK are mainly related to regions in Northeast India. Hence, Kumāraghoṣa, although obscure, seemingly has the greater chance of the two. Considering that the Kelurak inscription mentions Kumāraghoṣa, a master at the rank of a royal preceptor who came directly from Gauḍīdvīpa—the site of Vikramaśīla, Nālandā, and Somapura—he himself might have been the one who transmitted to Java this esoteric tradition. 83. The SHKM has only 42 verses, while the GSMV and GSVV both have more than 400 verses. 84.  If the initial trip plan of Bianhong could serve as an indicator of his perception of the source of the teachings he had acquired, the original destination was a region outside of China, thus more likely South Asia. But then, when Giebel (2012: 187–230) documents the Sanskrit texts brought back to Japan by Kūkai, this information does not give any additional indication that might lead us to the set of teachings parallel to those preserved by the SHK. In other words, the set of teachings brought by Vajrabodhi or Amoghavajra from either South India or Sri Lanka was somewhat different from those transmitted to Java. Of course, new evidence that may change our current perspective on how the transmission flowed might come to light.

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The SHK, although compact and succinct, is apparently a complete scripture combining initiatory ritual, fundamental doctrine, as well as practical instructions for daily cultivation to achieve the highest goal. Despite its relatively simple and unsophisticated look, it is underpinned by a complex system that cannot be easily unpacked without assistance from a fully competent master, and thereby follows the tradition of the Mukhāgama that is well known in the lineage of Dignāga in particular, or in the Mantranaya tradition in general.

borobudur In an attempt to explain the Buddhism of Borobudur, Krom took the SHK, together with other sources, and briefly analysed them in his monograph on the Javanese monument. Krom (1931: 332) concluded that Borobudur was a stūpa embodying teachings of Tantric Mahāyāna based on the Yogācāra school. He was not quite certain if Borobudur represented exactly the teachings recorded in the SHK (ibid.: 331). It is only later, when Willem F. Stutterheim took his turn investigating Borobudur, that the SHK became the main source for interpreting the architecture of the monument. Stutterheim (1961: 35), while resorting to the conclusion suggested earlier by Goris (1926: 156), individuated some key concepts in the SHK—mainly the tridhātu and stūpa-prāsāda—and related them to Borobudur. Mus (1978: 57–65, 85–106) modified Stutterheim’s idea of stūpa-prāsāda and incorporated it into his voluminous study of Borobudur. In due time, de Casparis discarded the compound bhūmisam­bhārabhūdara being the origin of the name Borobudur, and shifted to a combination of the Ratu Boko and Tri Tepusan inscriptions to recapture Mus’ idea of stūpa-prāsāda to arrive at the notion of the ‘dual nature’ of Borobudur. De Casparis did it while still insisting that no Tantric elements could be detected in Borobudur, not realizing that around 1960 Mus himself had dramatically changed his views on the monument (Soekmono 1981: 132). Another attempt to utilize the SHK to explain Borobudur re-emerged in the study on the worship of Tathāgatas in Java by Nurhadi Magetsari (1982). Magetsari concludes that Borobudur surely represents the progress in a yogin’s experience, and

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that it contains elements from Mahāyāna, Yogācāra, and Tantra, yet he does not specifically elaborate on how exactly those elements informed the architectural plan and iconography of Borobudur. In other words, if we follow Magetsari’s view closely, it would seem that the plan does not necessarily have to come from the SHK, as it was posited by Krom, but that anything possessing Mahāyāna, Yogācāra, and Tantric elements could be the driving force behind the creation of Borobudur. However, if such were the case, studies on the relationship between the SHK and Borobudur would have been pointless. Many scholars have contended that Borobudur has nothing to do with Tantric Buddhism.85 If Borobudur truly has no Tantric elements, there could naturally be no talk about relating the SHK to it. Thus, even before citing the SHK, one has to prove beyond doubt that Borobudur is really a Tantric Buddhist monument, or at least one related to Buddhist Tantric practices. This fundamental problem is difficult to solve, as the rationale behind Borobudur architecture, symbolism, and function is not readily accessible. This fact justifies the continued scholarly disputes on the Buddhism of Borobudur, while at the same time the debaters do not seem to offer solid arguments to address the underlying problem. For the reason just mentioned, we have to consider it very fortunate that a team of archaeologists unearthed a large number of clay stūpikās and votive tablets, a few silver plates, and a lead-bronze inscription from the Borobudur yard in 1974. Many of these artefacts are dated to no later than the second half of the 9th century. They were therefore likely in use when Borobudur was consecrated. As I reported earlier (Kandahjaya 2009), these artefacts help us confirm that Borobudur was architecturally a stūpa-prāsāda representing a dharmadhātumaṇḍala. These artefacts were related to practices of both the exoteric Mahāyāna and esoteric Mantranaya tradition, yet their association with the site named Buḍur which according to the 14th-century Deśavarṇana belonged to the Vajradhara school (kabajradharan) suggests that Esoteric Buddhism 85.  Such as Omura Segai, Heinrich Zimmer, Lokesh Chandra, John Huntington, Jan Moens, Ph. Pott, J.G. de Casparis, Jan Fontein, and Marijke Klokke.

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played an important role there. The sanctum was consecrated by the Kayumvuṅan inscription of 824 and was later addressed as Bhūmisambhāra. The SHK, together with the clay stūpikās and the Kayumvuṅan inscription,86 jointly provide us with further insight into the doctrinal background of Borobudur and enable us to deduce that Borobudur architects had access to stūpa construction manuals and to rituals for the confession of faults, and thereby had embedded a set of instructions for moral cultivation in the monument. I will describe the details in the following discussion. Stūpa-prāsāda As some of the clay stūpikās are inscribed with an abbreviated form of the formula oṁ ye te svāhā in ancient Javanese script,87 they provide us with an 86.  Jeffrey Sundberg and Mark Long have persistently reminded me of an issue affecting the relationship of the Kayumvuṅan inscription to Borobudur, which was hypothesized by de Casparis (1981: 60–63) and myself (2004: 256–57, 2009: 13). This issue is the (still debated) provenance of the inscription, which Long (2014: 177) has argued to be relatively far from the environs of Borobudur. However, while in certain cases provenance helps, in others it may not be as helpful. I do not think we can or should be totally dependent simply on provenance to explain things happening more than a thousand years ago, for ancient inscriptions were often found in locations far removed from their original whereabouts (such is the case of the ‘Calcutta stone’ or Pucangan inscription, which was sent to India by Thomas Stamford Raffles). Furthermore, archaeology in Java knows of a sīma called aṅśa, which allows granted land to be located far from the temple (Poesponegoro and Notosusanto 1984: 114). What is even more important to stress here is that the Kayumvuṅan inscription, irrespective of its original location, clearly partakes of the set of Buddhist doctrines prevalent in 8th- and early 9th-century Śailendra-ruled Java, which are reflected in Borobudur. While the burden of proof demonstrating that the Kayumvuṅan inscription relates to another Buddhist temple remains on Sundberg’s and Long’s shoulders, in the absence of a convincing argument, I prefer to keep de Casparis’ take as it is more in line with the context and doctrinal message of the inscription, as well as the form of Buddhism that seems to have been followed by the builders of Borobudur. 87.  See Boechari 1982: 93. The full formula runs: ‘Tathāgata, the great śramaṇa, has stated those things that have a cause and their cause, also their cessation’ (ye dharmā hetuprabhavā hetuṁ teṣāṁ tathāgataḥ / hy avadat teṣāṁ ca yo nirodha evaṁvādī mahāśramaṇaḥ).

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indication that the people who used these objects in the vicinity of Borobudur were familiar with the concept of dharmakāya-caitya (a caitya of the Dharma body), and particularly with caityavandana (‘worship of caitya’) inscribed on a panel at the hidden foot of Borobudur (Tucci 1988: 27–29). Yijing states that producing and offering a votive stūpa is believed to grant merit (Li Rongxi 2000: 12). Familiarity with a dharmakāya-caitya implies that the constructed stūpa does not necessarily contain relics,88 and the Javanese must have understood that by building such stūpa (or caitya, as these terms are often interchangeable) they would renew the preaching of the Dharma, gain merit and accumulate knowledge, grasp the law of causation, and have the vision of the Buddha.89 We can further determine that the architects of Borobudur followed an Indian prototype called the kūṭāgāra-prāsāda—or the stūpa-prāsāda in the SHK—to memorialize the eight miraculous events in the life of Śākyamuni, and to represent the body of the Tathāgata (dharmadhātu) embedded with multifarious virtues (Śrī Ghananātha),90 so that builders, supporters, and cultivators could accumulate virtues to speedily accomplish the highest goal. Considering the inscription of caityavandana on the hidden foot, the thousands of votive stūpas recovered in the vicinity of the monument, the expiatory ritual to be described later, and the structure of the monument itself, we cannot but be certain that the architects of Borobudur must have had access to manuals for stūpa or caitya construction. A number of scholars have investigated and documented Buddhist scriptures that prescribe a set of techniques for building a stūpa.91

According to their examination, a stūpa structurally comprises two main components: the (lion) throne, which is often missing in the production of stūpikā, and the stūpa proper.92 The stūpa proper consists mainly of eight parts: (1) a base of ten virtues (Tib. dge-ba bcu; Skt. daśakuśala) at the bottom with a shape following the steps above the base; (2) a flight of steps that is square, circular, or polygonal in shape;93 (3) a base for the dome; (4) the dome; (5) the harmikā in rectangular or polygonal form; (6) the spire; (7) the wheels; and (8) the umbrella.94 Then, if we compare and tabulate the structure of Borobudur with the structure of a stūpa proper, we find more correspondences than differences (see Table 3.12, p. 104). From the comparison in Table 3.12, it is clear that if it were not for the changes at the base and at the top, Borobudur would have perfectly fitted the structure of a stūpa. While this definitely brings us back to the same question as to why the architects made such changes, a better understanding of the eight different types of stūpas seems to lead us to a possible answer, especially when we recall that the dominant set of votive stūpas from the Borobudur yard has an elongated aṇḍa with eight subsidiary stūpikās around it. Those eight types of stūpas are of two categories: four commemorating the essential moments of Śākyamuni’s earthly life, and four commemorating some of his most famous miracles (Tucci 1988: 24). Each of the series of eight stūpas has some specific features, usually on their steps, which differentiate one from another. Those eight may reflect a further development in the concept of commemorating the miraculous events, in contrast to the initial four commemorating Buddha’s

88.  See Lokesh Chandra, ‘Introduction’ in Tucci 1988: vii: ‘If stūpa/caitya had been primarily a funerary monument, it would not have been associated with the birth of Lord Buddha. That would be blasphemous’. Then, on page 24, Tucci states: ‘Not all the caityas were built to contain relics, but … most of them had a symbolic value’. 89.  For a fuller discussion on this, see Tucci 1988: 28–32. 90.  I suggested a relationship between the name Śrī Ghananātha and the multitude of virtues of the Sugata (sugataguṇagaṇa) occurring in verses 11 and 15 respectively of the Kayumvuṅan inscription (see Kandahjaya 2009). 91.  See Tucci 1988: 13–21; Roth 1980: 182–209; Pema Dorjee 1996: 1–21.

92.  This is according to Tucci (1988: 15–17), whereas Dorjee (1996: 61) divides it into three parts: (1) the lion throne, (2) the intermediate section, and (3) the upper section. 93.  The polygonal shape in twenty corners like the one shaping Borobudur is called viṁśatikoṇa; the word is attested, e.g., in the Sanskrit ritual manual titled Kriyāsaṅgrahapañjikā compiled by Kuladatta (see Skorupski 2002: 165). 94.  I specifically choose these eight parts among other parts mentioned by Tucci and Dorjee for the purpose of comparing them with the parts in Borobudur. For a more complete enumeration of the parts of a stūpa, see Tucci 1988: 40–43 and Dorjee 1996: 61–71.

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia Table 3.12: A stūpa proper vis-à-vis Borobudur

Structure of a stūpa

Symbolic Meaning

Borobudur

Umbrella

Great compassion (mahākaruṇā)

Three umbrellas were installed by van Erp for experiment in 1910 and subsequently removed

Wheels

Ten knowledge-powers (daśa jñāna-balāni)

Nine wheels were installed by van Erp for experiment in 1910 and subsequently removed

Spire (yaṣṭi)

Ten knowledges (daśa jñānāni)

The spire for the abandoned original main stūpa is unknown; now the octagonal spire of the main stūpa

Harmikā/droṇa

Eightfold path (aṣṭāṅga-mārga)

The harmikā for the abandoned original main stūpa is unknown; now the quadrangular harmikā of the main stūpa

The dome (kuṁbha/aṇḍa)

Seven factors of enlighten- The dome for the abandoned original main stūpa is unment (sapta bodhyaṅgāni) known; now the dome of the main stūpa

The base of the dome (kuṁbha sandhī/kaṇṭhaka)

Five powers (pañca balāni)

The base of the dome for the abandoned original main stūpa now hidden underneath the first circular terrace

The steps (cataśro vedyaḥ/ caturthā jaṅghā vedī): 4

Five faculties (pañcendriyāni)

4th platform or altar in polygonal shape

(tṛtīyā vedī): 3

Four spiritual powers (catvāri ṛddhipādā)

3rd platform or altar in polygonal shape

(dvitīyā vedī): 2

Four renunciations (catvāri prahāṇani)

2nd platform or altar in polygonal shape

(ādhāra vedī): 1

Four awareness (catvāri smṛty-upasthāna)

1st platform or altar in polygonal shape

The base of ten virtues

Ten virtues (daśa kuśala)

Hidden foot with reliefs from the scripture on ten good and bad deeds (the Karmavibhaṅgasūtra)

life recommended by the Karmavibhaṅgasūtra.95 By comparing the architecture of the eight stūpas with Borobudur, we may envisage a correspondence between the features of the eight stūpas commemorating the eight miraculous events in the life of Śākyamuni and the main architectural elements of the monument. In Table 3.13 we can see that, except 95. See Mahākarmavibhaṅga, paragraph LXII (Lévi 1933: 82–83): ‘Which are the ten benefits if one pays homage and prostrates before the caitya of the Tathāgata, i.e., the four great caityas at Lumbinī, Mahābodhi, and others in the Middle Kingdom (Madhyadeśa)?... Here is the summary: country-clothings-family-form-voice-intelligence-faith-religious disciplines-scholarship-liberality-memory-wisdom. When one joins the palms in worship before Buddha shrine of Tathāgata, with devotion, one obtains excellent mind of wisdom, and exhaustion of the flows. And it is as in the sūtra, O Ānanda, all those who circumambulate the caityas with devotion, when they die, like an arrow fixed at the ground, after the dispersion of their body, they will be born in heavens’ (katame daśānuśaṁsā madhyadeśe caturmahācaityalumbinīmahābodhiprabhṛtiṣu tathāgatacaityāñjalikarmapraṇipāte…. asyoddānam. deśavastrakularūpa­sva­ rapratibhānatāśraddhāśīlaśrutatyāgān smṛtimān bhavati

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for the octagonal shape in the stūpa of Reconciliation, most of the main features of the eight stūpas correspond to features of Borobudur. Also, except for two types of stūpas, i.e. of Victor and Parinirvāṇa, all the stūpas have four steps—a feature that can be related to the four polygonal platforms or altars at Borobudur. The 108 niches and the four doors of the stūpa of Preaching correspond neatly with the 108 niches and four doors at each side of Borobudur.96 The bell-shaped dome of the stūpa of Parinirvāṇa matches the bell-shaped dome of the main stūpa of Borobudur. The ladders demanded by the stūpa of Descent from Trayastrīṁśa and prajñāvān tathāgatasya buddhaprasādaṁ kṛtvāñjaliṁ labhate dhīraḥ saprajña udāram āśravakṣayam. uktaṁ ca sūtre. ye kecid ānanda caityacaryāṁ caramāṇāḥ prasanna­ cittāḥ kālaṁ kariṣyanti. athā bhallo nikṣiptaḥ pṛthivyāṁ tiṣṭhate evaṁ kāyasya bhedāt svargeṣūpapatsyanti). 96.  As Tucci (1988: 128, 142) points out, the stūpa of Preaching in Tibet typically has Buddha niches, which are also found at Borobudur. See also Chemburkar’s contribution in this volume.

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Table 3.13: Eight stūpas vis-à-vis Borobudur Type of stūpa

Site

Main Features

Borobudur

1

Birth (Heap of Lotuses)

Kapilavastu

Four (or seven) steps with lotuses

2

Enlightenment

Nairañjanā- Square; four steps above a base of Magadha ten virtues

Four polygonal platforms or altars above the hidden foot with reliefs from the scripture on ten good and bad deeds (the Karmavibhaṅgasūtra)

3

Preaching (Many Doors)

Vārāṇasī

108 niches; four doors in four sides are four truths

108 niches each in four sides

4

Grand Miracle

JetavanaŚrāvastī

Square; four steps and reliefs in four sides

Four polygonal platforms or altars and reliefs

5

Descent from Trayastrīṁśa

Kānyakubja- Ladders; four (or eight steps) and Sāṁkāśya reliefs

Four polygonal platforms or altars; stairs in four sides and reliefs

6

Reconciliation

Rājagṛha

Octagonal; four steps

Four polygonal platforms or altars

7

Victor (Meditation on Life)

Vaiśālī

Three circular steps

Three circular terraces

8

Parinirvāṇa

Kuśīnagara

Bell-shaped dome without steps

Bell-shaped dome of the main stūpa

the reliefs demanded by this stūpa as well as by the Grand Miracle are all present at Borobudur. Should there be no expanded base, even the requirement for a base of ten virtues is met with what now constitutes the hidden foot of Borobudur, displaying reliefs from the scripture on ten good and bad deeds (the Karmavibhaṅgasūtra). But the most fascinating feature in this list is perhaps the prescription to have three circular steps for the stūpa of Victor, which in Borobudur are not located where we would expect them—i.e. at the bottom, starting from the ground—but on top of the four polygonal platforms or altars. There is also an exclusive requirement for the stūpa of Parinirvāṇa (i.e., bell-shaped dome without steps), which at Borobudur is again fulfilled by placing the whole solid bell-shaped stūpa on top of the third circular terrace. From all these arrangements we can perceive the architects’ desire to conform to all specifications at once, so as to make Borobu-­­ dur contain all the major features of all the eight stūpas.97

97.  Tucci (1988: 51) records that the most common type in Tibet is the Enlightenment, followed by the Preaching, the Victor, and the Descent from Trayastrīṁśa.

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Four polygonal platforms or altars

Anuttarapūjā Verses 14 and 15 of the SHKM describe an instruction to practise mantra, japa, and pūjā:98 Idañ ca maṇḍalam paśya śraddhāñ janayathādhunā / kule jāto ’si buddhānāṁ sarbvamantrair adhiṣṭhitaḥ Behold the Holy Maṇḍala, śraddhāñ janayathādhunā: generate faith, do not be disrespectful to the Holy Maṇḍala, kule jāto ’si buddhānām: because you are now [in] the Buddha family (buddhakula), because soon your name will be Bhaṭāra Hyaṅ Buddha, sarbvamantrair 98.  Comm. Verse 14: ka: vulati saṅ hyaṅ maṇḍala, śraddhāñ janayathādhunā, gavayakәn taṅ śṛddha, hayva tan sagorava ri saṅ hyaṅ maṇḍala, kule jāto ’si buddhānāṁ, apan kita buddhakula maṅke, apan bhaṭāra hyaṅ buddha ṅaranta mәnә, sarbvamantrair adhiṣṭhitaḥ, tuvi sampun kṛtādhiṣṭhāna iki de saṅ sarbvatathāgata, inajyan sinaṅaskāra rikaṅ sarbvamantra. Comm. Verse 15: ka: Aparәk tekaṅ hayu ri kita, siddhayo gatayaś ca te, samaṅkana ikaṅ kasiddhyan abhimuka ikā kabeh, agya kapaṅguha denta; pālaya samayaṁ siddhye, lәkas ta umabhyāsa saṅ hyaṅ samaya, marapvan katәmu ikaṅ kasiddhyan usәn denta; mantreṣūdyogavān bhava, gavayakan taṅ utsāha ri mantra japa pūja usәn, hayva hәlәm-hәlәm, yatānyan kopalambha ikaṅ kasugatin irikeṅ ihajanma ṅūniveh dlāha (Kats 1910: 21–22).

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adhiṣṭhitaḥ: you also have already become an abode for all Tathāgatas, have been instructed and consecrated in all mantras. Sampado ’bhimukhāḥ sarbvāḥ siddhayo gatayaś ca te / pālaya samayaṁ siddhyai mantreṣūdyogawān bhava // Fulfillments come closer to you; siddhayo gatayaś ca te, likewise all the perfections are close at hand, and you will attain them quickly; pālaya samayam siddhye, begin to practise the Holy Samaya, so that the state of perfection is quickly attained by you; mantreṣūdyogavān bhava, diligently perform mantra, japa, pūja immediately, do not delay, so that Buddhahood will be obtained accordingly in this very life, and even more in the future.

These two verses are found in a Sanskrit ritual manual titled Kriyāsaṅgrahapañjikā compiled by Kuladatta.99 In this manual, those verses are recited after obeisance at the four gates of a maṇḍala and followed by a recitation of the formula of the confession of faults (pāpadeśanā). The passages that surround the two verses are as follows (trans. Skorupski 2002: 114–15): [Ch. 6] Four obeisances, confession of sins, vows Next the disciple makes obeisances (praṇāma) at the four portals of the maṇḍala while reciting the appropriate mantras. Making the puṣpāñjali, and prostrating himself at the eastern portal, he recites: ‘oṁ, as I prostrate before the body, speech and mind of the Tathāgatas, I worship the vajra. May I be blessed by all the Tathāgatas. oṁ I offer myself for the service of worshipping (pūjopasthāna) all the Tathāgatas. O Vajrasattva of all the Tathāgatas bestow upon me your 99.  See Ishii (1989: 55–70 and 1992: 228). The portion of this manual edited and published by Sakurai (1988: 17) records verses 14 and 15 of the SHK with minor variants, as follows: idam hi maṇḍalam paśyan śraddhām janayamś cādhunā / kule jāto ’si buddhānām vidyāmantrair adhisthitah // sampado ’bhimukhāh sarvāh siddhiyogatayaś ca te / pālayan samayān siddho mantresūdyogavān bhava //. In 1984 Alex Wayman, who used a manuscript of the Kriyāsaṅgraha reproduced by Sharada Rani in the Śatapiṭaka series, pointed out that verses 6–9, 16–17, 20–22, 26–27, 29–32 of the Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan are found in this manuscript (see Ishii 1992: 228).

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blessing’. He executes similar recitations at the remaining portals, offering himself at the southern portal for the consecration of worship (pūjābhiṣeka), at the western portal for the continuation of worship (pūjāpravartana), and at the northern portal for the performance of worship (pūjākarma), and asks to be blessed by Vajraratna (south), Vajradharma (west), and Vajrakarma (north). The teacher envisages the disciple as being fully confirmed (adhiṣṭhita) by the Tathāgatas, and then invigorates his faith (śraddhā): ‘Behold this maṇḍala, and generate faith. You have been born in the family of the Buddhas, and blessed with vidyās and mudrās. You are confronted with excellent advantages (sampad) and the yoga of attainments (siddhi). Gain the attainments through protecting the pledges, and apply yourself to the practices of the mantras’. After that, the disciple recites the formula of the confession of sins (pāpa-deśanā), rejoices in the merit (puṇyānumodana) of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, supplicates the Buddhas not to pass into nirvāṇa, and offers his merit and himself for the attainment of buddhahood. Next, the disciple raises the thought of enlightenment, and recites the vows relating to the Buddha families. ‘I raise the perfect and highest thought of enlightenment in the same way as it has been raised by the Buddhas of the three times. I firmly embrace the threefold morality: the morality of precepts (śīlaśiksā), the morality of accumulating wholesome qualities (kuśaladharmaśīla), and the morality of acting for the benefit of living beings (sattvārthakriyāśīla). From today onwards, I take the vow born in the Buddha family, the highest and best Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṅgha. In the great Vajra family, I truly grasp the vajra, the bell, and the mudrā, and receive my teacher. In the great Ratna family with the pleasing yoga and pledge, I offer the four gifts (caturdāna), six times every day.100 In the great Padma family, pure and born from the great enlightenment, I receive the holy Dharma in its outer, inner and secret Vehicles. 100.  According to the SDP, the four gifts include worldly possessions, fearlessness, dharma, and friendship (Skorupski 1983: 288): caturdānaṁ pradātavyaṁ tridive ca trirātri­­ke // āmīṣābhayadharmākhyā maitrī ratnakuloccaye // (for English translation, see Skorupski 1983: 102).

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia In the great assembly of the Karma family, I truly take on the comprehensive vow of performing the task of worship (pūjakarma) to the best of my abilities. It is for the benefit of all living beings that I raise the perfect and highest thought of enlightenment, and embrace this comprehensive vow. I shall lead to the other shore those who have not as yet reached there. I shall liberate those who are not liberated, inspire those who are inert, and bring living beings to emancipation (nirvṛti)’. This concludes the procedure of taking the vows (saṁvaragrahaṇa).

These passages are also found in the SDP as well as the GSVV. Moreover, it is important to note that a portion of the passage on the confession of faults (pāpa­deśanā) survives in the Balinese tradition and is known as the Anuttarapūjā (see Table 3.14, p. 108).101 The Sevenfold Supreme Worship (sapta­vidhāanuttarapūjā) is one of the more popular repentance rituals known in Buddhist practice today. This ritual is often associated with two Buddhist masters, Śāntideva and Atīśa. In the beginning of the Śikṣāsamuccaya, Śāntideva quotes a passage from the Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabhasūtra in which the seven members of the anuttarapūjā are listed in connection with the ‘walk of the Bodhisattva’ (bodhisattvacaryā).102 But the vital source for 101.  See Lévi 1933: 82; Goudriaan and Hooykaas 1971: 433–38. 102.  The members are: homage (vandana), worship (pūjana), confession of faults (pāpadeśana), delight in virtue (puṇya), solicitation and entreaty of Buddhas (anumodanabuddhādhyeṣaṇa), application of the merit to the attainment of enlightenment (yācana bodhipariṇāmana). The Chinese translation of the list is in T 1636 from 78b10 to 78b12: 禮拜供養。說罪及隨喜福。勸請諸佛住世說法。乃至 迴向菩提。 The Dharmasaṅgraha (entry number 14) gives the following seven items: vandanā, pūjanā, pāpadeśanā, anumodanā, adhyeṣaṇā, bodhicittotpādaḥ, pariṇāmanā. It is possible that the manuscript used by Śāntideva is different to what we have today, because the exact quotation cannot be found either in the Sanskrit or in the many Chinese versions of the Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabharajasūtra that have come down to us (for the translation of the Chinese versions, see Birnbaum 1989). The family of this scripture indeed contains many references to pūjā and repentance ritual and how to perform it. In fact, T 1161, the Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on the Contemplation of the Two Bodhisattvas, King of Healing and Supreme Healer is the original source for praises to the fifty-three past Buddhas.

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the anuttarapūjā is actually the Bhadracarī, to which Śāntideva also refers (Bendall 1922: 264–65, 269). Atīśa confirms the role of the Bhadracarī in his commentary to the Bodhipathapradīpa (Sherburne 2000: 43). He explains that the anuttarapūjā is related to verses 1 to 12 of the Bhadracarī, and that all other verses, i.e. verses 13 to 62, are for transferring merit. Verse 12 includes all the seven elements of the anuttarapūjā, namely (1) homage (vandanā), (2) worship (pūjanā), (3) confession of faults (pāpa-deśanā), (4) rejoicing (anumodanā), (5) prayer (adhyeṣaṇā), (6) supplication (yācanā), and (7) transfer of merit (pariṇāmanā), as follows: vandanapūjanadeśanatāya modanādhyeṣa­ ṇayācanatāya / yac ca śubhaṁ mayi saṁcitu kiṁcid bodhayi nāmayamī ahu sarvaṁ // 12

Panel IV12 of the Bhadracarī at Borobudur (Fig. 3.1, p. 109) likely depicts verse 12. This depiction, together with the survival of a Balinese recension, may imply that the anuttarapūjā was widely known in ancient Indonesia, and performed at Borobudur. Krom (1931 II: 104) interprets this panel as follows: [I]n the middle, a Buddha seated in vitarkamudrā with a very high uṣṇīṣa, at his back the tablet with a flaming border; beneath him sits Samantabhadra, his hands folded in sĕmbah, on each side of him a dish of incense with the smoke rising out of it placed on a little cushion in the air. On either side of this group is a Bodhisattva standing on a lotus cushion, on the right Vajrapāṇi with his emblem worn-off, left, one with a flower in bud shape and a damaged headdress. Then kneeling on the ground, to the right, the second chief person with his escort; left another group of worshippers, and up above on clouds, heavenly beings with right and left a Buddha in dhyāna-mudrā.

The standing figure to the left of the Buddha is probably Avalokiteśvara, while the one kneeling on the right—arguably the second most important character in the relief—is Sudhana, who is making various offerings and performing merit transfer together with his retinue. The latter is part of the main ingredient for the liturgy of the 88 Buddhas Repentance (see Kandahjaya 2010).

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia Table 3.14: Anuttara-Pūjā

Kriyāsaṅgrahapañjikā, Chapter 6

Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan

Idaṁ hi maṇḍalam paśyañ śraddhāṁ janayaṁś cādhunā / kule jātāsi buddhānāṁ vidyāmantrair adhiṣṭhitaḥ // 1

Idañ ca maṇḍalam paśya śraddhāñ janayathādhunā / kule jāto ’si buddhānāṁ sarbvamantrair adhiṣṭhitaḥ // 14

sampado ’bhimukhāḥ sarvāḥ siddhiyogatayaś ca te / pālayan samayān siddho mantreṣūdyogavāṁ bhava // 2

sampado ’bhimukhāḥ sarbvāḥ siddhayogatayaś ca te / pālaya samayaṁ siddhyai mantreṣūdyogavān bhava // 15

Balinese Anuttara-Pūjā

Ratnatrayaṁ me śaraṇaṁ sarvaṁ pratidiśāmy agham / anumode jagatpuṇyaṁ Buddhabodhau dadhe manaḥ // utpādayāmi varabodhicittaṁ nimantrayāmi bahu sarvasattvān / iṣṭāṁ cariṣye varabodhicārikāṁ Buddho bhaveyaṁ jagato hitāya //

Sarvadurgatipariśodhanatantra utpādayāmi paramaṁ bodhicittam anuttaram / yathā traiyadvikā nā [128a] thāḥ sambodhau kṛtaniścayāh // 3

Utpādayāmi paramaṁ bodhicittam anuttaram // yathā traiyadhvikanāthāḥ saṁbodhau kṛtaniścayāḥ //

utpādayāmi paramaṁ Bodhicittaṁ anuttaram / yathā traiyadhvakā nāthāḥ saṁbodhau kṛtaniścayāḥ //

trividhāṁ śīlaśikṣān ca kuśalaṁ dharmasaṅgraham / sattvārthakriyāśīlañ ca pratigṛhṇāmy ahaṁ dṛḍham // 4

trividhāṁ śīlaśikṣāṁ ca kuśaladharmasaṅgraham // sattvārthakriyāśīlaṁ ca pratigṛhṇāmy ahaṁ dṛḍham //

trividhāṁ śīlaśikṣāṁ ca kuśaladharmasaṅgraham / sattvārthakriyāśīlāṁ ca pratigṛhṇāmy ahaṁ dṛḍham //

buddhaṁ dharmañ ca saṅghañ ca triratnāgram anuttaram / adyāgreṇa gṛhīsyāmi saṁvaraṁ buddhayogajam // 5

buddhaṁ dharmaṁ ca saṅghaṁ ca triratnāgram anuttaram // adyāgreṇa grahīṣyāmi saṁvaraṁ buddhayogajam //

Buddhaṁ Dharmañ ca Saṅghañ ca Triratnāgram anuttaram / adyāgreṇa grahiṣyāmi aṁvaraṁ Buddha-yoga-jam /

vajraṁ ghaṇṭāñ ca mudrāñ ca pratigṛhṇāmi tattvataḥ / ācāryañ ca gṛhīṣyāmi mahāvajrakulōccaye // 6

vajraghaṇṭāṁ ca mudrāṁ ca pratigṛhṇāmi tattvataḥ / ācāryaṁ ca grahīṣyāmi mahāvajrakuloccaye //

vajraṁ ghaṇṭāñ ca mudrāñ ca pratigṛhṇāmi tattvataḥ / ācāryāt tān grahiṣyāmi mahāvajrakuloccaye //

caturdānaṁ pradāṣyāmi ṣaṭkṛtvā ca dine dine / mahāratnakule yoge samaye ca manorame // 7

caturdānaṁ pradāsyāmi ṣaṭkṛtvā tu dine dine / mahāratnakule yoge samaye ca manorame //

caturdānaṁ pradāsyāmi satkṛtaṁ tu dine dine / mahāratnakule yoge samaye ca manorame //

saddharmaṁ pratigṛhṇāmi bāhyaṁ guhyaṁ triyānikam / mahāpadmakule śuddhe mahābodhisamudbave // 8

saddharmaṁ pratigṛhṇāmi bāhyaṁ guhyaṁ triyānikam / mahāpadmakule śuddhe mahābodhisamudbhave //

saddharmaṁ pratigṛhṇāmi bāhyaguhya-kriyānvitam / mahāpadmakule śuddhe mahābodhisamudbhave //

saṁvaraṁ sarvasamyuktaṁ pratigṛhṇāmi tattvatah / pūjākarma yathāśaktyā mahākarmakuloccaye // 9

saṁvaraṁ sarvasaṁyuktaṁ pratigṛhṇāmi tattvataḥ / pūjākarma yathāśaktyā mahākarmakuloccaye //

saṁvaraṁ sarvasaṁyuktaṁ pratigṛhṇāmi tattvataḥ / pūjākarma yathāśaktyā mahāvajrakuloccaye //

utpādayāmi paramaṁ bodhicittam anuttaram / gṛhītaṁ saṁvaraṁ kṛtsnaṁ sarvasattvārthakāraṇāt // 10

utpādayitvā paramaṁ bodhicittam anuttaram / gṛhītaṁ saṁvaraṁ kṛtsnaṁ sarvasattvārthakāraṇāt //

utpādayāmi paramaṁ Bodhicittam anuttaram / gṛhītaṁ saṁvaraṁ kṛtsnaṁ sarvasattvārthakāraṇam //

tīrṇāṁ tārayiṣyāmi amuktān mocayāmy aham / anāśvastān āśvāsayiṣyāmi sattvān sthāpayiṣyāmi nirvṛttau // 11

atīrṇān tārayiṣyāmy amuktān mocayiṣyāmy aham // anāthān nāthayiṣyāmi sattvān sthāpayāmi nirvṛttāv iti //

atīrṇān tārayiṣyāmi amuktān mocayāmy aham / anāthān nāthayiṣyāmi sthāpayiṣyāmi nirvṛtau //

Kandahjaya.indd 108

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Fig. 3.1: Panel IV12. (Photo: adapted from Krom 1920 II: 104)

Fig. 3.2: Panel IV43. (Photo: adapted from Krom 1920 II: 109)

A practice which is usually related to the anuttarapūjā is the liberation of living beings.103 Verse 21 of the Bhadracarī describes it in this way:104 Extinguishing all pains in the evil paths, establishing all creatures in happiness, let me practice [the life of Bhadra] for the benefit of all creatures, as far as there are lands and paths in the ten quarters.

Panel IV43 (Fig. 3.2) shows Samantabhadra sitting in a pavilion liberating a bird (Krom 1930 103.  This ceremony is widely known in Chinese Buddhism; it is called fang sheng (放生): ‘to set free captive animals’. It is also known in Japanese and Tibetan Buddhism. See Shiu and Stokes 2008, and Law 1994. 104.  Sarvi apāya dukhāṁ praśamanto sarvajagaṁ sukhi sthāpayamānaḥ sarvajagasya hitāya careyaṁ yāvata kṣetrapathā diśa tāsu // 21

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II: 109), while those that have already been liberated are seen flying away on the upper left corner. One of the people on the left side of the panel is seen emptying a bowl of fish into a lotus pond and the man behind him is carrying a squirrel. Other animals that are freely roaming are on the lower left corner. This panel is closely following verse 21 and shows how all beings live freely and peacefully. The whole Bhadracarī is uniquely depicted in full on 72 panels along the main wall of the top gallery of Borobudur. This placement likely reflects the highest regard that Borobudur architects had conferred upon the Bhadracarī. Moreover, since 62 verses of the Bhadracarī are allotted into 72 panels of reliefs, those verses are not mapped against the panels in one-to-one fashion. Thus, this assignment provides us with a supplementary indication that the figure 72 was not selected at random but must

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have been chosen deliberately, so as to conform to a grid formula that I have discussed earlier (Kandahjaya 2009), and to which I will return anon. Vuddhacarita The Kayumvuṅan inscription praises Princess Prāmodavarddhanī for not only practising bhakti (verse 9) but also performing conducts of Buddha (vuddhacarita, verse 4). Not knowing the context, we may comprehend this statement as it is but will not be able to appreciate it to the fullest extent of its meaning. The SHK, however, allows us to further appreciate these two concepts in the inscription. The SHK explains the meaning of bhakti as follows:105 [When] one acts by always following the essence of the sacred scriptures, is firm in maintaining asceticism, observances, purification rituals, and the teachings of Buddha, and is never satisfied in practising the Dharmma, that is considered bhakti.

We can also ascertain that the vuddhacarita is identical to buddhacārya and the latter is described as such in the last verse-cum-commentary of the SHK:106 This bodhi rising from samādhi, all mudrās, and tathāgatas, The ultimate secret sown, are to be known by one of wisdom and buddhacārya. The meaning is: The teaching on enlightenment, samādhi, and all mudrās are to be possessed 105.  Ikaṅ lumaku satatānut rasa niṅ āgama, matәguh rumakṣa tapa brata saṅskāra mvaṅ buddhaśāsana tan kavanәhan maṅulahakәn dharmma, ya sinaṅguh bhakti ṅaranya (Kats 1910: 64–65). 106.  Evaṁ bodhisamadhyottaḥ sarbvamudrātathāgata, suguhyatopitajñeyo buddhacāryyavicakṣanaiḥ. Ka: Ikaṅ kājaran iṅ bodhi samādhi mvaṅ ikaṅ sarbvamudrā pinakalakṣaṇanta mvaṅ ikaṅ tathāgata inaṅәn-aṅәnta, mvaṅ ikaṅ paramaguhya tathāgata niyata ikā kavruhana de saṅ buddhacāryyavicakṣaṇa, ka, ikaṅ mahābodhi, ikaṅ samādhi, ikaṅ sarbvamudrā mantra yoga bhāvanā mvaṅ kavicakṣaṇan ya tikāvak niṅ caturdevī Locanā, Pāṇḍaravāsinī, Māmakī, Tārā. Iti caturdevī kavruhana hayva tan prayatna, paḍa pavitranira mvaṅ bhaṭāra hyaṅ Buddha yan ta kapaṅgih pāvaknira caturdevī de saṅ yogīśvara (Kats 1910: 69–70).

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by you. Further, you should constantly meditate on the tathāgata, and this paramaguhya tathāgata is indeed to be known by one of wisdom and buddhacāryya, i.e.: mahābodhi, samādhi, all mudra-mantra-yoga-bhāvanā, and wisdom are the bodies of the four Devīs: Locanā, Pāṇḍaravāsinī, Māmakī, and Tārā. The four Devīs should be known as such; do not be inattentive. They are as pure as Bhaṭāra Hyaṅ Buddha; if these four Devīs are found they are to be embodied by the Yogīśvara.

If we now recall that Samantabhadra is one of the many epithets of Buddha Gautama,107 then we can find the identity of the terms Vuddhacarita in the Kayumvuṅan inscription, Buddhacāryya in the final verse of the SHK, and the Bhadracarī. In other words, all of them are pointing out the same practice: the Bhadracarī, the conducts of the Buddha. The description of buddhacārya also reveals a well-defined understanding of the four goddesses (caturdevī) of Locanā, Pāṇḍaravāsinī, Māmakī, and Tārā. All of their bodies are said to be identified with mahābodhi, samādhi, all mudrās, mantras, yoga, bhāvanā, and wisdom; or in other words, with buddhacārya and wisdom. Thus, according to the SHK, those four goddesses are really not female deities, as the word goddess might conventionally suggest, but conducts of the Buddha and wisdom. These conducts and wisdom are the objects that the Yogīśvara is to acquire and embody. As such, we will never find at Borobudur conventional female forms of Locanā, Pāṇḍaravāsinī, Māmakī, and Tārā,108 nor for that matter, Bajradhātvīśvarī, because those forms did not represent the symbolism espoused by the SHK or Borobudur architects. Instead, they are embedded in the totality of the reliefs. At Borobudur, various conducts of the Buddha are displayed through many accounts of buddhacarita, from those recounted in the Jātakas, the Jātakamālā, the Avadānas, and the Lalitavistara, up to the 107.  Thus in verse 29 of the Amaramālā (see Lokesh Chandra 1997: 149), an 8th-century Sanskrit-Old Javanese dictionary, which is perhaps related to the Amarakośa known to Indian literati. 108.  However, as we have seen above, the syllables associated with these four goddesses are found on a stone inscription from Candi Bungsu in Muara Takus (see my n. 61).

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SHK, Borobudur, and the Origins of Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia Gaṇḍa­­vyūha, and the summary of all these feats is depicted on the panels of the Bhadracarī. The final configuration of the Borobudur architecture thus reflects a complete instruction for cultivation by undergoing four steps as expounded in the SHK, i.e., one, Mahā-mārga (the great path); two, Parama-bodhi-mārga or Parama-mārga (the supreme path); three, Mahā-guhya (the great secret); and four, Parama-guhya (the supreme secret). The broad terrace at the base functions as an altar for offerings while performing the anuttarapūjā or initiatory rituals (abhiṣeka), and as such is specially built to conduct processes necessitated by the first step, the Mahā-mārga. The formed corridors become the venue for undertaking the second step, the Parama-bodhi-mārga or the Parama-mārga, whereby the disciple learns and acquires the ten perfections (daśapāramitā) by cultivating all Buddha’s conducts (buddhacārya) and wisdom. These two steps provide the necessary equipment for the disciple to be able to fully engage in the tasks required by the last two steps, the Mahā-guhya and the Parama-guhya. The symbolism underpinning the circular terraces, where the perforated stūpas make the Buddha inside visible, may reflect the description of the Mahā-guhya. In addition, it seems that the transition from the rectangular to the circular terraces was deliberately made perceptible as a continuity, implying as it does a correlation between the 72 Bhadracarī panels running along the main wall of the top gallery of Borobudur and the 72 Buddha statues inside the perforated stūpas on the circular terraces. As I have demonstrated earlier (Kandahjaya 2009), the number of Buddha statues on each floor is designated in accordance with the figure in the series calculated following Amoghavajra’s grid formula for the construction of the Garbhadhātumaṇḍala. For this reason, the correlation must have denoted that, on the reverse, all the Buddhas too continue reverberating the Bhadracarī while observing and listening to the universe. The central stūpa on the very top is a fully enclosed construction. It is singular and non-dual (advaya), solid and dense (ghana), and the chief (nātha), and thereby is correlated with the description of the Parama-guhya in the SHK, and with the name Śrī Ghananātha in the Kayumvuṅan inscription. This main stūpa crowns the whole structure,

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as if it embraces the manifold attributes embedded in the edifice. Hence, Śrī Ghananātha, being the Buddha as the Lord of All Virtues, is portrayed as an Excellent Buddha Image (Sinhalese, varabudu-r; Skt. vara-buddha-rūpa).

conclusion Comparative content analysis reveals that, in addition to the Sanskrit sources that have already been identified in previous studies, a number of newly identified texts are related to the SHK, namely: Śrīguhyasamājamaṇḍalavidhi Śrīguhyasamājamaṇḍalopāyikāviṁśatividhi Ratnameghasūtra Gurupañcaśikhā Guhyendutilaka Yogāvatāra Yogāvatāropadeśa Yogabhāvanāmārga Bhāvanākrama Piṇḍīkrama In contrast to earlier identifications, these new sources are significant insofar that they allow us to elucidate many peculiarities of the SHK, as well as other epigraphic and archaeological documents from both Java and Sumatra. Some preliminary, and yet relevant, findings are the following: 1) There are resonances, in terms of emphasis on practice, yoga, and oral teaching received from the guru, between the SHK and a series of texts including the Yogāvatāra, the Yogāvatāropadeśa, the Yogabhāvanāmārga, and the Bhāvanākrama. As these texts are connected to the 5th- to 6th-century Buddhist logician Dignāga and his scions, the claim made in the SHK that its set of teachings was received from Ḍaṅ Ācāryya Śrī Dignāgapāda opens up the possibility that this figure might be none other than the famous Buddhist logician. The possibility that doctrines related to Dignāga and his tradition reached the Indonesian Archipelago by the late 6th or early 7th century is conceivable on account of the information provided by Tāranātha, who relates that Dharmapāla, a disciple of Dignāga, spent the end of his life in Sumatra.

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2) Several verses and concepts of the SHK resonate with similar ones retained in the Guhyasamāja scriptural tradition. However, the brevity of the SHK, its ‘idiosyncratic’ re-ordering of the verses, the peculiar configuration of some key concepts, and the echoes of teachings attested in the Ratnameghasūtra in the hitherto untraced verse 25 of the SHKM all suggest that the SHK as a whole originated from a tradition that is yet to be recognized, or that—being perhaps a remarkably early one—did not survive for us. 3) Inscriptions from the Indonesian Archipelago and foreign accounts, particularly the Chinese ones, assist us in fixing the upper chronological limit of the SHK to the 8th century (thus confirming Goris’ conclusion); however, the deployment of early ‘hidden teachings’, like the ones advocated by the Guhyasamāja tradition, suggests that its lower limit may be pushed back to as early as the 5th century. 4) There are indications that the SHK teachings came from the northeastern regions of the Indian Subcontinent; this is in harmony with the evidence attested in the Sanskrit inscription of Kelurak (ad 782), written in Siddhamātṛkā script, mentioning a royal preceptor Kumāraghoṣa from Gauḍīdvīpa (modern Bengal or Bangladesh). 5) The SHK preserves an integrated set of practical esoteric teachings for the attainment of the highest Buddhist goal. The set consists of four

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steps: one, Mahā-mārga (the great path); two, Parama-bodhi-mārga or Parama-mārga (the supreme path); three, Mahā-guhya (the great secret); and four, Parama-guhya (the supreme secret). This set inspired the architects to finalize the design and symbolism of Borobudur, so that the sanctum would represent this programme and in turn provide the practitioners with an aid to achieve the highest goal. 6) The SHK mentions a set of four goddesses (devī) attested in Tantric texts from other regions of the Buddhist world, and it explicitly connects them to a set of doctrinal practices rather than representing them uniquely as conventional female deities. The same may also be true in the case of Borobudur, where such commonly conceived female deities are not depicted as such on any of its reliefs, and yet the latter symbolically embody the doctrinal practices connected to the deities. All of the above outcomes are preliminary results that need verification and confirmation. There are also many other details of the SHK that necessitate further investigation. For instance, we are yet to clarify its concealed background, to unpack its complex system, and to draw a more accurate map of its relationship with textual as well as visual sources of other Buddhist (and Śaiva) traditions. I would naturally hope that future studies will verify and expand the investigation.

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Chapter 4

Traces of Indonesian Influences in Tibet jan a. schoter man

E

ver since the rediscovery by the French scholar George Cœdès (1918) of the Indonesian kingdom of Śrīvijaya, which for more than half a millennium (7th–13th century ad) played a major role in the history of Southeast Asia, the study of this polity has assumed a prominent position in the research of the ancient history of Indonesia.1 This kingdom and its capital Śrīvijayapura, probably located near the modern city of Palembang in Sumatra, functioned for a long period as a relay station and resting point in the vibrant sea trade between India and China, to which it also contributed an array of products. Apart from this, Śrīvijaya also maintained close contacts with kingdoms on the mainland of Southeast Asia. Its important position in Asian commercial traffic aside, Śrīvijaya was for many centuries a prominent international centre in the Buddhist world. Chinese monks, on their way to India by sea, often stayed in the cpital of Śrīvijaya for some length of time to familiarize themselves with Sanskrit before travelling on to India. Of these Chinese monks the best known was perhaps Yijing, who stayed in the capital for a period of six months in the year 671. However, bhikṣus from India itself also did travel to the famous Śrīvijaya. Thus we read in Tāranātha’s History of Buddhism in India (in Tibetan, 16th century) that, after his retirement from Nālandā University, Dharmapāla, originally from Kāñcī and a contemporary of Xuanzang, left for Sumatra to stay there for the rest 1. The original paper, Indonesische Sporen in Tibet, was presented by J. Schoterman (1948–89) as a lecture at a meeting of the Dutch Oriental Society in Leiden on 18 March 1985, and subsequently published by E.J. Brill, also in Leiden (Schoterman 1986). The present English translation was a joint effort by Roy Jordaan and Mark E. Long.

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of his life. According to this late Tibetan source he gained immortality (amṛtasiddhi) there, never to be reborn again. This Dharmapāla followed the spiritual tradition of the famous Buddhist scholar Diṅnāga (5th century), who in turn is mentioned in the Old Javanese Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan as the proclaimer of the fourfold Yoga. Because of the many foreign contacts, both commercially and in religious matters, it almost goes without saying that non-Indonesian sources could contain important information regarding the history of Śrīvijaya. Apart from indigenous sources (inscriptions, artefacts, etc.), the Chinese in particular have contributed much to our knowledge of the kingdom of Śrīvijaya. The reports of pilgrims as well as the more official documents of the many Chinese embassies offer a wealth of information, although a correct interpretation of the data is hampered by the Chinese transcription of the Indonesian (mostly Sanskrit) names. In stark contrast to this is the meagre information from Indian sources. These sources yield little more than the Indian name for the Archipelago, the Island of Gold [suvarṇadvīpa], and the rich mines found there. Factual information is hardly ever offered. Next to the information from Chinese, Indian and—not to be overlooked—Arab and Persian sources, there is yet another foreign category in which to find information about Śrīvijaya, namely the vast Tibetan literature. Having once been an important Buddhist centre, it is not surprising that Śrīvijaya is mentioned as such in Tibetan texts, although in general the information therein cannot be called abundant. The exceptions are the writings by or about the Tibetan saint Atīśa (982–1054), one of the most prominent saints of Tibet, who for a period of twelve years stayed in Sumatra at the court of Śrīvijaya.

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In any discussion about Buddhism the mention of the name Tibet often has a nearly magical effect in which one is apt to lose sight of the fact that it is precisely Tibet which converted to Buddhism at a relatively recent date. In order to view the matter from a correct perspective it seems wise to devote a few remarks to the spread of Buddhism in Asia in general and in Indonesia in particular. At the Council of Pāṭaliputra (ad 245), under the auspices of the Emperor Aśoka, it was decided to disseminate the Buddhist doctrine universally. Relying on the texts, monks were dispatched to almost every known country to preach Buddhism successfully. However, the only thing that is certain is that the bhikṣu Mahendra arrived in Sri Lanka to teach the Doctrine shortly after the Council. Khotan, located on the southern Silk Road, must also have come into contact with Buddhism at an early date. As is so often the case, religion and commerce went hand in hand and therefore it is not surprising that Buddhism also reached China at the beginning of the Common Era via the Silk Road. One Lokaṣema, a Yüeh-chih, is credited with the introduction of Mahāyāna Buddhism in China (see Zürcher 1972: 35). After Buddhism had gained foothold in China, Japan also came into contact with Buddhism in the year 552, when the Korean King Songwang sent a Buddha statue and a few manuscripts to the Japanese emperor. The dissemination of Buddhism in Southeast Asia and Indonesia in particular is less clearly traceable. Contacts between India on the one hand and Southeast Asia on the other presumably existed from very early times onwards but are only clearly discernible at the beginning of the Common Era and, once again, primarily concern commercial interests. As gold in India itself is only found in small quantities (the goldfields near Kolar), from time immemorial the Indians used to import gold from Central Asia and Siberia, but in the last two centuries before the Common Era this was impossible due to the turmoil triggered by the large population movements in Central Asia. Consequently vast amounts of gold coinage were imported from Rome, apparently in such huge numbers that the Emperor Vespasianus (69–79) was compelled to prohibit any further exports. Out of sheer necessity gold was looked for in other areas, including the Indonesian

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Archipelago. Although gold had perhaps been the main motive, other products were also appreciated. This is apparent from the (Sanskrit) names given to the different new areas. Thus we hear among other things of Camphor Island, Coconut Island, etc. Gold Island fits in this series, designating Sumatra, but not exclusively. ‘Gold Island’ is the literal translation of the Sanskrit suvarṇadvīpa, being used side by side with ‘Gold Land’ (suvarṇabhūmi). The latter probably designates Pegu in Burma. It is against this background that the dissemination in Indonesia of Buddhism, and of course also of Hinduism, should be understood. The monks and priests who joined the lengthy sea voyages earned their position on board not least because of their knowledge of the stars and medicine. When exactly Buddhism reached the Archipelago cannot be determined. The oldest traces of Hinduism (and gold) are found on Kalimantan, where are the well-known Kutai inscriptions of King Mūlavarman, dating to around the year 400 (de Casparis 1975: 14ff.). We may assume that Buddhism also reached Indonesia in this period. In support of this contention the fact is often mentioned that early Buddha statues have been found in widely separated places such as Sempaga in Sulawesi, Jember (Java) and Seguntang (Sumatra). Both the geographical dispersion and the early date assigned to these statues (4th–5th century; see Cœdès 1968: 18) would point to an early and wide presence of Buddhism in the Archipelago. Recently, however, it has been rendered plausible that these statues date from a much later period, presumably the 8th or 9th century (see Barrett 1954: 41ff.). Even so, it seems beyond doubt that Buddhism was present in the Archipelago at an early date and almost simultaneously with Hinduism, although in the beginning Hinduism may have enjoyed a greater popularity. Perhaps the report of the Chinese pilgrim Faxian, who visited the Archipelago in 414 (Cœdès 1968: 54–55), sheds light on this. Faxian stated to his regret that Buddhism was not yet influential in contrast to the flourishing community of ‘heretic Brahmins’ (see Krom 1931: 82). In light of the above, the introduction of Buddhism in Tibet occurred at a relatively late date. Although it cannot be excluded that in incidental cases Tibet had gotten into touch with Buddhism from Central Asia, China, or Nepal even earlier (see

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Traces of Indonesian Influences in Tibet Tucci 1970: 13), it was probably only during the reign of King Songtsen Gampo (617–50) that Buddhism was introduced there. It will be generally known that Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism soon acquired a great authority within the Buddhist world. Still, it is worth knowing that there had been Buddhists in the Indonesian Archipelago long before the introduction of Buddhism in Tibet. Therefore, it seems like false modesty when it was stated during a symposium in Jakarta on Śrīvijaya that Buddhism in Śrīvijaya would have been influenced by Tibetan Buddhism (Suleiman 1978: 59; Satari 1979: 88). If indeed there has been some form of influence, then it would have been the other way around, as we will presently see. As was already observed, most of the information on Śrīvijaya is found in Tibetan texts dealing with the saint Atīśa (982–1054). Originating from northeast India, Atīśa stayed in Sumatra at the court of Śrīvijaya for twelve years (1013–25). It was rather chaotic in northern India, especially in this period. From Ghaznī, a fortress south of Kabul, Mahmūd of Ghaznī launched several attacks against India, in 1018 almost reaching Benares (which he plundered in 1033) and attacking Somnāth (Kathiawar) in 1024. The northeastern part of India, along with the famous Buddhist University in Nālandā, still remained spared, but unrest undoubtedly would have penetrated into this region. Although the Buddhism in northeastern India during this period was not yet directly confronted with Islam, it was highly susceptible to infiltration by various Tantric currents, as a result of which ‘classical’ Buddhism virtually disappeared. It is not difficult to imagine that Śrīvijaya took over the role of northeast India in this period. There one could study classical Buddhism in peace. Representative in this context is an illustrated manuscript of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā from the year 1015 (Foucher 1900, 1905), produced three years after Atīśa’s departure for Sumatra. Aside from the text, this manuscript contains a large amount of miniatures of Buddhist divinities and sanctuaries. Most of the illustrations relate to India itself, but a few foreign sanctuaries are also listed. Sri Lanka, for instance, is thrice mentioned and depicted. As for the Indonesian Archipelago, three localities are depicted along with the following captions: (1) ‘On the island of

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Java is Dīpaṅkara (= an early Buddha)’, (2) ‘On the island of Sumatra in Śrīvijayapura is Lokanātha (= Avalokiteśvara)’, (3) ‘In Kedah on Mount Vālavatī is Lokanātha’. In the manuscript’s series of shrines the absence of Nālandā is striking. The fame in India which Śrīvijaya enjoyed in this period is apparent but was of limited duration. Weakened by the attacks from southern India at the hands of the Cōḻas (see Cœdès 1968: 141ff.), Śrīvijaya lost its prominent position in the Buddhist world. Perhaps this is borne out in another manuscript of the previously mentioned Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā (Foucher 1900–5), but which dates from 1071. In this manuscript we also find a series of miniatures of Buddhist sanctuaries in India and beyond. The island of Sri Lanka is again mentioned thrice, which suggests that little changed in the intervening period. As regards the Indonesian Archipelago, however, the picture has radically altered. Only Java is still mentioned. Both Śrīvijaya and Kedah have disappeared from the list of important Buddhist sanctuaries. As said before, the information on Śrīvijaya in Tibetan sources is, generally speaking, not abundant. Yet, a few more or less salient details are worth mentioning. In a list of eight localities where relics of the historical Buddha are venerated, mention is made of Gold Island (see Das 1973: s.v. gnas). Although the Tibetans use the standard translation of the Sanskrit suvarṇadvīpa, ‘Gold Island’ (Tibetan gser gliṅ), it is not immediately clear that this refers to Sumatra. The other seven places enumerated are all located in India or Tibet. Gold Island is the one exception. In spite of the fact that it could confirm the importance of Sumatra, another interpretation is conceivable. Although it is true that the Tibetan word gliṅ is the equivalent of the Sanskrit dvīpa, it can also designate a large monastery. In this case it would relate to a ‘Golden Monastery’, not an unusual name for a vihāra in Nepal and Tibet. A clearer reference to Sumatra is found in the He­ vajratantra. In a list of pilgrimages is mentioned an ‘island yielding gold’ (Hevajratantra 1.7.16). In contrast to the common suvarṇadvīpa for Sumatra, we here find the expression cāmīkarānvita dvīpa, which faithfully recurs in the Tibetan version (gser daṅ ldan pa’i gliṅ). The Yogaratnamālā, the most important Sanskrit commentary on the Tantra,

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leaves little doubt that Sumatra is indeed intended here and gives the usual gloss of suvarṇadvīpa. All in all, it is evident that Śrīvijaya on Sumatra was a renowned centre of Buddhism in the first quarter of the 11th century. From days of old it was a place for studying classical Buddhism frequented by Buddhist pilgrims and scholars. An adventitious circumstance was that Śrīvijayapura was a well-known Buddhist site of pilgrimage. It is not surprising therefore that Atīśa sought refuge here when the situation in northeastern India was no longer favourable for studying classical Buddhism. As one of the most prominent saints in Tibet, it is understandable that a vast amount of secondary literature has come into existence about Atīśa. His biography is found in various Tibetan texts. Herewith it is notable that hardly any attention is devoted to his stay in Sumatra, which must have been of crucial significance for the training of Atīśa. Almost perfunctorily, the outward journey is referred to as ‘dangerous’ but hardly anything is said about the stay itself. Here I will confine myself to a short biography of Atīśa while referring others to the study of Alaka Chattopadhyaya (1967) for more detailed information. Atīśa, a title of honour that he was bequeathed with later, was born into a royal family in Vikramapura (Bengal) in the year 982. At birth he was named Candragarbha. Following his admission to the Buddhist order, in 1001 he received the name Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna. For a period of eleven years he studied the Buddhist doctrine in northeast India, but by force of circumstances in 1012 he left for Śrīvijaya in Sumatra, where, as said, he arrived in 1013 after a dangerous sea voyage. For a period of twelve years (1013–25) he studied at the court of Śrīvijayapura with the teacher Dharmakīrti. In 1025, Atīśa returned to India to become the head of the Vikramaśīla Vihāra in Bengal. At the invitation of the Tibetans, Atīśa left for India in 1040 and, after a short stay in Nepal (1041), reached Tibet in 1042. After a fruitful life he finally died at the age of seveny-two in Netang, a small place ten miles to the southwest of Lhasa. As said before, little is known of his stay in Sumatra. Actually, we know little more than of his study with the teacher Dharmakīrti. According

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to the Tibetan texts translated by Das (1893a), this Dharmakīrti was a Sumatran prince who one day discovered a Buddha statue in a cave. Through his sincere veneration of the Buddha, the Sumatrans had an abundant harvest and spontaneously converted to Buddhism. Longing to know more of the creed, the Sumatran prince left for India, where he stayed for seven years and visited Bodh Gāyā, among other places. From his teacher he received the name Dharmakīrti, ‘Fame of the Dharma’. Having returned to Sumatra he became a famous teacher whose reputation was known as far as India. This hagiography more or less follows a well-known pattern: birth into a royal family, a miraculous acquaintance with Buddhism, embracing the Doctrine. It is obvious that Dharmakīrti must have been one generation older than his pupil Atīśa. Whereas Dharmakīrti had gone to northeast India (presumably Magadha) to study the Doctrine, Atīśa went to Sumatra as the situation prevailing in northeast India had completely altered. Of course the reputation of Dharmakīrti also could have played a role in Atīśa’s decision to leave for Sumatra. We know from the Tibetan author Sum pa that Atīśa had not been the only pupil of Dharmakīrti. At least three other pupils are mentioned by name: Śānti, Śrī Jñānamitra and Ranakīrti (Sum pa, edited by Das 1908: 118). What precisely Dharmakīrti taught his pupils is not recorded, but considering the contents of the seven texts attributed to him this must have been in accordance with the traditional Mahāyānic beliefs as taught by famous teachers such as Nāgārjuna, Maitreyanātha and Candrakīrti (see A. Chattopadyaya 1967: 95). In view of the position of Śrīvijaya as a centre of classical Buddhism there is little reason to assume that local beliefs or ideas could have exerted any influence. The ultimate reason why Atīśa was subsequently invited to Tibet was for the ‘restoration’ and purification of Buddhism again so as to be able to overcome the setback that Tibetan Buddhism had suffered from the persecutions initiated by King Lang Darma2 (838–42). Apparently, Atīśa had enjoyed such a thorough traditional education as to be entrusted 2  Or King Lang Dharma as it more frequently appears in other historical works (translators’ note).

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Traces of Indonesian Influences in Tibet with such a commission—a task that he completed successfully. When Atīśa left Sumatra in 1025 to return to India, he had a small gold statue of the Buddha in his luggage that he had received from his teacher Dharmakīrti. At the occasion of his death in 1054, the statue and a few other personal possessions were distributed among the monks (A. Chattopadhyaya 1967: 439). If this small gold statue was of Sumatran origin and not brought from India by Dharmakīrti, it would imply that a small Buddha statue from Indonesia might still be found somewhere in Tibet. Far more important than this small gold statue are the manuscripts that Atīśa took with him from Sumatra. These manuscripts, amounting to seven, have survived in Tibetan translation and are recorded as such in the Tibetan Canon (TC). The original texts, which clearly were written in Sanskrit, are undoubtedly lost. That these texts originate from Sumatra and were for a large part recorded by Atīśa from the mouth of his teacher is evident from the different colophons. Without going deeper into the texts themselves at this time, it is possible to make a few remarks so as to indicate their significance. According to the Index of the Tibetan Canon (Peking edition; ed. Susuki 1955–61) the seven manuscripts contain six different texts; one text is believed to be found in two manuscripts (sc. TC nos. 5338 and 5464). This turns out to be incorrect. The composer of the said Index apparently relied on the colophons of both manuscripts, which indeed are nearly identical. The only difference is that the divinity Mañjuvajra (’jam pa’i rdo rje) is mentioned in no. 5338, whereas no. 5464 gives the variant Mañjuśrīvajra (’jam dpal rado rje). Both colophons mention the Śikṣāsamuccayābhisamaya text. However, a cursory glance over both texts does suggest that we are dealing with two different works. No. 5464 (around 35 lines) is almost three times as long as no. 5338 (around 13 lines). Any remaining doubt is removed when we read the beginnings of both texts, wherein as usual both the Sanskrit (in Tibetan transcription) and the Tibetan are given. The text no. 5338 indeed appears to have the name Śikṣāsamuccayābhisamaya, but the other (no. 5464) yields the title Śikṣāsamuccayakārikā. As a result of the strong resemblance, in title and

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also probably in colophon, between the two texts, the colophon of no. 5338 has also been used for no. 5464. Whether the last text was also brought from Sumatra to Tibet by Atīśa is, however credible, hard to prove for the moment. The colophons of the two texts in question have created a problem in connection with the kings of Śrīvijaya. In translation the two (nearly identical) colophons read as follows: Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna and bhikṣu Jayaśīla have translated this text [into Tibetan]. The King of Gold Island, the illustrious Dharmapāla, who had incurred the favour of the Sublime Mañjuvajra, exposed the Śikṣāsamuccayābhisamaya to Kamala and Dīpaṅkara.

So we are told that Atīśa (Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna) translated the said text from Sanskrit into Tibetan with the help of Jayaśīla, a renowned translator—the usual procedure. Next we learn of the name of Atīśa’s fellow student, one Kamala. From another colophon we know that his full name was Kamala­ rakṣita. In the list of Sum pa (page 16) this Kamala­ rakṣita is not mentioned. What matters, however, is the fact that King Dharmapāla of Gold Island, who must have ruled during Atīśa’s stay in Sumatra (see Das 1893b: 31; Krom 1931: 249; A. Chattopadhyaya 1967: 92), assuredly is mentioned in both colophons. Here the most common Tibetan word for ‘king’, rgyal po, is used, thus leaving little doubt as to the existence of a king Dharmapāla. This implies, however, that during the twelfth year of Atīśa’s stay in Sumatra three kings must have ruled successively—something that cannot be dismissed out of hand. From one of the colophons of the seven texts (no. 5192) we learn that during Atīśa’s stay in Indonesia, the king Cūḍāmaṇivarman reigned in the capital city of Śrīvijayapura. Each of the two Sanskrit names is clearly rendered in Tibetan: Cūḍāmaṇivarman is referred to as gtsug gi nor bu’i go cha, and the capital city Śrīvijayapura as dpal nram par rgyal ba’i groṅ. King Cūḍāmaṇivarman is especially known from the so-called ‘Great Leiden Charter’, a copperplate inscription from South India rendered both in Sanskrit and Tamil, in which mention is made of a gift by the Cōḻa king Rājarāja I (985–1012) to a Buddhist sanctuary at Nākappaṭṭiṉam, which had been built here by King

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Māravijayottuṅgavarman in honour of his father Cūḍāmaṇivarman. In the ‘Little Leyden Charter’, a shorter South Indian copper plate inscription, we are informed of the exact name of this sanctuary demolished by Jesuits in 1868, namely Śrīśailendracūḍāmaṇivarman Vihāra (see Vogel 1919: 630; Krom 1931: 236 ff.; Cœdès 1968: 141 ff.). King Cūḍāmaṇivarman was thus succeeded by his son Māravijayottuṅgavarman. The latter must have been succeeded by Dharmapāla, known from the Tibetan colophons. Although it is very well possible that the said three kings ruled over Śrīvijaya during the 1013–25 period, it is remarkable that in this case Cūḍāmaṇivarman and Dharmapāla are mentioned in the Tibetan colophons, but not Māravijayottuṅgavarman. Also worth noticing is that the first two kings bear a name ending in -varman, which is not unusual in this connection, whereas [the name] Dharmapāla clearly deviates from this. Lastly, it seems that a king would not be the first eligible person to expound a Buddhist text to two monks. All in all, one can call into question this king Dharmapāla of Gold Island, whose name is not recorded in any epigraphic or Chinese source. The only scholar who entertained doubts as regards King Dharmapāla was J. Naudou (see Cœdès 1968: 325, n. 87). That Naudou’s doubts were justified is borne out by a closer examination of the colophons. In the colophons of the works that Atīśa took with him and translated, his Sumatran teacher is mentioned several times. Only once is he referred to as Dharmakīrti, twice as ‘Dharmapāla, the guru of Gold Island’, and again twice as ‘The guru of Gold Island’. Apparently, the Sumatran teacher was known both as Dharmakīrti and Dharmapāla. In this connection it seems obvious that the suspect king Dharmapāla was in reality this teacher. The mention of the title ‘king’ remains problematic, however. Although it might refer to the royal descent of Dharmakīrti/Dharmapāla, this seems hardly plausible. Rather, here one must assume that the Tibetan rgyal po (Skt. rāja, ‘king’) stands for the longer *rgyal po’i bla ma or rgyal po gu ru, which in India as well as in Indonesia is the title of an adviser or minister of the king, particularly in the field of religion (Skt. rājaguru). This hypothesis is confirmed in the colophon of a work by Atīśa

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himself. In the colophon of the Satyadvayāvatāra (TC no. 5298) Atīśa refers to his teacher as the ‘Rājaguru of Gold Island’ (gser gliṅ rgyal po gu ru). From the above it may be concluded that Atīśa’s teacher in Sumatra was no ordinary instructor, but the incumbent of the highest religious position at the court of Śrīvijaya, namely the ‘minister of religious affairs’. That the Rājaguru indeed held a very important position can be inferred, for instance, from the inscription on the Ligor stele (ad 775) which states that the king of Śrīvijaya had three brick temples erected and that the Rājaguru (here Rājasthavira; see Vogel 1919: 633ff.), named Jayanta, erected three more stūpas. According to the Kalasan inscription (ad 778), King Panaṅkaran [of Java] had a temple for Tārā built at the instigation of the Rājaguru(s).3 Considering the actual content of the six or seven texts that Atīśa took with him, I will be brief. Four (or five) texts are technical and deal with subjects that are fully in line with classical Mahāyāna Buddhism. The other two texts are socalled sādhanas, manuals detailing the correct rules for the veneration of a particular deity/divinity. Of both texts it is stated in the colophon that they were made by the guru of Gold Island himself. As such, these two sādhanas are the only two known examples of this genre from Indonesia. The one sādhana concerns the Bodhisattva Acala (TC no. 3883), whereas the other pertains to Krodhagaṇapati (TC no. 4994). The latter sādhana is especially remarkable. Generally speaking, each sādhana is often known in various versions that, as far as the Sanskrit versions are concerned, are mainly found in the Sādhanamālā and for Tibetan versions in the [Tibetan] Canon. However, the Kro­ dhagaṇapatisādhana exists in the form of one text only, namely that of the guru of Gold Island. Closer inspection of the said sādhana yields some interesting information. Although Gaṇapati or Gaṇeśa, the well-known god with the elephant head, is indeed 3.  Note from the translators: Schoterman writes ‘his’ Rājaguru(s), meaning Panaṅkaran’s Rājaguru, but his interpretation is disputable. The Kalasan inscription itself refers to the Rājaguru(s) of an unnamed Śailendra king whose identification with the Javanese King Panaṅkaran is still hotly contested in archaeological circles and is in need of further substantiation.

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Traces of Indonesian Influences in Tibet the only divinity mentioned in this text, that two gods are involved is clearly shown through the ritual and the mantra used. Within one [and the same] sādhana is combined the veneration of both Gaṇapati and Jambhala, the Buddhist god of wealth. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that a segment from the ninth chapter of the Bhūtaḍāmaratantra, a text of mainly magical contents, of which there exists both a Buddhist and a Hindu version, is cited in the sādhana. The Buddhist version definitely is of respectable antiquity (first half of the 7th century; see Goudriaan 1981: 118). In the above we have already referred briefly to the construction of a temple for the goddess Tārā, as reported in the Kalasan inscription of ad 778. The goddess Tārā assumes an important position, at least according to the Tibetan sources, in light of the relationship between Tibet and Indonesia. Tārā, more or less the national goddess of Tibet, allegedly would have revealed herself especially through the line of Dharmakīrti of Gold Island and his pupil Atīśa, whereby the latter would have introduced the Tārā cult in Tibet. About this, a Tibetan source says the following: ‘Here in Tibet five traditions have come down to us. The most important is Atīśa’s School. Both he and his own teacher, Dharmakīrti of Gold Island, continuously saw the face of the Noble Lady (i.e., Tārā) and they both expounded the tradition. Hers is the first of the traditional schools introduced in our country’ (see Beyer 1973: 417ff.). From this and other Tibetan sources (Beyer 1973: 14ff.), it is clearly shown that the goddess Tārā first revealed herself to Dharmakīrti who then passed on the tradition to Atīśa. Although the information from Tibetan sources stresses the importance of the Guru from Gold Island in relation to Tibetan sources, these claims should not be accepted at face value. For if we accept the Tibetan information it would imply that the cult of Tārā was introduced from Śrīvijaya into Tibet only after ad 1042. Although this view is hardly tenable, it may contain a kernel of truth. The most common tradition about the introduction of Tārā in Tibet centres around the time of King Songtsen Gampo (617–50), during whose reign Buddhism gained firm footing in Tibet (see above, p. 115). For political reasons, according to indigenous sources, the king married a Nepalese

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princess and a Chinese princess, who were both regarded as incarnations of Tārā (see Tucci 1962: 121–26). As part of the wedding gifts, the Nepalese wife brought a sandalwood statue of Tārā to Tibet where it was erected in a temple. Beyer rightly observes that a widespread veneration of Tārā could not yet have existed in this early period and that the statue was erected in the temple largely for political motives (Beyer 1973: 6). Still, it is clear that the goddess Tārā was known in Tibet from as early as the first half of the 7th century. Seen in this light, the claims in the Tibetan sources that it was Atīśa who introduced Tārā in Tibet should rather be understood as referring to the beginnings of a widespread Tārā cult, which must have been less important and/or had suffered from the persecutions initiated by King Lang Darma prior to Atīśa. From the biographies of Atīśa, it appears that he had a close relationship with Tārā from an early age. Thus it becomes understandable that it was precisely Tārā who appeared to him in a vision to renounce royal power and search for a teacher in another country (see Roerich 1949 and 1953: 242). Everything points to the fact that Atīśa was a devout adherent of Tārā long before his visit to Śrīvijaya. It is known that the goddess Tārā was venerated in Northeast India long before Atīśa’s time. One of the earliest references is found in the itinerary of the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, who travelled in India between 633 and 645. He reports to have seen two statues of To-lo (i.e., Tārā) in the environs of Nālandā. Another ‘early’ Tārā from the region is a statue of the goddess dating from about ad 845 and originating from Hilsa (Patna; Sircar 1967: 128). Inscribed on this statue is the mantra oṁ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā, which still is the most important mantra in the cult of Tārā up to this very day. There is, clearly, little reason to regard Śrīvijaya in Sumatra as the place of origin of the cult of Tārā, thence finding its way to Tibet. Atīśa was already familiar with Tārā before his arrival in Sumatra, and Dharmakīrti is almost automatically mentioned in this connection for the simple fact that he was Atīśa’s teacher. Here we should not forget that Dharmakīrti himself spent seven years in northeast India studying Buddhism and that he may have learned about the Tārā cult existing there.

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Even though it is not very likely that Tārā revealed herself in Śrīvijaya to Dharmakīrti, who passed on the tradition to his pupil Atīśa, we cannot rule out the possibility that the cult of Tārā was known in Indonesia at an early date. The Sanskrit inscription of Kalasan from 778, which mentions the construction of a temple for Tārā (tārā­bhavana) in the plain of Prambanan, is actually one of the earliest extant references to a Tārā cult. In summary, we could advance the supposition that Atīśa found a long-existing Tārā cult upon his arrival in Śrīvijaya in 1013, as a result of which his own interest in the goddess was further strengthened. Aside from this, his teacher Dharmakīrti could have contributed to the enthusiasm and the diligence with which Atīśa later propagated the veneration of Tārā in Tibet. A final point relating to the relationship of Indonesia and Tibet concerns the possible existence of a monument in memory of Dharmakīrti in Tibet. The Tibetan monk Mkhyen brtse (1820–92) compiled a sort of religious travel guide for pilgrims who wanted to visit the holy places in central Tibet. To assist these pilgrims he presents a list of the sanctuaries and what can be found inside the walls of Ü, the central province of Tibet with the capital Lhasa. First mentioned by Mkhyen brtse is the famous monastery Reting (rva sgreṅ) to the northeast of Lhasa. According to the guidebook, the relics of bla ma gser gliṅ pa, of jo bo, and of ’brom ston pa rgyal ba’i byun gnas are to be found inside the walls of the said monastery. There is no doubt as regards the identification of the latter two individuals. Jo bo (Skt. ārya) refers to Atīśa, his usual name in Tibet. The last ’Brom ston (1003–63) is the most important pupil of Atīśa. Certainly, the Reting monastery harbours the relics of Atīśa and his pupil ’Brom ston. As already said (p. 116), Atīśa died in 1054 at Netang (sñe thaṅ), a small place to the southwest of Lhasa. After his cremation the major part of Atīśa’s ashes were installed in a stūpa there. In the 20th century the tomb was visited by Waddell in 1904 (Waddell 1905: 320ff.) and by Sir Charles Bell (1931: 58, followed by a photograph of the said tomb). However, the guidebook mentions Reting as the place where Atīśa’s relics are found. Apparently, the relics or a part thereof were transferred

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to Reting (Ferrari 1958: 77, n. 3). Three years after Atīśa’s demise, Reting monastery was founded in 1057 (Tucci 1970: 41) by his pupil ’Brom ston at the instigation of his teacher. It seems plausible that the relics of the founder, ’Brom ston, are kept in the monastery, and that the same ’Bron ston also ordered the transfer of the relics of his own teacher to Reting. After all, Atīśa was a very important and popular figure and the interment of his relics would only add to the fame of the monastery. The question remaining is the identity of bla ma gser gliṅ pa whose relics are safeguarded in the Reting monastery next to Atīśa and ’Brom ston. In her notices on this bla ma gser gliṅ pa, Alfonsa Ferrari observes that it probably refers to Gser gliṅ pa Bkra śis dpal, who was born in Gser glin and lived from 1292 until 1365 (Ferrari 1958: 78, n. 6). In fairness to Ferrari, I must add that she states in a note that ‘there also was a bla ma Gser gliṅ pa (Suvarṇadvīpika), master of Atīśa, but since he was an Indian teacher (in fact, this is but a surname of Dharmakīrti—L[uciano] P[etech]) it seems impossible to me that his relics should be preserved here’. Obviously the views of Alfonsa Ferrari will not be endorsed here. Firstly, the ‘master of Atīśa’ was not an Indian teacher but originated from Sumatra, in spite of the fact that Luciano Petech clearly confuses Dharmakīrti of Gold Island with the famous Buddhist logician Dharmakīrti (7th century), who is never said to originate from Gold Island. Aside from this, it seems very unlikely that a rather unknown monk, who lived three centuries after Atīśa, would have been interred in the vicinity of Atīśa and ’Brom ston. It seems more logical to interpret bla ma gser gliṅ pa literally and as referring to the guru of Gold Island, meaning Atīśa’s teacher Dharmakīrti. This would imply that the relics, or at least parts thereof, of Dharmakīrti in the Tibetan Reting monastery are interred next to the relics of his most renowned pupil Atīśa and the latter’s most famous pupil, ’Brom ston. The circle is closed. Ferrari finds it inconceivable that the relics of an Indian teacher of Atīśa were interred here, let alone those of a Sumatran teacher. Yet it is known that Atīśa did take the relics of an Indian teacher with him to Tibet, namely the relics of Nāropā that were interred in a caitya at Netang (see A. Chattopadyaya 1967: 439). In memory of this, Atīśa is depicted with

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Traces of Indonesian Influences in Tibet a smaller caitya. In light of this connection it is no longer odd to suppose the existence of a stūpa or caitya in the Reting monastery in memory of Dharmakīrti of Gold Island. This would imply that when Atīśa left Śrīvijaya in 1025, his teacher was no longer living. Perhaps the demise of his teacher was the direct cause for Atīśa to return to India. Be

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that as it may, Atīśa must have brought a part of the relics with him to India and subsequently to Tibet. If this line of reasoning is acceptable, it would imply that the relics of Dharmakīrti, the Rājaguru of the Sumatran kingdom of Śrīvijaya, are found in the Reting monastery in central Tibet.

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Chapter 5

The Politics of Esoteric Buddhism: Amoghavajra and the Tang State geoffr ey goble

I

t is broadly recognized in scholarship today that Esoteric Buddhism spread rapidly throughout Asia from the 8th century onwards and was consistently aligned with local political institutions and ruling classes.1 This relationship between esoteric traditions and local political structures can be found historically from post-Gupta India, to the maritime kingdom of Śrīvijaya, to Central Asian Tibetan states, and the pseudo-Sinitic polity of Dali 大理 in what is now southwestern China. The alignment of Esoteric Buddhism and local political institutions throughout Asia likely reflects fundamental structural elements of the movement stemming from its Indic origins. Following Ronald Davidson’s (2002) thesis that Esoteric Buddhism emerged in India as the result of particular shifting social realities and as a reflection of the political structures he refers to as ‘Samānta feudalism’, one expects a consistent association of Esoteric Buddhist practitioners and institutions with local 1. Dating the emergence and dissemination of Esoteric Buddhism to the 8th century is based on a privileging of locally recognized, institutional articulations of the tradition. The earliest of which I am aware occurred in China during the 8th century. Although less well-documented, the 8th-century dissemination of Esoteric Buddhism by Padmasambhava in Tibet would also argue for this time frame. Other approaches that would shift this date, sometimes dramatically, are possible. If identified with texts in which are found the practical precursors of what is sometimes considered to be ‘mature’ Esoteric Buddhism, then this date might well be pushed back to the 4th or 5th century, with the Chinese translation of a number of Buddhist scriptures in which dhāraṇī are central. Alternately, one might identify the development of doxographical projects aimed at incorporating esoteric texts into a larger bibliographic framework, in which case a 7th-century date predicated on Buddhaghuya’s would be apropos (see Hodge 2003).

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political institutions and rulers. Even considered in the abstract, Esoteric Buddhism appears to be a crypto-political system. The maṇḍala is simultaneously a central aspect of the late-mediaeval Indian political system and a paradigmatic element of Esoteric Buddhist systems throughout Asia. In addition to the examples mentioned above, there was also an integration of Esoteric Buddhism and the apparatus of the state in Tang dynasty China (618–907). The nature of this integration is an instructive case study for considering how some of the features of Esoteric Buddhism made it such an appealing religious and ritual ideology for local rulers. Among the characteristics of Esoteric Buddhism that conduced to its assimilation within the apparatus of the state were (1) its ethical flexibility, (2) its emphasis on mundane rather than strictly soteriological goals, and (3) the violent, militarily applicable nature of many Esoteric Buddhist rites. These characteristics reflect the central ethos of the Esoteric Buddhist tradition that emerged in the 8th century: an ethos of subjugation, coercion, and control.

esoteric buddhism in china The Comprehensive Mirror for Aiding Government (Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑒), an 11th- century chronicle produced by the court academician Sima Guang 司馬光 (1019–86), depicts the following scene: Jiashen day 甲申 of the ninth month [of the second year of Highest Prime (shangyuan 上元)], (Oct. 5, 761): the festival of Heavenly Pacification (i.e., the Emperor’s birthday)—His Highness set up a maṇḍala (daochang 道場) in the Triple Hall (sandian 三殿)2 taking the 2. Sandian 三殿: In the Tang dynasty, the Triple Hall was

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Palace Women (gongren 宮人)3 to act as Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and the North Gate military elite (beimen wushi 北門武士)4 to act as Vajra[pāṇis? -sattvas?] and divine kings. He summoned the Grand Ministers (dachen 大臣)5 to prostrate to and circumambulate them.6

This passage is illustrative of a number of issues germane to the present inquiry. First, taken as a reflection of true historical events, this scene indicates the degree to which Esoteric Buddhist norms, ideals, and structures were adopted in Tang dynasty China: the Chinese emperor Suzong 肅宗 (Li Heng 李亨, r. 756–62) is shown employing the maṇḍala structure as a model of political authority. In other words, fundamental elements of Esoteric Buddhism were incorporated into the most rarefied strata of the Chinese imperial government. However, this passage is taken from a historical work written by one of the most elite members of the Song dynasty literati class. As such, the Comprehensive Mirror for Aiding Government is a didactic work. This is indicated by its title, which invokes the traditional Chinese trope of history-as-mirror for investigating used as another name for the Hall of Virtuous Lin (linde dian 麟德殿), which was a three-sided structure, hence the epithet. Generally, though, it was a reference to the three halls of the Central Palace. 3.  Gongren 宮人 is a general term indicating imperial servants. Rather than court eunuchs, the term generally indicates women of the palace, though it is sometimes used exclusively as a reference to servant-women and does not include the empress, imperial consorts, concubines, or other high-ranking women in the Imperial Palace. The precise referent here is not clear, though the different possibilities have little influence on the scene that Sima Guang is creating (Hucker 1985: 293). 4.  Beimen wushi 北門武士: this appears to be a reference to the military leadership of the Four Imperial Armies of the Northern Gates (beimen si jun 北門四軍). These consisted of the two (right and left) Forest of Plumes Armies (yulin jun 羽林軍) and the two (right and left) Militant as Dragons Armies (longwu jun 龍武軍). These four armies were stationed at the imperial capital and were tasked with the protection of the emperor and the imperial government (Hucker 1985: 372). 5.  Dachen 大臣: the term chen is a generic, often diminutive, term for individuals holding government positions. Modified here by da 大 (‘great, grand’) the term indicates high-ranking members of the central government. 6.  Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑒 222.

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oneself and thereby avoiding the pitfalls and errors of the past. Given the rampant discord during Suzong’s relatively brief reign, the moral of this anecdote would have been apparent: the emperor is engaging in misguided, inappropriate behaviour detrimental to political stability and personal longevity. He is adopting a foreign religious system, the implementation of which has court officials (like Sima Guang and his literati confrères) making obeisance to military men and to women. Suzong is inverting the political and social norms central to the Confucian tradition, in which court literati like Sima Guang were steeped. This aspect of the anecdote points to a second issue concerning the assimilation of Esoteric Buddhism in Tang China: the adoption of Esoteric Buddhism by the Tang did not occur in a cultural or political vacuum. Rather, in Tang dynasty China, Esoteric Buddhism was adopted and implemented within well-established cultural institutions. While the maṇḍala system of Indic feudalism and the esoteric traditions that emerged from it provided the political template for a number of Asian states, such was not the case in China. With well-defined and entrenched systems of governance and political legitimation established long before the first Buddhists reached the Central Kingdom during the Han dynasty (206 bc–ad 220), we see not a restructuring of the Chinese state according to the religio-political patterns of Esoteric Buddhism so much as the incorporation of Esoteric Buddhism into the well-established apparatus of the Sinitic state, governed according to bureaucratic and ritual norms effectively established in the Han dynasty and anchored in the idealized Zhou dynasty. As such, the case of the Chinese appropriation of Esoteric Buddhism is instructive, for it allows us to explore the question of how Esoteric Buddhist practices and practitioners were able to mesh with institutions foreign to those from which they originated. Although we must recognize the fluidity of local and historical conditions and be careful not to overextend our evidence through over-broad conclusions, consideration of Esoteric Buddhism in 8th-century China may provide some insight into the basic elements of the pan-Asian esoteric tradition that facilitated its rapid and extensive spread.

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The Politics of Esoteric Buddhism The exact referent of Esoteric Buddhism, especially in the Chinese case, is a contentious matter in contemporary scholarship.7 While the textbook definition of the tradition as being strictly associated with the foreign Buddhist monks Śubhākarasiṁha, Vajrabodhi (a.k.a. Vajrabuddhi; see Appendix A) and Amoghavajra is contested, I will largely restrict my consideration of Esoteric Buddhism to the person of Amoghavajra, since it was his activities and accomplishments that most directly impinge on our topic of the intersection of Esoteric Buddhism and local political institutions in China. This much is implicitly indicated in Sima Guang’s passage, as Emperor Suzong was an ardent supporter of Amoghavajra. If we are to take that scene to be veridical, then it occurred as a result of Amoghavajra’s actions and relationship with the emperor and other members of the ruling elite. In any case, the prestige of Amoghavajra in the Tang court is well known and the extent of that prestige was not lost on later court literati: The barbarian (胡) monk Amoghavajra’s governmental appointment reached the rank of Chief Minister (卿監)8 and he was enfeoffed as a Duke of State (國公).9 He secured an official position in the Imperial Palace with the power to remove Palace Ministers 公卿. He strove 7.  For example, Sharf (2002) argues that the scholarly construction of Esoteric Buddhism as a sectarian Chinese tradition is an anachronistic projection of Japanese norms and institutions. McBride (2005) makes a similar argument by arguing that apparent references to the ‘esoteric teaching’ (mijiao 密教) in relevant sources are merely references to mainstream Mahāyāna Buddhism rather than to a self-consciously distinct sectarian movement in China. For his part, Orzech (2006) takes a different approach, arguing that evidence indicates that Amoghavajra represented Esoteric Buddhism as a distinct teaching within the Chinese Buddhist milieu. 8.  Qingjian 卿監: in both the Tang and Song dynasties, the term qingjian was employed as a generic rather than specific title. In the Song, from which our quoted passage comes, it was used as a designation for officials holding prestige titles (sanguan 散官), that is individuals holding a title fixing their seniority and rank within a particular bureaucratic hierarchy without relation to their actual functional post or activities (Hucker 1985: 174, 398). 9. Gougong 國公: The Duke of State was a title of nobility behind only Prince (王) and Commandery Prince (君王). See Hucker 1985: 298.

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for authority and arrogated power, vying even with the sun itself. (JTS 118.3417)

The incorporation of Amoghavajra—the most elite ācārya of Esoteric Buddhism in China—into the official bureaucratic structure indicated here effectively represents the incorporation of Esoteric Buddhism into those structures. Accordingly, the incorporation of Amoghavajra into the structures of the Chinese imperial government may be taken generally as representative of the assimilation of Esoteric Buddhism. However, insofar as Amoghavajra is known to have employed texts and techniques derived from a number of sources and given that we are concerned here not only with the lineaments of the Esoteric Buddhism in China but also throughout Asia, I will draw illustrative examples of aspects of this movement that are relevant to its adoption by the Tang government from a range of materials produced in China by Amoghavajra as well as by Śubhākarasiṁha and Vajrabodhi.

the tang imperial state The imperial Sinitic state during the Tang dynasty may be conceptualized as consisting of three basic sectors: (1) the imperial family, (2) the imperial central government, and (3) the imperial military. With its references to the ‘Northern Gate Military Elite’, ‘Palace Women’, and ‘the Grand Ministers’, these three dimensions of the central Sinitic state are reflected in Sima Guang’s vignette above. In sources concerning Amoghavajra, including those that he himself composed, his relationship to three successive emperors of the Tang dynasty is emphasized. In his final testament, Amoghavajra provides the following brief autobiography: I left home as a child (髫齓) and relying on the Master [Vajrabodhi] I sought the Indic texts for more than twenty years. Day and night [studying] diligently. I humbly received his council and accepted the Law of Yoga in 4,000 verses. Alas, he eventually became ill and the Master’s life came to an end. Living without anyone to rely on, on whom could I depend? Thus, I distantly roamed to India – traversing the perilous seas, everywhere studying yoga, and personally honoring the remains of the Sage. I obtained the 10,000 verse seal of the Law

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Treasury, which I transmitted, returning to the land of the Emperor (帝), blessing the land and practicing conversion. Thus, in one court I served as the master of three generations of Emperors. To the lords of men I exhaustively conferred the secret yoga and transmitted the seal of the Law. Consequently, since the current Sage expanded the teaching, the most profound eighteen assemblies of yoga have been exhaustively established, the thirty-seven Sage Worthies are each cultivated, the ritual field is always entered, in reliance on time there is recitation and recollection. The Nine-fold Layers of Ten-thousand Chariots10 continuously visualizes (觀) the heart of the Five Wisdoms. The Imperial Courtyard of One Hundred Houses11 exhaustively grasp the seal of the triple mystery. (T 2120.844a18–27)

There are a number of significant elements to this brief summary of his career, but for our present purposes we should note Amoghavajra’s references to the adoption of Esoteric Buddhism by the Tang emperors—Xuanzong 玄宗 (Li Longji 李隆基; r. 712–56), Suzong 肅宗 (Li Heng 李亨; r. 756–62), and Daizong 代宗 (Li Yu 李豫; r. 762–79). As to the nature of these relationships, while there is overwhelming evidence of Amoghavajra’s interactions with Suzong and Daizong, material concerning his relationship with Emperor Xuanzong is scant, largely circumstantial, and frequently legendary. In short, not much can be said with certainty concerning Amoghavajra’s interactions with Emperor Xuanzong. It appears to be the case that Amoghavajra conducted an initiation or consecration (guanding 灌頂) rite for Xuanzong, but the precise nature of this rite is indeterminable. In any case, it is with the reign of Emperor Suzong that an image of Amoghavajra’s relationship with a Tang emperor becomes distinct. Suzong, however, died in May of 762 at the age of fifty-one. His six-year reign was brief and characterized by radical upheaval and strife. While Amoghavajra’s relationship with Emperor Suzong is fairly well documented, it was under Emperor Daizong that Amoghavajra (read: 10.  九重萬乘 jiuzhong wansheng: ‘Nine-fold Layers of Ten-thousand Chariots’ is a metonym for the emperor. 11.  闕庭百寮 queting bailiao: ‘Imperial Courtyard of One Hundred Houses’ is a reference to the imperial courtesans and officials.

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Esoteric Buddhism) enjoyed the most widespread and long-lasting imperial patronage during the Tang dynasty.12 Although it is typically the persons of the Tang emperors who are emphasized in treatments of Amoghavajra and of Esoteric Buddhism in China, imperial patronage did not flow simply from the Sons of Heaven. Such patronage also came from members of the imperial family, many of whom had a personal relationship with, and were disciples of, Amoghavajra. Esoteric Buddhism was adopted by members of the imperial family, not just by sitting emperors. For example, it appears that Suzong’s empress Zhang 張皇后 was a patron of Amoghavajra and, one may therefore assume, a practitioner of Esoteric Buddhism. On 19 May 758, one month after having named the empress, Amoghavajra conveyed his congratulations to Suzong (Memorials and Edicts, T 2120.828c13). These congratulations might have been more significant than a simple attempt to curry favour or observe a certain etiquette. It is possible that she was known personally to Amoghavajra. Empress Zhang was a dedicated Buddhist. In an effort to cultivate merit and assist the emperor during a period of illness, she reportedly copied out sutras in her own blood in February of 761.13 Although we have no direct evidence of a personal relationship between Amoghavajra and Empress Zhang, there is strong circumstantial evidence in support of such a theory: she delivered an elegy for Amoghavajra on 16 August 774—the day of his interment (Memorials and Edicts, T 2120.0847b25–c13). There is also the example of the Huayang Princess 華陽公主, the daughter of Emperor Daizong and his empress, Lady Dugu 獨孤氏. On 7 November 773 Amoghavajra sent a memorial to Emperor Daizong thanking him for a gift of the canon of scriptures. The recipient of this gift was not, however, Amoghavajra. It was the Huayang Princess, who had evidently been placed in his personal care. 12.  The significance of Emperor Daizong’s patronage has been noted by other scholars as well. See, for example, Orzech 2006: 51, 2011: 274–75, and Chen 2004: 132–33. 13.  JTS 10.260. The composition and copying of Buddhist scriptures in one’s own blood, while not a widespread practice, was a known practice of Chinese Buddhists: see Benn 2007.

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duties, these men were traditionally expected to advise the emperor on matters of state. The actual business of managing the Imperium fell mainly on the agencies of the Three Departments (san sheng 三省): the Department of State Affairs (shangshu sheng 尚書省), the Central Secretariat (zhongshu sheng 中書省), and the Chancellery (menxia sheng 門下省). Actual administrative duties were overseen by the Department of State Affairs, which was managed through the Department’s Executive Office by one director and two vice directors. These men exercised oversight over the six ministries that composed the Department of State Affairs: the Ministries of Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, and Works. Each of these ministries supervised particular aspects of state administration (XTS 46.1184–1186). The Ministry of Personnel (libu 吏部) administered the appointments, promotions, demotions, and so forth of the civil officials who staffed the vast imperial bureaucracy (XTS 46.1184– 1186). The Ministry of Revenue (minbu 民部 or hubu 戶部) directed the assessment and collection of Upon the death of the princess in June of 774 taxes (XTS 46.1192–1193). The Ministry of Justice Amoghavajra sent another memorial to the grieving or Punishment (xingbu 刑部) was charged with Daizong, describing the diligence with which he supervision of prisons, convicts, and the general attended her, though to no avail, she being human application of justice throughout the empire (XTS and subject to death (T 2120.843c14–27). Daizong 46.1199–1201). Each of these individual ministries responded, acknowledging as much and two days was managed by a minister who supervised the later made a personal gift of white mourning garb bureaus of which the ministries were composed. for Amoghavajra (T 2120.844a5–15). Before her The Ministry of Rites (libu 禮部), for example, which death, however, a sum of thirty million strings of typically held responsibility for imperial and court cash had been donated to finance one of Amogharituals, oversight of visiting foreign dignitaries, and vajra’s projects on Mount Wutai, the construction of Daoist and Buddhist institutions, consisted of of a Mañjuśrī pavilion. The donors were Emperor a Headquarters Bureau, a Bureau of Sacrifices, a Daizong, his empress Dugu, their son the Han Prince, Bureau of Receptions, and a Bureau of Provisions and his sister, the Huayang Princess (T 2056.293c14). (XTS 46.1193–1196). Although the Department of The patronage of Amoghavajra and the adopState Affairs was the functional administrative tion of Esoteric Buddhism in Tang dynasty China unit of the central bureaucracy, the Secretariat extended beyond members of the imperial family and Chancellery held greater de facto power. This to also include office holders in the central impepower was the result of the function of these two rial government. The Tang central government was administered by an extensive bureaucracy of civil officials (wen guan 文官). The most prestig- dian (Taibao 太保). For the Three Preceptors see Hucker ious members of this bureaucracy were the Three 1985: 30, 48, 401, 477, 480, and also Des Routers 1947: 19. Preceptors (san shi 三師) and the Three Dukes (san The Three Dukes were the Defender-in-Chief (Taiwei 太 尉), the Minister of Education (Situ 司徒), and the Minister gong 三公).14 Though these posts carried no official of Works (Sikong 司空). For the Three Dukes see Hucker The śramaṇa Amoghavajra says: the Palace Receptionist, Director Wu Xiuyue 吳休悅 presented the declaration of the Sage’s edict [that] Qionghua Zhenren Truly Like a Diamond (瓊 華真人真如金剛) [receive] a treasury of all the scriptures—5,050 fascicles in all—with sandalwood spools and cases of woven silk brocade. Much incense accompanied the scriptural treasury—a fragrant wooden scripture table, a golden, bejeweled incense burner with glowing rosy clouds and the sun and moon in the space between. The lustrous radiance and sweet fragrance overflow into the streets and thoroughfares…. Indeed all those who contemplate and receive and keep the Buddha’s sagacious canon win blessings without end. I hope that my slight realization will be the cause of success. I have accordingly dispatched fourteen people to continuously recite scriptures. I hope that Zhenren Truly Like a Diamond, of firm blessings and virtues, an ornament to the Sagacious Emperor’s throne, will be renewed for 10,000 kalpas. (T 2120.843a18–a27)

14.  The Three Preceptors were the Grand Preceptor (Taishi 太師), the Grand Mentor (Taifu 太傅), and the Grand Guar-

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1985: 30, 399, 450, 458, 485. The description of the Three Preceptors and Three Dukes in the Tang appears in the Newer Tang History: XTS 46.1184.

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departments: the control of information in the form of edicts from, and memorials to, the throne. The most powerful members of the central bureaucracy were the Grand Councillors (zaixiang 宰 相 or xianggong 相攻). Officially, the Grand Councillors were composed of men serving in the central bureaucracy as directors and vice directors of the Three Departments and who, in theory, met in daily conference with the emperor.15 In practice, though, the Grand Councillors were usually composed of men selected from a variety of offices on the basis of a given emperor’s personal regard or trust. Such men had their titles supplemented and qualified with the official designation ‘Jointly Manager of Affairs with the Secretariat-Chancellery’ (tong zhongshu-menxia pingzhang shi 同中書門下平章事), or simply ‘Manager of Affairs’ (pingzhang shi 平章事). Under the reign of Daizong, when Amoghavajra received his most ardent and indulgent imperial support, at least four Grand Councillors—Du Hongjian 杜鴻漸, Wang Jin 王晉, Yuan Zai 元載, and Li Baoyu 李抱玉—were devoted supporters of Amoghavajra and, by extension, perhaps also practitioners of Esoteric Buddhism. The role played by Du Hongjian, Wang Jin, and Yuan Zai in Amoghavajra’s imperial support was not lost on the editors of the Older Tang History. An object of their opprobrium, the blame for Emperor Daizong’s devotion to Esoteric Buddhism and his patronage of Amoghavajra is laid specifically at the feet of those three men: Initially, Daizong delighted in the ancestral temple and deities and did not lay much importance on the Buddha, but Yuan Zai, Du Hongjian, and [Wang] Jin delighted in [providing] meals for monks. Daizong once inquired as to the affairs of blessing and karmic retribution, so Zai and the others produced a memorial and Daizong followed this memorial excessively. He once commanded that food for 100 monks [be provided], that Buddha images be laid out in the central palace, and that the recitation (念誦) of scriptures be practiced. He called it the Inner [Palace] ritual platform (道場). The meals that were provided were generous and of exceedingly rare [dishes]. Coming and going, [the monks] rode horses of the 15.  See Hucker 1985: 30; XTS 46.1182–1183.

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[Imperial] stables. The Ministry of Revenue (度支) provided them with an allowance from the Granary. Whenever the Tibetans (西蕃) invaded [Daizong] would certainly command the monks to recite the Scripture for Humane Kings in order to resist and capture the invaders. If there happened to be the good fortune of those [invaders] retreating, then [Daizong] would unreasonably bestow gifts.16

The passage clearly conveys a negative valuation of the emperor’s support, and the story of Daizong’s so-called conversion as the result of the Grand Councillors’ memorial is, like the story of Suzong constructing a living maṇḍala, probably fabricated for didactic purposes. Nevertheless, this passage does reflect certain historical realities. For example, it is evident from the correspondence between Daizong and Amoghavajra preserved in the Memorials and Edicts that Du Hongjian, Wang Jin, and Yuan Zai were instrumental in facilitating Amoghavajra’s imperial patronage under Daizong. From the beginning of Daizong’s reign, the names of these men consistently appear on memorials and edicts from and to Amoghavajra. As with the members of the imperial family mentioned above, it is evident that Amoghavajra had personal relationships with these men. However, given their positions in the imperial bureaucracy, these personal relationships translated into institutional support for Amoghavajra and Esoteric Buddhism. Du Hongjian 杜鴻漸 (?–13 Dec. 769) was the scion of a family of officials whose own career path closely followed that of his father, Du Xian 杜暹 (d.u.).17 Du Hongjian earned the rank of Presented Scholar and joined the army. In 755, when the An Lushan 安路山 Rebellions erupted, Hongjian occupied several posts. He was Rectifier for the Chamberlain of Law Enforcement (dali sizhi 大理 16.  JTS 118.3417. The information in this passage is essentially repeated by Zanning in his Great Song Brief History of the Saṅgha (T 2126.247b23–247c8). 17.  His father had earned the rank of Classicist (mingjing 明經) in the civil service recruitment exam before joining the army. Xian went on to serve with distinction on the Western frontier in the Tang protectorate of Anxi during the reign of Xuanzong. He ended his career holding the post of Grand Councillor. For Du Xian’s biography, see JTS 98.3075–3077. See also Twitchett and Fairbank 1978: 390–91.

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司直) on the staff of the Heir Apparent, Li Heng.

overshadowed neither his earlier accomplishments Hongjian maintained his ties to the Tang military nor the esteem with which he was held by Emperor at this time, serving concurrently as Capital Liaison Daizong. Upon his death on 13 December 769, the Representative to the Military Commissioner of emperor suspended court for three days of mournShuofang 朔方 and as Deputy Fiscal Commission- ing and Hongjian received the posthumous title er.18 With his close ties to both the Heir Apparent Defender-in-Chief and the courtesy name Wenxian and to the Tang military establishment, Du Hong- 文憲, the ‘Literary Charter’ (JTS 11.294; 108.3284). jian was immediately promoted when Emperor XuThe biographies of Wang Jin 王縉 (700–31 Dec. anzong abdicated and Li Heng ascended the throne 781) in the standard histories are not as detailed as to become Emperor Suzong. Under the nascent those of Du Hongjian. Indicative of a subsequent Emperor Suzong, Du Hongjian was first appointed generation’s disdain, the biography of Wang Jin to the Ministry of War 兵部郎中 (JTS 108. 3283) and in the Older Tang History essentially reports only then to Supervisor of the Supreme Area Command Jin’s devotion to Buddhism and his inappropriate of Jingzhou 荊州and Military Commissioner of influence on Emperor Daizong. The Newer Tang Jingnan 荊南.19 On 1 June 757, still serving as Vice History offers little improvement, adding only a Director of the Ministry of War, Du Hongjian was cursory outline of Jin’s promotions during and installed as Military Commissioner of Hexi (JTS following the Rebellion Period. According to the 10.246). When Emperors Xuanzong and Suzong Newer Tang History, Wang Jin began his career both died in 762, Hongjian, as Minister of the Court with an appointment as Vice Governor to Taiyuan. of Imperial Sacrifices (taichang liang 太常卿) and This was immediately following the rebellion of Commissioner for Ceremonial Propriety (liyi shi An Lushan. The appointment was significant and 禮儀使), oversaw the imperial funerary rites. His intuitive. Taiyuan was the ancestral home of both prominence in the imperial bureaucracy contin- Wang Jin and the Tang ruling family. During the ued under Emperor Daizong as he was appointed Rebellion Period, Taiyuan served first as a bulwark Vice Director of the Secretariat on 2 September and then as a forward operating base as loyalist 764 (JTS 11.275-6; 108.3283). Hongjian ended his troops assembled and counter-attacked under the career with an unfortunate appointment as Deputy command of Li Guangbi 李光弼, who was assisted Marshal of Shanzhou and Jianzhou and Military by Wang Jin (XTS 145.4715). As a result of his service Commissioner of Jiannan. In this capacity he was and success at this time, Wang Jin was promoted charged with restoring imperial regulation in the to a post in the central bureaucracy in the MinSichuan Basin in the face of persistent barbarian istry of War. Following the re-establishment of incursions and the open insolence of Cui Gan 崔旰. the Tang rulers in 758, Wang Jin became a Grand Hongjian was specifically tasked to put down Cui Councillor under Emperor Suzong with an apGan’s insurrection, but was unable to do so. Instead, pointment as Vice Director of the Chancellery (XTS Gan was symbolically brought to heel by recog- 145.4715). His importance in court did not wane nizing him as Capital Liaison Representative of when Daizong ascended the throne in 762. Two Sichuan.20 Hongjian’s failures later in life, however, years later, on 2 September 764—the same date as Du Hongjian’s promotion to Vice Director of the Secretariat—Wang Jin was appointed Director of 18.  JTS 108.3283. Zhidu fushi 支度副使: the Fiscal Commis- the Chancellery and was promoted to the peerage sioner was responsible for administering the finances of as Duke of Taiyuan Commandery (XTS 145.4716; military units stationed on the frontier and for submitting JTS 11.275–6). Three weeks later, Wang Jin became fiscal reports to the central government (Hucker 1985: 164). Regent of the Eastern Capital (dongdou liushou 19.  JTS 108.3283. The administrative seat of Jingnan De­ 東都留守 ) (JTS 11.276; XTS 145.4716). In this capacity, fence Command was modern Jingzhou in Hubei Province. Wang Jin was empowered as the emperor’s personal 20.  JTS 108.3283–4. The failure of Du Hongjian to adequately deal with this challenge to Tang authority, and what was arguably an inappropriate appointment given Du’s advanced age and lack of current command experience, may represent the emergence of what would become a trend

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later in the Tang of appointing scholars and bureaucrats to positions of command in the military. See Graff 2000.

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representative in Luoyang, the secondary dynastic capital. Wang Jin’s power grew at a seemingly exponential rate. By 18 October 768, in addition to being Vice Director of the Chancellery and Regent of the Eastern Capital, Wang Jin was also the Regional Chief of Youzhou 幽州, the Commissioner with Special Powers, Deputy Marshal of Henan, and Controller of the Mobile Brigade of Eastern Shannan Circuit. He was Military Commissioner of the armies of Youzhou and Lulong 盧龍21 and Commissioner in the Taiqing Palace (taiqinggong shi太清宮使). To these positions was added the title and authority of the Administrator of Taiyuan and Regent of the Northern Capital (JTS 11.290). Wang Jin’s power radiated from the eastern capital Loyang through what is presently Henan province, north to modern Hebei and Shanxi provinces. He would, however, end his career ignominiously. In May of 777 he was implicated along with Yuan Zai in an unidentified misdeed. One suspects he fell victim to the endless intrigues that characterized life in the Chinese court. Wang Jin was demoted to the relatively insignificant position of Regional Chief of Kuozhou 括州.22 He died in 781 at the age of eighty-one, holding the essentially powerless office of Advisor to the Heir Apparent.23 While Du Hongjian and Wang Jin had entered the central bureaucracy in the regular manner, i.e. as sons of important families and recognized littérateurs, Yuan Zai’s entry was unorthodox. Yuan Zai 元載 (?–11 May 777) was of common stock, born to a poor family from Qishan 岐山 in what is now Shanxi 陕西 Province. His biography in the Older Tang History represents him as studious but unable to pass the regular civil service recruitment exam. However, in February of 741, Emperor Xuanzong issued an edict directing the establishment of a temple to the Lord of Mysterious Origin (xuanyuan huangdi 玄元皇帝) and a School for Venerating the Mysteries (chongxuan xue 崇玄學) at which students would study Zhuangzi 莊子, Laozi 老子, Wenzi 文子, and Liezi 列子 (JTS 9.213). These four Daoist texts were the basis for a special imperial 21.  These armies were based in what is now Hebei province. 22.  Modern Lishui 麗水 in Zhejiang 浙江. 23.  He was eighty-two by the traditional Chinese reckoning.

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recruitment examination by means of which able men could gain entry into the civil service. This system instituted by Emperor Xuanzong expanded the base of recruitment for the civil bureaucracy to include men who were not trained exclusively in the Confucian canon. Yuan Zai was one of the earliest beneficiaries of this new policy. He passed the Daoist examination on or around 7 November 741 (JTS 9.214). His first duty assignment was as Commandant of Xinping 新平 in Bin Prefecture 邠州, modern Shanxi 山西 province.24 He was subsequently promoted to Case Reviewer in the Court of Judicial Review.25 As with so many other men of this time, the disruption to the imperial administrative system wrought by the An Lushan Rebellions led to Yuan Zai’s promotion to relatively important positions. He became Deputy to Li Xiyan 李希言 before eventually attaining the position of Director of the Ministry of Revenue following the recovery of the two capitals in 758 (JTS 118.3409). By December of 763, Yuan Zai ascended to the position of Adjutant Marshal of the Armies as well as Governor of Chang’an and Vice Minister in the Ministry of Personnel. Yuan Zai’s power during these years was pronounced. The Older Tang History, for example, reports that Yan Zhenqing 顏真卿 was demoted for having openly disagreed with Zai in 766 (JTS 11.282). But Yuan Zai continued to support Amoghavajra. On 18 August 774 he personally delivered a eulogy for the deceased master (T 2120.849c24–850a9). These men, each from rather different backgrounds and each following somewhat different career paths in the Tang central government, were all ardent supporters of Amoghavajra and of the Esoteric Buddhism tradition that he propagated. Although their backgrounds and responsibilities 24.  JTS 118.3409. ‘Commandant’ (wei 尉) was a common military title, sometimes honorific and not indicating actual field command, as it appears to be the case here (Hucker 1985: 564). 25.  JTS 118.3409. The Court of Judicial Review (dali si 大理寺) was the agency within the central bureaucracy responsible for reviewing reports of judicial proceedings from all levels of territorial administration, recommending to the emperor which of these cases involving major punishments should be returned for retrial, submitted to a gathering of court dignitaries for deliberation, or decided by the emperor himself (Hucker 1985: 468).

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The Politics of Esoteric Buddhism at times blurred the distinction between the civilian government and the military establishment, Du Hongjian, Wang Jin, and Yuan Zai were office holders in the central government and may be taken as indicative of the extent to which Esoteric Buddhism was adopted in the imperial Chinese government in the second half of the 8th century. In other cases, supporters of Amoghavajra and Esoteric Buddhism were strictly members of the Tang dynasty imperial military. The military establishment of 8th-century China was dominated by Military Commissioners (jiedu shi 節度使). Holders of this military position commanded the troops of the Frontier Garrisons (fangzheng 方鎮) quartered along the periphery of Tang political control. The institution of Military Commissioner was established in 711–12 (XTS 50.1329), developing from the post of border generals (bianjiang 邊將),26 but by the mid 8th century Military Commissioners were de facto rulers of the territory that they were charged with defending and administering. Military Commissioners and commanders in the Tang imperial military were among Amoghavajra’s earliest and most significant supporters. The examples of Geshu Han and Li Baoyu are telling illustrations of this fact. In 754 or 755 Amoghavajra was sent to the headquarters of Geshu Han 哥舒翰 (?–1 Dec. 757), the Military Commissioner (jiedu shi 節度使) of the Hexi-Longyou Defence Command.27 This was by imperial command, prompted by the request of Geshu Han. Han was a man of relatively humble origins. A member of the Turkish Geshu clan from which his surname derives, Geshu Han was of mixed, non-Han ancestry. His mother was reportedly hu 胡, a term applied during the Tang dynasty to Central Asian people typically hailing from Sogdiana.28 His father, a Turk (tujue 突厥), had served in the imperial army and attained the rank 26.  XTS 50.1328. For fangzheng 方鎮 Hucker suggests the translation ‘Defence Command’, which reflects the function of these troops rather than the term itself (Hucker 1985: 209). 27.  The sources that mention this—the Stele Inscription, the Account of Activities, and the Zhenyuan Catalogue— provide different dates for this event. 28.  This designation had, according to Pulleyblank (1952: 318–19), come to refer specifically to Sogdians by the late 6th to early 7th century.

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of Deputy Protector-General (fu duhu 副都護) of Anxi 安西.29 His father reportedly died when Han was still a boy. Joining the Hexi army, Geshu Han quickly made a name for himself in the seemingly interminable conflict between Tang China and the Tibetan Yarlung dynasty. His military successes in the campaigns against the Tibetans eventuated in rapid promotion and accumulated honours.30 He was appointed Deputy Military Commissioner of Longyou 隴右, Commander of the Guanxi 關西 area command, and Commissioner of the Heyuan Army 河源軍 in 747 or 748. In 753 or 754 he was enfeoffed as Duke of the Kingdom of Liang 涼, collecting revenue from 300 households. Simultaneously he became Military Commissioner of Hexi 河西 and was conferred the title of Prince of Xiping Commandery 西平郡王 (JTS 140.3211). By 754 or 755, when he requested Amoghavajra’s presence, Geshu Han held the position of Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent, Li Heng, the man who less than two years later would be enthroned as Emperor Suzong.31 Geshu Han met his end in the rebellion of An Lushan, having been captured 29.  Geshu Han’s ancestry is cited in a constructed conversation between Geshu Han and An Lushan in the Older and Newer Tang History (JTS 140.3211; XTS 4135.571). 30.  Geshu Han’s biography in the Older Tang History goes to great lengths describing his ferocity in killing Tibetans. One anecdote concerning his reported zeal in dispatching Tibetan invaders (‘traitors’) should suffice to illustrate this: Han had a slave in his home called Left Army 左車, 15 or 16 years-old, who was also strong. Han was good with a spear. He would chase traitors and when he caught them he would tap them on the shoulder with his spear and give a shout. The traitor would turn around and Han would thereby stab him through the throat, tossing [the head] up 15 chi into the air and letting it fall. There were none who were not killed. Left Army would then dismount and collect the decapitated heads. (JTS 140.3211) 31.  Taizi taibao 太子太保: one of the Three Preceptors of the Heir Apparent. The other two are the Grand Preceptor and the Grand Mentor of the Heir Apparent. Hucker (1985: 485) observes that these titles were frequently empty designators awarded to already high-ranking officials as a means of increasing their prestige and income. That is possibly the case here, but the title was certainly not without significance given that the Heir Apparent in question fled to Geshu Han’s military command region during the An Lushan Rebellion, where he ascended the throne as Suzong.

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and subsequently executed by enemy troops. But in many respects, Amoghavajra’s patronage and the adoption of Esoteric Buddhism in Tang China may be linked to the person of Geshu Han. According to the biographical section of his Zhenyuan Catalogue composed by Yuanzhao circa ad 800, it was while attached to Geshu Han’s regional administration of Hexi-Longyou that Amoghavajra began what would be two of his most persistent and important activities: the production of scriptures and initiations into Esoteric Buddhist practices. And Yuanzhao specifies that at this time Amoghavajra produced the most significant scripture in his corpus, the Diamond Pinnacle Scripture (Vajraśekharatantra or Vajroṣṇīṣa): Arriving at the city of Wuwei 武威 [Amoghavajra] dwelled in the Opened Prime Monastery 開元寺. The Military Commissioner [Geshu Han] welcomed him with all manner of offerings and requested that he translate the scriptures, offer initiation 灌頂, and explain the Yoga Teaching of maṇḍalas…. At that time the Prince of Xiping [Geshu Han] requested a translation of the Diamond Pinnacle: the Correct Inclusion of all the Tathāgatas, the Great King of Teachings Scripture in three fascicles for the sake of the kingdom. Adjutant and Director of the Ministry of Rites Li Xiyan 李希言32 acted as scribe.33 [Amoghavajra] also trans­lated 32.  Assuming that the Li Xiyan mentioned in Yuanzhao’s account is the same Li Xiyan who appears in the Older and Newer Tang History, it is highly improbable that he was present in Wuwei with Amoghavajra. His official post was in Wu Commandery, centred on what is presently Suzhou 蘇州 in Jiangsu province 江蘇州, approximately 1,000 miles to the southeast of Wuwei. Li Xiyan is mentioned only twice in each of the standard histories, where his official titles are given as ‘Investigating Commissioner of Wu Prefecture’ (Wu jun caifang shi 吳郡採訪使) (JTS 107.3265; XTS 82.3611) and ‘Prefect of Suzhou and Investigating Commissioner of Jiangdong’ (Suzhou cishi, Jiangdong caifang shi 蘇州刺史、江 東採訪使) (JTS 118.3409; XTS 145.4711). Li Xiyan is possibly included here based on his friendly relationship with Yuan Zai, who was an ardent supporter of Amoghavajra. Zai had served as Li Xiyan’s Deputy in Suzhou, and it’s possible that Amoghavajra established a relationship with both men when he was in that region preparing for his maritime journey to the southern Indic regions. 33.  In later eras the scribe (bishou 筆受) was responsible for the initial translation and its recording, though it is highly

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the Single-Syllable Pinnacle Wheel-Turning Rul­er Scripture Spoken at the Seat of En­light­ en­ment in five fascicles,34 the Yoga Scripture of the Single-syllable Pinnacle Wheel-turning Ruler in one fascicle,35 and the Ritual Procedures of Visualizing and Reciting the [Scripture] of the One-syllable Pinnacle Wheel-turning Ruler [T 954a]. The Administrative Assistant to the Military Commissioner, the Investigating Censor Tian Liangqiu 田良丘36 acted as scribe and also undertook the proofing of the smaller scriptures. (T 2157.881b14–27)

The Stele Inscription and the Account of Conduct also refer to Amoghavajra’s association with Geshu Han in Wuwei, though neither of those sources provides such specific details concerning his activities. If we assume a didactic quality to Yuanzhao’s account, as we have with passages drawn from Confucian-oriented sources, the import of this vignette would appear to be that it was with Geshu Han’s patronage in the Hexi-Longyou Defence Command that Amoghavajra began his activity of propagation of Esoteric Buddhism. The Diamond Pinnacle Scripture—the jewel of Amoghavajra’s textual corpus and the keystone to Esoteric Buddhism in China—as well as the One-Syllable Ruler series were produced at this time. unlikely that this is the connotation here. As Amoghavajra’s facility in Indic and Chinese languages argues against the view that an official of the Tang government would perform this function, I take it that Li Xiyan transcribed the (oral?) translation provided by Amoghavajra, though the term may be used here merely as a means of signalling Li Xiyan’s material support for the project. For this term and its designate in the Song dynasty, see Orzech 2006. 34.  Putichangsuoshuo yizi lunwang jing 菩提場所說一字 頂輪王經 (T 950). 35.  Yizi lunwang yujia jing 一字顶轮王瑜伽经. This most probably is T 955 一字頂輪王瑜伽觀行儀軌, but there are two other possible referents contained in the Taisho canon: T 957 金剛頂一字頂輪王瑜伽一切時處念誦成佛儀軌 and T 958 金剛頂經一字頂輪王儀軌音義. 36.  Tian Liangqiu’s involvement is perhaps more certain than that of Li Xiyan. He served as Geshu Han’s Adjutant upon the outbreak of rebellion in 755 or 756, and as de facto commander of the troops guarding the Tong Pass against Lushan and Shiming. Beyond this, nothing is known of Tian Liangqiu, though his presence in Wuwei with Geshu Han and Amoghavajra stands to reason given his close relationship with the former (JTS 104.3213, 3214; XTS 135.4571).

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The Politics of Esoteric Buddhism Geshu Han was not the only military commander to patronize Amoghavajra and Esoteric Buddhism in China. Equally noteworthy in this regard was Li Baoyu 李抱玉 (?–777/8). A descendant of An Xinggui 安興貴, Li Baoyu’s ancestral home was in Liangzhou 涼州, in modern Gansu province.37 Li Baoyu’s family is described as raising horses in the western prefecture of Hexi 河西 and serving in the Tang military, livelihoods typical of the non-Han peoples of the Western Frontier region.38 Li Baoyu’s own rise to prominence in Tang society was based on his military service to the throne. He was promoted to squad commander (pianpi 偏裨) by Li Guangbi 李光弼 during the early years of the Rebellion Period in 758 or 759. During these tumultuous years Li Baoyu’s ascent was meteoric. The next year, on 17 May 759, he ascended to the position of General-in-Chief of the Right Forest of Plumes Army,39 and was Regional Chief of Zhengzhou 鄭州 Concurrently Commissioned with Special Powers over all of the armies of Zhengzhou, Acting Vice Censor-in-Chief, and Military Commissioner of the four prefectures of Zheng 鄭, Chen 陳, Ying 潁, and Bo 亳 (JTS 132.3645). Under Daizong, Li Baoyu’s prestige continued to increase. In addition to serving as Military Commissioner of Zelu 澤潞, Administrative Supreme Area Commander of Lu 潞 Prefecture, concurrently Grand Master Censor of Zheng and Chen Prefectures, he was also installed as the Chief Minister of War (bingbu shangshu 兵部尚書) (JTS 132.3645). He formally entered into the peerage in 763 when he was recognized as Prince of Wuwei Commandery (JTS 11.272). Li Baoyu was a man of great influence during the reign of Emperor Suzong and especially during the reign of Daizong. From 762 to 37.  An Xinggui had received a fiefdom there from Emperor Taizong in 626 consisting of the income of 700 households. This was almost certainly a reward for the killing in 619 or 620 of Li Gui 李軌 , a holdout against Tang control along the Western Frontier (JTS 57.2294–5, 2414). 38.  For the stereotypical roles and perceptions of non-Han peoples during the Tang dynasty, see Abramson 2008. 39.  Yulin jun 羽林軍: the two Forest of Plumes Armies, Left and Right, were stationed in the Northern Command in the Tang capital (Hucker 1985: 91).

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777 or 778, nearly the entirety of Daizong’s reign, Li Baoyu served the emperor as Chief Minister of War and as an esteemed Grand Councillor, holding the title Jointly Manager of Affairs with the Secretariat-Chancellery. He was also a disciple of Amoghavajra (read: practitioner of Esoteric Buddhism). Li Baoyu states this to be the case in the elegy that he delivered on 16 August 774, the day of Amoghavajra’s interment. As for me, the late sage laid out the teachings that I sought. I consulted and studied with him as my master. Relying on benevolence to support virtue, I began to deduce the secret meaning. (T 2120.848a3–5)

esoteric buddhism and the ethos of power The patronage that Amoghavajra received from members of the Tang imperial family, from high-ranking officials in the central government, and from elite military commanders may be read more broadly as the adoption of Esoteric Buddhism in these various sectors of the Tang government. While no doubt involving personal and social factors, the adoption of Esoteric Buddhism among the ruling class of 8th-century China also reflected the ethos of the esoteric tradition that had emerged by that time. While the practical and soteriological dimensions of early Esoteric Buddhism were effectively established through the reformulation of Śākyamuni’s enlightenment as a process of visualizations and initiations,40 the driving ethos of the tradition, or at least the ethos that most directly contributed to the consistent alignment of Esoteric Buddhism with local political institutions, is encapsulated in the account of the subjugation of Maheśvara.41 In his Synopsis of the Eighteen Assemblies of the Diamond Peak Yoga Scripture,42 40.  This reformulation is fully articulated in the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha: see Giebel 2001, and also Weinberger 2003. 41.  For a full translation of this account as recorded in Tibetan sources, see Dalton 2011: 159–206. For a discussion of this theme and its political undertones in 9th-century Java, see Acri, this volume. 42.  For a full, critical translation of this text, see Giebel 1995.

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Amoghavajra provides a brief description of this story:

various deities [into the maṇḍala] to receive diamond titles. (T 869.285a17–28)

Maheśvara43 (Moxishouluo 摩醯首羅) was unyielding and difficult to convert (化). He would not accept conversion by means of the method of pacification (寂靜法).44 All of the Tathāgatas throughout the Dharma Realm as inexhaustible as space spoke with one voice through different mouths a request of Vajrasattva by means of the rite of praising the 108 names (of the Buddhas): ‘Thusly, various deities will not accept conversion by means of the method of pacification’. At that time, the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi received the request of all the Tathāgatas and then entered into a wrathful diamond samādhi, manifested in a mighty result body,45 and through various skillful means subdued [Maheśvara] to the point that his allotment came to an end and [Maheśvara] died. Then Maheśvara appeared in the lower quarter46 and in a world system called Ash-adorned 灰莊嚴 engaged in (過) the sixty-two [wrong views]47 for as long as there are sand grains. Within that world he achieved awakening (正覺) and his name became Terrifying Lord.48 The Tathāgatas directed (執) Vajrasattva to restrain [Terrifying Lord] under foot. He recited the mantra of diamond long-life and [Terrifying Lord] was revived and accepted conversion. Vajrasattva then explained the Great Maṇḍala and led the

From here Amoghavajra’s text goes on to enumerate five classes of deities who have been similarly suppressed and assimilated into the external Diamond division of the Diamond Maṇḍala. The subjugation of Maheśvara, and the consequent assimilation of him and wicked deities of his ilk as related in this digest, illustrates the central theme that I contend directly contributed to the appeal of Esoteric Buddhism for the ruling elite. This account is in part an explanation and argument for the diminishment and assimilation of local, rival deities within the framework of Esoteric Buddhism, but the central ethos of Esoteric Buddhism as indicated by the defeat of Maheśvara is one of coercion, control, and hegemony. In short: power. The appeal of such a tradition to rulers and would-be rulers is transparent. Additionally, the ethos of power that runs throughout the early Esoteric Buddhist tradition is evident in a number of secondary characteristics that we may identify as holding direct, practical appeal for the ruling elite. I propose here that we can see the adoption of Esoteric Buddhism in the local political institutions of Tang China as being facilitated or encouraged by three specific and interrelated characteristics springing from the ethos of power: (1) the ethical flexibility of Esoteric Buddhist systems, (2) a pronounced emphasis on mundane goals or effects, and (3) the violent nature and martial applications of many Esoteric Buddhist rites. Esoteric Buddhism afforded its adherents a degree of ethical flexibility such that standard ethical proscriptions and prescriptions for both monastic Buddhists and lay practitioners could be disregarded through their effective subordination to the ethics of power.49 This aspect of the

43.  Maheśvara is variously a Buddhist reference to the Hindu god Indra or, in this case, Śiva. 44.  寂靜法 jijing fa: the method of pacifying (寂靜法) is a reference to the practice or method of eliminating calamities (xizai fa 息災法; Skt. śāntika), one of the four classical siddhis of Esoteric Buddhism. 45.  德身 de sheng: a celestial body reflective of the innumerable good qualities of an awakened being (Skt. sambhogakāya) 46.  下方 xiafang: a reference to the three bad rebirths; rebirth as an animal, a ghost, or in hell. 47.  This translation is somewhat provisional. It appears to indicate the extent of the wicked and heterodox practices and views engaged in by Maheśvara. As outlined in the Pali Brahmajāla Sutta (Dīghanikāya 1), the sixty-two views refer to various views held by Brahmanical ascetics regarding the past (eighteen specific beliefs) and the future (forty-four specific beliefs). See Walshe 1995: 73–88. 48.  Buwei zizai wang 怖畏自在王: this appears to be a translation-cum-transliteration of the Sanskrit Bhairava, ‘frightful, terrible, terrifying’.

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49.  The degree to which monastic Buddhists may have been empowered to disregard Vinaya proscriptions is unclear and in any case was probably quite limited in actual practice. Nevertheless, there is an indication that Esoteric Buddhist ācāryas were rather less constrained than other monastic Buddhists. A telling illustration of this is the fact that Amoghavajra interacted freely and frequently with military leaders and was attached to army headquarters at multiple times during his life, as discussed below. These actions are a clear violation of Vinaya proscriptions and

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The Politics of Esoteric Buddhism esoteric tradition is suggested, for example, in the numerous examples found in Esoteric Buddhist ritual procedures promising to eradicate all negative karma. To give one example, in the Methods of Having Requests Heard by Ākāśagarbha, a text translated in China by Śubhākarasiṁha and a part of the Diamond Peak cycle of scriptures and ritual manuals, we are told that the performance of the rite will eliminate all sins and hindrances accumulated from beginningless time: All Buddhas and the Bodhisattva Ākāśagarbha will accept and receive this person, all crimes and hindrances will all melt away and one’s body and mind will be pure, blessedly wise, and longevous. All ghosts and vināyakas will all be unable to gain advantage [over you]. (T 1145.602b4–6)

Techniques and practices explicitly promising the eradication of all negative karma are hardly uncommon in the Buddhist tradition, especially in the Mahāyāna. Further, ritual techniques explicitly for eliminating the stain of negative karma are a necessary element of Esoteric Buddhist rites in particular, insofar that they are intended to bring the performer into contact with exalted Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and deities. However, these ritual procedures and their effects may also be read as implying an acceptance of practitioners who are obviously less than virtuous. There is scriptural evidence that such an appeal was not merely implicit or simply a vestigial element of general Buddhist ritual practices. In the Brief Explanation of the Production, Recollection, and Recitation of the Yoga of the Diamond Peak Scripture, a practical manual by Vajrabodhi, we find the following: As for those who possess a sufficiency of the various wisdoms and virtues, they are permitted to notably diverge from the actions of Xuanzang 玄奘, who refused to accompany Emperor Taizong (r. 626–49) on his campaign in the Korean Peninsula on the basis of monastic prohibitions disallowing associations with and viewing of military operations and armies (T 2053.253b17– c1). Nevertheless, the real import of this element of the early Esoteric Buddhist tradition is that it effectively permitted the inclusion of laypersons without making any effective demands on them to alter their lifestyles or aspirations.

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enter into the methods of recitations, setting up homa, and receiving consecration in this great maṇḍala (daochang 壇場) of the Diamond Realm and the method of explaining it and guiding diamond disciples into it. Among those who enter the platform, the highest reason for doing so is for the sake of relieving the suffering and increasing the joy of all sentient beings. [But] as for those who enter this great platform, you should not choose between those with ability and those without. Why is this? Both World Honored Ones [i.e., Buddhas] and sentient beings who have committed great crimes are to be seen in this great maṇḍala of the Diamond Realm. And as for those who enter [the maṇḍala], each and every one of all of their crimes and hindrances are removed. Again, World Honored One, there are sentient beings who give themselves over to lucre and to food and drink, desirous of pleasure, who detest the samaya and do not regularly make offerings—these people are [also] in the maṇḍala. As for those who enter in order to do as they please, they will completely attain all that they seek, both World Honored Ones and sentient beings. Those who practice for the sake of the pleasure of women, the pleasure of song and dance and food and drink, who do not know the Great Vehicle of all the Buddhas or do not inquire about the Dharma enter the temple of the various great gods of heretical paths within the platform. (T 866.224a3–15)

This passage clearly articulates a vision of Esoteric Buddhism that is inclusive of the morally upright and virtuous as well as those who are decidedly less so. The appeal of Esoteric Buddhism to individuals who dealt regularly in intrigue, punishment, and death, to say nothing of indulgence in aesthetic and carnal pleasures, is clear. In a word, the ethical flexibility of Esoteric Buddhism argued for and permitted the involvement of rulers, the governing elite, and military men in a way that other Buddhist traditions did not. And it is instructive to notice that the specific articulation of the inclusion of transgressive and sinful individuals in the passage above essentially mirrors the subjugation of Maheśvara topos in explicitly referring to the incorporation of less-than-virtuous practitioners into the paths of non-Buddhist deities, the sector of the Diamond Maṇḍala into

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which Maheśvara and the five classes of violent, non-Buddhist deities were assimilated according to the account cited above. Just as the evil and unrestrained Maheśvara is included in the totalizing maṇḍala of Esoteric Buddhism, so too are humans given to less restrained modes of behaviour. The ethos of power that characterizes Esoteric Buddhism was not simply a tool of subjugation and oppression, but one of inclusion for those already given to the ethics of power in the form of violence, appetitiveness, and misbelief. The implications of the ethics of power that runs through Esoteric Buddhism are also plainly evident in its promised effects. While Esoteric Buddhism extended the promise of soteriological effects (Skt. laukikasiddhi; Chin. chu shijian xidi 出世間悉地), it is well known that more mundane results (Skt. lokottara siddhi; Chin. shijian xidi 出世間悉地) were also available. These results, both soteriological and mundane, are articulated as the four classical goals of Esoteric Buddhism: (1) pacifying, (2) augmenting, (3) controlling, and (4) killing. These various results were and are sometimes interpreted as referring to soteriological goals— afflictive emotions are pacified, merit is augmented, the delusion of self is killed. However, it is abundantly clear that these were articulated as rather more quotidian goals—one’s wealth and power are augmented, one’s enemies are pacified, controlled, or killed. It is also evident that the quotidian effects promised by Esoteric Buddhism were a particularly important factor in the imperial patronage of Esoteric Buddhism in Tang dynasty China. For example, on 7 October 758, Amoghavajra submitted a carnelian image of the Buddha Ratnasambhava and a copy of the Dhāraṇī of the Great Protectress who is Universally Radiant, Pure, Incandescent, a Wish-granting Gem, and the Sealed Essence of the Invincible King of Mantras (hereafter Dhāraṇī of the Great Protectress)50 to Emperor Suzong (T 2120.829b2–21). The text in which that titular dhāraṇī is given describes a number of promised 50.  T 1153 Pubian guangming qingjing chisheng ruyi baoyinxin wunengsheng damingwang da Suiqiu tuoluoni jing 普遍光明淸淨熾盛如意寶印心無能勝大明王大隨求陀 羅尼經. Skt. Mahāpratisarā-vidyārājñī; The first text of the Pañcarakṣā corpus, devoted to Mahāpratisarā (Chin. Da Suiqiu 大隨求).

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effects, some of which are soteriological, but in the main these results are of a more mundane, practical nature. For example, the dhāraṇī, which one may write down and wear on one’s person (T 1153.617c4), is said to protect against both human and non-human malefactors, agrarian disasters such as insect infestation, excessive rain, and wind (ibid. 617c1–2), and invulnerability against fire, poison, and blades (ibid. 62b17–22).51 Such promised effects would putatively be appealing to any member of a pre-industrial, agrarian society like Tang China, but would perhaps be particularly so to the ruler of such a society. Given the nexus of political legitimacy, social stability, and agricultural productivity in Tang dynasty China in addition to the persistent threat of assassination, such effects as promised by the Dhāraṇī of the Great Protectress had real practical and political import. However, while these elements cannot be ignored, it seems that the Dhāraṇī of the Great Protectress was specifically submitted to Emperor Suzong for the purpose of healing an unknown ailment. The text (T 1153.618a24) specifically states that the dhāraṇī provides protection against illness for both kings (guowang 國王) and queens (hougong 後宮), and in biographical sources Amoghavajra is said to have performed the dhāraṇī on behalf of Suzong as a curative (T 2056.293b13–5). While the promise of addressing the quotidian concerns of the political class in particular argued for the adoption of Esoteric Buddhism among the Chinese ruling elite, it was perhaps the violent, murderous aims of the tradition that spoke most strongly in its favour. If there was a single systemic feature of the emergent Esoteric Buddhist tradition that most facilitated its integration into Tang po51.  In the biography of Vajrabodhi by Lü Xiang, it is recounted that the ship carrying the master to Java was the only one able to escape wreckage during a storm because he recited the Mahāpratisarā-dhāraṇī (Suiqiu 隨求): see Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 139. This account appears on my reading to be based on a standard trope from Chinese hagiographical literature in which the voyager encounters perilous difficulties, rather than rooted in actual fact. Nevertheless, the inclusion of the Mahāpratisarā-dhāraṇī in the account reflects the author’s awareness of the text, its relative importance in the imperial Esoteric Buddhism that emerged in China in the second half of the 8th century, and its role in bringing about beneficial mundane effects.

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The Politics of Esoteric Buddhism litical structures, it was the unfailing acceptance of Esoteric Buddhism and its representatives of state-sanctioned violence and their willingness to contribute to its application. The adoption of Esoteric Buddhism in Tang China occurred during a time of radical social upheaval precipitated by the rebellion of An Lushan and reinforced by persistent incursions into Tang territory by non-Han forces. Amoghavajra and the esoteric tradition that he presented in China actively contributed to the Tang war effort in these years. For example, his memorial stele inscription reports that during the rebellion of An Lushan, Amoghavajra performed the rites of the Banner of Acala and the Divinities of the Eight Directions Scripture on the emperor’s behalf.52 The effects of Acala rites described in texts produced in China by Amoghavajra are clearly violent and applicable to military operations. There is a procedure by which an opposing army may be rendered immobile and easy prey for an attacking force (T 1200.11b25–29). Alternately, there are rites by which one may starve an enemy army out of the field (ibid. 11c11–12). One may empower an army’s banners with Acala’s mantra and thereby win certain victory (ibid. 11b23–4). One can target an enemy commander with rites promising certain death (ibid. 11c8–10). In short, there are a variety of lethal and militarily applicable ritual techniques contained in Amoghavajra’s textual corpus and there is evidence that he performed them in service to the Tang emperors, who perceived him as possessing the ability to ritually bring about the deaths of enemies to the throne. The assassination of Zhou Zhiguang 周智光 in 767 is a case in point. Zhou Zhiguang was a Military Commissioner exercising command in Tongzhou 同州 and Huazhou 華州 northeast of the imperial capital, but suspicions concerning his loyalty to the Tang led Emperor Daizong to dispatch an envoy to meet with Zhou and ascertain his intentions. Upon reaching Zhou’s headquarters the envoy found the general unguarded, so he simply chopped off Zhou’s head and delivered it to the emperor (JTS 114.3368–3370; XTS 224.6373–6374). Hearing this news, Amogha52.  Even accurately predicting the date of Chang’an’s recovery, if we are to believe Feixi’s Stele Inscription (T 2120.848c29–849a3).

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vajra sent Daizong a letter of congratulations (T 2120.834c2–834c3). In his prosimetrical reply, Daizong suggests that Amoghavajra played a role in killing Zhou Zhiguang: Zhiguang, violent and murderous, dared to harass frontier supply posts (關鋪). The Princely Master53 [Amoghavajra], from him there was an execution, entirely unexpected.54 The numinous power of the ancestral and tutelary divinities, the great sage deployed their blessings. The master’s protective recollection, inauspicious signs forever purified. (T 2120.834c14– 834c15)

Evidently Emperor Daizong saw Zhiguang’s decapitation as facilitated or even caused by the practice of Esoteric Buddhist rites by Amoghavajra. As a ritual technology putatively capable of bringing about the deaths of enemies either singly or en masse, Esoteric Buddhism was effectively a weapon to be used by those in power to maintain their position and by those who aspired to power over others.

conclusion Esoteric Buddhism spread throughout Asia rapidly from the 8th century onwards. This diffusion of Esoteric Buddhist traditions throughout a vast geographical area inhabited by ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse people appears consistently to have occurred as a result of or concomitantly with the adoption of Esoteric Buddhist norms and practices by local ruling elites. In the Chinese case, among the earliest and best-documented instances of the pan-Asian adoption of Esoteric Buddhism, we see the assimilation of Esoteric Buddhism in the form of elite patronage of its practitioners throughout every dimension of the Tang dynasty political system. Sitting emperors, their empresses 53.  Wangshi 王師: is parallel, and therefore contrastive, to Zhiguang in this passage. Wangshi is a bureaucratic title for one of the Crown Prince’s tutors. Here, though, it seems to refer to Amoghavajra as a ‘princely master’ based on the reference in the concluding line concerning the ‘master’s (shi 師) protective recollection (hu’nian 護念)’. 54.  Zhuyi 誅夷: literally ‘to punish Yi barbarians’, invoking legal terminology and in reference to cultural or ethnic inferiority, the phrase most basically means to kill someone.

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and children, high-ranking officials in the central bureaucracy, and professional military men were all to be counted as patrons of Amoghavajra and, by extension, as adherents of Esoteric Buddhism. In the Chinese case, we do not see political institutions molded on the model of Esoteric Buddhist structures of power and hierarchy, as in other historical cases. Rather, Esoteric Buddhist practices and norms were assimilated within pre-established models and institutions of governance—those of the bureaucratic state of late mediaeval imperial China. Given that Esoteric Buddhism did not present a viable political structure in China, the Chinese case indicates the strong appeal of Esoteric Buddhism as a religious ideology and ritual technology, not simply as a template for structuring the institutions of an emergent state or establishing modes of legitimation. Its widespread acceptance among the Chinese ruling class is instructive as a case study illustrating some of the other and perhaps more compelling reasons for its adoption. Among these were Esoteric Buddhist emphases on ethical flexibility or acceptance of behavioural norms that lay beyond the ken of other Buddhist traditions, the elevation of practical, mundane goals and effects—specifically effects salutary to the flourishing of existing political institutions and office holders—and, perhaps most importantly, the violent, martial application of specific Esoteric Buddhist rites. These various, interrelated elements of Esoteric Buddhism reflect one of the central topoi of the tradition. As a guiding topos of early Esoteric Buddhism, the subjugation of Maheśvara reveals that in its early articulation Esoteric Buddhism is a tradition informed by ideals of hegemony, control, and power. These are not simply narrative tropes. They amount to an ethos of power and as such, we may speculate, Esoteric Buddhism was particularly appealing to ruling classes across cultures. Among other things, Esoteric Buddhism appears to have been a technology for maintaining the positions of the privileged and powerful in the face of rivals. In its rhetorical justifications and in its intended applications, early Esoteric Buddhism may be seen as a hegemonic tool, a religious system and ritual technology both accepting of and contributing to the quashing, coercing, and killing of individuals, institutions, views, and movements that, like Ma-

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heśvara, challenged the authority and power of local ruling elites.

Asian Language Sources Jiu Tangshu 舊唐書 [JTS] 16 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju chuban fa xing 1975. (Reprint, 2002.) Xin Tangshu 新唐書 [XTS]. 20 vols. Beijing: Zhong hua shu ju chuban fa xing, 1975. (Reprint, 2002.) Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑑. Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 1956. T 18, 866. Jingangding yujia zhonglue chuniansong jing 金剛頂瑜伽中略出念誦經 [Briefly Ex plaining the Production, Recollection, and Reci tation of the Yoga of the Vajra Peak Scripture]. T 20, 1145. Xukongzang pusa neng man zhuyuan zuisheng xin tuoluoni qiuwenchi fa 虛空藏菩薩 能滿諸願最勝心陀羅尼求聞持法 [Methods for Having Requests Heard by Ākāśagarbha Bodhisattva, Capable of Fulfilling of Wishes, the Most Victorious Heart Dhāraṇī]. T 20, 1153. Pubian guangming qingjing chisheng ruyibao yinxin wunengsheng damingwang da suiqiu tuoluoni jing 普遍光明清淨熾盛如意寶 印心無能勝大明王大隨求陀羅尼經 [Dhāraṇī of the Great Protectress who is Universally Radiant, Pure, Incandescent, a Wish-granting Gem, and the Sealed Essence of the Invincible King of Mantras]. T 21, 1200. Dilisanmeiye budongzun weinuwang shizhe niansongfa 底哩三昧耶不動尊威怒王使者 念誦法 [Trisamaya, Recollection and Recitations Methods of the Immovable Worthy, Wrathful King Emissaries]. T 50, 2056. Da Tang gudade zeng sikong dabian zheng guangzhi bukong sanzang xingzhuang 大唐故大 德贈司空大辨正廣智不空三藏行狀 [Account of Conduct of the Former Great Worthy Bestowed with the Title Minister of Works, Dabian Zheng Guangzhi Trepiṭaka Bukong of the Great Tang]. T 52, 2120. Daizongchao zeng sikong dabian zhengguang zhi sancang heshang biaozhiji 代宗朝贈 司空大辨正廣智三藏和上表制集 [Memorials and Edicts of the Venerable monk Dabian Zheng Guangzhi Trepiṭaka, bestowed [with the title] Minister of Works by the Daizong court]. T 54, 2126. Da Song seng shilue 大宋僧史略 [Great Song Dynasty Brief History of the Saṅgha].

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The Politics of Esoteric Buddhism T 55, 2157. Zhenyuan xinding shijiao mulu 貞元新 定釋教目錄 [The Honorable Prime (785–805) Revised Catalogue of Buddhist Teachings]. T 50, 2053. Da Tang dabei’ensi sanzang xuanzang

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fashi zhuan 大唐大慈恩寺三藏法師傳 [Great Tang Biography of the Trepiṭaka Dharma master Xuanzang of the Great Compassion Monastery].

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Chapter 6

(Spi)ritual Warfare in 13th-Century Asia? International Relations, the Balance of Powers, and the Tantric Buddhism of Kṛtanagara and Khubilai Khan d av i d b a d e

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ollowing up on moens’ (1924) remark that Kṛtanagara’s Buddhism was similar to the Tantric Buddhism of Khubilai, C.C. Berg argued in a series of publications during the 1950s and 1960s that Kṛtanagara of Siṅhasāri adopted the particular form of Buddhism that he knew to be practised by Khubilai, great Khan of the Mongols, in order to acquire spiritual powers to aid him in an expected military engagement with the latter. Many others have argued that Khubilai adopted that particular form of Buddhism as an instrument of rule in order to justify his military conquest and reign over Tibet. Is religion a mask for the will to power and its justification? Do the political-military situations of Kṛtanagara and Khubilai explain their adoption of Tantric Buddhism? Or are the relationships between religious and political practices not so simple and unidirectional? In this chapter I examine the connections between and proposed explanations for the Tantric Buddhism and political actions of Kṛtanagara and Khubilai in light of Rosenstock-Huessy’s theory of religion as life in the service of what one loves. If religion is understood thus, then both the religious and political practices of these two kings can be explained as following from their devotion to power: instead of politics explaining their (and our) religions, the gods they served explain their religion and their politics.

kṛtanagara versus khubilai Moens (1924: 544) argued that the Buddhism ascribed to Kṛtanagara in the Deśavarṇana (formerly called Nāgarakṛtāgama) belonged to a kālacakra tradition of Tantric Buddhism,1 and that Kṛtana1.  As observed by Griffiths (2014c), the emphasis on Kālacakra as the source of Tantric or Vajrayāna Buddhism in

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gara’s initiation into this form of Buddhism was much like Khubilai’s consecration as Hevajra.2 As a result of his consecration Khubilai would have become Mahāmitābha, which Moens regarded as the same as Mahākṣobhya, with which Kṛtanagara was associated by a statue in his image.3 In a series of publications throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Berg4 took Moens’ association with Khubilai and Indonesia is a rather stereotypical feature of early 20th-century scholarship (which has however been taken over uncritically in much later secondary literature) that seems to reflect the knowledge of the time on Tantric Buddhism, which heavily relied on sources from Tibet, where the Kālacakra indeed played an important role. 2. Earlier Kern (1910a: 9) had noted that in Kṛtanagara’s consecration as Jina, the term Jina—what European scholars referred to as Dhyāni-Buddha—was the same as that used in Tibet and Nepal, but Kern drew no conclusions from that connection. Nihom (1986: 485) stated that Moens had already suggested that Kṛtanagara was initiated in response to Khubilai’s consecration, as it may be inferred by the following remarks (Moens 1924: 544): ‘The most well-known of these rulers of China, Kublai Khan, contemporary of Kṛtanāgara, was consecrated as Jina through the Hevajrābhiṣeka’ (De meest bekende dezer keizers van China, Kublai Khan, tijdgenoot van Kṛtanāgara, werd tot Jina gewijd door de Hewajrābhiṣeka), and ‘The iṣṭadewatā of Kṛtanāgara, who thought of himself as Kublai’s match, should not have been less demonic’ (De iṣṭadewatā van Kṛtanāgara, die zich Kublai’s evenknie dacht, zal niet minder demonisch geweest zijn). I have been unable to determine whether or not Moens was the first to suggest that Kṛtanagara imitated Khubilai. 3. On the Simpang statue (now in Surabaya), see Kern 1910b and Poerbatjaraka 1922 for the earliest discussions, and Nihom 1986 for a post-Berg reinterpretation. 4. As this chapter is not a study of Berg’s ideas but of the historiography related to Mongolian-Javanese relations in the 13th century, I shall make no attempt to present a survey of Berg’s publications nor even present his ideas in his own

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went further with what he described in his last paper on the topic as a ‘guess’: Since Kĕrtanagara introduced a similar form of Buddhism in Java, we may guess that he followed Kubilai’s example in order to acquire the same degree of power so as to be able to protect his country against Kubilai’s raiders... (Berg 1965: 99)

Furthermore, Kṛtanagara’s Amoghapāśa inscription of 1286 is understandable, Berg argued, only ‘if interpreted as a symbolic invitation to join an alliance against Kubilai on the basis of Buddhism and connubium’ (1965: 99). Describing Kṛtanagara as a pacifist, Berg (1956: 408) agreed with Krom that for Kṛtanagara it was fear of the Mongols that guided his foreign policy, not aggressive expansionist aims, and that the inscription expressed his desire to establish ‘friendly relations with Champa and Malayu’ (1956: 407). Berg insisted that the texts that comprise the sources of our knowledge of Kṛtanagara’s reign cannot be read on the basis of Western historiographical assumptions, but must be read within the cultural assumptions of the culture of origin. Such an exhortation is salutary, and perhaps it is primarily upon that basis that Berg captured his readers’ attention. As summarized by Kwa (1970: 45), Berg also added that if we read these texts as their intended readers read them, then we find that they had a magical function: to legitimize and justify the contemporary political scene, to provide the reigning regime with a genealogy that justifies their being in power. The texts therefore had an optive, wish-fullfillment character, describing events that should have happened, not events that did happen.

That actually sounds very much like a reading made after Marxist historiography;5 Zoetmulder words. I am in fact much more interested in how his ideas have been repeated and responded to than in his interpretations themselves. His principal publications relevant to the discussion are listed in the references for the reader’s convenience (Berg 1950, 1951a, 1951b, 1953, 1956, 1962, 1965), but few of them will actually be discussed in what follows. 5.  Not only post-Marxist, but according to Andries Teeuw, ‘deconstructionist avant la lettre’ (Teeuw 1991: 219).

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(1974: 170), while crediting Berg with the indisputable merit of having shed light on the ‘magical’ aspect of Old Javanese literature, and the relation between the poem, its poet, and his kingly sponsor, also warned that ‘it is doubtful whether the foundation is sufficiently sound to enable us to reconstruct a complete picture either of Old Javanese life and thought in general, or of the position of the poet within its framework’. Berg did declare that the Deśavarṇana was a priestly statement and ‘therefore, an elaborate optative’ (Berg 1965: 105). How Berg knew that he was reading texts in the way they were originally intended to be read is not clear, but it appears to be the case that his assumptions about the relationship between religion and politics underwrote his interpretations, not the assumptions that a 14th-century Buddhist (whether poet-priest, king, or ascetic) would have made (whatever those might have been). In any case, according to Berg’s thesis, the proper interpretation of those texts concerning Kṛtanagara entailed that he strove to unite the Archipelago in a sacred confederacy through his supernatural powers obtained through Tantric rites, and that he did this in response to and in imitation of Khubilai. From D.G.E. Hall (1955) to Kenneth Hall (2011), variants of this interpretation of the Kṛtanagara-Khubilai conflict, and in particular its religious dimension, have been repeated, criticized, misunderstood, misstated, and often accepted and asserted as fact. More significantly, narratives of Kṛtanagara’s adoption of Buddhism in imitation of Khubilai and against him—that is, as an act of pure realpolitik—have often been suggested without reference to Berg or any later scholarship, a disconcerting development about which Bosch was alarmed already in 1956.6 As early as 1955, Hall wrote of Kṛtanagara that ‘in imitation of Kublai’s consecration as a Jina Buddha, he was in 1275 consecrated as a Bhairava Buddha, and strove to build up a sacred confederacy united by the power of Tantric Yoga to withstand the Mongols’ (Hall 1955: 785), without providing any references to primary and secondary literature; and twenty-five years 6.  Bosch 1956 remains the clearest refutation of Berg’s early theories but Berg, rather than Bosch, informs most subsequent discussions.

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(Spi)ritual Warfare in 13th-Century Asia? later when Mendis (1981: 316) wrote (also without references) of ‘a “heavenly duel” between Kublai as the avatar of Buddhism against Kṛtanagara the tantric power of the Circle of Yoginis’, he referred to this interpretation simply as ‘the traditional Indonesian version’.7 Mendis, however, was neither a careful reader nor a clear thinker, as he revealed in his reference to ‘the legend that he [i.e., Khubilai] made himself a Djin Buddha to counteract Kṛtanagara’ (ibid.: 319). Some scholars have even gone so far as to dismiss the 1293 invasion of Java as a myth, apparently having pushed Berg’s reading to its most extreme conclusions.8 One may—and probably ought to—assume that Kṛtanagara was well informed about Khubilai’s military campaigns throughout southeast and eastern Asia as well as his expansionist intentions, not only through the envoys sent from the Yuan court to Java but from merchants (both Arab and Chinese), refugees from southern China, and perhaps even refugees from the Muslim campaigns in northern India.9 The Yuan shi records that Mongol envoys came to Java in 1279, 1280, 1281, and 1286 and that they came back without having obtained submission and royal hostages, and furthermore that a mission to Java in 1289 (?) resulted in the mistreatment of the Mongol envoy. These missions all occurred during Kṛtanagara’s reign in Java and Khubilai’s reign as Great Khan, and therefore indicate a prolonged diplomatic relationship between the two kings and resistance to Khubilai’s demands on the part of Kṛtanagara. One can infer that in his interactions with the Mongol envoys Kṛtanagara both learned a great deal and developed 7.  Although this reference to the ‘traditional Indonesian version’ made me suspicious, if O’Brien (2008) is right in her understanding of the Sutasoma as being based on the historical relations between Kṛtanagara and Khubilai, the Sutasoma may indeed represent the ‘traditional’ Javanese version. For O’Brien’s reading of the Sutasoma and Kṛtanagara’s relation to Khubilai, see below, as well as her essay in this volume. 8.  This appears to be the case with Michael Aung-Thwin (2011: 35), who recently remarked that the Mongols ‘could not hold Java—if in fact that invasion were historical and not myth’. 9.  Reichle (2007: 102 ff.) discusses the possible influence of Newar art on the reliefs of Candi Jago, a suggestion she attributes already to Brandes (1904).

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his foreign policy accordingly. But exactly what he knew, how his knowledge directed his foreign policy, and how his religious practices related to his political decisions or to the religious practices of Khubilai are simply matters that are not on record. The 20th- and 21st-century historiography of Kṛtanagara’s domestic and foreign policy including his military campaigns has been oriented, guided, and often completely determined by the historians’ assumptions about the nature of religion and its relation to politics, as much as by their assumptions about the writing of history and the interpretation of texts. Furthermore, Kṛtanagara’s religion has been discussed in relation to the religion of Khubilai more often than not. That is to say, Kṛtanagara’s religion has been seen as arising out of a relationship that was at once political and personal, but the personal dimension of his religious practices and beliefs (insofar as they can be determined) has been understood (in every case with which I am familiar) to be explicable in terms of the political conditions of his reign. Why did Kṛtanagara embrace Tantric Buddhism? If he did so in imitation of Khubilai, then why was Khubilai initiated into Tantric Buddhism? If not in imitation of some other initiate, then why should one assume that Kṛtanagara’s initiation was due to mimesis? What is the relation between politics and religion in the lives and reigns of these two kings? If their religion follows from mimesis, of what relevance is politics? If political conditions explain their religious actions and orientations, of what relevance is mimesis? In what follows I shall look at how scholars have understood and written about first Khubilai’s and then Kṛtanagara’s adoption of Tantric Buddhism, and then look at the relations between religion, politics, and power. The religious and political worlds of Khubilai and Kṛtanagara will be reassessed in light of that discussion, and also in light of the related ideologies adopted by dynasties from other locales of maritime Asia in the 11th to 14th century.

khubilai’s religion All known sources, Chinese, Mongol, and Tibetan, agree that Khubilai was given a conse-

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cration (abhiṣeka) in 1253. It was an initiation to the rites of dGes-pa rdo-rje (Sans. Hevajra), a tutelary deity specially worshipped in the Sa-skya monasteries and whose cult is closely linked with that of Mahākāla, a protector and defender of the faith who is, like Hevajra, represented in a terrifying aspect. It seems that rites connected with Hevajra and Mahākāla became customary for every enthronement of a Yüan emperor, a fact which is also mentioned in the Chinese sources. The terrible Mahākāla was invoked when the Sino-Mongol armies went into battle. (Franke 1981: 308)

dhism-as-state-policy was not adopted by the Kitan in their relations with the ‘outer barbarians’, and ‘religion played no part in control of the dissident tribes’ (ibid.: 37). It was after they had conquered a sedentary civilization that the need arose for a sustaining state religion.... The need to cloak their ruler in symbols which would attract an essentially alien population is obvious. So, too, is the need to present the barbarian ruler as a protector of faiths and a divine figure. Only in this way could a conquest chieftain capture the loyalty or fear of a conquered population, and counter the traditional state philosophy of a ruling class. (Moses 1977: 40).

As a point of departure in an examination of Khubilai’s religion, we note that Franke’s statement reveals one of the problems the reader of histories The Mongols, Moses claimed, followed those encounters: while Franke confidently asserted in earlier traditions. At the beginning of Khubilai’s 1981 that ‘all known sources’ agree on 1253 as the reign, ‘co-optation of popular Buddhism seemed date of Khubilai’s consecration, we find Lokesh one way of appealing to the mass in their own lanChandra stating in 1995 (1995c: 156, without any references or argument) that Khubilai was initiated guage’ (ibid.: 66–67), but Khubilai’s Buddhism was twice—first in 1264 and again in 1269—as a prelude shaped by Turco-Mongol Buddhism rather than to aggression, and an even more recent historian a Chinese form. According to a Tibetan account asserting with equal confidence that his consecra- (often characterized as legendary), Tibetan Budtion took place only once in 1263, citing a number dhism reached the Mongol court through Sakya of Tibetan sources to back up his claim (Davidson Paṇḍita, who met with Godan (second son of 2005: 14, 379, n. 27). Seyfort Ruegg (1995: 40) agreed Ögödei Khan, in charge of Gansu) in ad 1246 after with Franke that the consecration occurred in 1253, the election of Güyük as Great Khan (ibid.: 76). but that was only the first consecration, which was ‘Out of gratitude, and most likely out of political followed by a second consecration in 1258 (ibid.: 42) need, the two became allies’ (ibid.: 77). According and a third one for which he gave no date (ibid.: to that account, ’Phags-pa was at that meeting in 49). This dispute does not matter in the discussion 1246. By 1255 he had become Godan’s advisor in both spiritual and political matters, and after 1260 that follows, for my concern here is only with the he was recommended to Khubilai. Moses argued nature of Khubilai’s religious orientation, not in that Khubilai was already oriented towards Budspecific dates, but it does illustrate how easy it is to dhism and that ‘the usual assertion that Qubilai was build narratives—and counter-narratives—in the converted by ’Phags-pa is misleading. Qubilai was absence of first-hand knowledge that circumscribes already Buddhist and already familiar with western the historian’s situation. Buddhism’ (ibid.: 77). Rossabi’s understanding of Moses (1977) situated Mongolian Buddhism in Khubilai’s Buddhism differed significantly from the context of the earlier history of Buddhism in Moses’, but both wrote of the relationship between Central Asia. He noted that the earliest Buddhist Khubilai’s Buddhism and his politics in the same remains in Mongolia are Kitan, and went on to terms. Khubilai, Rossabi wrote, won over the Budclaim that the Kitan adopted Buddhism like their dhists by ‘appearing to be attracted to their religion’ predecessors the To-pa Wei and Uygur since it pro(Rossabi 1988: 145). Tibetan Buddhism, he argued vided ‘a prop for the barbarian ruling class. Without such a prop the barbarians had no way other than was the ideal vehicle for his political purposforce and terror to enlist the loyalty and support es. It could offer ideological justification for of the Chinese masses’ (ibid.: 37). Yet this Budthe Mongol ruler’s accession to power. Its em-

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(Spi)ritual Warfare in 13th-Century Asia? phasis on magic... appealed to Khubilai, but its most attractive feature was its involvement in politics.... The Tibetan ‘Phags-pa lama of the Sa-skya sect proved a useful figure to support Khubilai’s aspiration to be perceived as the rightful ruler of China.... As soon as Khubilai took power, he began to woo the ‘Phags-pa with honors and titles. (Rossabi 1988: 143)

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view of Manjushri’s role, since at least Tang dynasty, as China’s Bodhisattva, residing in his sacred abode on Mount Wutai in Shanxi province. This association thus provided Kublai with the religious sanction he needed to secure his sacred authority to rule China. (Chua 2003: 45–46)

Thus, to Chua, the adoption of an esoteric If we compare the accounts of Mongolists like Tibetan sect would serve to legitimate Khubilai Moses and Rossabi with accounts by scholars of in the eyes of his Chinese subjects. The desire to Tibetan and Tantric history, we see clearly how explain religion in terms of its functioning as a different perspectives lead to significantly different political legitimation has led Ronald Davidson, a narratives. Scholar of Tantrism Ying Chua (2003: historian of Tantric Buddhism in India and Tibet, 45) claimed that ’Phags-pa’s role in Khubilai’s court to provide yet another perspective. Grounding his was ‘as spiritual master of Kublai’ and that this ‘was account in a narrative of the development of the the pivotal force of their relations’. Having first con- Sakya sect within Tibetan Buddhism, Davidson verted Khubilai’s wife Chabi and initiated her into (2005: 374) argued that members of the Khön clan Hevajra and Mahākāla, he then brought Khubilai ‘domesticated the wild image of Virūpa, making ‘under his religious influence, conceivably assist- the Lamdré, one of the most esoteric systems of ed by Chabi’s encouragement’ (ibid.: 45). Khubilai siddha practice’. The Sakya monks, ‘skillful in the ‘took Mahākāla as his personal deity (yidam) and world, spiritually mature, with magical and adtutelary’ (ibid.) with full awareness of Mahākāla’s ministrative ability, possessed of internal divinities powerful and militant character. and external alliances—powerful in every sense On the face of it, this description of the relation of the word’, prepared the form of Buddhism that between ‘Phags-pa and Khubilai seems signifi‘became a great part of the ground from which the cantly different from both Moses’ and Rossabi’s seeds for the association of Sakya patriarchs with description, for instead of Khubilai ‘co-opting’ or Khubilai Khan would eventually be grown’ (ibid.). ‘appearing to be interested’ in Buddhism, here we Davidson noted that some scholars (he cites Franke find ’Phags-pa to be the guiding figure, gradually 1981 and Heissig 1980) have interpreted ’Phags-pa’s bringing the Mongol court under his influence involvement in Mongolian affairs as a sign that he rather than the Mongol Khan bringing the Tibetwas the one who ‘legitimated Khubilai as a “univeran(s) under his influence. Chua proceeds to portray the Buddhists providing spiritual aid for Khubi- sal monarch” (cakravartin), or divine bodhisattva’, lai’s military campaigns, and providing him with but that few have asked ‘what was there about Sakya Paṇḍita and Pakpa that caused the Mongols to ‘sacred authority to rule’: require their presence in the first place’ (Davidson Phagpa directed Anige, the imperial art direc2005: 7).10 In Davidson’s view, the Sakya Paṇḍita tor (see below), to create an image of Mahakala for use in a ritual to aid the Khan in his battles against the Southern Song. Even during Kublai’s lifetime, Phagpa and other Tibetan Buddhists recognized him as an emanation or incarnation of the Bodhisattva Manjushri, as well as a Universal Emperor, or Chakravartin, a Buddhist title denoting a benevolent, virtuous ruler who promotes the well-being, education, and diverse religious paths of all his people.... The identification of Kublai with Manjushri is particularly significant in

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10.  Davidson does not mention that some of those who have asked the question have regarded the Mongol invitations to Tibetan monks as demands rather than invitations, and the Tibetans’ presence at court more a matter of hostages than spiritual advisors. While Wylie (1977: 113), citing The Golden Annals of Lamaism, declared that the ‘invitation to ’Phags-pa was an ultimatum accompanied by the threat of military action’, and Heissig (1980: 24) flatly stated that the Tibetan monks were taken specifically as hostages, Petech wrote more cautiously of Köden’s (Godan in Moses’ transcription above) invitation to the Sakya Paṇḍita that ‘a refusal was out of the question’ (Petech 1983: 181) and

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fascinated the Mongols with his abilities, ‘yogic systems, magical rites, monastic decorum, clan connections, intellectual acumen, administrative ability, medicine, logic, language’, and in fact in their dealings with Tibetans throughout the years the Mongols always selected those with the most skills and abilities. Davidson (ibid.: 375–76) also argued that the Sakya monks, as neoconservatives, were good Buddhists who did not elect to mandate their vision through the force of law, even when given the opportunity by their Mongol lords. They would be magnanimous rulers: having achieved victory, they could afford to grant religious freedom to those at the margins. In this, they were similar to other Buddhists who were satisfied that eventually all the world would see the truth.

Davidson pointed out that the common manner of understanding the role of these Tibetans in Mongolian Buddhist affairs ‘reflects the predisposition of those authors to assess this role principally through the filters of Chinese political documents’ (ibid.: 8).11 He observed that ’Phags-pa’s Buddhism ‘was perhaps the least accommodating to actual shamanic practice’ (ibid.) and that none of the arguments about the usefulness of Buddhism to referred to the young ’Phags-pa as ‘practically a hostage’ (ibid.: 185). 11.  Franke (1981: 297) noted this matter and his comments are worth being quoted in full here: Chinese history was written by Chinese intellectuals, and the majority of these were not active Buddhists. A negative bias in all official and most private sources as far as the attitude towards Buddhism is concerned must therefore be expected. The picture changes as soon as one turns to Tibetan sources. These are exclusively Buddhist-Lamaist and concerned only with the propagation of the faith. Activities of Tibetan lamas in Yüan China, which appeared to the Chinese as arrogant and insolent and at the best as foreign extravaganzas, may be viewed in Tibetan sources as selfless missionary efforts aimed at influencing Mongol rulers and propagating the doctrine of the Buddha throughout the whole empire... At the risk of oversimplification it could be said that the respective sources reflect the genuine antagonism between state and religion, and that the aim of the Tibetan lamas was precisely to bridge the gulf between religion and state by creating a theocratic theory of secular rule.

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the Mongols could be applied to Hülegü’s adoption of Buddhism, since ‘no muslim population has ever perceived the Buddhist religion as legitimate’ (ibid.: 9). Far from legitimating Mongol rule, Buddhism in the Il-Khanate and arguably also at Khubilai’s court problematized Mongol rule, for ‘esoteric Buddhism also tended to reinforce a social agenda that militated against long term political unity’ (ibid.: 10). Jagchid (1988) was one of those who did ask why the Mongols adopted Buddhism, and in particular he asked why Khubilai chose ‘Tibetan Buddhism as his personal faith’ (ibid.: 89). Of course this way of asking the question—framing it as a matter of personal faith—if taken seriously almost requires setting aside politics as the main factor, and it is no surprise that Jagchid answers his own question the way he does: Political reasons aside, the cultural similarity between the Mongols and Tibetans and their common distance from the Chinese may have been the main factors which caused Khubilai to make this historic decision. (ibid.)

Clearly, this is a pretty weak response to such an important question, and no more preferable than offering stark political motives as the deciding matter in his ‘faith’. Heissig, while not asking the question of why the Mongols chose Tibetan Buddhism, offered an answer anyway, and did so as though the question did not even need to be asked. For Heissig (1980: 24), ‘the first conversion of the Mongols to Lamaism did not go very deep’ and ‘the first contacts of the Mongols with the Lamaist church in Tibet were primarily political in nature’. It was not due to any spiritual need that ‘Phags-pa arrived at the Mongol court, but because Khubilai ‘wanted to hold a representative of the Sa skya pa’ as a hostage (ibid.). The subsequent conversion to Buddhism of the Mongols at the court and the ruling class was a result of ’Phags-pa’s ‘adroitness in arousing the interest of the ruling class in his religion ... the influence of Tibetan medicine as practiced by the Tibetan monks, which proved more convincing to the Mongols... and on the greater magical effectiveness of Tantric magic’ (ibid.). In a conclusion similar to Jagchid’s, Heissig blandly states that Tibetan

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(Spi)ritual Warfare in 13th-Century Asia? Buddhism ‘fitted in especially well with the political dynamism of the Mongols and with their militant nature’ (ibid.: 25). ’Phags-pa himself wrote of Khubilai’s adoption of Buddhism in a passage quoted in a Buddhist chronicle from the Yuan era and written in Chinese, the Fozu lidai tongzai (佛祖歷代通載). In this passage he states simply that Khubilai ‘subjugated many countries and territories and became powerful by extending his frontiers. He adopted the teachings and the Law of the Buddha and civilized his people according to the Law. Therefore the teachings of the Buddha flourished twice as much as before’ (quoted in Franke 1980: 306), the only connection between the expansions of the religious and political realms being that the latter facilitated the former—not the other way around. How seriously should such an interpretation be taken? Franke notes that the Mongol rulers appear here as the legitimate successors of the Buddhist universal emperors, not the Chinese dynasty, and Khubilai’s son Zhen Jin (真金) is addressed in this work as ‘Bodhisattva Imperial Prince’, this being ‘one of the many instances of Buddhist sacralization conferred upon the family of Chinggis Khan by the Tibetan lamas’ (Franke 1980: 307). Here the sacralization is made in the context of a Buddhist history—not a Chinese or Mongolian or even Tibetan history—but Franke immediately follows this note with a remark which puts the whole matter under the aegis of the political once more: ‘Because of its inherent supranational character, Buddhist sacralization was acceptable to the Mongols. It provided them with a sacral kingship that legitimized their domination over China and the world’ (ibid.: 307). Petech (1983) provided an account of the many Tibetan Buddhist lamas who had contacts with the Mongol court, from Chinggis Khan to Khubilai and the patronage of Tibetan sects by the Mongol royal family. The history is varied and extensive: miracle workers (such as Karma Pakshi), learned monks and interreligious disputations (some of which were presided over by the not yet khan Khubilai), and negotiations regarding Mongol policy towards Tibet are all well documented prior to Khubilai’s patronage of ’Phags-pa. Regarding this latter monk and the role he was to play at the Mongol court, Petech asks: ‘Why did Khubilai select the young

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Sa-skya hierarch?’ (Petech 1983: 184). Like most writers on this matter, Petech offers a political explanation: ‘He was the religious chief who offered the best guarantees of intelligent subservience to the aims of the new ruler of China’ (ibid.: 185). While Petech mentions ’Phags-pa’s initiation of Khubilai into Buddhism, he has nothing more to say about Khubilai’s religious life, and indeed in a later work Buddhism plays almost no role at all in Khubilai’s relations with Tibetan Buddhists: Khubilai selected ’Phags-pa ‘as his advisor and tool in Tibetan matters’ (Petech 1990: 16) and that is all there was to the relationship. In a counter-narrative to all those who offer the ‘Buddhist explanation’—that Buddhism simply legitimated the Mongol rulers—Elverskog argued that it was the rites related to the cult of Chinggis Khan alone that provided the Mongol rulers with their political legitimacy in the early imperial period. Although Franke (1981: 308) stated that Tantric rites were a part of every Yuan enthronement, Elverskog argued that there was a dual legitimation involving both Buddhist rites and rites pertaining to the cult of Chinggis. If Elverskog is correct, Khubilai could not have derived his legitimacy from his adoption of Tantric Buddhism unless the results of his initiation were such as to indicate the blessings of heaven (according to the cult of Chinggis). There is of course one clearly documented link between Khubilai’s political-military policies and the Buddhists within the Mongol Empire, namely that representatives of all religions were required to pray to their gods for the Khan’s good fortune and blessing, and this included prayers for military campaigns. ’Phags-pa not only performed rituals for the success of the khan’s armies, but as noted above, engaged artists as well for the making of religious articles for the performance of those rituals. Atwood (2004: 249) argued that Mongol policy towards all religions from the time of Chinggis Khan onwards was based on one simple assumption: that prayer benefited the ruler. In a similar fashion, Jagchid claimed that ‘if foreign priests, monks, or khojas communicated with Heaven and prayed for the khan, they also would be honored as böes, for the more prayers for the life of the khan and the tranquility of the people

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the better’ (Jagchid 1979: 7). Yet the study of state kṛtanagara’s religion policy regarding religion is not at all the same as studying Khubilai’s religious beliefs, practices, and If the historiography of Khubilai’s Buddhism leaves orientation. Atwood’s remark that ‘of all the khans, a lot to be desired, so does that relating to KṛtanQubilai Khan (r. 1260–94) tried hardest to curtail agara’s Buddhism. The sources for learning of Kṛtanagara are few religious privileges’ (Atwood 2004: 251) is a clear but varied. He himself left a number of inscriptions, reminder of the difference between understanding and there are later inscriptions mentioning him. Khubilai’s religion and understanding his religious There are lengthy passages in the Deśavarṇana policy; everything is much simpler if one tries only of 1368 and in the 16th(?)-century Pararaton as to understand state policy. 12 Apart from Davidson’s account, historians well as in the later kiduṅ. Since the Deśavarṇana have been nearly unanimous in seeing and un- was written by a Buddhist and the Pararaton by a derstanding Khubilai’s religion as primarily or ‘somewhat anti-Buddhist’ (O’Brien 2008: 237), ineven solely a matter of political expediency. It is terpreting what they have to say about Kṛtanagara’s as though Khubilai, because he was a powerful religion is fraught with problems. The inscriptions, member of the ruling class, could have no expe- on the other hand, are brief but accompanied by rience of or interest in religion except as a tool of statuary, and although each aids in the interprestate policy. Davidson’s narrative, the questions tation of the other, their interpretation is no easier he asks, and the criticisms he offers suggest that than understanding the longer poems and prose Khubilai’s Buddhism has never been adequately works, as the literature on these inscriptions clearly discussed for the simple reason that it has never demonstrates. In the Jaka Dolog inscription there are four been taken seriously. Theoretical orientations verses in Sanskrit that tell of Kṛtanagara; interand unstated assumptions have determined the preting what they have to say about that king indiscussions of Khubilai’s Buddhism so completely as to have rendered religion invisible in the rel- volves translation, and on that there has been no evant historiography: in the historiography of consensus. Nihom (1986: 487) suggested translating Khubilai’s Buddhism, there is hardly anything them thus: but realpolitik. Just as the Indra of the kings of the earth is the In fact, it is even a bit worse than that. In many sage, the master of the four continents, (so) he discussions there is simply a restatement of what is the son of Śrī Jayawardhanī (and) born of the some earlier writer had written, without any critical essence of Śrī Hariwarddhana. (10) Endowed engagement and often without understanding or rewith the complete truth, he is the teacher of the stating either the complexity of the issues involved doctrine of the Dharma. Actively engaged in or the sources from whence knowledge has been the ritual actions which redeem the fallen, he obtained. To make matters worse, the Mongols are is the best of those who know the lawbooks. (11) often portrayed as barbarians—simple-minded,   Named Jñānaśiwabajra, he is fully conversant with the gnosis of enlightenment. One rural-dwelling nomads of yesteryear—fascinated who has the limbs (of the ṣaḍaṅgayoga) puriby the magic and miracles of charlatans, shamans, fied by the rays of Insight, he is adorned with and miracle workers, envious and in awe of the the jewel which is mind. (12) baubles of urban civilization and its religions. It   With devotion having erected this (image) is therefore this predisposition that explains their conformable to the nature of Mahākṣobhya, in religious life and orientation. When it comes to the cemetery named Wurara he had previously religion among the Mongols, attitudes that would had consecrated himself. (13) not be countenanced in discussions of other social practices abound in the writings of Sinologists, Mongolists, and Tibetologists. 12.  The dating of the Pararaton and the kiduṅs is irrelevant to the discussion here.

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(Spi)ritual Warfare in 13th-Century Asia? Nihom’s conclusion was that they reveal a great deal about Kṛtanagara’s Buddhism, that ‘there is good reason to suppose that a cult of Hevajra was practised by the royal house’, and that ‘the consecration of Kṛtanagara was indeed in all probability a consequence, in syncopation or reaction, to the tantric consecrations of Kublai Khan’ (Nihom 1986: 497). The big surprise in this conclusion is that Nihom mentions nothing at all about Khubilai or the Mongols between his reference to Moens’ suggestion in his first paragraph and this closing remark. Lokesh Chandra agreed with Nihom that the Jaka Dolog inscription informs us of Kṛtanagara’s Buddhism, but what Nihom learned from the inscription was not exactly what Lokesh Chandra learned. Among other differences, Lokesh Chandra argued that Kṛtanagara’s Buddhism was of the Guhyasamājatantra tradition. He did agree with Nihom on several other matters, namely that ‘Kṛtanagara had performed consecrations and he had been purified by the luminosity of knowledge ... which made him ever more dedicated to Dharma. National stabilization was achieved through cosmic powers’ (Lokesh Chandra 1995c: 154).13 Lokesh Chandra also agreed that his initiation imitated Khubilai’s: Kublai Khan got initiated into Hevajra in 1264 and again in 1269, as a prelude to further conquests. To stem the Mongol threat of aggression, Kṛtanagara imitated Kublai Khan’s dedication and tried to develop magical might by taking the empowerment of Akṣobhya. The Hevajra pertains to Mother Tantras and Akṣobhya to Father Tantras. To supersede Kublai Khan who had been initiated into Mother Tantras, he got empowered into the more virile and powerful Father Tantras represented by Guhyasamāja (Wayman 1973: 234–35). The first empowerment referred to in the inscription could have taken place in 1281, when Kṛtanagara had been invited to come in person to the imperial court and to pay homage to the Mongol Emperor (Lokesh Chandra 1995c: 156–57).

Lokesh Chandra takes the old argument one step further, suggesting that the re-dedication of 13.  Lokesh Chandra earlier in the article attributed unification of the island realm to Kṛtanagara’s father Viṣṇuvardhana (to whom the statue was dedicated).

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the statue followed upon Kṛtanagara’s mistreatment of the envoy sent by Khubilai to Java in 1289 (Meng Qi, according to the undated notice in the Yuan shi): To avert any serious eventuality the King re-dedicated the same image, which had warded off for eight years the calamitous situation, with more esoteric rites to gain supernatural powers to preempt the aggression. (ibid.: 157)

Another inscription mentioning Kṛtanagara is the Amoghapāśa inscription, an inscription in two parts. The longer part on the back in praise of Amoghapāśa/Ādityavarman was added upon the reconsecration of the statue in the time of Ādityavarman (r. 1347–76), a reconsecration that ritually asserted his independence from Java (Kozok and Reijn 2010: 136). The inscription on the base (which was not altered or removed for the reconsecration) records that the statue was sent by maharājādhirāja Kṛtanagara as a gift to the people of Malayu in 1286. The inscription contains no further information on Kṛtanagara or his relations with Malayu except that he hoped that they would enjoy this and the other fourteen statues that he had sent. Both the Deśavarṇana (‘the King gave the order to move against the land of Malayu’ in Robson’s translation [1995: 54]) and the Pararaton (‘he sent an expedition to attack Malayu’ [Phalgunadi 1996: 99]) present Kṛtanagara’s expedition to Malayu as a military action, and an eventually successful conquest (as his gift of statues also indicates). Nevertheless Sedyawati (2004: 721) concurred with Berg in thinking that the Amoghapāśa inscription indicated ‘a religious diplomatic expedition rather than a military one’ and made no mention of Khubilai or a campaign to gather allies against him. The Deśavarṇana contains the lengthiest description of Kṛtanagara and was written by the Buddhist Mpu Prapañca. In that poem Kṛtanagara is in one passage (Canto 43: 2) called Jñānabajreśvara, ‘the king whose weapon is knowledge’ (Berg 1965: 97). The land of Malayu was defeated ‘through his divine incarnation’ (Canto 41.5), as would later be the case with Bali too. Likewise the other regions sought protection at the feet of the King: The whole territories of Pahang and of Malayu bowed humbly before him;​

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  The whole of Gurun and of Bakulapura also took refuge before him,   Not to mention Sunda and Madura, for the whole of Java was unquestioningly devoted to him. (Robson 1995: 55)

After this description of conquests and lands under his dominion (unless we accept that those lands did indeed seek his protection instead of being conquered), the text continues with a description of his religious character in Canto 42.3 and the whole of Canto 43: Canto 42 3. Nevertheless the King was not negligent, was free of intoxication, and was more and more energetic in his policy,   For he had realized how difficult it is to protect the world in the age of Kali.   This is why he held fast to esoteric doctrines and observances, and was firmly committed to the sect of the Buddhists,   In order to imitate the kings of old, and to guarantee the continued prosperity of the world. (Robson 1995: 55)

Here we do have an explicit reference to imitation, but it is not in imitation of Khubilai that Kṛtanagara was ‘committed to the sect of the Buddhists’ but rather ‘the kings of old’. In Canto 43 Prapañca declares that ‘only the divine being who concentrates on the six supernatural faculties of the Buddha could protect the world as god-king’ and it was for that reason that ‘the King was firmly devoted to the Śākhya Lion, And attentively adhering to the Five Commandments he was inaugurated and duly consecrated’ (Robson 1995: 55). Having been consecrated as a Jina, ‘the King studied the scriptures on reasoning, analysis and so on till he was completely accomplished’ (ibid.). At this point in his description of Kṛtanagara the author then mentions his esoteric rites: Canto 43 3. But as he grew somewhat older he held to all sorts of esoteric rites;   Mainly of course it was the Subhūti Tantra the essence of which he guarded and cherished in his heart.   He applied himself to worship, yoga and meditation for the stability of the whole world....

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4. He had mastered completely the sixfold stategy against enemies, was learned in the scriptures and expert in the works containing teaching on reality;   He was very virtuous, firm in his Buddhist observances and very energetic in the rites for application of magic. (Robson 1995: 55–56)

As an example of Buddhist hagiography it is unremarkable that he saw it as his duty to ‘protect the world in the age of Kali’ and engaged in religious practices ‘for the stability of the whole world’, but these same practices (whatever they were) were perhaps regarded quite differently by the non-Buddhist author of the Pararaton. In that text Kṛtanagara’s consecration as Bhaṭṭāra Śiva-Buddha is mentioned (Phalgunadi 1996: 99), but the unknown author later relates that when he was attacked by Jaya-katon, ‘King Kṛtanagara Bhaṭṭāra Śiva-Buddha was then merrily absorbed in enjoying palm wine’ (ibid.). The author again notes that Kṛtanagara was drinking palm wine when he narrates the circumstances of his death, but gives no further indication as to the nature of that drinking session, nor does he describe it as either religious or irreligious. Many scholars writing of this passage have concluded that the drinking was part of a Tantric Hevajra ritual and therefore probably accompanied by orgies and other transgressive practices. When Fic (2003: 86) declared that ‘Kṛtanagara was assassinated while performing a Tantrik rite’, we should understand that the hypothesis vigorously argued by earlier historians has become a simple and unquestioned truth. More carefully, Hall (2011: 320) noted that although Kṛtanagara was known as Śiva-Buddha, ‘neither his inscriptions nor the long Nāgarakĕrtāgama passage dealing with his reign show unambiguous evidence of Śaivism’ but clearly indicate Tantric Buddhism of the Vajrayāna variety. The ceremonies associated with that variety of Buddhism—such as the gaṇacakra mentioned in Deśavarṇana 43.3—remain, however, unclear (ibid.).14 14.  Unclear, that is, at least to Hall and all those still looking for the Subhūtitantra (on which, see Kandahjaya’s contribution, this volume, pp. 98–99). For Lukas (2004), the associated ceremonies were known: ‘In this Bhairavist (Tantric) tradition attempts are made to come into power in

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The kiduṅ offer pointed critiques of Kṛtanagara. dhism directly with Khubilai, nor his campaign He is described as a bad king ‘like a hot sun beating to Malayu with a threat from the North, however down mercilessly upon all’ in the Raṅga Lave (Berg plausible both explanations may appear to be. Nev1930: 35), living a gay and carefree life even as war ertheless, from Berg in the 1950s to the present, broke out and his killers bore down upon him (1930: Kṛtanagara’s Buddhism and his foreign policy 36–39). His religious life is evident only in his title have been repeatedly linked to and presumed to Śiva-Buddha. The Kiduṅ Harṣavijaya offers a bit be explained by Khubilai’s Buddhism and foreign more, but not much. Kṛtanagara is described in less policy. What is most striking about that literature than flattering terms: he pays no attention to his is that explaining Kṛtanagara’s Buddhism in terms ministers, who leave his service one after the other of realpolitik and mimesis appears to be the only or are exiled. He declares his intention to become option ever considered by most historians, primarian ascetic (a bhagavan) but changes his mind after ly because of the historians’ own assumptions about being encouraged to subject Malayu to his rule and the relations between religion and politics. This is take the princesses of Malayu, Dara-Petak, and all the more striking when we consider O’Brien Dara-Jiṅga as wives for his nephew Harṣavijaya.15 (2008), in which such ‘obvious’ explanations are set After he learns of Jayakatoṅ’s attack upon the capitol, aside in the interest of inquiring into the self-unhe wants to close the palace gates but his former derstanding of an early author. Having observed prime minister and Virakṛti reprimand him for that in the historiography concerning the worlds his cowardice, reminding him that ‘a king who of Khubilai and Kṛtanagara the relation between died in the women’s quarters would end up in hell’ religion and politics has been much discussed (Berg 1931: 77). He therefore goes out to do battle and everywhere explained but rarely questioned, and, fighting alone, is killed; his death is marked it seems necessary to proceed by questioning that by natural phenomena. relationship. In these kiduṅs, apart from the narrative concerning his desire to retire and become an ascetic, powers, religious and political little is revealed about his religious life and practices. The reproach about dying in the women’s Benedict Anderson (1990: 23) offered as one of quarters clearly indicates that the author of the the distinguishing features of the Javanese unKiduṅ Harṣavijaya could not have considered what- derstanding of power that ‘power does not raise ever Kṛtanagara was doing at the end of his life to the question of legitimacy’. As he described it, it have been responsible religious behaviour, whether ‘would be meaningless to claim the right to rule on the basis of differential sources of power.... Power or not Tantric rituals were involved. Surveying all of these sources for the religious is neither legitimate nor illegitimate. Power is’ life and foreign policies of Kṛtanagara, there seems (ibid.). This of course raises significant questions to be not one shred of evidence to connect his Bud- about any attempt to ‘see’ in Javanese religion the legitimation of a political regime, and Anderson a Rimbaud-like dérèglement systematique des sens—drunk- (ibid.: 26) noted this in reference to ceremonies enness, sexual orgies and ritual murder.... The Bhairava-rit- of state: uals—during which, among other things, a sexual intercourse between the Lord of the ring (mandala) and the yoginis—were sufficient to give rise to the consolidation of the ruler’s power (sakti): The yoginis were therefore chiefly considered to be representatives of magic power’. 15.  Christie (1964: 58) claimed that in ‘the Kidung Harṣa-wijaya Krtanagara became bhagavan (as did Vikramavardhane [sic] later), a statement which seems to have implied an attempt to increase the royal kesekten (cf. Skt. sakti) by spiritual exercises and tapa. While this is not affirmed in the Nagarakrtagama or the inscriptions, it is consistent with these sources’.

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This obsession with ceremony has commonly been interpreted either as simple love of ideologizing; as manipulative sleight-of-hand, concealing political and economic realities from the population; or as a way of formally integrating conflicting groups and interests.... Such judgments are doubtless partly valid... but it would be unreasonable to deny that the importance attached to ceremonies may also have a more traditional basis, certainly in the minds

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of the spectators and probably, if to a lesser degree, in the minds of the leaders themselves.

to whom the Khorchin Mongols gave allegiance in 1626 and whose descendants established the Qing dynasty of China) was ‘praised as a divine ruler who saves the Khorchins’, Elverskog questioned whether we should think of this as a conquest or a submission, for ‘using such terms not only shapes but also defines our interpretation’ (ibid.: 16).16 He suggested instead that:

Thus, according to Anderson, in Java religious rituals and ceremonies are means of acquiring power, and neither masks nor justifications for the exercise of power. Yet Anderson misses a crucial point: if ‘power is’, then we are dealing with a metaphysical presupposition which both precedes and informs social structures, political In large measure the Mongols hoped that the action, and theological disputation, and not with Manchu state could restore order among the fractious Mongol groups. Rather than seeing ideological constructions elaborated on the basis the Mongols as inherently anti-Qing, we need to of a pre-existing situation. recognize that many Mongols actually welcomed In his study of the historiography of Mongol– the rise of the Manchu state within the parameManchu relations, Elverskog (2006) noticed that ters of the ulus/törö framework. (ibid.: 30) state-supported Buddhism was everywhere understood to be ‘a form of Dharmic agitprop that The ulus/törö framework he mentioned was the secured the support of the Qing dynasty’s BudMongolian system of state organizing and medidhist subjects’ (ibid.: 3). The assumption he found ating among independent local authorities. Elverthroughout was that the Manchus secured the skog argued that what was at stake for the Mongol loyalty of their Mongol subjects by ‘ritually congroups was not their independent existence ‘but firming their rule through the symbols, myths and the absence of a proper mediating authority’ (ibid.). history of Buddhist political authority’ (ibid.). He The question that remains is why Nurhaci and the noted that the Jesuit Amiot described the relationlater Manchu rulers were described in religious ship this way already in the late 18th century, as terms (‘divine ruler’ etc.). Contrary to traditional did the Qianlong emperor in his ‘Proclamation historiography, it appears that the desire for peace on Lamas’. Elverskog (ibid.: 3–4) observed that among the various Mongol groups justified their this interpretation has been especially favoured unification with the Manchu state, which possessed by Mongols: the requisite political power to end the internecine warfare and effect a peace. Elverskog suggested that Ever since then, virtually every source touch‘most often, actual military, political and economic ing upon the Mongols, Buddhism and the success is ipso facto evidence of God’s grace, while Qing dynasty has echoed the same refrain... they all agree: the Manchus used Buddhism failure is proof of having lost favor. Yet ... for the to rule the Mongols.... The ‘Buddhist explanaMongols, God was a dynamic force that demanded tion’ assumes that by promoting the Dharma prayer in order to secure blessings and continued the Manchus were able to ensure the loyalty of favor’ (ibid.: 48). Political power (as well as its their Mongol subjects. acceptance) depended upon the ritually secured blessing of God. At least some Mongols understood Whereas ‘Buddhist history often reads like a that the Manchus possessed the political power as laundry list of famous Asian rulers who promoted the blessing of God, which the Mongols no longer the faith’ (ibid.: 9), Elverskog found ‘conceptualizapossessed. tions of community, state formation, political auBourdieu (1991: 20) argued that ‘religious spethority and religion’ informing one another (ibid.: cialists must always conceal that their struggles 11). He suggested that the theoretical concerns of historians who arrive after the fact ‘potentially 16.  This is precisely what is at stake for the interpretation distort our understanding of the past’ (ibid.: 15). of Mpu Prapañca’s remark quoted above that the regions Elverskog turned the terms of the discussion under Kṛtanagara’s dominion ‘sought protection at the upside down. Given that Nurhaci (the Jurchen leader feet of the King’.

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(Spi)ritual Warfare in 13th-Century Asia? have political interests at stake’. It seems to be clear in the case of both Kṛtanagara and Khubilai that Tantric Buddhist practices were inextricably involved in their orientations and actions as rulers, but that political interests were nowhere concealed. In spite of the near unanimous agreement of three centuries of historians, I propose to argue in a manner similar to Elverskog that the religious aspects of the political crises in the 13th century were not simply produced to legitimate or conceal political conditions, but were in fact a way of understanding the situation and at the same time the beliefs which produced the situation; the political significance of Kṛtanagara’s and Khubilai’s religious engagements arose from those engagements rather than determining them. In short, Kṛtanagara and Khubilai responded to the powers that moved and shook the world of their time—including the actions of both of these kings— on the basis of their beliefs about the world in which they found themselves, and for both of these kings their beliefs and actions were oriented (we might say disoriented) by Tantric Buddhism.

tantric buddhism and the love of kings To argue—as many have—that Kṛtanagara’s adoption of Tantric Buddhism was in imitation of or in response to Khubilai’s initiation requires the assumption that Tantric Buddhism offered effective power—spiritual, political, and military power— and that neither Kṛtanagara nor Khubilai ever questioned that. Without that operative assumption, mimesis makes no sense. If indeed Kṛtanagara and Khubilai understood their situation as one of (spi)ritual warfare in which Tantric Buddhism offered the greatest potency in action, we may acknowledge the political conditions as prompting the question of power and its attainment but not as explaining the adoption of Tantric Buddhism, much less the belief in its efficacy. And if both kings believed in the efficacy of Tantric Buddhism, there is no need to assume any act of mimesis. If we re-examine Kṛtanagara’s and Khubilai’s Buddhism with the understanding that it cannot be explained by their political situation, we are left with the question: ‘Why Tantric Buddhism?’

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In Bade (2013) I argued that Mongol expansion in the 13th century was driven by traditional Mongol beliefs about the means for achieving social peace, namely social unity.17 During the reign of Chinggis, the belief in one truth, one world, and one ruler to ensure peace and justice through his own actions which expressed both the order of God and the order of the world had come to be the foundation of that social unity, a matter explicitly recorded in later Mongol rulers’ correspondence with the papal authorities. These Mongol notions can be found in the Secret History (Mongγol-un niγuca tobčiyan) and other documents of the 13th century, and provided the foundation for the religious and political worlds into which Khubilai was born. In Khubilai’s youth the Mongols came into contact with Buddhism while campaigning in the south, and sometime during the reign of Ögedei (1229–41) two Kashmiri monks, Otochi and Namo, arrived at the Mongol court (Jagchid and Hyer 1979: 178). In the years that followed Khubilai was introduced to Tantric Buddhism and eventually consecrated in (one or more) Hevajra ceremonies (see discussion above). Why did he embrace this form of Buddhism? The Secret History records that Alan Gua, the mythical ancestor of the Mongols, taught her sons that power is achieved through unity, and that through unity her sons could become lords of the earth and lords of the air. By the time of Khubilai, the question had become how to produce and maintain that unity on the scale of an empire. For this task, Mongolian mythology and traditions provided no answer. ’Phags-pa proposed an answer involving Tantric practices and all the evidence indicates that Khubilai embraced that religious-ritual path to acquiring the power his position required.18 17.  That work, as the present chapter, was greatly influenced by my readings of the works of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, in particular his Out of Revolution (Rosenstock-Huessy 1993). While he wrote very little on Buddhism, his Soziologie (Rosenstock-Huessy 1956–58) contains a few remarks and a great deal of his thought about religion. Although the secondary literature on him is not extensive, three recent works are relevant: Cristaudo 2008 on power, Cristaudo 2012 on religion and politics, and Leutzsch 2009 on globalization and international relations. 18.  Pott (1966: 68ff.) provided a discussion of the ceremony he assumed accompanied Khubilai’s consecration, and

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In doing so he also embraced the religio-political doctrine of the cakravartin, ‘a just and virtuous world-monarch’ initiating ‘a universal, world-wide empire of enduring tranquility’ and ‘who should put an end to the perpetual struggle of the contending states’ (Zimmer 1952: 128). The Tantric initiate ‘strives after the attainment of supreme insight, however he may conceive this. And one concomitant of this supreme insight is supernatural power’ (Pott 1966: 105). Davidson (2002: 168) argued that Esoteric Buddhism was ‘accepted and supported by the monarchs on the Indian borderlands, for they understood that Buddhist institutions had provided them with exactly the right combination of political and religious authority’. Those rulers of foreign lands—among whom both Kṛtanagara and Khubilai should be counted—received training, rituals, spells, and medicine, all of which ‘could be used in service to the authenticity of the monarch and his state’ (ibid.). Davidson understood the relation of foreign monarchs to Esoteric Buddhism on the basis of his understanding of its origins in Indian feudal society: Thus institutional esoterism sought to sacralize observable reality, employing the techniques that had always been successful. Here, the Buddha was depicted as a king with a crown, clothed in all the ornaments of royalty. Here, the monks received the ritual coronation and became divine in the process. Here, they envisioned the spiritual state filled with Buddhas and bodhisattvas, with worldly beings and families of divinities. Here, they acted as agents for the Dharma, for the law. They performed the ceremonies that—in their minds— would bring peace where there was war, wealth where there was poverty, control where there was chaos, and destruction to the enemies of religion. (Davidson 2002: 168)

even suggests that a set of bronze statues discovered and photographed in the 1920s (and disappearing again shortly thereafter, its fate remaining unknown) was originally produced for use ‘at Khubilai’s Hevajravaśitā’. Sharrock (2006: 63) suggested as an alternative interpretation that ‘the bronzes may have been created for a performance of the cakrasaṁvara-tantra’.

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In his view, monks and siddhas sought to bring the real into line with their spiritual vision through their involvement ‘with real courts of local lords’ (ibid.: 334). Yet the rituals they devised for coronation ‘yielded dominion within a maṇḍala of vassal figures and conferred control over self and others in a world where hierarchy was not the primary model of social relations, it was the only model’ (ibid.). Once again it appears that the religious is both determined and explained by the social and political conditions within which it appears. The siddhas (at least some of them) produced their distinctive doctrines and ways of life ‘in a desperate move to make sense of the world that continued to unravel as the gods seemingly supported the capricious conduct of men with swords, power, and wealth’ (ibid.: 335). And in every case their goal was ‘the appropriation of power’ and in their scriptures they ‘maintained various versions of the imperial model of dominion over the gods, the sorcerers, and other religious groups’ (ibid.: 335). Yet Davidson argued that for Buddhists, ‘the fundamental reason they could engage the world in this way is that they believed in the transformation of personality’ (ibid.: 164). The rituals of coronation and ‘the public persona of the overlord is, among other things, an attempt to impress it with a consensual sense of responsibility’ (ibid.). Whence this belief? Two pages later Davidson offered a hint: How often can a monk visualize himself as King of the World, erotic and powerful, without being captured by the fantasy of his own vision? When the new scriptures explicitly proclaim that the individual can become all-powerful in this one life, what perspective can be expected of a semiliterate monk from a small village that has just been burned and had its wells poisoned by the local warlord in a dispute over tribute?... They would surely ask whether there were not some way to harness the power of Vajrapāṇi, the General of Secrets, to overcome these armies and to rectify the barbaric displays of inhumanity. In the process they would, as the Mahākālantantra teaches, try to use magic and visualization to engage in battle with the forces of evil and obtain success to rule the state. (ibid.: 166)

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(Spi)ritual Warfare in 13th-Century Asia? Davidson offers quite a contrasting response to Tantric teachings depending upon whether he is dealing with a ‘semiliterate monk from a small village’ (who responds by being carried away with his own fantasies) or the kings of foreign lands (who ‘understood that Buddhist institutions had provided them with exactly the right combination of political and religious authority’). Is it not kings and emperors who are more given to megalomania and fantastic dreams about their own divinity? If we rewrite the paragraph quoted above, substituting Khubilai or Kṛtanagara for monk, we have a new way to approach the relationship between political reality and religious belief, not only in the 13th century but in our own time as well. The widespread adoption of Tantric Buddhism at courts throughout Asia in the 13th and 14th centuries does not indicate the clever appropriation of religion as a ‘prop for the barbarian ruling class’ (Moses, as quoted above) nor as a means of legitimating their rule any more than it indicates the attraction of religious medicine, magic, and miracles, or the superiority of urban civilization to those rulers. If Tantric Buddhism arose in response to that world characterized by ‘the capricious conduct of men with swords, power, and wealth’ (ibid.: 335)—and this does seem to be the case—it did not arise as an attempt to justify or legitimate those conditions but to challenge and to change them. It was a response to political and social conditions, and judging by its spread throughout Asia, it was a particularly powerful response. The consequences of the adoption of Tantric Buddhism, both for the Buddhist monks and laity as well as for the kings and nobility who embraced it, were perhaps not what those who fashioned it would have desired, predicted, or even imagined, but they seem fairly clear in hindsight. Tantric Buddhism, with its imagination of a just and universal world ruler bringing about a state of affairs on earth that would mirror the heavenly state of affairs—the world as it ought to be—was not just a fantasy world of escape for monks and a useful mask hiding ugly realities for kings; it was a powerful motivating force that shaped political and social conditions throughout Asia. For some, the Buddhist rulers brought peace and political stability; for others, the Buddhist rulers brought

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war, destruction, and death. Whether Kṛtanagara was described as a wise king ushering in an era of expanding peace and prosperity, as a foolish and belligerent king, or as a rebellious local official threatening the peace and stability of the empire depended upon the point of view of the authors who wrote about him. For Mpu Prapañca, Kṛtanagara’s Tantric Buddhism provided the realm with a period of peace that was interrupted by his assassination, an act which plunged the world into a period of social disorder and evil. For the authors of the Pararaton and the kiduṅ, Kṛtanagara’s Tantric rituals (or more precisely, those of his behaviours that later historians have assumed were Tantric rituals) were his downfall. For the Chinese chroniclers, Kṛtanagara threatened world peace by resisting and even insulting the envoy of the ruler of heaven, but his religious practices were never mentioned. And at the other end, the Tibetan ’Phags-pa credited Khubilai with the expansion of Buddhism and world order as cakravartin. As a technique for obtaining power and con­ trol over the world, Tantric Buddhism—and especially its rituals—came to occupy the same place in 13th- and 14th-century Asian societies that science and technology occupies in our own time. The advocates of scientific method, like the advocates of Tantric Buddhism, have claimed that this method alone leads to knowledge and that knowledge is power. In his theological treatise Meditationes sacrae (1597), the early advocate of scientific method Francis Bacon wrote ipsa scientia potestas est (‘knowledge itself is power’) and in the 1651 edition of Leviathan (written by Bacon’s secretary, the young Thomas Hobbes) we find the phrase scientia potentia est for the first time.19 The order in which these phrases appeared 19. In Novum Organum, the later work in which the foundation of modern scientific method was first outlined, Bacon (1872 I: 222) wrote: ‘Now, the empire of man, over things, has its foundation exclusively in the arts and sciences; for it is only by an obedience to her laws, that Nature can be commanded’ (Hominis autem imperium in res, in solis artibus et scientiis ponitur. Naturae enim non imperatur, nisi parendo). The spiritual practices of Tantric Buddhism that are supposed to bring the initiate to absolute knowledge—to God—are precisely those which are to rid the initiate of all attachment, desires, and the perspective of separation, just as in Baconian science it is necessary to

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in England reflects the priority of the ideology over its political expression. Political orientations and political actions are always preceded and oriented by beliefs about the way the world is, about who we are, and about how we ought to respond to the world in which we find ourselves. The parallels between 13th- and 14th-century Tantric Buddhism and technoscience in our time as a means—the only effective means—of controlling and remaking the world according to our own desires and demands do not end with the identification of knowledge and power. Either the ruling class become initiates or the initiates become the ruling class, for in both cases it is the possession of power that is sought and the service of power that is actually realized. In the time of Kṛtanagara and Khubilai, as in our time, lives put into the service of power lead to war and global disorder, while those actors themselves proclaim that their way offers the sole effective means to a world of peace and justice. I stress the difference between effective and legitimate, for it is not the legitimacy of the regime (the service of any particular power) that matters but efficacy. For the mediaeval Mongol and Javanese kings as for the scientist and politician of today, what is achieved is its own justification because it has been achieved. The Tantric conception of knowledge as something to be obtained by particular methods and techniques is identical to the modern scientific conception of knowledge, and in both cases the acquisition of knowledge know Nature’s laws—reality as it is rather than as we desire it to be—in order to have the knowledge that would allow us to act effectively upon Her (gender is important here!). This is why knowledge alone confers true and effective power. But the initiate or scientist who desires knowledge in order to obtain power to rule over the world of man and nature is acting on the basis of desires that reflect the absence of that knowledge, and this perverts the entire enterprise. Were we to know the mind of God we would be lovers suffering for all creation, not tyrants dreaming of controlling her. As Davidson (2002: 161) noted, the ritual system of Tantric Buddhism ‘sacralized the political metaphor’, imagining the Buddha in the image of the kings of India. In similar fashion for Bacon and the science he founded, God is conceived according to the Renaissance European ruler, as an all-powerful being imposing its will on all, and that both reveals Bacon’s failures as a theologian and predicts the future trajectory of science.

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is the acquisition of power as such, natural and supernatural. With the acquisition of complete and perfect knowledge through science, we shall become God: If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God. (Hawking 1998: 191)

The desire for power and the means of obtaining it does not arise from political conditions, but from our being born into the world and the necessity of negotiating our lives within that world. Living involves struggles in the realms of bodily existence, desires and frustrations, social relations, and natural environment. All questions of acting involve the exercise of power as they always entail consequences and corresponding actions in the world around us. We may act out of habit and instinct or we may set our minds to learning about the world and adjusting our thoughts and actions in accordance with what we learn. The development of Tantric Buddhism and modern science were both responses to the world in a particular time and place, and both were/are oriented by the idea that knowledge is power, total knowledge being total power. Kṛtanagara and Khubilai both lived in a time of war and social crisis, and if we are to believe the histories that have been written, it seems that war and social crisis were in great part due to their own actions. They each lived in a world in which it was widely believed that only a single king could rule, however there may be many lesser rulers within his realm, a polity conceived as containing ‘core zones of authority and buffer client states’ (Davidson 2002: 337). They both sought to rule as divine rulers with complete knowledge and complete power. Their social position set each of them certain problems of action, and in seeking to act within that world, they sought a means for securing their own effectiveness. Tantric Bud-

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dhism supplied the most advanced and effective science known in their world and time. Were they living today, both would seek out the services of physicists and psychologists, just as Hitler secured the services of Heisenberg, Elizabeth Hecker, and Johannes Heinrich Schultz, while Roosevelt accepted the services of Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, Erik Erikson, and Jerome Bruner (among many others on both sides).20 When their two worlds came together, as they did during the diplomatic missions sent by Khubilai to Kṛtanagara, submission or war loomed as the only two options. Both Kṛtanagara’s refusals to meet Khubilai’s demands and Khubilai’s repeated missions indicate that neither king was willing to submit to the other, since both were intent on being the one king within the realm; war was inevitable. Because the Mongol offers of peace via submission did not allow refusal we may assume that peace negotiations were not really ever at stake—only proper submission to Khubilai. We may assume the same for Kṛtanagara since no peace was ever concluded and in 1289 (?) an envoy from Khubilai was sent back to the Mongol court with an unambiguous refusal of Khubilai’s offer. Political and military actions both follow from the idea, the belief in, and the commitment to realizing heaven on earth through becoming God. War was therefore spiritual before it was ritual and physical. What distinguishes this approach to the relation between religion and politics, what makes this analysis something other than realpolitik, is that by putting what one loves and serves at the root of human action—in other words, religion—the love of power (and realpolitik) becomes a love that can be overridden or contested by other loves. Those counter-loves may be proposed by religious teaching or by encounter. Tantric Buddhism can thus be seen on the one hand as a response to political conditions, and on the other as creating those very conditions; in both cases, its existence produces the conditions for its use and manipulation by any actors in any contested political realm.

If Tantric Buddhism is understood as a response to, and a creator of, social and political conditions, then the involvement of actors other than kings and rulers is important and perhaps crucial. The political role of ’Phags-pa’s Buddhism and that of other monks has often been investigated, as has the role of Buddhism in the policies of kings and rulers, although almost always from a perspective giving priority to the political. The importance of other agents—such as women—in determining the political and social conditions of Java and Mongolia has been given far less attention than it deserves. Both Worsley (1991) and O’Brien (2008) have stressed the importance of women in the Javanese conception of kingship, in particular the role of the queen in relation to the king and the nation. They have also noted Kṛtanagara’s association with Tantric rites, which bring together male and female. Others have noted the involvement of Chabi in getting Khubilai to pursue initiation with ’Phags-pa, as well as attributing to her the idea of dividing Khubilai’s and ’Phags-pa’s realms between the earthly and the spiritual.21 If indeed these two kings loved power, they also seem to have loved their queens. Could it be that Tantric Buddhism was introduced to the courts in both Java and Mongolia not only because the kings believed that it would bring them power but more importantly because the women they loved realized that power was too dangerous to leave in the hands of men alone? A focus on the legitimating function of religion has kept the historians’ attention away from its guiding and constraining functions (its role in demanding, initiating, and directing as well as inhibiting change), and has led them to misunderstand or ignore the involvement of other agents (e.g., monks, women) situated differently than a king, perhaps acting upon assumptions other than realpolitik, and probably driven by other desires. In a recent study of a 14th-century Old Javanese kakavin, Mpu Tantular’s Sutasoma, O’Brien (2008) offered one of the most interesting variations on the Kṛtanagara-Khubilai war yet published. She has argued that Candi Jago made ‘a very clear

20.  The physicists enlisted are well known; for psychologists and the Third Reich, see Cocks 1997; for the Americans, see Hoffman 1992.

21.  Seyfort Ruegg (1991: 448) cites the Mongolian historian ’Jig-med-rig-pa’i-rdo-rje as making this claim in his Hor Chos’byung of 1918.

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and eloquent statement about the status of Javanese kingship and the Singhasari dynasty’ and that Kṛtanagara had the monument made ‘as a statement to the world, perhaps even more so, as a warning to Khubilai’ (O’Brien 2008: 245). In her book on the Sutasoma she argued that the author attempted ‘literally to prove the royal divinity of Kṛtanagara and, given that his great-grandson, Rājasanagara, was also practising a similar if not the same system of Buddhist mysticism, then he too was Wairocana in mortal embodiment’ (O’Brien 2008: 245). According to her, the Sutasoma was an allegory that utilized a story known to its readers— the life of Kṛtanagara and the Mongol attempt to conquer Java—presented as a Buddhist tale to argue that Kṛtanagara had been a Buddha from birth. In her reading we are presented with a 14th-century interpretation of the spiritual meaning of the war in Java and the kings involved. It is a reading that is radically different from Berg’s readings of the kiduṅ, the Deśavarṇana, and the Pararaton because she has not tried to unmask the political realities falsified by the texts, but instead set out to understand what the story meant and how it may have a historical analogue that its original readership (or audience) would (or at least might) have known and understood. O’Brien’s hypothesis is that in the protagonists of the Sutasoma we can see the historical figures of Kṛtanagara (= Sutasoma himself), Khubilai (= Poruṣāda), Bajradevī (= Candravatī), Viṣṇuvardhana (= Mahāketu), Mahākāla (as himself), Ken Aṅrok (= Agrakumāra), and even Chinggis Khan (= Śūciloma). Prince Sutasoma must confront evil, yet violence is forbidden to him. In the final showdown with Poruṣāda (for which she would have us read Khubilai), she would like to see an analogy for the Kṛtanagara-Khubilai conflict, but of course the analogy could not extend to the actual historical invasion for by that time Kṛtanagara was dead. In the climax, Sutasoma/Kṛtanagara defeats both Poruṣāda and Mahākāla through his ‘Buddha-Mind, the weapon of Absolute Knowledge’ (O’Brien 2008). The story thus read offers us the meaning of the Kṛtanagara-Khubilai relationship and the tensions of international relations in late 13th-century Asia as it was perhaps understood in 14th-century Java, and not as a 21st-century historian would write it.

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If O’Brien is on the right track here, then for Mpu Tantular and his readers, there was indeed (spi) ritual warfare—as well as a naval campaign and land battles—for the 14th-century Javanese, and perhaps for Kṛtanagara and Khubilai as well. In such a reading, the politico-military world of Kṛtanagara and Khubilai is nowhere legitimated by religious practices of any sort but understood entirely in terms of ‘the spirit of the times’, which was a spirit of war and conflicting territorial claims as a Buddhist saw it. Instead of Berg’s optative, we have a poet’s record of the resolution of a great crisis, the aversion of social collapse, and the establishment of peace. For the readers or hearers of that story, there were not only historical parallels to be drawn relating to the time of Kṛtanagara and Khubilai, but contemporary parallels as well, and, perhaps most importantly, lessons for the future. Mpu Tantular’s Sutasoma was, in similar fashion to his Arjunavijaya in Worsley’s analysis, a story for the future rather than a dead statement about the past. No history worth reading can be otherwise.

conclusion Were the politico-military actions of Kṛtanagara and Khubilai legitimated or supported by their religious practices? Were their politico-military successes proof of the genuineness of their religious practices or indications of the superficiality and concealing function of the latter? The possibility of asking these questions challenges the assumption that the political and the religious dimensions of human action may be investigated and understood separately. Following Humphrey and Ujeed (2013: 23) I would insist that while ‘Buddhism ... cannot be explained by given social practices, [it] is nevertheless inflected by them—and vice versa’. The long history of philosophical and practical efforts to find a workable relationship between the religious and the political dimensions of social life suggests that their separation always leads to making a totalitarian religion out of politics or a totalitarian politics out of religion. Instead of always and only seeing religion as concealing political and economic realities, as a fiction maintained to ground and legitimize existing power structures and a ruling class, we

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(Spi)ritual Warfare in 13th-Century Asia? may see religion as the expression of a judgement concerning the past and a will towards a desired future. Humphrey and Ujeed offer an excellent case of this when they argued that the genealogy compiled by Mergen Gegen ‘was little concerned with the preoccupations anthropologists have usually assigned to it, property and legitimate succession, but instead it created a framework through time for a moral world’ (ibid.: 91). The past being judged may be seen as a golden age, a time of previous peace to be re-established; it may also be seen as a chaotic period of violence from which the new powers will extricate us. This is precisely how Lokesh Chandra (1995c: 152) understood the description of Viṣṇuvardhana in the Jaka Dolog inscription. ‘The internecine assassinations were absolved by virtue of ushering in an era of peace and prosperity, kindness to the people (kṛpālu), and fervent devotion and dedication to Dharma’, Lokesh Chandra wrote, and ‘the past acts of coming to power had been blood-stained and their expiation was to ensure the continuance of his dynasty by political, social and religious achievements’ (ibid.). The making of

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peace was an achievement, the conquest of chaos and the establishment of social security. Historiography is always and necessarily an attempt to interpret and ‘divine’ the meaning of events, and consequently belongs in the realm of the spiritual and the religious. It is never possible to argue about ‘what happened’ without making assumptions about the meaning of artefacts, the meaning of texts, the meaning of words, and the meaning of actions: whether an initiation into Tantric Buddhism is described as a religious experience or a political strategy will be determined in large part by how the historian understands religion, politics, and the relation between them. A historian who understands religion as a strategy for concealing political truths will produce a history like those encountered above in the historiography of the religious life of Khubilai and Kṛtanagara. A historian who does not make that reduction may not provide a better understanding, but the possibility of a more complex and perhaps better interpretation of the past at least remains open.

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PART II ART, ARCHITECTURE, AND MATERIAL CULTURE

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Chapter 7

Images of Devotion and Power in South and Southeast Bengal c l au di n e bau t z e-pic ron

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he importance of buddhist art in Eastern India from the 8th up to the 12th century has been recognized since the late 19th century as a major source of inspiration for the arts of Tibet and Southeast Asia. This artistic period has been associated with ‘esoteric’ practices and rituals and shows aspects which can differ from region to region over the centuries. Eastern India is a vast geographical area that includes Bangladesh and the modern Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and West Bengal. Bengal (Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal) and Odisha stretch along the Bay of Bengal, and the former region—in particular South and Southeast Bengal, an area which extends from the south of Dhaka up to Chittagong— was instrumental as the source of various aspects of Esoteric Buddhism in Southeast Asia. This art is usually labelled as ‘Esoteric’ or ‘Tantric’ and belonging to the Vajrayāna,1 and in inscriptions which mention them or in colophons of manuscripts which they had ordered to be produced, the Buddhists of Eastern India defined themselves as followers of the ‘excellent Mahāyāna’ (pravaramahāyāna; see below). The creation and development of a rich pantheon of characters, male and female, from the 6th century onwards, culminated in 12th-century Eastern India.2 But how was it really perceived and viewed? What were 1.  I am thankful to Christian Wedemeyer and other colleagues for having replied to my query on the use of this term in the H-Buddhism Log for March 2012 (http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lx&list=h-buddhism&user=&pw=&month=1203); see also Wedemeyer 2013: 9–10. 2.  See Linrothe 1999 for an in-depth study of the development of the iconography of wrathful deities and its subsequent periods.

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its functions? And were all its different types of production, i.e. stone, terracotta, stucco or cast images, manuscript illuminations, cloth-paintings or murals, regarded in the same way, without forgetting that images could also be visualized? It is beyond the scope of this chapter to try to answer these questions, which have already been assessed by authors in various different ways. For a long period, a major interpretation was the sectarian view, according to which the images are seen as reflecting a conflict between the Buddhist community and Brahmanical or Hindu society. More recently, Rob Linrothe has put them in a new perspective, as reflecting or symbolizing philosophical or religious experiences.3 This should however not lead us to abandon completely the more basic interpretation of some of these images as picturing deep tensions occurring between the different faiths existing in the region, which could surface and find expression in the art—thus acting as a form of religious propaganda or helping to ease off the pressure.4 If images could be appreciated from different perspectives depending on the social position of the viewer, they also most probably reflect on the situation of the community of monks within society at large. Due to the extremely rich amount of material, we shall confine our attention here to art-historical material. From its very early period, the Buddhist community had entertained close relations with the royal power. This connection, which can already be surmised from the biography of the Buddha 3.  Linrothe (1990: 16–18 and passim) summarizes previous views on the topic. 4.  See, for instance, Verardi 2011: 284–93, who analyses images of Cāmuṇḍā clearly betraying features of aggression towards the Buddhists.

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as recounted in the sources, survived through all the periods and found echoes in the imagery which emerged and developed as a language used within the Buddhist monastic community as well as among the laity. In the course of time, this visual language probably acted as intermediary between the different social groups: for instance, the image of the Buddha seated in bhadrāsana commonly met with on the façades of excavated monuments in Maharashtra in the 5th and 6th centuries could convey different meanings when conceived, commissioned, and seen by monks on the one hand, and when seen by laypeople on the other. For the monks it referred to the Sermon on Mount Meru—where the Buddha taught while seated on the throne of Indra, king of the divine universe, signifying the Buddha as a universal and divine king ruler over all gods of the Brahmanical pantheon, and hence also his power over human rulers. For the laity it was an image showing the Buddha dispensing his wisdom to humans like them. I doubt that laypeople could consciously have read more into such an image. However, it is true that such iconographic features, i.e. a major character seated in bhadrāsana on a lion throne, date back to the early centuries of our era, when it was used in depictions of Kushan rulers; it is thus possible to argue that these features remained lying in the collective imaginaire as pertaining to the iconography of a ruler. Images thus bear multiple purposes and meanings; their understanding occurs at different levels, some conscious, which I would qualify as ‘exoteric’, some unconscious, which I would regard as (to a certain degree) ‘esoteric’. What is exoteric here is the immediate perception of the depiction of the Buddha, seated on a lion throne, with hands joined in a specific gesture in front of the breast, which leads to the equally immediate identification of the Buddha as teacher. The esoteric element would be the subconscious knowledge that this image is one of royal power, portraying as it does a saintly man who became ruler of the universe as he could sit at the top of the Meru, occupying the throne of the king of the gods. This, I would add, is an understanding of the image that was willingly used by the Buddhist community on the façades of their monuments in order to transmit a message of power to lay society at a certain period and in certain regions.

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This is not only the Buddha as a teacher, but it is the Buddha at the centre of the universe and thus teaching to the whole of society. This is not the use that is traditionally made of the term ‘esotericism’ in scholarly research, and one could argue that this interpretation actually concerns the symbolic message of the image. As a matter of fact, if one goes beyond the materiality of images—and this is the aspect with which I shall mainly be concerned here—then a mental, non material, conception of them emerges: the initiate creates an image which is part of an evanescent continuity and with which he either identifies (sādhana) or constructs a maṇḍala. Such spiritual practices have been described in texts such as the Sādhanamālā or the Niṣpannayogāvalī, whose rich iconographic material can help us to identify, i.e. to name, images actually cast, carved, or painted. But we should keep in mind that these texts describe another, purely visual, category of images, aimed as they were at practitioners involved in spiritual practices and not at serving as ‘user manuals’ for artists. Turning to Eastern India,5 and in particular to Bengal, where mainstream Buddhism flourished in the 11th and 12th centuries, we cannot ignore the strategic geographical position of the region, which makes it a crossroads between the Indian Subcontinent and mainland (as well as insular) Southeast Asia. This region, being traversed by monks not necessarily adept in the Mahāyāna, not to speak of its late esoteric phase, became a point of convergence of all monks visiting Eastern India and especially Bodh Gayā, which was and still is today a place where Buddhists from all over Asia meet. The main image of the temple was and still is venerated by Buddhists of every obedience, which implies that it bears different layers of interpretation: it can be Śākyamuni, but it can also be Vairocana (BautzePicron 2010a: 33, 37–38 and passim). This may lead us to wonder about the context in which images of the Buddha in South Bengal were produced and worshipped, and by whom (see below). Buddhists excelled in the production of images of power. Images are basically of a material nature. 5.  For a general presentation of Buddhism in Eastern India from the 8th century onwards, see Niyogi 1980, Sen Majumdar 1983, and Chatterjee 1985: 230–356.

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Images of Devotion and Power They can, however, also be immaterial, such as those described in sādhanas, being created mentally and imbued with deep magical energy. These images have left no material traces; being ‘esoteric’ and ‘subtle’, they were created by monks during their meditation. More than any material icon, a visualized immaterial image allows the monk to identify with the deity evoked. Material images likewise become active when brought to life through specific rituals performed after being carved or cast by artists. Thus, material images always lie in a grey area, bearing an aura which is not materially perceptible but is nonetheless existent. Some images are more powerful than others; such are the cult images which are the objects of regularly performed rituals. Other images, e.g. those distributed on the façades of monuments, do not undergo similar treatment and their meaning is altogether of a different nature: they may, for instance, illustrate various aspects of the deity, i.e. of the Buddha in a Buddhist context; they may help in defining the sanctuary as a place inhabited by the Buddha; or they may contribute to reflecting the universal presence of the Buddha.6

bengal, an ‘international’ region There are different ways of approaching the vast topic that is the presence of similar Buddhist images in the countries bordering on the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The relations between images and monuments dating back to the 8th century and later from Indonesia, mainly Java, but also Sumatra or Borneo, and the homeland of Buddhism were noted a long time ago. Bihar—more precisely the 6.  Such was the case of the temple at Bodh Gayā: before its massive restoration in the 19th century, stucco images of the Buddha—more rarely of Bodhisattvas (e.g., Mañjuśrī)—were distributed in the niches now occupied by stone images (Cunningham 1892: pls. XII-B, XIV–XV). Monument 1 in Nālandā also had its façades with niches containing stucco images not only of the Buddha, but also of Mañjuśrī and Avalokiteśvara, and this major difference between the two monuments (and sites) can be accounted for by the fact that the Mahābodhi temple at Bodh Gayā is the ‘house’ of Śākyamuni par excellence; Mañjuśrī being an integral part of the Buddha iconography at Bodh Gayā (see below), his presence among the stucco images is not out of place.

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old Magadha—was considered to lie at the source of the ‘esoteric’ iconography noted in the Southern Seas. Recent research has, however, contributed to a more discerning appraisal of the situation during this fairly long period. Land routes within the Indian Subcontinent connected different regions and maritime routes crossed the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea in all directions.7 Bengal is a vast region located at the convergence of different routes, from Assam and Yunnan in the east, Bagan and Arakan in the southeast, Odisha in the southwest, Bihar in the west, and Nepal and Tibet in the north and northwest. It is also a region of transition between sea and dry land, between South and Southeast Asia, with inland ways leading to harbours like Tamluk or Chittagong which were connected with maritime routes along which merchants and monks travelled back and forth.8 Monks came from abroad to join the Mahāvihāras and participate in the teachings that were dispensed there,9 but also to go on pilgrimage to the places visited by the Buddha. They came from all over Asia, but relations between the Himalayan range, Bihar, and North Bengal were particularly intensive in the 11th and 12th centuries.10 In this context, monks from various countries and sects converged in particular 7.  See Huntington 1989 and 1990 for a presentation of the ‘international legacy’ of the art of Eastern India, and Pande and Pandya Dhar 2004, which includes a number of papers dealing with various cultural, in particular iconographic, aspects shared by South and Southeast Asia. 8.  Mukherjee 2011 is an in-depth study of the position of Bengal within the Asian network. 9.  Besides monks from Tibet—as one could expect— others from Sri Lanka professed their faith in Mahāyāna, i.e. esotericism; such was the case of Jayabhadra who came to study at Vikramaśīla (A. Chattopadhyaya 1981: 325). See also Frasch 1998: 76–77. 10.  Some inscriptions inform us about the movements of monks. See for instance the 9th-century Ghosravan inscription mentioning the monk Vīradeva who originated from northwest India (Sastri 1942/1989: 89–91; BautzePicron 2014a: 163, n. 4 for detailed references); the Bodh Gayā inscription of Vīryendra, native of Samatata (Southeast Bengal) and monk from Somapura (Paharpur) (Dutt 1962: 375–76 with further references); and the 12th-century Nālandā inscription of Vipulaśrīmitra, related to monks from Somapura (Sastri 1942/1986: 103–5; Dutt 1962: 376). For a study of the Bodh Gayā inscriptions and of the foreign presence at the site, see Leoshko 1987: 26–75.

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at Bodh Gayā, which was at the centre of a centripetal movement (Leoshko 1987: 40–56). Conflicts between monks originating from Sri Lanka and from the Himalaya are evoked in Tibetan historical sources, reflecting conflicts between Theravāda and Esoteric Buddhism.11 Similar conflicts seem to have arisen in Bagan during the early phase of the Bagan kingdom (Frasch 1998: 78), but from the second half of the 11th century onwards, Theravāda definitely grew stronger than Mahāyāna there.12 The Bagan rulers took deep interest in the Bodhi tree and the attached temple, sending missions to Bodh Gayā to preserve and restore the monument.13 In the reverse direction and as a final stately gesture vouching for the depth of the relation between the two sites, a copy of the Mahābodhi temple was erected most probably during the reign of King Nadaungmya (r. ad 1211–ca. 1231) (Frasch 1998: 79–80, 2000b: 41). Travelling all the way from Bagan up to Bodh Gayā, pilgrims had to cross Bengal, leaving artistic evidence of various natures: bronzes cast in Eastern India were discovered at Bagan,14 and stone images of the Buddha discovered in Bengal illustrate an iconographic programme encountered in the murals of Bagan and share stylistic similarities with the 11th- and 12th-century stone carvings from this site.15 11.  Apparently, the site was also visited and inhabited by monks originating from Sri Lanka; the existence of a Theravādin monastery in the close vicinity of the Bodhi temple is attested from the 4th century up to the 12th century (Frasch 2000a: 58, n. 7; 1998: 73–74). The Tibetan monk Dharmasvāmin, who visited the site in the 13th century, tells how he was advised by a śrāvaka to throw the manuscript of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, which he was carrying, into the river and not to worship images of Avalokiteśvara or the Tārā (Roerich 1959: 73–74). And Tāranātha records how ‘a large silver-image of Heruka … [was] smashed … into pieces … used … as ordinary money’ (A. Chattopadhyaya 1981: 279). 12.  This does not mean that Esoteric Buddhist monks were altogether absent from Bagan, but they did not hold a major function in the site. 13.  As Frasch (1998: 78–79) reminds us, there were three such missions during the Bagan period; see also Frasch 2000b: 41–43. 14.  See Luce 1969–70 III: pls. 445a, 446, 447a–d. 15.  Leoshko 1990; Allinger 2002; Lee 2009: figs. 24, 74, 82–83, 90; Huntington 1984: figs. 222–23; A. Sengupta 1993: figs. 54–55.

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Besides this intense relation with nearby Burma, which is attested by various sorts of evidence, the region’s contacts extended beyond the seas. As mentioned below, Atīśa left his homeland to study in Suvarṇadvīpa, where he remained twelve years before returning to the continent and pursuing his brilliant academic career; and in the 11th to 12th century the worship of Heruka, so important in the Delta, found direct continuation at Padang Lawas, a Buddhist site in North Sumatra. Likewise, East Java established itself as heir to iconographic topics illustrated in Bengal in the 13th century.16 The presence of Buddhism in the region is well documented with sources of different natures, all showing how Eastern India in general, and Bengal in particular, held a fundamental position in the development of Buddhism around that period: many names of scholars survived in the Buddhist canon (Niyogi 1987, 1988), and the rich poetic work of the Mahāsiddhas was not only preserved in old Bengali but also translated into Tibetan.17 Concerned with 16.  With regard to the names Hevajra and Heruka, see my n. 15 in Bautze-Picron 2014b. Mallmann (1986: 182–86) considers the names as being interchangeable when applied to some images, including the one encountered in Southeast Bengal; Linrothe (1999: 250), and following him Lee (2009), prefers retaining the name ‘Heruka’ for the images under consideration, underlining that the name refers to a ‘type’ but also to the ‘ultimate krodha-vighnāntaka’ depicted by these images. For the sake of easiness, but not necessarily being correct in view of Linrothe’s analysis, I shall retain here the name ‘Hevajra’ as in my previous study of the Padang Lawas material (BautzePicron 2014b), but remain aware that more attention should be devoted to the topic. 17.  Shahidullah 1928; Moudud 1992; Dasgupta 1976: 3–109; Jackson 2004, with numerous references; Bagchi 1982: 64–75. Mahāsiddhas, whose iconography is well developed in Tibet (Robinson 1979; von Schroeder 2006; Linrothe 2006), found only a (timid) echo in the artistic representation of the region; for an example showing Śavaripa and probably from North Bengal or East Bihar, see Bautze-Picron 2007b: 85 and pl. 10.9; for an individual portrait, probably from Lakhi Sarai: Bautze-Picron 1991–92: fig. 34 and Linrothe 2006: cat. 4 188–89. Siddhas could also be depicted on the outer surface of petals of lotus maṇḍalas; see, for instance, Huntington and Bangdell 2003: cat. 68; Linrothe 2006: cat. 5 190–93; Weissenborn 2012b: pl. 52. Emaciated ascetics, possibly situated in a rocky landscape, can be found in some stone images (for instance, see Fig. 7.6), a situation which might be related to the tradition of the Mahāsiddhas

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Images of Devotion and Power the history of Buddhism, Tibetan authors furnish ample information about Bengali scholars and the monasteries built in the region, as well as the local rulers who sponsored donations made to the Buddhist community or were instrumental in fostering the foundation of monasteries.18 Although these sources must always be approached gingerly, they do fortunately provide information that is not available from the Indian side. Due to the nature of the available documents, i.e. royal copperplates ratifying donations of land revenues, no details are indeed given concerning the real function or position of Buddhist monks at the court, or the genuine spiritual beliefs of the rulers.19 Data collected from local archaeology, epigraphy, and art history will be summarized here with a view to reappraising this part of the material and place it within its geographical and historical contexts. and of the Aris in Bagan (Bhattacharya 1994). An isolated and distant group of low reliefs showing siddhas and carved on the façade of caves is to be seen at Panhāle Kājī in Maharashtra (Deshpande 1986 and 1989). 18.  See in particular Tāranātha (D. Chattopadhyaya 1980) and Sumpa (Das 1908). 19.  The presence of the Buddhist seal at the top of the copperplates of the Pāla rulers and the fact that they label themselves as paramasaugata cannot be considered to be definite evidence of the affiliation of the kings to the last esoteric phase of Buddhism. As seen in the inscriptions also, the recipients or donators respect the ‘excellent Mahāyāna’ (see below), and this is perhaps how they really felt. No local information is preserved which would vouch for the interference of monks in the royal function. Quite on the contrary, I would suggest that, at least in South Bengal—in the region of Vikrampur-Maināmatī—it was the Brahmins who might have held a major position in specific rituals. Remains of only one Hindu temple were recovered on the Devaparvata, i.e. Maināmatī, which recalls the situation encountered at Bagan from the 11th century onwards, where we know that the Brahmins were involved in rituals related for instance to the foundation of the royal palace (see Bautze-Picron 2009b: 434). An important piece of information is however given in a biography of Śākyaśrībhadra (1140–225), who acted ‘as chaplain to the king of Jayanagara for some time’ (Jackson 1990: 11, 18 n. 1) and had visions of Maitreya while at court (ibid.: 10). Jayanagara was most probably the modern village of Jaynagar located south of Lakhi Sarai, where 12th-century Buddhist images were recovered in large numbers (Bautze-Picron 1991–92: 239–41).

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political landscape Numerous inscribed copperplates have been recovered throughout Bihar and Bengal; the information that they contain is manifold and brings light to various aspects of the regional history, their main purpose being to record donation of land. They mention kings and their genealogy, name the recipient, and describe the land that is given. While naming the rulers who authorized the donation, the texts also mention their religious affiliation: the Pālas, mainly ruling in Bihar, West and North Bengal from the 8th up to the 12th century, and the Candras, ruling in Southeast Bengal from the 10th century up to ca. ad 1050 are two dynasties that officially claimed to be Buddhist. The king was described as paramasaugata, and the seal bearing the Buddhist symbol of the wheel flanked by two deer was affixed at the top of their copperplates, above the name of the ruler. The Pālas—When considering the recipients of the donation which these copperplates record, it should be noted that they are very rarely mentioned as being Buddhist: of all the official inscriptions of the Pāla rulers, only five out of twenty-two concern a donation made to a Buddhist institution, all the others referring to donations towards Brahmins or Brahmanical temples dedicated to Viṣṇu or Śiva.20 These five donations which were made during the reigns of the early Pālas (8th–9th century) in Bihar and North Bengal are recorded in the two Nālandā inscriptions of Dharmapāla and his son Devapāla respectively, the so-called Murshidabad inscription of the first ruler, the Jagjivanpur inscription of his grandson Mahendrapāla, and the Mohipur inscription of Gopāla II, son of Śūrapāla, the second son of Devapāla.21 Already in that period, the rulers might 20.  G. Bhattacharya (2000: 441–42) lists nineteen inscriptions. See the following n. for the inscriptions regarding donations to the Buddhist community and which might have been discovered after the publication of Bhattacharya’s paper. See also Sen Majumdar 1983: 144–50. 21.  Nālandā inscription of Dharmapāla: see G. Bhattacharya 2000: 441 no. 1 and S. Bhattacharya 1985: 124, 154–55 no. 31 for further references. So-called Murshidabad copperplate of the same ruler: G. Bhattacharya 2000: 441 (second group) no. 1; see Furui 2011: 145 on the find-spot of the plate. Nālandā copperplate of Devapāla: see G. Bhattacharya 2000: 441 no. 4 and S. Bhattacharya 1985: 125, 154–55 no. 33

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also have recognized donations made towards Even though the eulogy may start with the Brahmins or a Brahmanical temple, a practice evocation to the Buddha and the ruler mentioned which was to be preserved by their descendants. as paramasaugata, its text reveals that the world At the same time, Brahmins also appear as lay of Hindu gods was an integral part of the ruler’s Buddhist donors responsible for the production culture.26 In the case of the official inscriptions of manuscripts as shown by Jinah Kim.22 of the Pāla and Candra rulers, who acknowledge The official inscriptions of the first Pāla rulers their Buddhist faith through the seal fixed at the reflect a continuous tradition of donations made to top of the copperplates and the label paramasaugathe saṅgha by the king but also by his subjects, the ta, we hardly find any mention of female or male sovereign ratifying the donation of land revenues characters of the Vajrayāna. This does not imply for the upkeep of the institution while his subjects that the individuals involved in the act of donahad provided the funds for the initial donation. tion were not aware of this form of Buddhism: for Tibetan sources, however, mention that Dharmapā- instance, Mahendrapāla’s army chief who had the la had been involved in the establishment of the monastery built for which the donation was made great monasteries of Vikramaśīla and Somapura is named Vajradeva (G. Bhattacharya 2000: 436). (Paharpur, North Bengal),23 and seals were discov- In the Devapāla Nālandā, the Mahendrapāla Jagered in situ at Paharpur naming the monastery jivanpur, and the Gopāla II Mohipur inscriptions, śrīsomapure śrīdharmapāladevamahāvihārīyārya-­ the donations were similarly made bhikṣusaṁghasya.24 The recent discovery of a copfor the worship, copying etc. accordingly of perplate inscribed in the year 26 of the ruler’s reign the lord Buddha-bhaṭṭāraka, of the abode of confirms this link in referring to a donation of land all the leading virtues like the Prajñāpāramitā plots for the upkeep of a community of monks at etc., of the multitude of the noble Avaivarttika the Somapura-Mahāvihāra.25 Bodhisattvas, [and] for garments, food, lying for further references. Jagjivanpur inscription of Mahendrapāla: G. Bhattacharya 2000: 442 (second group) no. 2. Mohipur copperplate of Gopāla II: Furui 2008. 22.  See Kim 2013: 236–47. It is perhaps within this context that one should consider the contents of tortoise-shell inscriptions discovered at Vajrayoginī (Vikrampur): both the Buddha and Vāsudeva, i.e. Viṣṇu, are praised side by side (Sircar 1949; Biswas 1995: 58). See also Prasad 2011a: 130, noting that in Southeast Bengal, donations were made to Brahmins rather than to Buddhist monasteries and that donations made to the monasteries had been done in a specific limited area; and Prasad 2010 for a study of donors of images in Southeast Bengal who rightly remarks ‘a general absence of donation of any Buddhist deity by any member of society in early medieval Comilla, Sylhet, Noakhali and adjoining parts of Tripura’ (ibid.: 34). 23.  A. Chattopadhyaya 1981: 274–83; Niyogi 1980: 52–59; Majumdar 1971: 115; Sen Majumdar 1983: 125–27, 128–31. 24.  Dikshit 1938: 90; Niyogi 1980: 21–22, 52–59; Furui 2011: 155, n. 26. 25.  See G. Bhattacharya 1994 and 2000: 442. See Furui 2011: 145 for a reading of the plate and for discussion of the find-spot: this was initially thought to be in the Murshidabad district but the author suggests that—considering the information given in the inscription—it must have originated further north (South Dinajpur district in West Bengal; Dinajpur or Bogra districts in Bangladesh).

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and sitting accommodation, meditation and personal belongings etc. of the community of noble Buddhist monks [belonging to the] Eight classes of great personages [and] for repairing work [of the monastery] when damaged and broken.27

26.  Let us briefly observe that, as one could expect (see Bautze-Picron 2010a: 39, n. 91), it is the Vaiṣṇava mythology that is predominant in all inscriptions, with numerous analogies being drawn between the king and the god. The transition from one belief to the other at this ‘official’ level is made during the rule of the Candras in South Bengal (see below). 27.  G. Bhattacharya (2000: 444–45) remarks how similar the formulation is between the Nālandā and Jagjivanpur texts, which he translates as ‘noble Buddhist monks (belonging to the) Eight classes of great personages’ (aṣṭamahāpuruṣapudgalāryabhikṣu saṁghasya). Cf. Mukherji 1992: 172 (whose translation is, however, unreliable). Furui (2008: 70) writes: ‘making the grant…. to the Buddha, the abode (sthāna) of all Dharmanetrīs beginning with the Prajñāpāramitā, a group (gaṇa) of non-returning (avaivarttika) Bodhisattvas, and to the bhikṣu-saṁgha as an embodiment of the eight great persons (aṣṭa-ārya-puruṣa)… according to their ranks. This was for the following purpose: worship, offerings and rituals…’. I wish to quote here an email by Peter Skilling, dated 16 March 2009, re-

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Images of Devotion and Power Southeast Bengal—Out of the thirty-five inscriptions that Swapna Bhattacharya had collected in 1985 in her study of the epigraphic material from Bengal and Bihar28 and which were found in Southeast Bengal—from Faridpur district up to Chittagong, most having been discovered in Maināmatī and the area of Vikrampur—only nine refer to a Buddhist recipient, all other beneficiaries being Brahmins.29 As mentioned above, the Candras who ruled from Vikramapura in the 10th and 11th plying to a question formulated by myself: ‘Avaivartaka is a quality of a bodhisattva, usually connected with the eighth stage (bhūmi)—a significant point because he cannot turn back, but must go on to full awakening.… One interesting thing about the inscriptions—only a handful, which belong to the Pāla period in Eastern India—is that they seem to take us from the ideal world of the texts—in which the ascent though the bhūmis takes many lifetimes—to the ‘‘real world’’ community of the monks, the saṁgha. Usually the inscriptions record donations to the mahāyanika-avaivartaka-bhikṣu-saṁgha—the community of avaivartaka Mahāyāna monks. In at least one case, the compound is preceded by the “eight noble individuals” (aṣṭa-ārya-pudgala) or similar terminology of Śrāvaka attainments…. The question is: were the monks of the vihāras in question actually regarded as having these attainments? Did they so proclaim themselves? Usually Buddhist tradition is discreet—or in some contexts restrained by Vinaya—about proclaiming one’s spiritual achievements. Or is the phrase simply a rhetoric that expresses the perceived worthiness of the recipients of dāna by the donor(s), or, more properly, by the eulogist(s)? In any case the term does not mean ‘‘the Mahāyāna Avaivartaka Buddhist sect’’ as it has sometimes been translated. In fact, the inscription(s) that mention the āryapudgala and the avaivartaka in the same breath are good examples for the fact that Śrāvakayāna (Hīnayāna, if one likes) and Mahāyāna lived under the same monastic roof and shared the same ideological bed. Again the idea of ‘‘sect’’ is quite inappropriate’. 28.  See S. Bhattacharya 1985: 150–61. More copperplates have been discovered since S. Bhattacharya submitted her PhD, but their content does not invalidate the observations based on her list. Importance is to be attributed to the content of the mid 9th-century inscription discovered at Jagjivanpur, a site located in Malda district, West Bengal: it records a donation made towards the Nandadīrghika Udraṅga Mahāvihāra by Mahendrapāla’s general Vajradeva for the worship of (Buddhist) deities and the performance of rituals including the copying of manuscripts (G. Bhattacharya 1992). 29.  See Furui 2013 for a study of the position of the Brahmins in Bengal. However, this is not decisive with regard to the situation of Buddhism among the society: Brahmins

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centuries30 claimed to be paramasaugata and had the Buddhist seal and their names affixed to the top of their copperplates (Sircar 1973: 20, 51). All inscriptions of Śrīcandra start with devotion being paid to the Jina, i.e. the Buddha, the Dharma, and the saṅgha (Sircar 1973: 51), whereas his grandson Laḍahacandra (r. 1000–1020) claims his affiliation to Viṣṇu while preserving the Buddhist seal affixed to his copperplates (Sircar 1969–70: 199; 1973: 45–49, 51–54). As for Laḍahacandra’s successor, Govindacandra, he also preserves the seal and is named paramasaugata, but the content of his inscription is uniquely Brahmanical.31 From around the middle of the 11th century, the Candras were followed by the paramavaiṣṇava Varmans who also ruled from Vikramapura (Majumdar 1971: 197–204) and at a still later period, the site became the capital of the Senas, themselves devotees of Sadāśiva. A clear shift in the religious affiliation of the rulers in the region thus took place towards 1050.32 The Buddhist community could still, however, enjoy royal support in the region of Comilla at a later period: an inscription dated 1141 Śaka, i.e. ad 1219, was incised in the 17th regnal year of Raṇavaṅkamalla Harikāladeva, who claimed to be Buddhist; the inscription confirms the donation of land for the upkeep of a vihāra erected in the city of Paṭṭikerā and dedicated to Durgottārā.33 As a matter of fact, although no major donation to the Buddhist community can be anymore ascribed to a ruler afterwards, Buddhism remained present in Paṭṭikerā, a region that entertained close contacts with nearby could also become Buddhist and commission the production of manuscripts (see Kim 2013: 238–40). 30.  See S. Bhattacharya 1985: 125–26, 154–56, inscriptions no. 38–50. See also Biswas 1995: 11–26 for a presentation of the history of the region. 31.  Sircar 1969–70: 199; 1973: 49–51, 54–55; S. Ghosh 2008–9: 112–13; Prasad (2011a: 129) suggests ‘a gradual loss of Buddhist hegemony in Samataṭa’ in the 11th century. 32.  For a survey on the ‘Religious condition of Vanga and Samatata’, see Biswas 1995: 51–60. 33.  See D.C. Bhattacharya 1933: 283–84. The region, kingdom, or city known as Paṭṭikerā was part of the region of Samataṭa and is already mentioned in inscriptions of the Candras from Ladahancadra’s reign; it was located east from Comilla in Tripura district (old Tippera) (S. Bhattacharya 1985: 264; see also D.C. Bhattacharya 1933: 285–86).

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Bagan.34 And in an inscription dated 1158 Śaka, i.e. ad 1236, Gautamadatta, minister of the Vaiṣṇava ruler Dāmodaradeva, was ‘said to be “devoted to the feet of Śrī-Gautama”’ (Dani 1954: 186–87, line 16). As we will see below, even in the absence of royal patronage, the Buddhist community was active in the region, with manuscripts being produced around the beginning of the 12th century. Political relations and trade with the neighbouring kingdom of Bagan also characterize this period (Bautze-Picron, 2015), these connections being part of a wider network linking Bagan to Bodh Gayā, where the Burmese undertook restorations of the temple (Frasch 2000b: 41–42).

lay practitioners and their manuscripts

Fig. 7.1: Mañjuśrī as Dharmadhātu Vāgīśvara (detail of ms. from Harivarman’s regnal year 8; Baroda Museum inv. E.G.121). (Photo courtesy of Birgit Breitkopf)

From the numerous manuscripts produced during this period, many are richly illustrated with images of male and female characters, and many are described in texts such as the Sādhanamālā.35 Few colophons give any information as to the place of production; when given, this site is often said to be Nālandā, whereas a number of manuscripts were produced in various sites.36 As Jinah Kim’s research shows, most manuscripts produced in the 12th century reflect a dramatic change in the nature of the donors—henceforth, lay practitioners. The production still, however, seems to be important in Bihar and probably North Bengal; although no indication of the site of production is given for them, a small number of manuscripts can be considered to have been produced in the region of Vikramapura-Maināmatī, since their colophons refer to rulers of Southeast Bengal. A manuscript was probably produced at Vikramapura during the reign of Govindacan-

dra;37 three others were donated during the reign of Harivarman, two being illustrated38 and dated in the regnal years 8 and 19 respectively whereas the third, not illustrated, bears the date of 39.39 The first reproduces the Pañcaviṁśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā and has for donor ‘Rāmadeva who is said to be a follower of the excellent Mahāyāna (Figs. 7.1, 7.16–17). The writing of the manuscript was completed in the eighth year of the prosperous reign of Mahārājādhirāja Parameśvara, Paramabhaṭṭāraka, Paramavaiṣṇava Śrīmad Harivarma Deva in the month of Kārttika, on the twelfth day of the moon, on Wednesday in the constellation of Uttarāphālgunī’ (B. Bhattacharya 1944: 18). The second, preserved in the Varendra Research Museum in Rajshahi, contains the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā.40 The third, kept in the library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Kolkata, includes the Vimalapra-

34.  See Bautze-Picron 2014b; on this kingdom and its location, see Majumdar 1971: 257–59. 35.  Exhaustive bibliographies on illuminated manuscripts are included in the works of Karen Weissenborn (2012b) and Jinah Kim (2013). 36.  As reported by Weissenborn (2012a), the site is unrecorded in thirty-three manuscripts; it is given as Nālandā in seven cases and various other sites in ten further examples, among which a manuscript may have been produced at Somapura as suggested by J. Losty 1989b (as quoted by Weissenborn 2012a: 298 no. 26).

37.  See Weissenborn 2012: 308 no. 43 for further references. 38. Bautze-Picron 1999 and 2009a; Weissenborn 2012a: 301–2 nos. 31 and 33, with further references. 39.  See Majumdar 1971: 201, n. 1 for a discussion concerning the two dates given in this third manuscript, which would imply that Harivarman ruled at least forty-six years, starting his reign in 1073 or 1074. 40.  See Siddhanta 1979: 383–84, where the manuscript is dated in the 19th regnal year; the six paintings are reproduced in Bautze-Picron 1999: pls. 13.32–35, 40–41, and pp. 192–93; see also p. 160 for further references.

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Images of Devotion and Power bhā, a commentary on the Kālacakratantra.41 A further illustrated manuscript donated in the regnal year 47 of Lakṣmanasena was possibly produced in this part of Bengal, considering the fact that the ruler was then reigning from Vikramapura.42 The same can be said of an illuminated manuscript of the Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra:43 although no precise date or location is given in the colophon, the style of the paintings includes features noted in the manuscripts of Harivarman’s reign, and the subdued colours profoundly differ from the vibrancy reflected by the manuscripts produced at Nālandā.44 Two basic features seem to characterize the paintings of South Bengal: stylistically, line clearly prevails over volume, i.e. the surfaces are flat and covered with plain colours, and, as far as iconography is concerned, we observe a tendency towards a narrative rendering rather than the clear iconic images seen in manuscripts from Bihar or North Bengal. This is illustrated particularly well in a manuscript—the present location of which is unfortunately unknown, but which was photographed in the monastery of Nor in the 1930s—which Eva Allinger analysed, concluding that it is to be related to the art ‘of Bagan and eastern Bengal’.45 Depicted in the pedestals of images of the Tārā, Avalokiteśvara, and Mañjuśrī (Figs. 7.2, 7.21, 7.23) that are carved in the region is the worship of the manuscript which lies on a stand, beside which sits a monk wearing a ‘pointed cap’ and holding the two classical attributes of the ritual, i.e. the bell and the vajra.46 From comparison of images of Mañjuśrī 41.  Shāstri 1917: 79–82: the author supposes that the river ‘Veng’ mentioned in the post-colophon was located in Jessore district (also mentioned by Majumdar 1971: 201, n. 1). 42.  Kim 2013: 59, Ms. D10; Weissenborn 2012a: 294 no. 24, with further references. 43.  Losty 1989a; Weissenborn 2012a: 311 no. 48; Kim 2013: 57, Ms. B5. 44. Bautze-Picron 1999: 162; Kim 2013: 106 after Losty 1989a: 5. 45.  See Allinger 2010: 36–38 and fig. 6. Two narrative texts that were illustrated in the region and in Nepal are the Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra and the Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra, e.g. Weissenborn 2012a: 310–11 and Allinger 2008. 46. Bautze-Picron 1995: 61–62 and figs. 5–7, 10–11, 17, 22; for illustrations, see Lee 2009: figs. 16, 19, 27, 31, 95–96; fig. 80 shows the monk alone with no depiction of the manuscript;

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Fig. 7.2: Mañjuśrī (Chandimura, Lalmai, Comilla District; Rammala Library, Comilla). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

in North (Fig. 7.3) and Southeast Bengal (Fig. 7.2) it immediately emerges that this double motif, i.e. the manuscript on the stand and the monk with pointed cap, is not only repeatedly encountered in the art of the region, but also occupies a predominant place in the ornamentation of the pedestal. The manuscript is also one of the Bodhisattva’s major attributes from an early period on; besides, Mañjuśrī is one of the Bodhisattvas encountered by Sudhanakumāra in his quest for wisdom and this is also a rare example of this iconographic motif at the bottom of a Buddha image.

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia from inscriptions and written sources as a monastery, is said to have been founded in the second half of the 8th century by Dharmapāla, probably on the remains of an earlier religious structure.48 East from Paharpur, Mahasthangarh was a major city in the region for a very long period. Though apparently occupied up to quite a late period, none of these sites seem to have taken a very active part in the late phase of Esoteric Buddhism, embodied in Paharpur by the fragment of a small image of Hevajra embracing his Prajñā.49 Besides Somapura, another ‘Great monastery’ (Mahāvihāra) was located at Jagaddala, the foundation of which is attributed to Rāmapāla in the second half of the 11th century (Niyogi 1980: 59–60). Its precise location in North Bengal had long remained uncertain; however, excavations led at Jagdal in Naogaon District, North Bangladesh, a site situated some twenty kilometres from Paharpur, revealed Buddhist remains, including another—very delicately carved—small image of Hevajra and his Prajñā embracing each other, which might support the identification of the site with the famous monastery.50 Large 11th- and 12th-century images of Mañjuśrī teaching (Fig. 7.3), of the Tārā (Fig. 7.4) and of Mārīcī (Fig. 7.5) were recovered in a vast area that roughly coincides with the Division of Rajshahi and the Dinajpur District in Bangladesh, and the districts of South Dinajpur (Dakshin Dinajpur) and Malda in the Indian state of West Bengal.51 West

Fig. 7.3: Mañjuśrī (Niyamatpur, Rajshahi District; National Museum of Bangladesh). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

knowledge (see below). He is thus clearly an image reflecting the fundamental importance attributed to this quest gained through the production, reading, and worship of manuscripts.

geography and the archaeology of monasteries North Bengal—Major Buddhist sites are located in North Bengal:47 Paharpur or Somapura, known 47.  See Niyogi 1980: 50–61 for a survey of the monasteries in North Bengal; see ibid.: 61–65 for the monasteries in West

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Bengal. To her survey, one may add the monastery discovered and excavated recently at Jagjivanpur (Roy 2002). See also Dutt 1962: 328–80 for a survey of the Mahāvihāras and the monasteries during the Pāla period. Ranjusri Ghosh carried out intensive fieldwork in South and North Dinajpur districts (R. Ghosh 2006–7, 2008–9, 2012). 48.  See Lefèvre 2012: 239–40 for a summary of the various hypotheses; the author himself suggests that the Buddhist monument was built on the remains of a Brahmanical temple. 49.  Today preserved in the Indian Museum, Kolkata: see D. Mitra 1989: 182 and figs. 1–2; A. Sengupta 1993: fig. 40; and Niyogi 2001: figs. 39–40. 50.  See Zakariah 1994 and Miah 2003: 153 pl. 11.6; see also Nazimuddin Ahmed in Banglapedia. 51.  Today preserved in the Varendra Research Museum, Rajshahi. For the Mañjuśrī images, see Bautze-Picron 1993a: 151–52, n. 15; see also the following references: Rahman 1998: 23 and pls. 28–29, 39, and A. Sengupta 1993: fig. 41. For the Mārīcī images, see Bautze-Picron 2001a: 268–69,

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Fig. 7.4: Tārā (Jagdal, Naogaon District; Paharpur site Museum). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

from this wide region was located the monastery of Vikramaśīla (today Antichak, on the south bank of Ganga River, Bhagalpur District, state of Bihar), the foundation of which is also attributed to Dharmapāla.52 The site opens the way to Magadha and its fundamental seats of learning, like Nālandā for instance, or to the pilgrimage route connecting all sites visited by the Buddha. As revealed by a very large number of stone images carved in the 12th century and found around the city of Lakhi Sarai, a place situated on the route between the Mahāvihāras of Nālandā and Vikramaśīla (Bautze-Picron 1991–92), the area held a crucial role in the region 288 no. 35–38, fig. 18, and also Rahman 1998: 45–46 and pls. 62–63. 52.  See above, n. 23.

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Fig. 7.5: Mārīcī (Narikelbaria, Paba, Rajshahi District; Varendra Rersearch Museum). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

during this period. One of the villages located in the southern suburbs of the town is Jaynagar, where important images were recovered,53 and which might well be the old Jayanagara where once stood the royal palace of a Pāla ruler, at whose court the Kashmiri scholar Śākyaśrībhadra resided for some time in the second half of the 12th century (see above, n. 19). As neighbouring regions, North Bengal and Bihar are closely related. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Buddhist artistic production of both regions shared profound aesthetic similarities that are clearly distinguished from the artistic trend 53.  To the references listed in Bautze-Picron 1991–92 is to be added the recently published paper by J. Kim (2012) on the nun who donated an Avalokiteśvara image (cf. BautzePicron 1991–92: 256, A.9).

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characterizing the production in South Bengal. The iconography is also directly in the circle of influence of Bihar, whereas specific iconic formulations emerge in the southern regions. South and Southeast Bengal54—South of Dhaka, the site of Bikrampur, i.e. Vikrampura (also named Vikramapurī), covers a very large area over which some seventeen or eighteen villages are scattered and which is limited by the Dhaleshvari River to the north and the Meghna to the east.55 The village of Vajrayoginī is said to be the birthplace of Atīśa (982–1054), who belonged to a royal family.56 Atīśa, also known as Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna, left Bengal, probably in ad 1012, to study under Dharmakīrti ‘of Suvarṇadvīpa’, often identified with Sumatra although this was recently interpreted as a general name for the region of Southeast Asia.57 He returned to Bengal in ad 1025, having spent twelve years under the guidance of Dharmakīrti in the kingdom of the ruler Cūḍāmaṇivarmadeva, who is also remembered for having had a monastery built in Nākappaṭṭiṉam during the reign of Rājarāja around ad 1005.58 54.  See Niyogi 1980: 65–86 for a survey of the monasteries located in the region. Special attention should be paid to the PhD Thesis on the Buddhist art of the Dhaka region which was presented in 2009 at the University of Texas, Austin, by Eun-Su Lee, whose life tragically ended prematurely. 55.  As mentioned and described by A.M. Chowdhury in Banglapedia, the area has greatly suffered and much transformed in the course of centuries through the evolution of the rivers, mainly the Padma, which runs south of the area (see also Abu Musa 2000: 1–4). 56.  See Abu Musa 2000: 11–12; on Atīśa, see Eimer 1979: 182–96 and A. Chattopadhyaya 1981: 56–66. 57.  Eimer 1979: 182–96; A. Chattopadhyaya 1981: 84–96; Cœdès 1964: 259, 264. See Skilling 1997: 188 for his and Wheatley’s opinions concerning the location of Suvarṇadvīpa. For the traditional views on the location, see BautzePicron 2014b, n. 79. ‘Śrīvijayapura (or Vijayanagara) of Suvarṇadvīpa’, where Dharmakīrti lived, can thus be tentatively located in South Sumatra (Palembang) (ibid.: n. 80; Schoterman this volume) or in the Malay Peninsula (Kedah) (Skilling 1997: 188–91 sums up the evidence), both regions being practically equidistant from the region of Padang Lawas, another major Buddhist site of the 11th and 12th centuries (on the Buddhist remains of this Sumatran site, see Bautze-Picron 2014b). 58.  A. Chattopadhyaya 1981: 88; Cœdès 1964: 259–64; Skilling 1997: 188; Sen 2009: 67; Seshadri 2009: 125. See Guy

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Vikramapura was the capital of various Hindu kings who ruled in the region. The initial centre of power of the Candras who ruled in the 10th and 11th centuries was located on the Devaparvata, i.e. Maināmatī, before Vikramapura became their administrative seat during Śrīcandra’s reign (ca. ad 930–75). They were followed by the Varmans, who ruled in the 11th and the first half of the 12th century from Vikramapura, before being ousted by the Senas who reigned till the 13th century. Throughout this period, from the middle of the 10th up to the beginning of the 13th century, the site proves to have been a very intensive Hindu place: numerous images of Viṣṇu, Sūrya, and Śiva, mainly as a dancing god, were produced then, all reflecting very high aesthetic quality. No major architectural remains similar to those uncovered at Maināmatī or Paharpur could, however, be recovered; this may be due to the changing landscape of the region provoked by its rich and intricate water system.59 Going east from Vikramapura in the direction of Comilla, one is struck by the Devaparvata (today Maināmatī), a hill that rises out of the flat country and reveals abundant archaeological remains.60 Besides numerous architectural structures adorned with terracotta panels, a large number of small cast images and some, very rare, of large dimensions, were recovered during the excavations. Stone images were not found in abundance at the top of the hill but some were discovered in the countryside from here as far as the region of Chittagong, where a large group of 9th-century bronzes was recovered at Jhewari—now preserved in the Indian Museum (A.K. Bhattacharya 1989; D. Mitra 1982); an equally important 12th-century stone image of the Buddha was found at Betagi, where it is now worshipped. Tibetan authors mention 2004 for a survey of the Buddhist data attesting to contacts between South India and Southeast Asia. 59.  Excavations recently revealed, however, a monastery at Dholagaon: http://bangladeshunlocked.blogspot. de/2012/05/atish-dipankars-vihara-dholagaon.html; http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2013/03/23/ancient-buddhist-vihara-found-in-munshiganj (last accessed December 2015). 60.  See Bhuiyan 2008–9 for a small site located northwest of Comilla.

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Images of Devotion and Power the existence of a monastery, the Piṇḍa or Paṇḍita-vihāra, in or near Chittagong: the monastery owes its fame to the debate which saw Buddhists and Brahmins opposed, and to the victory of the former after putting on ‘pointed caps’, which have since remained part of the clothing of monks, especially in Tibet.61 As recalled by Puspa Niyogi (1980: 69), the Mahāsiddha Tilopa (988–1069) and at a later period, Vanaratna (1384–1468), the teacher of Tāranātha, were also native to the region.62

iconography and the function of the images From the immensely rich world of images which emerged within Vajrayāna in eastern India and which was inherited and further developed by the Tibetans, only specific characters found their way into the visual iconography of Southeast Asia. While this phenomenon has yet to be rightly appreciated or even studied, we may suggest that the creation of such a rich iconography and the extremely abundant production of images in the monasteries of Bihar, Bengal, and Odisha might have partly resulted from the presence of Tibetan monks and their probable involvement in the transformations that the iconography underwent. A second aspect that the study of iconography brings to light is the geographical distribution of the images: not all ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ were represented evenly everywhere. This observation helps in localizing the specific South Asian geographical area where images carved or cast in Southeast Asia had the source of their inspiration. The iconography is closely intermingled with the way of depicting these characters, i.e. with ‘style’: as demonstrated by Pauline Lunsingh-Scheurleer, the earliest socalled Javanese bronze images were in fact cast in southeast Bangladesh, and more particularly in the region of Maināmatī (see n. 64 below). Maināmatī was at the centre of an active Mahā­ yāna community from the post-Gupta period onwards. Stone images were rarely produced, 61.  See Niyogi 1980: 69 and Bautze-Picron 1995: 62, n. 35. 62.  See Pal 1989 and Niyogi 1988: 44. Like most monks, Vanaratna was widely travelled, going to study in Sri Lanka where he stayed six years before returning to India and Tibet.

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where­as the production of metal images seems to have been very important, with numerous small bronzes from an early period (late 7th up to 9th century) having been recovered in the site and the region, depicting the main Bodhisattvas Avalokiteśvara and Mañjuśrī or the Tārā among others.63 The advance of Vajrayāna can be appreciated thanks to the discovery of a human-size bronze of Vajrasattva. Most of this material should be dated prior to the 9th century and is contemporary with images from the region exported to Java, where they would inspire a rich production of cast images in the subsequent centuries.64 Studies of iconography rely heavily on textual sources.65 However, the visual iconography often presents features of which we find no echoes in the texts. Producing an image is a creative process not locked in dogma and meets very specific religious or spiritual needs at the time of its fabrication; monasteries were not entities withdrawn from the world, but were interacting with the space around them, and they were also open to monks coming from faraway countries. The fact that the monasteries of Bihar and Bengal were engaged in extremely dynamic religious and spiritual activities may also have overshadowed the fact that they might have been influenced by developments which had taken place in other countries. Clear evidence is, for instance, provided by the representation of Sudhanakumāra standing or seated near the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara in images from Bihar and Bengal dated from the 10th century onwards (Fig. 7.6).66 Sudhanakumāra is no god and no image of him alone has, to the best of my knowledge, ever been produced: he is an attendant to the Bodhisattva forming a pair with Hayagrīva, whereas the 63.  Lee 2009: figs. 127 to 162 reproduce such early bronzes discovered at Maināmatī or in the region. 64.  See Lunsingh-Scheurleer and Klokke 1988: 66–69, cats. 14–17. 65.  When researching on the late Buddhist art of South and Southeast Bengal, one is confronted with an abundance of publications which address various different topics; outstanding bibliographies on the topic of Esoteric Buddhist art have been prepared by Ulrich von Schroeder in his publications of 1981 and 2001, to which one can add Utpal Chakraborty’s book published in 2006. 66. Bautze-Picron 2014a: 99–100 (with further references).

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Fig. 7.6: Avalokiteśvara (Mahakali, Vikrampur area; National Museum of Bangladesh). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

Tārā is paired with the Bhṛkuṭī. Likewise, he can attend on Mañjuśrī in images of the latter.67 But he is the main character of a spiritual quest which leads him to Bodhisattvas like Avalokiteśvara and Mañjuśrī and which is narrated in the Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra.68 The text was illustrated in the 9th century on Borobudur in Central Java and in the 13th century on Candi Jago in East Java (see O’Brien, this volume); other versions are known from murals at Tabo (Western Himalayas), dated before 1042, and from a Nepalese manuscript tentatively dated around the mid 12th century or slightly later.69 67.  See Bautze-Picron 1993a: 152–53 and Casey 1985: cat. 22. 68. Bautze-Picron 2014a: 99 (n. 116 for references). 69.  See Allinger 2008: 153 (date of the manuscript as proposed by Jerry Losty), 154 and Klimburg-Salter 1997: 120–24. For a comparison of the narrative in Tabo and on Borobudur, see Kimmet 2012: 98–99. For other icono-

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There is no doubt that the text was known in Bihar and Bengal as it was in these regions bordering India, but the main character was here singled out of the narrative and introduced as an attendant to the two major Bodhisattvas to be worshipped in Bihar and Bengal. Here he becomes a figure of knowledge, his main and sole attribute being the manuscript which he holds clasped under his left armpit, both hands joined in the gesture of veneration in front of his chest. We cannot exclude the possibility that the importance of the text in Java—which cannot be doubted, considering the fact that it is illustrated through 460 panels on Borobudur (Soekmono 1976: 20)—stretched out to Eastern India and beyond. In India, it is included in the iconography of two Bodhisattvas of different but to some extent complementary functions, although in both cases the fact that this young man in search of wisdom carries the manuscript symbolizing the spiritual knowledge which he accumulates through his encounters with wise men and Bodhisattvas may show how fundamental the book cult was within the monastery itself, but also beyond its limits, among the lay community (Kim 2013: 223–24, 236–50). The 8th and 9th centuries constitute a major period in the history of Buddhism in Java, marked notably by large constructions like Borobudur and Candi Sewu. Around the middle of the 9th century, Bālaputradeva, a Śailendra ruler, had a monastery built in Nālandā for monks originating from Java, and as a diplomatic gesture of good will, the Pāla ruler of the time, Devapāla, had the revenue from land and villages donated for the upkeep of this institution.70 The years around ad 830 have been considered by J. Dumarçay as pivotal between two phases of development of Javanese architecture, showing a ‘new cultural impulse’ which originates from India and brings new architectural techniques, and which is characterized by the creation of major construction sites (after Klokke 2006: 51). For different but complementary reasons, Marijke Klokke (ibid.: 52) reached the same conclusion. In this context we should mention the dedication of an graphic similarities between Java and Western Himalaya, see Lokesh Chandra and Singhal 1999. 70.  See Furui 2011: 155, n. 25 for the references.

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Images of Devotion and Power image of Mañjuśrī made by a monk from Bengal or ‘Gauḍīdvīpa’ in the year 782 at Kelurak,71 i.e. in the vicinity of Candi Sewu, a monument whose date is much debated, but can be roughly dated between the second half of the 8th and the first part of the 9th century.72 An inscription found in the Candi Sewu compound mentions the enlargement in 792 of a mañjuśrīgṛha, which could very likely be Candi Sewu itself (ibid.). Candi Sewu, like Borobudur, offers a majestic three-dimensional illustration of a topic generalized in the sculpture and the painted manuscripts of Eastern India from the 9th century on, i.e. the depiction of the five Tathāgatas, which was favoured mainly in the iconographies of Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, and the Tārā.73 As we will see below, the motif of the five Tathāgatas saw a particular treatment in the iconography of the Potala mountain on which the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara resides (Fig. 7.6); this iconography is encountered in particular after the 9th century in Bihar and South Bengal,74 which suggests that the visual concept ‘Mountain cum Tathāgatas’ might have been inspired by the impressive Javanese monuments. Images of specific deities were more favoured than others and may not have found the same degree of religious fervour everywhere. Thus, we witness a radical change in the 11th and 12th centuries in the regions of Vikrampur and Maināmatī, when large stone images of Mañjuśrī75 and Heruka/ Hevajra are produced (Figs. 7.2, 7.20–21; 7.9–10).76 This period follows a phase where the monastery of Nālandā seems to have exerted a major function: 71.  See Miksic 2006: 188–90 and Klokke 2006: 53–54. 72.  Klokke 2006: 53–54 (with further references). 73.  But not exclusively; it crowned, for instance, the tall image of the Buddha standing at Jagdishpur, near Nālandā (Bautze-Picron 2010a: fig. 125a). 74.  One of the most accomplished examples was found at Kurkihar (Bihar) and can be dated to the late 9th or 10th century; see Bautze-Picron 2014a: fig. 110. 75.  Casey 1985: cats. 22, 33; M. Mitra 1999; Lee 2009: figs. 95–96. 76.  Bhattasali 1929: 35–37 and pl. XII; Saraswati 1977: ill. 172; Huntington 1984: fig. 215; Biswas 1995: 40 and pls. 38–39; Linrothe 1999: 249–66 and fig. 188 (on Heruka, as named by Linrothe) and 267–75 (on Hevajra); Haque and Gail 2008: 279, 301–2 and pls. 506–7; Lee 2009: figs. 66–67, 69; Bautze-Picron 2014b: figs. 1–2.

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Fig. 7.7: Mārīcī (Bhavanipur, Vikrampur area; National Museum of Bangladesh). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

images that are outstanding in terms of iconography and aesthetic quality have been recovered in the area of Vikrampur, which clearly relate on the evidence of their style to the ateliers located around Nālandā/Ghosravan/Tetravan in Bihar. Such is the case of a unique depiction of a specific aspect of Mārīcī (Fig. 7.7) or a representation of Ava­ lokiteśvara seated on the Potala (Fig. 7.6).77 More77.  See Bautze-Picron 2001: 272–75 on the Mārīcī found at Bhavanipur; see also: Bhattasali 1929: 54–56 and pl. XIX; Huntington 1984: fig. 206; Samsul Alam 1985: fig. 69; Haque and Gail 2008: 131 and pl. 518; Lee 2009: 168–81 and fig. 51. Two further images of the elephant god Gaṇeśa found in Southeast Bengal and dated through inscriptions in the 10th century could likewise have been ‘imported’ from Bihar (Bautze-Picron 2014a: 160–61, nos. 15–17); it is most interesting to read that the donors of these two images and of a third one, of Viṣṇu, also sharing features with the art of Bihar, were donated by merchants who might indeed have been travelling between Southeast Bengal and Bihar

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Fig. 7.8: Mahāpratisarā (Kurkihar, Bihar; Patna Museum). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

over, a 9th-century bronze image of Mahāpratisarā found at Kurkihar in Bihar is a clear product of the ateliers located around Maināmatī (Fig. 7.8).78 The importance of Heruka under different (Prasad 2010: 31–33). See Bautze-Picron 1991–92: 249–50 on similarities shared by the image of the Bodhisattva on the Potala and sculptures from Bihar, and also: Bhattasali 1929: 27–28 and pl. VIIa; Saraswati 1977, fig. 59; Shamsul Alam 1985: fig. 78; Haque and Gail 2008: 129 and pl. 512; Lee 2009: 54–55, 179–90 and figs. 54–55. 78. Bautze-Picron 2014a: 18 and fig. B36, and 135, n. 358 for further references. See Mevissen 1999 for a study of this iconography in Bengal and abroad.

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79.  See A. Chattopadhyaya 1981: 378 and Eimer 1979: 92: ‘Als Dīpaṁkaraśrījñāna studierte … sah er im Traum Heruka vor sich am Himmel und hörte ihn sagen… er solle Mönch werden und viele Schüler anleiten’. 80.  They were apparently to be found everywhere, but seem to have remained isolated in the sites where they were discovered (D. Mitra 1989, 1997–98). We also know of a silver image of the deity which must have stood at Bodh Gayā (above, n. 11). 81.  See Weissenborn 2012b: 69–76 and figs. 51–55 on this iconography (also illustrated in manuscripts, 2012b: figs. 41a, 42c, 45a, 47–48). See Davidson 2002: 206–11 and Herrmann-Pfandt 2006–7 on the Cakrasaṁvaramaṇḍala, assimilated with Jambudvīpa and showing the universal power of the god over all Hindu, mainly Śaiva deities and sites of pilgrimage. 82.  See Lee 2007: 204–8 and figs. 70–71 on two examples found in the Vikrampur area; the presence of a tiny Buddha image at the top of the slab, probably Amoghasiddhi (as recognized by Lee, whereas the author in Haque and Gail 2008 sees here Amitābha), makes it a Buddhist and not Śaiva image (also reproduced by Haque and Gail 2008: 163, pl. 462, and by Rahman 1998: cat. 72 and pl. 46). 83.  See Bautze-Picron 2014b with further references on both gods in Sumatra and beyond.

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Fig. 7.10: Hevajra (Barkanta, Comilla District; National Museum of Bangladesh). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

Fig. 7.9: Hevajra (Lajjair, Comilla District; National Museum of Bangladesh). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

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Fig. 7.11: Wrathful three-headed male deity (Paschimpara, Vikrampur area; Varendra Research Museum, Rajshahi). (Photo courtesy of G.J.R. Mevissen)

while his image found at Padang Lawas in North Sumatra is evidently based on those carved in the region of Vikramapura—another evident element of contact between the Buddhist centres of these countries. A still enigmatic three-faced wrathful god standing in the victory posture and trampling corpses was found in the region of Vikrampur (Fig. 7.11): although doubt remains as to the proper identification of the wrathful three-headed image, this is evidently visually related to the more ‘clas-

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sical’ image of Mahākāla as found for instance in Lakhi Sarai but also in Vikrampur, or to further images of Yamāntaka and Krodhas from Bihar.84 The two gods, Hevajra and Mahākāla, are physically very different from each other: Hevajra/Heruka, in his images found in South and Southeast Bengal, has a beautiful well-proportioned human body, although he frowns and has fangs. This is not the case for Mahākāla and the wrathful image from Vikrampur: both are pot-bellied, have bulging eyes, have a heavy body with short legs, and do not display the lightness of movement which the dancing Hevajra shows. Other aspects of Heruka, like Cakrasaṁvara, found more particularly in North Bengal, partake in the same type of image, with a heavy body that expresses violence and aggressiveness, and whose obvious aim is to frighten. Images exported by monks evidently reflected concepts developed in Eastern India, but they merged with local Southeast Asian spiritual and political considerations. Clearly, both Hevajra and Mahākāla were images of political power in regions outside the Indian Subcontinent, symbolizing the duty of the ruler to protect the country by destroying its enemies (Mahākāla), while illustrating the presence of the political power as universal (Hevajra/Heruka standing at the centre of a maṇḍala) and destructive of negative forces (Hevajra/Heruka dancing on corpses). One may thus wonder whether in India, as was the case in Southeast Asia or China, they had the leading position of protecting the state; there is no clear evidence that the rulers of Eastern India ever placed themselves and their states under the protection of Mahākāla or Hevajra.85 Taking this into consideration we may surmise that these gods had the function to protect the saṅgha: the monastery becomes the maṇḍala on which Hevajra rules.86 How are we to assess the function of these images in their historical context? Can we approach

the carved and cast images, and the illuminations inserted in manuscripts alike? Probably not, since their basic function, which justifies their creation, differs. Large stone or cast images are to be displayed publicly, even if only to the monks, whereas small images can be carried as private belongings of monks, or donated to the monastery by monks and laypeople. Small objects could easily be transported, which makes their study rather difficult: were they produced in the site where they were discovered? Were they carried away from another site? Were they part of a set of images? Studying them thus means taking on many doubts and unknowns. The production of a manuscript reflects a completely different situation.87 When the eye and the mind focus on a material image—for simple worship or identification with it—the movement is centripetal, going from outside (the viewer) towards one single object. But opening and reading a manuscript opens entirely different vistas, the eye wandering through many different divine images and the mind following the spatial directions in which the deities depicted in the manuscript are distributed. The creation of a richly illuminated manuscript allows the insertion of practically as many images as desired; these male and female characters show a wide range of physical features known from their descriptions in sādhanas and can even be rarely shown in stone (Figs. 7.12–15). Their insertion all throughout a manuscript transforms it into a frame for these images, which are most often unrelated to the text, usually of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā. In short, they do not illustrate the text, or only rarely do so, such as in the case of narrative texts or of the Pañcarakṣā text (Mevissen 1989, 1990, 1991–92, 1992, 1999). One manuscript of the Pañcaviṁśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā donated in the early period of Harivarman’s reign as seen above has a rich and peculiar iconography88 where Avalokiteśvara appears

84.  See Bautze-Picron 1991–92: figs. 16, 25, 17 for a Krodha (Lakhi Sarai). For Yamāntaka, see Linrothe 1999: 162–76. For the Vikrampur image, see above. n. 82. 85.  To which remark one should add the observation made by B.N. Prasad on the absence of inscriptions on images which would refer to a donor (compare above, n. 22). 86.  See Bautze-Picron 2010a: 22–23 and Davidson 2002: 113–68.

87.  See Jinah Kim’s book (2013), which offers a range of new and challenging considerations regarding such manuscripts. 88.  For Kim (2013: 104–6), the folios preserved in Baroda and those kept in different Western collections, private and public, do not belong to the same manuscript, whereas for Weissenborn (2012a: 301–2 no. 33) they all belong to one single manuscript.

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Fig. 7.12: Ḍākinī (?) (Manuscript dated N.S. 393 or ad 1273, folio 401a; Varendra Research Museum, Rajshahi). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

Fig. 7.13: Eight-armed red goddess (folio 297a; Varendra Research Museum, Rajshahi). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

Fig. 7.14: Eleven-armed blue goddess (folio 173b; Varendra Research Museum, Rajshahi). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

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Fig. 7.15: Four-armed blue god (Hevajra?) (folio 388b; Varendra Research Museum, Rajshahi). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

as a major Bodhisattva, showing many different aspects (Figs. 7.16–17); his importance is consistent with the attention paid to different types of images of the Bodhisattva—for instance residing on his mountain, the Potala—found in the region (Fig. 7.6).89 The motif of the mountain quite naturally enhances the divine position of the Bodhisattva, this also being the place of residence of a major god like Śiva (Lee 2009, fig. 64), or the seat of the Tārā in a unique and outstanding carving found around Maināmatī.90 In this image, the Tārā preaches, evoking the ‘Potalake Bhagav[at]ī Tārā’ depicted in two Nepalese manuscripts of the 11th century.91 The fact is that these manuscripts, like the illustrated Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra kept in the British Library, take part in the very same iconographic tradition reflected by the manuscript dated in the regnal year 8 of Harivarman, i.e. they depict ‘famous’ images 89.  See above, n. 77. Lee 2009: fig. 59 is related to this iconography, a trefoil arch being the only reminder of the niche within the mountain where the Bodhisattva sits: see Bautze-Picron 1999: 183–85. For other images of the Bodhisattva in the region, see Bhattasali 1929: 25–26 and pl. VIa; Saraswati 1977: ill. 60; A. Sengupta 1993: fig. 56; Haque and Gail 2008: 158, 160–61 and pls. 513–14; Lee 2009: 121–29, 185 and figs. 27, 31, 58–60. 90.  See Lee 2009: 190 and fig. 65. For other images of the goddess in the region, see Bhattasali 1929: 56-58 and pls. XX–XXII; Shamsul Alam 1985: figs. 49, 65; Biswas 1995: 32, 35 and pl. 28; Niyogi 2001: fig. 50; Haque and Gail 2008: 146–47 and pl. 46; Lee 2009: 96–99, 105–12 and figs. 15, 17–19. 91.  See Foucher 1900: 192 no. 16, 210 no. 18, and pl. VII.16.

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of the entire Buddhist world, with images of deities located in faraway countries like China, Java, Sri Lanka, or Maharashtra to quote only a few, whereas the images in the Harivarman manuscript are those of many aspects of Avalokiteśvara, the Tārā, or Mārīcī for instance.92 Looking back at the history of the Buddhist community in South Asia, more particularly at its carved artistic production, it is obvious that the dividing line which one would wish to draw between the community and the non-Buddhist society within which the saṅgha was evolving was never deeply anchored: Buddhists were well aware of the existence of Hindu gods and goddesses, introducing them in their own artistic imagery but having a perception of them which could thoroughly change over the centuries (Bautze-Picron 1996, 2010b). Thus, Brahmā and Śakra (Indra) are present from the very beginning, appearing as peaceful characters fully submitted to the Buddha, an aspect that they preserve up to the 13th century. But from perhaps the late 10th century onwards, they also appear as demons belonging to Māra’s army, thus suffering the fate of deities like Gaṇeśa/Gaṇapati,93 Śiva, Pārvatī, and others who were perceived as malevolent characters and hence could be trodden on by frightful Buddhist characters whose major function was to destroy them. Going through the centuries, one thus attends a permanent encounter between the Buddhist and the Brahmanical (Hindu) imaginary worlds that finds its visual expression in a Buddhist context.94 When considering ‘Buddhist’ images, one tends too easily to forget that they were conceived in a context where the religious imagery was not exclusively Buddhist. Quite on the contrary, Buddhist 92.  See Bautze-Picron 1999: 188 and Kim 2013: 56–57 and 93–109. 93.  Lancaster 1991: 278 mentions a 5th-century Chinese translation of a text referring to him as Vināyaka, an ill-intentioned character ‘who keeps the practitioners from progressing and is thus a negative force that must be overcome.’ On Gaṇapati/Vināyaka in the Śaiva and Buddhist realms, see Acri, this volume. 94.  This is not to say that the Hindu side was unaware of the existence of the Buddhists, but the main, if not only, character who was shown in a demeaning position was the Buddha; see Verardi 2011, passim.

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Fig. 7.16: Avalokiteśvara (detail of ms. from Harivarman’s regnal year 8; private collection). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

Fig. 7.17: Twelve-armed Avalokiteśvara (detail of ms. from Harivarman’s regnal year 8; Baroda Museum inv. E.G. 122). (Photo courtesy of Birgit Breitkopf)

monasteries were surrounded by a landscape which was fundamentally inhabited by ‘Hindu’ gods and goddesses and which might have felt dangerous, if not threatening. In a wide movement which swept over Bihar and Bengal from the 10th century

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Fig. 7.18: Buddha and his life (Betagi, Chittagong District; Ratnankur Vihar, Betagi). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

onwards, Hindu deities were considered to belong to Māra’s army where they held a leading position, replacing the traditional monsters of the army (Bautze-Picron 1996, 2010b: 111–16), and possibly having their outer appearance modified—Brahmā becoming for instance a threatening character showing fangs (Bautze-Picron 1996: 126–27 and fig. 20). This perception of the Hindu pantheon apparently arose in the 10th century, an outstanding example being the image of Jagdishpur, a site located in the direct vicinity of Nālandā (BautzePicron 2010b: 108–11). From there, it is found up to Bagan in Burma, following a line that crosses Lakhi Sarai in East Bihar and the entire Delta (Figs. 7.18–19; below: The Buddha).

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Fig. 7.19: Buddha and his life (Sibbari, Khulna District; Kamalapur Buddhist Monastery, Dhaka). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

Images are not only carriers of religious or spiritual values, they also deeply reflect daily concerns; images could be conceived as an answer to other images which were produced by men of different beliefs, and as such could be acting as echoes to them. Images were clearly part of a ‘campaign’ that was aimed against those belonging to the ‘other’ side. Some examples can be given here, drawn from various parts of Eastern India and belonging to different periods: images of the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī produced in Magadha in the 7th to 9th century, more particularly in the region of Bodh Gayā,

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clearly borrow elements from images of Skanda, such as the necklace and the hair-dress, whereas the lion serving as vāhana was probably borrowed from Durgā’s iconography.95 At a later date, the 12th century, outstanding images of Mahākāla closely resembling contemporary images of Bhairava were carved in the area of Lakhi Sarai.96 And, turning to South Bengal in the 11th and 12th centuries, it is probably no coincidence that most Hevajra images (Figs. 7.9–10) were produced in this region where the cult of Śiva Naṭarāja was particularly important, or that Avalokiteśvara shows various ‘Śaiva’ aspects in the manuscripts of the region, notably the rare form of Padmanartteśvara.97 Another factor might lie in the proximity of Assam, more particularly of the Kāmākhyā-pīṭha located north of the area here considered, and in the vicinity of which ‘a cemetery called Heruka’ would be located according to the Kālikāpurāṇa.98 Hevajra images receive a fighting stamp in being a wrathful character sharing features with the frightful Hindu goddess Cāmuṇḍā, whereas images of this goddess and of Śiva-Bhairava can also convey a strong message of violence towards the Buddhist community, wearing for instance a long garland of Buddha’s heads or trampling on a bowl full of similar heads.99 95.  Not forgetting that Skanda is chief of the divine armies and that Durgā is a fighting goddess; see Bautze-Picron 1989: figs. 1, 4–15, 18 and 1993a: 151–52 (on the lion). 96.  Mahākāla: Bautze-Picron 1991–92: figs. 16 and 35; Bhairava: Kumar 2011: figs. 15a–b. On the similarities, see Lee 2009: 206–7. Davidson 2002: 211–17 relates Heruka to Bhairava, ‘Heruka [being] formed in imitation of Maheśvara’, and Heruka being a ‘divinity of a cremation ground’; the situation is indeed very complex as the author also notes on p. 214. It is indeed likely that the (Buddhist) cult of a god named Heruka owes a lot to the (tribal and Hindu) Tantric tradition which had emerged in Assam (ibid.). 97.  See Bautze-Picron 1999: 184. As Saṁvara, Heruka rules over the universe from Mount Meru, reminding us, as mentioned by Davidson (2002: 210), that this image echoes the motif of Śiva on Mount Kailāsa; but it also echoes the presence of the Buddha on Mount Meru, where he teaches the Dharma to his mother and the gods (Bautze-Picron 2010a: 28–35). 98.  Davidson (2002: 213) mentions that the cemetery is today named Bhairava. 99.  As shown by Verardi (2011), visual language was a major vector of propaganda and could reflect deep conflicts

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Also, Mañjuśrī is armed with a sword and represented in the gesture of using it, holding it high above his head.100 The development of the Bodhisattva iconography at Nālandā in the 7th and 8th centuries finds an echo in his importance in Java in the late 8th century. As seen in an earlier paper (Bautze-Picron 1993a), his function is to teach when Śākyamuni becomes Buddha, which makes the two iconographies—of the Buddha’s enlightenment and of the Bodhisattva teaching—profoundly complementary.101 Mañjuśrī possesses the sword with which darkness is slit and light (of the Bodhi) pervades the mind: such a major image used to stand at Bodh Gayā till it was stolen from the site,102 and the very characteristic gesture of holding the sword above the head as if going to be used occurs in three outstanding sculptures from Southeast Bengal (Lee 2009: 239–53 and figs. 95–96, 101). These include a rare depiction of Arapacana Mañjuśrī (Fig. 7.20)103 which foreshadows a 13th-century image of the same iconography carved in East Java,104 and two images of the also very rarely illustrated Mañjuvajra (Fig. 7.21) where the Bodhisattva is three-faced and six-handed, and has attributes which illustrate his function as slayer of which were tearing the society apart. And in the ‘Buddhist camp’, this goddess was really perceived as a dangerous deity, belonging to the army of Māra and ferociously attacking the Buddha (Bautze-Picron 2010b: 111–16). 100.  See Bautze-Picron 1999: figs. 1, 9–10. The weapon can be symbolic of destroying ignorance and darkness, opening the way to wisdom and light, but it might also be considered at a more basic level, being a visual rendering intended for non-Buddhists; the same can be said of the sword being held by Mārīcī (and other deities), whereas in the opposite camp it is Cāmuṇḍā who is depicted in an even more aggressive mood (see above, and n. 4 ). 101.  It is worth noting that the Mañjuśrī illustrated in Fig. 7.2 is accompanied by Maitreya and Avalokiteśvara, thus partly reproducing the triad so often encountered in Bihar of having the Buddha flanked by these two Bodhisattvas (Bautze-Picron 2010a: 77). 102. Bautze-Picron 2014a: 117–18, 214 n. 170 (see also fig. 170). 103.  Bhattasali 1929: 28–29 and pl. VIIb; Saraswati 1977: ill. 27; Shamsul Alam 1985: fig. 89; A. Sengupta 1993: fig. 62; Haque and Gail 2008: 132 and pl. 491; Lee 2009: 248–53 and fig. 191. 104.  As rightly suggested by Pauline Lunsingh-Scheurleer; see Bautze-Picron 2014a, n. 30 for further references.

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Fig. 7.21: Mañjuvajra (probably from Southeast Bangladesh). (Photo: MMoA, New York, www.metmuseum.org)

Fig. 7.20: Arapacana Mañjuśrī (Jalkundi, northeast of Vikrampur; Nat. Mus. of Bangladesh). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

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Fig. 7.22: Mārīcī (Salban vihara, Mainamati; formerly at the Mainamati Museum, present location unknown). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

ignorance—a main attribute still being the manuscript—and as bestowing his compassion.105 The Bodhisattva is not the only character who makes a reference to Bodh Gayā and the Bodhi. A major goddess is then Mārīcī, whose numerous images were found all through the region (Fig. 7.22)106 and hardly differ from those wor105.  See Lee 2009: 239–48 and figs. 95–96. An even rarer depiction of the Bodhisattva as Nāmasaṅgitī has been discovered in the Vikrampur area; the particular feature of this image is that it is the real female Nāmasaṅgitī who is depicted and not the usually seen male one (Akman 1999; Bautze-Picron 2000: 108–11; Lee 2009: 145–55 and fig. 37). 106.  See my article of 2001 for a study of the iconography of the goddess in Eastern India and in particular,

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Fig. 7.23: Aṣṭamahābhaya Tārā (Sompara, Vajrayoginī, Vikrampur area; National Museum of Bangladesh). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

shipped in Bihar or North Bengal. This is not a peaceful deity: she carries weapons in her eight hands, presenting the vajra in the upper-right hand;107 four sow-faced female deities surround her. All of them form thus a maṇḍala, a structure which is encountered in more than one iconographic type; see for instance the images of Arapacana Mañjuśrī, Mañjuvajra (Figs. 7.20–21), Hevajra (Fig. 7.9), the five Tathāgatas, and the Aṣṭamahābhaya Tārā (Fig. 7.23),108 or even the image of the Buddha’s life (see below). Mārīcī symbolizes the sunlight which penetrates the entire universe when Śākyamuni becomes Buddha; with her position of victory and her numerous armed hands, she is depicted as a warrior-goddess chasing away the darkness, i.e. ignorance. The very fact that she also stands within the womb of a stūpa is there to prove that light resides in the bosom of the Buddhist monastery. Her numerous images also testify to the importance of the female element as a dynamic, creative force. Movement is what opposed her to the images of the Tārā but brings her close to depictions of Parṇaśabarī (Fig. 7.24),109 a frightful goddess of folk origin, clad with leaves, who protects from diseases but also dispels hindrances to the spiritual quest, using the vajra and the aṅkuśa as weapons. Her images are rare but they are the reflection of the way chosen by the Mahāsiddhas, drawing their inspiration from non-canonical literature, refusing to be part of the ‘official’ Buddhist community, and opting for a freedom of mind which they found in the solitude of the forest.110 As far as one can surmise from the existing material remains, Buddhism in this part of Bengal was not solely confined to the monasteries where monks were

for the images produced in Southeast Bengal, see pp. 268–69 and 288–89: no. 39–47; cf. also the two images in the Khulna Museum published by Mevissen (2009) and Lee (2009: 155–68). The image reproduced here was stolen from the Maināmatī Museum (for further references, see Mevissen 2009: 280) and reappeared on the Belgian art market in 2006–7 (52e Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique: 209 where the provenance is said to be a ‘private English collection’); I myself saw it with the art-dealer K. Grusenmeyer (Sablons, Brussels). See also: Bhattasali 1929: 43–45 and pls. XIIIb–XIV; Huntington 1984: fig. 217; A. Sengupta 1993: figs. 27, 67–68; Haque and Gail 2008: 83, 146, 172–273, 282–83 and pls. 519, 523–25; Lee 2009: 155–68 and figs. 23, 42–49.

107.  In Bihar, she can present the sword (Bautze-Picron 2001: figs. 6, 9, 14–15). 108.  Bhattasali 1929: 56–57 and pl. XXI; B. Bhattacharyya 1958: fig. 375; Saraswati 1977: ill. 103; M. Ghosh 1980: 42 and ill. 11; Shamsul Alam 1985: fig. 90; A. Sengupta 1993: fig. 31; Haque and Gail 2008: 146 and pl. 530; Lee 2009: 99–105 and fig. 16. 109.  Bhattasali 1929: 58–61 and pls. XXIIIa–b; B. Bhattacharyya 1958: figs. 173–74; Saraswati 1977: ills. 188–89; Huntington 1984: fig. 210; A. Sengupta 1993: fig. 70; Haque and Gail 2008: 147 and pl. 541; Lee 2009: 129–44 and figs. 33–34; see also M. Mitra 2000. 110.  On the siddhas, see Davidson 2002: 169 ff.

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Fig. 7.24: Parṇaśabarī (Naynanda, Vikrampur area; National Museum of Bangladesh). (Photo: J.K. Bautze)

mainly active: as Jinah Kim’s research recently demonstrated, the lay practitioners were more and more active notably in the production and worship of the book; besides, the Mahāsiddhas were also very active as ‘independent’ spiritual seekers throwing a critical look on the ‘official’, mainstream Buddhist way. Lay practitioners and these ascetics reflect two further aspects of Buddhism, the study of which is more difficult to grasp, but which had to be taken into consideration by the saṅgha—hence the existence of these large images of Parṇaśabarī

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in what was the capital, i.e. Vikramapura, where many other images were collected side by side with those of Sūrya, Viṣṇu, or dancing Śiva, and where, let us remember, the political power was openly Brahmanical. The community was evidently outnumbered and this severely reduced position might also explain the multiplication of Mārīcī images; emerging as seen above in the womb of a stūpa, but also belonging to the kula of Vairocana, it is the monument as body of the latter which is here standing, but it is also the monument as symbol par excellence of the Buddhist way, and thus of the community, which is here depicted. The Buddha—Considering the rich pantheon which we just briefly surveyed and which developed during nearly two centuries, it must be noted that the iconography of the Buddha is rather uniform, depicting him touching the earth, i.e. at the very moment of his enlightenment. However, details added to this model can vary from image to image, and features can be inserted which are not encountered in Bihar, for instance the protome of an elephant below the Buddha.111 The main image remained, however, the one of Śākyamuni at Bodh Gayā, i.e. evoking the earth-goddess while touching the soil with the fingers of his right hand; as such, it could be venerated by any monk. A very specific iconographic programme depicted on book covers and in a series of illuminations traditionally distributed at the beginning and the end of the text echoes the narrative rendering of the Buddha’s life, which is carved in the lower part of images produced in the region in the 12th and 13th centuries, and which reflects a boundary between the ‘eight scenes’ model encountered in Bihar and the detailed rendering of the biography painted in various temples of Bagan.112 As also observed by Eva 111.  See Lee 2009: 217–32 and figs. 74–80, 82–88, 90 for a lengthy discussion of the Buddha image in the region of Dhaka. The motif of the elephant protruding below the Buddha is also encountered on the images of Viṣṇu or Śiva in Bengal (Bautze-Picron 1999b: n. 16). Further, see Bhattasali 1929: 30–34 and pls. VIII, IXb; Saraswati 1977: ills. 196, 199; Huntington 1984: figs. 208–9, 223; Shamsul Alam 1985: figs. 55, 72, 77; A. Sengupta 1993: fig. 52; Biswas 1995: 36, 40–41 and pl. 40; Haque and Gail 2008: 129–30, 157 and pls. 486, 503. 112.  Allinger (2010) wrote a detailed analysis of the question.

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Allinger, this iconographic model is also illustrated in early cloth-paintings that have been preserved in Tibetan monasteries.113 Even if one surmises that the carving of the images is posterior to some murals at Bagan, I personally do not think that their presence in the lower part of stone images from the Delta specifically reflects a Burmese influence, but rather illustrates a conscious choice of presenting the biography. The model retained is based on a composition which was elaborated in Magadha around the 9th century and which shows that the life of the Buddha reached its peak at Bodh Gayā, where the Bodhisattva became Buddha: this is the moment from where no return is possible (Figs. 7.18–19). Around the central large image, seven scenes are distributed following a very specific visual pattern, paired as they are according to their iconography and not in a chronological order.114 All scenes, apart from the final decease, are depicted as if they were icons standing on their own, in their own shrines, and not as part of a continuous narrative. Now, the motif of the shrine is typical of the art of Southeast Bengal, but the profile of the tower is apparently that of the Bodh Gayā temple and only certain godly figures sit within such a structure, i.e. the Buddha and Mañjuśrī. In these images only the central Buddha sits in a niche supporting this particular type of spire, whereas the secondary scenes are distributed in niches having their arch fully inserted in a series of flat and broad recesses which support an āmalaka, a structure well known in manuscript illuminations and which is considered to be a motif of (northern) Bengali origin.115 The spire of the Bodh Gayā temple, being only noted above images of the Buddha and Mañjuśrī ,is a consistent feature since, as mentioned above, the 113.  Allinger 2010: 34–35; Bautze-Picron 1995–96. The place of manufacture of these cloth-paintings is still a matter of debate; I personally tend to consider the thangkas reproduced by Eva Allinger, figs. 5–6, to be of Bengali origin but made for a Tibetan patron (the painting of fig. 5 includes the depiction of heavily clad characters and monks). 114.  See Bautze-Picron 2002: 222–23, with further references. 115.  But which could occur in manuscripts produced at Vikramaśīla, a site located in East Bihar; see Losty 1989b: 89, 95.

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Bodhisattva holds a major position in the iconography of the enlightenment.116 Not only does the presence of a tower transform the image into a shrine, but through the presence of four subsidiary shrines distributed around the spire the sculpture also illustrates a maṇḍala. The secondary scenes can also be seen as reflecting specific aspects of the Buddha, since apart from the Birth scene—always depicted in the lower part—all refer to Śākyamuni as a Buddha. The Birth scene is symmetric to the offering of madhu by the monkey which took place at Vaiśālī; both scenes refer to final moments in a long spiritual quest, the Birth scene coinciding with the end of the career of Gautama as a Bodhisattva, whereas the Vaiśālī event marks the moment when Śākyamuni took the decision to definitively depart from this life, thus putting an end to his life as a Buddha (Leoshko 1993–94: 258–59). Similarly, the first sermon held at Sarnath illustrates a ‘real’ event, whereas the sermon at Śrāvasti reflects the magic powers possessed by the Buddha—and it is also there that the Buddha takes the decision to go on Mount Meru where he will teach his mother and the gods (Bautze-Picron 2010a: 28, n. 50). The Parinirvāṇa scene topping the composition indicates that the Buddha is now out of reach, in undefined realms. Now, the ‘perfect’ life which is here illustrated rests upon a high base covered with scenes carved in low-relief; what is depicted in the lower part of the image, being in contact with the soil beneath it, is located at a human level and thus is of a lower essence per se than the divine world seen above and which it has also for function to support (BautzePicron 1995, 2007a: 93–94). As a matter of fact, the scenes carved in the lower part of the image mostly show Śākyamuni as a Bodhisattva: the first scene depicts his father presenting the newborn to Asita, followed by the great departure, the cutting of hair, the long period of asceticism up to the moment where Mucilinda protects the meditating monk, with further scenes being inserted. Now, what could appear to be a ‘simple’ narrative depiction of this 116.  Moreover, these two images of the Bodhisattva also include a depiction of the Seven Jewels of the Cakravartin, a theme which was well favoured at Bodh Gayā (on which topic see Hsu 2008).

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Images of Devotion and Power phase of the Buddha’s life hides or reveals specific aspects of the Buddha’s personality. As seen in a previously published paper (Bautze-Picron 2008: 89–91), the depictions of the emaciated Buddha and of the Buddha being sheltered by Mucilinda refer in fact to two contradictory but complementary aspects of the Buddha’s personality which have been exemplified since the beginning of our era in Gandhāra, i.e. the Buddha as master of fire and water. In small images carved in the so-called andagu stone and which were mainly, but not exclusively, discovered in Burma, these two scenes are symmetrically distributed below the main cycle of eight events; in cloth-paintings or on painted book covers, they are usually seen side by side (BautzePicron 2008: fig. 5 and p. 89, n. 21). The image of the Buddha, being elaborated so as to include the canonical topic of the ‘Eight great events’—seven being distributed around the main one—and adding to it further moments of this biography, is addressed to any Buddhist. Thus, this ‘perfect’ life finds its conclusion in the imperceptible moment of the enlightenment, which is the aim to be reached by the devotee, even if it is through radically different ways. Such images, besides narrating the initial phase of the Buddhist way, in some way also speak for the eternity of the Dharma. The five Tathāgatas and the maṇḍala—The motif of the five Buddhas is commonly encountered topping the images of the Buddha (whoever he is), Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, and the Tārā. However, it occurs irregularly in the images just considered which depict the biography of Śākyamuni, where it is the set of the seven Buddhas of the past joined by Maitreya that always crowns the image (BautzePicron 1995–96: 360–61). The depiction of the five Buddhas is also seen in illuminated manuscripts and/or on their book covers.117 The distribution of their five images118 all through the manuscript transforms the linear text into a three-dimensional structure.119 Their presence crowning stone images 117.  Kim 2013: 83–85; Weissenborn 2012b: 25 and fig. 9. 118.  Even if there are only three, they still suffice to create a direction, i.e. a three-dimensional volume: see BautzePicron 1999a: 186–87. 119.  See Kim 2013: 132–48 on the three-dimensional space that painted images confer to the manuscript (besides the fact that the very act of handling the manuscript transforms

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allows them to achieve the same result, particularly when carved in a rock-like landscape that symbolizes the Potala Mountain on which Avalokiteśvara resides; they constitute the basic maṇḍala, four of them marking the four cardinal points around the fifth one located at the centre. However, one should mention that nowhere in Eastern India were architectural compositions such as those achieved in Central Java in the 8th and 9th centuries ever created in stone. The concept of the maṇḍala is observed in numerous images produced in the region: Mārīcī, the Aṣṭamahābhaya Tārā, Arapacana Mañjuśrī, Mañjuvajra, or Hevajra, as mentioned above. Even the topic of the Buddha’s life has been reproduced according to a maṇḍala-like model that refers to Bodh Gayā, centre of the Buddhist universe, where Śākyamuni became buddha—a place and moment in time which shows the start of a new beginning and the emergence of a new spiritual thought. This model also integrates all around this fundamental scene smaller depictions of major events of Śākyamuni’s life. What is shown here is a pilgrimage that can be done through visualization. The idea of the non-dual universe with images emerging out of its centre found a particular achieved form in cast lotus maṇḍalas, found in the Faridpur district in Southeast Bangladesh up to Bihar, where the deity presiding over the maṇḍala can be Hevajra, Vajratārā, Cakrasaṁvara, or the Buddha.120 And beyond Bengal, this type of object was also produced in Bagan, having as central image the Buddha, a stūpa, or the spire of the Mahabodhi temple bearing a depiction of the eight great events, while monks are distributed on the eight petals.121 These images of gods and godthe flat two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional space). 120.  Lee 2009: 340–44 and figs. 192–94: Hevajra, Vajratārā; Kim 2013: 65–68 and figs. 2–6, p. 67: Vajratārā, Buddha surrounded by eight Bodhisattvas; Weissenborn 2012a: fig. 52; Huntington and Bangdell 2003: cat. 68; Linrothe 2006: 190–93, cat. 5: Cakrasaṁvara. 121.  See Luce 1969–70: pls. 425–28. Although it might appear difficult to consider these cast lotuses as being ‘esoteric’ or ‘maṇḍalas’, the fact is that the main topic which is depicted within the inner space shows the eight great events drawn from the Buddha’s life either distributed around a central shrine or fixed on the eight petals around

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desses each offer in their own way a subtle version of this symbolic vision of the universe, and similarly these cast lotuses perfectly illustrate the oneness of the universe with its central point out of which all peripheral deities emerge. But the maṇḍala also represents—in a more prosaic manner—the monastery; such images are then subdued ways of visually expressing this spiritual stranglehold that the monastery pretends to possess.122 Certain deities can be magically invoked or worshipped within this context, having for function to protect from any danger, like the Pañcarakṣā goddesses,123 or from dramatic situations encountered while travelling, like the Aṣṭamahābhaya Tārā (who had inherited this function from Avalokiteśvara),124 or to protect from diseases, like some aspect of Avalokiteśvara (Kim 2012: 210). Asserting such powers and declaring its own sectarian vision of the universe—thought to be merged with the Buddhist community—were a necessary reaction in a religious landscape where highly powerful Hindu images were created in the 11th and 12th centuries, reflecting the strength of the Brahmanical temples sustained by the political power.125 a central stūpa. Thus it would be as if these various aspects of the Buddha either irradiated out of the central shrine or all merged into the central and final monument. 122.  Davidson 2002: 206–11 and Herrmann-Pfandt 2006–7 study the Cakrasaṁvaramaṇḍala, which includes deities linked to specific pilgrimage sites distributed all over India and which are not specifically Buddhist, but mainly Śaiva or Śākta—a particular way of ‘assimilating’ the world of the other, of ‘magically reclaiming the whole of India for Buddhism’ (Herrmann-Pfandt 2006–7: 16). 123.  See Mevissen 1999. For an image found in the Vikrampur area, see: Bhattasali 1929: 61–62 and pl. XXIX; B. Bhattacharyya 1958: fig. 185; Niyogi 2001: fig. 80; Haque and Gail 2008: 131 and pl. 5; Lee 2009: 112–13, 143–45 and fig. 36. 124.  Allinger 2000; Bautze-Picron 2004: 239 and n. 105 for further references. 125.  For instance, the images of Viṣṇu generally show the god surrounded by tiny images of his avatāras, and those of Sūrya present him with similar images of the Grahas or of the Ādityas: these three models illustrate the gods as a power which is eternal (the avatāras) or which rules throughout the universe (the Grahas) (see Mevissen 2006b and 2010; Bautze-Picron 1985: 473–74, 2007a: 101). Śiva is worshipped in the region mainly as dancing, displaying his power to destroy the universe, which he achieves through this action.

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conclusion Artistic production in Bihar fits within a long tradition; ateliers were numerous and very active and they were closely related to monasteries and sites of pilgrimages. This presence might account for stronger and stricter iconographic rules. The situation differs in the Delta: there is no site of pilgrimage and the monasteries do not seem to have played the same intensive ‘cultural’ role of drawing monks from abroad to remain and study there. Rather, the region seems to have been the bastion of the last ramifications of Esoteric Buddhism as strongly practised in, and originating from, Bihar and North Bengal. This type of Buddhism underwent deep transformations in Bengal, allowing the lay society to perform rituals involving the production of manuscripts, and being confronted with the countercultural ways of life advocated by the Mahāsiddhas. Moreover, being an area to pass through on the way to Bihar when coming from Burma, it was thus visited by Theravādin monks and not exclusively by those advocating Mahāyāna. As we may surmise from the short survey presented here, this late (and last) phase of Buddhist art in Bengal reflects a deep intricacy which makes the study of its iconography difficult but also stimulating. Whereas images of Mārīcī and Mañjuśrī relate to the Bodhi and thus to the homeland of Buddhism, i.e. old Magadha or Bihar, the history of the wrathful representations of Heruka is deeply interwoven with the iconographies of Śiva and Cāmuṇḍā as they emerged in Bengal and Assam, and the iconography of the Buddha’s life betrays deep similarities with its representation in Burma and Tibet. This chapter of the history of Buddhist art would undoubtedly deserve to be written anew.

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Chapter 8

Borobudur’s Pāla Forebear? A Field Note from Kesariya, Bihar, India s wa t i c h e m b u r k a r

T

he rise of the pāla dynasty in the 8th century ad brought paradigm shifts in Buddhist text, ritual, and sacred architecture that sent cultural waves across the expanding maritime and land trade routes of Asia.1 This chapter focuses on how the architectural concepts travelled in the connected Buddhist world between the Ganges valley and Java. A movement of architectural ideas can be seen from studying the corpus of the temples in the Pāla (ad 750–1214) and Śailendra (ad 775–1090)2 domains of India and Indonesia. This chapter proposes that we see a paradigm shift in the design of a stūpa architecture at Kesariya (Bihar) that emphasizes the arrangement of deities in the circular maṇḍalic fashion with a certain numerological configuration of life-size Buddha figures placed in the external niches of the monument. This new architectural concept possibly played a key role in the development of a more elaborate structure of Borobudur in Java. 1. I owe a special word of thanks to Prof Tadeusz Skorupski for introducing me to Buddhism and generously sharing his breadth of knowledge, and to Dr Peter Sharrock for encouraging me to think beyond the boundaries of the established scholarship and reading and commenting on the manuscript. Many thanks to Prof Max Deeg, for all his valuable comments on the paper and for generously helping out with the reading material, and to Dr Andrea Acri for all his support, help and patience throughout the editing process. Dr K.K. Muhammed’s interest in my work, his insights and his significant contributions in excavating and restoring Kesariya stūpa are gratefully acknowledged. Thanks to Yves Guichard for providing me with the aerial images of Nandangaṛh, Kesariya, and to Deepak Anand, without whose help Bihar field work would have been difficult. 2. Pāla period dates after Huntington and Huntington 1990: 542, chart 1; Śailendra dates after Zakharov 2012: 1.

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The architectural linkages emerge stronger with the central fivefold structure of the temples of the Pālas and Śailendras. In order to make the essential comparison, a quick method of drawing architectural plans is developed that is based on the basic measurements and not archaeological plans.3

architectural development in stūpa structure The main archaeological sites of the middle and lower Ganges plain were recorded in the 19th century by Alexander Cunningham, following the travel accounts of the Chinese scholar-pilgrims Faxian (ca. 337–422) and Xuanzang (ca. 602–64). Northeast India contained not only early Buddhist stūpas and monastic complexes, but also a range of stūpa structures that advanced from the traditional hemispherical stūpa of Sanchi, through the cruciform, terraced stūpa structure of Nandangaṛh (Fig. 8.1) to the elaborate stūpa-maṇḍala of Kesariya. Most of the Pāla structures that may have served as a model for Central Javanese temples are in dilapidated state today, making it difficult to track the architectural borrowings. But since 1998, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) excavations of some parts of Kesariya have uncovered striking design similarities with the massive Central Javanese stūpa of Borobudur, whose stepped pyramid structure and maṇḍalic 3. The drawings of Kesariya are from 2011 field trip measurements and Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) reports. For temple buildings in Śailendra domain, the plans displayed at the Candi Sewu site museum have been used as a reference material but the details are mine. For Buddhist sites in present-day Bangladesh, I have mentioned the specific references for each drawing.

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Fig. 8.1: Cruciform structure of the stupa of Nandangaṛh, Champāran, Bihar. (Photo courtesy of Yves Guichard)

Fig. 8.2: Aerial view of Kesariya stupa, showing all the terraces. (Photo courtesy of Yves Guichard)

Fig. 8.3: Model of Borobudur stūpa kept at the site museum, showing all the terraces. (Photo: author)

arrangement of deities in circular form has hitherto been considered unique and without precedent (Figs. 8.2 and 8.3). Borobudur’s pyramidal slopes and circular summit are covered with niches and small bell-shaped stūpas hosting 504 life-size Buddha icons of the supreme pentad of Jina-Buddhas.

Kesariya also appears to be a monumental maṇḍala with life-size Buddhas facing the quarters of the universe. It is too early in the excavation cycle to identify the maṇḍala, but we already know that at least two of the Borobudur Buddhas, Amitābha and Akṣobhya, are present at Kesariya. From the

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Borobudur’s Pala Forebear? current evidence available it seems that Kesariya marked a major shift in the architectural development of the stūpa structure under the Pālas to a Buddha-bedecked, mountain-maṇḍala model. This breakthrough model for a ceremonial centre is what appears to have travelled, presumably with related texts and ritual practices, between the Pāla and Śailendra domains.

kesariya in legend The dating of the Kesariya stūpa is in its infancy. The structure that is partly visible today, following only partial excavation, is the ultimate phase of a stūpa constructed on a natural hill that evolved through an unknown number of phases. This may be the stūpa mentioned by Xuanzang, who traveled on the well-known route from Vaiśālī to Kuśinagara on the way to reside at Nālandā.4 Cunningham, the British archaeologist and army engineer considered the father of the ASI, wrote the first detailed description of Kesariya in 1861 and 1862. Following the leads of Xuanzang, he carried out some excavations of the adjacent mound known as Raniwās and found traces of an old Buddhist monastic establishment, with a temple enshrining a colossal Buddha image. However on his second visit, Cunningham said local people had pillaged the mound and the large cult image was lost. Cunningham suggests that Raniwās was the site of a large Buddhist monastery or vihāra linked to the stūpa of Kesariya.5 4.  Xuanzang mentions a cakravartin stūpa, approximately 200 li to the northwest of Vaiśālī, which Cunningham (1871: 65) identifies with Kesariya. See Xuanzang’s The Great Tang dynasty record of the Western Regions, translated in English by Li (1996: 214); cf. Watters 1905 II: 71–72 (English trans. of the French edition by Julien, 1858). 5.  Colonel Mackenzie of the Madras Engineers was the first modern explorer to survey the mound of Kesariya in 1814, along with his associate Kashinath Babu. (Coincidentally, in the same year Borobudur was ‘rediscovered’ by Cornelius, an envoy of Sir Stamford Raffles). Mackenzie and Babu excavated the east side of the huge mound. Unfortunately, there are no first-hand records of their excavations. In 1835, Captain Brian Hodgson, assistant to the resident in a new office of British-ruled Nepal, published the survey efforts of Mackenzie along with his sketch of the ruins without any descriptive note. The sketch is published by Bengal Asiatic Society’s Journal (1835, plate VII). Hodgson

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According to local legend, the big Raniwās (‘Palace of the queen’) mound is associated with cakravartin king Bena, who is said to have immolated himself there with his family because of the death of his wife Kamalāvatī. The Padmapurāṇa mentions King Bena as a Buddhist cakravartin who acquired superhuman powers, but due to some misconduct, his powers left him and his wife fell into a royal tank and drowned. The tank of the legend has been identified as the present-day Gangayā tank, about 1 kilometre south of the Kesariya. The despairing king, on the advice of the court priests, built the Kesariya stūpa and entered it with his family, never to be seen again.6

kesariya in history Xuanzang’s 7th century account mentions a stūpa built in the area of Champāran, Bihar, where the Licchavis of Vaiśālī took leave of the Buddha, on his way to parinirvāṇa. Here the Buddha left his alms bowl as a memento for them. The record mentions the stūpa, possibly built in the location of Kesariya as a memory of the event (see Cunningham 1871: 66), as one of the principal Buddhist sanctuaries of the region and notes that Buddhists referred to it as a cakravartin stūpa—a monument that commemorates the abhiṣeka ceremony of a Buddhist king of kings.7 collected several Buddhist texts and had worked in this area during his ten-year tenure in Nepal. Finally, in 1861 and 1862, the first detailed description of the Kesariya stūpa was offered by General Alexander Cunningham. Cunningham never excavated the actual stūpa of Kesariya but only the surrounding area. During the excavations, Cunningham had found an old Buddhist establishment, with a temple enshrining a colossal Buddha image. The statue was removed in 1860 by the Bengali Babu of the Rāmgarh Indigo factory. Cunningham dates the stūpa to the 2nd to 7th century in his four reports made between 1862 and 1865 and published by ASI (Cunningham 1871: 65). 6.  See Cunningham’s four reports made between 1862 and 1865 and published by ASI (1871: 65–67); see also Muhammed 2002: 3. 7.  Xuanzang describes: ‘In the city there is a stūpa at the place where Buddha had told an assembly of various Bodhisattvas and men and heavenly beings about his past events of cultivating Bodhisattva deeds. He was once a universal monarch [cakravartin] named Mahādeva (known as Datian or great city in Chinese), in this city, possessing

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The available archaeological evidence suggests there were various stages of construction, and the sheer size of the stūpa implies that it was funded by royal resources at each stage.8 Its construction at the junction of four major roads and its striking revolutionary maṇḍalic design both tend to support such a cakravartin claim, as do the legendary cakravartin stories of King Bena.

harṣa and a link to pāla The Licchavi stūpa was possibly expanded by King Harṣa (ca. 606–47), the first great post-Gupta king in the region.9 Harṣa’s empire was a loose federation of several kingdoms that at the peak of his power covered the present-day regions of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Bihar, Bengal, and Odisha.10 He was a lover of art and literature and was converted to Buddhism according to Xuanzang, who resided for eight years in his empire. Xuanzang records several monastic buildings patronized by Harṣa along with thousands of stūpas, each over hundred feet high, gardens, water tanks, and numerous endowments to Nālandā.11 Construction activity in northeastern India gained momentum first under Harṣa and then under later Guptas of Magadha. the seven treasures and being competent to rule over the four continents of the world’ (Li 1996: 214). 8.  The structure clearly shows two phases of construction activity: Śuṅga/Kuṣāṇa and late Gupta period (late 7th, early 8th century), according to Indian Archaeology: A Review 1998-99 (2004: 11). In a telephonic conversation on 16 January 2014, Muhammed stated that the slopes are strewn with late Gupta period bricks or maybe even bricks from a later date. 9.  This is my hypothesis, based on the ASI findings of the post-Gupta period bricks at the site. The sheer scale of the monument would not have been possible without significant royal funding. Champāran was part of Harṣa’s vast kingdom. 10.  Devahuti 1970: 87, 111; Thapar 2002: 289; Scherrer-Schaub 2003: 226. 11.  See Watters 1905 II: 164 and Li 1996 (Fascicle V: 144). Even though Xuanzang mentions Harṣa’s building activity, the only architectural evidence from his reign may be sought at Nālandā. The archaeological remains of Nālandā date from the 5th century to the end of the 12th century ad, and during Harṣa’s reign the monastery-cum-university was certainly at the height of its fame.

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Harṣa extended his kingdom in battle until his power stretched from Valābhī (Gujarat) to Magadha (Bihar, Odisha). With an empire consolidated at home he became the first Indian king to cement ties with the Tang court of China, notably through his personal friendship with the well-connected Xuanzang. Harṣa had ruled from Kanauj (Uttar Pradesh) for decades and then moved his capital to Magadha in ad 641.12 He announced the event by sending a delegation to the Chinese emperor, who in response dispatched an embassy in ad 643 (Sen 2001: 8), presumably to attend his Buddhist cakravartin coronation.13 Did Kesariya play a part in this ceremony? Chinese sources mention another delegation to Harṣa’s state in ad 648, which resulted in a battle between Wang Xuance, the lead envoy of the visiting Chinese delegation, and King Aluonashun (Aruṇāśa?), who had just usurped Harṣa.14 The fact that Champāran (the region of Kesariya stūpa) was the scene of this major historic battle gives us some indication of its importance in Harṣa’s vast empire. 12.  Based on her understanding of the Chinese sources, Devahuti mentions that Harṣa was the king of Kanauj for a long time, but by the time the Chinese mission arrived in ad 641, he had already proclaimed the throne of Magadha: see Devahuti 1970: 84, 214, 217. Based on his readings of Xin Tang shu 221a (New History of the Tang [Dynasty]), Tansen Sen (2005: 19) concludes the same. 13.  Based on Xuanzang’s travel account, Elliot (1921: 100) paints a picture of this ceremony in which a golden image of the Buddha was borne on an elephant while Harṣa, dressed as Indra, held a parasol over it, and his ally, dressed as Brahmā, waved a fly whisk. 14.  The name of Harṣa’s usurper is known through the Chinese inscription of Bodh Gayā and Chinese historiography as ‘Aluonashun’ (Lévi 1900: 297, Sen 2003: 22). Chinese sources describe Aluonashun as king of Nafuti or Tinafuti kingdom (see Devahuti 1970: 207–29). Modern scholars have deciphered the name of the kingdom as Tīrabhukti, a feudatory kingdom of Harṣa in northern Bihar (Waddell 1911: 37–65). Sen’s reconstruction of Aluonashun as Aruṇāśa is tentative. Lokesh Chandra (1992a: 260–61) interprets Aluonashan as King Arjuṇa. The battle site of Chapoholo on the banks of Chientowei is identified by Lévi (1900: 297–401) as Champāran on the banks of river Gaṇḍakī . Supporting the identification of Lévi, Devahuti (1970: 228) adds that Tīrabhukti, Champāran, and Gaṇḍakī are all in the same region. Apparently Champāran, situated on the Gaṇḍakī, was a part of Tīrabhukti kingdom in the 7th century.

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Borobudur’s Pala Forebear? Archaeological research has not yet begun at many sites in the middle and lower Ganges, but the available evidence points to Harṣa as the most likely post-Licchavi and pre-Pāla builder at Kesariya. The ASI superintendent for the site, K.K. Muhammed, has found Gupta and late-Gupta period bricks from the 7th century on the slopes of the stūpa.15 According to Dilip Chakaravarti (2001: 203), the site remained active in later centuries: The recent excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India at this site have discovered a Pāla period stūpa dating from the eighth century. The excavations have revealed the terraces of the stūpa, with ‘Pradakshinā Path’, which follows the pattern of those reported from Pahārpur in East Bengal and Nandangarh [in east Champāran]. The stūpa has been found with several [life-size] stucco figures of Lord Buddha in ‘Bhumīsparśā posture in the cells provided all over the terraces.

Chakravarti (ibid.: 206) reports a later Pāla-period structure was added to the stūpa summit in the 8th century, but the exact nature of the construction is very difficult to determine. Champāran played a significant role during the subsequent Pāla period, given the constructions of the massive stūpa sites of Bisa Sāgar and Purnadih. Along with the Kesariya stūpa, these huge stūpa sites in Chamapāran await the excavations. A large Pāla-period black stone slab with a 10th- to 12th-century inscription in Siddhamātṛkā script was also found at Kesariya.16 It is the same script that was introduced to Java by the builders of Borobudur, the Śailendra kings (Jordaan 2006: 6). The Pālas inherited the territory that was previously united by Harṣa and by the Magadha Guptas (Asher 1980: 69; see Fig. 8). Their control of the Gangetic plain extended over the trade routes of the Bay of Bengal, giving the dynasty more international influence than any of its predecessors. Nālandā, 15.  Based on the findings during the excavations and the size and the nature of the bricks, ASI has tentatively dated the structure to the late Gupta period (Indian Archaeology: A Review 1998–99, ASI 2004: 11). 16.  According to Patil (1963: 201), the stone slab that was found by J.B. Elliot in 1835 had a representation of a Viṣṇu image. The exact nature of the representation is not known, but it could be one of the incarnations of Viṣṇu.

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the prime monastery-university, already had an Asia-wide network and was bolstered by Pāla patronage. But along with Nālandā, Pāla finance also brought the construction of the new Buddhist centres of Uddanḍapura (Odantapurī) and Vikramaśīla in South Bihar, of Somapura, Lālmai, and Maināmatī in modern-day Bangladesh, and other Buddhist sites in Odisha17 providing a broad monastic base in northeastern India. Pāla sway dominated after King Dharmapāla (ca. 775–815) proclaimed his control over the Bay of Bengal trade.18 He was an extraordinary king whose political and military ambition was matched by an unprecedented generosity towards Buddhist establishments that provided a platform for the sacred art and architecture. The dynasty’s influence would soon be traceable across Asia in religious texts, bronze ritual icons, sacred architecture, and in the Esoteric Buddhist schools formed by Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Javanese masters, who travelled both eastwards and westwards along the maritime and land routes to the Ganges valley monasteries. From the basis of the above data, we can conclude that Kesariya hill first bore some kind of pre-Pāla structure and that the mound was active and under modification throughout the Pāla period. The Pālas modified and enlarged many Buddhist sites, sometimes constructing on the older vestiges.19 Thus, the other new Pāla Buddhist centres appear to be parallel—and major—8th- and 9th-century architectural enhancements of a maṇḍalic form that evolved from the older Nandangaṛh stūpa

17.  Donaldson (1995: 177) mentions the developments at Ratnagiri, Udayagiri, and Lalitagiri in Odisha, during the Pāla period. 18.  The Khalimpur charters of Dharmapāla were issued from Paṭaliputra, ‘where a variety of boats had formed a bridge on the Bhagirathi’ (Kielhorn 1896–97: 249). A verse from the Rāmacaritam, an epic poem by Sandhyākaranandin about the Pāla emperor Rāmapāla, describes his seafaring abilities as well as Pāla renown abroad (see Shāstri and Basak 1969: 3). 19.  Asher (1980: 92–93) has discussed the earlier Gupta-period fragments and their adaptation in several sculptures of Somapura Mahavihāra in Pahārpur, which is a Pāla monastery. He observes the strong Gupta character of some of the sculptures at Somapura.

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Fig. 8.4a: Kesariya east elevation showing brick niches housing Buddhas at all the levels. (Photo: author)

Fig. 8.4c: Kesariya brick niche detail showing Buddha in bhūmisparśa-mudrā. (Photo: author)

in to the Champāran and Kesariya stūpa type.20 Apart from its religious function as a monument expressing the form of Mahāyāna or Esoteric Buddhism that flourished during the Pāla period, the temple became a statement of political power and a major ceremonial centre under the Pālas. These developments appear to be reflected in the art and architecture of Kesariya. 20.  The terraces projecting out in the cardinal directions, on all levels of Nandangaṛh stūpa, develop into brick chambers housing life-size Buddha images erected as at Kesariya, and later on form the four shrine halls at the cardinal directions found at Vikramaśīla and Somapura, with huge cult images, concluding the fold system in architecture. For a detailed account of Nandangaṛh stūpa, see van Lohuizen-de Leeuw (1956).

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Fig. 8.4b: Borobudur east elevation Buddhas. (Photo: author)

Fig. 8.4d: Borobudur stone niche detail showing Akṣhobhya in bhūmisparśa-mudrā. (Photo: author)

comparing kesariya and borobudur Based on the overall measurements and the architecture of the two stūpas, Muhammed (2005) compares the structure of Kesariya to Borobudur. Long (2008: 187–91) also observes the similarities and differences between the two structures. The period between the Gupta and Pāla dynasties, when Kesariya was built, was a transitional period in art. The relative paucity of sculpture in stone and metal in the pre-Pāla period turned to prolific large-icon production in all media from the 8th to the 12th century. Some Nālandā sculptures from this period show Gupta traits (Asher 1980: 80, 93) and some art bears features identi-

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Fig. 8.5a: Kesariya plan showing the overall layout of the structure. (Drawing: author)

Fig. 8.5b: Borobudur plan. (Adapted from an undated drawing in the Kern Institute collection, Leiden University Library, GD 14 1472)

fiable as Pāla.21 Large niches on the outside walls of the temples were created during this threshold period to house life-size stucco sculptures. At the turn of the 8th century, Maniyār Maṭha in Rājgīr, stūpa III at Nālandā, and the Mahābodhi temple in Bodh Gayā were adorned with such stucco figures.22 Susan Huntington drew attention to this feature in her short survey of Pāla-period architecture.23 The feature was further developed at the Pāla monasteries at Pahārpur (Somapura vihāra) and Antichak (Vikramaśīla vihāra), where huge Buddha statues were enshrined in the niches that were erected in the cardinal directions of the

central terraced temple.24 Sculpture thus became an integrated part of the monumental structure and was no longer just an adornment. The Pāla foundations of Lalitagiri, Ratnagiri, and Udayagiri in Odisha all made prominent use of massive sculpture. Earlier Buddha images were replaced by sculptures of Bodhisattvas, especially Mañjuśrī, and sculptural maṇḍalas (Donaldson 1995: 179–80). The fivefold, terraced architecture of Kesariya with large external Buddhas in niches appears to be a somewhat radical enhancement of the feature that Huntington noticed as the new trait of the transitional period (Figs. 8.4a–4d). The concentric six terraces of the partly excavated stūpa at Kesariya are built on a natural hill in the same way as Borobudur. The lower four Kesariya terraces are more circular than those of Borobudur, but close examination reveals two square terraces on the top level, resembling the combination of

21.  As Huntington (1984: 10, 20) notes, ‘one might assume that “Pāla art” began with “Pāla dynasty”, but since there are no remains which may be definitely assigned to the first Pāla emperor-Gopāla, this assumption thus remains unfounded’. 22.  Bernet Kempers 1933: 10–11; Weiner 1962: 173; Asher 1980: 75. 23.  See Huntington 1990: 90–91. Claudine Bautze-Picron (1993b: 283) supports this in her review: ‘As the author emphasizes, a special feature of the architecture was then the niches on the outside walls of the temple. Those niches were occupied by sculptures as we know from temple 2 at Nālandā, still adorned with stone panels, or from the Maniyar Matha at Rajgir or the temple at Aphsad where stucco images used to adorn the niches’.

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24.  The structure is characterized by a cruciform plan raised on three receding terraces with a circumambulatory path. Four shrine halls of roughly the same size project in the cardinal directions on the second terrace, which probably held the Buddha statues. Above the second terrace is the construction of the hollow but inaccessible central shaft that probably served as the base to the superstructure of stūpa (Dikshit 1938: 14).

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198

• Akt obhya

Amltibha

•

Unknown

PLAN A ssumed symmetry ot Buddhas •t KtNriya

Kesanya Stupa East Champaran Bihar

A IN~

NOT TO SCAlE

Fig. 8.6: Kesariya stupa: Probable arrangement of Buddhas in the exposed and restored brick chambers on all the terraces. Only the basic dimensions are given. (Drawing: author)

square and circular terraces found on Borobudur (Figs. 8.5a and 8.5b). Like Borobudur, Kesariya’s design combines three elements: a natural hill, a stūpa, and a maṇḍala. Both monuments present themselves to the viewer as horizontally flattened. Anyone standing at the base of either monument cannot see the topmost stūpa. Much like the stūpa of Borobudur, Kesariya has a certain numerological configuration of brick chambers on each terrace at regular intervals with a life-size Buddha statue positioned in them.25 Atop the fifth terrace rises the stūpa to a height of 9.38 metres and 22 metres in diameter. 25.  The average chamber size at Kesariya is 2.20 x 1.80 metres with an approximate height of 2.25 metres. Each chamber has an opening 70 to 90 centimetres in width. There is a 25-centimetre high platform touching the wall to house a Buddha (Indian Archaeology: A Review 1999–2000, 2005: 11).

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The exposed terraced structure of the monument measures 123 metres in diameter and 37.5 metres in height (Muhammed 2005: 9). The length and height of Borobudur are almost the same as Kesariya. The topmost, fifth terrace of the Kesariya structure, just below the stūpa, houses a single brick chamber facing each cardinal direction.26 The chamber on the eastern side at this level contains an image of Akṣobhya in bhūmisparśa-mudrā. We await further excavation to discover which images faced the other cardinal directions. The fourth terrace has triple chambers facing the same directions. The lower three terraces in addition have triple brick chambers facing the subcardinal directions. All the chambers have a raised platform for a Buddha image. The entire monument, from the fifth terrace to the lowermost 26.  Indian Archaeology: A Review 1999–2000 (2005: 17, 19).

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Borobudur’s Pala Forebear? terrace, would have housed (4 + 4 + 8 + 8 + 8 = 32) brick chambers and would have once contained (4×1 + 4×3 + 8×3 + 8×3 + 8×3 = 88) Buddha statues.27 Figure 6 shows the Buddhas from the top level of the monument to the bottom level, based on the ASI report of 1999–2000. The drawing assumes symmetry in the unexcavated sections. The two upper-level terraces are connected by an 80-centimetre wide staircase in the southwest corner that is concealed within the polygonal designs between the chambers.28 Since the excavations are not yet complete, it is difficult to determine the number and exact nature of the staircase(s). The circumambulatory paths on all the terraces are today devoid of reliefs but there is ample space to have housed them. Whether there were any narratives in stucco, plaster, or paint is impossible to determine from the presently accumulated archaeological evidence. Borobudur is of course renowned for its kilometres of carved stone reliefs along the five terraces. At present, there are three brick chambers on the eastern side, beyond the base of Kesariya’s lowest terrace and rammed earth base. Due to the incomplete excavation, it is not yet possible to ascertain whether they were part of the stūpa structure, but their alignment and size strongly suggest they were. They seem to be later addi­ tions to the main structure and they may indicate that there was a further terrace below them, much like the hidden foot of Borobudur. This hypothesis can only be tested in further excavation (see Fig. 8.6). The excavators have unearthed a number of beautifully carved bricks with geometrical patterns and Kīrttimukhas (‘faces of glory’), tiles, vases, and many small red earthenware ritual pots with lids, 27.  The topmost level has a single chamber in all four cardinal directions, containing an image of the Buddha in each chamber (4 × 1 = 4). The fourth-floor terrace has four chambers facing the four cardinal directions and each chamber has three compartments, thus containing (4 × 3 =) 12 images. The lower three terraces have eight chambers facing the cardinal and subcardinal directions. Each chamber has three compartments housing (8 × 3 =) 24 images. The total number of Buddha statues is therefore 88 (4 + 12 + 24 + 24 + 24). 28. See Indian Archaeology: A review 2000–01 (2006: pl. 8).

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spouts, and sprinkler heads that are presumed to have been used in consecrations. The scale of Kesariya implies that it was a mass ceremonial centre, but its relationship to the dynastic centre is so far unknown. Given the kind of ruins found around Kesariya, it appears to have been a part of a vihāra or temple monastery,29 where daily rituals would have been performed by senior monks. Borobudur is precisely aligned with the fire ritual temple called Candi Pawon and the regal Candi Mendut, clearly forming the ceremonial centre of the Śailendra kingdom.30 No trace of a palace has yet been found, but it may have been beside Candi Pawon, as the king would sometimes partake in daily homa rituals. Archaeological finds made in a five-kilometre radius of Borobudur indicate a monastic complex.31

kesariya and the pāla vihāras of vikramaśīla and somapura Kesariya’s innovation of a crowning stūpa and lifesize Buddha images in external niches at cardinal points was further developed at the early Pāla monastery of Somapura at Pahārpur. Established by Dharmapāla (775–810),32 the central temple of Somapura vihāra has a maṇḍalic plan.33 An imposing brick structure twenty-one metres in height rises at the centre of the courtyard. It is raised on a cruciform plan in three receding terraces with circumambulatory paths housing narrative reliefs and accessed by a flight of stairs on the north side. Four shrine halls 29.  See the four reports made by Cunningham in the period 1862–65 (1871: 67 and plate XXIII). 30.  Van Erp (1917: 285–310) was the first person to recognize the significance of the alignment of the three structures. Krom (1927) believed that the three temples would have functioned as part of a single plan. It was Mus (1935: 418–20) who talked about the ritual dependency of the three structures that Moens (1951, English trans. Mark Long 2007: 7, 8, 67) supported. See Lokesh Chandra 1980a: 35–36 and Long 2008: 98–99. 31.  Based on Boechari’s excavation report (1982: 90–95), Miksic (1990: 34–35) argues about the monastic complex placed next to Borobudur. 32.  According to Dikshit (1938: 19), who carried out the excavations at Pahārpur from 1926 to 1927 and 1933 to 1934. 33.  Dikshit 1938: 19; Myer 1961: 3; Gail 1999: 131.

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Fig. 8.7a: Kesariya stūpa, Champāran. Central cruciform structure on the topmost level. (Drawing: author)

Fig. 8.7b: Somapura Mahāvihāra, Pahārpur. End of 8th century. (Drawing: author)

Fig. 8.7c: Vikramaśīla vihāra, Antichak. End of 8th century. (Drawing: author)

of roughly the same size project out in the cardinal directions on the second terrace, which presumably originally held Buddha statues. Above the second terrace is a hollow but inaccessible central shaft that probably served as the base for a crowning stūpa (Dikshit 1938: 14), as at Kesariya and Borobudur. One theory of Seema and M.M. Haque is that the central chamber and surrounding shrine halls would have once housed the supreme pentad of Jina-Buddhas, an expression of the Vajradhātumaṇḍala.34 The contemporary monasteries of Vikramaśīla at Antichak (patronized by the Pālas) and others at Maināmatī (patronized by the Devas) have a central 34.  Seema and M.M. Haque in a conference paper in 2004 thus speculated on the superstructure of the monument, which is today mostly abraded. Snodgrass (1992: 135) argues that stūpas with five Jina-Buddhas are expressions of the Vajradhātumaṇḍala.

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Fig. 8.7d: Rupban Mura vihāra, Maināmatī. End of 8th century. (Drawing: author)

stūpa structure that is identical to Pahārpur.35 These monuments share a cruciform plan and rise in stepped terraces. The niches facing the cardinal directions are empty today but presumably would have been occupied by huge Buddha statues,36 much like at Kesariya and Somapura. Archaeological research has unearthed several monuments with similar plans (i.e., a fivefold central structure) in Bihar and Bengal37 showing an identical arrangement of a 35.  For Antichak monasteries, see Asher 1980: 91; for Maināmatī monasteries, see Imam 2002: 614–16. 36.  In a niche of the Antichak stūpa, the excavators found the crossed legs of a huge image made of clay. Plate IIIa (Indian Archaeology: A Review 1961–62) depicts the remains of an image from the South chamber, while plate IXa (Indian Archaeology: A Review 1962–63) shows the remains of another image. 37.  Imam (2000: 133) mentions that further cruciform temples ‘in the 7th–8th century time bracket’ have been discovered in recent excavations at Savar near Dhaka.

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Borobudur’s Pala Forebear? sacred space that could have served parallel functions in Borobudur, Sewu, Lumbung, Bubrah, and Plaosan in the Śailendra domain38 (see Figs. 8.7a–d). From the above architectural plans of the central structure of these vihāra it is clear that the Buddhist monasteries began to resemble one another as never before. As pointed out by Joanna Williams (1982: 154–55, 174), the difference of layout between Nāgārjunakoṇḍa, Sañci, Taxila, and Ellora shows a wide variety of regional architectural forms, but the megastructures of Somapura, Maināmatī, Vikramaśīla and, I add, Kesariya, show a remark-able uniformity; in one sense, the development at Somapura appears to be an ancient Buddhist equivalent of 20th-century neoclassical office buildings—an early Indic model of university architecture (Davidson 2002: 107). This appearance of the new sacred architectural model raises many questions about what prompted the paradigm shift to a stūpa-maṇḍala, with a fivefold or ninefold maṇḍalic structure, and about how the Śailendras, the builders of contemporary Borobudur, inherited the model developed in Pāla Bihari-Bengali stūpas.39

the paradigm shift in design: the maṇḍala model and the cakravartin New forms normally arise in religious architecture when there are significant changes in belief and Maināmatī monasteries (Salbān vihāra, Bhojā vihāra, Aṇandā vihāra, Rupbān vihāra) in Comilla district in Bangladesh show an identical cruciform structure at the centre of the temple. 38.  Rowland 1953; van Lohuizen-de Leeuw 1956; Bhattacharya 1978; Samuel 2002. 39.  Hermann-Pfandt’s study (2008) has observed the maṇḍala elements in Buddhist architecture in India, Tibet, and Indonesia, and compared the well-known architectural maṇḍalas of Uddaṇḍapura/Otantapurī, Candi Sewu, Borobudur, Mendut, Tholing, Tabo, and Gyantse. The first Tibetan monastery of Samye was built between 767 and 779 ad (Lo Bue 1990: 17). Since the architecture of Samye displays they typical fivefold maṇḍalic structure (Yang 1996: pl. 152; Wong 2014) and was modeled after Uddaṇḍapura as per the account given in Pag-sam-jon-zang, part II (see Das 1908: content XI), it is natural to assume that Uddaṇḍapura was constructed on a maṇḍala model. Hermann-Pfandt mentions the Abhidharmakoṣa (4th century ad) as the basis for the maṇḍala

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ritual. Although the specific maṇḍala of Kesariya cannot yet be determined, this is the monument that marks the shift to the new stūpa-maṇḍala architecture that was to spread in the Pāla period to Vikramaśīla, Somapura, Maināmatī, and Borobudur. These latter monuments follow the fivefold Buddha-family scheme that forms the key pentad of Jina-Buddhas in the seminal Yogatantra text Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha (Snellgrove 1987: 175, 189, 198); it is therefore possible that Kesariya will eventually be shown by archaeologists to embody the same maṇḍala in its final form. In the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha, the fivefold Buddha-family scheme became dominant after Vairocana became a Buddha (Snellgrove 1987: 203). Vairocana then draws in a number of personages, beginning with Samantabhadra, who is crowned and consecrated with the name Vajrapāṇi. Later, the other thirty-six figures of the maṇḍala are consecrated with names conferred on them by Vairocana, before they are positioned in the maṇḍala (Snellgrove 1987: 8). These texts contain explicit references to human kingship. David Snellgrove (1959b: 206) establishes intimate connections between maṇḍala, kingship, abhiṣeka ritual, and Vairocana as the cakravartin Buddha in Vajrayāna Buddhism. During the abhiṣeka a lustration vessel is placed at the centre. The properties of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the maṇḍala are understood to gather into the water of the lustration vessel. When anointed with this water, the monarch would acquire all the powers embodied in the central deity to become universal earthly ruler or cakravartin. He would then be able to exercise the powers of the central Buddha, whether mundane (e.g., producing rain) or supramundane (e.g., deepening one’s store of wisdom and compassion), and be responsible for the spiritual as well as the temporal well-being of his geographical maṇḍala or the kingdom (Snellgrove 1959b: 208). The Vajradhātumaņḍala that was described in the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha (Lokesh Chandra 1980b: 319) found its way into the architecture as a concrete arrangement of deities, on a basic fivefold or ninefold model.40 Akṣobhya and 40.  There are two extant Sanskrit manuscripts of Sar-

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his attendants in the east, Ratnasambhava in the south, Amitābha in the west, and Amoghasiddhi in the north made up a maṇḍalic arrangement around Vairocana or Mahāvairocana. This pentad and the attendant deities demarcating respective Buddha fields and one thousand Buddhas of Bhadrakālpa found prominent places in architecture.41 Brajdulal Chattopadhyaya (1994) sees these textual developments of the maṇḍala with the strong centre and subsidiary sets in relation to the hierarchical structure of ‘samānta feudalism’ of mediaeval India. The idea of a maṇḍala with the central figure representing a supreme deity and directional figures as subordinate deities reflects the idea of the supreme king at the centre, surrounded by lesser kings that are expected to exercise power as local landlords rather than independent rulers. The nature of the maṇḍala is therefore to map the social and political interests and designate levels of hierarchy. Ronald Davidson (2002: 121) argues that ‘the central and defining metaphor for mature esoteric Buddhism is that of an individual assuming kingship and exercising dominion … through a combination of ritual and metaphysical means, thereby becoming a supreme overlord (Buddha) or universal ruler (cakravartin)’. These textual developments in Buddhism served the interests of imperial figures in organizing political and social landscapes with the assistance of their spiritual advisors. Architecture played a key role as ceremonial or ritual centre in these developments. The terraced architectural design of Kesariya and Borobudur, along with the arrangement of Buddha

vatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha from Nepal. Guiseppe Tucci obtained a 19th-century manuscript of the Tantra, and in 1956 David Snellgrove and John Brough discovered an Indian palm-leaf manuscript that they identified as a 9thor 10th-century work from Bihar, India. Snellgrove and Lokesh Chandra (1981) published a photographic reproduction of this manuscript; Do-Kyun Kwon (2002: 22, 28, 29) and Weinberger (2003: 47, 61, 62, 72, 73) have described the formation of Vajradhātumaṇḍala in the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha in the light of its Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan commentaries. 41.  For a detailed description of the maṇḍalas see Snodgrass (1988: 634); for their use in the architecture of Candi Sewu, Mendut, and Borobudur, see Lokesh Chandra 1980a: 8 and Bosch 1929: 111, mainly on Sewu.

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statues, clearly displays the hierarchical organization of the maṇḍala structure. There are examples of an early maṇḍala model and its application in the geo-political and religious domain during the time of Kesariya’s construction. Harṣa, in the tradition of the universal ruler, formally installed Bhāskaravarman on the throne of Kāmarūpa (modern-day Assam) as a symbol of his sovereignty over northeast India (Devahuti 1970: 45, 74, 75). The 6th-century Maitrika king Droṇasiṁha was anointed by a Gupta overlord, a fact that is proudly related in Valabhi grants in western India (Fleet 1888: 168). Maitrika queen Duddā was known for establishing a maṇḍala of monasteries in the 6th century, where the central monastery built by the queen became the nucleus that supported an extensive monastic group, known as the Duddā group of monasteries. This circle of monasteries was maintained and protected by the Maitrika kings, as overlords.42 Valabhī was one of the distinguished Buddhist seats of higher learning in India, along with Nālandā.43 The maṇḍala concept evidently permeated the political organization of Śubhākaradeva I’s (ca. 780–800) kingdom of Odisha, when he created a group of feudatory states called maṇḍalas in a semicircular format, surrounding the central authority.44 It seems that the application of the term maṇḍala to a political circle of vassals in the 6th and 7th century was already being reflected within the religious structures. In the subsequent centuries, it became well established in the politico-religious sphere of India as well as China (Davidson 2002: 126–40). How this maṇḍala model was used in the ritual is difficult to determine, as many of the teachings 42.  See Guhasena’s grant (Indian Antiquary VII: 67). The monasteries that formed part of the Duddā circle were under royal care and protection. For the details of the grants by Maitrika kings to these monasteries, see the table in Dutt 1962: 227. 43.  The 7th-century Chinese monk Yijing mentions Valabhī and Nālandā in the same breath during his time in India (Takakusu 1966: 177). 44.  Donaldson (1995: 180) says that the central Odishan authority was situated along the coastal area, which created a group of feudatory states such as the Airāvata maṇḍala, Śvetaka maṇḍala, Kodalaka maṇḍala, Yamagarta maṇḍala, Khijjiṅga maṇḍala, and Banai maṇḍala to define the political boundaries.

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Borobudur’s Pala Forebear? associated with the Vajradhātumaņḍala were oral, secret, and esoteric in nature. The narrative of the king Indrabhūti receiving the hidden scriptures in the important commentary of Prajñapāramitā Nayaśatapañcāśatikā (‘150-Line Perfection of Insight’) provides insight into the preaching and practice of such esoteric scriptures. The narrative shows how the royal chief priest divided up the court of princes, princesses, and ministers and placed each member on a maṇḍala board. This is then revealed as the physical enactment of the Vajradhātumaņḍala derived from the Sarvatathāgata­ tat­tva­saṅgraha by the members of the court.45

pāla buddhism (8th–9th century) and the connected buddhist world It seems that Empress Wu Zetian (r. 690–705) was interested in these new religious currents­—especially the concepts regarding the maṇḍala and cakravartin—as she officially assumed the title of cakravartin after usurping the Tang throne (Forte (2006: 23–24). Her attempt to rule as an incarnation of Maitreya, born to rule the continent of Jambudvīpa, evidently fulfils the need to legitimize her usurpation and enhance her political status through Buddhist prophecies.46 The worldly benefits of maṇḍalic rituals remained attractive throughout the reigns of Emperor Zhongzong and Ruizong in the early 8th century, who employed monk Fazang to perform esoteric rituals during the drought struck capital of Tang China.47 45.  Jñānamitra’s commentary on Prajñapārāmitā-nayaśatapañcāśatikā is found in the imperial catalogue of the Denkar library of ca. 810 ad (Toh. 2647, fols. 272b7-294a5; cf. Davidson 2002: 242–44). 46.  The evidence for the presence and involvement of South Asian monks in Wu Zetian’s political propaganda comes from a colophon found on the Dunhuang manuscript of the Ratnameghasūtra, translated by Forte (1976: 171–76, 253–70). The colophon records the names of the monks involved in the translation of the Sūtra under supervision of Huaiyi. Of the thirty people listed in the colophon, nine were monks from South Asia. 47.  In the year 708, Fazang successfully performed a rain-praying ritual at Jianfusi, which was the monastery Zhongzong dedicated to the posthumous welfare of his father Gaozong. In year 711, Fazang performed an esoteric ritual at a temple on Mount Zhongnan and allegedly brought down some snow (see Chen 2005: 30–31).

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Emperor Suzong (r. 756–62) consecrated himself as cakravartin while acknowledging the supernatural powers of Buddhism for his victory against the rebel forces.(Weinstein (1987: 58). Under the patronage of Emperor Daizong (r. 763–79), Amoghavajra managed to elevate the status of Mañjuśrī, the main deity of the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa,48 as the protector of the emperor and the nation.49 Mañjuśrī became important in the Pāla,50 Śailendra,51 and Tang domains, possibly to serve the political needs of the kings. By the end of the 8th century, Mañjuśrī’s cult, centred on the five-peaked mountain called Wutai Shan, was one of the most important cults in China, where aspirants to cakravartin status would seek the Bodhisattva’s support (Miksic 2006: 186). Is the importance of Mañjuśrī in Pāla, Śailendra and Tang domains an indication of the well-established cultural and diplomatic ties between the three dynasties? Buddhism became a new bridge that fostered dialogue between the Chinese and Indian courts. Sen (2003: 16) believes that during the 8th century, an orchestrated use of Indic paraphernalia was employed to establish a Buddhist realm in China. The prominent Indian and Chinese Buddhist travellers in this period played a crucial role in transmitting the new religious thought through artefacts presented to the courts. They are recorded as carrying texts, icons, and drawings with them.52 The delegation that attended Harṣa’s Buddhist ceremony in ad 643 visited Rājagṛha (Rājgīr) and the Mahābodhi 48. The Mañjuśrī- (or Mañjuśriya-)mūlakalpa (‘Primary Ritual Ordinance of Mañjuśrī’) is believed to be one of the earliest texts of esoteric Buddhism (N. Dutt 1958: 487). Possibly composed during 7th to 8th century in India, it became an important text in the Buddhist world. 49.  See the studies of Demiéville (1952), Lamotte (1960) and Birnbaum (1983: 30–38). Birnbaum’s excellent monograph builds on the earlier work of Demiéville and Lamotte and draws attention to the centrality of Mañjuśrī during the late period of Amoghavajra’s esoteric practice in China. 50.  Jayaswal (1934) sees Chapter 53 as a Pāla period addition to the text. Snellgrove (1987: 314) sees Mañjuśrī’s iconographic appearance in art only after the 6th century). 51.  For its popularity in the Śailendra domains, see Miksic 2006. 52.  Schafer (1963: 268) points out that ‘a prime objective of Chinese pilgrims in the holy lands of the Indies was the acquisition of holy statues, and images to edify the faithful at home and adorn the rich temples of T’ang’.

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

204

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Indian Buddhist Circle! ;

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Map. 8.1: The connected Buddhist world of India, China, and Indonesia during the 7th to 10th century. (Map: author)

complex in Bodh Gayā, where the artist Song Fazhi made drawings of Buddhist architecture and artefacts to carry to the Tang court.53 A model of the Nālandā monastery, an image of the Mahābodhi shrine, and other Buddhist illustrations were also taken to China at this time by the monk Huilun (Bagchi 1950: 196). The biography of Japanese monk Ennin notes that five esoteric images of the Buddha housed at the Jinge monastery on Mount Wutai were modelled after images from Nālandā and installed there by the Esoteric Buddhist patriarch Amoghavajra in the 8th century (Ennin’s Diary, trans. by Reischauer 1955: 253). The same

monastery also housed a rubbing of the Buddha’s footprint, obtained by Wang Xuance from India (Reischauer 1955: 254–55). John Guy (1991: 362–64) has traced around twenty late Pāla-Sena period architectural models of the Mahābodhi temple that were dispersed from eastern India to Nepal, Tibet, Arakan, and Burma, indicating the continuity in Buddhist travels. The well-developed Sino-Indian exchanges during the Tang period continued even when political upheavals, wars and economic changes took place across Asia during 9th and 10th centuries. Now the exchanges shifted across the maritime channels. Puri in Odisha had already established its position as the key port between India, the 53.  See Sen 2001: 9, quoting from the Lidai minghua ji southern sea states, and China. Nākappaṭṭiṉam (‘Rec­ords of the Famous Painters of All the Dynasties’) au-­ in South India also became a convenient transit thored by Tang dynasty scholar-critic Zhang Yanyuan in ad 847: ‘a painting of Maitreya drawn in India by Song port by the early 8th century. In ad 720, King Fazhi seems to have used as a blue print for a sculpture Narasiṁhavarman Pallava II, also known as Rāat the Jing’ai monastery in Luoyang’. For the exchange of jasiṁha (691–729) of South India, sent an embassy architectural ideas, see Boerschmann 1931.

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Borobudur’s Pala Forebear? to China requesting military help in order to mount an attack on the Arabs and the Tibetans.54 He later honoured this support by erecting a Chinese-style Buddhist temple in Nākappaṭṭiṉam with the huge crowning stūpa (Sheshadri 2010: 114 fig. 7.4, 118, 128). The Chinese Buddhist imagery of the late Tang period also shows signs of increased interaction with northern and southern Indian art (Rhie 1988: 39–40). This two-way sea traffic of monks and pilgrims interacting with each other was part of a single symbolic language (Verwey 1962: 141; Iyer 1998: 9) in which the Śailendras played a part as cultural brokers (Jordaan 1999a: 228). By the 9th century, the shoreline of the Bay of Bengal, nourished by its river networks, had acquired a vibrant new commercial identity (Ray 2006: 78). Strong links, mostly Buddhist, provided connections with eastern India, Java, and Sumatra. Indonesia’s Śrīvijayan port at Palembang, Sumatra, became a centre of Sanskrit language study for monks travelling to the sacred sites and institutions of India. Palembang lay halfway between India and the Chinese capital Chang’an (Xi’an today), and international scholars congregated there and consolidated the growing Buddhist network (see Map 8.1). There are several indicators of the growing importance of Sumatra and Java. Guṇavarman, one of the earliest known travelling Indian scholars, stayed in Java in the 5th century before being invited to China by the emperor (Miksic 1991: 20). Dharmapāla, the chief abbot of Nālandā in the late Gupta period, departed for Sumatra after his retirement in the early 7th century, and stayed there till his death (Schoterman, this volume, p. 113). Yijing arrived in Nālandā in ca. 673 after spending considerable time in Śrivijaya.55 The earliest written sources in Sumatra, from the late 7th century, are Buddhist and are connected with the foundation of the Śrīvijayan polity. By the 7th century Buddhism appears to be well established in Sumatra, and 54.  See Sen 2001: 27 and Sheshadri 2010: 110–11. 55.  Yijing was interested in the new religious developments and was aware of the esoteric currents at Nālandā: see Chou 1945: 245, 314 (quoting Chavannes 1894: 104–5). On his way to Nālandā, Yijing had spent six months in Śrībhoga (Śrīvijaya) studying Sanskrit grammar. He spent 10 years in Nālandā, and then again remained in Śrīvijaya for a few years on his way back to China (see Takakusu 1966: xxv–xxxvii).

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probably maintained Guṇavarman’s foothold in Java (Miksic 2006: 187). The monk Śubhākarasiṁha from Odisha (637–735) arrived in Chang’an in ca. 716, bringing paintings of the maṇḍalas of the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha to China.56 Vajrabodhi (671–741; a.k.a. Vajrabuddhi, see Appendix A) from Kāñcī in southern India studied at Nālandā, visited the Kāñcī-supported dynasty in Sri Lanka, and then sailed to the Malay Peninsula on his way to Sumatra and Java. It was King Narasiṁhavarman Pallava II who sent his emissaries along with Vajrabodhi.57 He eventually reached China after an eventful journey on a Persian ship in ad 719. Amoghavajra (705–74), who also became a patriarch of Chinese Buddhism, met Vajrabodhi in Java and accompanied him to Chang’an.58 The success of their magical powers in Chinese military operations is celebrated. They became the most influential monks of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism and made the major contribution of weaving Esoteric Buddhist concepts through the increasingly connected international Buddhist world.

java during the pāla period According to Dumarçay (1986b: 22), By the 8th century ad, Javanese Buddhism was at its peak and consequently Javanese Buddhist rites had been modified [to suit the need of the new dynasty?]…. Buddhist temple architecture developed elaborate plan to embody maṇḍala systems…. Javanese Buddhist temples assumed the cruciform plan. The plan provided 56.  Lokesh Chandra (1980: 13) argues that the monk knew six maṇḍalas of the text; cf. Iyanaga 1985: 724–25.. 57.  See Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 143–49. As Sheshadri (2010: 118) reports, ācārya Vajrabodhi had helped Narasiṁhavarman Pallava II when his country was caught in famine. When he expressed his urge to meditate on Mañjuśrī in China, the king decided to send his emissaries along with the scripture Mahāprajñāpāramitā. 58.  The generally accepted view takes Yuanzhao’s biography as the most reliable source. Sundberg and Giebel (2011: 148) are in agreement with Chou (1945: 321) over Java being the meeting place of Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra. However, Woodward (2004: 339), following biographies of Amoghavajra by Zhao Qian (T 2056) and Feixi (T 2120), maintains that Amoghavajra never went to Java (on this trip) and never met Vajrabodhi there.

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separate rooms for 5 images with the central cella opened to all sides.

The Javanese monk Bianhong, who was ultimately headed for India, arrived in Chang’an in ad 780, to undergo the Garbhadhātumaṇḍala consecration.59 His arrival in China coincides with the Śailendra period and the early construction phase of Borobudur. He joined the enormously influential Chinese Buddhist circle of Śubhāka­rasiṁha, Vajrabodhi, Amoghavajra, and Hyecho that was very well aware of the Indian Buddhist developments.60 These masters were all experts in state protection Sūtras and maṇḍala consecration rituals. Whether Bianhong returned to Java and played any role at the Śailendra court, or in the construction of Borobudur, is not known, but it seems likely.61 An inscription found less than a hundred metres from Borobudur shows that Buddhists following the Mantrayāna were active in the vicinity of the monument.62 It seems highly improbable that the Śailendra Buddhist dynasty in Java was unaware of the ambient international propagation of text, philosophy, art, architecture, and ritual technology by these powerfully connected Buddhist leaders, who were apparently pursuing an Asia-wide strategy. The Buddhist centre in Java enjoyed international esteem since the time of Guṇavarman in the 5th century and beyond the end of the 10th century when Shihu (*Dānapāla), one of the Indian translators, arrived in China with a good knowledge of the languages of Khotan, Sanfoqui (Śrīvijaya), and Shepo (Java).63 The fact that Shihu was well versed 59.  Iwamoto 1981: 85; Kandahjaya (2004: 65, 94–96, 108, 165) examines four independent references to the Javanese monk Bianhong. See also Sinclair, this volume. 60.  Based on the inscription on a Pāla period Buddha statue, Deeg (2010: 196–211) has convincingly argued about Hyecho’s journey to Nālandā between 751 and 790. 61.  The hypothesis that Bianhong did return to Java and was involved in the design of Borobudur was proposed by Kandahjaya (2004: 165, 251) and supported by Woodward (2009: 24). 62.  See Kandahjaya 2009 and this volume; Griffiths 2014b. 63. Between ad 977 and 1032, four Indian monks reached China and were extensively engaged in Song translation projects. Shihu was the most productive one, as a record of 111 Song translations is attributed to him (see Sen 2003: 122–23; Orzech 2011a: 449–50).

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in those two Southeast Asian languages indicates that either he must have spent a good amount of time in Śrīvijaya/Java or the Chinese Buddhist circle included a few Indonesian monks. All drew on the common platform of Indian Esoteric Buddhism. The Buddhas of Borobudur, for example, resemble in some ways the stone Buddhas of the Pāla Buddhist monastery of Ratnagiri in Odisha (Huntington 1985: figs. 19 and 44). Śubhākarasiṁha was the prince of a ruling central Indian family of Odisha. He is recorded in the Chinese annals as achieving the Saddharmapuṇdarīka-samādhi at Ratnagiri vihāra, before travelling to China (Chou 1945: 251–55; Donaldson 1995: 176). This samādhi involves reciting the whole Lotus Sūtra in an endeavour to see the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra. The Sūtra opens with the introduction of Mañjuśrī and then Samantabhadra. Hudaya Kandahjaya’s (2009: 10) study of the Kayumvuṅan inscription (ad 824) demonstrates the presence of the Lotus Sūtra in Java at the time of Borobudur’s construction. Both Samantabhadra and Mañjuśrī play decisive roles in the reliefs of the topmost terrace of Borobudur, where the pilgrim Sudhana is guided to Buddhahood. The king of Uḍra (present-day Odisha) had sent the Gaṇḍavyūha-bhadracarī text to the Chinese emperor around ad 795, which was immediately translated by Prajña (Donaldson 1995: 177), an Indian monk who flourished in China from ca. 785 to 810 ad. The text is an important source for Mañjuśrī’s role as one of Sudhana’s guiding kalyāṇamitra (‘good friends’). He is the first of the fifty-two spiritual friends that Sudhana visits on the terraces of Borobudur. The text also mentions Maitreya, Samantabhadra, and Mañjuśrī as cakravartins in earlier lives along with Vairocana. The Gaṇḍa vyūha-bhadracarī illustrations at Borobudur con­ form to the text translated by Prajña.64 Before arriving in China, Prajña had travelled extensively in 64.  See Kandahjaya 2004: 197, 218, 250, 260. The first portion of the Gaṇḍavyūha-bhadracarī is depicted in the reliefs of the second and third galleries, the second portion on the fourth gallery. These two scriptures had existed independently until brought together in the 8th century, perhaps not until the creation of the text sent by the ruler of Uḍra to the Chinese emperor. This text was translated by Prajña in 796–98 (see Gimello 1997: 144).

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Borobudur’s Pala Forebear? the southern seas and probably spent a few years in Java and Sumatra (Pachow 1958: 19; van Gulik 1980: 22). The script that was employed by Śailendra kings is close to the one implemented by Prajña.65 It is possible that the Javanese gained knowledge of the text from the Chinese esoteric circle, but the ties between Java and Odisha are also well attested by art-historical evidence, and recent excavations at Udayagiri near Ratnagiri vihāra are expected to strengthen the evidence for these ties.66 During the reign of Devapāla (ad 850), Bālaputradeva, the scion of the Śailendra dynasty, established a monastery at Nālandā (Sastri 1942: 95, 1923–24: 310–27). A verse inscribed on a small stūpa at this monastery is taken from the Bhadracarī text. The same text is depicted in the uppermost series of reliefs on Borobudur, which were probably carved in the early 9th century. Based on the invocation of the Bhadracarī-praṇidhāna on the Nālandā stūpa, Hiram Woodward suggests that either the concepts embodied in the great stūpa in Central Java were well known in Nālandā, or Bālaputra’s monastery brought to Nālandā new emphasis from abroad.67 The Śailendras were focused on Esoteric Buddhism. Bianhong, for example, first headed towards South Asia but then heard that the esoteric knowledge was available in China, so changed course to Chang’an. To promote esoteric teachings the Śailendra king Cūḍāmaṇivarman founded the Buddhist Śailendra Cūḍāmaṇi-vihāra in Nākappaṭṭiṉam, which was in turn supported by Cōḻa grants.68 Nākappaṭṭiṉam 65.  Van Gulik (1980: 22) sees the similarities between some Siddhamātṛkā glyphs used by Prajña and the one employed by the Śailendras in ad 778 and ad 792 inscriptions. 66.  Woodward (2009: 27) sees a strong connection based on the ASI, ‘Excavations 2000-2005-Orissa’: http://asi.nic. in/asi_exca_2005_orissa.asp (last accessed February 2016). See also Reichle’s contribution in this volume. 67.  Sastri (1942) provided the text of an inscription on the small stūpa at Nālandā site 12. Schopen (1989: 149–57) translated the text. Based on the presence of Jinas and the invocation of Bhadracarī-praṇidhāna on this memorial stūpa, Woodward (1990: 16–17) sees a strong connection between Nālandā and Java. 68.  The Leiden Copperplate inscription of the Cōḻa ruler Rājarāja I dated to ad 1006 refers to this construction (Epigraphia Indica XXII: no. 34). For a detailed discussion of all the references of the inscription, see Karashima and Subbarayalu 2010: 272–73.

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in South India was the port that Vajrabodhi left from on his voyage to Sri Lanka, Sumatra/Java, and China, with a copy of the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha. The Nākappaṭṭiṉam monastery was to remain the last major Buddhist bastion in India after the destruction of Nālandā and Vikramaśīla between ad 1197 and 1207.

the śailendras and indian buddhism There are unresolved debates about the origin of the Śailendra dynasty69 and their sudden rise to power in Central Java in ca. 750–1090 that coincided with a massive surge in temple construction that included Borobudur (ca. 760–830) and Candi Kalasan. The ad 778 inscription says the latter temple, dedicated to Tārā, was erected by the will of the preceptor of the Śailendra family. This corresponded with the rise of the Pāla dynasty in eastern India (ca. 750–1214) and the construction of the large monasteries of Somapura, Paharpur (ca. 775–810) in present-day Bangladesh and Vikramaśīla, Antichak (ca. 770–810) in Bihar. The construction of the Tārā temple at Somapura would have been contemporary with Kalasan.70 The ad 782 Buddhist inscription of Kelurak in Central Java mentions Bengali guru Kumāraghoṣa from Gauḍīdvīpa (Bengal), who consecrated an image of the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī at the requestof the Javanese king (Bosch 1928: 18–19, 21, 29–30; Sarkar 1971 I: 44, 46). Bengal was already part of the Pāla empire by then. The inscription envisions the new image of Mañjuśrī bringing prosperity and welfare to the kingdom. As this inscription was found between Sewu and Lumbung, John Miksic (2006: 189) believes that Lumbung was probably a Mañjuśrī temple. Another inscription found in the ruins of Candi Sewu, dated ad 792, mentions a 69.  The paper by Jordaan (2006) and the monograph by Jordaan and Colless (2009) sum up all the earlier views on the origins of the Śailendra dynasty and conclude that the dynasty was a non-Javanese one. For a counterargument and discussion on ‘Śailendra as Javanese dynasty’, see Zakharov 2012. 70.  A 12th-century Nālandā inscription mentions the construction of a Tārā temple at Somapura for the eradication of dangers (Epigraphia Indica, 1923–24 XXI: 97–101).

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Candi Sewu central shrine

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Candi Kalasan central shrine

Candi Lumbung central shrine

Fig. 8.8: The fivefold structure of the central shrines of Javanese monuments. (Drawings by author; not to scale)

Mañjuśrīgṛha, or Mañjuśrī sanctuary. Mañjuśrī evidently played the same significant role in Śailendra Buddhism as he played under the Pāla and the Tang. Yet another inscription dated to the middle of the 9th century at Candi Plaosan says this Central Javanese temple was visited by people who were continuously arriving from Gurjaradeśa, which refers either to Gujarat in western India, the Valabhī domain of the Maitrika kings, or to the kingdom of the Gurjara Pratihāras in central north India (de Casparis 1956: 188–89, 202). The construction dates of Buddhist monuments of the Śailendras and the Pālas are close and they have many design features in common. In ad 792, Candi Sewu underwent an enlargement in a cruciform structure,71 probably to represent the Vajrādhātumaṇḍala.72 Two important architectural changes that occurred in Central Java during the construction of Sewu are the transformation from a square to a cruciform plan and the inclusion of four entrances instead of one (Dumarçay 1986b: 22), presumably to follow the fivefold structure of Pāla monuments. The entire Central Javanese complex of Prambanan is thought to reflect the ruling dynasty’s feudal political structure, where the ruler of the centralized state controlled the autonomous regions with its subordinate rulers. According to Chinese

sources, Holing, identifiable with a kingdom in Central or East Java, enjoyed suzerainty over twenty-eight self-governing territories in the manner of the geopolitical maṇḍalas of northeast India.73 The designs of Somapura, Vikramaśīla, Maināmatī and Kalasan, Sewu, Lumbung, Bubrah, and Plaosan have striking similarities (see Figs. 8.7a–d and 8.8). Roy Jordaan (1999a: 225) takes this as support for his view of the Śailendras as newly arrived outsiders from northeast India:

71.  See Dumarçay 1989: 25 and Chihara 1996: 99. 72.  Bosch (1929: 111) had identified Sewu as a Vajradhātumaņdala drawn from the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha. Lokesh Chandra (1980a: 8) has demonstrated in detail how a Śailendra ruler, as an aspirant to the status of cakravartin, dedicated the temple to Vairocana.

73.  Chihara (1996: 100) mentions that this was possibly a Śailendra domain enjoying suzerainty over twenty-eight self-governing territories, which would suggest that it had seven dependencies in each of the four quarters. For a discussion of the identification of the toponym Holing (or Heling), see Damais 1964.

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Even though we cannot exclude the possibility of the designs for the Śailendra monuments being the brainchild of a single pilgrim-architect genius [i.e., Bianhong], it would seem much more likely that they originated from one of the prominent Indian centres of art and scholarship such as Nālandā in Northeastern India.

From an architectural point of view, a monument like Borobudur can only have been the culmination of a long period of artistic gestation. Wolff Schoemaker (1924: 22) suggests three to four centuries of an autochthonous gestation period and argues about the lack of an autonomous development of sculpture in Java. Given the Śailendra-Pāla contacts and the construction of the earlier Śaiva temples on the Dieng plateau, it is not beyond the

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Borobudur’s Pala Forebear? bounds of possibility in this connected Buddhist world that a breakthrough development in the Pāla domain, which transformed a stūpa into a maṇḍala of life-size Buddhas, was enhanced with narrative reliefs at Somapura and Vikramaśīla and reached its ultimate form of expression on Javanese soil. Jordaan has argued that the Śailendras built their monuments in direct cooperation with Indian architects and craftsmen. This seems possible at the high conceptual level of architectural design, but at the level of relief carving and highly innovative stūpikā designs, there is no trace of non-Javanese influence.

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We have already seen how the design ideas for Buddhist art and architecture were circulating from the 5th century. It was the network of monks, artists, and craftsmen that made possible the construction of the huge monuments and ritual centres. The first record of the association of the Śailen­ dras and Pāla India is dated to the Kelurak inscription of ca. 778 and the last inscription found in India referring to Śailendras is the smaller Leiden copperplate inscription of ca. 1090.74 By then, the ties between the two states had been sustained for more than three centuries.

74.  The inscription of Kulottuṅga Cōḻa refers to the grant of villages to the Buddhist temple constructed by the Śrīvijayan king (Epigraphia Indica, 1923–24 XXII no. 35). For the Sanskrit inscription and English translation, see Karashima and Subbarayalu 2010: 280–82.

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Chapter 9

Imagery, Ritual, and Ideology: Examining the Mahāvihāra at Ratnagiri nata sh a r e ic h l e

T

he main monastery of ratnagiri in Odisha (formerly known as Orissa) was built over a period of several centuries to fit the needs of a changing Buddhist community. Unlike the structure of a Hindu temple with power radiating outward from the sacred centre, the plan of the Mahāvihāra of Ratnagiri features a central axis leading through the monastery to the rear shrine. This axis is deliberately broken up by a series of portals or façades which serve both as demarcations of sacred space and as markers of developing theologies. At least two stages of construction of the monastery are evident, and while some of the underlying modifications were for purely structural purposes, transformations in religious ideology and ritual practice are reflected in changes in architecture and iconography.1 The imagery used in earlier stages of building suggests links to long-standing traditions in India, including worship of deities associated with nature, like the river goddess Yamunā, as well as figures connected with notions of wealth and fertility, like Pāñcika and Hārītī. The Mahāyāna roots of the monastery are evident in the frequent depictions of Bodhisattvas, especially paired images of Avalokiteśvara and Vajrapāṇi, who can be seen as role models for the monastic community. Evidence from later parts of the monastery demonstrates the relevance of a wider range of deities, as well as what seems to be an increasing interest in Tantric Buddhist practices. Aspects of iconography found at Ratnagiri are also seen at temple sites in Java and Sumatra and may reflect similarities in the development of religious 1. A very late third stage of minor renovation took place around the 16th century (Donaldson 2001: 57). It will not be discussed here.

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practices across maritime Southeast Asia. Beginning with an overview of connections between an­cient Odisha and Southeast Asia and a summary of past scholarship on the site of Ratnagiri, this chapter will then look closely at the monastery itself. In particular it will explore how the development of religious practices is mirrored in the architectural framework of the monastery and, when applicable, in Buddhist sites in island Southeast Asia.

odisha and maritime southeast asia The ancient region of Kaliṅga (which encompassed much of Odisha, northern regions of Andhra Pradesh, and parts of Madhya Pradesh) is perhaps best known for its conquest by the Mauryan emperor Aśoka in the 3rd century bc. Reflections on the devastation of this war are said to have turned Aśoka to Buddhism. Located in eastern India, with numerous ports along the Bay of Bengal, the region has also long been associated with seafaring. For millennia the Bay of Bengal has acted as an avenue of exchange for goods and ideas between South Asia and Southeast Asia. Evidence of maritime crossings from as far back as the 2nd millennium bc has led scholars to include this region in the broader Bay of Bengal interaction sphere (Gupta 2005, 2006).2 Archaeological finds of pottery, coins, and beads from the early common era indicate coastal trading routes that stretched across and throughout the Bay of Bengal, both down the eastern coast of India to 2. Neolithic sites on the coast of Odisha have yielded pottery and stone tools similar to those found in Southeast Asia. Some scholars have theorized this may be evidence of very early Southeast Asian maritime crossings but further investigation is needed (Gupta 2005, 2006: 117).

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Sri Lanka and across the ocean to mainland and island Southeast Asia. Many sources remark on the maritime prowess of Kaliṅga. Prosperous port towns were mentioned in Pliny’s Naturalis Historia (1st century ad), the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century), and Ptolemy’s Geographia (2nd century).3 South Asian texts also mention Kaliṅga in many different contexts. The 5th-century Raghuvaṁśa of Kālidāsa calls the king of Kaliṅga ‘Lord of the sea’. An 8th- or 9th-century Buddhist text, the Āryamañjuśrīmūlakalpa, describes the Bay of Bengal as the ‘Kaliṅga Sea’ (Behera 1977). The many references to Kaliṅga’s seafaring in ancient texts have led some scholars to hypothesize that the kingdom played an important role in the spread of Indic ideas to Southeast Asia. The theories of R.C. Majumdar (1937) in this regard were especially popular.4 Majumdar theorized that Indic culture spread to Southeast Asia through benevolent colonization, and proposed that the port of Poulara (Palur, Palour), located in Kaliṅga, served as the main embarkation site for overseas ships travelling directly to the Malay Peninsula. According to Majumdar (1937: 7), evidence of this colonization could be seen in the name Hēlíng  (訶陵) or Holing that was used by the Chinese to refer to Java and other islands of the Archipelago. He believed Holing to be derived from the word Kaliṅga. This theory was questioned by Louis-Charles Damais and today Holing is thought by many to refer to a place name in West or Central Java, perhaps Valaiṅ, Areṅ, or Aryaṅ (Van der Meulen 1977; Cribb 2000).5 Majumdar was one among many scholars who sought to find the foreign roots of the Śailendras, the dynasty associated with the great Central Javanese Buddhist monuments of the 8th and 9th centuries. He thought that the construction of these 3.  Arora 2006 examines descriptions of South and Southeast Asia by Greek geographers. The dating of Ptolemy’s Geographica is disputed. Some scholars think large portions were compiled in the 10th or 11th century (Wheatley 1983: 439–55). 4.  See Ray 2007: 11–66 for a critical appraisal of Majumdar’s theories regarding Southeast Asia. 5.  There is still contention regarding this identification; see Ray 2007: 219–52.

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temples was spurred by the introduction of Buddhism by a foreign empire. Sumatra, Funan, and various sites in India were all proposed as possible places from which the Śailendra dynasty might have originated (Zakharov 2012). Among the many Indian suggestions were the dynasties of the Malaiyamāns, Pāṇḍyas, Eastern Gaṅgas, Śailodbhavas, Śailas, and Ikṣvākus (Sarkar 1985b). Many of these dynasties were linked to the Śailendras because of similarities in their names, with little regard for religious affiliations. Majumdar (1937) conjectured that the Śailendra dynasty was related to the Śailodbhava dynasty of 7th-century Odisha. In more recent times H.B. Sarkar (1985b) and Lokesh Chandra (1994) have proposed that the Śailendras arose from the region near Śrīśailam in Andhra Pradesh. Opinions are still divided regarding the Śailendras, but many scholars today are looking to Java, rather than elsewhere for their origins (Jordaan 1999; Klokke 2004; Zakharov 2012). Although no evidence exists for of the colonization of Indonesia by any South Asian kingdom, communities of foreign merchants did live in Java, including traders from Kaliṅga. Inscriptions dating between the 9th to 14th centuries consistently mention traders from three regions of India: Andhra Pradesh and southern Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and the western Konkan coast (Wisseman Christie 1998). These inscriptions indicate that Kaliṅga was an important source for the import of cotton textiles into the Indonesian Archipelago. By at least the 16th century, the term kәliṅ was used in parts of the Malay world to refer to either southern India or the Subcontinent as a whole.6 What we know about the role of Kaliṅga in the trade networks of the 1st millennium ad derives from brief mentions in inscriptions, texts, and in the lingering memory of the name keling in current usage. The locations of many ancient ports thought to have been located in Odisha are not definitively 6.  The 15th-century Malay literary chronicle, the Sejarah Melayu, refers to a Cōḷa king as ‘Raja Kәliṅ’. Even today the word keling is used in the Malay world to indicate people of South Asian heritage. Because of its use in phrases with derogatory connotations, in 2003 a lawsuit was filed in Malaysia over the inclusion of the word in an official dictionary.

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Image, Ritual, and Ideology identified,7 and further excavation is needed along the coastline. It does seem clear, though, that merchants from Kaliṅga were active in trading with Java in the late 1st millennium. And it is very likely that the large monastery site of Ratnagiri (and the neighbouring sites of Lalitagiri and Udayagiri) were connected to this maritime network of trade routes. Land and riverine trade routes linked Ratnagiri with major urban centres, including Pāṭaliputra (Patna) to the north, and to ports along the coast (Nayak 2004). The records of Chinese pilgrims (who sailed through the Strait of Melaka to reach India) also attest to the connections between the Buddhist sites like Ratnagiri and the coastal ports (Behera 1977). The vast number of donative stūpas found at Ratnagiri is evidence of its popularity as a pilgrimage site. Unfortunately there are no inscriptions connecting Ratnagiri with island Southeast Asia like the Nālandā inscription of 860, which documented the dedication of a monastery at Nālandā by Bālaputra, a ruler from Sumatra. Scholars have suggested stylistic connections between the statuary of Odisha and Java, especially between the Buddha images of Ratnagiri and those of Central Java (Ghosh 1933; Behera 1977). Specific comparisons have been made between the modelling of the body, the simple style of drapery, the undecorated oval nimbuses, and the proportions of the figures in relation to their stelae. Behera suggested that the kāla-makara motif so popular in Java was derived from an Odishan source, but the example he cites from Mukteśvara temple in Bhubaneswar is not a particularly close comparison to Javanese models. Although some stylistic similarities exist between the statuary of both regions, it would be difficult to say that the Buddhist sculpture of Central Java was modelled on that of Odisha. Many features are quite different, especially the 7.  The locations of many of the ports mentioned in ancient texts are not known with any certainty. For instance, the port of Palur (Paloura) was thought by R.C. Majumdar and other Indian scholars to be located in modern Dantapura in Andhra Pradesh (Majumdar 1927: 6–7). Other scholars have placed Paloura in Odisha in the city of Puri, in the town of Palur, or much further down the coast of Andhra Pradesh, in Machilipatnam, in a region that was not claimed by the ancient kingdom of Kaliṅga (Casson 1989: 232).

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heavy-lidded eyes, voluptuous bodies, and intricate headdresses of Odishan images. Direct stylistic influences are difficult to prove, and it may be more fruitful to think of regional connections that existed over long periods of time via networks of maritime trade. Similarities in Buddhist iconography in Odisha and Java suggest communities in both regions were experiencing shifting trends in religious practice, and adapting new ideas to distinct environments.

previous scholarship on ratnagiri Although Odisha has a long history of Buddhism, the monasteries and stūpas at Ratnagiri were largely forgotten after the site fell into disuse after the 16th century. Explorations of the Buddhist remains were mentioned in governmental reports in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and brief articles by scholars followed in the 1920s and 1930s (Hock 1987: 11–12). The site was described in Indian Archaeology (Ghosh 1957–58; 1958–59; 1959–60; 1960–61), and by the archaeologist and scholar Debala Mitra in Indo-Asian Culture and Buddhist Monuments (Mitra 1960, 1971). The first in-depth art-historical examination of the site was in Robert Brown’s master’s thesis and subsequent Artibus Asiae article (Brown 1978). His work focused on dating the main monastery at Ratnagiri by comparing the architectural motifs to the ornamentation of contemporaneous Hindu temples in Odisha.8 Looking primarily at architectural design elements (rather than religious iconography), Brown places Ratnagiri within a larger historical framework of temple building within Odisha. A study of the stūpas of the site in comparison to those of Bodh Gayā was published by Mireille Benisti (1981). It was not until Debala Mitra’s two-volume Ratnagiri 1958–61 (1981) that an archaeological survey of the site was compiled. This report documents Mitra’s four seasons of work with the Indian Archaeological Service in which two thirds of the 8.  The commonality found in decorative motifs on Hindu and Buddhist structures suggests that the same workshops of artisans were constructing these monuments. This is likely to have been the case in Central Java as well, where Hindu and Buddhist buildings with similar ornamental motifs are found in close proximity.

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mounds at site were excavated. Mitra’s seminal work attempts to document, as thoroughly as possible, the remains of buildings, statues, stūpas, and other artefacts at the site. Scholars have defined at least two phases of building of the main monastery of Ratnagiri. Early construction dates from the late 8th century. At some point in the 11th to early 12th century, substantial renovations were made to the monastery (Mitra 1981: 155). The sculpture from this period is markedly different in both style and religious significance, and certain scholars have commented on the decline of what they saw as both moral and artistic standards. According to Mitra (1981: 181), the later façade of the monastery failed to compete with the earlier façade of the shrine either in the dignified bearing of sensitively-modelled figures or in the workmanship of decorative pattern. Revelling in over-ornamentation, the new sculptors lacked to some extent the high aesthetic vision of their predecessors and following the contemporary tradition freely introduced indecent and even erotic figures in the façade of the sanctuary of one who had risen above the world of passions. Indeed, the figures present a dire contrast to the earlier ones not only in style but also in taste, and the embellishment fell short of the standard achieved by the early builders and sculptors.

Other scholars have tended to agree with Mitra’s judgements; therefore these images have been largely dismissed by those who have studied the monument.9 In her monograph, Mitra discusses some of these later images, but cursorily and often without photographs. The next close examination of Ratnagiri was in Nancy Hock’s dissertation, Buddhist Ideology and the Sculpture of Ratnagiri, Seventh through Thirteenth Centuries (Hock 1987). Hock’s thesis focuses specifically on sculpture found at Ratnagiri and infers from the iconography of these images what types of texts might have been known at the site. Through her identification of these texts she suggests phases of developing Esoteric Buddhist ideology at Ratnagiri, including an early and ex9.  See, for example, Fabri 1974.

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tended period of use of Kriyātantras followed by the use of Niruttarayogatantras. Using this approach, her study obviously does not address images for which she could not identify a textual source, nor does it focus on the architecture of the site. Because of the lack of regional, textual source materials from this period, this type of endeavour is naturally hypothetical, and cannot take into account oral or visual traditions that left no trace. And as Thomas Donaldson (2001) suggests, ‘images themselves may have served as incipient sources for the texts.’Donaldson’s 2001 book, The Iconography of Buddhist Sculpture of Orissa, also uses available texts to attempt to identify a vast array of sculpture from sites throughout Odisha. His work is an important source for the documentation and classification of Buddhist statues throughout the region, but it does not hypothesize on religious practice from these works of art. Finally, the work of Rob Linrothe (1999), while not focusing specifically on Ratnagiri, draws upon many images from the site in his examination of the development of wrathful deities in India and Tibet. This chapter draws upon the work of all the above-mentioned scholars but has a narrower focus. It focuses primarily on the sculpture decorating the portals of the main monastery at Ratnagiri and argues that changing religious needs of the community are reflected in the iconography of the different phases of construction. Unlike previous scholars, this article examines the imagery of the later stage of construction, the period that has been most closely related to the development of esoteric practices at the site. When relevant, connections between this important site in Odisha and Buddhist sites in Indonesia are explored.

the development of the vihāra The establishment of Indian Buddhist monasteries, or vihāra, arose not out of a need to ‘house a god’ or to construct, in Stella Kramrisch’s words, a ‘monument of manifestation’. Instead, it came from a much more mundane concern: the need to shelter monks during the monsoon season. The first Buddhist monks were wandering almsmen, who begged for food in the mornings and settled in makeshift shelters at night. During the rainy

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Image, Ritual, and Ideology season, there was a necessity for more lasting refuge, and groups of monks began to settle in shelters known as āvāsa and ārāma. The āvāsa were built by the monastic community in rural areas, while the ārāma were settlements donated and maintained by a patron or patrons and were located closer to an urban centre. Members of congregations were not necessarily fixed, and wandering almsmen might have spent different rain-retreats at varying settlements. Legends supply most of our information about these early āvāsa and ārāma, but a few of the structures have been excavated (Dutt 1962). Although it is difficult to ascertain how these early monk-settlements were used, their plans are strikingly different from those of later vihāra.10 Sukumar Dutt (1962: 95) notes that ‘while the developed ... vihāra ... was a compact and unitary building for the accommodation of a single company, a unitary body of monks, meeting the needs of their communal living, the āvāsa or ārāma occupied a larger area, having the look of an outspread colony, more suitable for seasonal gatherings of monks hailing from all quarters’. The change from a settlement to a proper monastery was the result of the monks’ growing sense of their community as settled and circumscribed. This development of a corporate identity was in no small part the result of a growing number of congregational activities, such as communal chanting, systems of training and ordination, the holding of symposia and debates, and other collective rites and ceremonies. Some of the earliest vihāra in India can be found in the rock-cut architecture of the Western Ghats. At vihāra 19 at Bhājā from the 1st century bce we see a simple rectangular courtyard bordered by a veranda that is in turn surrounded by small cells. This basic pattern persists over the centuries and across India with few changes. A plan from Nāsik in the 2nd century ad shows a more regular arrangement of cells around the courtyard (Fig. 9.1), and a small space between the two cells opposite the entrance. On this convex portion of the wall, an image of a stūpa and two worshippers has been carved. By the 5th century ad, at sites like Ajaṇṭā, 10.  Compare, for instance, the open plan of Jīvakāmravana in Rājgīr in the Nālandā district of Bihar with plans of the monasteries at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh.

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a small but significant change in the structure of the vihāra occurs—the cell opposite the entrance is transformed into a shrine with a devotional image (Fig. 9.2). This model is similar to that at the main monastery of Ratnagiri.

Fig. 9.1: Plan of vihāra III (‘Gautamiputra’ cave) at Nasik. (Drawing by J. Huntington; after Huntington 1985, fig. 9.8)

Fig. 9.2: Plan of vihāra 17 at Ajaṇṭā. (Drawing by J. Huntington; after Huntington 1985, fig. 12.16)

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The addition of a shrine to the monastic dwellings results in the combination of a religious space with a pragmatic shelter, a meeting of sacred and mundane realms. According to John Huntington (1985: 253): The incorporation of the Buddha shrine into the vihāra format transforms the excavation from a mere dwelling place for the monks into a metaphor for a Buddhist paradise in which a Buddha preaches the dharma to the resident bodhisattvas who are in the process of attaining perfection and are awaiting their final rebirths. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, monks take the vow of the bodhisattva (relinquishing their own attainment of Buddhahood until all sentient beings are saved) and progress through the various stages of bodhisattvahood. The vihāra is a microcosmic version of paradise wherein the monks, as bodhisattvas (which they have become through the process of taking the vows), reside, listening to the teachings of the Buddha.

Huntington (1985: 253–54) notes that at Ajaṇṭā the metaphor of the vihāra as a paradise is supported by an inscription that compares the vihāra with Indra’s palaces and also by the painted images on the ceilings of the Ajaṇṭā vihāra. For centuries, monasteries had been built near sites of worship: stūpas, caitya halls, and places associated with the life of the Buddha. But in later monasteries, the object of worship is brought into the living quarters of the community, and housed in a cell not so different from the cells the monks themselves occupied. This moving of a sacred object inward reflects changes in monastic rites and ceremonies, and even, as Huntington suggests, a change in the monks’ conception of themselves.11

monastic practices at the mahāvihāra of ratnagiri The connections between the form and function of the main monastery at Ratnagiri are difficult to reconstruct. An initial stumbling block is the fact 11.  Interestingly, there are no traces of stone vihāra of this type that can be positively identified as such in Indonesia. Clearly large monastic communities existed, but they must have been housed in buildings made of less permanent materials.

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that the site was occupied for a very long period of time; the dates of epigraphical evidence range from the 5th to 13th century. Secondly, the monastery was not excavated until the late 1950s, and over the years statues were moved or displaced, images destroyed or appropriated. Theories about Buddhist rituals at Ratnagiri are thus speculative. They are based upon drawing together information from Chinese annals, from Buddhist texts, and from the structure, iconography, and physical remains of the monastery itself. Whether practices reported at other Buddhist sites also occurred at Ratnagiri is uncertain, and whether the texts I cite were known there is also unclear. But as a major pilgrimage site and academic centre, it would be reasonable to assume that the monks at Ratnagiri were aware of practices and texts widely known at other monasteries in India. Unfortunately there are few historical records concerning Ratnagiri, and the inscriptions from the site are mostly sealings of the Buddhist creed or ritual phrases (dhāraṇī).12 The popularity of votive stūpas and sealings at the site tells us about one aspect of Buddhist practice, but they do not give us information about the founding or subsequent use of the vihāra. Conventional descriptions of monastic practices include meditation, chanting, and teaching. But evidence suggests the lives of the saṅgha were less eremitic and more deeply entwined with the lives of the laity than thought by early scholars. Prasad (2011b) deftly summarizes scholarship tracing the evolution of Buddhist monasticism and its links with the development of trade, urbanism, and empire. While some information about monastic life in India has come from Chinese pilgrims such as Yijing, who travelled to India in the 7th century, most evidence concerning the early practices of Buddhist monks comes from texts compiled by the monastic communities themselves, including vinaya, or monastic codes of conduct.13 12.  See Mitra 1981: 15, 29–31, 43–44, 99–100, 104, 380–422. See Schopen (2005: 314–44) for a discussion of the Bodhigarbhālaṅkāralaksa and Vimalosṇīsadhāraṇī. 13.  Interestingly, Chinese visitors’ accounts sometimes relied heavily on these monastic codes. Schopen (1995) points out that an entire chapter of Yijing’s travel account was not observed by the monk himself, but translated directly from a monastic code.

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Image, Ritual, and Ideology Gregory Schopen notes that scholars have often sought in vain for the spiritual essence of such texts, and that one French scholar wrote that these codes ‘contain hardly a whisper about the numerous spiritual practices ... which constituted the very essence of the Buddhist ‘‘religion’’ ’.14 According to Schopen (1995: 473), monastic literature presents the picture of a monk who is ‘caught up in a web of social and ritual obligations, is fully and elaborately housed and permanently settled, preoccupied not with nirvāṇa but with bowls and robes, bathrooms and doorbolts, and proper behavior in public’. A close examination of vinaya emphasizes the fact that monastic life was not isolated asceticism, but often deeply entwined in local spheres of economics, politics, and religious beliefs. The initial construction of the Mahāvihāra of Ratnagiri has been dated to about the 8th century and presumably was built under the Bhauma-Kara dynasty (ad 736–931).15 Their capital was in Jajpur, twenty-one kilometres from Ratnagiri, and they were known to be Buddhist rulers. Surprisingly, there are no inscriptions linking the site with royal donors of this dynasty.16 The History of Buddhism in India, written by Tāranātha in 1608, describes Ratnagiri as a site populated by 500 monks who kept both Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna śāstras (Chattopadhyaya 1970: 144). Statuary and inscriptions seem to indicate that at first the dominant system of belief was Mahāyāna and later Vajrayāna Buddhism. In some Tibetan accounts Odisha is considered to be the birthplace of Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna (Moharana 2001). Tibetan sources identify the Ratnagiri monastery as a site from which the Kālacakratantra was disseminated (Donaldson 2001: 12), while Chinese sources credit a king from Odisha with introducing Tantrayāna to China (Donaldson 1995: 175–76).17 14.  Schopen 1995: 473, quoting André Bareau. 15.  See Brown 1978. Mitra (1981) discusses the various theories as to when this dynasty actually ruled, with hypotheses ranging from the 7th to the 9th century. 16.  The written records at this site consist mostly of sealings of the Buddhist creed and mantras and a few stone inscriptions of the Pratītyasamutpādasūtra. 17.  These accounts were written long after the time Ratnagiri was actively occupied. But the consistent mention of Odisha as a place where Tantric adepts visited and gained

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It is possible, and indeed perhaps likely, that monks affiliated with different schools of Buddhism shared the monastery. As Mukherjee (1961: 147–48) points out, a Mahāyānist Bhikṣu is not one who belongs to a Mahāyāna order in the sense of a separate religious corporation, but simply one who, observing in fundamentals the same monastic discipline as his Hīnayāna brother, devotes himself to the study of the Mahāyāna sūtras. Similarly a Hīnayāna monk is simply one who follows the Hīnayāna sūtras.

According to Dutt (1962: 177), monks of different sects could live in the same saṅgha. For this there is evidence both from inscriptions discovered in the monastic ruins and the eyewitness accounts of the Chinese pilgrims. Although there were monasteries exclusively occupied by Mahāyānist or by Hīna­ yānist monks, or by monks of a particular sect, co-existence of different sects in a saṅgha seems to have been the normal practice.

A wide variety of sculptures of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and peaceful and wrathful Buddhist deities were found at the site. As documented by Mishra (2011), these include forms of Tārā, Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, and a range of Bodhisattvas and their emanations. The popularity of female deities, especially Tārā, is pronounced at Ratnagiri, and has been linked with developing esoteric forms of Buddhism. Hock (1987: 1, 30) classifies much of the sculpture at Ratnagiri as Tantric, with the earlier material primarily associated with the Kriyā- and Caryātantras. This is disputed by Linrothe (1999: 38–41), who makes the distinction between ‘mature devotional Mahāyāna Buddhism’ and ‘early Esoteric Buddhism’. He argues that while sites like the late 6th- and early 7th-century caves of Aurangabad and Ellorā show ‘nascent Esoteric Buddhist thought and imagery’, they fit more clearly into a Mahāyāna framework, with an emphasis on a triad of Buddha and attendant Bodhisattvas, as well as on the Bodhisattva cult (especially Avalokiteśvara). knowledge points to the historical importance of the region for the development of Tantric Buddhist cults.

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This emphasis is true of the early stages of Ratnagiri as well. Linrothe (ibid.: 51–59) acknowledges that these theological traditions exist on a continuum and are at times difficult to distinguish, but argues convincingly that the artworks produced during the earliest stage of development at Ratnagiri can be classified as Mahāyāna. Some images from the later stages of the occupation of Ratnagiri do clearly fit into a Vajrayāna context, including numerous images of the wrathful deity Heruka. Linrothe (ibid.: 251–57) describes the emerging popularity of wrathful deities as a key component of Esoteric Buddhism in eastern India in the 11th century. The image of Heruka found near the main monastery at Ratnagiri balances on one foot atop a corpse—a symbol, according to Linrothe, of the ‘pre-enlightenment self-image’. A very similar image was found at Biaro Bahal II in Padang Lawas, North Sumatra, and suggests that changes in religious practices that were leading to the popularity of wrathful figures like Heruka in India, were also occurring in parts of island Southeast Asia at about the same time (Reichle 2007: 133–41). Although numerous other images depicting demonic figures have been found at Padang Lawas, with the exception of the sculpture of Heruka, not much among the scattered remains of the site bears resemblance to objects or architecture from Ratnagiri. This suggests that the Esoteric Buddhist beliefs that were spreading to the islands took very local forms when adapting to new environments.

the pathway through the mahāvihāra Like many other Buddhist sites, Ratnagiri is located on a hill, in close proximity to water and not too far from an urban centre. The complex is located on a low knoll of the Assia range, a site surrounded by two rivers—the Brahmani and the Birupa. The southernmost portion of the site contains a large stūpa, surrounded by hundreds of smaller votive stūpas. To the north of this are a quadrangular Mahāvihāra, and another smaller, and slightly later monastery. Eight small temples are scattered mostly between the vihāra and the stūpas, although one lies slightly to the southeast of the large stūpa. On the northeastern portion of the hill there is an

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isolated single-winged monastery. Although the arrangement of northern vihāra facing stūpas to the south may have been patterned after earlier sites like Sarnath (Mitra 1981), it seems more likely that the topography of the hill determined the placement of structures (Fig. 9.3). The large stūpa is located on the highest part of the hill, and looks across at the neighbouring hills of Udayagiri and Lalitagiri. The monasteries are at a slightly lower elevation. They are not directly due north of the stūpa, but the stūpa can easily be seen from the entrance to the vihāra.

Fig. 9.3: Ratnagiri site map. (After Mitra 1981, fig. 2; courtesy of ASI)

The monastery itself has a four-halled plan, closely resembling early examples of rock-cut vihāra (Fig. 9.4). The precedent for this type of building probably stems from a type of domestic architecture, which consisted of a courtyard surrounded on all sides by rooms opening into the central space. This type of enclosed, windowless architecture is much more private than the earlier āvāsa or ārāma. At Ratnagiri a paved forecourt leads up to a flight of stairs into the entrance complex of the vihāra. After passing through a front and rear porch one reaches the central courtyard, which is surrounded by twenty-four cells. The individual cells

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Fig. 9.4: Ratnagiri main monastery plan. (After Mitra 1981, fig. 8; courtesy of ASI)

MONASTERY I : SHRINE-COMPLEX

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originally had wooden doors (and possibly bolts and locks) (Barua 1969: 17). The central courtyard provided a space for congregational gatherings. At the rear of the monastery, two antechambers were built leading into the rear shrine (Fig. 9.5). This shrine contains a large stone image of Śākyamuni with sculptures of Padmapāṇi and Vajrapāṇi on either side (Fig. 9.6). This arrangement of deities is similar to those found in the early 9th-century Candi Mendut of Java, where a large stone image of a seated Buddha is attended by Avalokiteśvara and Vajrapāṇi.18 The first sculpted images visible when approaching the entrance of the Mahāvihāra are carved panels that stand in front of pylons on either side of the front porch (Fig. 9.7). Only one of these panels is in place today; its principal image is a female figure holding a flowering branch (or stalk of grain) in her left hand, with her right hand displaying the varada-mudrā (Fig. 9.8). Her lavish adornment—necklaces, belts, armlets, bracelets, anklets, headdress, and earrings—contrasts with her simple, transparent robes. Debala Mitra (1981: 158) suggests the figure might be a river goddess, but it is difficult to determine her identity because she stands on a double petal lotus base, rather than a turtle or makara, the traditional vāhanas of Yamunā and Gaṅgā. Donaldson (2001: 307) suggests she is the goddess Aśokakāntā-Mārīcī, who is known to display the varada-mudrā and hold a branch of the Aśoka tree. Whoever this figure represents, she follows in a long tradition of propitious female figures (yakṣī) often found at entrances to Buddhist sites. A small front porch precedes the portal of the vihāra. The lateral walls of the porch contain a niche with an image. On the west side is a panel depicting Avalokiteśvara standing below small, seated images of the Jina-Buddhas Akṣobhya and Ratnasambhava (Fig. 9.9). On the east wall is a matching image of Vajrapāṇi, with the same Buddhas above him (Fig. 9.10). The two figures have identical attributes with the exception of their headdresses and

'"' ;.. • "'---J:..---=

Fig. 9.5: Ratnagiri shrine of main monastery. (After Mitra 1981, fig. 12; courtesy of ASI)

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18.  Geri Malandra (1993: 116) notes that with the eight Bodhisattvas depicted on the exterior, the iconography of Mendut is similar to the Ellorā caves. She calls the arrangement a nascent Tantric Buddhist programme.

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Fig. 9.6: Interior of main monastery, Ratnagiri. (Photo © Daniel Limma, Wikimedia Commons)

Fig. 9.7: View of main monastery, Ratnagiri. (Photo © Mitrabhanu.Panda, Wikimedia Commons)

uppermost left hands, in which Vajrapāṇi carries his characteristic vajra, while Avalokiteśvara is in a four-armed form. The figures are similar in composition to the goddess at the entrance. They

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stand on a double lotus with two seated Buddhas on small lotuses floating at the top of either side of the main figure. Below the lower-left hand of each Bodhisattva is a kneeling supplicating figure, most

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Fig. 9.8: Female figure at entry. (Photo: author)

Fig. 9.10: Vajrapāṇi, entry porch. (Photo: author)

Fig. 9.9: Avalokiteśvara, entry porch. (Photo: author)

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likely a preta (hungry ghost), who seems to cup his hands to receive the mercy falling from the Bodhisattva’s varada-mudrā. Below the lower left hand (holding a water vessel) of each main image is a stout four-armed male figure, who kneels on one knee with two of his hands clasped before his chest. With his other two hands he holds a noose and offers a gesture of homage. His fanged countenance and dwarf-like stature identify him as Hayagrīva. Avalokiteśvara and Vajrapāṇi are often the flanking images in a triad with the historical Buddha, Śākyamuni. Looking down the central axis of the vihāra from the front porch, one can see the large image of Śākyamuni Buddha in the rear shrine. A triad can thus be formed, standing between the two Bodhisattvas but looking across the courtyard for the third member. Bodhisattvas represent the ideals of the monastic community, and in Mahāyāna Buddhism monks often took

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Fig. 9.11: Rear wall of front porch. (Photo: author)

‘Bodhisattva vows’ along with other monastic vows when they were ordained (Lopez 1995: 503–12). These vows were public events in which monks (and laypeople) promised to postpone their own enlightenment in order to help others attain Buddhahood. Vows were a very important part of the monastic community as a rite that bound and united them both spiritually and as an institution. The presence of the figures of Avalokiteśvara and Vajrapāṇi here in the entry to the monastery could have served as a daily reminder of these vows to monks who were entering and leaving the vihāra. The rear wall of the front porch is the most spectacularly carved part of the monastery (Fig. 9.11). As one approaches the building and climbs the steps, the portal is visible as a kind of frame through which one can look across the courtyard to the doorway of the rear shrine with the principal image of the seated Buddha. This portal is further emphasized by the media of its construction: a bluish-green chlorite which contrasts with the darker brown khondalite at the edges and the generic red bricks of the vihāra. The frames of the doorway contain a series of motifs that are also found on contemporaneous Hindu buildings in

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Fig. 9.12: Detail of portal of rear wall of front porch. (Photo: author)

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Fig. 9.13: Portal of rear wall of front porch. (© Amartyabag, Wikimedia Commons)

Bhubaneswar such as Vaital Deul and Śiśireśwara. The doorjamb around the portal is divided into three strikingly different facets that are separated by pearl borders (Fig. 9.12). The innermost facet is carved with an intricate foliated arabesque pattern: a thin vine twisting upwards with delicate curving offshoots. The centre facet has stylized lotus petals radiating outward. This bold pattern emphasizes the portal, with the lines of the petals forming a series of haloes. Thus, as one walks through the doorway one becomes the centre of an auspicious blooming lotus. The third facet depicts a gelabai motif of boys playing on vines. It is the most exuberant of the borders with plump youths playing on a swing, hanging upside down from one leg, and climbing playfully up the curving vine. These figures lead the eye up the doorway but do not continue across the lintel. Instead, a row of vidyādharas flew across the top of the doorway; unfortunately today only their legs remain. In the middle of the

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lintel is a seated Gajalakṣmī, a figure borrowed from the Hindu pantheon and commonly found on the lintels of Hindu temples in Odisha (Fig. 9.13). The figure of Lakṣmī is depicted being lustrated by two elephants that stand on small lotus pedestals above her. Lakṣmī is commonly associated with prosperity, and in this case her abhiṣeka also suggests a connection with purification. Donaldson (1976: 211) describes her presence as both propitious and protective: Although the goddess is essentially peaceful it is her very benign and smiling presence that wards off any adverse influences approaching the temple. As a dvāra-lalāṭa-bimba image over the doorway (niche) she functions as a vajra-mastaka (kīrtimukha), the most powerful apotropaic motif conceived by the Indian sculptor, the evil-dispelling motif upon which the security of the temple depended.

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Fig. 9.14: Detail of Fig. 9.13 (base of portal).

The portal also has door guardians (dvārapāla) to afford protection. They can be found at the base of the door frame in a niche containing four small figures (Fig. 9.14). The figures on the left and right sides of the doorway are not identical in posture, but form rough mirror images. The heads of all four figures in each group are tilted slightly towards the entranceway. The innermost figure is a male who leans inward on a large club. On the left, the dvārapāla is somewhat forbidding, with his thick arms and large hands resting on his hips. The guardian on the right, in contrast, is much more relaxed. He leans nonchalantly on his club and holds an utpala in his left hand. On the whole, though, these dvārapālas seem somewhat obligatory figures; they are small in stature and not very threatening. The second figure in each row stands below a parasol, which is held by the attendant next to him. He holds the hem of his robe in his outer hand, and a jewel or fruit in his inner hand. Mitra (1981: 164) suggests that this figure might be royalty and thus could associate the temple with a donor. But there is little else about him to indicate his royal stature—no special distinctions in his clothing, jewellery, or size. The third and fourth figures appear to be attendants, one carrying a parasol and another a bag. Extending out from the portal, only a small portion of the rear wall of the front porch remains in place today. But what we can see of it, on either side of the doorway, suggests that the carving

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was as intricate and as carefully planned as the entranceway itself. The west and the east wall are divided into two sections. Next to the portal is a flat area, which is itself divided into three sections. On the outermost edge of the wall is a sapta-ratha projection. Too many patterns and motifs are present to try to catalogue all of them, so I will only mention the ones with clear symbolic significance. A pillar adjacent to the portal contains the following motifs, listed from bottom to top: pūrṇa-kumbha, yakṣī, caitya window, vidyādharas, and more foliated patterns. Next to this pillar is a wider segment of the wall that contains niches between two smaller piers. At the base and top of these small piers are pūrṇa-kumbha. In the lower niche is an image of Pāñcika or Jambhala, the Buddhist equivalent of the Hindu god of wealth, Kubera (Fig. 9.15). He sits on a throne in lalitāsana, above pots of wealth. In an identical niche above Pāñcika sits Padmapāṇi in a similar pose, but with his signature lotus above his left shoulder (Fig. 9.16). It is likely that other figures may have been placed in niches above these two,

Fig. 9.15: Pāñcika on rear wall of front porch. (Photo: author)

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Fig. 9.16: Avalokiteśvara on rear wall of front porch. (Photo: author)

Fig. 9.17: Yamunā on rear wall of front porch. (Photo: author)

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but this is as high as the remaining wall reaches today. The third segment of the wall has a different set of motifs. At the bottom is a standing nāga whose hands clasp a kumbha. Above him, a pattern of pineapple-like fruit ensconced in palm fronds is repeated up the pillar. The sapta-ratha projection has a complicated set of mouldings as its base. The patterns on the bands are no longer in place. The niche of the central projection on the west side contains the image of the auspicious river goddess Yamunā (Fig. 9.17). Presumably at one time an image of Gaṅgā, the personification of the Ganges, occupied the corresponding niche on the east side of the portal. Yamunā and her companions do not have the formal frontality of some of the other images and their poses suggest a sisterly camaraderie. River goddesses are an extremely common motif at the entrances to both Hindu and Buddhist establishments, although they are not found on many early Odishan temples (Donaldson 1976: 190). As representations of the two most sacred rivers in India, Gaṅgā and Yamunā connote fertility and purification. The Gaṅgā in particular is also associated with the transition between the heavenly and earthly spheres. According to legend, she descended from heaven through Śiva’s locks to save the earth from drought. Thus she is a perfect threshold goddess, and walking between images of Gaṅgā and Yamunā is a way of cleansing oneself before entering a sacred compound. What is the significance of the other motifs on these walls? Jars of plenty and elaborate foliate designs are signs of wealth and fertility. The yakṣī and the nāga, two figures which appear in the earliest Buddhist art, likely have their roots in village cults, and their presence indicates the incorporation of local beliefs into Buddhist iconography. Pāñcika also is a symbol of abundance. The juxtaposition of his figure below with that of Avalokiteśvara above is an interesting one. Pāñcika is a symbol of material well-being—he surrounds himself with his pots of gold, and often holds a mongoose that spews forth gems. In contrast, Padmapāṇi is an example of spiritual generosity. He represents the Bodhisattva ideal of an individual who is so selfless that he delays his own nirvāṇa until all sentient beings can reach enlightenment. These two figures represent opposing sides of the monastic existence: on one

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hand the spiritual ideal of a selfless devotion, and on the other the practical concerns of everyday life. Despite, or perhaps because of, its spiritual quest for enlightenment, the monastic community was deeply dependent upon the contributions of lay society, and their monastic codes demonstrate an attendant obsession with quite mundane concerns, including money (Schopen 1995: 473–502). Continuing into the monastery, a second porch connects the front porch with the courtyard. Another image of Pāñcika is found on the west wall of the rear porch (Fig. 9.18). Here he is paired with his consort Hārītī who occupies a niche on the east wall (Fig. 9.19). This combination of figures was common in Buddhist monasteries and commented on by the Chinese pilgrim Yijing (Takakusu 1966: 37). Pāñcika’s wealth is emphasized by his pots of riches and also by his corpulence. His jewel-spitting mongoose is almost flattened by the weight of his hand. Hārītī’s body is also large and she holds only one child, instead of the usual five. Buddhist legends describe Hārītī as a child-eating ogress who was converted to Buddhism only after one of her own children was stolen. According to Huntington (1985: 147–48):

Fig. 9.18: Pāñcika in niche in second porch. (Photo: author)

Representations of Hārītī are commonly found in Buddhist refectories, and the donor of a meal is obligated to offer food to her. Her presence is therefore a daily reminder of the need for empathy and its result in compassion. As a pair, Pāñcika and Hārīti represent an expression of the desire of the monkhood for the material wellbeing that allows them to pursue their religious aims in peace. In addition to the popular stories about Pāñcika and Hārīti told to the Chinese pilgrim or otherwise appearing in Buddhist literature, the two divinities have an esoteric symbolism. Pāñcika is the keeper of the wealth or treasure of enlightenment while Hārīti is the embodiment of the Buddhamātṛkā itself. Thus, it is easy to see in these two sculptures the two levels, the popular and the esoteric, present in many images.

Pāñcika and Hārītī play a similar role in the Central Javanese temple of Candi Mendut. They appear on reliefs carved on either side of the interior walls in the entryway leading to the main cells. At Mendut, as at the Mahāvihāra of Ratnagiri, the

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Fig. 9.19: Hārītī in niche in second porch. (Photo: author)

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Image, Ritual, and Ideology central image of the shrine is a seated Buddha, with Avalokiteśvara and Vajrapāṇi on either side. At both sites images of the goddess Cundā are found, depicted on stūpas at Ratnagiri and in a relief at Mendut. Likewise, depictions of an eight-Bodhisattva maṇḍala are present at both places, on the exterior walls at Mendut and in free-standing sculpture at Ratnagiri. The imagery, while similar in content, is not particularly similar in style, and suggests that iconography rapidly spread from India (where it is seen at Ellorā as well) to Indonesia. At the Ratnagiri Mahāvihāra the rear porch leads into the courtyard. This courtyard is surrounded by a pillared veranda, which some scholars suggest might have been used for walking.19 The veranda originally had a svastika format that allowed rooms to be built in the far corners of the square. All around the courtyard are small cells, whose equal size reflects the relative equality of stature among the monks. Most of these rooms are quite large and probably housed more than one monk. They contain no trace of furnishings, no niches for lamps or images, and no windows. One of the cells was converted into a treasury for the monastery. A short passage leads from each of the cells to a doorway, which opens out onto the courtyard. In the southeast corner of the courtyard a large stone staircase leads up to a no longer extant second storey. In the opposite corner of the courtyard the floor dips and a small area is surrounded by a low wall. A perforated grill drain set into the corner indicates that this was a washing area, perhaps where the monks would bathe before entering the main shrine. It is possible the images were also washed, although if that occurred it might be in the centre of the courtyard where it could be observed by the saṅgha. Chinese travel accounts and translated sutras give elaborate descriptions of the bathing of images, a ceremony that continues today in South and Southeast Asian countries. These accounts give us some idea of the possibilities of ritual life in the monasteries. Luis O. Gomez’s translation of a 7th-century Mahāyāna liturgy provides the reader with a vivid description of ritual worship (Gomez 1995: 183–96). 19.  Yijing mentions monks ‘strolling quietly along the corridors of the monastery’ (Takakusu 1966: 114).

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The liturgy, an introduction to the Bodhisattva path, describes a ritual of worship and self-consecration. The pūjā begins with offerings of ‘all the flowers, fruits, and medicinal plants, all the treasures that there are in the universe’ and continues to describe gifts of such extravagance (wish-fulfilling and gem-bearing trees) that their metaphorical nature is clear. Besides offerings of all sorts, the worshipper offers himself as slave. The worshipper bathes, clothes and feeds the deities, adorns them with garlands, and provides them with incense, perfume, and music. Yijing reports that all the monasteries of the Western Regions [especially India and Central Asia] bathe the noble image. Every morning the monastic director sounds the bell. He spreads a jeweled awning over the courtyard of the monastery. At the side of the [image] temple are arranged jars of incense. He takes the gold, silver, bronze, or stone image and places it inside a basin made of bronze, gold, wood, or stone, He orders the female musicians to play their music while he smears the image with ground incense and bathes it with scented water. He rubs it with a clean, white cloth, and afterwards puts it back in the temple, furnishing it with floral decorations. This then is the custom of the majority of monasteries and the task of the revered director of monastic affairs. In the same manner the monks individually bathe the noble image within their respective cell. Each day they all perform the essentials without deficiency. (Boucher 1995: 62; brackets in the original)20

Ceremonies like this may have occurred at Ratnagiri. There is evidence that incense was prepared in the cells of the monastery; pieces of saddle querns used to grind pastes and herbs were found (Mitra 1981: 197). Vinaya texts like the one discussed by Gregory Schopen describe the settlement of an estate, in which the great pigments, yellow, vermillion, blue, and so on, are to be put in the ‘perfumed chamber’ to be used for the image (Schopen 1995: 20.  Yijing also translated a Sūtra of the bathing of the Buddha containing a very similar description, which elaborates on the types of incense to be used and the merits of such an activity. Boucher notes that the authenticity of this Sūtra is to be questioned.

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499). Several Buddhist texts also refer to a gandhakuṭī or ‘perfumed chamber’ in which images were stored.21 This cell was considered reserved for the Buddha himself, a room in which he resided.22 At Ratnagiri the principal image is made out of several blocks of stone and therefore would not have been practical to move. But smaller images of Bodhisattvas are portable and it is likely that lighter metal images were also kept in the main shrine. Yijing’s description of female musicians accompanying the ceremony is somewhat surprising.23 It is all the more thought-provoking because Yijing does not seem disturbed by their appearance in the vihāra. Images of female musicians and dancers are found at many Hindu and Buddhist sites, and presumably they played a role in ceremonies at Hindu temples. But the mention of these women being involved in Buddhist ceremonies is more puzzling due to monastic prohibitions on interactions between the sexes. Yijing’s other comments on women in his Records involve discussions of the proper behaviour of nuns. He does mention nuns entering a monastery compound for gatherings, but notes that they must not travel alone (Takakusu 1966: 63). At another point, though, he mentions female servants (1896: 84). These snippets of information are tantalizing and give us a view of the monastery in which people of various genders and different status interacted perhaps more freely than might be assumed. The rear shrine of the vihāra and its antechamber have seen various stages of construction (Fig. 9.5). There are three façades to the shrine proper; the oldest is the furthest north and therefore closest to 21.  Étienne Lamotte describes the ‘Original Perfumed Room’ (Mūlagandhakuṭī) as the personal cell of the historical Buddha. A temple has been built over this spot at Sārnāth (Lamotte 1988: 317). 22.  Gregory Schopen (1990) discusses the extensive references to the presence of the Buddha as owner and resident in inscriptions referring to Buddhist monasteries. 23.  Das (1978) suggests that there were devadāsīs at Buddhist establishments. His argument is based on a copperplate found at Ratnagiri that mentions a Rani Karpūraśrī from the Saloṇapura Mahāvihāra. The inscription does not mention the father of Karpūraśrī but does mention her mother and grandmother. D.C. Sircar interprets this to mean that the woman was a devadāsī. Other scholars, such as Mitra (1981: 352), assume the woman was a nun.

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the shrine. During the second stage of construction at Ratnagiri the veranda in front of the shrine was converted into a larger, wider antechamber. At the back of this late antechamber are the remains of a second façade, which was also built at the second stage of construction. The west side of this later antechamber has been converted into a brick sideshrine with niches for images. Finally, there is a third façade that presumably was originally placed even further towards the courtyard, in front of the second façade. (This façade has been largely reconstructed and now stands on the west side of the courtyard of the vihāra). I will discuss the imagery from the later stages of building after looking at the façade and shrine, which date from the earlier period. In the first stage of construction, one would move from the veranda into a small antechamber. The rear wall of this chamber forms the portal leading into a passage into the shrine proper. Only the lower hundred centimetres of this structure exists, but even from this one can clearly see that it is in a style reminiscent of the front portal (Fig. 9.20).

Fig. 20: View of rear shrine and remnants of façades. (Photo: author)

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Fig. 9.21: Detail of early façade to shrine. (Photo: author)

The doorjambs consist of two decorative bands separated by a pearl border. The motifs are familiar: the innermost is the thin foliated arabesque, and the outer is the gelabai motif. At the bottom of the jambs, a small dvārapāla stands in a pearl-bordered niche. He leans on a large club and has a small attendant at his side. The wall next to the portal has the same general pattern as the front entrance with three flat pillar-like facets. They contain many of the same motifs, radiating outward—a yakṣī figure, pūrṇa-kumbha, and more foliate and pineapple/ palm patterns. At the bottom of each of these bands is a figure in a small individual niche (Fig. 9.21). The innermost is a Bodhisattva, then a yakṣī, and finally a seven-hooded nāga figure. The yakṣī are individualized with different hairstyles, and the Bodhisattvas also have subtle differences. Mitra (1981: 175) suggests that the figure on the west is Maitreya, because he holds nāga-kesara flowers in his left hand. She tentatively identifies the figure on the eastern wall as Mañjuśrī. As in the rear wall of the front porch, a projection, this time pañca-ratha protrudes on the eastern and westernmost sections of the wall. A figure of Pāncika can be seen in a niche on one of the projections. The central panel possibly contained images of the river goddesses. All of these motifs are common and carry propitious connotations. A narrow, undecorated passage leads to the rear of the shrine. The shrine contains a two-metre high central image of a Buddha in bhūmisparśa-mudrā, who sits on a tri-ratha pedestal carved with a double lotus pattern (Fig. 9.6). A plain halo surrounds his head, with a small projecting halo above it containing a Bodhi tree carved in relief. The image is made up of several slabs of khondalite, a method that was used for large statues in the Ratnagiri area, but also

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in neighbouring Sirpur (Huntington 1985: 418). The Buddha has a tall round uṣṇīṣa, very round curls, and cakra marks on his palm and soles. The outer corners of the pedestal below the Buddha have crouching lions facing the lateral walls. The middle section shows two kneeling three-headed nāgas on either side of a double lotus. To the Buddha’s right stands a separate statue of Avalokiteśvara as Padmapāṇi, and to his left an image of Vajrapāṇi (Figs. 9.22–23). Unlike the images of these Bodhisattvas that we saw earlier, these are two-armed and have no attending Jina-Buddhas. As stated before, this triad is a popular one and each of the Bodhisattvas has come to be associated with certain qualities: Vajrapāṇi is the personification of wisdom (prajñā), which is conceived as one half of the state of Buddhahood. Padmapāṇi, as a manifestation of Avalokiteśvara, personifies compassion (karuṇā), the other half of Buddhahood. Through the meditational experience of the unity of these two components, the state of enlightenment (bodhi), or Buddhahood, is achieved. The exact meaning of the vajra and padma attributes held by the bodhisattvas is problematic, as any interpretations must be extrapolated from much more recent but conflicting usages. In one later tradition, the vajra symbolizes prajñā and the lotus denotes karuṇā, while in another the padma is equivalent to the prajñā and the vajra represents the skillful means (upāya) of implementing karuṇā. (Huntington 1985: 154)

Images from the second stage of building are found in the later antechamber of the shrine, including the second façade, and in the reconstructed third façade, which now stands in the courtyard. Very little remains of the second façade of the building; at its highest it stands less than half a metre high. A familiar dvārapāla holding a staff stands in a niche next to the doorway. In the niche next to the dvārapāla is a woman standing under a tree—the familiar śālabhañjikā from both Buddhist and Hindu art. The next niche contains the lower half of a pot-bellied man, who sits in mahārājalīlāsana. There are no pots of gold to associate him with Pāñcika. The first three of these

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Fig. 9.24: Detail of haircutting scene from second façade to rear shrine. (Photo: author)

Fig. 9.22: Avalokiteśvara in rear shrine. (Photo: author)

Fig. 9.23: Vajrapāṇi in rear shrine. (Photo: author)

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Fig. 9.25: Detail of haircutting scene from third façade to rear shrine. (Photo: author)

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Fig. 9.26: Third façade to rear shrine. (Photo: author)

images are standard fare for many Buddhist sites, but the fourth poses many questions. The final, westernmost niche contains three figures: a man and woman in an erotic pose, with a third figure who stands behind the man and holds his hair with one hand and perhaps grasps a knife in the other (Fig. 9.24). Interestingly, a similarly provocative image can be found on the third shrine façade, which was built shortly thereafter (Fig. 9.25). Ancient images depicting an erotic scene combined with what appears to be a ritual haircutting are extremely rare.24 In a Buddhist context, tonsure is commonly associated with a monk’s renunciation or ordination. In Hindu contexts, hair is sometimes cut and offered to the gods in temple ceremonies. Desai (1972–73: 86–90) notes that the Tantric texts Karpūrādistotram and Kakārakuṭarahasyam, associated with the worship of Kālī, describe the offering of hair and semen to the goddess. Woodward’s (2004: 332) discussion of the esoteric practices associated with the development of the Hindu Yoginītantras mentions sexual discharges as offerings for the purpose of increasing occult powers. Whether similar rituals were actually performed in a Buddhist context is undocumented 24.  Desai (1972–73) notes only four examples, three of which were found in Odisha.

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and, as Woodward notes (2004: 333), it is difficult to distinguish metaphorical language from actual practice in descriptions of the behaviour of siddhas in texts of this sort. Erotically explicit imagery (especially showing the sex act itself) is rare at Buddhist sites, although it is common on Hindu temples in Odisha (Donaldson 1975).25 The presence of images of loving couples (mithuna) on temple walls is thought to have been propitious through its allusion to fertility. Donaldson (1975: 91) suggests that while erotic images of figures displaying genitalia or engaging in intercourse serve an auspicious function, some images of more complicated sexual acts may illustrate Tantric rituals. But Desai (2012: 207) notes that it is questionable whether erotic sculptures on medieval temples were the work of committed Tāntrikas. Moreover, the ‘depiction’ of erotic scenes, as distinct from the ‘practice’ of sexual rites, was not functionally related to or an integral part of Tāntrism.

The late third façade is the most completely reconstructed portion of the vihāra (Fig. 9.26). The façade consists of three tall (2.69 metres), deep niches on either side of a doorway. At the centre 25.  See also Brown 1978, and Desai 1972–73.

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dharmacakramudrā Śākyamuni Mañjuśrī dhyāna-mudrā

dharmacakramudrā

abhaya-mudrā

varada-mudrā

Amitābha

Vairocana

Amoghasiddhi

Ratnasambhava

Akṣobhya

West

Centre

North

South

East

head

dwarf

dancer

bhūmisparśamudrā

bhūmisparśamudrā Śākyamuni Akṣobhya?

of each of the lintels of the niches is an image of Tārā, and it is assumed that large sculpted images of Tārā would have been placed below.26 The central niche on either side is surrounded by nāga pilasters of the type found at other sites in Odisha such as Chaurasi and Mukteśvara. At the top of each nāga pilaster is a dwarf, who acts as a support for the superstructure. Two of these figures are in what Mitra (1981: 183) calls ‘indecent poses’. Much of the stonework is missing from the lower portion of these niches, but a few images remain. They include a female flautist and female cauri bearer, and a dvārapāla. On the far side of the façade (originally the east side) is a second image of what seems to be some kind of haircutting ritual. In this image a man appears to hold the hair of a kneeling woman, while another woman with upraised arms stands behind them (Fig. 9.25). The superstructure of the third façade is extremely ornate and contains a vast array of different figures. Many of these images are extremely small and difficult to identify. In her monograph, Mitra (1981:184) merely reels off a list of images, rather than describing them individually: Buddha (one in the dhyāna-mudrā, the other being in either bhūmisparśa-mudrā or vara[da]-mudrā), a teacher with a disciple, devotee either with offering or with an incense-burner, dancers, erotic figures, pot-bellied dwarf in the attitude of supporting superstructure, etc.

26.  Mitra (1981: 183) notes that three images of Tārā were found in the immediate vicinity.

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Fortunately Mitra’s description is more complete when she is discussing the Buddha figures at the top of the superstructure. The chart above shows the relationship of images to each other— the mudrā and associated Buddha are indicated as well as the one Bodhisattva, Mañjuśrī. Three of the images are not explicitly religious—a head with earrings, a dwarf, and a dancer. Below each of the mudrās is a very speculative identification of the Buddha, as well as the direction with which each is often associated. The presence of Buddha figures in the dhyāna-, dharmacakra-, abhaya-, varada-, and bhūmisparśa-mudrās immediately calls to mind the five Jina-Buddhas (the five transcendent, trans-historical Buddhas). A sixth Jina-Buddha, known as Mahāvairocana or Vajrasattva, is found in some Tantric Buddhist traditions and is considered the Ādi-Buddha from whom the other Jina-Buddhas emanate.27 If these are indeed the Jina-Buddhas depicted on the third façade, how are they arranged? The Buddha associated with the dhyāna-mudrā and the west, Amitābha, appears on what would have been the west side of the façade, while Akṣobhya, whose mudrā is bhūmisparśa and direction is east, appears on that side. The other figures are more problematic. Amoghasiddhi and Ratnasambhava, associated with north and south respectively, appear on the left and right side of the jamb of the uppermost central niche. Vairocana, who is often associated with the centre, is the centre of the western three niches, but not the centre of the 27.  The name of this Adī-Buddha may vary by tradition. See, for example, the list in Gomez and Woodward 1981: 229.

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Image, Ritual, and Ideology façade as a whole. There is another Buddha figure in dharmacakra-mudrā in the central position, and it would be tempting to see him as Vairocana, the Buddha of the centre. But below this Buddha is a small image of a wheel with deer to either side. This iconography identifies the figure as Śākyamuni, preaching the first sermon. Below this figure, on the lintel of the uppermost niche, is an image of Mañjuśrī, who displays the varada-mudrā with one hand and holds the stalk of a lotus bearing a book in the other. The presence of Mañjuśrī further complicates the picture. One speculative theory about the arrangement of these figures depends on this image of Mañjuśrī. The Litany of Names of Mañjuśrī (Mañjuśrīnāmasaṅ­ gīti) is a Mantrayāna text, in which the Śākyamuni Buddha extols the virtues of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī. Ronald Davidson (1995b: 105), according to whom this 7th-century text ‘became one of the most popular liturgical works of later Buddhism, and was recited daily by monks and laymen in India’,28 describes the content of the litany as follows: The core of the work ... sets forth the use of syllables as a precursor to the actual visualization of many divinities, all of whom are considered forms of Mañjuśrī. It is here that the Buddha also elaborates the meditative environment of the circle of the divinity (maṇḍala, mandala) in the Path of Secret Spells. A mandala in tantric Buddhism is a perfected environment, often depicted as a buddha’s palace. Ritual entry into this environment is the central event in tantric Buddhist initiation, and the manifestation of oneself as a buddha and one’s environment as a perfect mandala is one of the prime goals of tantric Buddhist practice. 28. Davidson (1995b: 105) writes: ‘Unlike most earlier works in praise of the Buddha or the great bodhisattvas, the Litany of Names of Mañjuśrī was evidently written for an esoteric audience, one that would have had the mandala revealed to them in the ritual of consecration by a master of the Path of Secret Spells. Perhaps the most curious aspect of the Litany of Names is its unusual ability to have crossed over into a popular cultus of the bodhisattva of intelligence while retaining its function as a evocation of various esoteric diagrams. That one text could speak simultaneously to multiple communities seems to indicate that it directly addressed an important facet of both popular and monastic Buddhism in India’.

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In the first section of the work, verses 26–162, Śākyamuni Buddha describes and praises Mañjuśrī, listing a series of epithets. In verse 42 he states, ‘Being Mahāvairocana, he is buddha’ (ibid.: 109). Later in verse 59 Mañjuśrī is described as ‘[a] buddha in his nature of five bodies, an overlord by his nature of five types of gnosis, wearing a diadem whose nature is five buddhas, having five eyes, he maintains dissociation’ (ibid.: 111). The five Buddhas referred to are ‘Vairocana, Akṣobhya, Ratnasam­ bhava, Amitābha, and Amoghasiddhi—together forming the fundamental maṇḍala arrangement’ (ibid.: 125). The first of these verses refers to Mañjuśrī as Mahāvairocana, who is the sixth Jina-Buddha and the progenitor of the other five. The second quote refers to those Jina-Buddhas as forming a diadem for Mañjuśrī. Thus one possible explanation for the arrangement of figures on the third façade of the vihāra would be a maṇḍala containing all of these figures. At top and center is Śākyamuni Buddha, below him Mañjuśrī as Mahāvairocana, and on both sides the other Jina-Buddhas. The concept of grouping of Buddhas into three different families (kula), the vajrakula, tathāgathakula, padmakula developed in Mahāyāna Buddhism. In esoteric Buddhism the idea of a five Buddha grouping became more prominent. These Jina-Buddhas were especially important in Java and the Himālayas. They are represented at a number of the Buddhist monuments, most famously at Borobodur.

esoteric imagery of the third façade Whatever the meanings of the iconography of the third façade, a question that remains is why the monks felt the need to build it. The simplest explanation would be based on structural reasons. During the second stage of construction extensive changes were made to the monastery—the cells of the first floor were bricked up, the antechamber extended and a portion of the verandah was converted into rooms. The restructuring of the antechamber into a much larger space, the addition of a brick side-shrine and the iconography of the third façade itself suggest that builders were responding to a changing set of religious beliefs and practices. The large antechamber might have been

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necessary for ceremonies or initiations involving larger groups of individuals. The construction of the brick side-shrine was likely a response to the need to worship an expanding pantheon of deities.29 (This also explains the small shrines in the vicinity of the Mahāvihāra, which are also from a later stage of construction and associated with Tantric pantheons).30 The iconography of the third façade also points to increasing interest in Esoteric Buddhism. Worship of Tārā, the female Bodhisattva of compassion, was especially prevalent in Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna schools of Buddhism. Tārā was also an important deity in early island Southeast Asia. An 8th-century inscription from Candi Kalasan describes the dedication of a temple to the goddess (Jordaan 1998), and images, particularly in bronze, have been found on Java and Sumatra (Reichle 2008: 142–43).31 The goddess seems to have had the same import in Java as she did in eastern India, where numerous images depict her in her various forms. One of these, Aṣṭamahābhaya Tārā, saviouress of the eight perils, may have been popular among travellers, who could seek her protection from the peril of shipwrecks.32 The representation of sexual imagery is another indication of the esoteric nature of religious beliefs

during the second phase of building at Ratnagiri. Davidson (1995a:292) writes:

29.  This side-shrine contains eight images, which, according to Mitra (1981: 189) are ‘of differing dates and varying artistic merit’. They include four images of Buddha in bhūmi­sparśa-mudrā, two images that might be the Jina-Buddha Akṣobhya, and one image of Vasudhārā. Most of these images are dated from the 10th to 11th century or later. These images are representative of a shift in popularity of the representation of Buddhist deities. The earliest Buddhist images in Odisha show the historical Buddha, with a later development of the Buddha being attended by two Bodhisattvas. At the end of the 7th century artists began producing images showing Bodhisattvas, female deities and images showing configurations of subsidiary figures around a Buddha (sculptural maṇḍalas). Most of these sculptural maṇḍalas are dated between the 8th and 10th centuries (Donaldson 1995). 30.  See Hock 1987, especially Chapter 4. 31.  Jordaan (1998: 177) suggests a possible arrangement of deities on the superstructure of Candi Kalasan that has a counterpoint in a maṇḍala of Ratnagiri. 32.  Another saviour deity, Amoghapāśa, Lokeśvara with the unfailing noose, was popular at Ratnagiri and in Java (Reichle 2007).

Western students of Buddhism have generally regarded ritual attainment of enlightenment and desires for prosperity and fortunate rebirth as indicative of lay Buddhist interests and goals. This is contrasted with the presumption that monastics seek enlightenment strictly through contemplative practices and a strict moral life—the so-called ‘true’ path expounded by the Buddha. Such a dichotomy is not supported by much of the evidence. Yijing’s travel log, for example, specifically describes activities taking place in the monasteries. Although we do not want to detract from the importance of meditation and related practices for Buddhist mendicants, this is certainly only part of the picture. The vast majority of our data suggests that an array of practices were available to and taken up by monks and nuns of all periods. Not all of these practices were necessarily complementary. Many, in fact, may have been in competition with one another, reflecting competing con-

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The use of sexuality for religious purposes is almost as shocking in the Indian environment as it is in the West but was considered acceptable in secrecy since the purpose of an action denotes its ethical value in the Buddhist system. Accordingly, sexuality between consenting members in a secret ritualized context leading to awakening can be considered a profoundly religious experience.... Yet precisely this event was potentially destabilizing for the monastic community, which was committed to celibacy. Out of a wide variety of potential methods of interpreting or institutionalizing the event, two became standard—either sexual congress was restricted to the lay community or it became visualized in a ritual context.

It is impossible to tell if the erotic imagery at Ratnagiri was used for purposes of visualization, or if it depicted acts in which initiated monks actually took part. It does suggest though, that at this time the community of monks needed different kinds of images, presumably for different kinds of worship. Recent scholarship has begun to give us a much broader picture of ancient Buddhist practices and beliefs:

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Image, Ritual, and Ideology ceptions of how the presence of the departed teacher—be it the legacy of his teachings or his bodily remains and representation—was to be maintained and, more importantly, to be encountered. (Boucher 1995: 63)

Thus, the ritual life of the monastery did not consist of only meditation and prayer but also many more mundane tasks and obligations. The changing concerns of the saṅgha are reflected in the architecture the monks inhabited. Their move from open settlements to private vihāra occurred because of their developing corporate identities. Private cells were needed for permanent residents and a large courtyard for congregational activities. The pillared veranda served as a place for walking, or in some cases perhaps for circumambulating a sacred image. The courtyard was also the place where images were taken out and worshipped in public ceremonies. More private veneration could take place at the sacred sanctum at the rear of the vihāra. An important change in the structure of Buddhist vihāra was the addition of these shrines at the rear of the monasteries. Whether they transformed the vihāra into ‘a microcosmic version of paradise’ or merely provided a more convenient setting for daily worship is unclear, but in either case they did transform the nature of the space by mixing the sacred and mundane. This mixture of both

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worldly and spiritual concerns is also reflected in the iconography of the monastery. In order for the very survival of their way of life, monks had to be concerned for their own material well-being. This concern is reflected in images of popular gods associated with prosperity and wealth like Pāñcika and Hārītī, who appeared alongside Bodhisattvas who represent spiritual transcendence. Throughout all stages of construction at Ratnagiri, the central axis remained important. Along it were built a series of portals leading back to the most sacred site at the rear of the shrine. The elaborate decoration of these portals emphasizes their importance not only as thresholds, but also as demarcations of sacred space. In a Hindu temple the entrance leads to the garbhagṛha, the sacred centre. At Ratnagiri the model is not composed of concentric circles of radiating power, but rather an axis of portals leading inward. Each of these façades points one towards the sacred image in the rear, but also interrupts the passage. This pathway of portals demands that the viewer not only stop and view each façade but also contemplate himself within this telescoping axis of frames. Facing the main image of Śākyamuni Buddha a monk remembers his pratimokṣa vows; surrounded by Padmapāṇi and Vajrapāṇi he recalls his own Bodhisattva vows; confronted with esoteric images he contemplates Tantric vows.

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Chapter 10

Seeds of Vajrabodhi: Buddhist Ritual Bronzes from Java and Khorat pet er d. sh a r ro ck & e m m a c. bu n k er

G

eorge cœdès (1968: 96) considered the the princely proponent of a new current of Esoarrival in Southeast Asia of the Esoteric teric Buddhism, who imprinted its doctrines and Buddhist vehicle or Vajrayāna as the domi- rituals on Southeast Asia and China. The form of nant fact of the 8th century. While Vajrayāna spread Pallava-style Kāñcī Buddhism that Vajrabodhi and in Southeast Asia in different waves and through his disciple Amoghavajra propagated across Asia different channels and agents, India’s Buddhist was to profoundly influence the Buddhism of the strategists of the Pallava dynasty in the south and Pāla dynasty in northern India which arose a few the later Pāla dynasty in the north, forged alliances years after Vajrabodhi’s death in China in 741. We in Southeast Asia in the 8th century that became argue that the form of Buddhism he propagated, key to keeping alive their international proselytiz- as well as his cosmopolitan vision, prefigured the ing mission when the emperors of China and Tibet ‘internationalism’ that would later characterize the ordered the closure of thousands of monasteries Pāla political and religious ideology. Furthermore, on political-religious whims. And the roots they having frequented Nālandā and its environs, his put down in the region survived for a century or own thinking was no doubt tuned to the trends more the eventual sacking of the Buddhists’ huge and styles that were current in the regions that homeland monasteries in the Ganges valley by would eventually become the homeland of the Pāla Islamic armies at the end of the 12th century. This empire, and that he contributed to spread overseas. southward expansion of what is now often called Vajrabodhi, son of an Indian king, must have been ‘northern Buddhism’ can be glimpsed through the a man of immense charisma as well as learning, official Chinese biographies of the Indian pioneers for his influence spread across Asia from southern and more surely traced through the architectural India, to Sri Lanka, to the Malay world and Java, to remains and the bronze icons that have survived China, Korea, and Japan. The new esoteric system from the rituals of the new Buddhist communities of five supreme Buddhas linked to a maṇḍala that in Java, the Malay Peninsula, and Khorat in modern he propagated early in the 8th century left traces northeastern Thailand. in the sacred architecture and iconography of the The link between Bihar and Bengal and the Bud- whole area. His contact with island Southeast Asia dhists of Java has been well researched by Dutch was brief, during the years ad 717–20, when he was scholars. This paper traces a parallel link with the slowly journeying to China. In China he would Khmer Khorat plateau via the Malay Peninsula and become a renowned master of ritual, a translator seeks to expand on valuable recent research focused of major Sanskrit texts, and eventually a patriarch on the role of the Indian master popularly known of Chinese Buddhism. In these three years, when as Vajrabodhi (a.k.a. Vajrabuddhi: see Appendix weather delayed his eventually stormy passage A; Chin. Jingangzhi 金剛, 671–741), the son of a to China, he propagated the system of the Sarking of the southern Pallava dynasty in Kāñcī,1 1. ‘His Reverence was originally the third son of Īśānavarman (Yishenawamo, 伊舍那靺摩), the kṣatriya king of

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a kingdom in Central India’ (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 134). Conversely, Zanning reports that he was a Brahman from South India (cf. Acri, Introduction to this volume, n. 46).

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Fig. 10.1a: Patna Museum Buddha. (Photo courtesy Swati Chemburkar); Fig. 10.1b: Buddha of Candi Mendut in stone. (Photo: author); Fig. 10.1c: Javanese bronze (Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, RV-1403-2844)

vatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha (STTS)—what Charles Orzech (2010: 347) calls ‘cutting-edge Buddhism’— in the courts of Sri Lanka, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and Java, before going on to make his impact on Tang China. Esoteric Buddhist concepts can be seen in the magnificent monuments of Central Java like Borobudur (a unique form of the STTS pentad?),2 Mendut (Maṇḍalāṣṭasūtra or womb maṇḍala), Kalasan (Tārā), and Sewu (Vairocana, Mañjuśrī), and also later in the ritual bronzes, datable stylistically to the 9th to 11th century. Figs. 10.1a–c show how the Javanese artists embellished with poise, power, and refinement a Bihari model both in bronze and on a large scale in stone in Candi Mendut. The postures and throne designs 2.  Sundberg (2004: 118) offers this interpretation of the Borobudur structure: While not wishing to deny the indisputable arguments adduced by Snellgrove (1996) and Klokke (1995) against the interpretation of the Barabuḍur as an explicit maṇḍala of the STTS, we cannot exclude a tantrically conceived background for this monument…. However, I suggest the worthiness of consideration of the top levels of the Barabuḍur as the ‘secret universal palace of the mind’ as described by Kūkai in his Record of the Dharma Transmission, a universal palace in which resided the Dharmakāya Tathāgata Mahāvairocana accompanied by his attendants, all of whom were none other than Dharmakāya Tathāgatas (Abe 1999: 221). The Dharmakāya Tathāgata Mahāvairocana was the first patriarch in Kūkai’s lineage, originator of the teachings of the STTS.

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are close but the Javanese icons have the presence, tranquillity, and facial traits that remind us of the Buddhas of Borobudur.3 Details of Vajrabodhi’s journey in those three years are left vague in his official Chinese biographies but there are enough shreds of evidence to suggest that he influenced not only Java, but also the Malay Peninsula and the Khmer Buddhists of the Khorat plateau. The bronzes from Khorat are little known, as many are in private collections and little has been written about them, but there can be no doubt that they are part of the same cross-cultural expansion of Esoteric or Tantric Buddhism over the seas between India and China that opened with Vajrabodhi’s momentous journey. The discovery of 8th- through 10th-century Buddhist bronzes in Khmer-controlled territories in Īśān (modern Isan in northeastern Thailand), which are refined representations of the new esoteric deities, appears to reveal a direct spiritual and artisanal link with Pāla India. In the past, scholars called such bronzes ‘Śrīvijayan’, presumably because they were considered outliers related to the clearly attested Esoteric Buddhism of Java/Sumatra and because, despite their diversity in style, the still ill-defined ‘Śrīvijaya’ polity was considered to be a widespread shipping 3.  The delicacy, refinement, and human immediacy of Javanese bronzes are widely reputed. In the words of a well-known London dealer: ‘They are to die for!’

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Seeds of Vajrabodhi polity with no local specific artistic traditions. More recently Hiram Woodward (2003: 93) has called the Khorat bronzes Bengali-influenced. This chapter examines ritual bronzes found in Java and Khorat and concludes they were cast for related but distinct Javanese and Khmer Buddhist communities. Most such images exhibiting significant Pāla-derived features appear to have been cast at regional foundries throughout present-day northeast Thailand, peninsular Thailand, and Malaysia. The very earliest icon models, which have Indic facial features, clothes, and jewellery, were probably made in Bihar/ Bengal, but we will look at series of bronzes that are progressively Javanized or Khmerized.

sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha The root Tantra of the new Buddhism being propagated was the Compendium of Principles of All Tathāgatas and Vajrabodhi was one of its early masters. Weinberger (2003: 1) estimates the text was finalized towards the end of the 7th century—at the time Vajrabodhi was completing his training in the Ganges valley monasteries of North India. The key messages of the STTS are twofold. First, Śākyamuni is shown to ascend in meditation from the Bodhi tree to the court of the unifying Esoteric Mahāyānic fifth Buddha Vairocana, where he is taught a new form of self-transforming yoga to achieve inner fusion with deities that procures immediate enlightenment (and thus rapidly accelerating the Mahāyāna’s traditional 3,000-year Bodhisattva career towards perfection).4 The second message comes through a stirring narrative account of the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi’s battle with the universal god Śiva using arsenals of magical weapons.5 Vajrapāṇi, in his wrathful Trailokyavi4.  The doctrine also countered the Theravāda or southern Buddhist concept of one reigning Buddha per age of 5,000 years or more. 5.  ‘The Compendium of Principles of All Tathāgatas (Sarva-tathāgata-tattva-saṁgraha) is arguably the single most important development of Indian Buddhist Tantra. In this text we find the coalescence of a variety of Tantric elements organized around two new and seminal narratives—Śākyamuni’s enlightenment recast in Tantric terms and Vajrapāṇi’s subjugation of Maheśvara—that for the first time self-consciously announce Tantra as a new and distinct form of Buddhism. In declaring Tantra’s independence,

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jaya or ‘conqueror of the three worlds’ form, trades insults and intimidating displays with Śiva until he kills the pan-Indic god with his vajra (thunderbolt) and revives him in the Vajradhātumaṇḍala as the Tathāgata-bhasmeśvara-nirghoṣa (‘soundless lord Buddha of ashes’). In the 9th century, this Tantra and its widely reproduced narrative battle established Trailokyavijaya as the principal deity of the expansion of international Tantric Buddhism (Linrothe 1999: 178). The Tantra thus opened the way to rituals and meditative concentrations that conferred achievement of Buddhahood in one lifetime and offered kings state protection through supernatural powers. This powerful new text, offering a politically aggressive Buddhist alternative to the rising power of the Brahmins across India, found a committed and persuasive external propagator in Vajrabodhi. After being ordained in Nālandā, he went south and was early on venerated for his rain ritual (part of state protection for kings). Despite court pressure to stay, he was, according to his Tang biography, inspired by a vision of the compassionate Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara to mastermind an expansion of Esoteric Buddhist thought and ritual across the tropical southern seas and into China, where he would encounter the wisdom Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī. He is principally remembered as a translator of Tantric works for the Tang emperors and a patriarch of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Esoteric Buddhism, but his influence went even further through his contacts during his travels from 717 to 720. The spread of the Siddhamātṛkā script across island Southeast Asia in the same period seems to follow his movements. Esoteric Buddhism reached its first apogee in Tang China under Vajrabodhi and his disciple Amoghavajra. Orzech (2010: 348) says Vajrabodhi’s emphasis on the self-transforming ‘deity yoga’ portion of the STTS was considered the pinnacle, and he first rendered extracts in 723 (T 866) … of the mudrās and mantras necessary these narratives present a clearly defined soteriological goal, a new paradigm for this liberative path in which ritual is central, and innovations such as deity yoga (self-generation as an enlightened figure), consecration rites, and practices involving violence and sex’ (Weinberger 2003: Abstract A).

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for entry into the maṇḍala; techniques for accomplishing samādhi; details of the Vajradhātu maṇḍala; various signs of meditative ac­ com­plish­ment; tech­niques for erecting altars, making offerings, bestowing abhiṣeka; and per­forming various types of homa.

The ritual bronzes that are the focus of this chapter were crucial paraphernalia in his world, as they made up the maṇḍalas and enabled the deep meditative states or samādhi and the initiation ceremonies. A maṇḍala sanctuary in the royal palace became a key to Buddhist power. The transmission of Buddhist innovations from India to China was however blocked in 845 when late Tang emperor Wuzong closed all monasteries and promoted Daoism. China and Japan were cut off from the subsequent development of the Yoginītantras enshrined in texts such as the Guhya­ samājatantra (‘Secret Assembly’), Hevajratantra, and Cakrasaṁvaratantra. The later texts, which introduce the supreme sixth Buddha Vajrasattva/ Vajradhara and his fierce emanations Hevajra and Saṁvara, did however reach Java and Khorat and the Peninsula, as is attested by the extant ritual bronzes of these deities.6 Jeffrey Sundberg and Rolf Giebel have recently put new emphasis on Vajrabodhi’s role in leading the 8th-century propagation of Esoteric Buddhism (see Sundberg and Giebel 2011). Their translations and elucidations of the old Chinese biographies and their work on recent Sinhalese studies incite us to suggest that the Buddhist ritual bronzes found in both Java and Khorat may all be seen as later growths from the Pallavan seeds of the type of Esoteric Buddhism sown by Vajrabodhi in the early 8th century. The claim rests partly on a still-disputed identification of the Chinese references to the territories Vajrabodhi visited, and more firmly on the resemblances in the ritual bronzes of both places. 6.  See Weinberger (2003: abstract B): ‘The Compendium of Principles marks the emergence of mature Indian Buddhist Tantra at the end of the seventh century, and it immediately spawned a body of literary progeny that has played a central and enduring role in the development of Tantric Buddhism in India, Tibet, China, and Japan. Consolidated over time into traditions known in some Indian circles as Yoga Tantra, they spread as widely as Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, Khotan, Mongolia, and Sumatra.’

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According to the Tang biography by Lü Xiang, now translated by Giebel, Vajrabodhi spent seven years with his preceptor Nāgajñāna at the Pallava court at Kāñcī, before setting off on his long voyage of spiritual discovery and Buddhist propagation that began in Sri Lanka. In Kāñcī he must have known Mānavarman, the Sinhalese ex-regent and future Sri Lankan king Śrīśīla (r. 684–718). The latter was then in exile in South India and a serving general in the Pallava army, awaiting his eventual successful return to Anurādhapura at the head of a Pallava army, where he installed himself as king of the Second Lambakaṇṇa dynasty (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 146). Mānavarman’s descendants reigned until 772 and this first ninety-year period of the dynasty, favourable to the Esoteric Buddhism of Kāñcī, was to prove a rich source for the esoteric texts that were key to the Chinese and Southern Seas strategy of both Vajrabodhi and his disciple Amoghavajra. Sundberg and Giebel (2011: 146) suggest that the first of Vajrabodhi’s esoteric seeds planted outside India was in southern Sri Lanka in the kingdom of Rohaṇa, which his Tang biography claims turned from the Theravāda to Mahāyāna when he met the local king. The appearance of icons of Avalokiteśvara and a possibly royal inscription to a Tārā temple in the south of the island seem to vindicate the Tang claim.

‘vijaya’ in the peninsula or sumatra? What people—especially remote Chinese authors— meant by ‘Śrīvijaya’ could be Palembang, Jambi, Chaiya, or Kedah at different times in the connected, maritime Malay world of the Peninsula and Sumatra. Śrīvijaya has at least three names in Chinese texts and one of them, San Foqi, could mean ‘the three Vijayas’ according to Miksic (2013: 110). After returning to South India, Vajrabodhi began the next phase of his propagation of the new radical Buddhist thinking and rituals in the years between heading south from Nākappaṭṭiṉam in 717 with a courtly escort and then joining a fleet of thirty-five Persian vessels in Sri Lanka (at Trincomalee?). He finally reached China in 719 or 720. The Chinese biographies are vague on the intervening three years after leaving Sri Lanka. Lü Xiang’s mid 8th-century record mentions only one event:

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Seeds of Vajrabodhi After a month they reached the kingdom of Vijaya (Foshi, 佛逝). The king of Vijaya [876b] welcomed His Reverence with a golden parasol and a golden litter. Hampered by foul winds, they stayed for five months. It was only after the winds had settled that they were able to set out. It is impossible to describe in detail the minor incidents and strange things in the countries through which they passed and the perils at sea, with its immense waves and seething waters. (Trans. Giebel, in Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 139)

The later Song biography by Buddhist master Zanning gives a shorter account published in 988: ‘Travelling eastward, he visited twenty countries or more, including Bhoja 佛誓 [Vijaya], the country of naked people, and others. Having heard that Buddha’s Law was prospering in China, he went there by the sea route. Because of frequent mishaps, he took several years to get there’ (trans. Giebel, in Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 185). Piriya Krairiksh is among a growing number of historians, whom we would support, who interpret Vajrabodhi’s visit to ‘Vijaya’ as a stay for five months under poor weather conditions at the kingdom of Kedah in the northern part of the Peninsula. Krairiksh argues that Tantric Buddhism may have been introduced by Vajrabodhi to present-day Thailand in 717.7 Kedah was crucial to navigation because of the landmark mountain Gunung Jerai that rises over the port and the Bhujang Valley kingdom. Before marine chronometers made longitude calculations possible, navigators would head east or west into the rising or setting sun and otherwise use the stars to keep them on a straight line. Ships leaving Sri Lanka would head east, skirting Aceh on the tip of Sumatra, until Gunung Jerai appeared on the horizon (Miksic 2013: 58).8 Storm-enforced stays 7.  This information is based on Piriya Krairiksh’s talk at the London launch of his book The Roots of Thai Art on 20 November 2012. 8.  Quaritch Wales earlier referred to the importance of Kedah Peak: ‘Secondly [Malaya’s] north-west coast provided the first sight of land and possibility of rest and refreshment to would-be Indian colonists after their crossing the Bay of Bengal. Kedah combined the practical advantage of an excellent anchorage (the estuary of the Merbok) with the spiritual attraction of being dominated by a high mountain (Kedah Peak), which to the superstitious Indian sailors

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in Kedah could have been routine. George Cœdès (concluded that under the influence of Nālandā teachers in the last quarter of the 8th century: Mahāyāna Buddhism established a definite foothold on the Peninsula and in the archipelago. Its principal characteristics were: (1) a tendency toward the Tantric mysticism of the Vajrayāna, popular in Bengal from the middle of the eighth century; (2) a syncretism with Hindu cults which, already in the inscription of Kelurak, was to become clear in Cambodia in the Angkor period and was to culminate later in Java in the cult of Śiva-Buddha. (Cœdès 1968: 343)

H.G. Quaritch Wales, another pioneer of Southeast Asian art history, first linked Vajrabodhi’s visit to the emergence of Mahāyāna icons on the Peninsula.9 Peter Skilling firmly identifies Kedah (Kadāra in Cōḻa texts) as the ‘Śrīvijaya’ where the monk Atīśa, the great 11th-century reformer of Tibetan Buddhism, studied from 1012 to 1024 under guru Dharmakīrti. On one of Dharmakīrti’s texts, known only in its Tibetan translation, a colophon says it was written ‘in the city of Śrīvijaya in Suvarṇadvīpa’ (Skilling 1997: 188; see also Skilling 2007 and Schoterman, this volume). A year after Atīśa left, a Cōḻa fleet from Tanjor attacked the major ports in the Melaka Strait and installed a crown prince as viceroy in Kedah (Miksic 2013: 79). In the three years before Vajrabodhi finally set off for China, there are enough suggestions about his visiting Java and meeting the youthful disciple Amoghavajra there to suggest he made this story current in Chang’an. Sundberg and Giebel (2011: 152) assume the princely Indian sage with his prestigious entourage from Kāñcī would have taken the opportunity to visit all the important cities in the region with Buddhist communities: From Kūkai and other sources we are told that Vajrabodhi acquired Amoghavajra as a disciple during the 3 years. First, it is obvious that must have appeared to be a veritable home of the gods’ (Quaritch Wales 1940: 1). 9.  See Quaritch Wales 1939: 41. This view is echoed in the catalogue of the New York Metropolitan Museum’s exhibition by John Guy (2014: 251), and by Professor Takashi Suzuki: see http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/07/ jayankondam.html (last accessed 9 December 2015)

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Java ranked among the locales suitable for a well-educated Indian religious adept like Vajrabodhi to occupy his time, instead of energetically resuming his approach to his intended destination of China.… It is thus well within the realm of historical possibility that Vajrabodhi planted the seed of appreciation for Esoteric Buddhism in Java during his sojourn in 717: the elaborate, richly, and regally endowed Buddhism of the high Śailendra period some decades later seems to have sought to ground itself in the very locales and traditions esteemed by Vajrabodhi a half-century before.10

The local progeny of Vajrabodhi’s mission to the Peninsula world and Java therefore include the pentad of Buddhas described in the STTS and the Bodhisattvas Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, and Vajrapāṇi—all visible on a monumental scale in the statues and reliefs of Borobudur—but also, by extension into the coming centuries, a second wave of esoteric deities from what the Tibetans classified as the ‘Yoginītantras’, including the sixth Buddha Vajrasattva/Vajradhara and his fierce emanations Hevajra and Saṁvara, who followed through the channels Vajrabodhi opened. These deities were probably unknown to Vajrabodhi and were not venerated in China—because of Wuzong’s closure of the monasteries—until much later, under Kublai Khan’s Tibetan-influenced Mongol Yuan dynasty in the 13th century. Yet they did arrive in Java and Khorat from northern India, where their presence is primarily attested in 10th- to 12th-century ritual bronzes. The earlier Mahāyāna Buddhism of the Perfection Path (pāramitāyāna) showed its presence in Sumatra shortly before Vajrabodhi’s visit in the Old Malay/Sanskrit inscription dated 684 at Talang Tuwo near Palembang, which refers to bodhicitta, vajraśarīra, and kalyānamitra (like those visited by the pilgrim Sudhana in his search for enlightenment in the Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra that is prominently featured on the Borobudur reliefs). A century later and some decades after Vajrabo10.  Other sources, traced in Raffaello Orlando’s (1981) PhD dissertation, suggest that Amoghavajra travelled overland from his Sogdian boyhood home in northern India with his uncle and met Vajrabodhi in China. Woodward (2004: 339) inclines to this interpretation.

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Fig. 10.2a: Wat Keow Chaiya. (Photo: author)

Fig. 10.2b: Wat Keow Akṣobhya. (Photo: author)

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Figure 10.3b: Avalokiteśvara from Bidor, Perak tin mine. (Photo: Gryffindor [CC BY 3.0], Wikimedia Commons) Figure 10.3a: Wat Wiang eight-armed Avalokiteśvara. (Photo: author)

Figure 10.4: Clay tablet of Śākyamuni-Vairocana and eight Bodhisattvas. (Photo: author)

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dhi’s visit, three high brick temples, bearing Cam tower features, were built at Chaiya (‘Siwichaiya’ in Thai) on the Gulf of Siam side of the Peninsula. Wat Keow has external directional Buddhas in niches on three sides (Fig. 10.2a) and contained a 69-centimetre stone icon of Akṣobhya, head of the vajra family, seated in bhūmisparśa-mudrā on a pedestal displaying a large vajra (Fig. 10.2b). This was one of ‘three beautiful brick buildings, resting places for Kajakara (Padmapāṇi), for the destroyer of Māra (Śākyamuni) and for Vajrin (Vajrapāṇi)’ erected by a king of Śrīvijaya, according to the Wat Hua Wiang inscription dated 775 (Cœdès 1929–61: 23). These temples held the princely bronze Avalokiteśvaras with inlaid silver eyes of the Bangkok National Museum (Fig. 10.3a). A similar 79-centimetre bronze with eight arms joined at the elbows in the Kuala Lumpur History Museum was dredged in 1936 from the Bidor, Perak tin mine (Fig. 10.3b). They have been compared with a silver and gilt icon that was found at Tekaran, Wonogiri in Central Java (Fontein 1990: 210–11). The Perak icon holds a noose (pāśa) and appears to

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be an early Tantric Amoghapāśa (‘unfailing lasso’), We have to assume that the new Buddhist docthe form of the Bodhisattva later found prominent- trines and icons transited from Kedah and Chaiya ly for example in East Java in the 13th century (e.g., to Khorat in modern northeast Thailand along the at Candi Jago). This suggests they are all Tantric coast, and then through the Mun river valley that icons. was Cambodia’s well-plied main external trade. A The courtly 8th-century Bodhisattvas with string of Mahāyāna communities along this route high mukuṭa and elaborate jewellery also appear is signalled by the presence of icons of Buddhas in a maṇḍala around a wheel-turning Śākyamu- seated on the coils of giant serpents—the central ni-Vairocana on votive tablets (Fig. 10.4) in caves sanctuary icon of the 12th-century Bayon state and other sites on the Peninsula—a formation that temple in Angkor that we and certain other art appears on a grand scale in Candi Mendut late in historians consider to be the Khmer Vairocana. that century. The Maṇḍalāṣṭasūtra that defines When Pierre Dupont researched the origins of the this maṇḍala was translated by Amoghavajra (T Khmer nāga-enthroned Buddhas, he concluded 1167) and earlier by the early Indian Tantric master that only a Mon intermediary could have assured Puṇyodaya, who twice travelled to Cambodia on the transit of the nāga-enthroned icon found in imperial missions when Xuanzang wanted him 8th-century Sri Lanka that first appeared among out of the Chinese capital.11 The maṇḍala is not the Khmers in the Buddhist revival led by purohita however found in Cambodia. Kīrtipaṇḍita in the 10th century. (We will return Woodward (2004: 330) defines the distinction to him shortly). Dupont (1959: 263) wrote: between Mahāyāna and Tantric ritual environIt is therefore not possible that at the end of the ments thus: ‘Mantrayāna differs from the Perfection 10th century Khmer art borrowed directly from Path (pāramitāyāna) Mahāyāna Buddhism that Ceylon and, as an intermediary was indispenhistorically preceded it in its emphasis on the ritual sable, only the art of the Mons could have perentering of a circle of divinities (a maṇḍala) and formed this role. We must therefore have to deon the recitation of sacred formulas (mantra)—the termine that the Khmer image of the Buddha on production of sounds whose wavelengths cause the naga was inspired … by Mon iconography. fundamental universal powers to resonate.’ He identified five nāga-enthroned stone Mantrayāna or Esoteric Buddhism, emphasizBuddhas in high relief from Nakhon Si Thammarat, ing ritual to obtain supernatural powers, is what Dong Si Maha Phot, Lopburi, and Pracinburi. Most Vajrabodhi propagated, and ‘Śrīvijaya’ appears to of these places were sea or riverine ports on Cam12 have been primed for his message. Links between bodia’s trade route. The Peninsula was linked culChaiya and Vajrabodhi’s former base in southern India were maintained for a long period, for in 1005 turally and at times politically to Śrīvijaya and Java, a king of ‘Śrīvijaya’ named Cūḍāmaṇivarman and but the nāga-enthroned Buddha appears neither his son Māravijayottuṅgavarman, both direct heirs on Sumatra nor Java, so the Buddhist cultural of the king who issued the Chaiya 775 inscription, influence that had the supreme Khmer Buddha had a Buddhist temple built in Nākappaṭṭiṉam sit on a nāga can only have come from Sri Lanka, dynasty where entitled Cūḍāmaṇivarmavihāra (Jacq-Hergoualc’h under the 8th-century Lambakaṇṇa 13 Vajrabodhi was a major presence. 2002: 275). 11.  See Woodward 2004 and Lin 1935: 83–100. 12.  See Woodward 2004: 336: ‘The Srivijayan inscriptions, when taken together, evoke a realm familiar with the teachings of Perfection Path Buddhism, the ancillary magical powers those at the end of the path acquire, and the use of mantra and yantra as instruments of war. If mantra and yantra could be used to defeat enemies, could they also not be used to help achieve Buddhist enlightenment? Sumatra, therefore, was fertile ground for Mantrayāna Buddhism’.

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mahāyoga icons of the yoginītantras The germination of the last wave of Yoginītantras must have occurred in the great monasteries of Bihar and Bengal in the 8th to 10th century. 13.  The history of the Khmer nāga-enthroned Buddha is traced at more length in Sharrock 2011b: 481–91, Appendix 2.

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Fig. 10.5a: Lovea Em bronze. (Photo: author)

Icons that facilitated the consecrations (abhiṣeka) into the maṇḍalas of these secret rituals only appear towards the end of this period. The Buddhist southern communication channels that Vajrabodhi played a role in opening were evidently working between Pāla India and Java, and with the Malay Peninsula/Khorat. By the 10th century, bronze icons of the fierce new deities begin to appear and by the 11th century, they proliferate and a few related inscriptions occur. One author’s first acquaintance with the icons of the second florescence of the Esoteric Buddhist wave was in the Phnom Penh National Museum, where a 10-centimetre bronze in the corner of a cabinet was seated in the distinctive mudrā of the sixth Buddha Vajrasattva with a vajra balanced on the fingers of the right hand and a bell on the left hip (Figs. 10.5a, 10.6a). It was also unusually dressed with epaulettes, earplugs resting on the shoulder, tribhaṅga in the hips, long necklaces, and with five small Buddhas in a high dome of hair. The posture and headdress resembled a Vajrasattva relief in the Sarnath Museum that is dated to the 9th century (Fig. 10.5b). The French curators in Phnom Penh called it a Buddha from 5th- to 6th-century Funan, the coastal polity that preceded the formation of the Khmer state. It was catalogued but never published. On a subsequent visit, the tiny bronze from Lovea Em village in Kandal province around the capital had disappeared from the cabinet. The then museum director Hab Touch said he had doubts about the style of the jewellery and questioned whether it was a Khmer

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Fig. 10.5b: 9th-century Vajrasattva relief. (Photo courtesy American Institute of Indian Studies)

face. A letter arguing against its removal from the permanent exhibition was later reproduced in Khmer Bronzes: New Interpretations of the Past.14 The bronze was difficult to date because it seemed unlike any other Khmer piece. (It is still kept downstairs in the Museum’s reserve collection). When the authors later collaborated on the proofs of Khmer Bronzes, the Phnom Penh bronze’s uniqueness evaporated, for there was an almost identical icon in the National Museum of Australia (Fig. 10.6b). Another is on display in the Bangkok National Museum. The best preserved icon (Figs. 10.7a, 10.7b) has been published by Bunker and Latchford (2011, fig. 7.28); it belongs to what proved to be a series of similar Vajrasattvas, with the five Buddhas set into a more elaborate crown and with a tenon that slots 14.  See Bunker and Latchford 2011, which includes Sharrock’s ‘Discussion on Vajrasattva of Barong Lovéa Em, Kandāl (K.5432, E.808)’ (Sharrock 2011a: 493–96, Appendix 3).

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Fig. 10.6a: Lovea Em bronze, 10.5 cm, Ga 5432, E 808. (Photo courtesy Bunker and Latchford 2011)

Fig. 10.6b: 10.4 cm, National Museum of Australia 1968.11. (Photo courtesy Bunker and Latchford 2011)

Figs. 10.7a, 10.7b (left to right): Enthroned Indic model Vajrasattva from Khorat. (Photo courtesy Bunker and Latchford 2011, fig. 7.28)

into a lotus throne with high throne-back, with parasol and festoons that are more typical of Java. All but the Lovea Em icon were unearthed in the mid 20th century in Khorat, northeast Thailand. They yield no stylistic clues to their original context in India, Khorat, or Cambodia, and no inscriptions assist in dating them. However, the freer environment for Khmer Buddhists in the mid 10th century (after almost three centuries of suppression) suggests they arrived with the Tantric

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texts brought in from abroad by the Khmer Buddhist leader Kīr­ti­paṇḍita as recorded in the ca. 970 Wat Sithor inscription K.111, which like the Phnom Penh National Museum icon was also found in Kandāl province (Sharrock 2007: 263, n. 143). These Vajrasattva icons, perhaps suggesting the presence of the Guh­yasamājatantra of the second wave of Mahāyoga (Weinberger 2011: Abstract B), clearly met a Khmer need and yet do not look Khmer. We reached the conclusion that they were either cast

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Fig. 10.8: Partly Khmerized Vajrasattva, 8.9 cm. (Photo courtesy Bunker and Latchford 2011, fig. 7.30)

in India on orders from Khmer patrons in Khorat, or they were made in Cambodia by itinerant Indian craftsmen. The local ritual need for Vajrasattva icons, proven in the material record, persisted for another three centuries and the icons were gradually infused with Khmer facial and body features, as well as dress and posture. They became fully Khmerized. Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer traces a similar process taking place somewhat earlier in Java.15 Another bronze Vajrasattva (Fig. 10.8) shows a Khmer craftsman trying to remain faithful to the early Indic model. 15.  ‘The Javanese bronze casters quickly expanded their own idiom and very soon the bronzes became Javanized…. Here is a summary of the situation: from the 8th century onwards bronzes from what is now south east Bangladesh were imported into Java. At first the Javanese bronze casters copied them but, within a very short space of time, the native Javanese element predominated, eventually to result in a purely Javanese style by about the middle of the 9th century’ (Lunsingh Scheurleer and Klokke 1988: 29).

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Yet Khmer features intrude. The jaw is more square and the cheeks fuller in the Khmer style; the tri­ bhaṅga is reduced, the body is more corpulent and muscular. The epaulettes have become standard Khmer upper arm bands and the Buddha pentad remains set in the hair but with the high dome reduced. However, the long double necklaces, the earrings on the shoulder bone, and the vajra leaning on the chest remain loyal to the probably Indic model. The first fully Khmer Vajrasattva is a 21-centimetre icon (Figs. 10.9a–b) with braced elegant limbs and torso, dressed in the courtly style named after the Śaiva Baphuon state temple—including a sampot pulled high over the loins and low into a U-shape in front, a lightweight coronet and jewellery, and incised eyes and eyebrows. The vajra is now held away from the chest and the pentad of Buddhas has gone from the hair. This bronze from Khorat may be dated to close to the time of the ad 1066 Sab Bāk inscription K.1158 from Khorat, which venerates the sixth Buddha

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Figs. 9a, 9b (left to right): Baphuon style late 11th-century Vajrasattva 21 cm, with attachment for parasol. (Photos courtesy Bunker and Latchford 2011, fig. 7.31a, 7.31b)

Vajrasattva as overlord of the Vajradhātu pentad sees the central Buddha flanked by four others as (śrīpañcasugata) and uses several times the short ‘Akṣobhya, with his four fellow Jinas. Akṣobhya is form ‘Śrīsamāja’ of the Guhyasamājatantra: ‘For the Jina in the centre of the GST maṇḍala’. Phimai salvation I salute Vajrasattva, the sixth (Buddha), was presumably built by the usurper Jayavarman who is the bearer of all the Buddhas and the master VI, who brought to power the Mahīdhara dynasty of all the existing Bodhisattvas’.16 Woodward has of Angkor’s greatest builders. Phimai houses the suggested that the principal deity in the pentad of only known Khmer icon of the Heruka Saṁvara Buddhas in the northern lintel of the nearby large bursting open the elephant hide of illusion (Fig. Phimai temple complex looks similar to the descrip- 10.10) and must affirm the presence there of the tion of the form of Vajrasattva called Mañjuvajra, Cakra­saṁvaratantra. This text, which David Gray as defined in the 11th-century Niṣpannayogāvalī (2001: 204) considers an unorthodox contemporary compendium of maṇḍalas.17 Pia Conti (2014: 391) tradition to the STTS, could well have been one of the large number of Tantric texts imported earlier by the Khmer royal purohita Kīrtipaṇḍita. 16.  Bajrasatvas tu ṣaṣṭhas sadvodhisatvaprabhur varaḥ / Fully Khmerized Vajrasattva bronzes evolved ādhāraḥ sarvavuddhānāṁ tan namāmi vimuktaye // with the temple styles into the 12th and 13th cen(quoted in Chirapat Prapandvidya 1990: 11–14) turies like Ga 202 in the Phnom Penh National 17.  ‘The central figure in the northern lintel appears to be akin to the “Vajrasattva in the form of Mañjuvajra”, Museum (Fig. 10.11a), and an icon with parasol and the central deity in maṇḍala number one in the late elev- ribbons found in the Srah Srang pond in Angkor enth-century northern Indian compendium the Niṣpan(Fig. 10.11b). They are fully integrated into the nayogāvalī’ (Woodward 2004: 350).

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Khmer idiom through their facial features, jewellery, sampot, coronet, and earrings.

earlier khmer buddhism There is an almost complete break of three centuries in the historical record of icons, architecture, and inscriptions of the Cambodian Buddhist community from late 7th-century Zhenla until Kīrtipaṇḍita’s royally patronized revival, recorded in the Wat

Figure 10.10: Phimai Saṁvara dances on the head of an elephant. (Photo courtesy Pia Conti)

Fig. 10.11a (left): Vajrasattva, 9.3 cm, Ga 202; Fig. 10.11b (above): Vajrasattva, Srah Srang, Angkor, Ga 2657/2647. (Photos courtesy Bunker and Latchford 2011)

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Fig. 10.12a: Bronze Vajradhara with six arms and three faces, seated on a high, tiered Kurkihār Bihar style lotus throne with Bihari-Bengali style lions crunching elephants in the base. (Photo courtesy A. Götz, London)

Fig. 10.12b: Raised lion throne from 10th-century Kurkihār, Bihar. (Photo courtesy American Institute of Indian Studies)

Sithor inscription. Yijing travelled in the area and reported that in the late 7th century the Khmer Buddhists were suppressed or exiled ‘by a wicked king’ (Takakusu 1966: 12). Cambodian craftsmen were to produce no more of the quiet, contemplative Buddhas of Sambor Prei Kuk and the Mekong delta dressed in flowing bhikṣu robes until the arrival of Theravāda at the end of the 13th century. The 8th and 9th centuries, however, saw a Bodhisattva cult flourish somewhere over the Dangrek mountains in the Mon-Khmer inhabited Īśān. A hoard of more than 200 superbly modelled and cast Bodhisattvas was found in the 1960s at Prakhon Chai, attesting to a regal-looking cult of Bodhisattvayāna, possibly in the shadowy state ‘Śrī Canāśā’ fleetingly mentioned in inscriptions. Nothing is yet known of this community that suddenly re-entered history with the discovery of the buried bronze masterpiec-

es. This Buddhist culture presumably went on to produce the ‘Bengali-influenced’ Tantric bronzes from Khorat like the splendid Vajradhara on a high double-lotus throne—like those found in the 10th- to 11th-century Kurkihār, Bihar hoard—and with Pāla-style Buddhist lions bringing chthonic elephants to their knees that was recently auctioned in New York (Fig. 10.12a; cf. Fig. 10.12b). It was not until the 10th century that the domestic Khmer Buddhists re-emerged with inscriptions and began again erecting shrines and icons guided by Buddhist guru Kīrtipaṇḍita.

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stylistic links among ritual bronzes Of particular significance is the ubiquitous use of double-lotus bases placed on pedestals supported

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Fig. 10.13a (left): Mañjuśrī, Khong district, Khorat; Rockerfeller collection, 1979.082. (Photo courtesy Bunker and Latchford 2011, fig. 6.16b)

Fig. 10.13b (centre): Vajrasattva, Khorat. (Photo courtesy Bunker and Latchford 2011, fig. 6.16a)

by four three-dimensional grinning lions that are provided for many bronze deities. Similar lions can be traced back to Pāla traditions in northeast India. The circular haloes adorned with concentric designs and flames along the rim also derive from a Pāla tradition. Parasols (chattra) festooned with ribbons surmount the haloes of some images, an important honorific element also found on Pāla-style bronzes. Some of these Khorat bases display a semicircular panel falling over the front of the pedestal that represents a piece of drapery found earlier in Dvāravatī, but can also be traced back to the Indic world. One group of images found in northeast Thailand is portrayed seating on bases with honorific parasols that often display a vertical raised rib on the back of their haloes. The raised

rib represents a technical device used to support the wax pieces of the base-assembly during the casting process, reflecting a foundry characteristic traceable to northeast Indian traditions (Bunker and Latchford 2011: 193). Dating of the sophisticated Khorat bronzes remains tentative, as is reflected in the 7th–14th century spread maintained by the Asia Society for the best known of them in the Rockefeller collection.18 The Rockefeller Mañjuśrī (Fig. 10.13a), with broad shoulders and leaning seated in tribhaṅga, was discovered in Khong district north of Phimai.

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18.  John Guy (2014: cat. 165) has published a second Mañjuśrī from the Asia Society collection without throne-back, but seated in an almost identical posture with high crown and very similar jewellery.

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Seated at royal ease in varada-mudrā, a form known as Sita Mañjughoṣa (‘white, gift-bestowing’) in Tibet, the icon has the pentad of Buddhas in his high, tiered crown that is seen in the Lovea Em Vajrasattva. The Huntingtons (Huntington and Huntington 1990: cat. 74) suggest a circa 9th-century date, but Woodward (2003: 93) indicates a narrow date range of the 770s to 780s, presumably aligning the icon in time with the three temples built in Chaiya and also the Kelurak inscription, dated ad 782, found between Candis Sewu and Lumbung in Central Java, which mentions the erection of an image of Mañjughoṣa (see Miksic 2006: 189). Guy (2014: 258) agrees with a late 8th-century date and speculates, despite the find-spot, that they were made somewhere near Chaiya in the Peninsula. Yet the high double-lotus throne—with parasol and ribbons and with four lions raising a defiant paw on a plain, stepped rectangular base—is almost identical to a Khorat Vajrasattva (Fig. 13b), and the Padmapāṇi icon called ‘Indonesia’ in the former Alice Boney collection in Tokyo that is dated to the 9th century. Stylistically, the thrones are so similar they suggest they were made contemporaneously in the same foundry. The Vajrasattva has the same long necklaces and vajra leaning on the chest as the Lovea Em and related icons earlier suggested to be imported Indic models for Khorat patrons of castings by itinerant Indian artisans (Figs. 6a, 6b) that may have been brought in by guru Kīrtipaṇḍita in the mid 10th century. A late 8th-century date for a Vairocana icon is reasonable but it is too early for an icon of Vajrasattva who does not appear in the iconographical record before the 10th century.

13th century In the 11th century the monk Atīśa underwent the Hevajra abhiṣeka before sailing to Kedah to study under Dharmakirtī, ahead of his final career move to Tibet to purge the Esoteric Buddhism being practised there (Woodward 2004: 345). But in the world of kings the Hevajratantra took hold in the 12th and 13th centuries, when Jayavarman VII of Cambodia (ca. 1200?), Kublai Khan (1260), and Kṛtanagara of East Java (1263) took the Hevajra consecration to counter Kublai Khan’s invasion

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plan.19 Many Hevajra icons and numerous libation conch holders have been found in Phimai and Angkor;20 Sundberg and Giebel (2011: 218) suggest that Hevajra or another Heruka may have eventually replaced Mañjuśrī as principal deity of Candi Sewu. Lokesh Chandra and Sudarshana Devi Singhal (1995: 121–47), Woodward (2004: 343), and Sundberg and Giebel (2011: 218–19 n. 173) see half the 10th- to 11th-century Surocolo hoard from East Java as being part of Hevajra’s maṇḍala. The arrival of this major Esoteric Buddhist deity in the 13th century can ultimately be traced back to the key external links to the Ganges monsteries and South India that underpinned Vajrabodhi’s strategy to preserve Buddhism outside India, which he forged in Sri Lanka, Kedah, and Java in the early 8th century. 19.  Rob Linrothe, an authority on the texts and icons of Tantric Buddhism in Tibet and China who would not claim close acquaintance with Southeast Asia, makes a brief reference which captures the singularity of what appears to have been a politically driven Hevajra cult of Cambodia. He surveys the evolution and spread of Tantric Buddhism through a 9th- to 11th-century phase led by Vajrapāṇi-Trailokyavijaya and defines a further phase dominated by texts and images of Heruka, Hevajra, and Saṁvara. He perceives that something special happened with the deities of this phase in Phimai, Angkor and Java-Sumatra, where Hevajra/Heruka was adopted politically into a royal cult and not only in monasteries. Linrothe (1999: 274) observes a clear political application of such a third phase cult: If there was a Hevajra cult, it seems to have thrived in Southeast Asia. Hevajra imagery may have come overland to Thailand from eastern India, directly from Bengal via Burma. The transmission of Hevajra teachings was probably reinforced through contacts along the maritime routes from island Southeast Asia and eastern India. Whatever the route it clearly had considerable influence in the highest levels of society. Seemingly removed from his yogic and monastic origins, Hevajra was utilized in the royal cult, not, as in the Ming court, to improve relations with Tibet, but as part of an attempt at local political legitimisation.… The compelling power of the Hevajra image seems to have contributed to the cult, which sponsored commemorative monuments more so than monasteries. On the political aspects of the Hevajra-cult practised in the East Javanese and Mongol courts, and a problematization of the historical accounts, see Bade, this volume. 20.  An account of the Khmer Hevajra icons can be found in Sharrock 2012: 41–55.

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Chapter 11

Archaeological Evidence for Esoteric Buddhism in Sumatra, 7th to 13th Century john miksic

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Much of the art generated in the Malay realm ecent archaeological discoveries of vajras and inscribed gold objects in Sumatra during this period is very different from Buddhist and under the water near the island lend art in modern Southeast Asia. Whereas the figure support to the hypothesis that Sumatra was a sig- of Buddha and the stūpa dominate in modern nificant centre of Esoteric Buddhist activity during Southeast Asian Buddhism, early Buddhist pracan important phase of that religious orientation’s tice in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula tended genesis and growth. Archaeological and histori- to favour a multiplicity of deities more reminiscent cal data suggest that several streams of Buddhist of contemporary Hinduism. The stūpa was present thought and practice coexisted in Sumatra for more but rare in the architectural inventory. Statues of than half a millennium. Geographic correlations some deities associated with Hinduism have been between these artefacts and inscriptions with found in Sumatra and the Siamo-Malay Peninsula, ethnic groups and imported items suggest that but this is also true of such major Buddhist sites as Sumatra offered fertile ground for the development Nālandā in India. Buddha did not deny the existof Esoteric Buddhist concepts. This chapter will ence of Hindu gods; some Buddhists of the Classic summarize the archaeological correlates of Esoteric period in India and Southeast Asia depicted Śiva Buddhism in Sumatra from the late 7th to the end as a convert to Buddha’s law (see for example the of the 13th century, and explore the implications Gaṇḍavyūha reliefs of Borobudur). Manifestations of this data in terms of Buddhism’s links to social, of the elephant-headed Hindu god Gaṇeśa are political, and economic variables. found in the Buddhist art of Japan, and may have Most modern Malays, even those who are existed in Southeast Asia. highly educated, believe that their ancestors were The people of the Strait of Melaka during the Hindus. Archaeological data flatly contradict this Classical period were not passive recipients of exterassumption: they show that Buddhism was much nal influences. Chinese and Indians viewed Śrīvimore popular than Hinduism in Sumatra and the jaya as an active participant in the evolution of BudMalay Peninsula during the Classic period (ap- dhist doctrines and rituals. Since George Cœdès proximately 1,000 years long, from the 4th to the first identified this kingdom in 1918, Śrīvijaya has 14th century ad). In Kedah, one of the bastions of been envisioned by many scholars as a major thalasthe Buddhist kingdom of Śrīvijaya, an invasion by socracy which dominated the Strait of Melaka from the Cōḻa Tamils of 1025 led to a period of Hindu the late 7th to the late 13th century. Archaeologists domination lasting through the 11th century. and art historians have been less confident about The large ruin of a temple probably dedicated to the nature and geographical extent of the kingdom. Śiva at Candi Bukit Batu Pahat built during this This uncertainty stems from several factors. One period, and the eventual decline of Buddhism in factor is that the majority of the inhabitants in the India, may have biased public opinion. Another kingdom’s capital may have lived on water (specifpotentially confusing factor includes the tendency ically the Musi River) rather than on dry land. The of early European scholars to label everything second is that the art of Śrīvijaya has defied most pre-Islamic as ‘Hindu’. art historians’ efforts to define a particular style

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Archaeological Evidence for Esoteric Buddhism in Sumatra associated with the kingdom (Diskul 1980). Śrīvijayan sculpture seems to blend styles from mainland Southeast Asia and India, and Śrīvijayan (Sumatran) styles may have influenced sculptors in other regions. Another reason is that very little systematic archaeology has been conducted at Classical sites in the Strait of Melaka. Most Buddhist sculptures attributed to Sumatra lack provenance. We are almost helpless in the endeavour to restore the contexts from which they were ripped. A similar lack of focus afflicts the historical record. Most contemporary references to the kingdom were written by outsiders, rather than the people of Śrīvijaya. Observers from China seem to have perceived Śrīvijaya differently from people coming from the west (i.e., Arabs, Persians, Armenians, Indians, Sinhalese). Viewed from the Indian Ocean, the most important territories of Śrīvijaya were located at the north end of the Strait of Melaka, in Kedah, southern Thailand, Aceh, and Barus. The Chinese on the other hand viewed Śrīvijaya through the lens of their proximity to southeast Sumatra, which led their observers to give particular prominence to the port of Palembang. The exact extent of Śrīvijaya and the political and economic threads which bound its people and territory together are likely to remain permanent matters of debate. It is unlikely that we will ever attain more than a very imperfect understanding of the network of political and economic institutions which constituted Śrīvijaya. The same blurriness of vision unfortunately applies to religion. As a result, Śrīvijaya’s contributions to Buddhist theology and art are underappreciated. Religious ideas, however, unlike political or even economic concepts, tend to be expressed in material form, including buildings, sculptures, and locally written texts. Archaeological research has begun to shed some light on the development of Buddhism in the Strait of Melaka, and this field offers the best hope that new data may yet be discovered. Unfortunately, archaeological sites are being rapidly looted or destroyed—sometimes intentionally—in this region, and the window for making new discoveries is rapidly closing.

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the malays and the spread of buddhism The Malay cultural realm stretches from south Thailand, down both coasts of the Strait of Melaka, to west Kalimantan (Andaya 2008). Malay culture is carried by Austronesian-speaking people who adapted to the estuaries of the equatorial zone of Southeast Asia. This type of location favoured the development of societies which were adept at managing the exchange of commodities from specialized collectors in the hinterlands and the offshore islands. Śrīvijaya was one of the most prominent of these, but we know of many others, large and small. These populations were related to those who expanded into the Indian Ocean, reaching Madagascar off the southeast coast of Africa, and at the same time discovered and settled the islands of the vast Pacific thousands of kilometres in the other direction. They were the most successful and advanced sailors of the ancient world. It was they or their near ancestors who made possible the first interaction sphere of the South China Sea, transporting Dongson bronzes from north Vietnam to eastern Indonesia (see Calò 2013). They were probably present at the first ports in the isthmian region of the Siamo-Malay Peninsula, starting with Khao Sam Kaeo, where Chinese and Indian ceramics are found together. The oldest texts composed in the Malay realm are Buddhist inscriptions found in the northwestern part of Peninsular Malaysia, in Kedah and Seberang Perai (formerly known as Province Wellesley), which may date back to as early as the 5th century. When writing appeared in Sumatra, about two centuries later, the earliest texts were political documents infused with Buddhist references. Roughly ninety per cent of the artefacts of pre-Islamic religious character in the Malay realm are Buddhist. As in much of Southeast Asia, Buddhists in the Malay cultural realm coexisted with devotees of Śiva, Viṣṇu, Gaṇeśa, and Durgā. We have no reliable way of gauging the degree of devotion which the average person in the Malay realm felt for Hinduism or Buddhism, but the distribution of Buddhist sites over the Sumatran highlands as well as in the coastal zone implies that Buddhism penetrated different social strata

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and various ethnographic groups to a significant and speculation. This attitude generated a stream degree. of communication between centres where Buddhist The highland populations of Sumatra speak scholar-monks congregated. These monasteries languages which are derived from the same root are not seldom located in areas of sparse populaas Malay, but they prefer to maintain distinctive tion, but Sumatra is criss-crossed with numerous identities, calling themselves by various ethnonyms thoroughfares, both riverine and overland, along such as Toba, Karo, Minangkabau, Kerinci, Rejang, which people, ideas, and commodities have moved and Serawai, rather than Malay. Politically and regularly throughout history. Buddhist sites in economically, they formed symbiotic relationships inland Sumatra are situated along the trade routes with the lowland port-cities, but the highlanders which early European visitors recorded when retained a considerable amount of autonomy in they began to penetrate the hinterland in the late their dealings with the lowlands (Miksic 1985, 2009). 18th century. The presence of Buddhist remains How does the nature of Sumatran Buddhism mirror at strategic locations along these routes strongly this situation? Was Buddhism in the highlands a suggests that they already existed a thousand pale and generalized reflection of that found in years ago. the cosmopolitan lowland ports, or was it equally varied and complex? the rise of śrīvijaya In the conventional history of Sumatran Buddhism, the name Śrīvijaya shines so brightly that The inscriptions from Palembang contain few refit tends to blot out references to the other ancient erences to Buddhist subjects, but there is enough kingdoms and regions of this huge island and the information to conclude that the ruler of what we Siamo-Malay Peninsula. This is partly due to the might for simplicity’s sake call the kingdom of Śrīvifrequent references to that name (or names such as jaya expressed himself in terms found in Vajrayāna Suvarṇadvīpa, Zabag, and Sanfoqi [Sānfóqí] which Buddhism, which was differentiated from earlier have been assumed to refer to Śrīvijaya) in Chinese Perfection Path (pāramitāyāna) Buddhism by its and Arab texts, and partly to the importance of emphasis on maṇḍalas and recitation of mantras inscriptions found in Palembang for understand- (Woodward 2004: 330). ‘By far the most extensive ing early Southeast Asian history. Certainly the text of the empire of Śrīvijaya’ (de Casparis 1956: 17) Palembang inscriptions are important, but they appears on a stone formerly called the Telaga Batu are few in number, and were written in a very inscription, but now referred to as Sabokingking brief period during the late 7th century. About all after the place of its discovery in Palembang. The they tell us about religion is that some Buddhist inscription is undated but is believed to be contemterms which imply espousal of a certain stream of porary with dated inscriptions from Palembang belief were integrated into public proclamations and other locations in south Sumatra. The inscripby Jayanāśa, ruler of Śrīvijaya. Tangible remains of tion, ‘precisely the kind one would expect to find Buddhism are scattered over the length and breadth in the capital of the empire’ (Wolters 1967: 209), of Sumatra, including many locations in the hin- is a long oath threatening dire penalties against terland that were far from the trading enclaves on traitors. Two dated inscriptions have been found near Palembang. the estuaries visited by foreigners. The text that gives the greatest insight into The Buddhagupta inscription and other remains in Kedah indicate that Buddhism was probably well Śrīvijaya’s religion is the Talang Tuwo inscription integrated into Malay culture long before Śrīvijaya (ad 684). It contains a long statement of His Majesty was founded (Christie 1990). Śrīvijaya was not the Jayanāśa’s wish that everything in a garden which wellspring of Buddhism in Malay culture. No doubt he has founded, including coconuts, areca, sugar Buddhism took root at different times in various and sago palms, fruit trees, bamboo, ponds, dams, locations in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. etc., contribute to the welfare of all beings. ReliMahāyāna Buddhism placed great emphasis on gious aspects of the text include the wish that the sutras, on texts, and on ontological disputation thought of Bodhi will be in them, references to the

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Fig. 11.1: The Kedukan Bukit stone inscription. (Photo: author)

(śūnyatā). The inscription may have begun with an invocation of a perfect Buddha, Mañjuśrī, or Avalokitesvara (de Casparis 1956: 11). In addition to formal proclamations, two other types of written materials give us some insight into the religious attitudes prevalent in the lower Musi River in the 7th to 10th century. One category consists of religious objects, of bronze or clay, some in the form of miniature stūpas or stūpikās, bearing the Sanskrit Pratītyasamutpādagāthā, often known ‘having a physical body as diamondlike as that as the ye dharmā formula (sometimes styled the of a Bodhisattva such as Vajrapāni’.… It may ‘Buddhist creed’, but this is inaccurate; see Grifbe that the terms in the inscription can all be fiths 2011: 144–45). The other category consists of found in [various Buddhist] texts; more probover forty small stones inscribed with the word ably, someone with a good knowledge of Sansiddhayātra, palaeographically dated to the 7th skrit invented paraphrases. At any rate, the incentury, found in several districts of Palembang. scription leaves no doubt that Perfection Path The term is Sanskritic, but not specifically Buddhist. Buddhism was well established in Sumatra in Cœdès defined it as ‘a voyage or a pilgrimage in the seventh century. (Woodward 2004: 335) order to obtain supernatural powers’.1 Another There are a few other scattered fragments of stone found in the district of Kedukan Bukit in stones with tantalizing references to Buddhist con- Palembang mentions a royal pilgrimage in which cepts. The Bukit Seguntang inscription was found the king with 1,312 soldiers went to acquire sidduring road construction. Unfortunately we only dhayātra (Fig. 11.1). The word seems to have denoted have parts of it. One fragment has only the initial ritual visits to sacred places in order to acquire portions of twenty-one lines. Another fragment spiritual power for political or military purposes. purchased later bears the word śikṣāprajñā. Śikṣā Why those locations were believed to be places refers to mundane knowledge (including rules of where such power could be acquired is not specidiscipline), which is acquired from others; prajñā refers to the highest intuitive wisdom, which is 1. For more discussion of this and related terms, and inseparable from the true vision of emptiness more sources, see Woodward 2004: 336, n. 14..

three jewels and the diamond body (vajraśarīra) of the mahāsattva, and the concluding wish that all will attain enlightenment. Cœdès argued that these concepts belonged to Vajrayāna or Mantrayāna, which rose to prominence in the northeastern region of the Indian Subcontinent not long before this date (Cœdès 1930). It is more likely that the term vajraśarīra, which Cœdès thought was clearly Tantric, means something like

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fied. The same practice is attested in Javanese inscriptions, where it is sometimes associated with mountain springs (de Casparis 1956: 2). The first person known to have written the name Śrīvijaya (as Śrībhoja) was a Chinese Buddhist monk named Yijing. He recorded his travels in search of Buddhist texts. In 671 he sailed from China to Śrīvijaya on a ship belonging to Śrīvijaya’s ruler. After a residence of six months there which he spent studying Sanskrit grammar, the king’s ship carried him to Malayu (Jambi, in the Batanghari valley north of Palembang), where he spent two more months. Next he went to Kedah, where he remained for a few months more before the winds became favourable for his voyage to India. From Kedah he sailed direct to Nālandā, where he spent the next eighteen years. He then took all the texts he had collected, which he stated contained 500,000 ślokas, and returned to Śrīvijaya via Kedah and Malayu, both of which he said had now become part of Śrīvijaya. He strongly advised future Chinese pilgrims to spend one or two years in Śrīvijaya to ‘practise the proper rules’ before going to India. He himself spent at least four more years in Śrīvijaya before he returned to China for good in 695. While he was in Sumatra, several other Chinese monks joined him, some of whom also spent several years there. He noted that of the seven most distinguished Buddhist teachers of his day, one, Śākyakīrti, had ‘travelled all through the five countries of India in order to learn, and is at present in Śrībhoga [Śrīvijaya]’ (Takakusu 1966: 184). Yijing took one of Śākyakīrti’s texts to China and translated it into Chinese. Yijing depicted Śrīvijayan Buddhism as almost identical to that of India. One practice which he observed both in India and Sumatra was the recitation of Jātaka stories by both monks and laypeople (Takakusu 1896: 163). He also noted several customs peculiar to Sumatran monks. One was the practice of using a cloth three or five feet long, which they carried folded over one shoulder when walking.2 He said that ‘whenever Indian Bhikṣus come to the islands, they cannot but smile when they see this custom’ (Takakusu 1896: 111). 2. This is similar to a cloth in traditional Malay culture called a selendang.

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Archaeological remains of Yijing’s period (the late 7th century) and the next 200 years are of limited quantity in the Palembang area. This situation is partly the result of destruction of archaeological sites in the early 20th century; for instance, in 1930 the Dutch archaeologist F.D.K. Bosch (1930: 153–54) recorded that important archaeological sites such as Seguntang Hill and Candi Angsoka had been mined for bricks for a long period. This practice was still going on in 1960, when remains of a brick stūpa on Seguntang Hill were reported to have been found and immediately used as building material (Bronson et al. 1973: 7). At the important site of Telaga Batu, where the Sabukingking inscription was found, F.M. Schnitger (1937a: 1ff.) found ‘heaps of bricks’ in 1935 and 1936. Archaeologists who explored Palembang in the 1970s found it puzzling that they could find no material remains which Chinese and Arab descriptions of a wealthy kingdom in southeast Sumatra led them to expect should be found there (Bronson et al. 1973). Concentrated archaeological research since then has yielded some notable results, and enough archaeological remains have now been discovered in and around Palembang that any reasonable person would accept that Palembang was Śrīvijaya’s capital from the 7th to 9th centuries (Manguin 1993); yet, no major Buddhist structures from the Śrīvijayan period have ever been discovered there.

underwater archaeology in inland sumatra Much of the archaeological evidence for life in Śrīvijaya probably lies beneath the Musi River, which forms the heart of modern Palembang. The Musi River has been a major artery of commerce for over 2,000 years. It connects the sources of gold, ivory, and other tropical luxuries with the long-distance maritime trade route through the Strait of Melaka. Whereas nobility in southeast Sumatra traditionally lived on dry land, the majority of Śrīvijaya’s population lived over the river. Dredging of the riverbed in the first decade of the 21st century led to the discovery of many antiquities with market value; looting of the riverbed quickly ensued. By 2014, the volume of antiqui-

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sheets of heavy metal appear to be tin or lead votive objects inscribed with mantras. Utilitarian objects include scale weights. Imported items include a wide range of Chinese ceramics, from Tang Yue bowls through middle-Ming cobalt blue wares, and large quantities of Chinese coins of the Tang through Song dynasties (Miksic 2012). One of the few objects to have been studied with potential to illuminate the range of Buddhist practices in the Musi River basin is a bronze base for three images (two standing, unfortunately lost, and one kneeling in the posture of a devotee), said to have been found beneath the Musi River at Palembang. It bears a dedicatory inscription. In several respects it bears comparison with an image of Lokeśvara discovered at Gunung Tua, in the Padang Lawas region (Griffiths 2011: 151).

shipwrecks and buddhism Marine archaeology beneath the sea lanes in the western Java Sea has yielded important data on Fig. 11.2: Vajra-bell from the Musi river region. (Photo: the nature of trade in Buddhist ritual apparatus. author) The Intan, discovered in 1997 off the southeast coast of Sumatra (Flecker 2002), was a Southties reaching the market from Palembang had de- east Asian ship, probably built in western Indoclined, suggesting that either all the items on the nesia, possibly in southeast Sumatra. The bulk of riverbed had been discovered, or that the limits of the cargo consisted of tin ingots, probably from the simple technology used by the looters had been somewhere in the tin belt stretching from Bangreached. Few of these finds have been recorded by ka Island, off the mouth of the Musi River, and scholars. Two locations on the Batang Hari, Suma- south Thailand. Above the ingots were Chinese tra’s second-longest river, which flows from West ceramics. Chinese coins on board fix the probSumatra province through Jambi to the Strait of able date when the ship sank between 917 and Melaka, have been subjected to similar treatment. 942 ad. The wreck also yielded Indonesian gold Items known to have reached the antiquities coins and silver ingots with Chinese characters. Smaller items in the Intan site included a wide market include cylindrical amulet containers of a range of bronzes, possibly made in Sumatra, where silvery metal, perhaps tin, meant to be suspended the raw materials for making bronze (copper and from strings hung around the neck, gold items such tin) are available. Most of the bronze objects are as coins, and jewellery such as rings for fingers and finished artefacts, many for Buddhist rituals. ears, including types known from Central Java These include bronze finials with loose rings and dated to the late 1st millennium ad. Beads of that rattled (khakkhara), to be fastened to the gold, glass, and stone are common finds. Religious heads of wooden walking staffs carried by priests objects included numerous items associated with 3 Buddhism, such as bronze statues of Buddha, and (Flecker 2002). A large group of bronze vajras, and examples of what appear to be stamps used to print small bells perhaps meant to be worn by priests, Buddhist texts on clay. Bronze items include faces of Kāla, mirrors, and bells with vajra handles for use in Esoteric Buddhist rituals (Fig. 11.2). Rolled 3. For an example found in Java, see Miksic and Soekatno (1995: 143, fig. 38).

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Figs. 11.3 (above) and 11.4 (right): Vajras from the Intan shipwreck. (Photos courtesy Michael Flecker)

the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, contains depictions of famous statues and sanctuaries, three of which are found in the Malay realm: a Dīpaṅkara from Java, a Lokanātha in Kedah, and another at Śrīvijayapura in Suvarṇapura (Schoterman, this volume, p. 115 [1986: 12]). The last primary source to mention Śrīvijaya was composed in south India in 1030–31 (Cœdès 1968: 142). Numerous other sources from India mention the ‘Golden Island’, Suvarṇadvīpa, referring to Sumatra in general, rather than Śrīvijaya. This includes a charter from mid 9th-century Nālandā, where a monastery for Sumatran monks was endowed by a Pāla king. Chinese sources mention no missions from Śrīvijaya from 742 to 904; in that period, the only east Sumatran kingdom sending missions to China was named Jambi. In 904, the chief of the foreign quarter in Fujian was from Śrīvijaya (Wolters 1966: 226, n. 11). Historians, notably O.W. Wolters, long perthe end of śrīvijaya? sisted in translating Sānfóqí as ‘Śrīvijaya’, despite Chinese scribes used the transcription Shīlìfóshì (or the possibility that a kingdom by this name no Shìlìfóshì) to transcribe ‘Śrīvijaya’ until the end of longer existed after the Cōḻa attack in 1025. Wolters the Tang dynasty in 906, most probably to refer to a (1975: 35) speculated that Jambi was the capital of polity centred at Palembang. Beginning in the early Sānfóqí/Śrīvijaya from around 1080 until it was 10th century, Chinese records dropped Shīlìfóshì devastated by a Javanese attack in 1377. Eventualand a new name appeared: Sānfóqí. ly Wolters granted the possibility that after 1082, The name Śrīvijaya had already disappeared ‘“Śrīwijaya” may not be the appropriate name from Southeast Asian sources; its last known use of the overlord’s center’ (Wolters 1983: 51). The was in 775, when Face A of an inscription was character san actually might have been meant carved at Ligor/Nakhon Si Thammarat in south in its literal sense, ‘the Three Vijayas’, denoting Thailand. A Nepalese manuscript of the late 10th a new and more accurate Chinese perception of or early 11th century mentions an important Bud- the multicentric nature of the political pattern of dhist statue in Śrīvijayapura (Sastri 1949: 77–78). southeast Sumatra. The term Sānfóqí may have An 11th-century illuminated Sanskrit manuscript been used to refer to an area including both rival preserving a copy of an important Buddhist text, centres. were also recovered (Figs. 11.3, 11.4). Other components of the cargo included statues of Buddhist deities, mainly the historical Buddha Śākyamuni. It is possible, but rather unlikely, that the Buddhist implements were being transported by a single monk, or a group of them. They seem to have come from the same part of the ship as other items of cargo. This indicates that Buddhism was sufficiently popular that an industry specializing in producing bronze items including mirrors (probably secular items) and religious paraphernalia developed, perhaps in the Palembang area. The large quantity of vajras compared to the other bronze items in the cargo implies that they were in high demand by Buddhist practitioners in Java and Sumatra in the mid-10th century, and that Sumatran bronze casters were well acquainted with their iconographic details.

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One of the implications of this historical uncertainty is that we cannot be sure whether references to the southeast Sumatra region as Sānfóqí after 904 refer to Palembang or Jambi. This ambiguity makes it impossible to connect important historical personages mentioned in foreign sources with specific archaeological sites.

and the Air Kelumpang tributary of the Musi are only fifteen kilometres apart. This fact may explain why the Mahārāja of Śrīvijaya chose this site to erect an important oath of loyalty to his newly expanded kingdom of Śrīvijaya: Malayu and Śrīvijaya may have communicated via this route as well as the water trail down the Musi, up the Strait of Melaka, and then up the Batang Hari. A number of other sites with classic statues are found along the middle where did atīśa go? course of the Batanghari: Tanah Periuk, Teluk the rise of malayu/jambi Kuali, Betung Berdarah, and Marem River; setMalayu sent a mission to China in ad 644. The tlement remains at Pamenang, Dusun Tuo Suamai, oldest known reference to the place named Jambi Sengkati, Rantau Kapas Tuo, and Solok; brick ruins (Zhānbēi) appeared in 840, in another Chinese at Teratai, Pematang Jering, and Solok Sipin; and source (the Youyang zazu). Chinese records remains of both brick structures and settlement at mention two missions, in 853 and 871, from Jambi Danau Bangko. Remains in Jambi mainly date from (Wolters 1967: 85). The kingdom of Malayu is the 11th through 13th centuries, when few signs of thought to have been in the region of modern Buddhist activity have been found in Palembang. Jambi. Did Malayu change its name to Jambi, or The Jambi remains are overwhelmingly Buddhist, was Jambi a new kingdom? We cannot tell. The as will be shown below. gap of two centuries can however be explained by Several Chinese sources mention Buddhism in Yijing’s statement that Malayu had become part of Sānfóqí. In 1003 Sānfóqí envoys reported that their Śrīvijaya. Śrīvijaya may have monopolized com- king had built a Buddhist temple to pray for the munication between the Malay realm and China. emperor, and asked for temple bells. In 1017 SānThe dispatch of embassies to China in 853 suggests fóqí’s king sent tributes, including a letter written that Malayu, now calling itself Jambi, was now free in gold Chinese characters and Sanskrit palmfrom Śrīvijaya’s monopoly. leaf books (Groeneveldt 1960: 62–65). During this No archaeological site corresponding to the period a Chinese Buddhist, Fa-yü, met an Indian kingdom(s) which sent missions to the Tang court priest in Sānfóqí (Cœdès 1968: 131–32). The Song Shi under the names Jambi or Malayu has yet been section which deals with Sānfóqí states that ‘the found in the Batanghari basin, where in later times king is styled Zhanbi’. It is possible that Jambi’s kingdoms of those names were established. Some ruler had already become the paramount ruler in Buddhist images which may date from this period southeast Sumatra at this time. have been found, but no Chinese porcelain or other The early 11th century is a critical period in the trade commodities from the Tang dynasty have study of Sumatran Buddhism. Suvarṇadvīpa, the yet been recorded there. There is a Śrīvijayan oath ‘Golden Island’, had a reputation as a great centre of inscription similar to the one found on Bangka Buddhism. Suvarṇadvīpa is mentioned in Tibetan which contains the date 686 at Karang Berahi, in sources of this period such as the Hevajratantra the Jambi hinterland. This is probably a token of and the Yogaratnamālā (Schoterman this volume, subordination to Śrīvijaya. This area has not been pp. 115–16 [1986: 13]). According to a 16th-century thoroughly explored; perhaps remains from the 7th Tibetan history of Buddhism, a monk named Dharcentury may one day be found to explain why this mapāla, who served as chief abbot of Nālandā in location was sufficiently important that Śrīvijaya the early 7th century, retired just before Xuanzang would go to the trouble of carving that inscription. arrived. He then departed for Suvarṇadvīpa where This site is situated near the junction of the he undertook further study, remaining there until Batang Merangin and several smaller tributaries. he died (ibid.: 113 [1986: 6]). He was one of a number The distance from the coast is great, but near this of senior Indian monks from Nālandā who went point, the Batang Asai tributary of the Batang Hari to Suvarṇadvīpa.

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In the late 10th century a king of Suvarṇadvīpa Bodhisattva of wisdom, Mañjuśrī (ibid.: 51). The found a Buddha image in the ground, whereupon central Tibetan monastery of Reting is believed the people reaped a rich harvest, and converted to to contain relics of three people: Atīśa himself, Buddhism. His son the prince made a pilgrimage his principal Tibetan student ’Brom ston, and his to Bodh Gayā, where he stayed for seven years and teacher, ‘the Guru from Golden Island’, whose was nurtured by a great teacher. The prince changed epithet is almost certainly a reference to Sumatra his name to Dharmakīrti, and eventually returned (Schoterman this volume, p. 120 [1986: 28–29]). to Sumatra to teach. According to a Tibetan source, Atīśa translated a work by Dharmakīrti, Durseveral students went to Suvarṇadvīpa to study bodhāloka, into Tibetan. This translation in Tibetan with Dharmakīrti. One of these was the Indian is the only known surviving example of Śrīvijayan monk Candragarbha (986–1054), who was renamed literature, and one of the oldest in all of Southeast Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna when he entered the monkhood, Asia (Skilling 1997). This work is a commentary and later received the title Atīśa after initiation on the Abhisamayālaṅkāra, ‘Ornament of Reinto an Esoteric Buddhist order. Atīśa, then aged alization’, which in turn is an explication of the 26, went to Śrīvijayanagara, which he described Prajñāpāramitā, ‘Perfection of Wisdom’. The text as being in Malayagiri in Suvarṇadvīpa, to study contains the information that the original text of tantra with Dharmakīrti (or Dharmapāla) from the Durbodhāloka was composed in the tenth year 1012 until 1024 (Skilling 1997: 187; Bimalendra of the reign of King Cūḍāmaṇivarman in ŚrīviKumar 2008: 103; B.B. Kumar 2008: 185). In 1025, jayapura (or Śrīvijayanagara; ‘Tibetan grong can which is perhaps not coincidentally the year when stand for nagara as well as pura of Suvarṇadvīpa’, the Cōḻas invaded the Strait of Melaka, he returned Skilling 1997: 194, n. 12). He died between 1005 to Bengal and became head of a monastery there. and 1008. Chinese and Cōḻa sources mention him In 1040 he accepted an invitation to move to Tibet, (Cœdès 1968: 141–42). Some texts add the detail and after fourteen years he died at Netang, sixteen that he died in Malayagiri or Malaya, which could kilometres from Lhasa (Schoterman this volume, be taken as a reference to Malayu/Jambi; Skilling p. 116 [1986: 14–15]). There is therefore reason to (1997: 193, n. 8) suspects that ‘the extra detail comes believe that when Atīśa went to Tibet in order to from a catalogue of the Tanjur’. ‘purify’ Buddhism according to Tibetan sources, he Skilling (1997; see also Wheatley 1983: 267) replicated much of what he was taught in Sumatra. equates Suvarṇadvīpa with Suvarṇabhūmi, which Sources depict him as discussing ways of med- he identifies with the Malay Peninsula. Indian itating in buildings constructed as multi-storey sources are certainly vague and imprecise in their use of these terms, both signifying an association maṇḍalas. Other scholars have debated the possibility that with gold. Skilling goes on to assert that King concepts regarding maṇḍalas which Atīśa espoused Cūḍāmaṇivarman and his successor ruled from while in Tibet were first formulated in Sumatra. The Kedah. This is possible; I have argued that for the remains of a monastery at Tabo, Spiti, Himachal people coming from the Indian Ocean, the ruler Pradesh, contain murals which are closely parallel of Kedah was seen as more important than that of to those at Borobudur. Atīśa visited Tabo in 1042, Palembang (Miksic 1995). I do not however believe and may have been present at its founding. This that references to the ‘Lord of Śrīvijaya’ denote the too may be evidence of the transmission of Bud- ruler of Kedah. Rulership of Kaḍāra, Kiḍāra, Kataha, dhist ideas from Indonesia to India (Wayman 1981: Kaḍāram, etc., was probably a glorious title in itself. 140–42; Nihom 1994: 72, n. 192.) Arguments for locating Śrīvijaya in Kedah or south Atīśa is credited with the authorship of over Thailand are still in circulation, but the inscrip200 works, including a commentary on the tional evidence, combined with the archaeological Kālacakratantra. His teachings were based on the research of Soeroso and Pierre-Yves Manguin (see Yogācāra and Madhyāmika systems, but also on Manguin 1993) in South Sumatra, is in my opinion Vajrayāna Buddhism (Banerjee 1984: 30, 50, 61, 74). conclusive that Śrīvijaya meant Palembang. I do He was considered to be an incarnation of the however concur with Skilling (1997: 191) that ‘as

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accepted by Coedès (1934: 63; 1968: 320–21, n. 176) at this point, so that it could technically be called there is no proven link between the earlier name an estuarine rather than riverine site. Shih-li-fo-shih and San-fo-ch’i’. Sānfóqí could Muara Jambi consists of eight principal brick include Kedah. I will however advance reasons temples of the 9th to 13th centuries, as well as to believe that Malayu was the most important perhaps a hundred mounds called menapo; water Buddhist centre in the Strait of Melaka between features including a large pool and man-made 1025 and 1200, and that Atīśa may have spent his canals, as well as probable alterations of natural time in Malayu/Jambi rather than in Kedah. As streams; and surface scatters of bricks and ceramics. for Suvarṇadvīpa, the territory encompassed by Some of the menapo have been excavated and found this name cannot be narrowed any further than to contain brick ruins. In some cases they are sur‘Sumatra’. It could mean either Palembang or Jambi, rounded by artificial moats. Two more complexes but probably not Kedah. Skilling (1997: 191) notes of brick ruins (called Candi Teluk I and II) and that ‘three other works translated or written by menapo lie on the right (south) bank of the river Atīśa are associated in their colophons not with opposite the downstream end of Muara Jambi (Eka Śrīvijaya as such but with Suvarṇadvīpa (Eimer Asih P. Taim 2013). 1981: 73–78). The evidence of these colophons is A small stream called the Malayu River flows ambiguous, and raises more questions than it north from the levee, then west, then north again, answers’. One hopes that Skilling will return to then eventually south to the Seno River, an artificial this subject in future. channel south of Kedaton. The upper portion of According to Skilling (1997: 188), ‘the composi- the Malayu roughly divides Muara Jambi into two tion of Durbodhāloka presupposes the existence and sectors of unequal length: an upstream or western study in Śrīvijaya of the abstruse Prajñāpāramitā sector about 5 kilometres long, and a downstream or and Abhisamayālaṅkāra literature; of a high level eastern sector about 2 kilometres long. Major sites of scholarship; and of royal sponsorship’. It also in the western sector include Gedong I, Gedong II, implies a major Buddhist institution of learning Kedaton, and Mahligai. They are scattered over a existed somewhere in east Sumatra at the beginning large area. Major sites in the eastern sector include of the 11th century. The only viable candidate for Tinggi, Kembar Batu, Astana, and Gumpung, the this role from an archaeological point of view is most important site yet investigated archaeologilocated at the site of Muara Jambi and its environs cally. These sites all lie in close proximity to one along the Batang Hari river, in the eastern coastal another, and are associated with the largest artifiplain of Sumatra. cial water feature, a rectangular pond called King’s Pool (Telaga Raja). In 2008 the Indonesian National Research muara jambi archaeology Center for Archaeology undertook excavations at The National Center for Archaeological Research Menapo Adam, one of a cluster of menapo 30 metres and Development of Indonesia has identified at least northeast of Astana. Results included high-quality twenty-six sites from the early historic period along ceramics, both Chinese and Fine Paste Ware made the 800-kilometre-long Batang Hari. In addition somewhere in Southeast Asia, probably southern to sites along the upper course of the Batang Hari, Thailand, and a large quantity of bronze nails and there are at least fifteen sites with remains of ancient a star-shaped ornament with a hole in the centre; settlement in the lower 120 kilometres of the river, it was probably meant to be fastened to a wooden some of which also have yielded brick ruins. structure. By far the most significant site is Muara Jambi, One of the most important sets of data for the 40 kilometres downstream from the modern city of history of Sumatran Buddhism was recovered from Jambi. It covers over 2,000 hectares of land along a one of the sites at Muara Jambi: a large brick ruin 7-kilometre-long section of a natural levee on the called Candi Gumpung. This site was reconstructleft (north) bank of the river. The eastern coastal ed in the early 1980s. The work was mainly conplain of Sumatra is so flat that the river is still tidal ducted by technicians rather than archaeologists.

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no clear textual trace of this historically imDuring the dismantling of the original structure, portant maṇḍala [i.e. the Vajraśekharatantra] eleven ‘holes’ in the base of the temple foot were is to be found in Indonesia and that, in consefound to contain ritual deposits comprising cups quence, the syncretic maṇḍalas of the yogatanof gold, silver, and bronze, small gold plates, some tras such as the Sakalajagadvinaya, Sarvadurwithout inscriptions, gold lotus flowers, semi-pregatipariśodhana and Trilokavijaya which may cious stones, and crushed lead plates which were be shown to be extant in the Archipelago are described in the reports as ‘ash’. At an academic chronologically prior to the Vajradhātu, which workshop held in 1985, an important paper was is orthodox insofar as it is inhabited by Budpresented on the ‘ritual deposits’ recorded from dhist divinities alone. That is, the yogatantra maṇḍalas populated by both ‘Hindu’ and ‘Budthis site (Boechari 1985). Boechari concluded dhist’ divinities are necessarily earlier than the that these deposits were supposed to replicate a Vajradhātumaṇḍala which, the TattvasaṃgraVajradhātumaṇḍala, which would have required ha explicitly holds, the other maṇḍalas reflect. seventeen holes. The inscriptions enabled Boechari to identify Thus, the syncretic features of Indonesia’s cultwenty-two deities, all but one including the element tures are not necessarily of indigenous origin. The Vajra. The Vajradhātumaṇḍala has thirty-seven primary influence of Tantric Buddhism in Indodeities; perhaps seventeen of the names found at nesia must have occurred before the compilation Candi Gumpung belong to this group. However, of the Tattvasaṅgraha, the fundamental text of the five Tathāgatas (Vairocana, Akṣobhya, Rat- the Yogatantras, in India; this influence must have nasambhava, Amitābha, and Amoghasiddhi) are arrived before ad 700. The textual source of the missing; only the Vajrabodhisattvas for Akṣobhya Gumpung maṇḍala is probably from material also and Amoghasiddhi and two of the four Vajrabo- found in the Vajraśekharatantra, which was probdhisattvas of Ratnasambhava and Amitābha were ably found in Indonesia in a very different form to represented. Only three of the four doorkeepers and that found in the extant Tibetan canon. two of the twelve Vajratārās were found. They may Nihom found the nearest textual source have once been present, but as Boechari notes (1985: for the Gumpung maṇḍala in the Trailokyavi37), ‘apparently the recording of the finds by the jayamahāmaṇḍala as described in the Vajratechnicians in charge of the demolition of the temple śekharatantra. Internal evidence led him to the was not accurate, causing the loss of some of the inference that the Indonesian version was older inscribed gold plates’. Inscribed bricks were found, than the Tibetan version (Nihom 1998a: 249). The but their precise location in the temple was not re- important—albeit tentative—conclusion he derived corded. At least two different types of script were was that Indian Buddhist influence in Indonesia used: standard Kawi, probably dating from the mid between the early 8th and 13th century ‘was at best 9th to early 10th centuries (de Casparis 1975), and a modest, and perhaps even substantially non-exsquarish form resembling East Javanese script of the istent’. The lack of evidence for Tantric Buddhist 11th to 12th centuries. Sherds of Chinese porcelain, influence from India after the syncretic Yogatantra mostly from the Song dynasty, were found in the maṇḍalas were introduced may indicate ‘either an compound, but their find-spots were not recorded. abatement of contacts between the Subcontinent It is unfortunate that no proper archaeologi- and the Archipelago or a socio-economic shift cal research was performed at Candi Gumpung. in the status of Tantric Buddhism in India itself, Now it will never be known whether the deviations which was subsequently reflected in the nature and/ between the finds and textual prescriptions are or patterns of trade with what is now Indonesia’ due to intention, and how much to chance. These (Nihom 1998a: 252). discoveries have been subjected to some important In 2004, Hiram Woodward returned to the analysis by learned scholars, but their conclusions Gumpung ritual deposits in the context of a are limited by the quality of the data. discussion of Esoteric Buddhism in Southeast In an important study, Max Nihom (1998a: Asia as a whole. He used the data from Jambi in 245–46) concluded that conjunction with collections of bronze statues

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from approximately the same period found in took back to India, and then carried even further East Java to test hypotheses about the knowledge to Tibet. Tibetan tradition holds that Atīśa and his of Mantrayāna and more advanced texts in Java, teacher Dharmakīrti of Suvarṇadvīpa were devoted and whether they were transmitted from North- to the goddess Tārā. It has also been argued that ern India or Sri Lanka. One collection found at Atīśa acquired concepts regarding inner and outer Nganjuk in 1913 portrays deities ascribable to the maṇḍalas in Śrīvijaya, but Max Nihom has disputed Vajradhātumaṇḍala as described in 8th-century this (Woodward 2004: 347, n. 53). Woodward (2004: texts. A second collection found at Surocolo in 1976 347) speculates that the mantra oṁ maṇi padme contains twenty-two statues which seem to belong huṁ which is popular in Tibet may also owe its to two maṇḍalas: the Vajradhātumaṇḍala plus a origin to Atīśa’s years in Śrīvijaya. maṇḍala of Hevajra (Woodward 2004: 344). Was the As Woodward (2004: 330) shows, Tantric teachHevajratantra, ‘a fundamental Yoginī tantra’, ings evolved in two historical contexts. He uses the known to the 8th-century Buddhists of Java? term Mantrayāna to refer to institutional esoterism, Perhaps it appeared in Indonesia in the early 11th which arose within monasteries, and represented century, around the time of Atīśa. It is known that a new development from earlier pāramitāyāna or he was familiar with the Hevajratantra; he may ‘perfection path’ Buddhism through its emphasis have either taken it to Sumatra, or been induced on maṇḍalas and mantras. He uses the term Yoginī to go there because the Hevajratantra was being Tantra for ‘siddha esoterism’, which arose from explored by Sumatran Buddhist intellectuals marginal antinomian practitioners and shared fea(Woodward 2004: 345).4 tures with Śaiva and Śākta Tantric cults, including Woodward (2004: 346) is willing to consider union with female partners. The chief deities of the possibility that Indonesian Buddhists devel- maṇḍalas are male gods, ‘but one could also argue oped ideas which made their way to India, rather that the males are only conduits for the transcenthan being merely passive recipients of thoughts dental wisdom of the females’ (Woodward 2004: originating from elsewhere. One possible instance 330). In his article, written as an extended review he cites is a verse from the Bhadracarī found on of Ronald M. Davidson’s book Indian Esoteric Buda small stone stūpa at Nālandā dated to the 9th dhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement century. This is the general period when the Pāla (2002), Woodward notes that in 6th-century India, king Devapāla endowed a monastery for the monks kingdoms formed political structures modelled on from Suvarṇadvīpa, specifically connected with maṇḍala symbolism. Female involvement associatKing Bālaputra, whose ancestors had probably ed with pāramitāyāna Buddhism was de-emphasised ruled in Java. It is also the time when the long in the new structures. Either because of, or in tandem series of reliefs illustrating this text were carved with, the male-oriented Mantrayāna, the siddhas, on the walls of the highest terrace at Borobudur. saints or perfected ones, possessors of supernatural It is possible that the Bhadracarī was already well powers (siddhi) arose as socio-political alternatives known in Nālandā, but the Javanese representation to increasing centralization. By ad 1000, siddha texts indicates that it occupied special prominence there came to be accepted as Buddhist scripture. (Woodward 1990; Schopen 1989). The political advantages of playing the role of an A second instance concerns Atīśa, who as Wood- overlord (rājādhirāja) of a circle of vassals (sāmanward notes spent more than a decade in ‘Śrīvijaya’, ta-maṇḍala) was not lost on Indian abbots (Woodwhich might be Palembang, Kedah, or Jambi. It is ward 2004: 353; citing Davidson 2002: 106), or on known that Atiśa found texts in Sumatra which he Sumatran chiefs. The Sabukingking inscription contains the term sakalamaṇḍala (‘all the maṇḍalas’), but whether one can infer that King Jayanāśa 4. Recent studies on images of frightful Buddhist deities was attempting to manipulate the symbolism of the from Padang Lawas (Bautze-Picron 2014) and Sanskrit inscriptions recording exact parallels to the Hevajratan- Vajradhātu for political ends is uncertain. Woodtra (Griffiths 2014: 18–22) suggest that the cult of Hevajra ward himself feels that ‘the term [maṇḍala] has enjoyed a certain popularity in Sumatra from the 11th to become so overworked in Southeast Asian historithe 13th century.

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ography and has become so imprecise in meaning that it might best be avoided’ (Woodward 2004: 353). The author of this chapter, it must be declared, was a student of O.W. Wolters, whose book History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (1999) thrust the term squarely into the forefront of discussions about early Southeast Asian polities.5 The resonance which Wolters’ explication of the term has achieved over the last three decades, and the controversies which his work has incited, would seem to be good reasons to continue to explore the advantages and weaknesses of this line of enquiry. Woodward observes that the extension of Davidson’s analysis to incorporate Southeast Asian data contradicts some of the latter’s conclusions. Davidson argued that Mantrayāna’s rise in India was due to ‘the loss of mercantile support and the rise in official patronage’ (82–83, 167)’ (Woodward 2004: 353, citing Davidson 2002), but this model would seem to neglect the importance of the communication between Java, Sumatra, Bengal, Nākappaṭṭiṉam, and Sri Lanka, as well as the Pyu of Myanmar, which flourished due to expanding commerce, with religion following rather than leading the way. Woodward believes that Indonesia and India remained equal partners in Buddhist development until about ad 900. This date is correlated with the rise of Hindu Angkor and the collapse of Central Javanese civilization. However, the examples of Indian savants who visited Sumatra, and in the case of Atīśa went on to expand Buddhism’s sphere, suggests otherwise. In addition to the finds at Gumpung, other related items have been discovered at other sites in the Muara Jambi area. Two have been recovered from Tinggi temple, which lies in the same eastern complex. One, found in a subsidiary shrine of the main temple, bears ‘the ye dharmā formula in curiously amputated form … extraordinarily corrupt’ (Griffiths 2011: 150). Palaeographically its script, which resembles eastern Indian Nāgarī, can be dated to approximately the 11th century. In addition to the writing, the plaque is decorated with two vajras which Griffiths compares with other gold plaques from Tandihet and Aek Sangkilon, 5. For divergent views, see Kulke (1993); Christie (1990b).

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Padang Lawas (see further below). Another plaque was found in the east gateway of the main temple at Tinggi. It is related to the first, but ‘it represents less than a quarter of that formula, and the remainder of the inscription clearly does not belong to any known version of the formula’ (Griffiths 2011: 162). Gedong I, also located in the same eastern complex of Muara Jambi, yielded a plaque of quite unique form: it consists of two halves, each half composed of a different metal (probably gold and silver). It was found in the fourth course of bricks on the north side (presumably of the wall; whether it was near the entrance is not mentioned). It comprises mantras resembling those connected with Mahāpratisarā, a Buddhist goddess of protection, including the goddess’ name, but with fundamental differences which cast doubt on the identity of the exact text used for the composition (Griffiths 2011: 163–64).

padang lawas It is not surprising to discover a site so rich in Buddhist materials as Muara Jambi in a lowland estuary easily accessible from the major maritime thoroughfare through the Straits of Melaka, along which many Buddhist pilgrims passed on their way to and from the important sites in China, India, and Java. Padang Lawas is quite a different type of site. It lies far up two medium-sized rivers, the Barumun and Panai. The name ‘Pannai’ appears in the list of places raided by the south Indian Cōḻas in ad 1025, and also in the 14th-century Javanese poem Deśavarṇana (Wolters 1967: 193), but no sites of ports or other important early remains have been found in its lower course. Bosch (1930: 147–48) thought the name might have been derived from the Tamil word for ‘colony’. This region (the name means ‘broad plain’) lies on the eastern fringe of the Barisan mountain range which separates the east coast of Sumatra from the west. Its location has one strategic benefit: it lies at the eastern entrance to the easiest pass between east and west in the entire chain (Miksic 1980). On this plain, which covers about 1,500 square kilometres, are at least twenty-six ruined brick temples and temple complexes, almost all Buddhist.

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Padang Lawas is unlikely to have supported a large agrarian population: dry winds from the west coast blow through the pass and sweep across the plain, creating an unusually barren landscape (Mohr 1944: 538; Verstappen 1973: 11). A British traveller in 1849 was struck by the strangeness of the place on an island largely blanketed by tropical rainforest: We have ascended Gunung Tua and cast our eye downwards from the summit Sipolpal. There we see unrolled a plain without horizon and without variety; an unbounded carpet on which the more or less luxuriant growth of the lalang makes the only diversity and on which not a single living creature appears to move, where a tree is literally a rarity and has the appearance of stunted dwarfishness, where at a distance of miles, we descry like an oasis in the desert an insignificant thicket, or a small strip of brushwood along the banks of a marsh or stream; where a fell scorching wind blows for months together and from the numerous conflagrations of lalang generally spreads a dull glow through which the sunlight scarcely forces itself wavering and heavy—in a word where all nature appears to have gone to an eternal sleep. Such is the appearance of Padang Lawas.... (Willer 1849: 367)

Little systematic archaeology was conducted in the region until a Franco-Indonesian team began excavations there in 2006 (Perret et al. 2007). The earliest dated object from Padang Lawas is a bronze statue of the Lokanātha with an inscription containing the date 1039. The inscription contains a Malay word which probably indicates that the statue was made locally (Bosch 1930: 144). Nine other inscriptions from the region are known at present. One of them is dated 1179 (Tandihet I). Another, from Porlak Dolok, which records a donation from a senapati, is unusual because it uses both Sumatran and Tamil scripts and languages. Bosch (1930: 147) read the date as 1245, but another date in the 13th century is possible (Perret et al. 2007: 54). Although the use of Tamil language and script in one inscription is evidence for connections with South India, there are even better grounds for emphasizing the probability of links to Sri Lanka (Miksic 2004b: 207; Schnitger 1936: 6). The date on another inscription has been read as 1372 (Bosch

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Fig. 11.5: Vajra-base at Si Joreng Blangah. (Photo: author)

1930: 147; Schnitger 1936: 13). Other undated inscriptions have been attributed to the 13th–14th centuries (Tandihet II) and the 12th–14th centuries (Bahal I; Perret et al. 2007: 54–55). Estimates for the dates of the temples on stylistic grounds vary. Bosch (1930: 147) assigned them to the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Schnitger (1936) and Bernet Kempers (1959: 75–76) placed them earlier, i.e. in the 12th–13th centuries. I (Miksic 2004a: 207) have speculated that they may be even earlier, i.e. 11th to 13th centuries. The excavations at Si Pamutung in 2006 yielded more precise evidence for dating that particular site. Imported ceramics indicate that occupation began in the 10th century, increased in the 11th and 12th centuries, and then declined until the site was abandoned in the early 14th century (Perret et al. 2007: 70). The architectural motifs from Padang Lawas are closely identified with Buddhism: stūpas, garlands, chattras, and vajra motifs (Perret 2007: 62; see Fig. 11.5). Architectural elements found at ten sites have been identified as stambhas (Perret et al. 2007: 67), but Ślączka (2007) gives good reasons for considering them stūpas. Three possible Hindu images have been found (if one includes a four-armed Gaṇeśa), but statuary recovered from Padang Lawas is overwhelmingly Buddhist. In addition to images of Buddha, Amitābha, Ratnasambhava or Akṣobhya and Amoghasiddhi, the inventory includes a rare image of the deity Heruka. The gold plaque from Tandihet II with eight lines in Nāgarī with a vajra (palaeographically dated to the 13th–14th centuries) and a rectangular gold plate from Aek Sangkilon, also inscribed with Nāgarī script, Sanskrit language, with a vajra (Perret et

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al. 2007: 54–55) were collected by F.M. Schnitger, who did not provide much contextual information. The gold plate from Aek Sangkilon was found in the main room of the temple, and has a double vajra in the centre and the letters hūm ̐, with seven lines of Nāgarī script which Bosch found similar to Muara Takus (Ślączka 2007: 364; Ijzerman 1891: 59; see further below). They are reminiscent of the ‘ritual deposits’ from Muara Jambi. The possibility of a direct connection between the two sites is strengthened by the discovery of orange kendis (gargoulette) very similar to those probably made at Muara Jambi (Perret et al. 2007: 65). Perhaps Jambi provided Padang Lawas with earthenware.

padang roco Another complex of brick sanctuaries deep in the Sumatran hinterland has been under study by Indonesian archaeologists since 1991. The area where the Pingian joins the Batang Hari, including Padang Roco (literally ‘statue field’) and nearby sites such as Pulau Sawah and Sungai Langsat, seven kilometres away, has long been known to be important; two large statues were found here during the early 20th century: an Amoghapāśa from Rambahan with inscriptions of the 13th and 14th centuries, and a statue from Sungai Langsat representing a male standing on a corpse lying on a pile of skulls, holding a skull bowl and sacrificial knife, with bulging eyes and a figure—perhaps of Amitābha—in the headdress. Measuring 4.41 metres in height and four tons in weight, the latter is the largest statue ever found in Indonesia. It is conventionally identified as either Bhairava (a form of Śiva) or Mahākāla (its Buddhist ‘counterpart’). As eminent art historian Jan Fontein has noted: These two deities have so many iconographic characteristics in common that it is often difficult to draw clear distinctions between them. Not only in India but also in Indonesia, the identity of statues of these deities can often not be determined with certainty. This is especially true of statues created during the Majapahit period.… (Fontein 1990: 167; Reichle 2007: 250, n. 25)

A statue of a person holding a skull in the left hand, and a sacrificial knife in the right (Fig. 11.6),

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Fig. 11.6 (Left): Mahākāla? (Photo: Oudheidkundige Dienst 10593 [detail])

was found in Bahal II at Padang Lawas, the ruin where the Hevajra was found (Schnitger 1937a: 27). Scholars such as Reichle (2007: 154) and Bosch (1930b: 143, plate 42b) have identified the figure as a female, but Bautze-Picron (2014: 10) points out that it is most likely another image of Mahākāla (viewers may have been deceived by the image’s rather rotund physique).6 Two famous stone statues of Amoghapāśa were carved in Indonesia. One is found at Candi Jago, a 13th-century Buddhist site in East Java; the other statue was sent by King Kṛtanagara of Siṅhasāri to Malayu in the 13th century. The meaning of this act is disputed: it may have been a claim to suzerainty, or a means of solidifying an alliance against the aggressive designs of the Mongols. This statue bears an inscription on its back which gives the date Śaka 1208 (ad 1286) and says that the statue ‘was brought from the Land of Java to Suvarṇabūumi, and erected at Dharmasraya as a gift’. The inscription also mentions the name of Malayu’s king at that time. The implication is that Dharmasraya, located in the highlands of central Sumatra, was the capital of the kingdom. It is likely that the centre of power had moved here, far into the highlands. 6. Bautze-Picron (2014) argues that most, if not all, the so-called ‘Bhairavas’ recovered from Buddhist contexts of Sumatra and Java actually represent frightful (krodha) forms of Buddhist deities, such as Mahākāla, Heruka, or Hevajra.

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The reasons for this move are disputed, but it seems that the Padang Roco area was heir to the Buddhist culture of Muara Jambi. A Prajñāpāramitā statue in late 13th-century style found at Muara Jambi indicates that the site might not have been entirely abandoned, but few imported ceramics of that period have been discovered at Muara Jambi, whereas samples of them have been found in the Padang Roco region. Three foundations of brick sanctuaries were found at Padang Roco and restored in the early 1990s (Teguh Hidayat and Yusfa Hendra 2006). The largest measures 21 x 21 metres, and was extended after its original construction. A makara has been found at Candi Bukik Awang Maombiak, across the river from Candi Pulau Sawah. Two sanctuaries have been excavated, but were badly damaged. At least seven more are suspected to exist. Bricks from the site have been reused for Islamic graves and looters (Marsis Sutopo 1992). Imported ceramics from the vicinity date from the Song period (11th to 13th centuries). The Pulau Sawah site has yielded the best evidence for the Buddhist nature of the activities conducted in this region. The evidence consists of a fragment of a stone inscribed with a Sanskrit stanza Fig. 11.7: The Mahligai stūpa. (Photo: author) from a Buddhist text, the Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra: ‘And by this good deed may I soon become a Buddha is conjectural: estimates range between the 8th in the world. May I teach the Dharma for the benefit to 9th centuries (Krom 1931: 133) and the 12th to of the world. May I release creatures tortured by 14th centuries (Bernet Kempers 1959: 69). The many sufferings’. The script dates from the 9th or outer layer of the structure envelopes an earlier 10th century ad (Griffiths 2011: 169). The object is building with a different profile which can only small and so could have been brought to the site at be glimpsed through a small opening in the base. any time after its composition, but it strengthens The style of the stūpa has been compared to one in the conclusion that the site had already become a Villagaam, Sri Lanka (Groeneveldt 1879: 219). The prominent centre of Buddhist activity before the best depiction of the ruins in their original state large Amoghapāśa and Mahākāla statues were (i.e., before restoration) is found in Ijzerman 1893. erected there. The site lies in a remote locale of central Sumatra; there is no evidence that a large population ever lived in the area. It has been suggested that the smaller sites of esoteric buddhism site was in use for only a short time (Bronson et in the sumatran hinterland al. 1973: 16, 45). J.L. Moens (1937) once suggested Muara Takus that Muara Takus was the centre of Śrīvijaya, but this hypothesis has not been generally accepted. The remains at this site, lying on the upper Kampar Legend connects the construction of the temples River, consist of a complex of brick structures. The with Ādityavarman, and suggests that he acquired major feature is a large stūpa-form temple called power over Kampar by marrying his daughter to Candi Mahligai (Fig. 11.7), the date of which the local chief (Ijzerman 1893: 51; Schnitger 1940:

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399–401). Muara Takus may have been in some way linked to Padang Lawas, hundred kilometres to the north, via Pasir Pengarajan and Hokan; in support of this are small finds at Manggis and Kotanopan-Pinarik, and a legend of a Batak attack on the site (Schnitger 1936: 40). A set of eleven inscribed gold plates found in one of the ruins has been assigned on palaeographic grounds to the 12th century (Krom 1930: 149). The last plate bears diagrams including a lotus beneath a cakra with eight rims or a sun, a moon, an elephant-goad (aṅkuśa), and a trident (triśūla). J.G. de Casparis (1956: 48) identified the text as a Sanskrit treatise on Dependent Origination. Several different inscribers worked on it, but the style of script is uniform. He dated it much earlier than Krom: between 650 and 800. The text on the large plates begins with the Pratītyasamutpādasūtra, which is also found inscribed on bricks at Nālandā. The plates give a detailed commentary on the sutra, Fig. 11.8: Stone with Nāgarī letters. (Photo: Kern Institute termed Vibhaṅga (‘division, analysis into sets of collection, Leiden University Library, GD 13 1321) categories’), which has also been found on two bricks discovered at Nālandā. Vibhaṅga is also 1937a: 11; Ślączka 2007: 363–64). In this example preserved in a Chinese translation made by Xu- we have more contextual information than usual: anzhang, dated 661. it was found together with fragments of gold leaf, This text has an unusual list of the three Thirsts soil, and ash, inside a lotus-shaped base, supported (tṛṣṇa), which according to de Casparis is proba- by a 36-sided base which itself was supported by bly an older stage of speculation than the known a 20-sided base. The plate bears engraved vajras7 existing ones. The text follows the Sarvāstivādin and three Nāgarī letters. A stone with nine Nāgarī point of view, whereas the Nālandā version gives a letters and vajras (Fig. 11.8) was also found nearby different division of tṛṣṇa. Some other minor points (on which, see Griffiths 2014: 236 and, for a revised also suggest an association of this Indonesian text reading and interpretation, Kandahjaya, this with the Sarvāstivādins. No Mahāyāna influence is volume, n. 61). Similar inscribed objects (bricks) discernible in the Indonesian version; the variations are reproduced here as Figs. 11.9–11. found in the Nālandā version are due to Mahāyāna influence. These plates have some significant Tanjung Medan differences from those at Nālandā, so cannot be seen as directly influenced from that cosmopolitan This site is located approximately 75 kilometres northwest of Muara Takus. In 1876 a stūpa-form centre of Buddhism. Schnitger (1937b) found a gold disc in the upper structure still stood here, but in 1930 only brick part of one of the temples at the site which is unique heaps remained. A gold plate and a kendi (water in that it records the names of Buddhist priests goblet) with neck of gold and rim of silver have who supervised the construction, and says that been reclaimed from the rubble. The plate bore a the temple was built by Vajradharas (Ślączka 2007: maṇḍala of eight Bodhisattvas and an inscription 364–65). Another plate found in the Bungsu temple bears 7. As argued by Griffiths (2014), what Ijzerman described an inscription in Nāgarī which Bosch compared as ‘triśūlas’ (i.e., tridents, which are Śaiva symbols) are in to another found at Aek Sangkilon (Schnitger fact vajras (or viśvavajras), i.e. eminently (Esoteric) Buddhist symbols.

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Kota Cina With this site we return to the coastal zone. Kota Cina is now seven kilometres inland from the coast, and only about 1.5 metres above sea level. When it was occupied the site may have been much nearer the Strait of Melaka; deposition of silt seems to have been rapid during the last few centuries. Remains include at least three complexes of brick ruins, statuary, bone, stone, glass, artefacts of gold, bronze, and iron, and remains of tree resins (dammar), an article of trade associated with Sumatra during the classical period. Edwards McKinnon also recovered about a ton of potsherds, of which about two-thirds are earthenware, most probably made locally, and the remaining one-third imported porcelain and stoneware, mostly of Chinese manufacture (Miksic 1979; Edwards McKinnon 1984). Evidence from dated Chinese and Sinhalese coins, Chinese porcelain, statuary, and radiocarbon dates all support the conclusion that the site was occupied in the late 11th and late 13th centuries. Villagers in Kota Cina have found two granite Buddha statues, one of which is very similar to a South Indian image of the 13th century, while the other appears more closely related to Sri Lanka. One intact lingam of polished granite and a fragment of another, and statues of Viṣṇu and Lakṣmī indicate that the people of Kota Cina may have belonged to two religious communities. (It is also possible that they belonged to slightly different time periods). Numerous porcelain and stoneware fragments indicate that the population carried on a thriving commerce with China. The Buddhist remains from Kota Cina, principally the two granite statues, display no esoteric Figs. 11.9–11 (top to bottom): Inscribed bricks. (Photo: traits. They appear more closely related to the author) Theravāada aesthetic which was sweeping into the central part of the Siamo-Malay Peninsula, at of Buddhist formulae in Nāgarī script, which cannot the border between the Malay and Siamese ethnobe older than the 12th century (Bosch 1930: 133; linguistic groups. It seems that this busy trading Schnitger 1937a: 14; Bronson et al. 1973: 59). It is difficommunity espoused a type of Buddhism which cult to date the remaining fragments of the temples, was not part of the esoteric tradition. This suggests six of which are found spread over an area of 18,000 that it was inhabited mainly by foreigners and by square metres. Temples I, II, and VI have been locals who were neither Hindu nor Buddhist. No restored, while the others are too fragmentary to historical documents have yet emerged to enable reconstruct. Temple VI may be the gateway to us to link it with any polity known in any sources, the site. foreign or indigenous.

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consecration deposits

the Kāśyapaśilpa gives instructions for digging the foundation pit. When conducting the ceremony of kumbha- or kalaśasthāpana, ‘the placing of the jars’, the text specifies that: ‘Then one should make karāla8 and so on in order to fix (the finial) firmly’ (Ślączka 2007: 171). The excavated pit is filled up with gravel (ibid.: 173). These passages may help to clarify a phenomenon which is found at several temples in Sumatra and Java. At Muara Jambi, Kedaton was found to have had its base filled with huge quantities of white quartz pebbles several centimetres in diameter. At Sungai Langsat, a temple was found to have been built on a layer of andesite cobbles mixed with kaolinite (Marsis Sutopo 1992). A similar layer of white gravel was discovered beneath Puntadewa on the Dieng Plateau in Central Java. It seems highly probable that this practice derives from a ritual prescription similar to that found in the Kāśyapaśilpa. The consecration deposit container (garbhabhājana, phelā) should be constructed of metal (Ślączka 2007: 177). In Gumpung, it seems that the containers were in fact made of lead. The text gives directions for placing mantras and vowels (svara) in the compartments of the casket (ibid.). Also placed in the deposit container are various metals, semi-precious stones, attributes of the main deity, and grains. The location for the garbha is near the door to the temple. In Kedah, at site 15, a deposit was in fact found to the right of the door. In some North Indian texts, however, the garbha is placed in the centre (ibid.: 210, n. 41). In Vaiṣṇava texts, a tortoise is often accompanied by other attributes such as the conch shell, the discus, the club, and Garuḍa (ibid.: 226, n. 20). Ślączka compiled an exhaustive list of consecration deposits (or what may well have been such deposits) at Southeast Asian sites. It seems that none of them precisely follows the Kāśyapaśilpa instructions, but elements of the same type of ritual practice can almost always be discerned.

Many of the sites discussed here have yielded small inscribed objects, including gold, brick, and stone. This phenomenon is not limited to Sumatra; numerous other examples have been noted in other parts of Southeast Asia. The largest and possibly most complete set was recovered from Gumpung Temple in Muara Jambi, but even there many elements of the set were no doubt lost. A study of this type of archaeological data by Anna A. Ślączka (2007) has added significantly to our understanding of them by reference to a South Indian text on architecture and ritual, the Kāśyapaśilpa. It was probably written in the 11th or 12th century. According to Ślączka’s data, there is much more archaeological information available for this type of artefact in Southeast Asia than exists in India. She found only about fifteen examples where archaeological data on the practice of making consecration deposits exists in India, whereas there are about 200 such reports from Southeast Asia (ibid.: 1). It is not possible to explain this discrepancy, but this situation makes it possible to add significantly to the comparative data which enables us to study the relationships between the two regions. One interesting feature is that the Kāśyapaśilpa is written to guide the builders of a Hindu temple, whereas most of the sites where such deposits have been found in Southeast Asia are Buddhist. The Kāśyapaśilpa gives instructions for three ceremonies during the process of constructing a temple. These are: prathameṣṭakā-nyāsa, ‘the placing of the first bricks’, mūrdheṣṭakā-nyāsa, ‘the placing of the crowning bricks’, and garbha-nyāsa, ‘the placing of the embryo’ (ibid.: 5). In Southeast Asian archaeology, early discoverers of such deposits tended to call them ‘relics’, under the assumption that they contained ashes of cremated humans, and that the temples were funerary monuments. Thus, the containers were called ‘reliquaries’. This assumption still can be found in many texts, but the the 14th century Javanese archaeologist R. Soekmono (1975, 1995) has thoroughly disproved this notion. Thus, Ślączka This chapter has omitted the 14th century, not proposes the term ‘consecration deposits’ for this because it is unimportant, but because it is so category of material. In the first phase of construction, the descrip- 8. A type of coating or mortar; according to Māyāmata tion of the ceremony of placing the first bricks in 18.93, however, karāla is ‘gravel stones the size of abhaya or akṣa fruits’ (Dagens 1994: 275).

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complex that it would take another chapter to The frequency with which vajras and viśvavadiscuss it, and because little archaeological data jras appear in two- and three-dimensional forms for that century is yet available. There are many in the archaeological record of Sumatra seems inscriptions from this time, but their translations without precedent in archaeology in South Asia. are still beset with many uncertainties. Most of the This fascination with the vajra implies two charinformation for the 14th century comes from the acteristics about Sumatran Buddhism: its esoteric highlands, specifically the area of Padang Roco, aspects were extremely popular in ritual; and the but more significantly from another region further local Buddhism, like other Sumatran approprianorth, the Tanahdatar region. That area and period tions of cultural materials from South Asia, made are of great interest because of deviations displayed use of certain motifs from South Asian art, but by the Buddhism there and then from the Bud- placed very different emphases on some of them. dhism which had existed in Sumatra in the previous Sumatra was not an isolated backwater; even the 600 years rather than continuity with the past. people in the highlands (where the majority of Esoteric Buddhist sites are found) for most of the conclusion Buddhist period were well aware of developments in the Buddhist cosmopolitan world, as witnessed Sumatran Buddhism was definitely a local product, by the use of Nāgarī script for Sanskrit mantras and not a mere reflection of foreign beliefs, though Su- yantras engraved on stone, metal foils, and bricks. matrans were definitely rapidly apprised of new The extraordinary complexity of the temple conartistic and philosophical ideas from the Buddhist struction rituals discussed by Ślączka hints at the realm which covered South Asia, Central Asia, East level of detail which could have been recovered had Asia, and Southeast Asia.9 In the year ad 1000, these the consecration deposits in the 200 sites in Southregions covered about half of the urbanized, literate east Asia where they appear been properly recorded. areas of the entire globe. The history of this enor- In fact none of them can be reconstructed in its mous area can only be understood by examining entirety. This situation is due to numerous factors, the similarities and differences between them in but one which could have been avoided is the use their interpretations of religious doctrines. The of technicians to dismantle temples for restoration statement by Arlo Griffiths (2011: 172) that ‘while rather than allocating the job to archaeologists. political or economic history may not stand to gain There are still sites in Muara Jambi which have not much from further discoveries, it is especially our been restored, Mahligai Temple being the most perspective on the history of Buddhist institutions important. This site lies at the northwest corner and practices in Sumatra, which stands to become of the site, and appears to have great potential to significantly enriched as new discoveries become yield relatively intact consecration deposits. Using known to scholarship’ is much too humble. As the insights of Ślączka’s research as a guide, and Woodward has indicated, Buddhist ideas were at employing Davidson’s and Woodward’s depiction least excellent proxies for the political and social of the link between maṇḍalas and political ideolideology of the societies where they were espoused, ogy, it is still possible for Buddhist archaeology in and more likely they were an independent varia- Sumatra to reach a much higher level of precision, ble shaping the possibilities of the political sphere and thus insight into Sumatra’s role as a source of rather than reacting to them. Buddhist ideas as well as art. 9. While acknowledging the importance of the Pāla intellectual world in shaping the Buddhist cultures of the Malay Peninsula and the Khmer domains, Skilling (2007: 97) points out that ‘[t]he icons and architecture of the region are accomplished and distinctive—they are not mere copies of Pāla or other Indian forms. That is, the members of local cultures were active participants who responded to normative texts according to their own social and religious needs and their own æsthetic ideals’.

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Chapter 12

The Tale of Sudhana and Manoharā on Candi Jago: An Interpretation of a Series of Narrative Bas-reliefs on a 13th-Century East Javanese Monument

C

k at e o’br i e n

andi jago is located at tumpang, some fourteen kilometres east of Malang in East Java.1 It is commonly held that the shrine was commissioned in ad 1268 by King Kṛtanagara on the death of his father, Viṣṇuvardhana, with a date of completion around 1280 to coincide with funereal rites held twelve years after death. Its relatively small size and current state of deterioration possibly belie the scope of its importance. This monument came into existence during a dramatic period not only in Javanese history, but in the history of East and Southeast Asia. This was the time of Khubilai Khan, whose expansionist aims throughout Asia were known to include Java. However, with Kṛtanagara also keen to broaden his sovereignty well beyond Java, conflict was inevitable. Tension between China and Java may well have continued until the Yuan dynasty came to an end in 1368. As I have indicated elsewhere (O’Brien 1988, 1990, 1993, 2008, 2011), much of the design and embellishment of Candi Jago reflects the tension of those times. Since the publication of Brandes’ extensive monograph on Candi Jago in 1904,2 most of the narratives portrayed on its five tiers of bas-relief panels have been identified. However, for some years

1. I would like to acknowledge the assistance of a number of colleagues and friends who have kindly read this work in its various drafts and offered numerous valuable suggestions for its improvement, in particular, Roy Jordaan, Andrea Acri, and Ian Dunn. For the many shortcomings that no doubt remain, I am solely responsible. 2. All references ‘(Brandes ph.*)’ herein relate to numbered photographs as published in that monograph, all of which may be viewed on the Digital Sources website of Leiden University (https://socrates.leidenuniv.nl, then to ‘Kern Institute’). As Brandes photographed Jago’s reliefs in the opposite direction to the flow of all the narratives, the plate numbers are now read (left to right) in reverse.

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two series did continue to resist efforts at positive identification. One is located on the southern and eastern faces of the first terrace (see Diagram 12.13) and has since been interpreted in terms of a Buddhist redaction of the Aji Dharma tale.4 The second series begins at the eastern end of the southern face of the beugel5 and continues on the eastern and northern faces of this same band. This latter series—the subject of this chapter—was interpreted some years ago6 as being an extension of the Kuñjarakarṇa tale, which had much earlier been correctly identified among the reliefs of the first terrace and beugel by van Stein Callenfels (1916: 445ff.). As an alternative identification, I propose to show that in fact the second unidentified series is the tale of the Bodhisattva prince Sudhana and the kinnarī princess Manoharā. As will become apparent, such an interpretation is not without problems. However, it would seem to supply far more satisfactory explanations for the great major ity of scenes within this bas-relief series than can be be provided by attempting to rationalize them as an extension of the Kuñjarakarṇa tale. 3. Diagram 1 is a skeletal plan of Candi Jago showing the layout of the bas-relief narratives on their various terraces. The points marking the start and finish of each story are indicated thereon. 4. Also known as Angling-darma (Rdn. Bambang Soetrisno 1985), and Aridharma (Hunter 2000: 69–102). 5. The beugel is a narrow band of reliefs girding the base of the second terrace (see Diag. 1). Beugel appears to have been a descriptive term used by Brandes and is retained here for its one-word convenience. 6. See Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan 1977, and also Soetrisno 1985: 14–20. No comparison with either of these two works will be made here in order not to further complicate an already multifaceted discussion of damaged reliefs.

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Diagram 12.1: Plan of Candi Jago showing the layout of the bas-relief narratives. (Drawing: author)

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The Tale of Sudhana and Manoharā on Candi Jago

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Fig. 12.1a: Candi Jago. (Original photo: Brandes N.W. 234) :

The romantic tale of Sudhana and Manoharā is well known throughout Asia and Southeast Asia, and has evidently been so for many centuries.7 What gives added interest as regards Candi Jago, is the presence of the amoghapāśa (‘unfailing noose’) within this tale. The amoghapāśa is a major attribute of the bodhisattva Amoghapāśa Lokeśvara, its purpose being to snare unenlightened beings and lead them to nirvana. It becomes significant then, that Amoghapāśa Lokeśvara (inscribed bharāla āryāmoghapāśa lokeśvara) is also the central divinity of Jago’s statuary. Jago’s particular emanation of Amoghapāśa is a white form, eight-armed and accompanied by the divinities Śyāmatārā, Sudhana kumāra, Bhṛkuṭī, and Hayagrīva. Evidence of devotion to the emanation of Avalokiteśvara known as Amoghapāśa Lokeśvara can be traced back as far as the late 6th century in East Asia (Leoshko 1985: 128) and late 8th century in 7. Concerning the diversity of this tale, see for example Padmanabh S. Jaini’s extensive survey (1966: 533ff.) and, more recently, Csaba Dezsö 2014: 74.

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Southeast Asia (Lunsingh Scheurleer and Klokke 1988: 58), but is strangely scarce if not completely absent in India. The forms of Amoghapāśa are many and varied but Pal (1967: 26) notes that it is the eight-armed figure that gained prominence in Java, Tibet, and Nepal. This divinity is much venerated in Tibet and particularly in Nepal, where the Aṣṭamīvrata rite—during which images of the deity are consecrated—is still performed by Newar Buddhists on the eighth day of the month, with numerous paṭas and maṇḍalas going back as far as the 16th century attesting to his worship (Pal 1985: 31, 68 [P18], 214). The iconography of Jago’s Amoghapāśa and that of the four companion statues closely follows a sādhana known to have been composed by the great Kashmiri scholar, Śākyaśrībhadra (ad 1127–225),8 much revered in Tibetan Buddhism. I will return to this figure in the final discussion. Success in the most esoteric forms of Tantric practice was believed not only to bring Buddhahood in life to the devotee, but also potential access 8. O’Brien 1993: 252–55; Schoterman 1994: 154–77.

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to extraordinary magical powers. This concept certainly seems to have gained the interest of a number of rulers in Asia and Southeast Asia by the time of Khubilai Khan.9 Attainment is achieved through the union of Wisdom and Compassion10 that is expressed at the highest level of Non-duality in the union of the female and male principles (respectively ) and is said to bring forth the Buddha as ‘son’.11 This triad of father/mother/son is described in precisely these terms in the Old Javanese Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan of indeterminate dating (Kats 1910: 48)12 and the Sutasoma of the 14th century (O’Brien 2008: 56, 208). I would argue that the establishment of such a triad was King Kṛtanagara’s plan in deifying his father as the Bodhisattva, Amoghapāśa Lokeśvara, in Candi Jago.13 Accordingly, Kṛtanagara’s abhiṣeka 9. Perhaps one of the earliest examples of royal initiation in the highest Tantras is the sādhana devised by Atīśa for the king of Western Tibet some three centuries earlier. The sādhana is based on the Guhyasamājatantra and its maṇḍala is emanated with Amitābha at its centre (Roerich 1949: 250–51; also O’Brien 1993: Appendix 2). How this process came to gain wider royal interest may be uncertain, but by the 12th century there are notable examples: Jayavarman VII (Cambodia, r. 1181–1218, see also n. 16, below); Kṛtanagara and Khubilai Khan, 13th century; and various Japanese emperors from late 13th century on (Kamikawa 1990)—all initiated in one form or other of the Ādibuddha. On the nature of the politicoreligious rivalry between Kṛtanagara and Khubilai, see Bade in this volume. 10. Also known as ‘Wisdom and Means’: it carries all the same connotations since ‘Means’ motivated by universal Compassion are deemed to be inseparable. 11. In Tibetan (and Nepalese) maṇḍalas where the male and female divinities are shown in union, they are described as yab-yum (‘father-mother’). 12. Various opinions have placed its compilation as early as the first half of the 10th century and as late as the 14th or even 15th century. 13. Deśavarṇana: Canto 41.4ab (Robson 1995: 54). Given the absence of epigraphic evidence, Griffiths (2010: 361) counsels caution in accepting that the Amoghapāśa statue of Jago was intended as the deified image of Viṣṇuvardhana. This will always be a moot point. Even Prapañca, author of the Deśavarṇana, was gently cautioned by his informant, an elderly abbot, as to the complete accuracy of all the details he was about to impart, since they were based on oral traditions (Robson 1995: 52ff.). However, Viṣṇuvardhana’s enshrinement image is far from the only one mentioned,

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name refers to his being a Jina(-Buddha) but as the oneness of Śiva and Buddha at the highest level of truth.14 Essential to the most esoteric practice is the ‘right’ female partner. For Kṛtanagara this was Śrī Bajradevī and in death we find the couple commemorated as Vairocana and Locanā (Robson 1995: 56). Thus, the identification of Kṛtanagara as Buddha Vairocana ties well with the interment image of his father in the particular eight-armed, white form of Amoghapāśa who occupied Vairocana’s central position in Jago’s maṇḍala.15 At a more secular level, fundamental to the Javanese concept of ideal kingship is the importance of the ‘right’ queen and the obligation on the king to pursue that quest, since it is the queen who embodies the fertility and good fortune of the kingdom. I have long maintained that Candi Jago, while fulfilling its commemorative role of housing the divine image of a dead king, is at the same time an exposé on the rising status of Buddhist-empowered kings of Java. So it is perhaps no surprise that besides the power of the pāśa to ensnare beings and draw them towards enlightenment, in the tale of the Bodhisattva prince Sudhana it is also the means of capturing his ideal wife and future queen, the kinnarī princess Manoharā.16 there being a number of other rulers mentioned covering a span of more than a century. Although of later dating, the Pararaton also mentions the enshrinement of Viṣṇuvardhana at Jago (Brandes 1920: 24, 77). 14. In the Deśavarṇana, the consecration name is given ‘as a Jina, Jñānabajreśvara’ (Robson 1995: 55). The 1351 Singhasari inscription gives it as ‘Śṛī Jñāneśvarabajra’; the Pararaton, as Bhaṭāra Śivabuddha (Brandes 1920: 24). 15. It may well be that a similar situation had already been earlier adopted in Cambodia with the triads founded by Jayavarman VII. By deifying the images of his deceased father and mother as Lokeśvara (Bodhisattva of Compassion) and Prajñāpāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom) he would be in a position to build his claim as Buddha-king, and indeed the king’s triad of Lokeśvara, Prajñāpāramitā, and the Buddha seems to have ‘dominated the first decade of his reign’ (Sharrock 2007: 234). Supported then by subsequent Tantric initiation rites to the great Tantric deity, Hevajra, he later projected this vision of himself as supreme Buddha in the multiple faces of the Ādi-Buddha, Vajrasattva, on his regnal temple at the Bayon (Sharrock 2007: 230–81). 16. The quest for the right queen is also the subject of two other tales illustrated on Jago, in particular the Kṛṣṇāyaṇa on the damaged cella walls and the Aji Dharma tale on the

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The Tale of Sudhana and Manoharā on Candi Jago While evidence of the Sudhana and Manoharā tale in Java has not as yet been unearthed among extant manuscripts, its appearance among the reliefs of Borobudur suggests that it had at least some currency in Central Java by the 8th century, when Buddhism flourished there. The story as it appears on Borobudur was not correctly identified until late in the 19th century. However, there were still problems in resolving some of its episodes and Krom, though he consulted many texts, was not able to precisely match the Borobudur version with any known sources of the tale.17 On the basis of his survey, Jaini proposed that while the Borobudur reliefs show affinity with the Sudhanakumārāvadāna from the Divyāvadāna collection, they also appear to share details found in later Pali recensions of the tale, suggesting an intermediate, unknown version (Jaini 1966: 555, 558). Similar difficulties are met with Jago’s ‘Sudhana’. Even though the present work draws on three Buddhist versions, i.e. the Sudhanāvadāna occurring

first terrace. In the Kṛṣṇāyaṇa kakavin, King Kṛṣṇa rejects the wife chosen for him, taking instead the Princess Rukmiṇī by abduction even though his action brings about war (Krom 1974: 284–90). The origin and interpretation of the Aji Dharma reliefs on Jago are ongoing problems and the reader is referred to Hunter 2000: 69–102 for an in-depth discussion. In essence, the queen has taken her own life as a result of misadventure by the couple. Aji Dharma is so grief-stricken that he journeys in quest of his lost love, convinced she is by now reincarnated. The narrative reliefs suggest their reunion. Among the other stories depicted, in the Pārthayajña (second terrace), the ruling Pāṇḍava clan have been tricked into the loss of their kingdom. It falls to Arjuna to take up the yoke of asceticism in order to win the favour of the gods and regain his family’s right to reign. The Arjunavivāha, on the third terrace, sees Arjuna granted the magical Paśupati weapon with which he will re-establish his family’s right to rule. However, god Indra first draws Arjuna into his own battle against the demon king Nivātakavaca who currently threatens heaven. Arjuna defeats the demon king and is rewarded by Indra with temporary marriage to a number of celestial nymphs in Indra’s heaven (Krom 1974: 234–49). 17. For information concerning the earliest scholars to have worked with the Sudhana reliefs on Borobudur, see Krom 1927: 230ff. and Jaini 1966. For a more recent examination of the Sudhanakumārāvadāna tale as depicted on Borobudur, see Miksic 1990: 77–81 and Levin 2011: 191–204.

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in the Tibetan canon,18 a Kinnarī contained in the Mahāvastu,19 and a third version of Khotanese origin,20 problems are still encountered. Whether any of these or some other localized text inspired the artisans of Jago is yet to be made clear, for as noted by Fontein (1981: 92) in his discussion of a particular panel in the Sudhana-Manoharā reliefs on Borobudur: Like some of the reliefs of Prambanan, this relief from Barabaḍur suggests the possibility that later texts from all over Southeast Asia may have preserved divergent traditions which found their expression in the reliefs of Barabaḍur, and that such material should not be excluded from our research simply because it was so obviously committed to writing long after Barabuḍur was built.

18. Originally translated from the Tibetan Kah-gyur into German by F. Anton von Schiefner in 1882 and later translated from the German into English by W.R.S. Ralston: Tibetan Tales derived from Indian Sources (1906: 44–74). An identical Sanskrit version of this avadāna is apparently also held in the Divyāvadāna collection of Nepalese manuscripts (copies held in Cambridge and Paris). This collection was transcribed but not translated by Edward B. Cowell and Robert A. Neil in The Divyâvadâna—A Collection of Early Buddhist Legends (repr. 1970), in which the tale is given the name Sudhanakumāra (‘Young Sudhana’). For the convenience of this study, I have made extensive use of Ralston’s English translation based on von Schiefner’s Kah-gyur version in German, and page numbers cited will refer to Ralston’s volume. Therefore, all references to ‘the avadāna’ herein will denote the Kah-gyur version. I am also indebted to Andrea Acri, who has alerted me to a very recent critical edition and English translation by Csaba Dezsö (2014) of an incomplete manuscript of the Sudhana-Manoharā tale held under the auspices of the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project. The text is believed to have been written in Bengal by the Buddhist scholar, Śāntākaragupta, and is possibly datable to the late 11th century. 19. J.J. Jones, The Mahāvastu, Vol. II (1952: 91–111). 20. H.W. Bailey, ‘The Sudhana Poem of Ṛddhiprabhāva’ (1966: 506–32). This version by Ṛddhiprabhāva was one of three Khotanese texts in Saka language examined by Bailey. He observed that it differed from the other two ‘markedly in phrases, in additional verses, and in orthography [being written] in a less developed form of the language’. Bailey also noted a colophon by Ṛddhiprabhāva stating that he had taken the tale from an ancient śāstra (1966: 506).

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Or, as observed by Pal (1978: 82) in reference to which ‘like-themes’ are projected in vertical ‘para Nepalese paubha in the possession of the Boston allels’ down through the reliefs on all wall facings.21 Museum of Fine Arts, which painting contains a The relevance of these ‘parallels’ to the story will be great number of scenes from the kinnarī tale in its indicated and briefly discussed during the scenemiddle register: ‘There are two versions of this story by-scene description and interpretation given below. in Buddhist literature, but the Newari rendering It should perhaps also be pointed out that depicted in this paubha seems to be yet a third discussion here will only deal with the tale on a variation which has taken on much local colour’. scene-by-scene basis with a view to establishing As with Borobudur and the Newar paubha, even identification. Any wider discussion of the tale with access to the three versions at hand we will from the point of view of its choice, location on the still find ourselves at variance with some episodes structure, its sequential position among the other projected in Jago’s reliefs. That we may in fact be narratives, etc., must be temporarily put aside, as dealing with a ‘localized’ adaptation will become also, regrettably, any detailed comparison with the abundantly clear when the scenes are considered Sudhana tale as it appears, say, on Borobodur. It is one by one. For example, one sees that the action the sole aim here to initially establish a relationship and venue of a scene can be resolved with the between the specified reliefs on the beugel with the avadāna version, only to find that the actors appear tale of Sudhana and Manoharā. to be at variance—or vice versa. The sequential In interpreting the beugel reliefs, the avadāna ordering of some episodes within the reliefs also (through Ralston’s translation) has been used as provides difficulties. It may be prudent to also bear the primary source for three reasons: (1) within my in mind that given Jago’s emphasis on kingship, the current knowledge, it appears to contain most of story as illustrated in the reliefs may be a deliberate the episodes depicted in the Jago reliefs, but more melding of specific episodes gathered from one or a importantly its comprehensive telling of the tale number of sources, and chosen for inclusion on the shrine with more earthly motives in mind, as well 21. A quick perusal of Diag. 1 will reveal that there is no as those of a spiritual and commemorative nature. consistent point on Jago for the starting and stopping of Making the task of dealing with the tale even relief narratives. This alone suggests that there is a fixed more difficult, 2.7 metres of stonework containing spatial order for the arrangement of narrative episodes and this is further supported by the fact that in some an unknown number of the opening scenes are instances, a single episode may occupy an entire panel, missing, with another small section near the end while the very next panel (e.g., around a corner) may hold of the series showing signs of never having been a number of episodes, all tightly condensed. This led me finished, the stones being only partially carved. As to the discovery that a system of vertical, parallel themes well, the beugel—which, unlike the other narrative exists down each of the four sides. How these themes acbands on Jago, carries no upper or lower decorative curately and ingeniously express tenets of Vajrayāna is extensively explained in O’Brien 1993, esp. 261–79. Basically, frieze or ogive bands—has lost the top course of its the parallel themes relate to symbolism associated with stones in a number of places so that identification the maṇḍala of the five Jina-Buddhas: Vairocana (centre), of individual characters is frequently hampered by Akṣobhya (east), Ratnasambhava (south), Amitābha (west), the loss of heads, headwear, facial features, etc. The and Amoghasiddhi (north). These five are the central dinatural erosion of time and climate together with vinities of the Diamond World maṇḍala but are also to be found in the central ‘palace’ of many other mandalas in geological disturbance and the more insidious and Tantric Buddhism, including the mandala of Amoghapāśa faster working effects of industrial pollution have Lokeśvara who is the central divinity of Jago. also contributed to the damage. A similar system relating to symbolism associated with Yet in spite of these obstacles, there are still the Jina-Buddhas is also found to be operating in the enough key episodes left in situ to make compari- Old Javanese kakavin Sutasoma, a 14th-century literary son with the Sudhana–Manoharā tale a thoroughly work centring on Vairocana (O’Brien 2008). A potential link between composition of the Sutasoma and a possiworthwhile exercise. Additional help also comes in ble 14th-century refurbishment of Jago is also considered the strong, vertical relationship that exists between therein (O’Brien 2008: 245–46) and again, from a different the narrative bands on Jago’s various terraces, by perspective, in a later essay (O’Brien 2011).

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The Tale of Sudhana and Manoharā on Candi Jago allows recognition of small details featured in the reliefs; (2) it features (as does the Ṛddhiprabhāva redaction) the amoghapāśa, which is the major attribute of the temple’s central divinity, Amoghapāśa Lokeśvara; (3) Sudhanakumāra is also one of the four acolyte figures who frequently accompanies Amoghapāśa in his maṇḍalas, and who also figures as a member of the cella statuary of Jago.22 Due to difficulties in describing and positively identifying some of Jago’s more eroded and depleted bas-relief scenes, it will be necessary to supply a reasonably detailed summary of the avadāna tale, itself quite lengthy. In many cases, it is precisely the small details contained in the literary version that make identification possible.

the sudhanāvadāna The tale opens by relating of two kings in Pañcāla: one who ruled in the north, the other in the south. 22. According to Mukhopadhyay (1985: 124), Sudhanakumāra, an acolyte of Amoghapāśa, is held to be the same Sudhanakumāra of the Gaṇḍavyūha Mahāyānasūtra. Amoghapāśa himself is a Bodhisattva figure, the spiritual son of Amitābha. Mukhopadhyay also notes that Sudhanakumāra, during his search for enlightenment, is directed by the Bodhisattva Sāmantabhadra ‘to approach Buddha Amitābha of the west from whom he learns the highest truth’. Iconographically, the acolyte Sudhanakumāra has a noble appearance, and his hands are held in añjali-mudrā with a book (of learning) under his left arm (Bhattacharyya 1958: 129). While any positive link between Prince Sudhana(-kumāra) of the Kah-gyur or Nepalese avadānas and Sudhanakumāra (son of a rich merchant) of the Gaṇḍavyūha is unknown to me, it is interesting to note that both the avadāna and Gaṇḍavyūha Sudhana tales appear on Borobudur; the avadāna being located on the lower register of reliefs on the main wall of the first terrace (actually the second terrace when counting the covered terrace) with the Gaṇḍavyūha story being the last of the narrative series on the upper galleries. One may also note a certain similarity in their separation on Jago, where the avadāna tale is also depicted on the second-from-lowest tier, with the statue of Sudhanakumāra highly likely to have resided in the temple’s cella with Amoghapāśa. On the appearance of both Sudhanas on Borobudur, Fontein (1967: 170) remarks: The appearance of a namesake of the person whom we may call the hero of the Barabuḍur in such an important place on the first gallery suggests the possibility that these two different persons may have had more in common than their names, at least in the eyes of the architects of the Barabuḍur.

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King Dhana of North Pañcāla was a law-abiding monarch; his capital of Hastināpura was therefore prosperous and abundant, totally free of disorder, crime, and disease. In the city was a beautiful lake inhabited by the nāga Janmacitra, whose power over the rains caused the land to be fertile; the people, being well supplied, tended generously to the welfare of Buddhist monks (śramaṇa) and Brahmans, as well as the poor and needy. The king of South Pañcāla, on the other hand, was negligent, cruel, and unjust. Because he did not rule in accordance with his dharma, the rains failed and eventually, out of fear and despair, the people ran away to North Pañcāla. One day when the king of South Pañcāla was out inspecting his domains, he found the towns and villages deserted, the parks and temples fallen into decay. The reason, he was told, was the situation of peace and plenty in North Pañcāla due to the righteousness of its king and the presence of the nāga Janmacitra. The king, heeding the opinions of his ministers, immediately promised to reform his ways on condition that the nāga could be brought to South Pañcāla. To that end, a snake charmer was hired and promised a basket of gold when the task was accomplished. The snake charmer surveyed the lake and ordered the preparation of utensils and offerings, guaranteeing to capture the nāga within seven days. The nāga, noting the arrival and purpose of the snake charmer, feared great distress at being separated from his parents and thus approached a hunter who lived nearby. Since his own livelihood depended on the continued presence of Janmacitra in the lake, the hunter readily agreed to help him. The nāga explained that when the snake charmer performed his ritual, the waters would begin to seethe and at that point the nāga would be drawn to the surface. Before killing the snake charmer, the hunter must force him to reverse the spell; otherwise, the nāga would forever remain captive to the spell. The nāga Janmacitra then ‘took up his abode in a lonely spot [and] when seven days had passed, the hunter hid himself near that place’ (Ralston 1906: 48). As the snake charmer proceeded with his ritual preparations, he was duly set upon by the

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hunter in the manner prescribed by the nāga, and then killed. Now that the nāga had been released from the spell, ‘he came forth from the lake’ and in gratitude led the hunter to his abode to meet his parents. They in turn rewarded him with many precious jewels and gold. Relating the incident to a gentle and kind ṛṣi who also lived near the lake, the hunter was admonished for having taken the jewels, etc. Instead, the ṛṣi advised him to ask for the ‘amogha-chain’ (Skt. amoghapāśa). At first the nāgas were reluctant to part with it, but as the debt was one of honour, they finally agreed. The story then shifts to North Pañcāla... Now, the king and queen of North Pañcāla did not have a son and this was a great sadness for them. On the advice of the Buddhist monks, Brahmans, and others, King Dhana was exhorted to pray to the gods. He therefore prayed to Śiva, Varuṇa, Kubera, Vasudeva, and many others. In answer to his prayers ‘a Bodhisat of the Bhadrakalpa entered into the womb of his good spouse’ (Ralston 1906: 51). Being gifted and intuitive in such matters, the queen advised the king that she was expecting a son. The king was utterly delighted, his pleasure manifest in strings of pearls and other jewels with which he adorned her. No expense was spared to ensure the comfort of the queen during her pregnancy and at the end of the nine months, a son was born ‘of noble form and lovely aspect, fair and gleaming, like unto gold in colour, with a head like a canopy, long arms, a brow of great width, interlacing eyebrows, a high-arched nose and provided with the full complement of limbs and joints’ (Ralston 1906: 51). He was called Sudhana. By the time the boy was grown up he was well schooled in reading and writing, ‘adroit in his manners’, and skilled in the five arts as was demanded by his status as a future kṣatriya king. King Dhana bestowed three palaces upon the young Sudhana, with a wife in each. The tale switches back to the forest... where the hunter has learned of a beautiful lake nearby where, on the fifteenth day of each month, the beautiful kinnarī princess, Manoharā, attended by a great number of kinnarī, would come there to bathe. The hunter resolved to use the amogha-chain to capture Manoharā, which task he duly accomplished.

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Since it would be most inappropriate for a mortal man to lay hands on a kinnarī, she offered her head jewel, the means of her power to fly and therefore escape, if he would promise not to touch her. Now, on that particular day, ‘the youth Sudhana23 had gone forth to the chase’, during which he encountered the hunter with Manoharā. Realizing that very much more was to be gained by offering Manoharā as a gift, the hunter presented her to Sudhana. There follows a long discourse on the voluptuous nature of her physical charms. Sudhana was immediately besotted with her ‘whose countenance was like unto the moon’ and on returning to his palace installed her in the upper rooms and there spent all his time. One day, two Brahmans came to Hāstinapura—one attaching himself to the king as purohita, the other to Sudhana. In order to secure his own position, the purohita devised a plot against Sudhana. An ongoing rebellion in the mountains gave the purohita his opportunity; he advised the king to send Sudhana as a test of his strength and courage. The king then summoned the youth who prepared to do his father’s bidding. However, when Sudhana returned to his own palace to take leave of Manoharā, upon seeing her he immediately forgot the words of his father. The purohita, aware of this, advised the king to summon the troops to the ready, call upon the youth, and send him without further ado. This was arranged and the king summoned Sudhana again. Before leaving, Sudhana gave Manoharā’s head jewel to his sympathetic mother with the request that it should be returned to Manoharā should any danger come to her during his absence. 23. In the Kah-gyur avadāna the youth of Sudhana is consistently emphasized (eg., Skt. Sudhanakumāra, Sudhanarājakumāra), which is also supported by the Divyāvadāna version. This is important as regards Jago, where the very youthful figure of Sudhana is never attired regally, with the possible exception of one problematic episode that could be interpreted as taking place in the kinnarī palace when Manoharā needed to regally dress Sudhana before presenting him to her father. This episode aside, Sudhana is consistently clothed quite simply in a kain that is tied and draped in the same manner throughout the reliefs. Apart from bracelets, he wears no other jewellery, save for one or possibly two episodes in which he wears an object around his neck.

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With the aid of the yakṣa king Vaiśravaṇa After gathering the recommended potions, and his mighty army, the mountain rebels were remedies, and spells, Sudhana set out. In turn, he quickly intimidated into surrendering peacefully met and overcame all the obstacles as forewarned to Sudhana. In fact, the people avowed that they by the ṛṣi and eventually arrived at the kinnarī were not in rebellion against the king but the king’s kingdom ruled by King Druma. As he stood gazing ministers. Being more than ready to accept the at the beautiful city, a number of kinnarī came to young and wise Sudhana, they opened the gates draw water. He asked them the purpose of all the and went forth with full pomp to meet him. water being drawn and was told that the princess At the palace... King Dhana asked the purohita Manoharā had recently returned, having escaped to explain a fearful dream he had just experienced. from mortal capture, and that now the smell of Although the purohita knew the dream was a sign humanity had to be washed off her. As he conversed that Sudhana had won over the rebels, he instead with them, Sudhana dropped Manoharā’s ring into told the king that it was a bad omen and that a one of the jugs and instructed that it be the first very complicated rite must be held to combat it. to be poured. Such a rite demanded that Manoharā be put to As soon as she saw the ring, Manoharā realized death. The king, swayed by the purohita, reluctantly that Sudhana had indeed come. She went to her agreed. However, Manoharā learned of the plan and father and after soothing his anger towards the went to the queen. The head jewel was returned to youth, presented Sudhana in ‘divine array’. Even though King Druma was much impressed by Manoharā and she was able to escape. On her way back to the kingdom of her father, Sudhana and greatly desired him as son-in-law, he Manoharā recalled Sudhana’s love for her and nevertheless set the youth several tasks to perform. went to the ṛṣi. Knowing that Sudhana would also After performing truly amazing feats with sword question him, Manoharā gave the ṛṣi her ring and and arrow, Sudhana was set one more task by the a message for Sudhana should he wish to follow king: he was required to pick Manoharā out from her. She warned that the journey was really far too amid one thousand other beautiful kinnarī exactly arduous for a mortal as there were many dangerous like her. However, drawing on her love for him, obstacles to be overcome, but nevertheless left full Sudhana ordered that the real Manoharā present instructions on how to deal with each—should he herself, with which command she readily complied. King Druma could find no anger for this and still be intent on making the journey. The victorious Sudhana returned with his army instead summoned his people to pay great honour from the mountains. After reporting to his father, to Sudhana. The king happily agreed to the union he begged leave to return to his palace and there of his beautiful daughter with Sudhana, although learned of Manoharā’s departure. From his mother with a warning that he should never desert her. The he heard details of the affair and he resolved to happy couple sojourned in the kinnarī kingdom follow Manoharā. The ṛṣi reassured Sudhana con- for some time, but Sudhana became increasingly cerning his future happiness and proceeded to distressed by the prolonged separation from his pass on Manoharā’s instructions. He told of the own parents and so begged leave of the king in mountains, the fabulous animals and ogres with order to take Manoharā back to the world of men. terrifying weapons and appearance, of the many There was great rejoicing in Hāstinapura upon strange rivers Sudhana would need to cross. The their arrival and the entry of the royal couple was last two would be a river of snakes—the crossing a triumphant affair. After receiving gifts of jewels from Sudhana and of which would require a ‘charm against snakes’— and a river of reeds, requiring ‘the magic of sharp an account of his journey to the city of the kinnarī, weapons struck together’. After crossing the last King Dhana invested his son as king. For his part, river, he would come to a land ‘rich in bushes’ where Sudhana realized that his good fortune in acquiring he would have to overcome the 500 yakṣas who Manoharā and the might of kingly power was the dwelt there. There too he would find the capital of result of ‘earlier deeds’ and resolved to spend his the kinnarī king (Ralston 1906: 70). reign bestowing gifts and practising good works.

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Fig. 12.1b: The King of South Pañcāla goes out to inspect his domain. (Brandes ph. 102/103)

the tale of sudhana on candi jago

long scene, which is a highly ordered landscape, perhaps a formal garden or a park. The sequence Following the description of each scene, an inter- of two different tree types with constructed surpretation will be offered based for the most part, rounds is repeated three times in the remaining as noted earlier, on the Schiefner/Ralston transla- stonework. No other figures are visible and it is tion of the avadāna as contained in the Kah-gyur. unknown how far this scene may have extended— However, in a few instances of variance between the rest of the panel along to the southeast corner the reliefs and the avadāna, I will also draw upon of the shrine (2.7 metres) is missing, as is a shorter the jātaka version as related in the Mahāvastu for distance around the corner on the eastern face. possible explanation and, in one interesting case, Interpretation: In terms of the avadāna tale, this the Khotanese redaction.24 Given the difficulties scene likely depicts the king of South Pañcāla as he posed by damage and loss and resulting uncergoes out to inspect his domains and finds them detainties, each interpretation will be followed by an serted. Perhaps in scenes on the now-missing section, analysis of the relationship between the relevant we might have seen him discussing the desertion of scene and those appearing in the narrative bands his people with his ministers, promising to reform immediately above and below the beugel, bearing if they will return. We might have also seen some in mind the earlier mentioned system of ‘parallel reference to the rain-bringing nāga who resided themes’ operative on Jago which may well assist in North Pañcāla and to the snake charmer being in any discussion of the subject matter of a scene. dispatched to snare the nāga and bring it to South As an appendix to this work, I have also included Pañcāla. While we can only speculate on missing a tabulated list of the scenes with an abbreviated episodes, could it be mere coincidence that the start summary of each. of the tale showing the ruler and kingdom of South Pañcāla is depicted on Jago’s southern face? southern face Parallel themes: Parallels for this scene Scene 1 are provided on the temple by stories above (Pārthayajña, second terrace), and below (Aji Reading from left to right, the first scene of the Dharma, first terrace). Whereas at this point on Sudhana tale (Fig. 1.1b) is separated from the last scene of the previous tale (Kuñjarakarṇa) by a the beugel the bad king of South Pañcāla finds triangular floral motif followed by what appears himself ruler of a kingdom bereft of its populace, to be a banana palm. Beside the palm, stands a Yudhiṣṭhira (directly above), through a foolish corpulent male figure dressed in royal garb. His act, has a kingdom of people of which he is no damaged face looks towards the remainder of this longer ruler. Directly below on the first terrace, Aji Dharma is similarly kingdomless through selfimposed exile.25 24. It should be noted that while the Mahāvastujātaka does occasionally provide quite a plausible interpretation for some puzzling scenes, it does not feature the amoghapāśa at all— the hunter trapped Manohāra by means of a spell.

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25. According to the well-known episode from the Tantri tales, King Aji Dharma has left his kingdom to wander in

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Fig. 12.2: King and queen of North Pāñcala (?). (Brandes ph. 101/100)

southern face Scene 2

Fig. 12.2a: Detail. (Brandes ph. 101) abject remorse for having allowed his wife (Satyavatī) to commit suicide. Added to this, the kingdom is now without its most valuable asset, the queen. At this point in the Aji Dharma story, Jago’s episodes begin to deviate from other known versions. Aji Dharma, unable to fill the void in his life with any other woman, abandons his kingdom but then encounters Ambaravatī, the daughter of an ascetic. She is the image of Satyavatī and Aji Dharma perceives her to be the reincarnation of his lost love. However, her father is violently opposed to this match (Soetrisno 1985: 1–19).

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As can be seen better in Fig. 2a (detail), there are actually three figures in this early photo by Brandes. Only the lower limbs are visible on the figure at far left. Given that it is separated from the two figures shown by a small vegetal motif, it is conceivable that the first figure may have belonged to a prior scene that has now disappeared. The stance of the feet, however, indicates that it is faced in the same direction as the second figure. Of the two main figures, one is certainly female; the other, male and somewhat paunchy. Though the upper portion of his head is missing, the lower half of the face seems rather gross and rākṣasalike. His adornments suggest a royal figure, a king. The headless female figure has her left hand on the shoulder of the male. Her right hand, at chest height, appears to be holding something small. The male’s right arm is outstretched, his hand behind her back or around her waist. His left hand seems to grasp his paunch. The couple appear to be in ‘inhabited’ space—perhaps a palace. To the right of the ‘king’ there is a highly stylized tree in a kuruṅan,26 followed by a wall and gateway. 26. A kuruṅan appears to be a constructed, formal surround for a tree. In his discussion of the Kuñjarakarṇa reliefs of Candi Jago, Bernet Kempers remarks that this particular tree motif (of which there seems to be at least two different types) ‘indicates that the action takes place in heaven [while] the last one in a series of such trees at the same time marks the end of the scene in

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Interpretation: Through steadfast performance of appropriate rites, the king and queen of North Pañcāla have finally been blessed with a child who will be a ‘Bodhisat of the Bhadrakalpa’. When the queen tells the king that she knows she is expecting a son, ‘the king joyfully drew himself up, and stretched out his right arm and said, “I shall behold the son whom I have long been desiring”.... Thus did he joyfully exclaim’ (Ralston 1906: 51). Apart from the fact that in the Jago scene a kingly figure plainly extends his right arm to a female figure, perhaps we can also gauge a little of his ‘joy’ in the posture of his left hand as he clasps his paunch. In further explanation of this scene, the story goes on to relate that throughout the queen’s pregnancy the king pampered her with special measures to preserve her comfort in times of heat and cold and she was given special foods, etc. ‘With strings of pearls of various kinds and with other ornaments he adorned the body of his wife’ (Ralston 1906: 51–52). That we should find a queen bejewelled so on Jago would not be unique, but could it be suggested that the small item held by her is perhaps a ring or a jewel with which the king has demonstrated his pleasure at her condition? Parallel themes: The pregnancy aspect is well suited for placement on the eastern face of the shrine, where we find episodes on all levels very much concerned with aspects of femininity and feminine behaviour. These will become obvious as the scenes unfold. Here, in the Sudhana tale, the emphasis that is placed on producing a son underlines one of the most important roles of a queen.

(see Fig. 12.3a). The absence of stones on the top row causes some problems with the first figure, but from his corpulence and dress, it could be the same royal figure from the previous scene. The second figure is obviously female but, if it is the same woman from the previous scene, then she seems older. These two figures face a young male figure seated in a respectful pose before them. This latter figure has sustained some damage to the face, but we can see that his hair is wavy, his eyebrows meet over his nose, and his dress seems to consist of a kain, rolled and tied at the waist. There are a number of curling motifs around the seated figure.27 The three figures in this scene are separated from the next scene by a tree with luxuriant foliage—its lower branches, laden with fruit, dip to the ground (see detail, Fig. 12.3a). This particular tree motif is the only one of its kind on Jago.

Scene 3 Three figures occupy the scene in Fig. 12.3, which is separated from the next by a bountiful tree heaven’ (as cited in A. Teeuw and S. Robson 1981: 208). Notably on Jago, this particular type of tree with kuruṅan motif seems only to appear on the first terrace and the beugel. It does not seem to have been used at all on the second and third terraces or the cella where other ‘heavenly’ locales might have prompted its use. On the other hand, if the monument was refurbished and/or modified in the 14th century—which could well explain the odd nature of the beugel in the overall design—it may also account for the inclusion of variations from those employed in the 13th century when the temple was originally commissioned.

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Fig. 12.3: The king and queen of North Pañcāla with their son, Sudhana (?). (Brandes ph. 100/99) 27. On Jago, ‘curling flame motifs’ near a character would seem to most often indicate divine or magical status.

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Fig. 12.3a: Detail of anthropomorphic tree. (Brandes ph. 99)

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Returning to Fig. 12.3 (main illustration), it might be suggested that the left hand of the female figure seems to be holding something small, delicately poised between thumb and forefinger. Something this small could conceivably be a ring or a gem—might it have some connection with the gift of the previous scene? Or is this the presentation of the palaces? In any event it would seem to be the royal female who dominates the scene, with the king standing behind her. As regards the fruiting tree, its shape is distinctly anthropomorphic, clearly suggesting feminine form and grace—the four upper limbs rather like a four-armed goddess. Its fluid, curving form and gracefully weeping branches, heavy with fruit, may well be signifying the abundance of the capital of North Pāñcala, Hāstinapura. In kakavin literature, the motif of a tree whose laden branches hang down to the ground is frequently employed to indicate fertility and abundance in a landscape. Fertility and abundance are also primary attributes of a queen. The tree also serves here as a most unique scene divider—a function to which we will return shortly. Although thus far the jātaka version from the Mahāvastu has contributed little to the interpretation of the Jago scenes, at this point the jātaka does relate that having come of age, Sudhanu (= Sudhana) was invested as ruler on the retirement of his father. It also mentions among the many virtues of Sudhanu, that he was ‘accomplished and dutiful to his mother and father’ (Jones 1952: 92).

Interpretation: Scene 3 presumably depicts the king and queen of North Pañcāla some years later. Although the facial features, like the others in this scene, are badly damaged, the smaller figure who sits Scene 4 in attitude of obeisance would be none other than Sudhana as a youth. The submissive nature of this character is constant throughout the series, and togeth- The stance of the larger figure—right hand on er with specific features and dress, makes it consistently hip, left hand raised with first and middle fingers recognizable as being one and the same. The avadāna extended—suggests an attitude of directive. The relates that among other qualities, he was ‘adroit in young male looks towards the larger figure with his manners’. Here, the posture suggests compliancy head slightly bowed (Fig. 12.4a, detail). His right towards his parents. The avadāna describes Sudhana hand is raised and held flat, palm against his left as having ‘a head like a canopy, long arms, a brow of breast and upper forearm, the fingers spread into great width, interlacing eyebrows, a high-arched nose, two groups. This interesting posture suggests aletc.’ and while these features are damaged here, they legiance or obedience to a command with the feet can easily be recognized in later illustrations such as turned away from the regal figure, as if leaving to Figs. 12.6 and 12.11a. From the avadāna we also learn carry out an order. Again there is damage to the face, that when Sudhana came of age and was skilled in the but enough is left of the dress to suggest that it is arts and qualities of a future king, the king bestowed the same young figure from the earlier scene. There will be seen to be a consistency in the dress—parthree palaces upon the youth, with a wife in each.

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Fig. 12.4: A corpulent, bejewelled rākṣasa/yakṣa figure addresses the young male. (Brandes ph. 99/98)

Fig. 12.4a: Detail. (Photo: author)

ticularly in the tying of the kain—that like the facial features, will also carry through ensuing scenes. The figures are framed on the leading (left) side by the aforementioned anthropomorphic tree—which would appear by its ‘stance’ to be ‘concerned’ with the current scene rather than the former—and on the far (right) side by vegetal and rock motifs. There are a number of curling flame motifs near the young male (at his far side) with no such motifs apparent near the thickset figure; indeed, it is the anthropomorphic tree which seems to attend him. A circular type of motif separates the two figures at head level; whether it has some special meaning is difficult to say as similar motifs appear throughout the series. In the lower right-hand corner of the same scene, there is a series of water motifs in which the head of some sort of horned aquatic creature appears to emerge from the waves. Above this creature there are motifs that seem to represent rocks and vegetation. These also continue into the next scene. What ties the aquatic creature to the current scene and not the following one is the fact that it faces back towards the two figures previously described.28 Interpretation: Precisely what is being acted out in this scene is somewhat difficult to establish from 28. In his description of this particular relief, Brandes (1904: 55) refers to the creature as een dier (‘an animal’) with no further comment.

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Fig. 12.5: At the lake of Janmacitra. (Brandes phs. 98 and 97)

the avadāna. The youthful figure shares many meaning on the temple.29 In the Aji Dharma story similarities with the earlier figure proposed as on the tier below, there is the ‘demonic’ form of Sudhana, although there may be a suggestion here Ambaravatī’s father as he faces the fatal arrow from of Sudhana being slightly older. Given the similar- Aji Dharma’s bow,30 and to a certain extent, this ity with the rotund figure in Figs. 12.2 and 12.2a, it echoes the action against the snake charmer in the could be suggested that the corpulent figure here Sudhana tale, although not shown in the reliefs. is the king of North Pañcāla (Sudhana’s father); however, this presents difficulties later in Scene 9 Scene 5 where the royal figure can also be taken contextually to be King Dhana but where his appearance This scene (Fig. 12.5) is the longest and most promis much slimmer. inent on the eastern face of the beugel. On the left An alternative explanation, also to be found half are two figures in similar crouching positions in the avadāna, is that when the nāga, Janmaci- among rock motifs at the edge of an expanse of tra, learned of the plot to send a snake charmer to water motifs (continued out of range of this phocapture him, he assumed the form of a man and tograph). Although both figures have sustained went to the hunter, Phalaka, who lived nearby in considerable damage to their faces, the one on the order to elicit his help. A plan was devised to kill right appears to have some form of headdress with the snake charmer by the lake. jewellery comparable to the ‘royal’ figure in the Connected to the same idea is the possibility previous scene and probably again in Scene 6 (Fig. that it is the king of South Pañcāla commissioning 12.6). The attributes of the left-hand figure are too the snake charmer to abduct the nāga, who gains marred to be recognizable but his kain may also warning by apparently overhearing (?) them. Is the be similar to that of the youth in Fig. 12.4a. The horned creature performing the role of listening head of the larger figure appears to be turned back to the previous two figures? towards his slender companion as if the two are in This is surely a scene where the venue of Jan- conversation.31 macitra is being introduced, but as yet we have no certainty as to the actors. 29. Arjuna has just undertaken a quest to regain the Parallel themes: Unfortunately, in this in- kingdom for his brother, Yudhiṣṭhira. In order to prepare stance, there seems little help to be gleaned himself physically and mentally as well as gain the favour from parallel scenes either above or below. In the of the gods, he has taken an oath of penance and chastity. Pārthayajña scene immediately above, Arjuna On the eastern wall the sight of courting couples is his first temptation, but not his last. On the far end of the same encounters two pairs of courting couples in the face he will brush aside the attempted seduction by a nun. forest, which is followed by the first views of 30. For the Pārthayajña scene, see Brandes ph. 149/148 Mahāyanī’s hermitage. Since the incident of the and for the Aji Dharma scene, see Brandes ph. 43/42. courting couples is not related in the Pārthaya- 31. Interestingly, the crouching posture of these two jña kakavin, we are left to guess its content and figures is very like that of figures elsewhere on Jago depicted

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In the centre of the water motifs there is a large conical-shape ‘pile’ of rock motifs. At the centre of its base, one of the rock motifs has the appearance of an arched cavern with a tiny figure of indeterminate form inside. This rocky ‘cavern’ marks near enough the centre of the eastern face of the beugel.32 To the right of the ‘cavern’ is a small boat containing a single figure. Seen in detail (Fig. 12.5a), the head in profile is strangely shaped with quite definitely bulging eye(s). Part of the odd shape of the head could be due to some form of head covering. The hands are held, seemingly clasped together. Wave motifs surround the craft, both above and below. This scene is separated by vegetation and rock motifs from the next scene. Interpretation: According to the story, Janmacitra ‘then took up his abode in a lonely spot’ and the hunter took up a position ‘near that place’. In the Jago scene, neither of the two crouching figures appears to be armed with a bow and arrow as related in the avadāna. The similarity between these two figures and those of the preceding scene and following scene has already been noted. Brandes (1904: 55) suggested that the larger figure with the crown and assorted jewellery is a ‘reuzenkoning’ (‘rākṣasa Fig. 12.5a: Detail. (Photo: author) king’), with teeth showing as if laughing.33 The smaller figure he described as a servant ‘boeta’—a interest, Brandes (1904: 55) describes the boat as ‘een naga-vormig schuitje, met een beeldje er in’ (‘a being of a lower class of demon (bhūta). If the identities of the two crouching figures are small, nāga-shaped boat with a tiny figure in it’). ambiguous, so too is the figure in the boat. Con- However, if it is the nāga, Janmacitra, where is the textually, it is the nāga. The water motifs do seem royal regalia of the previous scenes? Is it then the disturbed in nature as described in the tale.34 Of hunter on his way to the abode of the nāga’s parents where he is to be rewarded? Another possibility, albeit remote, is that in some form of localized adas flying (see, e.g., Fig. 12.14, Scene 14); see also Brandes aptation, the figure involved in this whole episode phs. 40 and 187. Notably, however, the flying figures are is not a hunter but Sudhana himself.35 accompanied by a fluttering ribbon-like motif, distinctly

different to the rock motifs of the current scene. 32. In the Pārthayajña above, the centre of the main panel is marked by a thirteen-storey pagoda-like (meru) structure in Mahāyānī’s hermitage (Brandes ph. 148/147). Below, on the first terrace (Aji Dharma), it is the liberated ‘good’ character of the demon ascetic that marks the centre (Brandes ph. 42/41). 33. I thought the figure a little too damaged, at least in the photo, to be sure about the ‘laughing’. 34. ‘...when, as he is performing a ceremony of this kind, the waters of the lake begin to seethe and overflow, and I come forth from them’: see the summary of the tale as given above.

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35. Andrea Acri (personal communicaton) has raised the possibility that the head of the figure in the boat could be bird-like and that with its beak-like nose and bulging eye it may well represent a garuḍa figure. As the archenemy of snakes, its aid is frequently invoked in spells aimed at the healing of snakebite, etc. While none of the versions of the tale in my possession give any detail of mantras or spells used by the snake charmer, this does not preclude the possibility that a Javanese version may well have featured a garuḍa spell, given the popularity of the bird in Javanese and Balinese art and literature.

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with guarding the nāga, it would not be in order for him to be involved in a killing, and perhaps this situation has been resolved here by suggested reference to the story below where a ‘killing’ actually has taken place. If we accept that the lake and cavern scene is the domain of Janmacitra into which Sudhana has, or is about to enter, then it is closely paralleled above on the second terrace where, in a scene to the right of Mahāyanī’s hermitage, we see Arjuna being ushered into Mahāyanī’s bale.36 Scene 6 The first thing to be noted about this scene (Fig. 12.6) is that it is clearly not taking place within the boundaries of formalized space (ie., no gates or structures). ‘Rocks’ and a tree separate the two figures beside the lake in the previous scene, with similar motifs forming a divide between this and the ensuing scene. Fig 12.6a shows the two figures in detail. The one to the left is paunchy and regally garbed. His left hand (much less damaged and more obvious in Fig. 12.6) is extended towards the second figure—whether it is just a raised finger or Fig. 12.5b: Section of beugel, second and third terraces whether the hand once held something is unclear. on eastern face. (Photo: author) The second figure is that of a young male seated on As with the previous scene, the venue can be the ground in a very respectful posture, hands held resolved according to the story, but not the par- in obeisance. When examining this relief in situ, I noted that these hands, although damaged, may ticipants. The notable absence in this episode in the reliefs also once have held something which protruded is the slaying of the snake charmer; however, the from underneath. In Brandes ph. 95 there is the parallel scene directly below on the first terrace suggestion of perhaps a chain or string of beads running over the outside of the hand—but it is may assist. Parallel themes: At this point, mid-centre of difficult to be certain. It was earlier suggested that the headgear or Jago’s eastern face, the scenes on the other levels crown on the larger of these two figures might above and below those of the Sudhana tale become be similar to that worn by a similar figure in Fig. quite important (see Fig. 12.5b). For example, in the 12.5, while the seated figure is very similar to the tale on the first terrace below, Aji Dharma (out of young male in an identical pose in Fig. 12.3 and sight to the left) has killed the demon ascetic with very likely the same as in Fig. 12.4. Each of these his bow and arrow, along with the demon’s two representations of the youth is accompanied by accomplices. The three lie dead, directly below the a curling motif. In Fig. 12.5 a curling motif is set lake scene on the beugel. As noted, at this juncture in the Sudhana avadāna, the hunter kills the snake charmer al36. While there is considerable difficulty with the though neither of the crouching figures appears Janmacitra scene on Jago, it is perhaps worth noting that to be armed. If it is Sudhana, a Bodhisattva, who Krom (1927: 251) also had similar problems with the same is in league with Janmacitra or has been charged episode as depicted on Borobudur.

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Fig. 12.6: Sudhana receives the amogha-chain? (Brandes ph. 96)

Fig. 12.6a: Detail. (Photo: author)

between the two crouching figures, a further indication that it is the same youth as in Figs. 12.3 and 12.4. As for the curling motifs present in the current scene, although ubiquitous in the scenes pertaining

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to this tale on Jago—particularly those involving Sudhana—here, both figures are attended by them. Interpretation: We know from the source tale that the hunter was rewarded by the nāgas with the

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Fig. 12.7: Sudhana (circled). (Photo: author; cf. Brandes phs. 96, 95)

amoghapāśa and we might surmise that the Jago scene portrays the bestowing of the gift—perhaps with variant characters. It is interesting that while the avadāna does not appear to ascribe royal status to Janmacitra or his parents, when Krom wrote of the same episode on the Borobudur version using the Divyāvadāna as the source tale, he identified the parents of Janmacitra as the nāga king and queen. Looking at the elaborate headgear on the ‘royal’ figure in this scene, we can see serpent-like scrolls at the back of it.37 This scene may then be rendering a grateful nāga ‘king’ as he presents the amogha-chain to the saviour of his son—but here on Jago the recipient appears to be Sudhana. It may well be that in these episodes on Jago, the youthful figure has been Sudhana all along. Parallel themes: If it is counsel that Sudhana is receiving (along with the amogha-chain?) from the nāga king, then it is paralleled above in the Pārthayajña reliefs where Arjuna is receiving counsel from Mahāyanī on the true nature of existence and the evil power of rajas and tamas, which must be overcome (Zoetmulder 1974: 369). Arjuna will shortly have cause to put this advice to good use. As for the amogha-chain on the beugel, it came to be used in the capture of Manoharā. 37. Brandes (1904: 55) describes the figure as a ‘boetavorst (?) of titan, met makoṭa (kroon) en wild naar achten krullende lokken’ (‘a demon king (?) or giant, with crown and unruly hair curling at the back’).

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Scene 7 The lone figure (circled) in this scene (Fig. 12.7) is once again that of the young male. He walks in the direction of the narrative reliefs but looks back over his shoulder to the two figures in the previous scene. Clearly visible on this figure is the presence of a decorative item worn around the neck, extending out to the shoulders. While such an item being worn is not apparent in the previous scene, here, bead shapes on the chest and shoulder are quite clear. The youthful figure is separated from the ensuing scene to the right by a highly stylized tree motif (without kuruṅan); notably, he is without the curling motif. Interpretation: Here, a young male journeys on, alone. He looks back however, as if to the previous scene. Possibly this is a device to portray recollection (of received counsel). According to the story, on the day that Sudhana acquired Manoharā, the kinnarī princess, he had gone ‘forth to the chase’, and the next scene may actually depict the first meeting of the couple. As for the item around the figure’s neck, could this be the amoghapāśa itself?38 Regarding the tree motif, whether we understand it as a ‘tree of heaven’ (pārijāta) may be open to question but there is no doubt that its placement 38. In later scenes, Sudhana will again be shown wearing certain items of significance—perhaps an artistic device to convey that he has such items in his possession.

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Fig. 12.8: Sudhana meets Manoharā (?). (Brandes phs. 95, 94)

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here, in lieu of rock or vegetal motifs, clearly has meaning. Like the earlier fruit-laden tree, this is a special scene divider, marking either the entry or exit point of an extraordinary area. Perhaps it serves to mark the end of the special area through which Sudhana has passed: the kingdom of North Pañcāla and the cave-realm of the nāgas. This being the case, the fruiting tree may have marked the entry point and this in itself is significant since we are told that the fertility and abundance of North Pañcāla were entirely due to the presence of the nāga Janmacitra who lived in its lake and who held the power over rain. Parallel themes: The parallel that occurs here with the Pārthayajña scene above is both subtle and interesting. As noted, Sudhana is looking back as he journeys, as if in reflection on the advice or instruction he has just received. In a scene almost directly above, Arjuna is sitting alone in his bale, having retired for the night. The story relates that at this time Arjuna is beset by problems with his own desires but that Mahāyanī’s advice brings calm to his mind as he reflects on her words (Zoetmulder 1974: 369). In this scene, Arjuna sits in his bale also facing the previous scene (Brandes ph. 146). The stylized tree separating the journeying Sudhana from the next scene is also paralleled below on the first terrace where, according to the available version of the Aji Dharma, the Brahman accompanies the ‘liberated’ ascetic (shown as flying) to the realm of Vairocana (see Brandes ph. 40). Scene 8 This illustration includes part of the previous scene (Sudhana and parijāta tree) to demonstrate continuity in the image of the young man. The action in Scene 8 (Fig. 12.8) appears to be taking place outside a walled compound, the enclosing fence and gateway acting as a scene divider. There are four figures taking part. The young male (some damage) to the left faces another slender, somewhat regally dressed figure (slightly less damaged). The regal figure wears a headdress featuring a backward curling diadem at the front and what might be a ‘lobster-claw’ at the back (see detail in Fig. 12.8a). The vestiges of a bosom in the Brandes photo suggest that this figure is female. To the rear of this ‘regal’ person stand two panakawan-like figures.

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Fig. 12.8a: Sudhana and Manoharā. (Photo: author)

Fig. 12.8b: Statue of a ‘royal’ kinnarī in Mojokerto Museum, East Java. (Photo: author)

In the top register, a curling motif separates the two main figures, while at ‘ground level’ there is a floral motif.

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Interpretation: As related in the avadāna, while Sudhana was out on a chase he encountered a hunter who had used the amoghapāśa given to him by the nāga to capture Manoharā as she bathed at a lake. The hunter had then presented Manoharā to Sudhana, who was immediately captivated by her charms—on which the story dwells at some length. That this scene shows the hunter is unlikely; the first figure to the left—in spite of its deterioration—is much closer to that of our Sudhana. The second figure is regally attired with jewellery and ornate headdress. Moreover, there is no sign of obeisance between these two: they clearly meet as equals. It would appear that because it is Sudhana himself who has acquired the amogha-chain (the beaded item is still apparent in this scene), it is he who has also met or captured Manoharā. If the second figure is Manoharā, then the headdress as described would not be out of keeping with her status as a princess.39 The eyes on this particular figure were very well defined and a comparison with those of the female in the next scene revealed them to be very similar in shape. We are also told that she surrendered her head jewel (the means of her ability to fly) to her captor. Perhaps it is her head jewel that she is here offering to Sudhana. As an alternative explanation, the Jago scene of Fig. 8a and the next scene (Fig. 12.9) might refer to an incident related in the Mahāvastu (jātaka) version of the Sudhana tale. In the Mahāvastu episode, Prince Sudhanu (= Sudhana) is sent by his father to attend a grand sacrificial rite being held in a neighbouring kingdom. Among the creatures in the sacrificial enclosure is the beautiful kinnarī, Manoharā. When Sudhanu sees her, he falls in love with her and she with him. He persuades the king to abandon his planned sacrifice and hold a ‘blameless’ rite instead. Sudhanu then returns with his 39. Although having no discernible connection with Jago, the Museum of Antiquities in Mojokerto, East Java, has in its collection a largish statue of a kinnarī displaying distinctly royal embellishments (Fig. 8b). Her crown (a little damaged) appears to have been of the same style as that of the royal figure in the Jago scene, though perhaps not so exaggerated in height. Enquiries at the Museum revealed that the exact provenance of the statue was not known, other than that it was ‘from the area’ and the dating: ‘around Majapahit’.

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia the Pārthayajña reliefs above, a nun is slipping away from a bale in which other nuns are still asleep, in order to go to Arjuna (Brandes ph. 144). The Pārthayajña scene provides an interesting interplay with the Sudhana tale. Whereas the nun steals away voluntarily from her companions in an attempt to seduce Arjuna, who rejects her in accordance with his ascetic aspirations, Manoharā has, by her capture, been isolated from her female companions against her will. In the avadāna, Manoharā must reject the possible (and inappropriate) attentions of the hunter, but then—as we may presume from the next scene has also happened on Jago—she takes up with Sudhana, the equality of their regal status being closer and a union therefore more appropriate.41

Fig. 12.8c: Detail showing Panakawan figures. (Brandes ph. 94)

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beautiful kinnarī to his own kingdom, where he This scene (Fig. 12.9) is quite obviously set within a compound, bordered by a sloping wall with a gate sets up court solely with her. at the front (left) and a similar wall without a gate The introduction of panakawan (Fig. 12.8c) at to the rear (right). Five persons are involved in the this point in the story is intriguing. In a discusscene: the first is the young male who stands in resion of the Aji Dharma reliefs on the first terrace spectful posture before another figure whose crown of Jago, Hunter (2000: 75, 81) notes the presence of suggests that he is a king. There is some damage, two distinct sets of panakawan figures who seem to but the second figure appears either to be holding bear a strong resemblance to current-day ‘left’ and something or to show his right hand in a gesture of ‘right’ panakawan figures appearing in Javanese and instruction (with index finger raised), his left arm Balinese wayang performances. by his side (see detail, Fig. 12.9a). Reclining in the The Sudhana-Manoharā panakawan are obvibale is a young, voluptuous female. Her long hair ously of a similar class of figures as those in the Aji falls down behind her shoulders as she leans back, Dharma reliefs, but the now deteriorated state of the head turned away as though in grief, not wanting carvings makes it impossible to say that they are to hear the words of the king (see Fig. 12.9b).42 The the same characters. They may well be attendants rear wall of the compound divides this scene from of Sudhana or even Manoharā, in much the same way as Arjuna is attended by panakawan on the second terrace. 41. On the third terrace above (Arjunavivāha), the parallel Parallel themes: The wall and gateway that act panel has disappeared. However, the storyline up to this as a scene divider in this Sudhana relief are also point in the reliefs suggests that we might have seen the employed below in the Aji Dharma tale on the first celestial nymph Suprabhā feigning to offer herself to the demon king Nivātakavaca in order to lure him into terrace. Here, according to the available version, revealing the secret of his great power. Indra, who had we find that the Brahman and ascetic have arrived devised the plan himself, also ordered that Arjuna should outside Vairocana’s heaven, where ostensibly the accompany and protect the nymph. On no account was ascetic will receive instruction and salvation.40 In she to suffer violation at the hands of the demon. 40. Hunter (2000: 87). The gateway in the Aji Dharma tale seems of a different design to that depicted in the series above, being more of the split variety (Brandes ph. 40).

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42. A less likely alternative is that she is involved in the conversation of the two panakawan figures seated outside the bale behind her. Whether these two panakawan are the same as those of the previous scene is difficult to say. It would seem logical, but they are just too damaged to be absolutely certain.

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Fig. 12.9a: Royal figure. (Detail of Brandes ph. 93)

Fig. 12.9: Sudhana’s palace quarters. (Brandes phs. 94, 93, 92)

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Fig. 12.9b: Manoharā. (Detail of Brandes ph. 93)

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the next, which shows a figure in a forest setting walking away from the compound. Interpretation: The charms of Manoharā as related in the avadāna are too vividly portrayed in this scene for us to consider any other identity for the female in the bale. Indeed, this female form is far more voluptuous than any other (extant) on the shrine. She is also quite clearly without the elaborate crown of the previous scene. If we continue to follow the avadāna, there seems little doubt that this scene depicts Sudhana’s father, King Dhana, counselling his son on his obligations to the kingdom (regarding the rebellion, etc.) and ordering him to put aside Manoharā. However, this perhaps raises difficulties when we look at the difference in features and build between this kingly ‘father’ and the one given similar identification in Fig. 12.2 (detail Fig. 12.2a). Parallel themes: If the first alternative is true, that this scene portrays Sudhana’s father ordering the young prince to put aside Manoharā in favour of royal duties, then there is a very clear parallel directly above in the Pārthayajña reliefs where Arjuna is also lecturing the besotted nun on her duties. Directly below (Aji Dharma), the parallel may be more one of contrast. Vairocana is said to be counselling the ascetic father (accompanied by the Brahman). According to the version of the story at hand, the ṛṣi had wanted to take his daughter, Ambaravatī, away from Aji Dharma. Vairocana tells him that Ambaravatī is really the incarnation of Queen Satyavatī, Aji Dharma’s late wife, and that the two should be allowed to live in peace. Scene 10

Fig. 12.10: Manoharā (or Sudhana?). (Detail of Brandes ph.92)

court conspiracies and plotting.43 The avadāna relates that although the young prince agreed to his father’s summons to duty, he quickly forgot when back in Manoharā’s company and it was then necessary to summon him to the court. However, while the next scene (Fig. 12.11) seems to be taking place in a palace environment, some of the figures are ambiguous. The first two figures are priestly and, given the context of the story, their appearance at this point would not necessarily be unexpected. Parallel themes: Above, in the last scene of the Pārthayajña reliefs on the eastern face, Arjuna is shown alone at his ablutions before leaving the convent to continue his journey (Brandes ph. 143). Below, in the last scene of the Aji Dharma tale, the available account relates that Aji Dharma

Outside the palace, a solitary person of slim build proceeds alone, looking ahead (Fig. 12.10). Separated from the previous scene by a compound wall, the figure is surrounded by vegetal motifs and rock scrolls. Here ends the eastern panel of the beugel band. Interpretation: The figure has suffered deterioration to the extent that it is difficult to decide whether it is male or female. On the one hand it could be the young Sudhana figure who now journeys in 43. Looking ahead to Scene 18 (Fig. 12.18, detail), it will a forest setting or, as seems more likely contex- be seen that the Manoharā figure holds the left arm in a tually, it is Manoharā fleeing the palace in fear of very similar position.

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The Tale of Sudhana and Manoharā on Candi Jago and the panakawan, led by Ambaravatī (formerly Satyavatī), are entering a compound, there to live happily ever after. However, it could also be suggested that Ambaravatī is about to enter the compound (perhaps a convent?) alone and that her gesture back towards Aji Dharma is one of farewell (Brandes ph. 37). Summary of the Eastern Wall

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As we have already seen, the eastern panel of the beugel deals with a number of issues, beginning with the birth of a son to the reigning queen and the fruit-laden tree, both of which are emblems of fecundity and intricately bound up with concepts of queenhood. There is the capture-acquisition of the kinnarī princess, Manoharā, whom Sudhana takes as bride and future queen, with the last scene on the eastern wall showing either Sudhana as he leaves his bride, setting out from the palace to fulfil his father’s quest, or, as seems more likely, Manoharā leaving Sudhana’s palace. Ostensibly, a similar struggle is going on in the first terrace (Aji Dharma) below. It has been suggested that Aji Dharma also struggles for the woman he desires as queen and, indeed, in the last scene on the eastern face, she leads the group into its finale.

The stories carved on Jago display in their upward progression a rise in the power and righteous behaviour of kings that increasingly will depend on the principles of esoteric practices. With attainment of the right queen being an essential attribute of ideal kingship, the activities of women as leading players in the lives of kings, kings-to-be, and wouldbe kings are clearly evident on the eastern face of the temple as a whole. For example, at the southern northern face end of the eastern face of the third terrace that Scene 11 features the Arjunavivāha, we see a scene totally devoted to the celestial nymphs in Indra’s heaven (Brandes ph. 184/183). Although the ensuing panels Marred by the loss of the top row of stones, the are missing, from the context of the kakavin tale, first scene (Fig. 12.11) is long and set in a comwe can surmise that they would have shown the pound—whether it is a palace or hermitage is nymph Suprabha bravely carrying out her danger- difficult to say. There are a number of bale—at ous mission against the demon king Nivātakavaca least three—one of which is enclosed and has a on behalf of Indra, King of the Gods; while at the central staircase. A fourth structure, second from same time gently rebuffing her protector and com- left, with the suggestion of a Meru-roof, may be panion, Prince Arjuna, whose amorous advances an offering place or, given perspective, a Candi might well have distracted her from her task. Had set further away. Several water pots and plants are she not been successful, heaven and earth would neatly arranged. Six figures occupy this scene: two are at the front of the open bale; they face a young surely have been destroyed by the demon. Next, in the Pārthayajña on the second terrace, male figure seated on the ground. The first figure the eastern panels begin with a scene showing is clearly priestly, his hair is clearly bound up and Arjuna in tears. Having left his distressed wife and swathed into a large turban-like arrangement; he mother, he thinks of how they must be missing stands holding a (woven?) basket-like receptacle. him and of the sorrow he caused them. He then The headdress of the other figure, however, is enencounters courting couples. As noted earlier, the tirely different. It appears to have a crown-like central panel (and remainder) of this terrace is ded- diadem at the front and the swathing sits in an icated to the nunnery run by the abbess Mahāyanī, odd shape right at the back of the head, rather with the final panel on this face devoted to the than on top. Just how one is to resolve this figure nuns themselves and their interaction with Arjuna, is problematic: on the one hand, the swathing in particular the abbess who gives Arjuna wise suggests a member of the priestly class; on the counsel. The very last scene of this episode on the other, his facial features are somewhat gross and eastern wall shows Arjuna completing his ritual his manner suggests a certain arrogance or what morning ablutions at the nunnery before departing might be a regal pose—possibly a form of lalitāsana, a posture of relaxation or serenity adopted to continue his quest (Brandes phs. 152–143).

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Fig. 12.11: Introduction of the two Brahmans (?) into the tale. (Brandes phs. 91, 90, 89)

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by royal figures and deities.44 He points (in either an accusatory or directional gesture) towards the young male figure who is seated on the ground before him, holding his left hand over his ear, his right hand to his chin. In the background, between the accusatory ‘priest’ and the young male, is a small servant-like figure. Immediately behind the young male are two more figures, one of which leans against, or is being held by, the other. Since these last two are not separated from the previous figures by any formal dividing motif, they are considered here as perhaps belonging to the one scene or within the same venue. Interpretation: At first glance, this scene would seem relatively easy to deal with inasmuch as the major participants are mostly identifiable from the avadāna. However, placing the action into the contextual flow of that version proves to be a little more difficult. In one sense the scene follows the reference story in logical sequence, for we are told that it was through the insistence of the high priest that Sudhana was summoned to the court by his father. Actually, the story relates of two Brahmans: one attaches himself to Sudhana and the other becomes purohita to the king. While the two arrive at the court together, in reality they connive against each other as well as against the king and Sudhana. Are the two ‘priestly’ figures the Brahmans? Or, given that they have split up on arrival in North Pañcāla, is one a Brahman and the other the king—Sudhana’s father—in ascetic garb? Sudhana’s posture at this point is intriguing: he is seated on the ground, lower than the two figures at the bale, yet his gesture is not entirely one of obeisance (Fig. 12.11a). His left hand is held to his ear, either covering or cupping it. A comparison with Fig. 12.11 reveals that a great deal of deterioration has occurred since Brandes’ photographs were taken. Sudhana’s left arm is now all but missing—only his hand remains at his ear. There is enough detail left in the face, however, to recognize a similarity with the seated character in Fig. 12.3. The mood of the 44. In his description of these figures, Brandes offers no opinion as to who or what they might represent. The pose is similar to one displayed by a later figure in Scene 19 (see Fig. 12.19a). See also Brandes phs. 156 and 157 for renditions of viku/guru figures in the Pārthayajña reliefs.

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Fig. 12.11a: Detail of Brandes ph. 92. (Photo: author)

scene is certainly not one of tranquillity and one may guess that Sudhana is less than pleased with Fig. 12.11b: Detail of Brandes ph. 89. what he is hearing. But whether his consternation is due to what he hears from the pair in front of different, seeming rather more feminine. The dehim or from those behind is not possible to say. meanour of this figure is also curious—even though The role of the tiny figure here is unclear but may ‘she’ appears to be held by the throat, there does be explained later in Scene 12. not appear to be any aggression.45 On the contrary, The two figures behind the young male are also there is almost a feeling of helpless submission. intriguing (see Fig. 12.11b). Lacking a formal di- On the one hand, we know from the avadāna that viding motif between these two groups, we might before Sudhana left to do his father’s bidding, he assume that all are in the same locale. Identification gave Manoharā’s head jewel to his sympathetic is further hampered by the row of missing stones mother with the request that it should be returned at the top, resulting in details of the upright figure to Manoharā should the latter encounter danger. being lost. On the other hand, could this be Sudhana’s While appearing to be well dressed, the upright mother returning the head jewel to her daughterfigure has bare arms and does not appear to be in-law? The Khotanese text has the following dewearing arm jewellery; the second figure is not clear enough to be positively identified. The upright 45. On one of my visits to Jago, I took the opportunity figure holds something (not identifiable) in the of asking Rdn. Bambang Soetrisno (caretaker of Jago and right hand, while the left hand appears to be at or author of the earlier mentioned Sejarah Percandian Daerah Malang) for his opinion on these two figures. He proffered around the other’s throat. that these two figures were embracing each other (memeluk). The leaning figure is slimmer, more like the However, in his publication he describes them as fighting build of Sudhana, although the hairstyle is clearly (berkelahi).

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scription of Sudhana’s mother returning the head jewel to Manoharā: When the queen Sūryaprabhā knew the circumstance she gave the brilliant jewel and likewise the robe to her. She so said to her, Please to accept this back from me, my daughter. Manoharā, prostrate on her breast, cried out aloud... (Bailey 1966: 511)

leaving to undertake an equally traumatic journey. On the first terrace, directly below the compound of the Sudhana scene, are the opening scenes of the Kuñjarakarṇa tale. Kuñjarakarṇa is in Vairocana’s heaven, where the Omniscient One advises Kuñjarakarṇa that he is to journey through hell to see its punishments for himself and thus strengthen his resolve to seek enlightenment. In the next scene, Kuñjarakarṇa is seeking directions from the demon of the crossroads as to the correct route to hell—a beneficial journey but also a harrowing one (Brandes phs. 34–33). The parallel between the three terraces at this point is indeed striking.

The Mahāvastujātaka version relates that after learning that Manoharā had obeyed his wishes and left the court, the king sent for Sudhana and embraced him and comforted him. However, while Sudhana as the leaning figure could be a possibility, this would seem to be precluded by the hairstyle Scene 12 and dress—the hair being more reminiscent of the female in Fig. 12.9b. Part of the previous scene has been incorporated Regarding the dwarfish figure that can be seen into Fig. 12.12 to show the relationship between the near the bale in Figs. 12.11 and 12.11a (detail), it is also figures and the separation provided by the vegetal related in the jātaka that, although under guard, Sudhana was able to leave the court secretly with motifs. Scene 12 clearly shows the three figures one devoted companion, Vasantaka, to search for (framed in the centre) as being in a forest setting. Manoharā. A similar figure appears with Sudhana Once again, damage to the head and upper torso of in the next scene (Scene 12, Fig. 12.12). Perhaps this the thickset figure prevents easy recognition of its figure is filling a similar role to Vasantaka of the category or character, although the three-quarter jātaka—although he does not appear in the reliefs length coat with its long sleeves might suggest a member of the priestly class.46 The left hand of this after Scene 12. To summarize, the most likely scenario for the figure is extended towards the young male—the episode depicted is that Sudhana, having been fingertips holding something small—as if to pass summoned by the purohita (or king) to the court, it to the young male whose hands, in a reverential hears that he must leave the court immediately to pose, make ready to receive it. Behind the thickfight the rebels in the mountains. Perhaps he is also set figure stands a dwarfish figure wearing a large hearing that Manoharā is to be, or has already been, swathed headpiece. Interpretation: From the avadāna we know that ousted. This would logically explain the two figures immediately behind Sudhana: one may well be Sudhana sought information regarding Manoharā Manoharā, the other the queen (Sudhana’s mother) from his mother and from the ṛṣi who lived near who is returning Manoharā’s head jewel so that the the lake frequented by the kinnarī maidens.47 It kinnarī princess might escape danger in Sudhana’s appears that Manoharā had been forced to leave absence. Sudhana’s palace by the intrigues of the purohiParallel themes: As regards parallel themes with ta, which eventually put her life in danger. The the stories on the other terraces, at this point the Pārthayajña above shows Arjuna and the panaka- 46. See for example, Brandes ph. 164, which shows Arjuna wan leaving Mahāyanī’s hermitage (the gateway is meeting with the sage, Dvaipāyana, at the Iṅgitāmṛtapada visible) to begin what will turn out to be a most hermitage (second terrace, Pārthayajña). traumatic journey through the forest. There, iso- 47. Taking the context of the avadāna into account, it will be immediately obvious that—thus far at least—the episode lated deep in the woods during a storm, he will of Sudhana’s military commitment in the mountains has face the demons of his inner self (Brandes phs. not been recounted in the reliefs. This matter will be taken 142–38). Notably, on the beugel, Sudhana is also up again later in this work.

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Fig. 12.12: Sudhana takes advice for his journey. (Brandes phs. 89, 88)

queen had then returned the head jewel with which Manoharā was able to make good on her escape. Before returning to the kinnarī kingdom, however, Manoharā also gave her ring to a ṛṣi to keep for Sudhana, together with instructions for the hard and perilous journey to the land of the kinnarīs, should the prince wish to follow her. The thickset figure in this scene is certainly different to the rotund figure of the previous scene. The garb is different: the arms are covered—indeed the upper garment has the appearance of a coat. The dress and setting would seem to suggest that this is the ṛṣi handing the ring to Sudhana, together with directions for the journey to the kinnarī kingdom. This is further borne out in the next scene (13), where a round object is clearly visible around Sudhana’s neck. Regarding the short figure to the left, his posture and body build are similar to the tiny figure present in Scene 11—to identify them as one and the same would seem reasonable. Parallel themes: There is an interesting parallel below, on the first terrace, where Kuñjarakarṇa has met with the guardian of the crossroads who is also giving him directions as to which path to take to hell (Brandes ph. 34). In the first of two wide scenes of the Pāthayajña above, Arjuna and the panakawan are at the start of their journey in the forest, and in the second the group has encountered a rainstorm (Brandes phs. 141–139). Above the second terrace, the walls are no longer in situ.

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Fig. 12.13: Sudhana starts his journey. (Brandes ph. 88)

Scene 13 Surrounded still by scrolling rock and vegetal motifs, the young male (highlighted) walks on alone, looking back over his shoulder as if to the previous scene (Figs. 12.13, 12.13a). Interpretation: As noted earlier, this looking back to a previous scene seems to infer the recalling of previously given counsel. Of importance is the object that the figure now wears at his neck (Fig. 12.13a). It is a protruding, round flat ‘lump’ with a slight depression at its centre. In the context of the

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tale, I am fairly confident in identifying this figure as Sudhana wearing Manoharā’s ring tied around his neck as his means of carrying it—somewhat like an amulet. Thus we may assume that his quest for Manoharā, fraught with danger so we are told, has begun. Parallel themes: There are very clear parallels with this and ensuing scenes on all the other terraces. Kuñjarakarṇa’s journey through hell has just begun on the first terrace below, as has Arjuna’s night of terror during his journey through the ‘enchanted’ forest on the second terrace, above (Pārthayajña). Also, on the third terrace, the major battle of the Arjunavivāha, with all its associated traumas, would have just been unfolding in a scene that once wholly occupied the major panel of the northern face of the third terrace.

Fig. 12.13a: Detail. (Photo: author)

Scene 14 This long scene (highlighted) is set in a direct vertical line beneath the central panels of the upper

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terraces (Fig. 12.14). It includes two sets of water motifs separated by what appears to be the young male (face and head damaged, but identifiable by the distinctive tie in his kain), who is in a crouching position on one knee, supported and surrounded by a long, undulating ribbon motif ending in the familiar curling flame motif. The left bank of the first water motif shows a rocky shoreline (curling, knobby rock motifs) and some vegetation. The surface of the water in the first section is different to that in the second, being more agitated in appearance. The ripple lines in the second body of water are smoother and more ordered. Though damaged, the head of the central figure is looking forward. Of note, the ribbon-like motif is the same as that employed elsewhere on the shrine to indicate flying.48 If one looks closely, an object is still present around the neck, but now what appears to be a jacket has also been added. Interpretation: I have no doubt that this scene represents a portion of Sudhana’s journey to the kinnarī kingdom in search of Manoharā. The more disturbed nature of the water as suggested by the first group of motifs, together with the presence of tiny heads and the appearance of scales on the undulating shapes, indicates that this is the river of snakes which could only be passed, according to the story, by means of magical charms. The second water motif is made up of much flatter, longer ripple lines, suggesting that the water surface is smoother and more tranquil than the previous group. Whether this is the second river (‘of reeds’) or a device to indicate the working power of the charm on the same body of water, it is difficult to say. The avadāna does not mention what form the snake charm took—perhaps the ring—but as noted above in the detail of this scene (Fig. 12.14a), Sudhana is also wearing what appears to be a tiny jacket. While the Sudhana tale says nothing about a jacket, the Old Javanese Arjunavivāha relates that 48. See for example in the Aji Dharma reliefs (first terrace) where figures of an ascetic and Brahman and their proximity to the sun makes it certain they are flying (Brandes ph. 40). The same ribbon motif is also employed in the Arjunavivāha reliefs to portray Arjuna and the two gandharva messengers flying to Indra’s heaven (Brandes ph. 187), although they are also provided with swing motifs as aids to their flight.

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Fig. 12.14: Sudhana crosses two (?) rivers. (Brandes phs. 87, 86)

Parallel themes: As mentioned, this scene of Sudhana’s encounter with the river of snakes is beautifully paralleled on the terraces above and below. On the first terrace (below), Kuñjarakarṇa continues his sightseeing tour of hell past lines of suffering sinners tormented and goaded by their animal-headed keepers. Above, on the second terrace, Arjuna is also continuing his journey through the ‘enchanted forest’ where he is about to encounter tree monsters, demonic apparitions, copulating animals, etc., and on the third terrace, as noted, the whole of the major panel would have dealt with the battle waged by Arjuna and his army of gods against the demonic hordes led by Nivātakavaca. Scenes 15, 16, 17, and 18 This tableau consists of four tightly interrelated and overlapping scenes, which requires them to be condensed into one illustration.50 Scene 15 Fig. 12.14a: Detail. (Photo: author)

the gandharvas gave Arjuna a magic jacket and a pair of sandals, which were the means of his flight to Indra’s heaven.49 49. See Zoetmulder (1974: 235). See also Brandes ph. 187: it is not possible to confirm in the photo whether Arjuna is wearing the items spoken of in the kakavin.

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The forest motifs at the extreme left end adjoin the water motifs of the previous scene and overall, form a surround for the single figure who now 50. This convention of overlapping scenes is not an isolated case on Jago. Other notable examples are the tableau illustrating Arjuna’s sojourn in Mahāyanī’s hermitage on the second terrace in an episode from the Pārthayajña—and a parallel scene from the Kuñjarakarṇa on the first terrace below (see also Fig. 12.18a).

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Fig. 12.15: Sudhana’s arrival at the court of King Druma. (Brandes phs. 86, 85, 84)

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Fig. 12.15a: Sudhana approaches the kinnarī palace. (Detail of Fig. 12.15)

approaches the wall (without gateway) of an inhabited compound (Fig. 12.15). However, while at first glance the clothing is certainly that of the young man from previous scenes, a close inspection of Fig. 12.15a suggests that he has become somewhat dishevelled, his hair is not quite as it was, and he has grown a moustache. It is also possible that his ribs are showing. Nowadays, the figure is so deteriorated that the facial features are no longer evident at all. Interpretation: The avadāna relates that having crossed the last of the rivers, Sudhana reached a land ‘rich in bushes’. It further tells that he must meet and subdue 500 yakṣa who dwell there, but that this place was also the capital city of the kinnarī king. We are not shown the yakṣa or the kinnarī maidens who, in the context of the tale, came to draw water for Manoharā’s bath from a pond near where Sudhana stood gazing at the city. Unlike Borobudur, which presents a beautiful depiction of this episode, Jago does not show Sudhana dropping Manoharā’s ring into one of the water jugs. But neither is the ring to be seen now around Sudhana’s neck, nor is he wearing the jacket of the previous scene.

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Fig. 12.17: Sudhana (or the queen?) with King Druma. (Detail of Fig. 12.15)

Scene 17 There are two levels in the large bale (see Fig. 12.15 and detail, Fig. 12.17). On the upper level, a figure Fig. 12.16: Manoharā receives the ring. (Detail of Fig. 12.15) sits as if listening to a second figure on the lower level, who is seated in the pose of obedience, hands Parallel themes: If we were to look for a parallel joined in sәmbah. Due to corrosion, the sex of among the other reliefs, then the most notable one neither figure is immediately obvious. The hairstyle would be on the first terrace directly below, where of the lower figure is certainly different from that Kuñjarakarṇa is coming to the end of his tour through of the female figures shown at either side, outside hell and in an almost identical scene is also approach- the bale (see Figs. 12.15, 12.16, and 12.18), and in fact is closer to that of the upper figure. However, the ing the wall of a compound (Brandes ph. 31). upper-body jewellery on the lower figure is closer Scene 16 to that worn by the females outside. Brandes (1904: 54) suggested that the lower figure is female, and we The central setting in the tableau shown in Fig. 12.15 is a will return to this possibility later in the discussion. large bale in the foreground of a compound, separated While the jewellery on the lower figure is reasonably from the previous scene by the wall. A smaller bale well defined, the upper figure is too damaged for is situated in the background. To the left of the main any such adornments to be clear. bale stands a bejewelled female figure (see Fig. 12.15 and detail, Fig. 12.16), her long hair trailing down over her Scene 18 left shoulder. She appears to be proceeding towards the bale, but with her head turned as if looking back On the far (right-hand) side of the bale (Fig. 12.15 towards the approaching figure of the male described and also 12.18 detail), a figure that is obviously in the previous scene. Her left hand is upraised, clasping female52 heads back towards the bale, again looking something small, while her right arm hangs by her side.51 51. Brandes (1904: 54) also noted that she seemed to be holding something.

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52. There is just enough detail left of the flowing hair over the shoulder to suggest that it is a similar, or the same, female figure as that in Fig. 12.16.

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Fig. 12.18: Manoharā gazes out through the gateway. (Detail of Fig. 12.15)

back over her shoulder—this time in the opposite direction, towards the gate in the far wall. Interpretation of Scenes 15, 16, 17, and 18: We know from the source tale that Manoharā received notice (in the form of her ring) that Sudhana had arrived, so it would seem in order to suggest that the figure in Scene 16 (and detail Fig. 12.16) is Manoharā. Recognizing her ring and realizing that Sudhana has come for her after all, she looks back over her shoulder in the direction of his approach as she goes towards the court of her father. While the vestiges of the two figures in the bale do not give us much to go on, the raised position of one figure, while the lower sits respectfully, suggests that the former has supremacy and may be King Druma himself. As for the lower figure, I have already noted that the hair is different from either of the two female figures outside the bale. The avadāna relates that Manoharā did speak to her father about the arrival of Sudhana, but that it was necessary to both cool his anger and to dress Sudhana in more

Fig. 12.18a: First terrace (Kuñjarakarṇa), the bale of King Pūrṇavijaya directly below that of King Druma on the beugel (top left). (Brandes ph. 30)

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The Tale of Sudhana and Manoharā on Candi Jago princely finery than what he had arrived in, before presenting him to her father. In such a context, it could be suggested that the figure on the lower level of the bale is Sudhana. However, there is another important and more plausible alternative for the two seated figures to be found in a source other than the avadāna, and we will return shortly to its consideration. In the last scene of this tableau (Fig. 12.15), we see Manoharā again, this time heading back towards the bale, but with her head turned, gazing somewhat anxiously or disconsolately out through a gate in a wall (see Fig. 12.18, detail) towards a group of people outside. Parallel themes: To explain the duplication of Manoharā in the same tableau, it will be helpful to look at the parallel scene directly below on the first terrace (Fig. 12.18a). The layout of Sudhana’s arrival at the court of King Druma is remarkably similar to Kuñjarakarṇa’s arrival at the court of his friend, King Pūrṇavijaya. Kuñjarakarṇa has come to warn the king that he is shortly to be punished in hell for his transgressions. Earlier, for his own good, Kuñjarakarṇa had been sent by Buddha Vairocana on a journey to see the torments of hell so that the demon ascetic might avoid such punishments himself. So at the far left of Fig. 12.18a we see Kuñjarakarṇa, having finished his journey, arriving at the compound—in much the same way as Sudhana arrives at the compound of King Druma after his traumatic journey. Compacted into the next scene is the bale where Queen Gandhavatī reclines with King Pūrṇavijaya (prostrate, head on her lap), and Kuñjarakarṇa is seated opposite them. Immediately then, outside the bale (to the right), we find Kuñjarakarṇa again, with Pūrṇavijaya pleading at his knees for help. Beyond this pair, just inside the gate in the wall, we see the queen once again, this time heading back towards the bale but half-turned, gazing back over her shoulder through the gateway to the departing figures of Pūrṇavijaya, Kuñjarakarṇa, and the royal entourage (out of view in this illustration; see Brandes ph. 30/29). Perhaps displaying a little more despondency, the posture of Queen Gandhavatī in this last scene is nevertheless very much like that of Manoharā almost directly above (connected by arrow in Fig. 18a), who is also

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gazing through the gate to a retinue of persons of similar numbers. It is interesting that although the trauma of a dangerous journey is over—at least for the heroes of the first terrace and beugel—tension still abounds. It can clearly be seen in King Pūrṇavijaya’s panic and the grief of the queen at his departure. Although it is not indicated as clearly in the Sudhana relief, we know from the story that King Druma was at first angry enough to kill Sudhana, and we see that there is also a certain anxiety about Manoharā’s posture as she looks towards and through the gate. Perhaps we can draw the conclusion from this (and as echoed in the Kuñjarakarṇa panel)53 that Sudhana has had to leave her again and that danger is still imminent for him. Scene 19 This next scene (Fig. 12.19), to which Manoharā appears to direct her gaze (from the left side through the gate), takes place outside the compound (no buildings evident). It is dominated by a regal figure who sits on a low bench in lalitāsana. His eyes are bulbous; his right hand rests on his hip, while the left hand holds a long, thin object, suggested by Brandes (1904: 54) to be a lontar. He is attended by five other persons: one at his right and four at his left. The one at his right is described by Brandes as a servant who holds a box, probably for betel. At his left, the first figure is seated in the posture of obeisance, completely attentive to the regal figure. Next, are two seated figures in conversation with each other—they are wearing a peculiar kind of cap that is also worn by the attendants of Vairocana in the Kuñjarakarṇa tale on the first terrace.54 Due to a missing course of stones, the last male figure (standing) is headless. He stands, arms crossed over the chest; the tie of his kain is not unlike the one found in earlier depictions of Sudhana. Interpretation: The figure who sits in sәmbah (Fig. 12.19b), also described by Brandes as female, 53. Above, on the second terrace, Arjuna is still in the forest of frightening, demonic apparitions. Above this again, on the central panel of the third terrace, Arjuna would have still been embroiled in the great battle against the demon army of Nivātakavaca (panel missing). 54. See for example Brandes phs. 28 and 105.

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Fig. 12.19: The kinnarī queen pleads with King Druma, on behalf of Sudhana and Manoharā (?). (Brandes phs. 84, 83)

Fig. 12.19a: Detail. (Brandes ph. 83)

is the same as the one in Fig. 12.17 is uncertain, although the hairstyle and regal bearing suggest the possibility.55

Fig. 12.19b: Detail. (Photo: author)

bears great similarity to the figure seated on the lower level of the bale of the previous scene (Fig. 12.17), in terms of the posture, hair, etc. On the other hand, from the context of the avadāna it could also be Sudhana, who has been restored to a state of refinement in order to be presented to King Druma. Whether the royal figure with the ‘sceptre’

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55. The iconographic features of the royal figure of Druma, king of the kinnara, seem to bear analogies to those of Vaiśravaṇa, king of the yakṣa; renditions of Vaiśravaṇa in Asian art frequently depict him seated in lalitāsana, also with bulging eyes, holding a jewel-sceptre in one hand and a jewel-spitting mongoose or sometimes a stupa in the other. In the avadāna, Manoharā related to Sudhana that he would come to a land rich in bushes where he would have to overcome the 500 yakṣa who dwelt there, and where he would find the capital of the king of the kinnara. It is possible that this panel reflects a conflation of ideas and iconographical features, resulting in the assimilation of

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Fig. 12.20a: Overlap and continuation of Scene 20. (Brandes phs. 82, 81)

If these two figures are King Druma and Sudhana, then the simple interpretation of the entire group would be that the kinnarī king is organizing the tests (archery and other martial skills) through which Sudhana will prove his suitability to be the husband of Manoharā. To that end, perhaps it is a bow and/or arrow that the royal figure holds, and Sudhana is making ready to receive it. If however Brandes is right, i.e. the figure making obeisance in this scene and the previous one is female, then the avadāna is of no help since this female cannot be Manoharā, whose depiction is entirely different. This point is significant and will be taken up again shortly. Parallel themes: While there is an important parallel for this scene in the Pārthayajña reliefs directly above, it may serve us well to look at the content of the next (and last) remaining scenes in this story, returning later to draw what conclusions are then possible. Scene 20 Between Scenes 19 and 20, a length (0.56 metres) of stonework has been only partially carved, as can be seen at the left-hand end of Fig. 12.20b. Thus we kinnara and yakṣa on the one hand, and of Druma and Vaiśravaṇa on the other. In the Mahābhārata, King Druma is associated with Kuvera (Vaiśravaṇa) as a member of the latter’s court (Dezsö 2014: 76). The depiction of Vaiśravaṇa on the northern face of Jago would have certain significance since he is the Guardian of the North.

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Fig. 12.20b: Uncarved stonework and beginning of Scene 20. (Brandes ph. 82)

must consider that possibly the scene was unfinished. From this point to the end of the beugel at the western corner, stones are randomly missing from the upper row of the narrative. This long scene—here spread across Figs. 12.20a, 12.20b, and12.20c—contains approximately twelve figures,56 at least two of which are short and podgy like panakawan and are on their hands and knees. Viewing the postures of the first half-dozen figures, it is impossible to say whether it is a form of cooperative activity or whether an altercation of some sort is in progress. At the far end of the scene there is a wall (Fig. 12.20c), beyond which there is a bale (also partly visible at left in Fig. 12.21), from where begins the next scene. 56. There are quite possibly more than twelve, but due to weathering some are nothing more than indistinct shapes.

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Fig. 12.20c: Continuation of Scene 20. (Brandes ph. 80)

Scene 21

upper body)—the balance appear in Fig. 12.21c. The back four at least seem to be bare-topped, dressed This scene (Fig. 12.21) opens at left with a sloping in long sarongs, and appear to be in conversation wall and an enclosed bale within a compound (the with each other. Each holds aloft a platter, similarly wall can be seen at far right of Fig. 12.20c). There is piled with what appears to be food or offerings. also a tree in a kuruṅan beside the bale. Weathering has made it difficult to determine if Whether there was once anyone or anything the processional figures are all the same gender. to be seen inside the open doorway of the bale is Certainly they are more plainly attired than the now impossible to say. Proceeding from the bale to two main females in the previous scene. Between the gateway are three figures. The first two figures the second and third, and third and fourth figures (from the left) are female, with a clearly defined are curling motifs such as have been randomly feminine form. Both appear bejewelled, the second noted throughout the series. very heavily at the neck and waist. The second Due to missing stones from the upper course, we female also has long hair falling over her shoulder cannot see if the figures which form the balance of in a style that is reminiscent of earlier depictions the group in the preceding photo are also bearing of Manoharā (see Fig. 12.9b), but damage to facial platters or other items. However, the leading figure features makes certainty difficult. She proceeds in the procession is complete and carries a staff to half-turned, gesturing to the first female behind her which something (a banner, flag?) is attached at as if in conversation. The third figure, in the style of the top end. The total procession of nine figures a panakawan, is possibly female. The gateway is very approaches a tenth, similarly dressed figure standsimilar to the gateway in Fig.19 though the position ing at the end of the scene. While the gender of of the tree in its surround is slightly different. the figure carrying the banner is not clear, this Proceeding from the gateway of the previous last figure would appear to be male. He is set apart scene are another nine figures walking in single file from the procession by two sets of large, decoratin the same direction as the three inside the gate— ed, scrolling motifs set symmetrically on either with the possibility that this scene is a continuation side of him. He stands, facing back towards those of the previous one shown in Fig. 12.21. In Fig. 12.21b approaching. This scene, the last on the northern only five are included (one of whom is missing the face of the beugel, is also the last in the Sudhana

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series. Around the corner on the western face are the opening scenes of the second part of the Kuñjarakarṇa, being continued from below on the first terrace (see Diag. 1).

Fig. 12.21: A retinue bearing offerings. (Brandes phs. 79, 78, 77)

Interpretation of Scenes 19–21: Under Scene 19, two possible though broad interpretations offered by the avadāna were noted, with yet a third from another source depending on the gender of two figures. Beginning with the first possibility mentioned, i.e. that the ensuing Scene 20 relates to King Druma’s testing of Sudhana, we have already noted the possible resemblance of the two main figures of Scene 19 with those in the bale of Scene 18. The remainder of the figures in Scene 19 would then be commensurate with those one might expect to find in a court scene (keeping in mind, however, that Fig. 12.21a: Detail showing last three figures in retinue.

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Fig. 12.21b: Detail showing five figures at centre of retinue.

Fig. 12.21c: Detail showing leading figures in retinue.

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the venue seems to be outside the compound). What go on to display the eventual outcome of attainkind of an implement the ‘kinnarī king’ would be ing his beloved Manoharā—especially in light of holding in such circumstances is uncertain. Brandes ancient Javanese concepts of ideal kingship, where suggested that the figure holds a lontar, but the object gaining the right queen is paramount? In the final appears to be pointed at least at the top end. Con- episode of the tale, the couple live happily in King cerning the tasks set for Sudhana by King Druma, Druma’s kingdom but eventually make their way the avadāna narrates that Sudhana, amid dance back to Sudhana’s kingdom, where they are received and music, cut seven golden stems with a sword with great rejoicing. Jago makes no reference in its that looked like the leaf of a blue lotus into small reliefs to this last part of the tale. fragments, and shot an arrow through seven palm For a potentially more plausible possibility, let trees, seven kettledrums, and seven boars (Ralston us return to Brandes’ opinion that in Scenes 17 1906: 72). The avadāna then relates that Sudhana (Fig. 12.17) and 19 (see Figs. 12.19, 12.19a, and 12.19b) was required to pick out Manoharā from a thousand the two figures seated in obeisance are females. kinnarī just like her, which he duly accomplished. Here, we resort again to the Khotanese text, which Now satisfied with Sudhana, King Druma calls his relates that when Manoharā discovered the ring people forth to honour him, after which the king and thus the arrival of Sudhana, she was fearful of formally presents Manoharā to Sudhana. her father’s reaction and went first to her mother. If one could understand precisely what actions The queen was sympathetic to her daughter and are taking place in Scene 20 (Figs. 12.20a, 12.20b, full of admiration for the ordeals of Sudhana’s and 12.20c) on Jago, then perhaps the total context twelve-year journey to find Manoharā. She ordered of the final scenes would fall into place. Though that Sudhana be brought to her. Being much taken the reliefs have suffered deterioration, some of the with him, the queen nevertheless warned that ‘King figures in Scene 20 clearly exhibit the features of Druma threatens violently’. She therefore undercoarse beings, and others are strangely attired, with took to inform the king herself; when the king two having unidentifiable items around their necks. had heard, he imposed upon Sudhana ‘unlimited The implements or items they hold are largely un- punishment, harsh threats, abusive speech’ (Bailey recognizable. Only one figure (fourth from the left) 1966: 513). If these two very similar figures sitting shows any affinity with the familiar Sudhana figure in sәmbah are, as Brandes suggests, female, could from the rest of the series. Progressing further they both represent the queen? It would then mean along the same scene, the action appears increas- that in Scene 17 the queen is informing the king ingly frenetic—but are the characters fighting or of Sudhana’s arrival, and in Scene 19 she pleads dancing? In any event, the action does not seem to with the king on behalf of Sudhana who awaits the match the tasks set for Sudhana by King Druma, king’s judgement. This would explain Manohara’s unlike Borobudur where the drama of the tests is consternation in the previous scene as she looks beautifully portrayed. However, it may allude to the out through the gate (Fig. 12.18). She is obviously music, song, and dance described in the avadāna. very much connected to the outcome of activities It would then follow that the assessment tasks were in the ensuing scene. In such an event, it may well deliberately not depicted or simply did not occur be Sudhana who stands at the right-hand end of Scene 19 (Fig. 12.19) with arms folded across his in the version being illustrated. Allowing some latitude in identifying the action chest. The Khotanese text does not detail what in this scene (20), perhaps the final scene (21) relates forms the punishment took, only that Sudhana to Sudhana being required to pick out Manoharā ‘went out invincible as a kesarin lion’; nor does the from a line of kinnarī maidens who are clearly ad- text mention the king’s directive that Sudhana must vancing towards him.57 So why then does Jago not 57. While it is reasonable not to expect that a thousand kinnarī or even a sizeable crowd could be displayed on Jago, it is interesting to note that there are only seven kinnarī

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in the Pāli version (Jaini 1966: 552). As observed earlier, of the three figures inside the compound of Scene 21, one could easily pass for Manoharā, given her depiction in previous scenes.

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Parallel themes: An investigation of the reliefs pick out Manoharā from a number of her kinnarī above and below these final scenes of the Sudhana sisters. Earlier, Scene 20 was considered from the pos- tale yields some interesting parallels, but little help sible aspects of fighting or dancing. The Mahāvas- in defining precisely what is taking place in these tujātaka offers yet a third way of viewing this scene. last scenes. For example, on the first terrace below Having been told by Manoharā that Sudhana had, (Brandes phs. 30–28) we find that Kuñjarakarṇa after all, managed to reach the kinnara kingdom, and King Pūrṇavijaya, accompanied by members there is no talk whatsoever by King Druma of retri- of his court bearing offerings as well as a number bution. In fact, he orders that the city and palace be of musicians,60 have gone off to plead with Buddha festooned with all manner of finery and flowers and Vairocana for a means of avoiding the terrible punfor the city elders and the army to go forth bedecked ishment in store for Pūrṇavijaya. In fact, Pūrṇaviwith flags and banners to meet Sudhana. When jaya’s entreaty to Vairocana (Brandes phs. 29, 28) the commands have been carried out, a reception exactly reflects the queen’s suggested entreaty to is arranged with great pomp, hosted by ‘several King Druma in the Sudhana tale directly above (Fig. thousand Kinnaras and to the accompaniment 12.19), even down to the similarly dressed members of thousands of musical instruments’ (Jones 1952: in the two courts. Continuing with the Kuñjarakarṇa tale below, 107). Thus, the jātaka certainly presents a plausible scenario for Scenes 20 and 21 on Jago. However, King Pūrṇavijaya can be seen leaving his wife the jātaka says nothing of prior intervention by and home to undertake the journey to hell. He the queen.58 For its part, the Khotanese text makes is followed by trident-wielding individuals. Curimuch of the queen’s role, but says nothing of wel- ously, at the end of the last scene (Brandes ph. 23) coming festivities.59 The avadāna does not mention Pūrṇavijaya has turned his back on the direction the queen or receptions, but makes much of the to be travelled and now faces his armed pursuers, punishment and conditions imposed on Sudhana, in the same way that Sudhana faces those who which he needed to undergo before being accepted approach him at the end of the last scene in the as Manoharā’s husband. Sudhana tale (see Fig. 12.21c).61 Taking now the Based on the evidence of the last few scenes, it is parallels directly above on the second terrace, the plain that neither the Sudhanakumārāvadāna and Pārthayajña reveals a number of scenes relative to the Kinnarījātaka (Mahāvastu), nor the Khotanese the appearance of the goddess Śrī Lakṣmī to Arjuna text of Ṛddhiprabhāva, was the sole source of ref- (Brandes phs. 134–30). The whole episode is spread erence for the sculptors of the Sudhana-Manoharā over two large panels; thus, it would be reasonable tale on Jago. However, if the matter of an interpre- to assume it had prime significance. In the first tation of the last few scenes of the Sudhana tale panel Śrī Lakṣmī appears in a blaze of dazzling still lies in doubt, perhaps our confusion was also light, which in effect puts an end to the darkness shared by the sculptors themselves, for there is and the demonic apparitions that were plaguing still the matter of the uncarved stonework between his imagination as he journeyed through the forest. Scenes 19 and 20. She reassures Arjuna by foretelling that he will be successful in his mission and then gives instruction on the ‘enemies in the innermost part of man that must be fought relentlessly’ (Zoetmulder 1974: 369). 58. Nor does it feature the nāga, Janmacitra, or the On Jago, as she does this, the positioning of the

amoghapāśa; nor the Vaiśravaṇa episode of the prince being sent to put down a rebellion. Instead, Sudhana is held confined in his own palace and Manoharā is sent away. This latter possibility has already been noted in connection with Scene 11. 59. The Khotanese text tells of a nāgarāja and the amoghapāśa; it also tells of Sudhana conducting war against rebels in the mountains but does not mention Vaiśravaṇa.

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60. These musicians, featured in two consecutive scenes, are located directly below the problematic scene of the Sudhana tale, which it is proposed may feature dancers. 61. These are the last scenes of the Kuñjarakarṇa on the northern wall. It is then continued on the western face of the beugel around the corner from where the Sudhana tale finishes (see Jago layout in Diagram 1).

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goddess on the panel exactly parallels King Druma arrangement around the shrine. In terms of the below, whereas it is (presumably) the queen who maṇḍala,63 the overall thematic parallel which runs parallels Śrī Lakṣmī, successfully interceding on vertically between narratives on the northern wall behalf of Sudhana. The last scene of the Pārthayajña is plainly related to Amoghasiddhi, Jina-Buddha on the northern face of the second terrace (Brandes of the Northern Quarter, whose abhaya-mudrā phs: 128/127) shows Arjuna watching a procession signifies the Performance of Duty and the gift of of celestial beings comprising Kāma and Ratih with the Absence of Fear, so clearly provided by the their attendants on the far side of a beautiful lake. various divine and semi-divine beings. In an ensuing panel around the corner, Kāma too will give words of guidance and encouragement. In conclusion the last panel of the Arjunavivāha on the northern face of the third terrace,62 there is also a group of With a survey and interpretation of the Sudhana divinities arranged around a small multi-roofed pa- narrative series now complete, I would like to recall vilion in which sits Arjuna, who has been crowned once again Pal’s earlier-mentioned views on the Newar paubha and propose that Jago’s rendering, temporary king of Indra’s heaven. As can be seen from the above discussion of the too, seems to be another ‘variation which has taken last few scenes in the Sudhana tale on the northern on much local colour’. Working with three Budface, visual and thematic parallels exist both above dhist versions of the Sudhana tale, I found many and below. Gods and goddesses are intervening on affinities as well as many differences; there were behalf of supplicants, enabling them to overcome times when the venue and action could be attribtheir difficulties, with the end panels finishing uted to one version or other, but the actors could with processions or groups of people or celestial not. On the other hand, depictions of Sudhana, the beings attending or paying homage to a divine or lake of Janmacitra, the introduction of Manoharā, victorious character. However, the significance of the crossing of the river of snakes, Sudhana’s arrival these ‘parallels’ comes to the fore when read from at the kingdom of the kinnarī, and Manoharā’s the base up, for it is then we can see an ascend- discovery of the ring all seem obvious in their ancy of kingship. In the Kuñjarakarṇa, the king identification, so much so that, even taking into fearlessly sets out to undergo transformation and account the problems of the final episodes which purification in his step towards enlightenment and seem to find clearer resolution in versions other Buddhahood. On the next level, the virtuous bo- than the avadāna, there can be little serious doubt dhisattva prince Sudhana, through his endurance at all that we are basically dealing with the right tale. and determination, has won the right to keep the This view is also supported, on the whole, by the kinnarī princess as wife and future queen. On the system of thematic and visual parallels that plays second terrace, Arjuna’s austerities have won the such an important part in the arrangement (and initial help he needs on his quest to restore his consequently our understanding) of the narrative kingdom to its rightful rulers (Pārthayajña). On reliefs on this shrine. Whether the Sudhana tale as depicted on Jago is the third terrace, we see that Arjuna’s efforts on the result of ‘local colour’, whether it is a composite behalf of heaven in the war against the demons of versions, or whether it belongs totally to an ashave earned him temporary rule in Indra’s place yet-unknown version is impossible for this writer as king of the gods (Arjunavivāha). to speculate on at the moment, for while at least Just taking these four tales into consideration, it becomes clear that the choice of narratives was three other narratives depicted on Jago find very 64 in no way a random affair for Jago, much less their close parallels in extant Old Javanese literature, 62. While this panel is the last on the northern face of the third terrace, it is not in direct vertical parallel with the final scenes on the first terrace, beugel, or second terrace. The third terrace bands the base of the cella, which is set well towards the back of the monument (see Diag.1).

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63. Discussed briefly in note 22 above. 64. The Kuñjarakarṇa, Pārthayajña, and Arjunavivāha tales are all represented in Old Javanese kakavin literature, and in the main, the narrative reliefs on Jago seem to follow them fairly closely (excluding panakawan

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The Tale of Sudhana and Manoharā on Candi Jago such is not the case for the story of Sudhana and Manoharā, though we may suppose that it must have had some currency in Java given its depiction on Borobudur. As noted earlier, it is not inconceivable that the sculptors worked with multiple texts simultaneously, though the notion of them working with a localized tale that derived over time seems somewhat more attractive. Unfortunately, such a Javanese version, if it exists in manuscript form, still awaits discovery. Another possibility to be considered is that the tale may indeed be a localized version ‘imported’ from outside the Javanese sphere. In consideration of other elements of the shrine, namely the statuary and some other decorative features, I have elsewhere supported input by influences (or even artisans themselves) from the Newars of Nepal (O’Brien 1993: 252–55).65 History records that Newar artisans were in high demand in Central Asia during the period.66 The most powerful of the characters). Sections of the Aji Dharma tale are also known in Old Javanese literature. The narrative reliefs that adorned the cella walls have been identified as the Kriṣṇāyana, but there remains too little of it left on Jago to assert that it followed the kakavin version of this tale, which deals with King Kriṣṇa’s desire to have Rukmiṇī as his wife and queen and his subsequent abduction of her. 65. In 1987 (O’Brien 1987: 139–41), I pointed to the distinct similarities between the decorative over- and under- bands of Jago’s bas-reliefs and the decorative bands on the ‘walls’ and ‘circles of protection’ that surround the ‘palace’ of the sovereign deity of linear maṇḍalas, in particular those maṇḍalas emanating from the Nepalese (Newar) and Tibetan (Sakya-pa) traditions. In her discussion of Nepali architecture, Slusser (1982 I: 145) asserts that there ‘can be little doubt that the Newar-style temple, in some of its variations at least, is a three dimensional maṇḍala’, noting the testimony of Nepali records, which frequently specify that a temple was constructed as a maṇḍala. She also draws attention to other similarities of features including the decorative cornices that encircle the Newar temple, which she also notes are comparable to the palace ‘walls’ of linear maṇḍalas. These same bands were also employed on later temples in East Java, e.g. Tigawangi and Surowono (Bernet Kempers 1959, pls. 296–98). Of the five bands of bas-reliefs on Jago, it is notable that the beugel is the only one that does not carry either upper or lower decorated bands. 66. At the turn of the 13th century, Buddhism in northern India was in crisis, having come under attack by Muslim forces. The great Buddhist universities, including Nālandā

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Buddhist sects in Tibet, the Sakya-pas, who ruled their large region virtually as abbot kings, used Newar artisans—architects, painters, sculptors, metal casters, etc.—almost exclusively. In fact, Pal (1985: 61–67) has noted that Sakya-pa domination is perhaps the reason why more of their maṇḍalas seem to have come down to us from that period. When the Sakya-pas came to occupy influential positions at the Yuan court as religious advisers, their preference for Newar artisans was extended there too.67 Now, the iconography of Jago’s Amoghapāśa and that of the four companion statues closely follows a sādhana known to have been composed by the great Kashmiri scholar, Śākyaśrībhadra (ad 1127–1225), much revered in Tibetan Buddhism, particularly by the Sakya-pa sect (O’Brien 1993: 252–55; Schoterman 1994: 154–77). Śākyaśrībhadra was teacher to Sakya Paṇḍita, who became chief abbot of the Sakya-pas, the most powerful theocratic state in Tibet. It was Sakya Paṇḍita who gained the interest of the Mongol Khans of Yuan China in Tibetan Buddhism. Sakya Paṇḍita was eventually succeeded by his nephew, ’Phags-pa, who went on to become Imperial Preceptor to Khubilai Khan. Such was the extent of his influence that Phags-pa was able not only to retain authority in his own court but was also given complete jurisdiction in religious matters in the Mongol court. The extraordinary popularity of Newar artisans in this Sino-Tibetan and Vikramaśīla, had been razed. Those scholars and artisans who managed to escape the onslaught, ‘fled with texts and portable icons into the Himalayas’ (Sharrock 2007: 252), with significant numbers settling in Nepal (von Schroeder 1981: 311). From there they spread even further eastwards, not inconceivably as far as Southeast Asia. In his study of the faces on the Bayon towers in Cambodia, Sharrock notes Jean Filliozat’s suggestion (1969: 47) that as a result of the enforced dispersion of learned Tantric masters there were ‘links between Nepalese and Khmer architecture at this period’ (Sharrock 2007: 252). 67. The great name among Newar artisans is Aniko, who went into the service of the Sakya-pas under ’Phags-pa in 1260. His abilities as an artisan and architect gained him many major commissions under Khubilai Khan. However, as Tucci (1949: 277) notes, Aniko was only the first in a long line of Newar artists whose works are praised in the eulogies and chronicles of numerous monasteries, attesting to an ‘uninterrupted flow into Tibet of Nepalese artists and craftsmen’.

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sphere is important because the time also coincides with the reign of Khubilai’s Javanese adversary, King Kṛtanagara, builder and patron of Candi Jago and, like Khubilai, a follower of Tantric Buddhist doctrine and an aspiring empire builder (see Bade, this volume). In his study of the iconographic concordance between Jago’s statuary and iconographic details contained in the sādhana composed by Śākyaśrībhadra, Schoterman (1994: 154) felt inclined to support Bernet Kempers’ (1933) opinion that ‘the Candi Jago statues have been influenced by a new wave of Buddhism from Northeast India, which reached Java in the first part of the 13th century’. Even earlier, Brandes (1904: 83) also gave thought to Indian influences on the statuary—perhaps even non-Javanese artists—among other things, pointing to their Nāgarī inscriptions.68 While exploring the bas-reliefs of Jago, I noted that the features of Śiva carved in the Arjunavivāha reliefs on the south face of the third terrace are strikingly similar to the features of Jago’s Jina-Buddha statuary (cf. Locanā and Māmakī), so much so that I am of the opinion that whoever carved the statuary was—at least in part—involved in the carving of the bas-reliefs on the temple (O’Brien 1993: 254–55, pls. 31c and d). Whether the iconography and/or craftsmanship of Jago’s statuary was directly imported at the time or sourced locally from monks and artisans—refugees of the earlier Muslim onslaught in northern India and who were now established and practising in Java—is an argument which may never be resolved. But given the importance of the maṇḍala in understanding the layout of the narratives on Jago and the close similarity of a number of its decorative features to maṇḍalas of Newar influence, whether direct or indirect, it may well prove useful to examine the same regional sources for help with the Sudhana 68. Both Lokesh Chandra (1984) and Pal (1985: 145ff.) have published a selection of pages from Nepalese (Newar) sketchbooks containing images of deities, sometimes accompanied by their names and other iconographic details in Nāgarī (see for example Lokesh Chandra 1984: Sketchbook 1, p. 9 with two images of Amoghapāśa Lokeśvara). However, while very little survives from the 13th century, these examples existing from the 17th century may reflect practices from earlier times.

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tale, bearing in mind Pal’s earlier-quoted comments on the popularity and diversity of the tale in Nepal.

appendix Inasmuch as missing scenes, lost features, and rampant ambiguity allows, the following is an attempt to summarize the scenes, bearing in mind that it is based on subjective choices from the multiple options provided by some scenes. The first thing that will have already become evident is that Sudhana appears to play a far more ubiquitous role in Jago’s episodes than he is given in the literary works mentioned, such as the avadāna. As suggested earlier, this may be due to Jago’s reliefs being based on an as yet unknown version; or there may have been more local and pragmatic reasons for featuring the Bodhisattva prince as a future heroic, steadfast, and capable king. From the lowest level and moving upwards to culmination in the cella, Jago clearly displays the ascendancy of divine kingship in accordance with principles of Esoteric Buddhism. For Kṛtanagara, the shrine’s patron, the divine status would later climax in his own person: the oneness of Buddha/Śiva with that of a mortal king. The tale of Sudhana on his father’s shrine was another step towards that goal. Exactly why it was chosen and how it—among the other narratives—participates in that progress is yet to be made clear. Scene 1

The unjust king of South Pañcāla inspects his domains and finds them deserted by his citizens.

[2.7 metres of missing stonework containing an unknown number of scenes.] Scene 2

King and queen of North Pañcāla; joy at the queen’s pregnancy.

Scene 3

King and queen of North Pañcāla; presentation of their deferential son, Prince Sudhana.

Scene 4

Tree symbolizing the fertility and prosperity of North Pañcāla provided by the presence of the benevolent nāga,

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The Tale of Sudhana and Manoharā on Candi Jago Janmacitra. A king (nāga?) in discussion with a respectful (but not submissive) Sudhana, who is perhaps being charged with protecting Janmacitra. Scene 5

Two figures (from Scene 4) crouch by the lake of Janmacitra, whose home is a cavern at the centre of the lake (or beneath the waves). Sudhana or snake charmer (?) approaches the cavern in a small boat.

Scene 6

Sudhana receives a gift (the amoghapāśa) from the grateful nāga king.

Scene 7

Sudhana (wearing amoghapāśa) leaves the realm of the nāgas.

Scene 8

Sudhana meets Manoharā who surrenders head jewel (?), her magic amulet for flight.

Scene 9

Manoharā installed in Sudhana’s palace quarters as his wife. Regal person instructs Sudhana to put aside Manoharā and present himself to the royal court. Manoharā is distraught.

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given a ring, a magic token to protect Sudhana on the arduous journey should he decide to follow her. There are also special instructions for the journey, which the ṛṣi passes on to Sudhana Scene 13

Sudhana accepts the ring-token (now worn around his neck) and sets out on the journey, the words of the ṛṣi uppermost in his mind.

Scene 14 Sudhana, now wearing a jacket, flies over the river of snakes. Scene 15

A gaunt and older-looking Sudhana arrives at the kinnarī kingdom, coming to the palace of King Druma.

Scene 16 Manoharā recognizes the ring she had earlier left for safekeeping with the ṛṣi— she knows that Sudhana has arrived and fears her father’s reaction. Scene 17

Manoharā has informed her mother, the queen, who now faces King Druma with news, pleading on behalf of the couple.

Scene 10 Manoharā (or Sudhana?) undertakes a journey away from the quarters.

Scene 18

Manoharā watches fearfully through the gateway…

Scene 11

Scene 19 …as, outside the compound, King Druma confronts Sudhana, the queen still pleading at his feet.

Scene 12

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Sudhana meets with two priestly figures in the royal compound—he is loath to hear the instruction of the high priest. The loyal Vasantaka overhears their conversation. Meanwhile, Manoharā takes comfort from Sudhana’s sympathetic mother and receives back the magic headjewel (and cloth?). Alternatively, it may be Sudhana, full of grief, who visits his mother. In any event, both parts of this scene appear to be in the same venue. Vasantaka accompanies Sudhana to a friendly ṛṣi to whom Manoharā has

Scene 20 Numerous figures fighting or dancing? Or, in the previous scene, King Druma is much pleased with his princely son-inlaw and has ordered that the kingdom be prepared and decorated for celebration. Scene 21

Manoharā goes forth from the compound with a retinue of kinnarī to meet and be reunited with Sudhana.

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PART III BAUDDHA-ŚAIVA DYNAMICS

Part III.indd 1

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Part III.indd 2

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Chapter 13

Once More on the ‘Ratu Boko Mantra’: Magic, Realpolitik, and Bauddha-Śaiva Dynamics in Ancient Nusantara a n dr e a acr i

I

n his groundbreaking article ‘A Buddhist of Wanua Tengah III recovered from Central Java, mantra recovered from the Ratu Boko plateau: as well as from the 16th-century Old Sundanese A preliminary study of its implications for historical chronicle Carita Parahyaṅan (Sundberg Śailendra-era Java’, Jeffrey Sundberg (2003) high- 2011). Sundberg (2003) discovered instances of very lighted an important gold artefact recovered from similar mantras (i.e., takki hūṁ jaḥ, ṭakkijjaḥ the Ratu Boko hillock near Prambanan in Central huṁ)4 in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Sino-Japanese Java.1 The artefact, an inscribed gold foil consisting Tantric Buddhist texts, and pointed out that in the of two connected diamond-shaped leaves recalling Sanskrit Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha (STTS)—a a vajra, bears the Sanskrit mantra oṁ ṭakī hūṁ 7th-century mūlatantra consolidated over time jaḥ svāhā repeated on each of its four sides.2 A into the Yogatantra tradition (Weinberger 2003: unique, and intriguing, feature of the inscription 4)—the mantra occurs in the context of the Budis the engraving of the words panarabvan and kha- dhist Trailokyavijaya myth or the ‘Subjugation of nipas within an exaggerated circular bubble in the Maheśvara’ by the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi, while in two cases of the grapheme ī in the sequence ṭakī. Sino-Japanese sources it is associated with Aizen’s This feature led Sundberg to advance the hypothesis subjugation of Īśvara and Nārāyaṇa. In view of that the artefact, and the mantra(s) inscribed on it, these interesting facts, Sundberg concluded that was connected to King Rakai Panaraban (r. ad 784– the epigraphic document was Vajrayāna in nature, 803),3 who is known to us through the inscription thus opening the grounds ‘to find expressions of these tantric convictions in the stone temples of 1.  I wish to thank Rolf Giebel, Arlo Griffiths, Roy Jordaan, Java’ (ibid.: 181); that it might have had an anti-Śaiva Iain Sinclair, and Jeffrey Sundberg for having read and character (and purpose)—being a repudiation in commented on various drafts of this chapter. Any mistakes strong terms of the religion of Panaraban’s ancesare, of course, mine alone. I am particularly grateful to Iain Sinclair who, besides providing me with references tor Sañjaya (ibid.: 183); and that it was devised by to relevant passages of Tantric Buddhist manuals, has Panaraban, in order to ‘link himself to the mantra kindly shared with me many e-texts and rare editions of or the cosmic being it points to’ (ibid.). In the Buddhist sources that otherwise would have remained conclusion to his essay, Sundberg anticipated that inaccessible to me. the study of this mantra ‘has hopefully only just 2.  Regrettably, the present whereabouts of the gold foil are unknown; what remains is a hand-drawn facsimile made by Suhamir (Oudheidkundig Verslag 1950: 36), reproduced in Sundberg 2003: 165 and again here as Fig. 13.1. 3.  In fact the identification of panarabvan with Rakai Panaraban was already proposed by the late Indonesian archaeologist Kusen (1994), whose work is acknowledged by Sundberg. While I am entirely persuaded by the phonetic and orthographic arguments adduced by Sundberg (2003: 176–77) in support of the identification of the panarabvan inscribed on the plate with the historical king Rakai Panaraban known from Old Javanese inscriptions, most notably

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Wanua Tengah III, I must leave aside the discussion of his proposed identification of this figure with the Śailendra king Samaratuṅga, which goes beyond the scope of this contribution (for a critical appraisal of his hypothesis, see Jordaan and Colless 2004: 58–59). 4.  I consider the doubling of consonants in the versions of the mantra attested in Sanskrit and Tibetan sources on the one hand and Archipelagic sources on the other (e.g., ṭakki vs ṭaki) a trivial matter, which reflects minor orthographic variation rather than linguistic variation.

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Fig. 12.1: Drawing of the Ratu Boko gold foil by Soehamir. (Adapted from Oudheidkundig Verslag 1948 [1950: 36])

begun’ (ibid.), and invited scholars with the necessary philological skills to search for attestations of this mantra in textual sources from South, Central, Southeast, and East Asia; to explore the meaning of the obscure Old Javanese (?) word khanipas; and to pay archaeological attention to the Ratu Boko Buddhist site. Sundberg’s appeal was promptly taken up by Roy Jordaan and Brian Colless, who in 2004 published the short study ‘The Ratu Boko mantra and the Śailendras’. Jordaan and Colless (2004: 58) wrestled with Sundberg’s proposed identification of Panaraban as Samaratuṅga, the Śailendra ruler under whose auspices the 792 Buddhist inscription of Abhayagirivihāra was composed, as well as his adherence to Buddhism. They assume that he was in fact a Śaiva and that, given the association of the mantra with the Trailokyavijaya myth, its ‘intention could have been the mantrical subjugation and conversion of Panaraban’ (ibid.: 61).5 Recently, Arlo Griffiths (2014a) has returned to the ‘Ratu Boko mantra’ in section 7 (pp. 177–80) of his fine study entitled ‘Written Traces of the Buddhist Past: Mantras and Dhāraṇīs in Indonesian Inscriptions’. Griffiths, crediting Sundberg with having done much to throw light on this unique gold artefact, has drawn attention to attestations of precise matches to the mantric sequence oṁ ṭa(k) kī/i hūṁ jaḥ in the Guhyasamājatantra (14.22) and in the Tibetan version of the pre-9th century Sarvavajrodaya, a ritual manual by Ānandagarbha based on the system of the STTS. Having fulfilled Sundberg’s desideratum to find exact attestations of the mantra in early Tantric Buddhist sources, Griffiths pointed out that the same mantra ṭaki 5.  A succinct ‘rejoinder’ to the critiques and alternative hypotheses advanced by Jordaan and Colless may be found in Sundberg 2006: 112–13, n. 25; for his 2014 comments amending his 2006 rebuttal, see Sundberg, this volume, Annex to Chapter 14.

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hūṁ jaḥ is also attested in three short Old Javanese stone pillar inscriptions that previous scholars, followed by Sundberg, read as paki hūṁ jaḥ; furthermore, he pinpointed a very similar mantric sequence attested on a fourth Old Javanese inscription, whose whereabouts and context are presently unknown, as well as on a lead-bronze inscription from Borobudur, which contains a dhāraṇī devoted to a wrathful form of Vajrapāṇi (Griffiths 2014a). Building on the work of my predecessors, I will enter this fascinating discussion by identifying two other attestations—in a slightly modified form— of the ṭaki hūṁ jaḥ mantra: one in a Sanskrit Buddhist hymn (stuti) from Bali, and the other in the Gaṇapatitattva, a Sanskrit-Old Javanese tutur text of Śaiva persuasion. The latter—admittedly unusual—attestation of a Buddhist mantra in a Śaiva text named after Gaṇapati will give me the opportunity to elaborate on the links between the mantra and the figure of the elephant-headed god. Further, given the commonality of themes—that is, Tantric magic—shared by the section of the tutur attesting the ṭaki hūṁ jaḥ mantra and the Ratu Boko gold foil, I will try to throw new light on the context and the function of the latter. By analysing relevant textual evidence from Java and the Indian Subcontinent, I will then discuss the religious and socio-political scenarios opened up by it.6 The documents, I will argue, bear witness to dynamics of interaction and appropriation of mantric technology across the Śaiva and Bauddha divide in Central Java, Bali, and much of the premodern Indic cosmopolitan world. 6.  Given the uncertainty about the exact spot where the artefact was found, and other basic archaeological facts about the Ratu Boko complex, I will leave aside such questions as whether the gold foil was part of a foundation deposit related to the construction of the great western entrance-gate of the complex, or rather was meant to accompany the consecration of the statue of a tutelary deity, as speculated by Sundberg.

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Once More on the ‘Ratu Boko Mantra’

the mantra jaḥ ṭaḥ kiḥ huṁ phaṭ in the pañcakāṇḍastava The Pañcakāṇḍastava was edited and translated by Goudriaan and Hooykaas (1971: 241–43) as stuti no. 375, ‘Hymn to the Five Constituents’.7 The authors called this an ‘interesting hymn … nearly confined to Buddhist sources’, which they found in its entirety on at least twelve Buddhist manuscripts on daily ritual and death ritual, while its first two ślokas—precisely those attesting our mantra—they found also in three Śaiva sources (mss. 1590/I3a, 5160/33b, 2335). According to their Śaiva informant, this hymn is not used by the Śaiva priests (ibid.: 242). Below I reproduce Goudriaan and Hooykaas’ edition, critical apparatus (converted from their footnotes 1–7), and English translation of this stuti and its ‘sprinkling formula’. jaḥ-kāraḥ parvato jñeyaḥ taḥ-kāro jaladhis tathā / kiḥ-kāraś ca mahātejo huṁ-kāro vāyur eva ca // 1 phaṭ-kāraś ca mahākāśaḥ sarvavighnavināśanam / etāni sarvabhūtāni tad eva satataṁ punaḥ // 2 devapūjāṁ kariṣye naḥ sarvakleśavināśanam / dīrghāyuṣyam avāpnoti bhuktilābham avāpnuyāt // 3 ādityasya parāyaṇam sarvarogavināśanam / toyavahaṁ jagatpuṇyam pavitraṁ pāpasakalam // 4 Sprinkling formula (PVTg18; PPKA29): oṁ oṁ Śrī Śrī ambhavana Sarvarogavināśanam, sarvapāpavināśāya Sarvakleśavināśanaṁ, sarvaduḥkhavināśāya, Namaḥ svāhā 2b sarvavighna° ] 7× vighna; 7× roga 2c etāni sarvabhūtāni ] thus two mss.; others etānām sarvabhūtānām 2d tad eva ] 8× sadeva 2d punaḥ ] 6× udaḥ; others pudaḥ 3c avāpnoti ] 5× apaśyataḥ 3d bhuktilābham āvāpnuyāt ] five mss. saṁgrāme vijayī bhavet 4d °sakalam ] mss. sakatam

7.  An alternative, more faithful, translation may be ‘The five-constituents mantra’ (where ‘constituents’ stands for ‘portions’ or ‘divisions’ rather than ‘constitutive elements’).

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The syllable jaḥ is to be known as the mountain, and the syllable taḥ as the ocean;8 and the syllable kiḥ as the fire, and the syllable huṁ9 as the air. (1) And the syllable phaṭ is space; destruction of all hindrances; all these elements are always that…10 (2) I will perform the worship of the gods … which means destruction of all stains; [the worshipper] obtains the condition of a long life and will obtain enjoyment. (3) The refuge given by the Sun; destruction of all disease; a stream of water, blessing to the world; a purifier destroying all evil. (4) Sprinkling formula: oṁ oṁ …; Destruction of all disease; towards destruction of all evil; destruction of all stains; towards destruction of all sorrow, honour, hail.

Goudriaan and Hooykaas (1971: 242) commented that ‘the language is good-looking, although the second part of [śloka] 2 is somewhat puzzling. Perhaps the sentence has been broken off’. Further, they noted the similarity between ślokas 1 and 2 and those found in the edited Gaṇapatitattva as ślokas 54 and 55, but confirmed Sudarshana Devi’s (1958: 117) view that ‘the bījas mentioned in these verses do not seem to be found elsewhere’. In a rather speculative attempt to make sense of them, they proposed that they originally constituted the mantra Jā-na-kī Huṁ Phaṭ. Jānakī, (= Sītā) is indeed often worshipped as the Great Mother of existence and might on this function very well be considered as a personification of the Five Great Elements which constitute Prakṛti (Nature). 8.  Goudriaan and Hooykaas (1971: 242–43, nn. 1 and 2) pointed out that here ‘mountain’ and ‘ocean’ represent ‘earth’ and ‘water’ respectively, corresponding to pṛthivī and āpaḥ of the Gaṇapatitattva; see below. 9.  Huṁ here could be restored to hūṁ. 10.  The reading sadeva attested on 8 mss. could be sadaiva (i.e., sadā + eva), ‘at all times/eternally’, which is however redundant in a verse-quarter featuring satatam and punar.

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In view of the attestation of the parallel mantra ṭa(k)kī/i jaḥ hūṁ in Buddhist texts, this hypothesis is no longer tenable. Furthermore, apart from the intriguing occurrence of the originally Buddhist mantra found in ślokas 1–2 in three Śaiva ritual sources, it should be noted that both ślokas 3–4 of the stuti and the sprinkling formula present thematic analogies with the ślokas and Old Javanese commentary of relevant portions of the Gaṇapatitattva, which I will present and discuss in the next section.

the mantra jaḥ ṭaḥ kiḥ hūṁ phaṭ in gaṇapatitattva 59–60 (54–55) The Gaṇapatitattva is a Śaiva scripture belonging to the Javano-Balinese tutur genre;11 arranged as a dialogue between the Lord Śiva and his son Gaṇapati, it consists of sixty Sanskrit ślokas provided with Old Javanese prose glosses, introduced by an extensive Old Javanese prose section. The text, which has come down to us only through palmleaf manuscripts from Bali, is of uncertain date. While the prose section appended to ślokas 51–53 reveals various Balinisms and (Middle-)Javanisms, thereby suggesting a late date of composition (16th century onwards), its earliest textual stratum, and in particular its ślokas, may be several centuries older, and perhaps even date back to the Central Javanese period.12 11.  On this genre of Śaiva literature, see Acri 2006. 12.  A small number of verses of the Gaṇapatitattva/ Tutur Kamokṣan/Jñānasiddhānta have parallels in pre-9th century Sanskrit Siddhāntatantras from the Indian Subcontinent (Acri 2006), while verses 57–59 have a parallel in a Sanskrit stuti from Bali (Praṇavajñāna, no. 890.1–3, Goudriaan and Hooykaas 1971: 524); compare also verses 1–2 and 3cd of the Pañcakāṇḍa with Gaṇapatitattva 54–55 and 56cd. Recent research has shown that many Balinese stutis have preserved material stemming from the Central Javanese period: see, e.g., Kandahjaya (2009) and Griffiths (2014b) on the Navakampa (no. 510, Goudriaan and Hooykaas 1971: 314–15), and Acri and Jordaan (2012) on stutis that, together with the Śaiva Sanskrit-Old Javanese tutur Bhuvanasaṅkṣepa (also handed down uniquely on Bali), arguably informed the masterplan of 9th-century Candi Śiva at Loro Jonggrang. See also stuti no. 450 (Goudriaan and Hooykaas 1971: 274–77), attesting a fragment from the pre-8th century Vīṇāśikhatantra (cf. Acri 2006: 118–19).

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As Hooykaas (1962, especially pp. 314–18) painstakingly showed, the printed edition of the Gaṇapatitattva (ed. Sudarshana Devi Singhal 1958), produced on the basis of a single palm-leaf manuscript, turned out to be just one version among the many that were circulating on Bali under different titles. The edited version corresponds to Īśvara Uvāca Gaṇapati Matakvan (‘Īśvara Spoke, Gaṇapati Asked’, Gedong Kirtya manuscript K2411), which appears to be the most ‘mature’ one as it betrays a complex process of compilation. It was carved out of a core of sixty ślokas (four of which are lacking in Sudarshana Devi’s edition), supplemented with extra material related to Gaṇapati at its beginning and end, namely: an opening maṅgala verse to Gaṇapati followed by an Old Javanese prose portion containing ten questions-and-answers between Gaṇapati and Śiva; a concluding series of ślokas (59–61) with appended Old Javanese paragraphs; a prose paṅlukatan gaṇapati or ‘exorcism (by means) of Gaṇapati’; and three eulogizing ślokas (62–64) and short Sanskrit and Old Javanese invocations (65) to the same god.13 Judging from the number of Balinese manuscripts preserving various redactions of this text it may be argued that the Gaṇapatitattva enjoyed certain popularity on the island. The section that primarily concerns us here consists of the two ślokas 59–60 (54–55 in the printed edition) plus an Old Javanese prose appendix of three paragraphs. The Sanskrit-Old Javanese dyad follows an (apparently unrelated) long prose section, stretching over nineteen paragraphs, appended to ślokas 57–59 (51–53 in the printed edition);14 this 13.  The ‘core text’ out of which further versions of the Gaṇapatitattva were carved is the Tutur Kamokṣan, which in its turn forms a part (with some sections rearranged in different order) of the Tutur Ādhyātmika (an expanded version of the latter text was edited as Jñānasiddhānta: see Soebadio 1971: 4–7). An ‘intermediate’ version of the Gaṇapatitattva is the Tatva Gaṇapati (romanized transcription by Ketut Sudarsana, PusDok, 1993), which includes the ten questions-and-answers but lacks the maṅgala, and the concluding material after śloka 61. 14.  The three ślokas and long prose section are also found in the Tutur Kamokṣan, but not in Tutur Ādhyātmika/ Jñānasiddhānta—the three ślokas alone, i.e. without the long Old Javanese prose appendage, being attested in Jñānasiddhānta 3.1–3, 17.4, and 18.12; cf. also stuti 809.1–3 (Praṇavajñāna). The relation, admittedly superficial, that

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Once More on the ‘Ratu Boko Mantra’ is followed by an (arguably related) śloka on the mṛtyuñjaya mantra (61), the paṅlukatan gaṇapati, and the concluding Sanskrit and Old Javanese invocations. The two ślokas and the first paragraph of the Old Javanese commentary run as follows:15 jaḥkāre pṛthivī jñeyaḥ ṭaḥkāre āpa-saṁsthitaḥ / kiḥkāraś ca mahātejaḥ hūṁkāre bāyu-saṁnyaset // 59 phaṭkārākāśa-saṁyuktaḥ mahāpātakanāśāya / pañcāṅgaṁ japayed vidvān śivalokam avāpnuyāt // 60 ndya ta ya / jah / ṭah / kih / hūṁ / phaṭ //16 iti saṅ hyaṅ pañcāṅga17 / japākna śivadhyāna / mahāpātaka vināśa denya // 0 // 59a jaḥkāre ] GaṇEd, TGaṇ, GaṇUd; jaḥkare PDok; jaḥkarai GaṇL; pṛthvī ] corr.; prathivi TGaṇ, GaṇUd; pravivi PDok; praviviṁ GaṇL; jñeyaḥ ] PDok, GaṇL, TGaṇ, GaṇUd (m. aḥ for f. ā); jñeyā GaṇEd; 59b ṭaḥkāre ] corr. (°e ā° for °a ā°); taḥkāra GaṇEd; taḥkārai GaṇL; thaḥkare PDok (as 59c); ṭāḥkāre GaṇUn.; āpa-saṁsthitaḥ ] corr. (nom. sing. for f. plur., °a-s° for °ḥ s° or °s s°, m.c.); āpaḥ saṁsthitāḥ GaṇEd; apa saṁstitaḥ GaṇL; hapa saṁsthitaḥ PDok; apa saṁsthitaḥ TGaṇ, GaṇUd 59c kiḥkāraś ca ] corr.; kiḥkaraś ca, GaṇL, TGaṇ, GaṇUd, PDok (as 59b); kiḥkāre GaṇEd (em.); mahātejaḥ ] corr.; mahatejaḥ TGaṇ, GaṇUd; mahāteja GaṇEd (GaṇL); hūṁkāre  ] em.; hūṁkare TGaṇ, GaṇUd; uṁkāre GaṇEd; uṁkarai GaṇL; uṅkare PDok; 59d bāyu ] em. (m. sing. acc. ending °ṁ dropped m.c.); vāyuṁ GaṇEd; bayu GaṇL, GaṇUd, PDok; saṁnyaset ] GaṇEd; sanyaset PDok; śanyaṣet GaṇL; śanyaset GaṇUd; śūnyayet TGaṇ 60a phaṭkārākāśa-saṁyuktaḥ] em. (°rā° for °ra ā° [°e + ā° ] (double sandhi), and °a-s° for °aḥ s°, m.c.); phaṭkārākāśasaṁyukto GaṇEd; phaṭkarakāśasaṁyuktaḥ

this part bears to the two ślokas following thereupon seems to be limited to the statement, found in the end of paragraph 19, that the obtainment of release (kapadamokṣan) corresponds to śivapada, which may be linked to śloka 61d, which speaks about the obtainment of śivaloka. 15.  The passage has been collated from five different witnesses, namely the edited text and the single manuscript it stems from (= Īśvara Uvāca Gaṇapati Matakvan, K2411 ≈ LOr 11461), and three versions of the Gaṇapatitattva proper (for the sigla used in the apparatus, see the primary sources section at the end of this chapter). 16.  jaḥ / ṭaḥ / kiḥ / hūṁ / phat] em.; / jah / ṭah / kih / uṁ / phaṭ GaṇEd; jaḥ / ṭaḥ / kiḥ / hūm / phaṭ GaṇL (?); jah / tah / kih / uṁ / phat PDok; jaḥ / ṭaḥ / kiḥ / hūṁ / phat GaṇUd 17.  pañcāṅga ] em.; pañcaṇdha GaṇUd, pañcandha PDok; pañcakāṇḍa GaṇEd, pañcakāṇdha GanL.

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GaṇL; phatkārakāśasaṁyuktaḥ TGaṇ, GaṇUd; phankare kasa saṁyuktaḥ PDok 60b mahāpātakanāśāya ] em. GaṇEd (°śā° unmetrical); mahāpaṭakanaśāya GaṇL; mahāpaṭakanasaya GaṇUd; mahāpatakanasaya TGaṇ, PDok 60c pañcāṅgaṁ japayed vidvān ] conj.; pañcāṇḍaṁ japed yo vidvān GaṇEd (em.); pañcāṇḍhaṁ japayet vidvan GaṇUd; pañcaṇḍhaṁ japayaid vidvān GaṇL; pañcaṇdhaṁ japayet vidvaṁ TGaṇ; pañcāndhaṁ japayet vidvān PDok 60d avāpnuyāt] corr. GaṇEd; avasnuyat GaṇL, GaṇUd, TGaṇ, PDok

In the jaḥ the earth is known [to reside]; in the ṭaḥ is placed the water. The kiḥ is full of fire; [one] should place the wind in the hūṁ. (59) The phaṭ is fixed in the space. For the annihilation of great sins, the wise should mutter the [mantra of] Five Units, so that he may reach the world of Śiva. (60) Jaḥ, ṭaḥ, kiḥ, hūṁ, phaṭ: Thus is the sacred [mantra] of Five Units. The visualization of Śiva should be muttered. Great sins are annihilated by means of it.

The two ślokas, composed in a typically ‘Tantric register’ of Sanskrit, attest virtually the same reconfigured version of the mantric sequence ṭaki jaḥ hūṁ found in the Pañcakāṇḍastava. In both the Sanskrit verses and the Old Javanese gloss, the sequence ṭaki is divided into its constituents ṭa and ki, each of which is provided with a visarga.18 The mantra phaṭ occurs in place of the svāhā attested in the Ratu Boko gold foil.19 The fivefold mantric sequence jaḥ ṭaḥ kiḥ hūṁ phaṭ is called pañcāṅga (my emendation from pañcāṇḍa) in both the śloka and the Old Javanese gloss, meaning the ‘(Mantra of) Five Units’; but one manuscript attests the reading pañcakāṇḍa in the gloss, which mirrors 18.  The visarga in the syllables jaḥ ṭaḥ kiḥ might have been part of the first person singular nominative declension, but appears to have been understood by the compiler of the śloka as an integral part of the single mantric units (for he wrote jaḥkāra and not jakāra, etc.). This form has been retained in the Old Javanese commentary. 19.  A similar form of the mantra is attested in a book of yantra etc. drawn up by Newar artisans in the Ming dynasty, where it is given as oṁ ṭakkirāja hūṁ phaṭ (i.e., the signature mantra of Ṭakki). In fact, what may be the earliest attestations of the mantra ṭṭakki huṁ phaṭ is in the STTS (ed. 200, lines 12–14), where it is connected with magical ‘killing with a glance’ (vajraṛṣṭayā nirīkṣed  … maraṇam āpnuyāt). I thank Iain Sinclair for these references (email dated 30 August 2014; cf. Sinclair 2013).

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Table 13.1: Correspondences between mantric units and visualizations in OJ commentary, GNP 60–61 phaṭ hūṁ kiḥ ṭaḥ jaḥ

space wind fire water earth

Paramaśivadhyāna Rudradhyāna Mahādevadhyāna Śaṅkaradhyāna Īśvaradhyāna

final release (mokṣa) destruction of enemies (ripusaṁhāra) success in the world (kasvasthan iṅ rāt)* accomplishment of all actions (sakārya siddha)** affection of somebody (kasihana deniṅ janma)

* Here I follow GaṇL (kasvastan) and GaṇUd (kaśvastan), against GaṇEd (kasvastyan). ** Here I follow PDok and GaṇUd against GaṇEd (sakāryanta siddha) and GaṇL (sakāryyantā).

the title of the Balinese stuti.20 In the ślokas these units are linked to the five elementals, whereas in the Old Javanese gloss they are declared to constitute the visualization of Śiva (śivadhyāna). A notable feature, attested in both the Gaṇapatitattva and the Balinese stuti, is the transformation of the original sequence ṭaki jaḥ into jaḥ taḥ kiḥ, which may represent an instance of purposeful ‘inversion’.21 The continuation of the first paragraph of the Old Javanese gloss seems to be an addition, and yet is apparently related to ślokas 60–61. So is the second paragraph, as well as the four ślokas and eulogy that bring the text to its end. The first paragraph elaborates on śivadhyāna, prescribing the muttering (japa) of aṁ-aḥ sixteen times, the fruit of which is purity (nirmala).22 The remaining part of the first paragraph describes a fivefold visualization technique (dhyāna) aimed at obtaining specific 20.  Aṅga is a common technical term for the constituents of a mantra, whereas aṇḍa (‘egg’) does not make sense here. The reading pañcakāṇḍaṁ supported by GaṇL may represent a ‘contamination’, in the light of the attestation of the form in several mss. of the Balinese stuti Pañcakāṇḍa, and perhaps also because of semantic overlap (kāṇḍa = ‘part, unit, portion, division, constituent’; compare khaṇḍa ‘piece, part, fragment, portion, section’, and skandha ‘part, division, section’; pañcaskandha is a well-attested unit in Buddhist literature, e.g. in the Guhyasamāja exegesis, where it represents the the five constituent elements of being). The causative form japayed attested in all mss. may be the outcome of the insertion of one extra syllable as required by the metre, or may represent a corruption of japed yo vidvān). 21.  Compare the mantra ‘ṭaki hūṁ jaḥ jaḥ hūṁ kiṭa h(ū)[ṁ] ṭaki (dhuṁ) kiṭa dhu(ṁ)…’ engraved on a leadbronze foil from Borobudur, where the sequences jaḥ hūṁ kiṭa and kiṭa dhu(ṁ) may represent inversions of ṭaki hūṁ jaḥ and ṭaki dhu(ṁ) respectively; Griffiths (2014b: 25) notes the inversion with respect to the element kiṭa. 22.  Perhaps here the Sanskrit (and Old Javanese) nirmala should be understood as being equivalent to the Sanskrit abstract noun nirmalatva (‘purity’).

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faculties. This is hierarchically ordered from the highest to the lowest attainment, as corresponding to the highest and lowest mainifestations of Śiva. Although there is no explicit indication in the Old Javanese commentary that the five forms of visualization following thereupon are connected to each one of the five mantric units detailed in the śloka, the redactor might have implied thus, in order to obtain the list of correspondences illustrated in Table 13.1.23 The progression is from the foremost visualization of Paramaśiva, connected with the subtlest element of space or ether (ākāśa),24 the mantra phaṭ, 23.  The redactions of the text corresponding to the ms. titled Tatva Gaṇapati (TGaṇ ≈ LOr 14982) add yan sadāśivadhyāna dīrghāyuṣa phalanya (spelling standardized) between Śivadhyāna and Rudradhyāna, against the redactions corresponding to the edited version of the Gaṇapatitattva and ms. titled Īśvara Uvāca Gaṇapati Matakvan. This sentence may be an addition as it disrupts the fivefold arrangement and the correspondence with the elements of the mantra in the śloka. As far as the fivefold hierarchical arrangement is concerned, it is tempting to detect a spatial arrangement as well, where the four main points of the compass plus the centre are linked to the five deities presiding over/associated with the respective direction. If one links the names of the manifestations of Śiva mentioned in the passage to the corresponding deities known from the navasaṅa arrangement that has survived down to modern Bali, the resulting arrangement, starting from the east and proceeding in counterclockwise direction, would be as follows: Īśvara in the east (like Indra, he rides an elephant in Balinese iconography), Śaṅkara in the northwest, Mahādeva in the west, Rudra in the southwest, and Paramaśiva in the centre. 24.  This is in harmony with the widespread homologization of the highest form of godhead (or paramount metaphysical entity, such as the Self, or even a yogic attainment, such as tarka) to space (ākāśa)—and, at the same time, ‘emptiness’ (śūnya[tā])—attested in several texts of both Śaiva and Buddhist persuasion from the Indonesian Archi-

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Once More on the ‘Ratu Boko Mantra’ and the attainment of liberation, to the lowest visualization of Īśvara, connected with the coarsest element earth (pṛthvī), the mantra jaḥ, and the securement of the affection of somebody.25 The paragraph ends with a characterization of the mantras aṁ-aḥ—the former is ‘the seed-syllable of the Soul’ (ātmabījākṣara), the latter ‘the seed of emptiness’ (śūnyatābīja); together, they are called ‘the great union’ (mahāsaṁyoga). They should be used with restraint. The section ends with a caption iti saṅ hyaṅ mahājapa ‘[here ends] the sacred Great Muttering [formula]’, which is a paramount secret (paramarahasya). The second paragraph links the Sanskrit word khaḍgarāvaṇa (see below) to the mantric sequence oṁ ha ka śa ma la va ra yaṁ uṁ,26 which should be visualized (kahiḍәpanya) as Ardhanārīśvara (a half-male, half-female form of Śiva). The ten syllables should be placed in the body following a clockwise direction (pradakṣiṇakrama); this results in the obtainment of impenetrabilty from any kind of weapons (tan kataman iṅ sarvvasañjāta) and being free from all hindrances (luput iṅ sarvvavighna). Then the concentration (anuṣṭhāna) of the mṛtyuñjaya should be performed, as follows: oṁ in the fontanelle, aṁ in the mouth, kaṁ in the throat, aḥ in the cavity of the earth, aṁ from the navel down to the feet; these go together with the ten-syllable mantra (daśākṣaramantra) from the crest to the feet, and also with the mantra maṁ (i.e., jūṁ?) saḥ vauṣaṭ mtyuñjayāya namaḥ svāhā vaṣat (see below, n. 43). Śloka 61 elaborates on the mṛtyuñjayamantra, granting long life (dīrghāyuṣa) and victory in battle (saṅgramavijaya).27 The Old Javanese gloss simply pelago (see, e.g., Gonda 1971; Acri 2011a: 347, 589); also note that a Chinese Buddhist text attributed to Śubhākarasiṁha links Mahāvairocana—the highest Tathāgata—with space and the centre (see Damais 1969: 85–86). 25.  This amounts to a form of vaśīkaraṇa: cf. below. 26.  This mantra, which still plays an important role in the theology and yogic praxis of present-day Balinese Hinduism, is indeed a variant of the old, in origin Saiddhāntika, Śaiva mantra nāvātman, most often represented by the sequence rhrkṣmlvyūṁ (see Padoux 2011: 58–60). 27.  Compare Pañcakāṇḍastava 3cd, 5 manuscripts of which read: dīrghāyuṣyam avāpnoti, saṁgrāme vijayī bhavet, and Gaṇapatitattva 61cd (ed. 56cd): dīrghāyuṣam avāpnoti saṅgramavijayī bhavet.

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states that it is not to be used or revealed indiscriminately, and that its aim is to keep death far away (hayva cāvuh, madoh maraṇa donira tәlas).28 The word tәlas (‘finished’, ‘the end’) suggests that the original text ended here.29 The ‘exorcism (by means of) Gaṇapati’ that follows—attested only in the edited Gaṇapatitattva (= Īśvara Uvāca Gaṇapati Matakvan)—starts with an Old Javanese passage containing instructions for a pūjā to invoke the intervention of the elephant-headed god against the damage caused by field-mice.30 The three ślokas, constituting the mantra to be employed in the pūjā, eulogize Gaṇapati as the son of Śiva who destroys all poisons (sarvaviṣavināśana) and calamities (roga), and bestows success (siddhārthada). The text ends with a short auspicious formula in honour of Gaṇapati and Sarasvatī, by which one obtains long life and prosperity.31 28.  This is the correct reading, as shown by Hooykaas (1962: 315), versus the hayva cāvuh, adomraṇa denira tәlas of the edition (however, the variant denira, ‘by means of it’, is permissible and attested in some manuscripts). I do not agree with Hooykaas’ translation of maraṇa (māraṇa) as ‘field-mice’, but take it in its most evident meaning of ‘death, killing’, which is consonant with the content of the śloka devoted to the Mṛtyuñjaya mantra. It is evident that Hooykaas was misled by the contents of the paṅlukatan gaṇapati that follows thereupon, which deals with ‘agricultural exorcism’; it is entirely possible that the compiler of the ‘mature’ redaction of the Gaṇa­ patitattva took maraṇa to mean ‘field-mice’, but the same reasoning cannot be applied retrospectively to the Old Javanese gloss of śloka 61. 29.  The ‘intermediate’ version of the Gaṇapatitattva from ms. PDok, as well as the Tutur Kamokṣan, end here indeed. 30.  Hooykaas (1962: 315–16) described this as ‘an additional note for peasants … only a rustic and picturesque accretion to our philosophical/metaphysical text’. The practitioner is prompted to ‘make a circuit (scilicet: of his rice-field), using an ‘‘ivory bamboo’’ (scilicet: adorned with) a drawing of Gaṇapati, with a disc [cakra] in His left hand and a cudgel [gadā] in His right’ (ibid.: 315). This kind of ‘agricultural magic’ does not represent an ‘indigenous’ Balinese invention, but has clear parallels in South Asia. In current Indian harvest festivals, and also in folk literature, Gaṇapati is worshipped as a ‘harvest hero’, and especially as a destroyer of mice (he is often portrayed as riding a rat, his vehicle): see Michael 1983. 31.  Oṁ ghmuṁ gaṇapataye namaḥ / oṁ sarasvatyai namaḥ / oṁ siddhir astu / tad astu / astu // oṁ dīrghāyuṣaṁ sukhaśriyā / darśanāt tava vṛddhiśriyā //.

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a kind of magic? the ratu boko gold foil as a yantra The mantra jaḥ-ṭaḥ-kiḥ-hūṁ-phaṭ is apparently associated in the Gaṇapatitattva with purification, averting of calamity, and bestowal of supernatural goals. Both the ślokas and the Old Javanese gloss declare that the use of the five-unit mantra is ‘for the annihilation of great sins’ (mahāpātakanāśa), which results in the attainment of śivaloka. The Old Javanese gloss implies that the murmuring of the five units amounts to śivadhyāna, which is connected to the mantra aṁ aḥ (the so-called rva bhineda formula that is widespread in Javano-Balinese lore). A similar stress on purification, averting of calamity and sins, and bestowal of supernatural goals is found in ślokas 61–64 (56–59 ed.) on mṛtyuñjaya and Gaṇapati-related mantras, as well as in the Pañcakāṇḍastava.32 Three of the goals listed in the Old Javanese gloss to Gaṇapatitattva 59–60, namely the destruction of enemies (aptly homologized with Rudra, the destructive form of Śiva), worldly success, and attracting the affection of somebody, apparently correspond to the operations of māraṇa, puṣṭi and vaśīkaraṇa respectively, which we find in the ‘six acts/practices’ or ‘six rites of magic’ (ṣaṭkarmāṇi). Sanskrit literature, from the Atharvaveda to Tantric texts of Śaiva, Buddhist, and even Jaina and Vaiṣṇava persuasion, defines ritual practices connected with protection, pacification, exorcism, incantation, and the acquisition or cultivation of prosperity, according to different systematizations. The standard, ‘mature’ list as defined in many Tantric works is the one adopted by the early 16th-century Śaiva author Mahīdhara in his manual Mantrama-

32.  Compare the stuti’s sarvavighnavināśanam, sarva­ kleśavināśanam, bhuktilābham, sarvarogavināśanam, pavitraṁ pāpasakalam, and sarvapāpavināśāya with Gaṇapatitattva’s sarvaviṣavināśanam, parāṇi rogāṇi mūrchhantam, siddhārthadam (62–64 = ed. 57–59), and mahāpātakanāśāya/mahāpātakavināśa (ślokas and commentary 59–60 = ed. 54–55) . In particular, note that Gaṇapatitattva 61cd (ed. 56cd) is the same as Pañcakāṇḍastava 3cd (see my n. 27 above); the whole śloka 3 of the latter source is also attested in the Balinese ritual text Pūjā Kṣatriya (ms. PKTb, as stanza 3 of the Śaiva stuti no. 13): cf. below, n. 43 and 46. .

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hodadhi,33 which comprises appeasement (śānti), subjugation (vaśya, vaśīkaraṇa), immobilization (stambha, stambhana), enmity (dveṣa, vidveṣa), eradication (uccāṭana), and liquidation (māraṇa); but other sources also attest lists of four or fewer elements,34 while sources listing nine elements—the aforementioned six plus delusion (mohana), attraction (ākarṣaṇa),35 and acquisition (puṣṭi)—are also known. In fact ākarṣaṇa (i.e., bringing a person under the practitioner’s control), even if it is not included in the ‘standard’ list of six acts, is ‘one of the best known and most widely performed acts of magic’ (Goudriaan 1978: 294), and as such it plays an important role in many of the documents discussed here. As I have mentioned above, the ṭaki jaḥ hūṁ mantra has been linked to a context of mantric subjugation; and since the version of the mantra attested on the Ratu Boko gold foil and the version in the Gaṇapatitattva seem to have been used in a context of magic, an investigation of selected key sources related to magical practices in Buddhist and Śaiva contexts may throw light on the contexts and purposes of the mantra. Let us turn to Chapter 25 of the Mantramahodadhi. In verses 30–32ab Mahīdhara declares that in the six rites the seed syllables of a yantra—a ‘coercive diagram’ (Brunner 2003: 164–65)36—consist of 33.  Being a systematic manual compiled on the basis of several earlier authoritative texts, the Mantramahodadhi remains a valuable source on the ṣaṭkarmāṇi in spite of its relatively late date of composition. A translation and analysis of Chapter 25 of this text, which I will draw from in my discussion, may be found in Bühnemann 2000. 34.  In fact Vedic sources already subdivide all karman (in the sense of ritual) into three kinds, namely śānti (pacification), puṣṭi (welfare or acquisition), and abhicāra (harming others) (Goudriaan 1978: 252). 35.  In some other lists, ākarṣaṇa—which is relevant to our discussion—replaces śānti, especially in (con)texts where the rite assumes a more cruel appearance (Goudriaan 1978: 260–61). 36.  Cf. Sanderson’s (2004: 290) definition of yantra as ‘a Mantra-inscribed diagram written in various colours and with various inks on cloth, birchbark, the hides of various animals and the like, wrapped up and then employed in various ways (by being worn as an amulet, by being buried in a cremation ground, and so on) for purposes such as warding off ills, harming an enemy, or forcing a person to submit to the user’s will’. Iain Sinclair (email dated 30 December 2014) pointed out to me that many Nepalese

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the letters of the moon, water, earth, ether, wind, and fire (Bühnemann 2000: 457). One may wonder whether the correlation between the five syllables jaḥ-ṭaḥ-kiḥ-ḥu(/ū)ṁ-phaṭ and the five elements in the Pañcakāṇḍastava, as also between the last two series and the five manifestations of Śiva in the Gaṇapatitattva, reflect an analogous systematization, as well as the widespread idea that, by connecting (on a subtle level) syllables or mantras to elements, the latter are purified. Correlations between five mantras, the five elements, and five Tathāgatas, are often found in Tantric Buddhist maṇḍalas (see e.g., Kandahjaya 2009, table 4, and my n. 23 above), so this idea need not be distinctively Śaiva. The Mantramahodadhi (verses 17cd–23ab, see Bühnemann 2000: 449 and table 26.5) describes six arrangements for connecting the mantra to be uttered in each rite with the letters of the name of the victim of the magical act; such methods may include the insertion of the victim’s name at the end, or the insertion of letters between its syllables, and so on. Padoux (2011: 96–97), describing in detail analogous practices on the basis of Netratantra Ch. 18 and Kṣemarāja’s commentary, characterizes the technique called saṁpuṭa as the symbolic ‘encasing’ of a mantra ‘(or any part thereof, or any element with which it is associated) inside a space or casket, covered as with a lid or within two covers’. He adds that in his commentary on Netratantra 6.18 Kṣemarāja describes a written procedure: mantram ādau likhet;37 similarly, in Agnipurāṇa Ch. 138, ‘where saṃpuṭa is prescribed for the magical action of vaśīkaraṇa and ākarṣaṇa, it is described as the placing of the mantra around the sādhya—above, under and to its right and left: a spatial pattern, not an oral operation’.38 This practice, which is signifi-

cantly associated with vaśīkaraṇa and ākarṣaṇa, resonates with the encasing of the personal raka title ‘Panaraban’ (and ‘Khanipas’) on the Ratu Boko gold foil within the circular ī of the mantra ṭakī. It is therefore not too far-fetched to assume, as was done by Sundberg (2003: 177), that the inscription of Panaraban’s personal title within a grapheme was intended to infix it ‘as a vital component of the sacred mantra’. Whatever the actual intended procedure might have been, the practices described in the Sanskrit documents presented above would seem to support the link with practices of adduction and subjugation hypothesized by Sundberg as well as Jordaan and Colless, and lead us to regard the Ratu Boko gold foil as a yantra of coercive magic. Exploring further the hypothesis that the Ratu Boko artefact indeed might have constituted a yantra, I turn again to the Mantramahodadhi, which in verses 23cd–26ab (Bühnemann 2000: 455–56, and table 26) describes the symbolic shapes of the elements that have to be drawn in such yantras: for subjugation this is a triangle endowed with svastikas, for immobilization it is a square connected with thunderbolts (vajra), and for enmity it is a circle. Other sources give different combinations, namely vajra and liquidation, square and pacification, circle and pacification, subjugation, eradication, or acquisition (see Goudriaan 1978: 292). An early Śaiva Tantra, the Brahmayāmala, declares that the practitioner ‘should draw a square and write [the target’s] name in its centre’ (5.78cd–79ab, Kiss 2014: 212). We may connect these ideas to the shape of the Ratu Boko artefact and see in the vaguely vajra-shaped double quadrangle a counterpart of the ‘square connected with thunderbolts’ associated with subjugation; on the other

Buddhist mantra manuscripts attest a placeholder for the name of the ‘target’, usually ‘Devadatta’, and that while Buddhists classically used terms such as rakṣācakra, contemporary Newar Vajrācāryas talk about yantra (jantra). On examples of yantras found in early Śaiva Tantras, see Kiss 2014. 37.  Sanderson (2004: 290) draws attention to Kṣemarāja’s definition (ad Netratantra 20.59c) of a yantracakram as ‘a series of Mantras written in a particular spatial arrangement … yantracakraṁ viśiṣṭasaṃniveśalikhito mantrasamūhaḥ’. 38.  Compare also Padoux’s (2011: 97–98) description of techniques that appear to be related to saṁpuṭa, namely:

grasta (‘swallowed or eclipsed, but also surrounded’), which is in fact what Agnipurāṇa Ch. 138 calls saṁpuṭīkaraṇa; ākrānta (‘seized or invaded’—applying to the name of the victim, which Kṣemarāja characterizes as ‘when the mantra is placed so as to surround the name which is in the centre’; Padoux sees this as a variant of what is called grasta by the Netratantra and saṁpuṭīkaraṇa by the Agnipurāṇa); garbhastha: this corresponds to the Agnipurāṇa’s definition of saṁpuṭa, except that Kṣemarāja on Netratantra ‘mentions the four directions of space instead of the four sides of the written mantra. It is also the reversal of what is defined as grasta. Like the AgP’s saṁpuṭa, this can be done only in writing’.

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hand, the engraving of the raka title panarabvan that enclose bījamantras to form effective mantric (and, perhaps, the personal name khanipas) within sequences, and therefore need not necessarily be the circle of two of the the ī signs may correspond connected with a particular function.42 to ‘enmity’, as per Mahīdhara, or again subjugaLet us turn to the Gaṇapatitattva again. The tion, according to an alternative list. Although no mention of Khaḍgarāvaṇa, the ten syllables, and definitive conclusion can be drawn, it seems safe the mṛtyuñjaya mantra43 in the second paragraph to assume that the choice of these shapes was not of the Old Javanese commentary to ślokas 59–60 entirely arbitrary but reflected systematizations offers a hint to the fact that the mantra jaḥ-ṭaḥdescribed in manuals of yantra-magic. kiḥ-hūṁ-phaṭ was meant to be employed—as, it Further, Mahīdhara associates six closing words appears, also in the Pañcakāṇḍa—in a context of of mantras with the respective acts, namely namaḥ Tantric magic. Khaḍgarāvaṇa is the chief deity of and pacification, svāhā and subjugation, vaṣaṭ the Bhūtatantras of the exorcistic Paścimasrotas diand immobilization, vauṣaṭ and enmity, hūṁ and vision of the Mantramārga (Sanderson 2003–4: 374), eradication, phaṭ and liquidation (verses 32cd– a Rudra possessing the demonic identity of both 33ab, Bühnemann 2000: 457). According to this Rāvaṇa and Bhairava, who presides over evil beings categorization, the closing svāhā in the ‘Ratu Boko and is invoked in his capacity as lord of the bhūtas version’ of the mantra would neatly correspond to (bhūtanātha) to chase them away.44 The mṛtyuñsubjugation;39 on the other hand, the closing phaṭ jaya (‘Conqueror of Death’) is both a mantra and in the series attested in the Pañcakāṇḍastava and a god—the Old Javanese commentary indeed calls Gaṇapatitattva may be linked to liquidation.40 But, it a deva—i.e., a mantric representation of the form also in this case, different systematizations exist, of Śiva called Mṛtyuñjaya, Mṛtyujit or Amṛteśa (see and it is therefore difficult to establish with certain- White 2012; Padoux 2011: 95); besides granting, as ty which one was used as a prototype by the authors the śloka and the Old Javanese commentary puts of these documents;41 we may just conclude that it, impenetrability from all weapons, long life, and although the details differ widely, the principles victory in battle,45 it also ensures ‘freedom from underlying the application were probably the same. I should also like to point out that such formulas as namaḥ, svāhā and phaṭ, together with the be- 42.  Griffiths (2014a: 177, n. 125) notes that the absence of svāhā in the sequence [oṁ] ṭaki hūṁ jaḥ attested in ginning oṁ, constitute very general mantric units some Sanskrit, Tibetan and Old Javanese documents ‘can 39.  The Hevajratantra (II, ix.21) describes a mantra of attraction (ākarṣaṇa)—which is in fact related to subjugation (vaśikaraṇa) in that text—made up by the syllables oṁ, hūṁ, and the closing svāhā (in connection with the names of celestial nymphs to be attracted): see Nihom 1995: 524–25. On the other hand, Sundberg (2003: 178) envisaged an element of ‘auspiciousness’ in it, for svāhā is admittedly an exclamation of blessing used in benign contexts, be they mantric, ritual, or otherwise. Contrast my remark about the sequence oṁ … svāhā below, as well as my nn. 42, 44. 40.  This would be in harmony with the goal of final liberation (mokṣa): besides noting the mention of māraṇa, I refer to Goudriaan’s (1978: 74) definition of phaṭ as a word ‘loaded with magic’, a ‘sonic explosion’ used for piercing. 41.  The Vaiṣṇava Pāñcarātra Jayākhyasaṁhitā prescribes svāhā for homa, svadhā for ancestor worship, phaṭ for destructive activities, hūṁ for creating hatred, and namaḥ for release (Goudriaan 1978: 74); other combinations are found in different texts, namely phaṭ with vidveṣana, uccāṭana and māraṇa; svāhā with śānti, ākarṣaṇa and puṣṭi; hūṁ with vidveṣana and māraṇa (ibid.: 75, 288).

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be considered a trivial difference’. 43.  The mantra oṁ maṁ saḥ in the sequence oṁ maṁ saḥ vauṣaṭ / mṛtyuñjayāya namaḥ svāhā vaṣaṭ should probably be emended to oṁ juṁ saḥ on the basis of the reading oṁ mjuṅ saḥ in GaṇUd and in the prose part of Stuti 453, Mṛtyuñjaya (which is found, interestingly, only in the Pūjā Kṣatriya: cf. n. 46). Oṁ jūṁ saḥ is indeed the base-mantra (mūlamantra) of Amṛteśvara/Mṛtyujit/ Mṛtyuñjaya (see Sanderson 2004: 260; Padoux 2011: 95). In Kriyākālaguṇottara 9.45, the sequence oṁ jūṁ saḥ svāhā is invoked as the armour (kavaca) of the mūlamantra of Khaḍgarāvaṇa (see Slouber 2007: 73). 44.  Chapter 9 of the Kriyākālaguṇottara (verses 39–44, ed. Slouber 2007) relates that by chanting the heart mantra, oṁ bhūtapati svāhā, one is able to subjugate (vaśam) and drive off spirits, subjugate even the gods, and perform the six acts by thought alone. Khaḍgarāvaṇa is also mentioned in the Balinese ritual for the preparation of consecrated water (Hooykaas 1974: 54). 45.  Besides in the Netratantra (see Padoux 2011: 95–96), the mṛtyuñjaya is featured in the context of ṣaṭkarmāṇi in the Sanskrit Siddhayogeśvarīmata, a text of the Kaula

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Once More on the ‘Ratu Boko Mantra’ hindrances’ (luput iṅ sarvvavighna), which may be linked to another function of this all-powerful mantra, namely controlling, routing, and destroying demons ‘with total efficacy’ (White 2012: 145). In fact the mṛtyuñjaya mantric lore has a royal dimension to it, converging with the exorcistic aspect.46 This is apparent, for instance, in Chapter 19 of the Netratantra—a pre-9th century Kashmirian text devoted to the cult of Mṛtyujit/Amṛteśa. As pointed out by Sanderson (2004: 246), this chapter ‘details procedures for countering possession by various classes of being. Here the Guru’s role is portrayed almost exclusively as that of priest to the royal family’.47 stream of Śaivism. It considers the objectives of the six rites as siddhis, divided into the categories of sāttvika, rājasa and tāmasa (Törzsök 2000: 138–39). The sāttvika include, e.g., well-being (puṣṭi), expiation or pacification (śānti), conquering death (mṛtyuñjaya), and final release (mokṣa); the rājasa include, e.g., subjugating people to one’s will (vaśya) and attracting people (ākarṣaṇa); the tāmasa include, e.g., murder (māraṇa) and annihilation (jambhana)—compare the analogous goals of final release, destruction of enemies, success in the world, and attracting the affection of somebody in the first paragraph of the Old Javanese commentary to ślokas 59–60, and long life and victory in battle in śloka 61. 46.  This royal dimension is also suggested by the fact that the half-śloka dīrghāyuṣam … saṅgrāmavijāyī bhavet attested in (some manuscripts of) the apotropaic Pañcakāṇḍa 3cd and in the mṛtyuñjaya-focused śloka 61cd of the Gaṇapatitattva has a parallel in the Pūjā Kṣatriya, a ritual compilation with Vaiṣṇava overtones that apparently contains materials geared towards the protection of royal committers (see Goudriaan and Hooykaas 1971: 281). 47.  Sanderson (2004) has made a number of points that are directly relevant to the themes I am treating here. When discussing the nineteenth chapter of the Netratantra in connection with the rites performed by Śaiva and Buddhist royal chaplains for the protection of the kingdoms of their patrons, he (2004: 233) notes that the ‘protective, therapeutic, and aggressive rites for the benefit of the monarch and the kingdom’ performed by rājagurus were grounded in the Tantras of the Śaiva Mantramārga. On the basis of Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa 3.1.10, Sanderson (ibid.: 239) describes ‘(1) rituals to ward off dangers and ills of every kind from the king and his kingdom (śāntikaṃ karma), some of them simple rites to protect the king’s person to be performed at various times every day, others much more elaborate ceremonies to be performed periodically, (2) rituals to restore his health and vigour (pauṣṭikaṃ karma), (3) rituals to harm his enemies (ābhicārikaṃ karma), (4) the regular and

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the ‘ratu boko mantra’ and gaṇapati: on taming demons… Several elements in both the Pañcakāṇḍa hymn and the closing section of the Gaṇapatitattva conjure up a context of magic and exorcism, i.e. dispelling or pacifying ‘demonic agents, hostile to well-being’ (Linrothe 1999: 24), or ‘beings that cause injury’ (hiṁsaka; see White 2012: 148). The crescendo of apotropaic magic culminates in the ‘agricultural exorcism’ of the paṅlukatan gaṇapati, which at some point was inserted into the textual transmission. The insertion of this material as a conclusion to a text dominated by the figure of Gaṇapati is appropriate, for Gaṇapati, beside being the remover of obstacles (vighnāntakṛt) par excellence, is also the ‘Lord (pati) of Demonic Hosts (gaṇa)’. As White (2012: 149) puts it, such beings as yakṣas, rākṣasas, grahas, vināyakas, and so forth can only be controlled by placating the masters of their respective hosts: that is, one of the Seven Mothers, or gods like Bhairava, Gaṇapati, Vīrabhadra, or Hanumān. These multiple Spirit Lords (bhūteśvaras, bhūtanāthas)—generic terms already attested in the Āyurvedic literature … and that continue to be employed throughout modern-day South Asia—constituted the original pantheons of the ‘Bhūta Tantras’.

White (2012: 150) notes that the Netratantra itself, and texts of later Tantric traditions, came to subsume the bhūtanāthas beneath a principal deity (e.g., Amṛteśa), and relegated them to the maṇḍala’s dark fringe … where the bhūta­ nāthas, now reduced to the status of guardians at the gates, were mobilised to wall out the demonic horde that would have liked nothing better than to break through and devour everyone in sight.

The role of ‘guardian of the gate’ fits the profile of Gaṇapati, who is invoked as remover of obstacles prior to undertaking any activity, and portrayed at occasional rituals (nityaṃ karma and naimittikaṃ karma) required of the king, (5) reparatory rites (prāyaścittīyaṃ karma), and (6) postmortuary rites (aurdhvadehikaṃ karma)’. See my discussion of the Khmer materials presented by Sanderson below, p. 346.

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trouble, he should immerse himself in [the dethe boundaries of Hindu and Buddhist temples. It ity] Vajrahūṁkāra and adduct them with the is therefore not surprising that the closing section Ṭakkirāja; should also adduct them with the of the Gaṇapatitattva mentions the mantra jaḥ Vajra-goads etc.; should bind the [seal of] Vaṭaḥ kiḥ hūṁ phaṭ side by side with a series of jrahūṁkāra; and should step on the effigy of Bhūtanāthas: Khaḍgarāvaṇa, Mṛtyuñjaya (or Mṛthe obstacle with his left foot. After the practice tyujit/Amrteśabhairava), and Gaṇapati, for all these of [self-]expansion with hūṁ vaṁ hūṁ etc., he deities (and the mantras they personify) play a role should stand in pratyālīḍha stance… (trans. in dispelling hindrances and malevolent influences. Griffiths 2014a: 178) The dictum luput iṅ sarvvavighna (‘free from To Griffiths, ‘it seems that ṭakkirājenākṛṣya can all hindrances’), specifically attributed by the Old Javanese commentary to ślokas 59–60 to the be interpreted as ‘‘having adducted by reciting the mṛtyuñjaya mantra, exactly corresponds to the mantra named Ṭakkirāja’’, and that the intended outcome of the familiar opening benedictory mantra is the one that concerns us here’. In fact formula oṁ avighnam astu, ‘let there be no hin- the Sarvavajrodaya seems to break up the discrete drances’. This formula occurs at the beginning of constituents of a longer mantra. By mentioning, Javanese and Balinese manuscripts, and notably besides Ṭakkirāja, ‘also the actions of adduction etc. also, as pointed out by Griffiths (2014a: 178), in by means of the vajra-goad etc.’ (vajrāṅkuśādibhir Old Javanese inscriptions from the 9th century apy ākarṣaṇādikaṁ kṛtvā), as well as mentioning onwards. One of these—the Guluṅ Guluṅ inscrip- the binding of Vajrahūṁkāra, the text is appartion of Śaka 851—starts with oṁ avighnam astu ently referring to the fourfold sequence of actions, gaṇapataye namaḥ (Oṁ, let there be no obstacles! instruments, deities, and mantras hinted at in Homage to Gaṇapati!), thereby making the con- the sequence vajrāṅkuśādibhir ākṛṣya praveśya nection with Gaṇapati—the god who removes ob- baddhvā vaśīkṛtya ‘having adducted, drawn in, 49 stacles—explicit. Griffiths (2014a: 177–78) points bound, brought under control’ in section 55. Those out that three brief inscriptions on stone boundary actions correspond to those detailed in a passage markers from Central Java substitute this common of the Trailokyavijayamahāmaṇḍala section of opening with the formula ṭaki hūṁ jaḥ, which the STTS. Snellgrove (1987: 222–23), pointing to obviously served the purpose of removing obstacles. a passage describing a fourfold process by which Interestingly, two out of three of these inscriptions ‘all the Great beings, the Buddhas and the others, seem to have been recovered from seemingly Śaiva are summoned, drawn in, bound, so entering his contexts, and both date back to the second half of power’, notes that the 9th century.48 the four door guardians represent the four stagGriffiths corroborates the association of the es of introducing the divinities into the maṇḍamantra ṭaki hūṁ jaḥ with removal of obstacles la, which are effected by the mantra Jaḥ Hūṁ on the one hand, and with ākarṣaṇa on the other, Vaṁ Hoḥ! Vajrāṅkuśa (Vajra-Hook) summons by citing an important parallel from the Tantric them; Vajrapāśa (Vajra-Noose) draws them in; Vajrasphoṭa (Vajra-Fetter) binds them and VaBuddhist text Sarvavajrodaya, section 56: He who wishes to effect complete freedom from obstacles should cover them (i.e. the effigies of the directional deities who might cause trouble, pinned down in section 55) with mud. If in this condition (evam) they [still] make 48.  The three short inscriptions are: a cylindrical stone carved in the Śaiva cave-shrine of Abang, dated 872 (Stutterheim 1932: 293; Damais 1955: 29–30); an (undated) stone post from the Śaiva Candi Bongkol (Stutterheim 1932: 294); a stone post, mentioning a (Buddhist?) vihāra, dated 874 (Stutterheim 19З2: 296; Damais 1955: 236).

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jrāveśa (Vajra-Penetration) alias Vajraghaṇṭā (Vajra-Bell) completes the pervasion of the maṇḍala by wisdom…. This fourfold function of the door guardians fully explains their names, which might otherwise appear quite arbitrary.

A similar arrangement, with minor variants, is found in the Sarvadurgatipariśodhanatantra, in the section where the master introduces his pupil into the maṇḍala (ed. Skorupski, p. 103 and 290), in the 49. 

Cf. also sections 13 and 40.

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Once More on the ‘Ratu Boko Mantra’ Vajraśekhara (one of the explanatory Tantras of the STTS), and several other Esoteric Buddhist texts.50 The set of correspondences (from below upwards) may be schematized as follows: hoḥ North vaṁ West hūṁ South jaḥ

East

Vajraghaṇṭā/ vajra-bell/ Vajrāveśa vajra-penetration Vajraśṛṅkhala/ vajra-fetter/ Vajrasphoṭa vajra-chain Vajrapāśa vajranoose Vajrāṅkuśa vajra-goad

to penetrate/ draw within one’s power to bind to draw to adduct

Having noted that the set of names and mantric acts found in Sarvavajrodaya 55–56 correspond to those connected to the male gate-guardians of the Vajradhātumaṇḍala of the STTS and other Buddhist sources, I should like to make the following points: (1) The four guardians are personifications of their hand-attributes, namely the hook, noose, chain, and bell, and of the activities and mantric 50.  On the STTS (194.4–14, ed. Lokesh Chandra) and Vajraśekhara (49b6/8.17), see Nihom 1998a: 248 and 253, notes 16–17 (STTS: vajrāṅkuśa + ākarṣa + hūṁ jjah; vajrapāśa +praveśa + huṁ hūṁ; vajrasphoṭa + bandha + huṁ vaṁ; vajrāveśa + āveśa + hum aḥ; VŚ: aṅkuśa + ākarṣa + hūṁ jaḥ; vajrapāśa + praveśa + hūṁ hūṁ; vajrasphoṭa + bandha + hūṁ baṁ; vajrāveśa + āveśa + hūṁ phaṭ ho). Nihom (ibid.: 248) notes that the bījas for Vajrāṅkuśa (jaḥ) and Vajrapāśa (hūṁ) correspond to those given in the mantras inscribed on the gold foils recovered from Candi Gumpung in Sumatra, which he regards as reflecting a form of the Garbhadhātumaṇḍala; I cannot however agree with his statement that ‘the bījas for Vajrasphoṭa, oṃ in the Candi Gumpung evidence and vaṃ, or baṃ, in these two tantras, are different and can not be reconciled’, for o is a common spelling variant of va in documents from ancient Indonesia (therefore oṁ = vaṁ = baṁ); on the other hand, the Candi Gumpung text has oṁ vajramuṣṭi baṁ. The item reflecting Vajrāveśa is absent. Sādhanamālā no. 251 lists the sequence jaḥ (ānīya, adduction), hūṁ (praveśa, penetration), vaṁ (bandhana, binding), hoḥ (toṣaṇa, satisfaction); no. 97 (samayamaṇḍala) gives the feminine names of goddesses (e.g., vajrāṅkuśī, -pāśī, -sphoṭā, -ghaṇṭā, associated with the activities of ākarṣa and the syllable jaḥ, praveśa and huṁ, bandha and vaṁ, vaśīkaraṇa and hoḥ (Goudriaan 1978: 271). An analogous account of femininized deities is found in the Tibetan translation of the Herukasādhana of Huṅkāravajra, f. 204r5–7 (see Sanderson 2009: 153, n. 349). See also Sinclair, this volume, p. 50; Snodgrass 1988: 629–33; and fig. 1 in Sharma 2011: 211.

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operations they imply, and as such they are included in the sets of attributes of many wrathful (krodha) Buddhist deities, such as (Caṇḍa)Vajrapāṇi/Trai­ lokyavijaya, Yamāntaka, Hevajra, etc., whose function is to tame demonic forms of Śiva.51 The obvious implication is that in the Sarvavajrodaya passage the practitioner is imagined to embody the deity: he is explicitly invited to identify himself with, or connect to, Vajrahūṁkāra (vajrahūṁkārayogaṁ kṛtvā), perform the four actions with the four attributes, bind his ‘seal’ or mudrā (vajrahūṁkāraṁ baddhvā), and assume the pratyālīḍha pose.52 (2) ‘Ṭakkirāja’ denotes the mantra ṭakki, and at the same time a wrathful deity of Esoteric Buddhism linked to Trailokyavijaya, whose function is to eliminate disasters and subdue demons and ghosts; his attributes are the hook and the noose. Similarly, a deity called Vajrarāja, inhabiting the Vajradhātumaṇḍala and associated with Akṣobhya, represents the unit jaḥ and the aṅkuśa (as such it is also attested in the Candi Gumpung gold foil: oṁ vajrarāja jaḥ). 51.  See Griffiths (2014b) on the Borobudur inscribed foil attesting a hṛdaya invoking Caṇḍavajrapāṇi, where that wrathful deity is characterized as bearing a sword, club, axe, snare, cudgel (vajra) and flaming fire, and putting his left and right foot respectively on the breasts of Pārvatī and the locks of Paśupati (Śiva). Griffiths (2014a: 178) notes that in Guhyasamājatantra 14.22 the mantra oṁ ṭakki hūṁ jaḥ is explicitly called sarvatathāgataṭakkirājamahākrodha; the Tattvasaṅgraha and Vajraśekhara characterize the four weapons associated to the guardians of the maṇḍala with the epithet mahākrodha. The STTS relates that Vajrapāṇi issued forth from the hearts of all the assembled Tathāgatas, gathering together to create the body of Mahāvajrakrodha; then Vairocana uttered the mantra oṁ ṭakki jjaḥ, which is the disciplinary aṅkuśa of all the Tathāgatas (Davidson 1991: 200). 52.  Cf. Griffiths 2014a: 178, n. 130. Goudriaan (1978: 217) quotes a verse of the Sādhanamālā (71, p. 144) declaring that, when performing subjugation, a practitioner should master attributes such as ‘vajra, disc, trident, arrow, hammer, noose, elephant hook, ointment, paste to be smeared on the feet, and painted spot on the forehead’; he argues that the implication from this and similar passages is that the practitioner should meditate on himself as bearing one or more of these attributes. An instance, found in a Dunhuang Tibetan manuscript, of ritual purification of the practitioner and his imaginative transformation of himself into the wrathful Buddha Ṭakkirāja is described by Dalton (2011: 87).

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(3) The ‘extended’ mantric sequence given by Sarvavajrodaya 56 could be ṭakki jaḥ hūṁ vaṁ hoḥ.53 The text is not the only one to add the unit ṭakki (ṭakkirāja) to the other four: significantly enough, a similar sequence is attested in the fourth Old Javanese stone inscription (9th century) mentioned by Griffiths (2014a: 179), bearing twice the sequence ṭaki hūṁ jaḥ jaḥ hūṁ vaṁ hoḥ—an extended variant of the ṭakki jaḥ hūṁ mantra.54 (4) The mantras ṭaki (Ṭakkirāja) and jaḥ (Vajrāṅkuśa) in the Sarvavajrodaya are both associated with attraction (ākarṣaṇa, goad),55 while hūṁ is associated with drawing to oneself (praveśa, snare)—which ultimately corresponds to a form of vaśīkaraṇa.56 Thus, the sequence ṭakki jaḥ hūṁ implies both attraction (ākarṣaṇa) and drawing to oneself (vaśīkaraṇa).57 In fact the sources display

a tendency to consider both goad and snare as characteristic of attraction, which constitutes a ‘reflection of the tendency to make attraction a facultative introductory stage to subjugation’ (Goudriaan 1978: 317). As Sundberg (2003: 173) notes, the basic idea of the mantra ṭakki (j)jaḥ, as found in the STTS,

53.  This is given in the devatāyoga section of Kuladatta’s Kriyāsasaṅgraha (ed. Inui, Part 2): oṁ ṭakki hūṁ jaḥ / iti paṭhan trir vajram ullālayet / oṁ ṭakki jaḥ hūṁ vaṁ hoḥ // hṛdy utkarṣaṇam (I thank Iain Sinclair for pointing out this reference in an email dated 30 August 2014). 54.  This reading is reconstituted by Griffiths on the basis of Damais’ transcription paki hūṁ jaḥ jaḥ hūṁ vaho (2x); the original artefact is regrettably no longer available, and the context and function of the inscription remain obscure. Griffiths (2014a: 179) traces this sequence to a virtually identical one in a section on the consecration of the Tantric master in the Kriyāsaṅgrahapañjikā (6.2.9), namely oṁ ṭakki jaḥ hūṁ vaṁ hoḥ. 55.  What Sundberg (2003: 173) calls ‘the hṛdaya of aṅkuśa used in the text as both the elephant-goad means of summoning the gods to Sumeru’ is actually (oṁ) ṭakki jaḥ and not hūṁ ṭakki jaḥ. His claim that this is also the personal hṛdaya or quintessence of Vajrapāṇi is incorrect, for in the STTS and related Buddhist literature the personal mantra of Vajrapāṇi—and of his alter-egos Vajrasattva, Vajradhara, Vajrahūṁkāra, and Trailokyavijaya—is hūṁ (see Linrothe 1999: 156). One may also argue that the syllable jaḥ alone is the element that effects summoning. 56.  Mantramahodadhi 25.26f links the snare-seal (pāśamudrā) with vaśīkaraṇa (Goudriaan 1978: 289). 57.  See, e.g., Guhyasamāja 14.27–30, where ākarṣaṇa is carried out by means of both vajrāṅkuśa and vajrapāśa; see Nihom 1995: 525 on the identification of ākarṣaṇa and vaśīkaraṇa in Esoteric Buddhist manuals. An illuminating discussion on the relationship between the attributes (and especially the hook and snare) of Esoteric Buddhist deities and the magical acts of ākarṣaṇa and vaśīkaraṇa may be found in Goudriaan 1978: 316–17.

At the same time Sundberg (2003: 173) refers to Snellgrove’s (1987: 222–23, quoted above) more articulated reading of the relevant passage of the STTS, which ‘serves very well to differentiate the use of the aṅkuśa from other Tantric implements’. The four actions of attracting, drawing to oneself, snaring and ‘penetrating’ are those narrated in the main episode in the Trailokyavijaya cycle of the taming of Maheśvara, the lord of demonic hosts. In fact taming or pacification (śānti) involves a more elaborate procedure than just the mantric abduction/attraction ([ṭakki] jaḥ) and binding (hūṁ) of the victim, for it also implies mantric overpowering (= vaṁ) and resurrection (= hoḥ), after which ‘conversion’ occurs. In view of that fact, one may connect the mantric units vaṁ with fettering or immobilization (bandhana or stambhana, chain), and hoḥ with ‘penetration’ or ‘possession’ (āveśa, bell). The latter may be regarded as a violent act, as penetration implies ‘stabbing’ (with bell, perhaps figuratively indicating a ‘mantric penetration’ via the medium of sound).58

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is that it is the mantra of a ‘hook’, ‘goad’ or a ‘prod’ for summoning, for compulsion, for convocation, the utterance of which has compelled Mahādeva to Sumeru. Iyanaga (1985: 669, note 47) notes that the Japanese commentary provides some control over the meaning of the Sanskrit mantra, which could also be considered as ākarṣaṇa (magic to draw to oneself) or by vaśīkarana (magic to draw someone to your will). Davidson (1991: 200) offers ‘dragged’ as a term suitable to connote what happened to the gods after Vairocana intoned the mantra.

58.  Perhaps because according to Sanskritic ontology sound pervades (i.e., ‘penetrates’) space (ākāśa)—compare the association of phaṭ with ākāśa in the Gaṇapatitattva and mahākāśa in the Pañcakāṇḍa. Also note that the word kīlayet (‘he should pierce’ [with a kīla/kīlaya]) appears after the sequence vajrāṅkuśādibhir ākṛṣya praveśya baddhvā vaśīkṛtya in Sarvavajrodaya 55. The

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(5) The invocation of these mantra-deities who also resides, as the latter, in the northern sector during the preliminary stage of the practice for the of the maṇḍala.60 In connection with point (5) purpose of removing obstacles may correspond above, I wonder whether the use of the mantra to the invocation of Gaṇapati as gate-guardian jaḥ ṭaḥ kiḥ hūṁ phaṭ in the Gaṇapatitattva and remover of obstacles at the beginning of any and the Old Javanese inscriptions reflects an undertaking; this trans-sectarian aspect mirrors attempt to ‘bridge’ the Buddhist Amṛtakuṇḍalin the use of the opening formula ṭaki hūṁ jaḥ and the Śaiva Gaṇapati, which would amount to in the three short Old Javanese inscriptions in a a Śaiva appropriation of a largely co-functionmanner that is co-functional with the use of the al Buddhist apotropaic deity. Given that in the formula oṁ avighnam astu [gaṇapataye namaḥ] Amṛtakuṇḍalivināyakaban­dha­dhāraṇī (cf. Giebel in inscriptions and manuscripts. Thus, the aim 2010: 191) Amṛtakuṇḍalin is described as ‘having seems to have been apotropaic, i.e. to exorcise the put an end to the life of Mahāgaṇapati’ (mahāgpotentially dangerous beings and transform them aṇapatijīvitāntakarāya), implying a fundamental into benign guardians of the gates or points of the enmity between the two vināyaka/vighnāntaka compass.59 This process is symbolically enacted deities, this appropriation would carry an element through the summoning, drawing, overpowering, of anti-Buddhist polemic. and reviving of the deity, who is thereby transformed. At the same time, it cannot be exclud...and on taming elephants ed that the formula presupposes an element of anti-Śaiva polemic, alluding to the taming, con- The mantric unit jaḥ is well represented in Buddhist version, and transformation of Gaṇapati into an Tantras as the mantric expedient used to adduct or invoke the victim or deity in the preliminary part auspicious Buddhist deity. (6) The mention of ‘the refuge given by the Sun’ (ādityasya parāyaṇam) in śloka 4 of the Pañ60.  Indeed the Shibahui zhigui (Giebel 1995: 143) places cakāṇḍa—which does not explicitly refer to the the Sun (sūrya) among the apotropaic, originally Hindu deity it is devoted to—in association with purifi- deities of Maheśvara’s retinue (which includes Gaṇapacation and destruction of disease and evil could be ti-Vināyaka), who are confined to the outer space of the a reference to Amṛtakuṇḍali(n), a Buddhist vigh- maṇḍala; the STTS instead of Sūrya has Amṛtakuṇḍalin, nāntaka deity not unrelated to Vināyaka-Gaṇapati, ‘for which the Tibetan sDe-dge and sNar-thang editions STTS makes clear that Mahādeva, having been rendered powerless and lying prostrate under the feet of Vajrapāṇi, literally becomes possessed as a result of the mantra oṁ vajrāviśa hanaya traṁ traṭ uttered by the latter. The ‘suffering of Mahādeva’s possession’ only ceases after Vajrapāṇi intones the essential phrase of loving kindness of all the Buddhas: oṁ buddha maitrī vajra rakṣa haṁ (Davidson 1995c: 555). 59.  For a representative example of apotropaic and protective use of the ṭakkirāja-mantra in a Sanskrit source, see Vajrasattvaniṣpādana of pseudo-Candrakīrti (ed. Luo and Tomabechi 2009), 2.4.4, where a protective fence (prākāra) and canopy (vajrapañjara) is meditatively visualized: tataṣ ṭakkirājamantreṇa lohajalāgnivāyuprākāracatuṣṭayaṁ yathākramaṁ bāhyato vicintayet / tatrāyaṁ mantraḥ—ṭakki hūṁ jaḥ; similarly, in the Vajraśekhara/ Vajraśikhara, the mantra ṭakki ja is used to clean out kleśas (Taidō Kitamura 2012: 341, sec. 597), while in the Trailokyavijayamahākalparāja, ṭakki hūṃ ja is used as a kavacamantra (Taidō Kitamura 2014: 34). I thank Iain Sinclair for these references.

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have ‘‘Nyi-Ma’’, viz. Sūrya/Āditya, while Ānandagarbha also identifies Amṛtakuṇḍali with Sūrya/Āditya’ (ibid.: 145, n. 62). Griffiths (2014c) has detected a variant of the mantra of Amṛtakundalin, which is known from various ritual manuals in Sanskrit, in a prob. 11th- to 13th-century stone inscription from Muara Takus in Sumatra; what might be another instance of a mantra related to Amṛtakuṇḍalin is that of the lead-bronze foil unearthed near Borobudur (cf. Griffiths 2014b), which shares the invocation namo ratnatrayāya / namaḥś caṇḍavajrapāṇaye / mahāyakṣasenāpataye (with slight variants) with the opening part of the Amṛtakuṇḍalin mantra found in T 953.302c12–13, 303a3–5 (cf. Sinclair, this volume), the Amṛtakuṇḍalivināyakabandhadhāraṇī (cf. Giebel 2010: 190, and 192 for a discussion of parallels in the Susiddhikarasūtra etc.). On the other hand, the connection between *TāraSūrya (Sgro ma nyi ma) or *Tāraka-Sūrya (Sgrol ba nyi ma) and Ṭakkirāja discussed by Dalton (2011: 239, n. 43) may be worth exploring. Tāraka features in a Śaiva myth as a demon oppressing Hindu gods, who is defeated by Śiva. Note also that on his vāhana (the rat), ‘Gaṇapati symbolized a sun god covering the animal, which in ancient mythology is a symbol of the night’ (see Michael 1983: 95–96).

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of the ritual or visualization.61 Being called ‘hook’ or ‘elephant-goad’ (aṅkuśa), it bears a strong association with elephants in the Indic imaginaire. The reason why jaḥ represents a hook or elephant-goad is obvious: in North and Eastern Indian scripts, such as Devanāgarī and Siddhamātṛkā, this grapheme closely resembles such instruments (ज D.; and S.).62 Furthermore, elephants represent the preferred victims of rituals of subjugation—especially in Buddhist texts; as noted by Goudriaan (1978: 332), ‘when there is a question of animals to be tamed and brought under power, the elephant will be the most impressive object on which a performer’s abilities can manifest themselves’. A version of the ‘taming of Maheśvara’ myth featuring a demonic form of Gaṇapati is found in the 14th-century Old Javanese Buddhist kakavin Sutasoma. There Prince Sutasoma, a manifestation of the Bodhisattva Vairocana, ‘tames’ (i.e., converts to Buddhism) a nāga, a tigress, and the elephant-headed giant Gajavaktra—all explicitly portrayed as followers of the demonic form of Śiva known as Mahākāla, the counterpart of the Maheśvara of the Trailokyavijaya cycle. The text climaxes in the final confrontation between Sutasoma and Mahākāla, which also results in the taming and conversion of the latter to Buddhism. Insofar that it portrays the transformation of violent, unrestrained, and subversive demonic char61.  See, e.g., GST p. 55, 1f (Goudriaan 1978: 297), Hevajratantra Ch. 4 (ibid.: 298); Sādhanamālā no. 59 (ibid.: 303). For occurrences of variants of the mantra ‘Aṅkuśa’ in Amoghapāśa-related ritual texts in the Taishō canon, see Shinohara 2014: 135. 62.  These associations are by no means uncommon in the Sanskritic tradition. Jayabhadra, the 9th-century Sinhalese vajrācārya of Vikramaśīla, in his commentary to the Cakrasaṁvaratantra homologizes the letters ra and ha of the Sanskrit syllabary (as written in northeastern India in that period) with the male and female genitals by virtue of their similarity in shape (Gray 2005: 440); in a similar fashion, the grapheme e (as written in Śāradā, as well as Devanāgarī script) was called trikoṇa (‘triangle’) and associated with the female organ by non-dual Śaiva authors Abhinavagupta and Jayaratha (Padoux 1990: 263–65). An association between ākarṣaṇa and a ‘hook’ may be found in the Ṣaṭkarmadīpikā (p. 188 st. 52), which declares that the victim of ākarṣaṇa should be thought of as being ‘caught and dragged along like a fish by a fish hook’ (Goudriaan 1978: 291).

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acters—Mahākāla and his retinue—into ‘demon devotees’ of the Buddha, the narrative cycle of the Sutasoma recalls that of the ‘taming of Maheśvara/ Rudra’ in the Trailokyavijaya cycle. Canto 32–33 of the Sutasoma is devoted to the conversion of the degraded demonic form of Gaṇapati (Gajavaktra, Gajendramukha)63 from (Śaiva) demon to (Buddhist) Lord of demons, and hence protector of the outer space of the maṇḍala. If O’Brien’s (2008) view that the Sutasoma narrative is a representation of a maṇḍala is correct, then the Gajavaktra episode, which occurs at an early stage of Sutasoma’s journey, would (fittingly) represent its outer section.64 Amoghavajra’s Shibahui zhigui (‘Indications of the Goals of the Eighteen Assemblies’), describing the section of the Vajraśekharasūtra on the Trailokyavijayamaṇḍala (which, being in the section of the First Assembly, corresponds to the STTS), mentions twenty Protectors residing in the outer space of the maṇḍala, who were converted by Vajrapāṇi, like their ‘head’ Maheśvara (Snodgrass 1988: 559–63, 637).65 From this evidence one may infer that a cycle on the conversion of Gaṇapati—intended as a member of Maheśvara/ 63.  Gajavaktra is declared to be a grossly evil being that is different from the god Gaṇarāja, son of Śiva, who is depicted in positive terms as the victor over the Great Lord of Demons. Gajavaktra belongs to a set of eight ‘pre-conversion’ vināyakas in some Chinese Buddhist texts; this set probably derives from an earlier Purāṇic set (cf. Agnipurāṇa III.3.4 and Garuḍapurāṇa I.129.26 [as Hastimukha], referred to in Sinclair, this volume, p. 47, n. 88). As reported by Iain Sinclair (email dated 4 April 2014), Gajavaktra is a synonym of Gaṇeśa in some Newāri Buddhist works. 64.  O’Brien (ibid.: 179) places the episode in the northern sector, which is in agreement with the description of a form of Vināyaka in the northern sector of the maṇḍala by Amoghavajra. As the bo­dhyagrī-mudrā used by Sutasoma to overcome Gajavaktra (see below, n. 67) is usually associated with Mahāvairocana and the vajra, O’Brien sees a contradiction between this and the fact that the Jinabuddha of the northern quadrant is Amoghasiddhi, which is normally associated with the dhyāna-mudrā. However, the reference to Mahāvairocana’s bodhyagrī-mudrā would seem to be appropriate in the Gajavaktra episode—cf. above, n. 51 on Vairocana’s connection with the ṭakki hūṁ jaḥ mantra, ākarṣaṇa, and the conversion of Maheśvara in the STTS. 65.  Snodgrass uses the Japanese form, Jūhachie­shiki (‘Synopsis of the Eighteen Assemblies’), i.e. the Kongōchōkyōyuga-jūhatte-shiki (T 869); an annotated translation is provided by Giebel (1995: see esp. 142–46, and 150–51, n. 92).

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Once More on the ‘Ratu Boko Mantra’ Mahākāla’s retinue—must have existed by the time of Amoghavajra, and that the Gajavaktra episode of the Old Javanese Sutasoma might have been based on such a cycle.66 The subjugation of Gajavaktra in the Sutasoma is effected through a mantric thunderbolt-weapon (bodhyagrī-mudrā) generated from the ‘knowledge that is a means of destroying violence’.67 This 66.  The STTS (ed. Horiuchi, vol. 1, p. 520), in a section dealing with the outer space of the maṇḍala, details a series of mantras and invocations to Vajrapāṇi for the harming and warding off of Gaṇapati, Mahāgaṇapati, and Vināyaka; in section 1245 the process involves the six acts of ākarṣaṇa, praveśa, āveśa, bandhana, vaśīkaraṇa, and māraṇa (oṁ vajramālagaṇapate mālayākarṣaya praveśayāveśaya bandhaya vaśīkuru māraya huṁ phaṭ). It would be worthwhile to investigate the sādhana-text pertaining to Krodhagaṇapati (Tibetan Canon no. 4994) attributed to Atīśa’s guru from Suvarṇadvīpa (see Schoterman, this volume), as well as Chinese Tantric Buddhist materials, such as those described by Duquenne (1988) and Lancaster (1991), which ‘present a wealth of references to Vināyaka along with the spells, dhāraṇī, mudra, and other rituals that could keep this malevolent spirit under control’ (ibid.: 279). As related by Lancaster (ibid.: 282), a text (T 849) devoted, like the Sutasoma, to the Buddha Vairocana, informs us that the Vināyakas and all the evil yakṣas will be seized with fear and run away when they hear the spell being recited. Duquenne (1988: 323) mentions a Japanese Daijizaiten-hōsoku-giki (Maheśvara-vidhi-kalpa?), which is in fact a slightly enlarged version of the Shijuhō-kyō (i.e., Shizhoufa jing, T 1267) attributed to Bodhiruci, which is dedicated to Vināyaka rituals and spells. The former text points to a Śaiva (or perhaps Trailokyavijaya cycle-related) context in its title. 67.  Sutasoma hits Gajavaktra in the chest, and the demon is ‘rendered completely powerless; exhausted, he lay prostrate, unable to budge the heavy thunderbolt-weapon weighing down on him’ (O’Brien 2008: 45). Gajavaktra is thus ‘exorcised’ and the Gaṇa who had taken hold of him departs from the elephant-faced being, who regains control of his passions. The bodhyagrī-mudrā is characterized in Canto 33.9c as jñānāveśa minuṣṭi, perhaps ‘penetration by Gnosis embodied in a fist’. This characterization calls to mind the mudrā (and weapon) of the central divinity of the STTS (i.e., either Vajrasattva or Vairocana), jñānamuṣṭi-mudrā ‘fist of knowledge’ (Lokesh Chandra 1987: 46), which is indeed a synonym of bodhyagrī-mudrā (or bodhāgrī mudra, as described in STTS, ed. Horiuchi vol. 1, p. 185, section 285; Sarvavajrodaya, suppl., ed. Takahashi 1990: 78): cf. de Mallman (1986: 33, 34, 62, 130, 242, 331, 386, 392, 393), B.T. Bhattacharya (1949: 66–68), and Bautze-Picron (2010a: 59–60). Snodgrass (1988: 316–17) describes a

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knowledge is, appropriately enough, suggested to Sutasoma by the god Indra (Canto 31.10), the arch-enemy—and tamer—of elephants, who rides the white Airāvata elephant and bears a vajra, an elephant-goad, and a net as his attributes. The mention of Indra is significant: as argued by Bosch (1947), Vajrapāṇi (and later, Vajrasattva) represents a Buddhist development of the Brahmanical god Indra; the former retains the attributes of the latter, and his hostility to (or mastership over) elephants; both reside in the eastern point of the compass.68 As we have seen, (a fierce form of) Vajrapāṇi is the main Bodhisattva in the Trailokyavijaya cycle. That this cycle was known in Central Java around the 9th century may be inferred, apart from the mantra inscribed on the Ratu Boko gold foil, from a dhāraṇī inscribed on a lead-bronze foil unearthed near Borobudur, which could be dated to between the 8th and early 10th century Vajramuṣṭi Bodhisattva (himself representing Mahāvairocana’s inner realization), whose vajramuṣṭi-mudrā ‘strikes and destroys doubt, karma and other hindrances’. One may connect the bodhyagrī-mudrā and Vajrahūṁkāra, both of which are associated with penetration (āveśa). A vajrahūṁkāra-mudrā associated with the krodha-deities Saṁvara and Hevajra is described by Linrothe (1999: 283, 286–87, 290, 298, 334); this is also the mudrā that the practitioner should assume (in meditation) in Sarvavajrodaya 56. Scriptural evidence linking the vajrahūṁkāra-mudrā to the vajramuṣṭi is found in the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana (ed. Skorupski p. 136, trans. p. 13): ‘The inner enclosure is made by means of Vajrahuṁkāra, saying: huṁ. He binds the vajra-fists [vajramuṣṭidvaya] and forms a vajra with his arms; the little fingers he makes into hooks [aṅkuśa] and raises the forefingers into a point known as Trilokyavijaya (Victor over the Threefold World). This is the gesture of Vajrahuṁkāra’. 68.  In fact, an association between Indra and Gaṇapati is already found in the early Vedic corpus (see Michael 1983: 103–6). We also find an association between hūṁ, wind, Rudra and Vajrapāṇi/Vajrasattva/Indra: all these deities embody, to varying degrees, the terrible aspect of such fierce atmospheric phenomena as storm and thunder. In the Sanskrit-Old Javanese Buddhist manual Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan, Vajrasattva is placed in the east, associated with the mantra hūṁ, and attributed an elephant as vehicle (the last association is found in ms. B only; see Damais 1969: 89). In Gaṇapatitattva 59–60, the mantra hūṁ is linked to the element wind (the same is found in a Chinese text by Śubhākarasiṁha: see Damais 1969: 86), and associated with the visualization of Rudra.

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(Kandahjaya 2009; Lokesh Chandra 2013; Griffiths 2014a, whose reconstituted text and translation I am quoting here). In the Mahāraudranāmahṛdaya, a fierce form of Vajrapāṇi (Caṇḍavajrapāṇi as Mahāyakṣasenāpati)—and his ‘greatly ferocious mantra’—is invoked to cause ‘the destruction of all of (Śiva’s) bhūtas and Gaṇas, that causes terror, fear and conflict, that causes the success of all rituals!’ (sarvvabhūtagaṇavināśakaraṁ raudrākāraṁ trāsabhayavivādakaraṁ sarvvakarmmasiddhikaraṁ). This mantra is declared to destroy all enemies (sarvaśatru), obstacles (sarvavighna), diseases (sarvavyādhi), illnesses (sarvaroga), and all Vināyakas (sarvavināyaka). The left foot of Vajrapāṇi is placed on the pair of breasts of Pārvatī.69 The inscription closes with a second text, a mantra composed in standard Sanskrit, which also opens with the same invocation to Caṇḍavajrapāṇi, and ends with the sequence ṭaki hūṁ jaḥ jaḥ hūṁ kiṭa hūṁ ṭaki dhuṁ kiṭa dhuṁ iya ija i_ḥ svāhā—a variant of the ‘Ratu Boko mantra’. As noted by Griffiths, it seems that these two texts were not originally composed together, yet they clearly display a commonality of context and function.70 It is significant that besides the destruction of enemies (sarvaśatru) and obstacles (sarvavighna), the mahāraudranāmahṛdaya explicitly mentions the destruction of all Vināyakas, namely the demonic forms of the elephant-headed god Gaṇapati. As we have seen above, the mantra ṭakki jaḥ hūṁ represents the (Elephant-)goad hostile to 69.  Compare the above-quoted passage of the Sarvavajrodaya, where the practitioner (embodying the deity Vajrahūṁkāra) is invited to assume the pratyālīḍha stance and step on the effigy of the obstacle (vighnaprakṛti, the tamed Śaiva deity?) with his left foot. This image re-enacts the events described in the Trailokyavijaya myth, when ‘Maheśvara and his consort Umā were dragged nude and feet up before Vajrapāṇi, who stepped on Maheśvara with his left foot and on Umā’s breasts with his right’ (Sundberg 2003: 169). Griffiths (2014b) discusses the problem posed by the iconography transmitted by the dhāraṇī and the known sculptural corpus all over the Buddhist world, which shows representations of Trailokyavijaya/Vajrapāṇi with an opposite position of the feet (i.e., left foot on Śiva, right foot on Pārvatī). 70.  As discovered by Kandahjaya (2009), the first text has a parallel in the Navakampa, a Sanskrit stuti recovered from Balinese manuscripts (see above, n. 12).

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Gaṇapati, and is also connected with purification and removal of obstacles. Either of these facts, or perhaps both, could explain the occurrence of the sequence oṁ ṭaki jaḥ hūṁ as a calque of oṁ avighnam astu (oṁ gaṇapataye namaḥ) in Old Javanese inscriptions and manuscripts. The same concern with the removal of obstacles, purification, and subjugation/destruction of enemies is found in the Pañcakāṇḍa; even more so, it features in the closing section of the Gaṇapatitattva, where a pot-pourri of mantras and visualization techniques with both harmful and protective purposes, and to grant (ritual) success and destroy obstacles, were compiled one after the other.71 Represented in Esoteric Buddhist texts and visual documents as a quintessentially Śaiva de mon­ic deity being tamed (i.e., trampled upon) by krodha-vighnāntaka deities such as Acala, Vighnān­taka, and Heruka/Saṁvara,72 Gaṇapati was absorbed as a minor deity (vināyaka) with the 71.  A series of goals that calls to mind those described in the Mahāraudranāmahṛdaya and the closing section of the Gaṇapatitattva is listed in connection with the mahāhṛdayadhāraṇī bestowed by the ferocious goddess Vidyutkarālī to Sutasoma at the beginning of his journey (Sutasoma 12.1), namely (the destruction of) hindrances (vighna), impurity (mala), all enemies (sarvaśatru), diseases (roga) and misfortunes (upadrava), as well as the highest supernatural prowess (siddhyottama). 72.  A useful treatment of the historical development of the apotropaic Krodha-Vighnāntaka deities vis-à-vis the Dharmapāla and Guardian deities (dikpāla) is offered by Linrothe (1999: 19–28). Having noted that ‘the essential metaphor behind the krodha-vighnāntaka is that of the dompteur-dompté relationship’, Linrothe (1999: 214) draws attention to the pair Acala and Vighnāntaka, ‘who are both depicted dominating ‘‘obstruction’’ itself, in the form of Gaṇeśa or Vināyaka’. As for Heruka Saṁvara, Linrothe (ibid.: 277) notes that this deity ‘appears just as Trailokyavijaya disappears, and he has so much in common with Trailokyavijaya that Saṁvara may be considered the Phase Three reincarnation of Trailokyavijaya’. A standard element of the iconography of Saṁvara is the elephant skin (representing illusion, which is destroyed by Saṁvara); a Saṁvara dancing on the head of an elephant (prob. 11th or 12th century) is depicted in the Khmer sanctuary of Phimai in modern Thailand (see Conti 2014: 388). Another Phase Three Tantric Buddhist example of subjugation of Gaṇeśa/Vināyaka is the representation of the latter as prostrated at the bottom of stelae depicting the healing goddess Parṇaśavarī/Parṇaśabarī, an emanation of Amoghasiddhi (Verardi 2011: 373).

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Once More on the ‘Ratu Boko Mantra’ function of protecting, overcoming obstacles, and guarding boundaries. In fact Gaṇapati/Vināyaka occupies an ambivalent position in both the Buddhist and Śaiva pantheons: As one whose demon ancestry is manifest … Gaṇeśa is superbly qualified to be lord over Śiva’s gaṇas, themselves a generally unruly bunch. As one of the demons brought over into the family of the great lord Śiva, Gaṇeśa mediates between the oppositional forces of the divine and the demonic. He understands the demons; he knows their ways and does not fear their powers. Like his father [Śiva] … Gaṇeśa stands both outside and inside the divine worlds as he dwells at the threshold…. He both places and removes obstacles and facilitates and thwarts undertakings. (Courtright 1985: 136) [Vināyaka] is at once the creator and remover of hindrances. He is maleficent unless controlled, and many Buddhist rituals commence with formulae to prevent Vināyaka from obstructing the efficacious performance of the ritual and to rechannel his energies in guarding the mandala from disrupting influences. The dual character of Vināyaka is like that of an elephant, powerfully destructive and terrifying when uncontrolled, but obediently using his immense strength to serve those who nurture and control him. (Snodgrass 1988: 642)

Gaṇapati’s ambiguous status secured him a liminal position at the boundary between the Śaiva-Buddhist divide, resulting in a trans-sectarian cult where the god maintained a co-functional role in both religions. A series of Buddhist and Śaiva embodiments of Gaṇapati intended as vighnāntakṛt, i.e. destroyers of obstacles, are attested in texts and visual documents as wrathful deities that display demonic features, and whose main function was to dispel demons and remove hindrances. Linrothe (1999: 25) reminds us that ‘the primary activity of the krodha-vighnāntaka deities … is not merely to protect sacred territory or the aspirant, but to destroy obstacles, both outer and inner, mundane and transcendental’. Forms of Vināyaka appear in the list of twenty outer Guardian or Protector gods of each of the four gates of the Perfected Body

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maṇḍala in Sino-Japanese Tantric Buddhist texts; a separate Vināyaka is also placed in the northern sector.73 As a ‘tamed demon’ and at the same time a tamer of demons, creator of obstacles (vināyaka) and destroyer of obstacles (vighnāntakṛt), Vināyaka/ Gaṇapati represents the outcome of the Buddhist (and Śaiva) narrative of transformation from bhūta to bhūtarāja, or from criminal to protector of the religion. According to Mayer (1998: 274) this narrative, most effectively portrayed in the Trailokyavijaya cycle, repeats a widespread pattern found in Indian religions in which deities transform hostile demons into their loyal devotees (often giving them the specific function of guardian or protector) through the medium of first slaying them, and then bring­ing them back to life.

(inter-)religious implications of the ratu boko yantra The materials presented above share a constellation of common themes in the domain of mantric technology, which is mainly used to avert illnesses, acquire mundane and supramundane goals, influence other people, and purify or ‘convert’ hostile beings. Having advanced the hypothesis that the Ratu Boko gold foil and its engraved mantra constitute a yantra of Tantric magic, and having elaborated on the connections between the mantra and Gaṇapati, I now proceed to discuss its implications for the contemporary Central Javanese religious and socio-political situation. Continuing the train of thought started by Sundberg and Jordaan and Colless, a fruitful line of enquiry seems to be the analysis of the yantra, and the mantra ṭaki jaḥ hūṁ in general, in the context of the Bauddha-Śaiva polemic. An evident anti-Śaiva stance is reflected in the use of the ṭaki jaḥ hūṁ mantra in the context of the taming of Maheśvara by Vajrapāṇi in the Trailokyavijaya cycle narrated in the STTS and related Buddhist sources in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese, as well 73.  See, e.g., Śākyamitra’s commentary to the Vajraśekharasūtra and Amoghavajra’s Shibahui zhigui (Japanese Jūhachieshiki), discussed in Snodgrass 1988: 588–89, 640–42.

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as, more generally, in the context of annihilation of obstacles by krodha-vighnāntaka deities. A similar anti-Śaiva attitude is found in some documents from premodern Java, namely the Borobudur dhāraṇī devoted to Caṇḍavajrapāṇi, which destroys all Vināyakas, and the Sutasoma kakavin, which narrates a version of the taming of Śiva/Mahākāla that also features the taming of his retinue (Gajavaktra, a nāga, and a tigress). On the other hand, the association of the mantra with Gaṇapati, as witnessed by its occurrence as the incipit of two Old Javanese inscriptions recovered from Śaiva sites (where oṁ ṭakkijaḥ represents a calque of oṁ avighnam astu [gaṇapataye namaḥ]), and in the closing section of the (Śaiva) Gaṇapatitattva, suggests that dynamics of trans-sectarian appropriation were at play from the second half of the 9th century in Central Java. The homologization of the five units of the mantra jaḥ ṭaḥ kiḥ hūṁ phaṭ, already attested as such in the (Buddhist) Pañcakāṇḍa, with a pentad of manifestations of Śiva may constitute a Śaiva ‘signature’ implying the ‘rebranding’ of what was perceived as an eminently Buddhist mantra.74 One may wonder whether the Śaiva appropriation of a Buddhist mantra implied a statement of superiority of the former religion over the latter, and whether this appropriation represented a (subtle, or implied) Śaiva ‘retaliation’ towards what was felt to be a mantra hostile to Śaivism in general, and Gaṇapati in particular, because of the connections with the acts of ākarṣaṇa and vaśīkaraṇa, their instruments (elephant-goad and the snare), and the deity Vajrapāṇi in the Trailokyavijaya cycle.75 74.  I wonder whether the inversion of the element jaḥ in the mantric sequence given in both the Pañcakāṇḍa and the Gaṇapatitattva, i.e. its shift to before ṭaki (oṁ ṭaki jaḥ hūṁ svāhā > jaḥ ṭaḥ kiḥ hūṁ phaṭ), may be seen as a sign of purposeful ‘rebranding’; however, this would be at odds with the fact that the Pañcakāṇḍa seems to be predominantly Buddhist, and indeed still not used by modern Balinese Śaiva priests. 75.  Snellgrove (2004: 141–42, n. 50) argues that the element niśumbha in the spell oṁ niśumbhavajra hūṁ phaṭ uttered by Vajrapāṇi just before the spell oṁ ṭakki jaḥ in the STTS means ‘slaughter’, and ‘thus it may have come into use as a destructive spell with Śaivite associations’ (on the association of ṭakki with phaṭ and māraṇa, cf. my n. 19 above); with respect to ṭakki jaḥ, he notes that

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Mayer (1998: 274) seems to portray a less clear-cut situation when he says that the ‘taming of Maheśvara/Rudra narrative’ can be seen to document the process described by Levi-Strauss as ‘bricolage’, in which persisting cultural materials are re-worked to create new cultural
reconstructions.76

In fact, one may also suppose that dynamics of mantric and ritual technology might have been at play here: ritual, and especially magic, was a ‘grey zone’—or ‘penumbra’, as Orzech, Payne and Sørensen (2011: 12) put it—that favoured inclusion and eclecticism in view of the co-functionality of the practices from the point of view of practitioners, ritual specialists, and patrons alike. All the more so in Java where, as noted long ago by Stutterhem (1989 [1925]: 242), ‘the main point was always the mantras themselves, in short the magic practices. Śivaite or Buddhistic are here no more than [a] difference of system[s] of magic’. ‘Ṭakka seems to have been applied to certain aborigines, hence the meaning of ‘‘wild’’. Ṭakkijjaḥ would thus mean ‘‘savage-born’’. Ṭakkara is an epithet of Śiva’ (indeed, Ṭakkī in some Prakrit grammatical works is regarded as an unrefined dialect of Apabrahṁśa, spoken by semi-educated people, and is sometimes associated with Drāviḍī: see Nitti-Dolci 1938: 101, 127–29). On the other hand, Dalton (2011: 239, n. 43) associates Ṭakki with the root tāraka and the name of the demon Tāraka, which features in a Śaiva cycle (cf. above, n. 60). Dalton argues that Tāraka may be ‘a pseudonym for Takkirāja or a case of creative etymology on the part of Indians or Tibetans (or both)’, and draws attention to the toponym Ṭakki in northern Punjab, which according to Tucci was the place of origin of a ‘local deity’ called Ṭakkirāja. Given the lack of evidence in Śaiva literature, it would be speculative to maintain that the ṭaki jaḥ mantra was originally Śaiva, and only later borrowed—and preserved—by the Buddhists; however, given the evidence of widespread borrowing of originally Śaiva materials in Buddhist texts documented by Sanderson (2009: 124–240), this possibility must be kept in mind. 76.  Mayer (1998: 274) also sees the Trailokyavijaya cycle as constituting ‘the charter myth (more or less in a Malinowskian sense) of the Vajrayāna in its specifically kāpālika forms, in other words as the myth by which the Buddhists explained and justified to themselves and to the world their co-option of so much of the religion of their Śaiva rivals’. This implies that the ‘anti-Śaiva’ sentiment could have been triggered by the realization that Śaiva elements indeed permeated Tantric Buddhism.

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On account of the association between the mantra on the Ratu Boko artefact and the taming of Maheśvara by Vajrapāṇi, Sundberg (2003: 182–83) argued that

necessarily entail a benedictory nuance—in fact, it is connected with ākarṣaṇa and vaśīkaraṇa in some Tantric texts on yantras (cf. above, p. 332). Similarly, to counter the latter argument I may point out that the west is connected with snaring, implicit in the choice of mantra used by Paand deities bearing the snare (pāśa) as attribute narabwan is a story of some degree of tension in both Buddhist and Śaiva sources;78 the pāśa is between the Buddhist yoga tantrists and the in turn connected with vaśīkaraṇa, and therefore Śaivites whose god was mythically subdued, does not necessarily imply an ‘inversion’ resulting murdered, resurrected, and converted.… In in a beneficient rather than maleficient procedure. adopting his Buddhism, and more importantly Given that the mantra ṭakki hūṁ jaḥ was used in scribing his name to a plaque of anti-Śaivite character, Panarabwan seemingly repudiated in the context of the ‘mantric battle’ narrated in the in strong terms the religion of his probable anvarious myths of the subjugation of Maheśvara, it cestor Sañjaya. is logical to assume that it was used as a means to While I agree with Sundberg’s interpretation of subjugate or ‘spellbind’ the ruling king. The idea the mantra as fundamentally anti-Śaiva in nature that the artefact would represent the re-enactment and purpose, I do not share his opinion that the of a similar battle in the real world, which implies yantra would have been crafted by Panaraban him- conversion of a king from Śaivism to Buddhism, self.77 In a somewhat contradictory manner (see was advanced by Jordaan and Colless (2004: 61). Jordaan and Colless 2004: 62), Sundberg (2003: They argued that, there being no evidence that the 179; 2006: 112, n. 25) suggests that the mantra mantra was composed at Panaraban’s instigation, might have had a benedictory nature on account the engraving of the personal raka title of Panaof its being enclosed within the mantric units oṁ raban within the inflated ī of ṭakī conveyed ‘the … svāhā, and its having been recovered beneath idea of his being caught and tied up with ropes and the west rather than east gate of the Ratu Boko rendered powerless’ (p. 62), and its main intention complex—the east being the direction of the first ‘could have been the mantrical subjugation and consummoning (ākarṣaṇa) rite according to the STTS. version of Panaraban’ from Śaivism to Buddhism The former argument can be easily dispelled by (ibid.: 61). Even the Javanese geographical setting, noting, as I have done above, that svāhā does not i.e. the Ratu Boko hillock, would correspond to Mount Sumeru, when the Trailokyavijaya story is set. To Jordaan and Colless (ibid.: 61–62), the ar77.  Sundberg (2003: 177) speculates that Panaraban ‘by tefact could have been crafted by the monks of the inscribing his name within the dot of the ‘‘i’’, has infixed Buddhist establishments (maybe the Abhayagirihis name as a vital component of the sacred mantra. In this way, he is operating within the circumference of the vihāra?) on the Ratu Boko hillock, who ‘by infixing mystic vowel itself, and clearly intends to link himself to the Panarabwan’s name into the same mantra that was mantra or the cosmic being it points to, albeit in a manner used to subjugate Śiva in the myth of Trailokyawe cannot understand’; see also Sundberg 2006: 112, n. 25: vijaya … sought to establish a similar coercive ‘What is more, the essence of the conceptual innovation hold over Panarabwan’. While we know virtually which defined the yoga stage of the tantras was the yogic nothing about the historical figure of Panaraban identification of the practitioner with the deity—it is entirely expected within this system that Panarabwan actively and the events that occurred during his reign, in seek the binding of his preferred deity to himself’. The latter the Carita Parahyaṅan we find a reference to a diargument is a valid one, as we have seen that some of the alogue between this king and his (alleged) father usages of the mantra ṭaki hūṁ jaḥ (vaṁ hoḥ) involved Rahyaṅ Sañjaya, who addresses him as follows: ‘O an element of (self-)visualization as the krodha deity dechild, change (from) my religion, because it scares stroying or taming the opponents; however, this element of visualization cannot be applied to the Ratu Boko artefact, which evidently represents a yantra, and which only attests the name(s) of the victim(s) without mentioning any deity. In fact, Tantric manuals often prescribe visualization by the attacker of the victim of the spell.

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78.  The association of the western side of Buddhist maṇḍalas with the fetter is noted by Sundberg too (2003: 179).

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people’ (hayva dek nurutan agama aiṅ, kena aiṅ mrәtakutna uraṅ ryea). This intriguing detail leads us to speculate that the Old Sundanese text might have preserved a vague memory of a dramatic and far-reaching religious conversion, or even of a religious conflict, linked to this king and his reign, which predates the Carita Parahyaṅan by perhaps six or seven centuries.79 Examples of (Buddhist) narratives being used as a commentary on real-world scenarios of religious (i.e., Śaiva-Bauddha) frictions abound in the Sanskrit and Tibetan traditions. For instance, Mayer (1998: 273) has described Esoteric Buddhist discourses on the ‘all-powerful malignance of Śiva and his entourage, specifically in their more radically transgressive or kāpālika tantric forms’, which were criticized for seducing many devotees into demonic religious practices, thereby posing a threat to the Buddhist religion. To Mayer (ibid.: 274), the ‘taming of Maheśvara/Rudra narrative’ may be seen as ‘giving a Buddhist commentary (in the Geertzian sense) upon Śaiva-Buddhist relations’. According to Dalton (2011: 36),

in the esoteric system) would not overwhelm the monasteries. The Maheśvaras of the world were stubborn, and Vajrapāṇi was represented as the ‘best of those subduing the difficult to tame’ (durdāntadamakaḥ paraḥ).

To Davidson, the worlds of feudal politics, unstable social realities and sectarian competition largely coincided during the ‘Tantric turn’ that dominated the early Mediaeval Indic world.

socio-political implications of the ratu boko yantra

the vajra represented the king’s right to force— the metaphorical legal ‘staff’ (daṇḍa), which legal literature claimed as the essence of kingship—and therefore the symbol of the Buddha’s Law (Dharma). The enforcement of the law was left to Vajrapāṇi (Vajra in Hand), who ensures that the criminal elements (mythically represented by either Māra or [Śiva] Maheśvara

That the relationship between certain Buddhist and Śaiva factions may have been less than idyllic was suggested by Jordaan (1999b: 70), who did not rule out the possibility that ‘Central Javanese society was riddled by social tensions in which religious affiliations came to play an ever important part’. On the other hand, Jordaan (1999b: 47–54, 2006: 6, 10) also argued against the often too simplistic view of relationships between Śaivism and Buddhism in early Central Java propounded by scholars, pointing out that the two religions may have peacefully cohabited and any anti-Buddhist sentiment may be attributable to political reasons, namely the conflict between the Sañjaya and the Śailendra lines of kings. What the archaeological remains—and, with an element of ambiguity, the literary sources—tell us is that by the middle of the 9th century Buddhism continues to coexist along with Śaivism, yet it ceases to be the ‘state religion’, and from that period onwards the architecture of Central Java becomes predominantly Hindu (i.e., Śaiva). This is witnessed, for instance, by the ‘occupation’ of the Ratu Boko promontory (formerly colonised by Buddhist foundations, such as the Abhayagirivihāra) by Śaiva religious foundations (Sundberg, this volume; Degroot 2006: 71), the proliferation of inscriptions of Śaiva character (some of which were associated with Vināyaka),80 and the construction of the Loro Jonggrang temple in the

79.  A discussion of the passage in question and, in general, of the Carita Parahyaṅan and other textual sources that may help us to reconstruct the socio-political and religious landscape of the early Mataram kingdom of Central Java may be found in Sundberg 2011.

80.  The Pereng and Dawangsari inscriptions share a close association with the cult of Vināyaka, and were formerly placed in the vicinity of a colossal Gaṇeśa image on the Ratu Boko hillock, which is indeed referred to in the latter (Griffiths 2011: 137–39). Both inscriptions, and seemingly also the contemporary statue, are associated with the figure

the Rudra-taming myth reflects these burgeoning sectarian rivalries … by destroying Śiva and binding all the Brahmanical gods into service, the buddhas were not only providing a model for subsequent ritual of demon-taming; they were also demonstrating Buddhism’s superiority over Brahmanism, and Śaivism in particular.

Davidson (2002: 197), when discussing the vajra, i.e. the symbol of Vajrayāna par excellence, introduces an element of realpolitik, arguing that

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Śaiva complex of Prambanan. This phase has been 8.31, are to be best understood as acts of Tantric rightfully regarded as coinciding with the end of sorcery (ṣaṭkarmāṇi)’.81 Hunter (2007: 35–36) has the Śailendra rule (or influence) in Java (Jordaan discussed 13th-century East Javanese inscription1999b: 66–67; 2006: 6, n. 8). al evidence of practices, stemming from a Śaiva Even if we leave aside the anti-Śaiva implica- Tantric (bhairavika) antinomian milieu, aimed tions, we may still see in the Ratu Boko yantra an at granting King Kṛtanagara invulnerability and element of attraction and subjugation, i.e. a magical victory in battle; Santiko (1997: 217–18) discusses a operation directed towards the person of Panara- statuary group consisting of images of Cāmuṇḍā, ban—perhaps by a political rival, with the com- Bhairava and Gaṇeśa, which she connects with a plicity of Esoteric Buddhist monks. This scenario vaśīkaraṇa ritual aimed at defeating Kṛtanagara’s is supported by evidence drawn from manuals of enemies. Similar, and contemporary, instances Tantric magic for the drawing of yantras that I have of royal-sponsored ‘war magic’ centred on such presented above, which connect symbolic shapes demonic Tantric deities as Mahākāla, Heruka, and such as square, vajra and circle—all present in the Hevajra, are well documented among the Mongols, Ratu Boko artefact—to various harmful actions, i.e. Tibetans, and Chinese.82 subjugation, immobilization, or enmity. Vaśīkaraṇa is mentioned in the long Old Malay Resorting to magical practices to fulfill aims of ‘Śrīvijayan’ inscription of Telaga Batu (Sabokinrealpolitik is a cliché in many Śaiva and Bauddha gking, near Palembang in Sumatra) from the Tantras, and even in Brahmanical Sanskrit nor- late 7th century. The text contains imprecations mative texts, such as the Arthaśāstra and the against the enemies of the state and the king; it Manusmṛti; these manuals also invoke the use of mentions an oath of loyalty to the king taken by infiltrated agents posing as siddhas, i.e. power- his entourage, which, if broken, will result in the ful wizards bearing the insignia of such antino- culprits being killed by spells. In line 13, ‘the curse mian Śaiva groups as the Kāpālikas (Davidson is directed against the king’s servants, should they 2002: 174–75). Analogous ideas are found in the be in contact with various sorts of people well-verRāmāyaṇa kakavin, the arguably contemporary sed in the use of magical practices’ (de Casparis Śivagṛha inscription of ad 856, and narrative reliefs 1956: 23–24). Lines 12–14 allude to conspirators who of Central Javanese temples. These documents would make use of Tantric rituals, philtres, and allegorically allude to the deceitful activities of magical artefacts—most notably a śrīyantra—to sham ascetics and sorcerers associated with covert cause madness in other people. Referring to this political manoeuvring during the dynastic struggle inscription, Goudriaan (1978: 323) concludes: that opposed Bālaputra of the Śailendra line and There is no question here of an abstract use Rakai Pikatan in the middle of the 9th century, of these expressions but of real magical cerewhich seems to have had its final resolution precimonies is proved by a reference made by the sely on the Ratu Boko hillock (see Acri 2010, 2011). king to certain methods used by the rebels Jakl (2013: 11–12), on the basis of his reading of the such as designing or painting an image of him Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa and other kakavins, has (rūpinaṅku) and application of ahses (bhasma), concluded that malicious ‘black magic’ practices wizards … and spells (mantra). of ritual destruction, aimed at securing victory Goudriaan (ibid.: 324) maintains that ‘[a]s with in war, were conceptualized in premodern Java the act of ākarṣaṇa, it is a matter of probability as a part of vicious practices of Tantric wizards that persons of high status and wealth such as of the siddha type, portrayed as ‘demon-ascetics’ kings have often figured as the victims of rites of (viku rākṣasa); to him (ibid.), ‘these practices of subjugation, immobilization and annihilation, censured as aji śāstra wĕgig in kakawin Rāmāyaṇa of Kumbhayoni, whose anti-Bauddha activities on the Ratu Boko hillock are discussed by Sundberg (this volume).

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81.  Jakl (ibid.: 12) has also drawn attention to a passage of the Bhomāntaka (82.3) mentioning the application of mantras in order to harm an enemy. 82.  See Bade, this volume; Dalton 2011: 137; Sinclair 2014.

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subjugation’.83 A Buddhist instance of these practi- both the Pañcakāṇḍa and the section closing the ces is found in the Vidyottamātantra, a so-called Gaṇapatitattva share a commonality of themes and Caryātantra or Kriyātantra now available only in mantric technology with scriptures—such as the Tibetan; sections 1–3 of this text describe a ritual Netratantra, the Vīṇāśikhatantra, and the Bhūtatfor the subjugation (vaśīkaraṇa) of kings ‘in the antras—devoted to the rituals of Tantric magic presence of Vajrapāṇi’ (vajrapāṇisya/vajrapāṇer devised for the benefit of royal sponsors. agrataḥ);84 similarly, the Susiddhikārasūtra states In view of the above facts, one may assume that that ‘the mantras of the Vajra [Family] are for ābhi­ the word khanipas inscribed on the lower part of cāruka (subjugation) [rites]’ (Chinese trans. of ad the bubble where the raka title of Panaraban is 726, Giebel 2001: 130–31, 133). The Vīṇāśikhatantra, also inscribed represents a personal name, perhaps a Śaiva scripture of the Vāmasrotas mainly devoted that of the king himself, or of one of his associto magic, describes rituals for the subjugation of ates—a general, minister, his royal chaplain, or kings and queens (pp. 174–77), and of the entire a close family member, e.g. his queen.86 I find it threefold world (trailokya, pp. 163–64, 270–74, see more plausible that Khanipas would be a victim Einoo 2009: 33). Describing one such rituals for of the subjugation spell together with Panaraban, rulers, this text declares that, at the end of a sacrifice but one may also speculate that Khanipas would making use of human flesh, the practitioner ‘should be the individual who wanted to ‘bind’ Panaraban imagine the victim as being out of his mind and to himself, or influence him. benumbed, struck on his head by the Elephant-goad (aṅkuśa) and bound by the Māyic noose; even a conclusion king or queen he will subjugate within a week’ (pp. 160–61). The Vīṇāśikhatantra figures (as Vināśikha) Two ślokas of the Pañcakāṇḍa, a Sanskrit Budin the ad 1052 Sdok Kak Thom Sanskrit-Old Khmer dhist stuti from Bali, and the Sanskrit-Old Javanese inscription hinting at Tantric rituals performed by Gaṇapatitattva, a Śaiva tutur text that has come the Brahmin Hiraṇyadāman for the ‘liberation’ of down to us in many Balinese redactions to varying the Khmer domains from the subjugation of Javā,85 degrees dominated by the figure of Gaṇapati, attest by means of which King Jayavarman II founded the the mantra jaḥ ṭaḥ kiḥ hūṁ phaṭ. This is a reKhmer Empire in the early 9th century and became a Cakravartin (Goudriaan 1985: 24–26; Brown 2003; Sanderson 2003–4: 357, 2004: 235). Sanderson (2004: 86.  The possibility that Khanipas might have been Panaraban’s queen was already voiced by Sundberg (2003: 177). 238) also discusses the Sanskrit inscription K.111 of Degroot (2006: 66) reports a personal communication the reign of Jayavarman V (ca. 968–1000/1) that by Klokke (2004) casting doubt on Sundberg’s identificatells us that Kīrtipaṇḍita, a Buddhist master fol- tion of Panarabvan with King Panaraban, on the ground lowing the Yogatantras, ‘had been adopted by the that ‘the absence of any title is suspicious given the fact royal family as their Guru, [and] was frequently that Panaraban is a rake title, not a personal name’. This engaged by the king to perform apotropaic, restor- objection is not very compelling, for the epigraphical evidence has only yielded attestations of the rake title and ative and aggressive Mantra rituals within the royal consecration names of kings; similarly, in the allegoripalace for the protection of his kingdom’—namely, cal passages of the kakavin Rāmāyaṇa, we find allusions ‘rituals for the quelling of dangers, the restoration to kings such as Rakai Pikatan (as pikatan, 24.115, 25.13 of health and the rest’ (to Sanderson, ‘the rest’ [pikatan = decoy bird]) and Rakai Kayuvaṅi (as caṇḍana, presupposes abhicāra). As I have argued above, ‘sandalwood’, 21.94; kyātīnaran arūm, ‘known as fragrant’, 83.  A discussion of Sanskrit texts that describe rituals of subjugation targeting rulers and their ministers and subjects may be found in Goudriaan 1978: 322–26. 84.  See Ito Gyokan (ed.) 2005: 264–65 (I thank Iain Sinclair for this reference, email dated 30 August 2014). 85.  On the identification of this Javā with Yavadvīpa (i.e., Java), see Griffiths 2013.

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and taru kanakā, ‘sandalwood tree’, 24.126 [kayuvaṅi = ‘fragrant tree/wood’, i.e. sandalwood]) that refer to these titles (without the honorific particle rakai) rather than the personal names, thereby implying that the former were the appellations under which these kings were popularly known at the time. Even if Klokke is right, then one may speculate that Khanipas is the personal name of Rakai Panaraban, and that as such both appellations were inscribed on the yantra.

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Once More on the ‘Ratu Boko Mantra’ configured version of the ṭaki jaḥ hūṁ mantra—a quintessentially Buddhist mantra attested in the context of the Trailokyavijaya cycle in a number of Vajrayāna texts in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. The instance of the ṭaki jaḥ hūṁ mantra found in the Pañcakāṇḍa and Gaṇapatitattva—the latter being the only one thus far documented in a thoroughly Śaiva religious text—adds to the series of rare attestations of this sequence recovered from Central Javanese inscriptions, namely the Ratu Boko gold foil, two boundary-stones dating back to the second half of the 9th century (from a Śaiva context), an undated stone mentioning a vihāra, and a Buddhist lead-bronze inscription from Borobudur (prob. 9th or 10th century). All these documents bear some implications for our understanding of the purpose of the Ratu Boko inscribed gold foil, as well as of the religious and socio-political context in which it was produced. Having argued that the attestation of the mantra in both the Pañcakāṇḍa and the Gaṇapatitattva occurs in a context of apotropaic, siddhi-oriented, and coercive magic characterizing Tantric literature of various sectarian persuasions across the mediaeval Indic world, I have concluded that the Ratu Boko artefact was most likely intended as a magical yantra. Given that, as noted by Sundberg, the mantra involves an element of anti-Śaiva polemic, I further elaborated on Jordaan and Colless’s hypothesis that the mantra was meant to influence, i.e. ‘spellbind’, the late 8th-century Javanese King Panaraban, either for religious purposes (i.e., to convert him to Buddhism) or for aims of realpolitik. This picture fits well in the context of political and religious transition that Central Java seems to have witnessed during the 9th century, namely the shift from a (Śailendra-dominated) Buddhist paradigm to a new Śaiva course. Building on the work of Sundberg and Griffiths, who have shown the association of the (various versions of the) ṭaki jaḥ hūṁ mantra with removal of obstacles and magical operations of ākarṣaṇa and vaśīkaraṇa in Indic Buddhist sources, I have explored the links between this mantra and the figure of the elephant-headed god Gaṇapati/Vināyaka, which had a place in both Śaiva and Buddhist pantheons as a remover of obstacles. Gaṇapati, as a demonic member of Maheśvara’s entourage,

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constitutes the victim par excellence of subjugation through the mantric elephant-goad (jaḥ) and snare (hūṁ) of Vajrapāṇi, which the Bodhisattva used to tame Maheśvara in the Trailokyavijaya cycle. The transmogrification of the ṭaki jaḥ hūṁ mantra in the Gaṇapatitattva, in a context of Tantric magic, suggests that the compiler of the text carried out an operation of ‘textual bricolage’ that involved the trans-sectarian appropriation of (co-functional) Buddhist mantric technology and its translation into Śaiva terms. This appropriation may have involved a direct borrowing from (a version of) the Pañcakāṇḍa, as suggested by the association between Gaṇapati/Vināyaka and Amṛtakuṇḍalin, a Buddhist apotropaic, outer-maṇḍala deity that might have been invoked through the epithet ‘Sun’ (āditya) in the Pañcakāṇḍa. In the fluid context of Tantric magic, where borrowing commonly occurs, and many ritual (and sectarian) distinctions become blurred, the production of counter-narratives (and counter-mantras) may not necessarily entail an implied element of trans-sectarian polemic. However, given the climate of fierce religious competition for royal patronage across the Indic world (Java included) in the Mediaeval period, the possibility that ‘as the tantric ritual technologies were widely adopted, the new ritual resemblances that resulted can only have heightened sectarian anxieties’ (Dalton 2011: 36) should be kept open.

Primary Sources Old Javanese titles Gaṇapatitattva (1) [GaṇEd:] Gaṇapati-tattwa. Ed. and (Hindi) trans. Sudarshana Devi-Singhal. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1958. (2) [GaṇL:] Lontar Gaṇapatitattva, collection of the International Academy of Indian Culture. (3) [TGaṇ:] Tatwa Gaṇapati, romanization by Ketut Sudarsana, Kantor Dokum entasi Budaya Bali, Denpasar, 1993. (4) [PDok:] Lontar ms. XX 4, Pusat Doku mentasi Budaya Bali, Denpasar.

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(5) [GaṇUd:] Lontar ms. Rt 6, Universitas Udayana. Sutasoma kakavin, see O’Brien 2008. Sanskrit titles Agnipurāṇa: ed. Mitra. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1879. Hevajratantra: see D. Snellgrove (ed.) 1959a. Kriyāsasaṅgrahapañjikā (Ch. 6) by Kuladatta: ed. Inui, Hitoshi, ‘Kriyāsaṁgraha no honzon yuga: bonbun tekisuto chū [‘On deity yoga in the Kriyāsaṁgraha: Sanskrit text, Part 2’]’, Mikkyō Bunka Kenkyūjo Kiyō 5: 160–33, 1992. Netratantra: The Netra Tantram with Commentary by Kṣemarāja, vol. 1, ed. Pandit Madhusudan Kaul Shāstrī, Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies No. XLVI. Bombay: Tatva Vivechaka Press, 1926. Pañcakāṇḍa: see Goudriaan and Hooykaas 1971, stuti no. 375.

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Sādhanamālā: ed. Benoytosh Bhattacharya. 2 vols. Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1928. Sarvadurgatipariśodhana: The Sarvadurgatipari­ śodhana Tantra. Elimination of All Evil Destinies. Sanskrit and Tibetan texts with Introduction, Translation and Notes, ed. and trans. Tadeusz. Skorupski. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983. Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha: see Lokesh Chandra ed., with D. Snellgrove) 1981. Sarvavajrodaya by Ānandagarbha: e-text by Ryugen Tanemura, based on Vajradhātuma­ hāmaṇḍalopāyikā-sarvavajrodaya by Ān­an­ dagarbha, ed. Mikkyō Seiten Kenkyūkai in Taisho daigaku sougou-bukkyou-kenkyūjo kiyou 8: 228–56 (1986), 9: 216–22 (1987). Susiddhikārasūtra (Chinese trans.): see Giebel 2001. Vajrasattvaniṣpādana of pseudo-Candrakīrti (San­ s­k rit and Tibetan): see Luo and Tomabechi (eds.) 2009. Vidyottamātantra: see Ito Gyokan (ed.) 2005. Vīṇāśikhatantra: see Goudriaan 1985.

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Chapter 14

Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java: Lord Kumbhayoni and the ‘Rag-wearer’ Paṁsukūlika Monks of the Abhayagirivihāra jeffr ey r. su ndberg

T

he two primary buddhist monuments of Śailendra Java, Candi Sewu and Borobudur, are impressive but, as little is known about their genesis or ultimate meaning, mute and historically uninformative.1 On the other hand, as this essay will attempt to show, there is an important and fascinating dynamic locked in the architecturally unremarkable lithic remains on the southern end of the Ratu Boko prominence, a dynamic which is of much greater importance than either Sewu or Borobudur to both Buddhist sectarian history as well as the history of Bauddha-Śaiva relations. The primary goal of this chapter is to examine the relationship between two chronologically and thematically distinct sets of lithic structures and inscriptions at the southern end of the Ratu Boko promontory in Central Java. The first set of structures is Buddhist and relates to an ad 792 Śailendra foundation inscription (Fig. 14.1) that explicitly identified the occupants as Sinhalese monks of the renowned Abhayagirivihāra. The specific identification of these Sinhalese monks as paṁsukūlika,2 literally ‘rag-wearers’, is inferred by

1. I am indebted to a number of correspondents who contributed to my present understanding of the curiosities associated with the 9th-century Śaiva response to the Sinhalese monks of the Abhayagirivihāra who came to inhabit the padhānaghara in Java. Among them are Andrea Acri, Osmund Bopearachchi, Sven Bretfeld, Robert Brown, Ven. Rangama Chandawimala Thero, Véronique Degroot, Emmanuel Francis, Ryosuke Furui, Rolf Giebel, Roy Jordaan, Gerd Mevissen and Corinna Wessels-Mevissen, Nicolas Revire, Sudarshan Seneviratne, Peter Sharrock, Vincent Tournier, and Hiram Woodward. 2. In the precursor to this essay (Sundberg 2014: 66, n. 14), I chose to distinguish the ‘rag-wearers’ associated with the Abhayagirivihāra from those of the Mahāvihāra by denominating them according to what seems to be the

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the telltale presence of their seemingly signature architecture, the double-platform structure. The second set of structures and artefacts is Śaiva in character, and was erected around 856 by a cultivated Javanese blue blood, the raka of Valaing pu Kumbhayoni, one of whose several Gunung Kidul inscriptions mentions him to have once reigned over some kingdom, although obviously not in Central Java itself. Despite the vast acreage of open terrace available on the plateau, Kum­ bhayoni’s Śaiva structures were erected in remarkably tight proximity to the Abhayagiri structure, with sacred Śaiva architecture, inscriptions, and emblems placed just metres from the prākāra walls and surrounding them on at least three sides. This chapter seeks to explicate these archaeological facts and offer a plausible narrative about how the Bauddha and the Śaiva intersected in 856 on that small patch of Central Java. I conclude that it is difficult to discern any evidence that Kumbha­ yoni’s Śaiva symbology was intended to promote rather than thwart the Abhayagiri group, but rather represented a deliberate attempt to stamp a countervailing Śaiva presence on the plateau. I favoured scriptural and administrative languages in each vihāra. Accordingly, I assigned the Sanskrit ‘pāṁśukūlika’ to discussions of the Abhayagiri’s ‘rag-wearers’ and retained the ‘paṁsukūlika’ of the Pali chronicles when referencing the Mahāvihāran analogues. In this chapter, I drop this notational distinction and employ the Pali in which the extant mentions of both groups are preserved. In Sundberg 2014: 117, n. 14, I have pointed out the large numbers of Sanskritic epigraphic references found within the Abhayagiri’s precincts even during the period of the Second Lambakaṇṇa where the Pali-dominated Mahāvihāra reigned, leading me to suggest that the Abhayagirivāsins pursued their activities in Sanskrit even to the eve of the Cōḻa reign.

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Fig. 14.1: The Abhayagiri inscription of Central Java as composited from photographs of the portions in the National Museum (the proper right of the inscription) and in the Indonesian Archaeological Service in Yogyakarta (the proper left). Missing from this depiction is the arrow-headed fragment in the middle, which de Casparis (1950: 11–22) denoted as ‘e’.

believe that the collision, when seen in context and perspective, represents one facet of a consequential event in the course of Buddhism in Asia: the emphatic reversion of Sinhalese Buddhist kings from the Mantranaya to the Theravāda teachings which had been conserved in the Abhayagiri’s rival Mahāvihāra, which had last seen royal Sinhalese favour perhaps several centuries before. To assist the reader in navigating through this chapter, I provide the following rough orientation: In Section I, I summarize the most pertinent aspects of my recently issued study (Sundberg 2014) on the phenomenon of the paṁsukūlika monks of the Abhayagirivihāra in Sri Lanka, which included the delegation of the Abhayagiri monks who came to the Śailendra court. I survey the efflorescence of these Abhayagiri monks and the Esoteric Buddhist texts that they seemingly promoted in the early period of the second Lambakaṇṇa dynasty, as well as the rejection of those doctrines and that specific nikāya in the wake of the disastrous sacking of

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Anurādhapura around ad 840, when the Sinhalese kings resumed sponsorship of the Theravāda doctrines conserved by the rival Mahāvihāra. In Section II, I provide a brief presentation of the Śaiva activities of pu Kumbhayoni3 some sixty years 3.  An extensive analysis of the figure of Śrī Kumbhayoni, the nature of his Śaivism, and the contemporary Javanese historical background will be deferred to other venues (Sundberg 2016b, 2016c). For the purposes of the present chapter, with its exploration of a specific episode of Bauddha-Śaiva relations in the 9th century, it is necessary to examine the immediate Buddhist antecedents. In Sundberg 2014, I examined the history of the Abhayagirivihāra in Sri Lanka from the reign of Mānavarman (684–718) to the abandonment of Rājaraṭṭha by the Abhayagiri’s paṁsukūlika monks in the twentieth regnal year of Sena II (854–89), the Sinhalese king who restored the Theravāda doctrines of the Mahāvihāra after the disaster of the ca. 840 Pāṇḍya invasion. For the Central Javanese situation ca. 856, the most immediate data is present at the Buddhist Plaosan Lor temples a few kilometers to the north of the Ratu Boko bluffs (Sundberg 2006: 109–13). Following a pioneering identification by

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Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java after the Śailendra’s sponsorship of the Abhayagirivihāra, about whose monks’ activities in the intervening decades nothing is known. Supposing the presence of an Abhayagirin ritual space akin to that established by Kūkai 空海 at his Kongōbuji 金剛峯寺 monastery, I present an analysis of the positioning and nature of Kumbhayoni’s inscriptions and a lithic Śiva-temple simulacrum for the generation of consecrated water just metres away from the prākāra walls of the Abhayagiri. In Section III, I draw attention to the collapse of institutional support for Esoteric Buddhism in a number of countries across the Buddhist world in the years shortly after 840. I tentatively conclude that Kumbhayoni’s activities on the Abhayagiri­ vihāra need to be seen in light of not only the contemporary general reaction to military failures and Kusen (1994: 87) of the presence among the Plaosan shrines of the same raka lord who had accompanied King Garuṅ (r. 829–47) on his ad 829 restoration of the support of the crown lands at Vanua Tṅah for the Pikatan vihāra founded by King Sañjaya’s younger sibling (avi), I noted (Sundberg 2006: 117, n. 37) the rather tight chronologization of the Plaosan shrines offered by other mentions of noble and official Plaosan shrine donors during the Garuṅ period. I further noted (Sundberg 2006: 117, n. 39) a fundamental mystery, greatly pertinent to the present chapter and the history of Bauddha-Śaiva relations in Central Java: the two pre-regnal Plaosan shrine donations offered by Garuṅ’s successor Pikatan (r. 847–55), which run across two faces of their harmikā: the first face gives Pikatan’s personal name and his territorial title from before he gained the crown; while the inscription of the second face updates the prior dedication with his new title as Śrī Mahārāja. It is hoped that the considerations in the present chapter will shed some light upon the question of how and why this same royal raka of Pikatan should come to be interred in 856 with a pronounced Śaiva funeral stele (de Casparis 1956: 280–330). Finally, it should be noted that the Ratu Boko, the Plaosan temple, and all of the other great Javanese Śailendra edifices seem to be clustered around the location of the dynast Sañjaya’s (r. 717–46?) camp, if the Taji Gunung inscription does indeed derive from the village at the foot of the Ratu Boko (Sundberg 2003: 17, n. 32) as thought. The recently unearthed ad 869 sīmā inscriptions from the Kedulan temple in the Kalasan district specifies the sīmā to originate at ‘Panaṁṅgaran’ (Pramastuti et al. 2007: 31), suggesting that all of these Prambanan-area edifices lay within the compass of the historic vatak, the raka of Panaṅkaran, who reigned from 746 to 783 and who originally donated the Vanua Tṅah crown lands to Sañjaya’s avi’s vihāra.

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perceived moral excesses in Esoteric Buddhism across Asia, but quite particularly the hitherto unperceived reaction against the Abhayagiri’s esoteric doctrines by the contemporary Sinhalese regent Sena II himself. The Śailendra sponsorship of an Abhayagiri edifice was predicated on that monastery’s reputation and predominance in its homeland, and it therefore might not be surprising to see it fall when the mother monastery fell from grace. In the Annex, I provide my current thoughts on the vajra-shaped gold foil which was found in front of the Great Gate of the Ratu Boko plateau (Acri, this volume, Fig. 13.1) and which seemingly implicated the Central Javanese regent, the mahārāja Rakai Panaraban (r. 784–803), whose misfortune at the hands of his treasonous son is recounted in the Carita Para­hyaṅan (Darsa and Ekadjati 1997), a 16th century Sundanese narrative source which preserves the sole surviving historical remembrance of the glorious Sañjaya period.

i. antecedents to the abhayagiri presence on the ratu boko plateau Prompted by studies of sources like the doubleplatform structure on the Ratu Boko plateau (Fig. 14.2) and the biographies of Vajrabodhi (a.k.a. Vajrabuddhi) and Amoghavajra, I (Sundberg 2014) recently investigated the prominence of Esoteric Buddhism in the early (684–ca. 840) portion of Sri Lanka’s second Lambakaṇṇa dynasty,4 which was almost coincident with what little is known of the history of the Yogatantras. The sources which stimulated my enquiries were not indigenous but rather foreign, and in the novel consideration of these foreign sources, I believe that I moved towards a history of that period of the island which might be termed ‘Abhayagirigenic’ rather than the traditional historical narrative 4.  In my essay, I did not attempt to comprehensively address all of the Esoteric Buddhist material which has been found in Sri Lanka, and an even smaller portion of that evidence is presented for this chapter. Chandawimala (2013) conveniently summarizes a good portion of that which has been reported by Paranavitana (1928), Mudiyanse (1967), Dohanian (1977), and von Schroeder (1990), but Chandawimala’s praiseworthy book was not intended to serve as a catalogue or database.

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Fig. 14.2: The north and west faces of the prākāra wall around the ad 792 double-platform structure of the Abhaya­girivāsins on the Ratu Boko promontory. The presence of the portal on the west side is remarkable, as almost every such structure in Sri Lanka has a portal on the east, and is most probably harmonized to the orientation of the Great Gate (Fig. 14.7) which provides access to the plateau. (Photo © Crisco 1492, Wikimedia Commons)

which is sustained by the literary and epigraphical efforts of the Mahāvihāra, the long-subordinated but eventually victorious rival to the Abhayagiri­vihāra for doctrinal primacy, royal influence, and ultimately the right to write history.5 To facilitate a discussion of the goings-on at the Abhayagiri padhānaghara at Ratu Boko promontory in 856, I summarize in this section the most pertinent portions of my companion essay. Mānavarman and Vajrabodhi; Mānavarman and Kāñcī As mentioned above, the advent of Esoteric Buddhism almost perfectly coincides with the history of the second Lambakaṇṇa, and the dynast Mānavarman (r. 684–718) features large in each story. Propelled on to his Rājaraṭṭha throne at the ancient 5.  As nearly as I was able to determine at thirteen centuries’ remove, the Mahāvihāra Chronicles acknowledge what had been subsequently ‘Theravādicized’, like the Pallava-styled Rājiṇāvihāra located at the curiously named upland town of Nālandā, or brought under Mahāvihāran control, or what could be referenced as a Mahāvihāran archetype like the paṁsukūlikas, or what they shared with the rival Abhayagirivihāra (i.e., vinaya codes which were ‘not in dispute with the tradition’).

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capital of Anurādhapura by a Pallavan army that he had himself commanded on behalf of his South Indian hosts during his long years of exile in Kāñcī, Mānavarman’s descendants would proceed to rule for the remainder of the Anurādhapura period. The basic facts of his reign are documented most completely in Chapter 47 of the Cūḷavaṁsa, the 13th-century historical chronicle generated by the Mahāvihāra.6 It is the references to Mānavarman’s 6.  Novel biographical material, differing in every respect from those recorded in the 47th chapter of the Cūḷavaṁsa formally devoted to Mānavarman, is to be found in its Chapter 57 (Geiger 1953: 193ff), devoted to the junction of the Moriya and Lambakaṇṇa in the person of Vijayabāhu. The first datum concerns Mānavarman’s eye, the fluids of which he ‘offered’ to the war god Skanda’s peacock vāhana in compensation for the unsatisfactorily desiccated coconut used in a mantra-effected ritual. Even more remarkable than this apparent reference to Mānavarman suffering a conspicuous wound in a military campaign is the subsequent passage, not fully coherent because of its internal contradictions with other chapters of the Cūḷavaṁsa and further contradictions with other Sinhalese chronicles (Geiger 1953: 192, n. 2), which involves Māna, a younger brother of Mānavarman. The passage claims that Māna assumed the throne while the disfigured Mānavarman himself was ordained under the Abhayagirivihāra, assuming directorship of a new Abhayagiri pirivena, directly

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Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java kindness to and interest in the seminal monk Vajrabodhi, captured in a contemporary biography by the academic Lü Xiang 呂向 (Sundberg and Giebel 2011), which appear to most directly betray an interest in Esoteric Buddhism seemingly acquired from South Indian Vajrayāna innovators,7 presumably during his exile there. supervising the guardians of the Tooth Relic and furnishing his regnal younger brother with counselors drawn from the ranks of the Abhayagiri. This passage clearly merits much more skillful religio-historical explication than I am able to bring to bear, but the passage and its Mantranayic vocabulary (mantra, japa, akṣamālā, siddhi) support the idea that Mānavarman was an Esoteric Buddhist king with a special relationship with the Abhayagiri, an analysis which accords with the research results of my 2014 essay. (I thank Ven. Rangama Chandawimala Thero for his kind identification of some of the original Pali terms of Geiger’s translation). 7.  In the early biographical accounts of Vajrabodhi and the mytho-historical accounts of the origins of the Vajroṣṇīṣa, lies, insofar as I am aware, the best support for the claims that these texts originated in the South of India, and too that Mānavarman and the Abhayagirivihāra were intimately knowledgeable of that important process. While I am fully cognizant of the well-documented involvement of northeastern India and specifically Nālandā in the genesis of the Caryātantric Mahāvairocanasūtra (Hodge 1995), it seems to me that this was decidedly not true for the Vajroṣṇīṣa, led as it was by the Yogatantric Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha. While the biographical notes prepared by Hunlunweng (混倫翁; T 2157.876b29–877a21) as the epitaph for Vajrabodhi’s memorial stūpa do indeed allude to ‘esoteric doctrines’ learned by Vajrabodhi in his many years at Nālandā (Rolf Giebel, p.c.), both Vajrabodhi and his disciple Amoghavajra are seen acting in a manner which suggests Nālandā is irrelevant to them. There is, for example, no hint of specifically Esoteric Buddhism in the representation of Vajrabodhi’s Nālandā years in the longer early biography of Lü Xiang (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 134). Considerations of Lü Xiang’s biography serve instead to reinforce the impression of the conventional character of the teachings promoted at nearly contemporary Nālandā as witnessed by Yijing 義淨. Indeed, the sterility of early 7th-century Nālandā in the genesis of the Yogatantras may be made explicit in Amoghavajra’s comment in his account of the South Indian Iron Stūpa episode that ‘in the country of Central India the Buddhist teaching had gradually decayed’ (Orzech 1995: 315). On the other hand, everything in Vajrabodhi’s biography and the recitations of the Iron Stūpa legend point to his acquaintance with— and allegedly fumbled acquisition of—these cardinal Vajroṣṇīṣa texts in South India. It is undoubtedly this specific corpus, which is designated in Hunlunweng’s mention as

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Three exemplary temples from early in the Second Lambakaṇṇa reign: The Thūpārāma at Anurādhapura, the Girikaṇḍivihāra at Tiriyāy, and the Rājiṇāvihāra at Nālandā Although the religious proclivities of Mānavarman, his three Kāñcī-born successor-sons, or his grandson, Aggabodhi VI (r. 733–72), the Sinhalese patron of Amoghavajra during his extended (742– 46) text-gathering stay in Laṅkā, remained unacknowledged by the orthodox Theravādin Cūḷavaṁsa and in the epigraphical record,8 these sources do document religious endowments that can now be understood to be linked to Esoteric Buddhism. Three in particular are worth reciting in the present context, for they illustrate the contemporary Abhayagiri and background the Śailendra establishment of that nikāya in the 8th-century heartland of that kingdom. These three are the Thūpārāma stūpa and its ‘palace’ to the immediate south of the citadel in the middle of urban Anurādhapura, the Girikaṇḍivihāra at coastal Tiriyāy, and the Rājiṇāvihāra at upland Nālandā near Matale. I (Sundberg 2014: 89–90) pointed out that the Lambakaṇṇa dynast, Vajrabodhi’s friend and patron Mānavarman, had roofed the Thūpārāma (Fig. 14.3) which harboured the Collarbone originating from South India, that Vajrabodhi procured: ‘a text of the great bodhisattva teachings in 200,000 words and a Sanskrit manuscript of yoga’ (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 199, n. 125. For more on what is meant by this ‘yoga’, see Orzech 2006b). The handoff of pedantic primacy to institutions in Buddhist Sri Lanka seems natural in light of Mānavarman’s return from his long Kāñcī exile and is reflected in Vajrabodhi’s half-year residence at the Abhayagiri and subsequent lifelong correspondence with his Sinhalese ‘master’ *Ratnabodhi, as well as Amoghavajra’s selection of Sri Lanka for his critical mission of gathering the canon of essential Mantrayāna texts. For a survey, only slightly stale, of the Pallava-styled relics extant in Sri Lanka, see Dohanian 1983. 8.  In a long footnote of the companion essay (Sundberg 2014), I examined the curious resumption of the Sri Lankan epigraphic record only at the end of the reign of Sena I (r. 834–54), and the very end of the period of Abhayagirin dominance, and compared it to the absence of royal administrative inscriptions in Java before the reign of Kayuvaṅi (r. 855–83), noting in particular the pertinence of my explanation (Sundberg 2006: 124; 2011: 155, n. 30) of possibly widespread retractions of Javanese tax privileges during the reigns of Varak (r. 803–27) and Pikatan (r. 847–55).

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Fig. 14.3: A reconstruction of the vaṭadāge of the Collarbone Relic of the Thūpārāma. Such a permeable stūpa, erected also at Tiriyāy and elsewhere in Sri Lanka, may have modelled the Iron Stūpa of Amoghavajra’s account. The roofing (and implicitly the pillars which supported it) was instigated by Mānavarman. (Photo courtesy of Osmund Bopearachchi)

Relic, transforming the open stūpa into a pillared vaṭadāge,9 and had built a ‘palace’ which he gifted to ‘rag-wearer’ paṁsukūlika monks. In doing so, I believe, Mānavarman built an Esoteric Buddhist

ritual centre at the oldest of Sri Lanka’s stūpas—a vaṭadāge configuration astoundingly reminiscent of the primordial, permeable Iron Stūpa (Orzech 1995) of the Mijiao and Shingon creeds which

9.  Vaṭadāge have been found in Anurādhapura at the Thūpārāma, Laṅkārāma, Toluvila, and Vessagiri; and elsewhere in Sri Lanka at Mädigiriya, Polonnaruwa, Ambasthale in Mihintale, Tiriyāy, Attanagalla, Sigiriya, Virandagoda, Rajangana, Mänikdena, and Devundara. The earliest extant vatadage is at Mädigiriya, which dates from the reign of Aggabodhi IV (r. 667–83), from whose short-reigned successor Mānavarman wrested the Sinhalese throne. These vaṭadāge structures also seemed to have attracted the patronage of kings who accepted Esoteric Buddhism, not only Mānavarman at the Thūpārāma and

either Mānavarman or his grandson Aggabodhi VI at Tiriyāy, but also Sena I at the vaṭadāge at Polonnaruwa (Ranawella 1999: 10–11; Epigraphia Zeylanica III: 291–94), although Ranawella’s discussion of the finding leaves some substantial doubt about whether Sena I intended for his inscribed stone to be incorporated as an element in the stairwell. Apart from the vaṭadāge’s associations with Esoteric Buddhists at Tiriyāy and the Thūpārāma, it is of interest that a Vajrasattva/Dharmadhātu icon was recovered from Mädigiriya (Mudiyanse 1967: 62–63). Consultation of the archaeological record may shed further light on its association with the vaṭadāge there. It is interesting

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Fig. 14.5: The double-platform structure at Tiriyāy, under the paving stones of which was discovered the largest collection of Vajrayāna and Mahāyāna statuary in Sri Lanka. (Photo courtesy of Sven Bretfeld)

Fig. 14.4: The vajra capitals on the columns of the building adjacent to the Thūpārāma, likely the ‘pāsāda’ erected by Mānavarman and dedicated to the ‘rag-wearer’ paṁsukūlikas. (Photo courtesy of Osmund Bopearachchi)

stemmed from the activities of Vajrabodhi and Amogha­vajra—and provided for the Thūpārāma a ‘palace’ which he bestowed upon the paṁsukūlikas, to observe that the only king admitted by the Theravādin secondary historical literature to have been a Tantric Buddhist, the luckless Sena I whose military defeat led to the sacking of Anurādhapura, had an inscribed stone built into the stairs of the vaṭadāge in Polonnaruwa, the inland city to which he retreated after the disaster. This same Sena I built the extra-urban Riṭigala site, the largest concentration of double-platformed structures, for the Abhayagiri paṁsukūlikas, endowing them with workers and slaves as well as equipment of a royal standard. It is of note that ruins of a vaṭadāge have been found in Vessagiri on the south side of Anurādhapura, for that site also turned up an inscription with the only known reference to the Abhayagiri’s Vīrāṅkurārāma, the site specified by the Nikāyasaṅgraha as the locus of the Vājiriyavāda heresy which ensnared Sena I (Sundberg 2014: 75, 131 n. 55).

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about whom Wijesuriya (1998: 144) observed ‘the extraordinary respect and treatments paid to these monks, both by the rulers and the public’. I further noted that this ‘palace’ was likely the building with the pillars terminating in vajra emblems (Fig. 14.4), and that the paṁsukūlikas in question were almost certainly those of the Abhayagiri rather than the Mahāvihāra, given the laboured assertions by the later Mahāvihārans that specifically this prime and prestigious site did indeed lie within their original sīmā boundaries. These Abhayagiri paṁsukūlikas were in turn the most likely inhabitants of the double-platform structures that harboured the Esoteric Buddhist statues at Tiriyāy and were selected for replication by the Śailendras at the Ratu Boko plateau. The Girikaṇḍivihāra site at Tiriyāy, known to preserve one of the Buddha’s hair relics under its stūpa, and itself formed into the smallest of Sri Lanka’s vaṭadāge by a circle of pillars which supported a superstructural roof, was supported by the monks at the site’s two double-platform padhānagharas, one of which disgorged the largest hoard of Esoteric Buddhist statues yet found on the island (Fig. 14.5).10 These padhānaghara structures are seemingly associated with the ‘rag-wearers’ or paṁsukūlikas, and within the century such a double-platform structure would be constructed as the 10.  Von Schroeder (1990) offers the best photographic coverage of this Tiriyāy set of statues.

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Fig. 14.6: The Pallava-styled image house associated with the Rājiṇāvihāra at upland Nālandā. Built as Sri Lanka’s oldest roofed structure by Mānavarman or his Kāñcī-born son Aggabodhi V, the Rājiṇāvihāra site was engraved with two small transgressive erotic friezes. (Photo courtesy of Ven. Rangama Chandawimala Thero)

centrepiece of the Abhayagirivāsin presence on the Ratu Boko plateau. Although the Girikaṇḍivihāra site is ancient, the more recent constructions are associated by a Pallava-Grantha Sanskrit boulder inscription with the twenty-third regnal year of the Siṅghaḷendra Śilāmegha Mahārāja. No king of the Lambakaṇṇa dynasty other than Mānavarman (r. 684–718) and Aggabodhi VI (r. 733–72) reigned that long and the Śilāmegha coronation name could denote either of them,11 so the more recent constructions date from either ad 707 or 756, either shortly before Vajrabodhi arrived in Sri Lanka or a decade after Amoghavajra left. Given that 8th-century ac11.  Lü Xiang’s biography (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 138) merely glosses Mānavarman’s name as ‘Śrīśīla’ (Shilishiluo, 室哩室囉), but it is clear from the alternating pattern of Lankan throne names that he ruled under the full name of Śīlamegha, as did his grandson Aggabodhi VI.

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tivities at the Girikaṇḍivihāra are not mentioned in the Cūḷavaṁsa, it is not quite clear which king was active in construction there, but it is recorded that it was Mānavarman who roofed in the Thūpārāma in the centre of urban Anurādhapura, so it is not out of the question that he also turned the ancient stūpa for one of the Buddha’s hair relics into the pillared vaṭadāge form. Paranavitana’s (1943: 152–54) discussion of the site paleography suggests that it most closely convenes with specimens of Pallava inscriptions used around the 680s, suggesting strongly that it was Mānavarman rather than his grandson who embellished the site. While an affiliation with an Anurādhapura parent monastery is unconfirmed, the Tiriyāy site’s votive shrine depicting the Buddha’s Footprint (Sirisoma 1983: 2) may indicate its primary affiliation with the Abhayagiri (Sundberg

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Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java and Giebel 2011: 161, 219 n. 177),12 a relationship not unexpected given the chronology and the theme of the complex. The Rājiṇāvihāra13 and its temple (Fig. 14.6) is likely referenced in the Cūḷavaṁsa as the Rājinīdīpika (vihāra) and its ‘mansion’ (pāsāda), which are, not unexpectedly, mentioned as gifted to the Abh­ a­yagiri bhikkhus (Cūḷavaṁsa 48.1–2; Geiger 1953: 109). The marked Pallava styling tends to confirm the Cūḷavaṁsa’s attribution to either Mānavarman or his oldest son, the Kāñcī-born Aggabodhi V (r. 718–24).14 The site is notable for two small friezes 12.  Sirisoma (1983: 9) mentions a pillar inscription, located near the ponds to the east of the shrine, which has yet to be transcribed or translated, and which Sirisoma (ibid.: 4) anticipated was a grant of tax immunities. If Sirisoma is correct, the extant inscription represents a Theravāda regularization of Tiriyāy’s monastery by one of the 10th-century kings, in much the same manner as the Lankan Rājiṇāvihāra site at upland Nālandā (Ranawella 2005: 109–10). 13.  Ranawella (2005: 109–10) transcribes and translates the extant 10th century administrative inscription which provides the original name of the site. In Sundberg 2014: 127, n. 48, I conveyed Dohanian’s (1977: 26, 131, n. 27) description of ‘dhāraṇī stones’, composed in a Sanskrit which was ‘incorrect’, found nearby the site. Consultation of Dohanian’s source, the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon (1947: 17), reveals no justification for the ‘dhāraṇī stones’ Dohanian describes, but does document the existence of a single-lined Siddhamātṛkā inscription from three kilometres away. This inscription, written in ‘incorrect’ Sanskrit, mentions a sthavira whose name might be Guṇabhadra. Siddhamātṛkā tablets, this time demonstrably engraved with dhāraṇīs, were found at the so-called dhāraṇīghara to the immediate southwest of the stūpa at Abhayagiri. These dhāraṇī include extracts from both the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha as well as the Sarvatathāgatādhiṣṭhāna, another stūpa-oriented text that Amoghavajra favoured (Schopen 1982; Chandawimala 2013: 128–48). 14.  Although the single surviving terminus of Cūḷavaṁsa’s Chapter 47, devoted to Aggabodhi’s father Mānavarman, states that it was the father who built the Rājinīdīpika and gave it to the Abhayagirivāsins, Geiger (1953: 108, n. 1) considers this passage an interpolation. Whether father or son, the patronage by either candidate would convene with the apparent Pallava styling of the Rājiṇāvihāra temple. I consider it somewhat remarkable that each and every one of the Cūḷavaṁsa manuscripts available to Geiger were ruined at the point where they discussed the termination of Mānavarman’s reign.

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of a sexually explicit nature, with a depiction of a female engaged in a sexual act with two males (Sundberg 2014: 126, n. 48). Mānavarman as first esoteric Indic king It is not out of the question that Mānavarman was the primordial Mantranaya Indic king, and even that his ascension was due to the aboriginal employment of apotropaic Abhayagirin state-protection rites, whose credibility only grew when Amoghavajra used them to great effect during the Tang crises of the 750s and 760s. However, if I am correct about what the vaṭadāge represented to its builders, then the first influence of Esoteric Buddhist thought is exhibited during the reign of Aggabodhi IV (r. 667–83), the ethnically Tamil king of Rājaraṭṭha whose successor was overthrown by Mānavarman and the Pallava army, whom the Cūḷavaṁsa records as forming the vaṭadāge at Mädigiriya. Whether Aggabodhi IV or Mānavarman, the dates for such an adherence concur strongly with the dates allowed for the development of the novel texts and conceptualizations of the Buddhist Yogatantras, and Mānavarman may have been the first such Esoteric Buddhist king to be admired for his regnal achievements, with his acquisition of the Sinhalese throne—the Milvian Bridge of its day. Given the appreciation of the Abhayagiri’s monks during his reign and for more than a century afterwards, it is plausible that a coterie of these monks resided with him during his Kāñcī exile and received credit for his military success. Unfortunately, such information would have only survived in the Abhayagiri’s own chronicles and is not available in the extant Mahāvihāran representations. Abhayagirin successes in state ritual, particularly apotropaic doctrines It is an uncontroversial statement, one of the few facts on which all his biographies concur, that Amoghavajra went to Sri Lanka, where he and his entourage received his final abhiṣeka at the hands of his Sinhalese preceptor *Samantabhadra, learned the recondite Buddhist doctrines, and accessed the texts—the biographies say over 500 of them—of their Mantranaya creed. Some small controversy

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exists over the question of whether Amoghavajra, Abhayagirivihāra, which might itself have been per the contemporary Zhao Qian 趙遷 and accepted already held in admiration for the role I surmise two centuries later by the Song Buddhist historian that it played in Mānavarman’s restoration. That Zanning 贊寧, went to India as well. Amoghavajra’s there were successes accruing to the Abhayagirin putative journeys, Zhao Qian claims, led to such name seems confirmed by the subsequent estaban overabundance of exploits and encounters in lishments of delegations of their monks in other the ‘Five Indias’ that they defied his ability to de- Southeast Asian countries, not only in Śailendra scribe; overwhelmed by the task of providing even Java but likely in the lands of the Khmer, where a a single detail, he excused a description of this leg particular set of Buddhist statues, the propitiation of Amoghavajra’s journey with a brief and awkward of which was considered supernaturally integral disclaimer: ‘Amoghavajra then visited India; he to Jayavarman II’s liberation of Cambodia from travelled in all of India’s kingdoms. The traces of his the yoke of his nemesis ‘Javā’, was erected on the activities are so plentiful that we must leave a gap, ‘Abhayagiri’.16 as we cannot record all the details’ (T 2056.293a16). The biographical sketch composed upon imperial 16.  At least three extant Cambodian inscriptions refer to order within days of Amoghavajra’s death by his the Jayavarman’s ceremonial efforts to free Cambodia from disciple and collaborator Feixi 飛錫, on the other the dominating hand of ‘Javā’ and have a cakravartin of its hand, states that Amoghavajra went directly to Sri own. It is not clear whether the ceremony was undertaken only once or in a number of places. Choulean (1996: 117–20) Lanka, stayed on the island, and returned from provides a fuller discussion of this issue, while substantive there, strictly confining his journey to that limited amplifications and more appreciative translations of the destination (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 149). relevant inscriptions are presented in Sharrock (2012) and In singling out Sri Lanka, Amoghavajra was not Conti (2014). In a prior paper (Sundberg 2003: 178, n. 28), I speculated only following his master Vajrabodhi’s experiences there, but was likely actively exploiting a relation- that the statues mentioned in the Sab Bāk inscription were offered by Satyavarman to Java’s Abhayagiri rather than ship which Vajrabodhi had himself maintained a Cambodia-based one or the mother monastery itself. over the decades since his six-month domicile at This possibility was also suggested by Griffiths (2013), who the Abhayagirivihāra: Hyecho’s (慧超) unique but refined it by observing that the -varman suffix implies that incidental mention of Vajrabodhi’s esoteric manu- Satyavarman was royal, quite possibly the Cam king who script borrowed from his ‘master’, the ācārya *Rat- suffered destructive Javanese sea-raids from at least 787. nabodhi (Baojue 寶覺) in Sinhala (Sundberg and (Griffiths leaves unexplored the implication of a very tight anti-Javanese alliance between the Khmer and the Cam if Giebel 2011: 192, n. 97), as late as the last year of his the Cam king was indeed allowed to perform fundamenlife implies at least one reliable monastic resource tal rites in the Khmer homeland. I proposed [Sundberg for Amoghavajra to track down, adding confidence 2011: 147] that those raids were only possible because Java to the result of an ocean voyage otherwise blindly had subordinated Sumatran Śrīvijaya, and those same raids ceased when King Varak’s coup against his father undertaken.15 Given the concurrence of all the sources that split the unified kingdom). However, I am unconvinced by Griffiths’ argument that the -varman suffix requires Amoghavajra achieved his Esoteric Buddhist Satyavarman to be a king, and cite the counterexample textual acquisitions in Sri Lanka, the nature of his of a Devapāla-era ‘Śrī Nālandā bhikṣu’, the Sarvāstivādin astounding apotropaic successes in the service of named Mañjuśrīvarman (Sastri 1986: 103). (For an articuthe Tang emperors must have redounded upon the late argument that the ‘Javā’ in question was not the island 15.  The relationship between Vajrabodhi’s Sinhalese master *Ratnabodhi and Amoghavajra’s Sinhalese master *Samantabhadra is unknown. This attested ad 741 relationship between Vajrabodhi and *Ratnabodhi may be the genesis of the early biographical claims that Amoghavajra received tutelage in Sri Lanka by Vajrabodhi’s old master, the Shingon Patriarch Nāgajñā/Nāgabodhi (a.k.a. Nāgabuddhi: see Appendix A).

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of Java but rather a nearby mainland kingdom, see Ferlus 2010; see also Woodward 2011 for a view that the candidate kingdom was Wendan. While acknowledging the force of Ferlus’ and Woodward’s arguments, I am still inclined to believe that the subjugation was achieved by the island of Java, as argued most fully by Griffiths 2013). It should be noted that in light of the research advanced in the present chapter it appears that the Javanese Abhayagirivāsins were quite nullified when it came time to refurbish the ad 802 statues, which had fallen into dis-

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Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java Paṁsukūlikas as the key group of this Abhayagirin elite If the cosmopolitan Abhayagirivihāra was the favoured monastery among the early second Lambakaṇṇa kings, the paṁsukūlika ‘rag-wearers’ seem to be the favoured group within that monastery. I observed that they are to be found in an astonishing variety of situations and locales, from their ‘palace’ at the urban Thūpārāma to (I infer) the sole custodianship and ritual superintendence of the vaṭadāge at Tiriyāy, to the tracts of double-platform structures established by the hapless Tantrist Sena I (r. 834–54)17 at the extra-urban site of Riṭigala,18 where repair, and furthermore there was no longer a reason for a Khmer to come to Java to placate an imperium. It now seems certain to me that the 802 Khmer efforts concerned a different Abhayagiri than the one in Java, and I consider my 2003 comments to be ill founded. Conti (2014: 384) suggests that the Khmer Abhayagiri lies near the village of Sap Bak on the Khorat Plateau in Thailand. The relationship between this Abhayagiri and the Khmer palace remains uncertain. 17.  Scholars unfamiliar with the careful research results of Perera and Paranavitana, as reflected in the monumental University of Ceylon’s History of Ceylon, may encounter an alternate set of dates associated with the Lambakaṇṇa kings, a set which invalidates the present chapter’s observations on the tight chronological linkage of the rejection of the Abhayagiri in both Sri Lanka and Java. Despite the widespread use of this alternate set (see, e.g., the present Wikipedia entry), it was generated in the early days of Island historical scholarship and is to be considered immature and erroneous. As noted in Sundberg 2014, Ranawella’s (1999: 72; 2004: 118–22) skillful adjustment of Sena II’s accession year shifts it from the University of Ceylon’s History of Ceylon’s ad 853 to 854. 18.  The selection of the Ritigala site may be taken as restoring the paṁsukūlika monks to a situation of austerity were it not for the record that they were provided with slaves and other service help. It is in the reading of the Guhyasamāja, which specifies the types of locations where adherents are advised to practice, that we might obtain some sense of what Sena I was trying to accomplish by erecting the scores of double-platforms: ‘Then Vajradhara the Teacher, the Lord, the Master of all Dharma, pure in body, speech and mind, spoke vajra wisdom: “On pleasant mountain-tops and in lonely forests practise vajra meditation by the method of chanting mantras; Vajrasattva and all the others, aroused by mantra and meditation, will perform the various actions according to the word of the Work of Speech”’ (Freemantle 1971: 102; cf a similar passage

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they were provisioned with implements worthy of royalty and many slaves and servants. Apart from the vajra-finials on the Thūpārāma-area ‘palace’ that Mānavarman gave to them and the hoard of esoteric statues which lay under the paving stones of the double-platform padhānaghara structures at Tiriyāy, the attentions of the esoteric admirer, the Śailendra king, and his desire to construct an Abhayagirin double-platform structure to attend to the needs of his court, all speak to the intimate awareness of sophisticated Esoteric Buddhist doctrine by these ‘rag-wearers’ and the appreciation accorded to them by both the kings of Sinhala and from overseas. The foreign Śailendra patronage seems to validate the suggestion, thrown up by both circumstance and the Tiriyāy archaeological record, that the soteriology and utility of the Sinhalese monks who occupied the meditation platform extended far beyond their adoption of mild nibbāna-facilitating privations of the monks featured in the extant Theravādin literature. Śailendra patronage in context: The role of the Abhayagiri at the Javanese court At the time of the Śailendra invitation, the Abha­ yagirin reputation must have stood at its very zenith. These monks were reputed both at home and overseas, and indeed it is not impossible that in their positioning on the Ratu Boko promontory, they were seated at the kraton/kaḍatvan, the very centre of Śailendra rule marked by an impressive double-tiered gate, which may, like the gate of Yapahuwa, be modelled upon an earlier Lankan precedent (Fig. 14.7). Being the only attested Buddhist presence there, the Abhayagiri’s counsel must have been of tremendous value, and their stature on the island must have been very great indeed. The nature of Abhayagiri paṁsukūlika asceticism Regarding the eponymous signature feature of the Abhayagirin paṁsukūlika ‘rag-wearers’, which specifying ‘a great deserted wilderness, on forested mountain-sides, and river-banks’ [ibid.: 70]).

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Fig. 14.7: (Left) The west-facing, five-portalled Great Gate of the Ratu Boko plateau (late 8th century). Im­me­di­ ately in front of it lies a three-portalled analogue. (Right) The gate of the palace-fortress of Yapahuwa. The Ratu Boko installation was fashioned out of stone using timber-building construction techniques. Both buildings may be modelled on an earlier Anurādhapura form derived from the timber gates of its royal Citadel. (Yapahuwa photo courtesy of Osmund Bopearachchi; Ratu Boko photo: author)

shows up explicitly at Riṭigala and in the ‘palace’ at the Thūpārāma and implicitly in their seemingly preferred architecture, the double-platform structure at Tiriyāy and in Java on the Ratu Boko plateau, I examined the extant references to their royal provisioning and suggested that these monks were ascetic ‘rag-wearers’ in name only, or only intermittent practitioners of the most extreme form of this ascetic practice—the wearing of robes culled from the cemetery. In the ordinary course of their day, however, it seems likely that they practised only the most trivial of ascetic practices—that of merely receiving worn clothing—especially when that clothing happened to be the finery of the Sinhalese king. (Indeed, I questioned whether or not the ‘rag-wearer’ term was a residual term of honour rather than designating an essential component of their soteriology). Such mild asceticism would be comprehensible to, and indeed may have inspired, the intermittent wilderness retreats of such Sino-Japanese Tantric figures as Kūkai, Hanguang 含光, and Amoghavajra himself at their imperially sponsored mountain vihāras of Jingesi 金閣寺 on Mount Wutai 五臺山 and Kongōbuji 金剛峯寺 on Mount Kōya 高野山.

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The fall from grace: The Abhayagiri, Anurādha­ pura, and the Pāṇḍya disaster ca. ad 840 In Section Ibii of my companion essay, devoted to the fall of the Abhayagiri, I pointed out that any state-protection claims that had once given them domestic and international credence had certainly vanished instantly in the wake of the ca. 840 Sinhalese military defeat by the invading Pāṇḍya army, a disaster where the battlefield apparently lay within the precincts of the Abhayagirivihāra itself (Walters 2000: 133). Two later subsidiary Mahāvihāran chronicles, in the sole admission in any extant Sinhalese historical literature that a Sri Lankan king accepted the Vajravāda, blamed the defeat on the regent Sena I’s foolish heresy. After the Pāṇḍya had looted Anurādhapura of all of its valuables and accepted further payments by Sena I to return to Madhurai, Anurādhapura would have stood desolate for a period of two decades or more, during which the long-held primacy of the Abhayagiri was lost, absolutely and irrevocably. The historical record does not allow the determination of whether it was Sena Ⅰ himself who resumed the royal promotion of the Theravāda doctrines which had been tenaciously maintained in the Mahāvihāra, but it is clear beyond all doubt that Sena II

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Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java (r. 854–89) had taken unprecedentedly Theravādin rites of coronation within the grounds of the Mahāvihāra itself. The sacking of Madhurai and the trajectory of Sri Lanka’s religious history Resurrected from royal disregard by the Sinhalese military disaster ca. 840, the Theravāda creed newly reaffirmed in Sena II’s 854 coronation at the Mahāvihāra would, in less than a decade, be validated by a glorious and utterly surprising turning of the tables: the 862 killing of the offensive Pāṇḍya king; the counter-sacking of Madhurai which restored to Anurādhapura all of its lost treasures and even more; and the placement of Sri Lanka’s puppet on the Pāṇḍya throne. This epochal event, which together with Sena’s reintegration of the breakaway Rohaṇa province doubtlessly clarified in many doubters’ minds questions about the efficacy of the Mahāvihāra’s long-husbanded and long-disregarded Theravāda, seemingly imparted sufficient momentum to sustain that venerable creed through thick and thin in the many centuries hence. Indeed, the disaster of Anurādhapura sealed the fate of not only the Abhayagiri’s reputation but of its heterodox doctrines, for that vihāra was the object of a royally directed campaign to regularize it and bring it into subordination to the Mahāvihāra, which seems evident from the very outset of Sena II’s reign;19 and by his twentieth regnal year, the Abhaya­ girivihāra’s paṁsukūlikas had walked out on him, never to be heard from again in the Mahāvihāran histories. Further, the Anurādhapura catastrophe sealed the fate of the Abhayagirin’s own chronicles of Sri Lankan history, which probably constituted a tremendous wealth of collateral knowledge about other Buddhist countries in contact with the most 19.  This aspect of Sinhalese history is well explicated in various writings of Jonathan Walters (e.g., 1997, 1999, 2000), which use both the pre-eminent historical commentary of the 10th century, the Vaṁsatthappakāsinī, an important Theravāda commentary on the Mahāvaṁsa, in conjunction with the contemporary Lankan epigraphic record. I can see little among the many new inscriptions subsequently published in Sirimal Ranawella’s praiseworthy compendium Inscriptions of Ceylon Volume V (Ranawella 2001, 2003, 2004) that requires adjustments to Walters’ conclusions.

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cosmopolitan of Anurādhapura’s major monasteries. It is unknown whether its literature was actively destroyed or merely allowed to passively rot, but the Abhayagirin histories would certainly have narrated the contacts with South India, with China and with Java. In the absence of these chronicles, the Ratu Boko’s Abhayagirivihāra inscription is, so far as I am aware, the only instance where the Abhayagirivāsins speak with something of their own voice. For the purposes of this essay, however, the endorsement of the Theravāda in the form of the Madhurai conquest lay ahead by six years. We pick up the situation as it stood in 856, with Anurādhapura in ruins and the Abhayagiri in deep discredit, with new kings (Sena II in ad 854 and Kayuvaṅi in ad 855) installed on the thrones of Java and Sri Lanka, both with seemingly greatly different confessional allegiances than those kings in their immediate pasts.

ii. the raka of valaiṅ pu kumbha­yoni: śaiva erections and the terminus of the abhayagiri padhānaghara, ca. ad 856 The advent of Kumbhayoni So far as I am aware, no piece of evidence on the plateau sheds light on the Abhayagiri and its monastic denizens in the years between its founding in ca. 792 and the year ad 856, when the next cluster of datable structures and artefacts begins to be imposed on the area. Such fundamental questions as whether the original ethnically Sinhalese delegation was replaced by native Javanese ordained into the Abhayagiri order; whether the doctrines these initial Abhayagirivāsins advocated were especially strongly appreciated or discounted by the successive Śailendra kings; or whether new Buddhist doctrines and literature passed readily from the mother monastery in Sri Lanka during the sixty-four years after the installation of the Abhayagiri monks,20 will be forever unknown. 20.  As noted in Sundberg and Giebel (2011: 192, n. 97; Sundberg 2014) there is a remarkable precedent for the lending of texts across the oceans in a Taishō Tripiṭaka mention of Vajrabodhi’s return of a manuscript borrowed from the

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Map 14.1: A photomap of the bluffs on the spur of Gunung Kidul to the south of Prambanan, showing the archaeological ruins on the Ratu Boko promontory and the spatial extent of Kumbhayoni’s inscriptions. (Wikimapia)

The second cluster of buildings on the Ratu Boko plateau crops up around ad 856, a year after the (possibly traumatic) death of King Pikatan.21 Thw new installations can be attributed to the raka of Valaiṅ pu Kumbhayoni, who is known to have left eight emphatically Śaiva inscriptions along the Gunung Kidul ridgeline (Map 14.1), the western end of which terminates in the abrupt cliff-edge on the Ratu Boko plateau, from the years ad 856 to 863. Kumbhayoni’s inscriptional efforts included at least three stones (and more probably five) within a few metres of the Abhayagirivihāra’s walls.22 His

inscriptions are accompanied by some architectural structures, such as a featureless oblong block, which were built along the vihāra’s south and east sides, and the particularly interesting Śaiva temple platform with a water-holding tank (Figs. 14.8–9). At least one liṅga is implied by his site inscriptions, but none have ever been found. A fuller accounting of Kumbhayoni’s activities and beliefs is beyond the scope of this chapter, as the topic demands an independent essay of comparable size. In Sundberg (2016c), I extend the observations on Kumbhayoni that I made in Sundberg (2011: 152, n. 19) and argue that

Sinhalese master *Ratnabodhi. If Vajrabodhi could achieve this unofficially, I suspect that such transmissions would be routine for the Abhayagirivāsins stationed in Java. 21.  Insofar as we know him from the scant historical evidence, Pikatan is a curious afigure who was provided a Śaiva burial (de Casparis 1956: 280–330), even though his two stūpa-shrines at the Buddhist Plaosan temple were inaugurated before he was even installed on the Javanese throne and were then affirmed by his incision of his new royal title upon his assumption of the throne in 847. See Acri (2010, 2011b) for explication of allegorical passages in Old Javanese texts that seemingly implicate Pikatan in political, and perhaps inter-religious, struggle. 22.  The available Kumbhayoni corpus is at present unsatisfactory. It consists of eight inscriptions (Griffiths 2011a: 134–40): one is both unreadable and fragmentary, one remains unpublished, and those that were transliterated by de Casparis (1956: 269–70, 273–74, 277) present some readings that have been contested by Damais (1968: 467) as flatly impossible. Five of the inscriptions were recovered from the Ratu Boko and at least four of them concerned the erection of liṅga devoted to Śiva in his various denomina-

tions, seemingly to mark some triumph, probably military because of the Tripurāntaka imagery, of Kumbhayoni. It is not known precisely where on the Ratu Boko two of the three earliest ones originated (de Casparis 1956: 244), but one would expect that they were found closer to some of the architecture rather than on the tiers of broad, flat, and featureless terraces which comprise most of the central area of the plateau, and where no other archaeological residue has been discovered. If this surmise is correct, then Kumbhayoni’s other inscriptions were found either near the buildings in the northwest of the complex or in the cluster of lithic architecture to the south: the latter is much more likely as the three well-documented discoveries from the 1954 campaign were found in the immediate environs of the Abhayagiri structure (de Casparis 1956: 341–43). Indeed, it is not impossible that Kumbhayoni had pegged śivaliṅgas in all cardinal directions around the Abhaya­g iri­v ihāra: the relevant Laporan Tahunan (1954: 19) reports the recovery of what seems to be the upper half of the Pinakin liṅga inscription to the west of the Abhayagiri prākāra, another inscription about 1.5 metres from the south walls, and a final one in the corridor just outside the walls to the east.

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Fig. 14.8: A photograph of the three miniature temples; the Abhayagiri-associated structures lie to the left of the photo. The reader will observe the water sluices that feed into the water reservoir to the front. Clearly, provision has been made for the collection of a large volume of sanctified water, and the collection tank is large enough to immerse a human. Jordaan (1996: 48–60) has envisioned and adduced much convincing evidence for a similar function for the confines of the central courtyard at Prambanan. (Photo: author)

Kum­bhayoni: (1) was a descendant of royalty; (2) was himself royal; (3) seemingly reigned in Sundanese Western Java after the post-Varak fracture of a unified kingdom into Western and Central Javanese entities (Sundberg 2011, 2016b);23 (4) operated on and around the Central Javanese Ratu Boko plateau under the auspices of King Kayuvaṅi (r. 855–85), who was almost certainly a blood relative; (5) had military skills or military resources that may have been instrumental in some critical event occurring in the immediate aftermath of the possibly traumatic death of King Pikatan—possibly a resurgence of dissident forces in Sumatra which was recognized as threatening to both Sundanese and Central Javanese; and (6) that each of Kumbha­yoni’s district sites across and beneath the Gunung Kidul ridgeline is devoted to a different Purāṇa.24 23.  Based on the precedent of the modern Central Javanese toponym pairs like Warak-Warakan and Garung-Garungan that are candidates for the raka domains of Kings Varak and Garuṅ, I believe that the Raka of Valaiṅ pu Kumbhayoni is referred to in the Carita Parahyaṅan’s listing of ‘Saṅ Wәlәṅan’ as the third king after the post-Varak division of the kingdom (Sundberg 2011: 152, n. 19). 24.  Kumbhayoni’s own name—which is itself an epithet

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Fig. 14.9: A photograph of the back of the central temple showing the origins of the water sluices. (Photo: author)

Fig. 14.10: An excellent depiction of the rubble-filled wall building technique on the terrace below the Abha­ya­gi­ri­vihāra, which contained the animal-symbol pillars which suggested to Degroot (2006: 65–66) the presence of a ritual hall devoted to Vairocana. The use of this building technique is first attested during the reign of the raka of Garuṅ (r. 829–47) and seems to indicate construction during the Kumbhayoni period rather than the Buddhist one. (Photo: author)

What is greatly pertinent for the purposes of the this chapter are several facts associated with Kum­ bhayoni’s erections to the immediate south and east of the padhānaghara, which are best appreciated by the visuals keyed to the maps 14.1 and 14.2, and of Agastya—may have a noteworthy association with the island of Sri Lanka. According to a popular tale of Indian mythology, Indra found reason to discharge his semen into a pitcher, out of which was born Varuṇa. The son of Mitra and Varuṇa is called Kumbhayoni (‘born of a pot’), i.e. Agastya, and his place is Laṅkā; he is the Laṅkāvāsin (see chapter 61.50–51 of the Matsyapurāṇa).

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Map 14.2: A map of the Ratu Boko plateau depicting the Kumbhayoni additions. Adjacent to the double-platform structure of the Abhayagirivihāra stands the trio of Kumbhayoni’s miniature temples, and farther to the east on a lower tier, a terrace with passageways, walled courtyards, and cylindrical holes which might also belong to Kumbhayoni’s era or later. While the Ratu Boko prominence is formed by forbiddingly high and steep bluffs to the north, west, and south, a ridge running off from the east side of the plateau allows for gentler access from that direction, and more of Kumbhayoni’s relics have been discovered along that ridge. (Map taken from Degroot 2006)

illustrated in Figs. 14.8–12. It will be seen from the maps that Kumbhayoni’s additions to the Ratu Boko were all placed in intimate proximity to the Abhayagiri structures, in a manner which serves not to complement the pre-existing Buddhism, but rather to react to it by placing Śaiva cultic items in deliberate opposition to them. This interpretation is augmented by the observation that in his inscriptions, Kumbhayoni is seemingly not talking to the Buddhist monks but is rather talking past them, in the language of Śaiva triumphalism. As will be argued in the next Section, the incidence of Kum­ bhayoni’s new structures almost certainly signalled the end of the Abhayagirivāsin presence in Java.

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Kumbhayoni and the Abhayagiri The presence and proximity of Śaiva activity could hardly be uncustomary or unfamiliar to the Abha­ yagirivāsins of the time, whether the original cadre was replenished with younger Sinhalese from the mother monastery or supplanted by native Javanese disciples who had been inducted into the Abhayagirin order. Besides the presence of the (presumably many) members of the Javanese court and upper reaches of the local aristocracy who maintained the Śaiva traditions attested in earlier generations in Java, we must take note of a somewhat similar familiarity in Rājaraṭṭha itself. Mahinda II (r. ad

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Fig. 14.11: The corridor between the prākāra of the Abhayagiri (right) and the rectangular platform (left) to the east. (For orientation, the reader will note that the upper half of the largest of the three miniature temples is slightly visi­b­le protruding upward from the southern side of the oblong platform.) The proper left half of the Abhayagiri­vāsin foundation inscription was recovered in the rub­ble about halfway along this corridor, while fragments of one of Kumbhayoni’s inscriptions were recovered clos­­er to the far southern end of the corridor. (Photo: author)

Fig. 14.12 (right): A photograph looking west to the three miniature structures (centre of photograph, sil­hou­etted against the sky) and the southern and eastern walls of the Abhayagirivihāra (farther back, extending from the middle to the right, with the snaggle-toothed pattern 0f wall finials). The photograph was taken from the lower eastern terrace looking towards the west, and indicates the tight proximity of Kumbha­yoni’s platform to the walls of the wilderness monastery. (Photo: author)

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772–92), who reigned at the time of the establishment of the Ratu Boko delegation (although his name is seemingly not acknowledged in the available portions of the foundation inscription), patronized Brahmanical establishments: the Cūḷavaṁsa (48.143; Geiger 1953: 155) noted that he ‘restored many dilapidated temples of gods (devakula) here and there and had costly images of the gods made, and also he gave the brāhmaṇas delicious foods such as the king receives, and gave them milk with sugar to drink in golden goblets’. However, the Cūḷavaṁsa (51.65; Geiger 1953: 152) records a parallel honouring of brāhmaṇas and bhikkhus by Sena II’s clearly Theravādin successor Udaya II (1,000 brāhmaṇas received a jar filled with gold and jewels, while the bhikkhus received the three garments), so the similar activities attributed to the presumably vajravādin Mahinda II may therefore signify nothing of especial importance. More pertinent to the point, the Esoteric Buddhism of the day was suffused to an unprecedented degree with Buddhacized Śaiva figures (e.g.,Vināyaka25 and the subsidiary maṇḍalas of the STTS), cultic 25.  The only extant translation by Hanguang 含光 , Amoghavajra’s only other known companion on the journey to Sri Lanka, in the Taishō Tripitaka concerns the worship of the dual-headed form of Gaṇeśa. Lancaster (1991: 284) provides the most complete résumé of Hanguang’s extant work and notes that it encompasses many forms of Vināyaka, including the yuganaddha (‘yab-yum’) embracing figures, Gaṇapati, and the elephant-headed king. Significantly, it was translated in ad 747 (Tianbao 天寶 6) (Getty 1936: 74), seemingly just after Hanguang and Amoghavajra had returned from Sri Lanka, making it almost certain that Hanguang’s work was sourced from the island and motivated by his experiences there. It therefore possibly reflects practices by Aggabodhi VI. Hanguang’s appreciation for the double-headed (androgynous?) Gaṇe­śa persisted throughout his life: in 774, he advised the Chinese monk Jingshe 憬瑟 on how to form an image and of the benefits of worshipping him (Getty 1936: 74, citing T 1274; Sanford 1995 greatly amplifies the implications of this particular erotic form of Vināyaka). The subtleties of the Buddhist perception of Vināyaka as either hostile or benign as expressed in works by Śubhākarasiṁha, Vajrabodhi, and Amoghavajra are treated in both Lancaster (1995) and Sanford (1995) and are explicit in Kūkai’s inaugural rites at Kongōbuji, as we shall see later in this chapter. For a discussion of Gaṇapati/Vināyaka in the cadre of Central Javanese Śaiva–Bauddha relations, see Acri, this volume.

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Fig. 14.13: The Ardhanārīśvara found at the southwest courtyard of the Abhayagiri stūpa, now at the National Museum of Colombo. Kulatunge (1999: 65) suggests that the conch shell denotes a feminine Vaiṣṇava fig­ure, of the type perhaps implied in Kumbhayoni’s Śaiva inscriptions (de Casparis 1956: 267–68) where they pair Śiva not with Pārvatī or Umā but rather with consorts of Viṣṇu. (Photo taken from von Schroeder 1990: 264–65, plate 67A)

artefacts, and other elements of Tantric Śaiva thought (Sanderson 2009; Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 155; Giebel, this volume). Archaeologists have recovered votive items such as a hermaphroditic Ardhanārīśvara of the 7th to 8th centuries from the southwest of the very courtyard of the Abhayagiri stūpa in Anurādhapura (Fig. 14.13, von Schroeder 1990: 264).26 (Indeed, Xuanzang in the mid 7th 26.  This particular four-armed Ardhanārīśvara image was noted for its Pallava styling and dates from the 7th to 8th centuries (Indrapala 2005: 308). It was cast dancing in pratyālīḍha and holding nāga and śaṅkha attributes. The dual-divinity attributes seem to imply the pairing of Śiva with one of Viṣṇu’s consorts, which I will argue (Sundberg, 2016c) to be a practical presentation of the fecundation of Viṣṇu episode in the Liṅgapurāṇa (Rajarajan 2000 provides a bibliography on this icon and argues that this particular

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century noted that on Mount Potalaka in South India, Avalokiteśvara appeared in the form of either Maheśvara or an ash-smeared ascetic [Li 2000: 332]). Not least among the reasons for proposing the likelihood of Abhayagirivāsin comfort with Śaiva ways (and possibly Śaiva esoteric theology), is a feature observed by Degroot (2009: 237, n. 125), who points out an aspect of the Javanese monastery’s construction that I myself had overlooked in my several visits there: the gargoyles at the Abhayagiri are makara-yoni, i.e. yoni placed under the chin of the makara. (While it defied my recent limited efforts to further exploit by identifying corollary features in Sri Lanka, Degroot’s observation may very well prove critical in refining a specific understanding of the Javanese padhānaghara, the Sri Lankan instances of which were designed to be flooded (personal communication with Osmund Bopearachchi). This perceptive observation convenes with Alexis Sanderson’s thesis of Esoteric Buddhists’ knowing dependence on Śaiva material and indeed may by itself provide an indication of the coexistence of, and interactions between, Śaivism and Buddhism that characterized Camstatue exhibits not only a dominant feminine mode, but that the statue specifically represents the Pattiṉi-Kaṇṇaki pair attested in the Cōḻa era). One wonders whether the stray find of this particular Ardhanārīśvara is the detritus of one of the mediaeval sackings of Anurādhapura. If the art-historical 7th–8th century dating (Kulatunge 1999: 65) is accurate, the statue’s loss must have occurred during the Pāṇḍya sacking under Śrīmāra Śrīvallabha, ca. ad 840. It is possible that the detailed archaeological reports of the unearthing of the Lankan Ardhanārīśvara will shed further light on the background of its findings. I draw attention in n. 43 below to a similar Śaiva artefact recovered from the courtyard of Candi Sewu, which is likewise the probable residue of a sacking of the temple. In the Javanese case, the statue in question was part of a clearly Buddhist maṇḍala as it depicts Śiva in the respectfully subordinate añjali-mudrā. Such appreciations of Śaivism are not limited to the Abhayagirivihāra. Van Lohuizen de Leeuw (1957, cf. Myer 1961) observes in her work on the great historic vihāra of Somapura at Nandangaṛh that of the sixty-three figures on the outside, only Avalokiteśvara is Buddhist and all the remainder are Hindu. At the time of this writing, I know of no published study investigating whether the Somapura’s depictions were intended to flatter Hindus or else to indicate their subordination to Buddhists.

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Fig. 14.14: Kumbhayoni’s temple platform reached the lip of the makara of the Abhayagirivihāra’s outer wall. A section sketch created and published by Degroot (2006: 68) and republished here with the kind permission of the author.

bodia by the mid 9th century27 and Java in the 10th. This background of the Abhayagirivāsin acquaintance with Śaiva ideas and practitioners being noted, it must be said that there is little about Kumbhayoni’s activities that I can construe as favourably disposed towards Buddhism or supportive of the Abhayagirivāsins. There being no shortage of space on which to implement his cultic vision across the Gunung Kidul ridgeline and even on the broad terraces of the Ratu Boko plateau (see Map 14.1), Kumbhayoni deliberately chose to encroach on the Abhayagiri and entangle it with his structures. In building his platform and erecting on it a trio of symbolic temples for the generation of sanctified water,28 Kumbhayoni could hardly have made himself a welcome neighbour to the Abha­ yagirivāsins. As noted above, his liṅga inscriptions were found on at least three sides of the meditation platform, with one or two more likely originally found on the relatively rubble-free north side of the Abhayagiri prākāra: therefore, Kumbhayoni pegged in the padhānaghara with inscriptions about liṅga. If Kumbhayoni was not talking to the Abhayagirivāsins in his Śaiva inscriptions at their site, he was certainly talking at them, with actions that injured. The square platform to the south of 27.  See, for example, the ad 868 Sanskrit-Khmer inscription of Bo Īkō (Prapandvidya 2010: 49) in which the king resolves to seek enlightenment and donates a herd of cows and buffaloes to the Saṅgha on one side of the inscription, even while donating a golden śivaliṅga on the other. 28.  Bopearachchi, Jordaan, and Sundberg (2016) will examine the incorporation of fluid water in contemporary Pallava, Sinhalese, and Javanese religious architecture.

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the Abhayagiri must have been Kumbhayoni’s as it was established so close that it effectively obstructed the drainage spouts of the Abhayagirivihāra (Degroot 2006: 68, see Fig. 14.14). Whether in addition to building his own edifices uncomfortably close to the Abhayagirivihāra, Kumbhayoni also tore down the walls of the vihāra and shattered its foundation inscription is uncertain, as all the 9th–10th century Javanese temples were masses of ruined masonry when first noted by Colonel MacKenzie (1814: 24–28) in the historical record. However, portions of the Abhayagiri inscription were found both at the centre of the rubble pile as well as underneath the fallen masonry of the eastern wall, so the inscription had been split at some time before the walls were destroyed.29 Whether the 29.  The Abhayagirivāsins seemingly kept their foundation inscription close at hand throughout their tenure in Central Java. The Abhayagirivihāra inscription has by now been almost wholly recovered, but it has been found in a greater state of fragmentation than almost any other Javanese inscription and seems to have fractured from only a few discrete percussion points. This may suggest that the shattering was deliberate, induced by human agency (rival Buddhist sects, Śaivas in 856, or just common vandals). However, given the proximity of this inscription to openair walls, it is not out of the question that they fractured so severely as a result of the earthquake-induced tumbling of the Abhayagiri walls. Pertinent to considerations of this question, all three of Kumbhayoni’s Ratu Boko inscriptions found near the walls of the Abhayagirivihāra are broken and the inscription which rivals Abhayagirivihāra in its state of fracture is the genealogical inscription of Kumbhayoni (de Casparis 1956: 342–43, Griffiths 2009: 16–20), the proper right half of which was recovered just down the

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destruction of the prākāra walls was the doing of Kumbhayoni around 856 or by nature sometime thereafter will be forever unknown. Besides the unwelcome physical encroachment of Kumbhayoni’s temple platform, there are deeper considerations which arise from the fortuitous preservation of some of the statuary and the material deposited in the foundation boxes of the miniature temples, which might also be interpreted as part of Kumbhayoni’s agenda against the Buddhists of the Abhayagirivihāra. Kumbhayoni’s erection of his triple shrines, whose statuary and mantras may have been in some way connotative of the Tripura30 mentioned in his liṅga inscriptions and buttressed by the carved Tripura mural noticed in 1815 by Crawfurd (1967, cf. Bernet Kempers 1949), was apparently invested with aggressive Śaiva symbology and positioned to thwart or negate the putative supernatural efficacy of the Abhayagiri. In so doing, Kumbhayoni was asserting a metaphysical challenge to the nearby Abhayagiri structure via a mode which he considered effective, namely the magical and supernatural Śaiva symbols that he had strewn around the Abhayagiri precincts.31 Such a challenge would convene with the Tripura story corridor from the Abhayagiri fragments turned up in the 1954 archaeological campaign. However, given the finding of the earliest fragments on top of the peṇḍapa but the majority of the inscription under the rubble of the eastern prākāra wall, it seems as though the Abhayagiri inscription was shattered and scattered before the collapse of the walls. In comparison, Walters (2000: 142) pointed out that Rājendra I’s inscriptions from the Cōḻa interregnum in Sri Lanka were smashed but allowed to remain rather than being eliminated. 30.  De Casparis (1956: 244–79) translates and explicates three Kumbhayoni inscriptions which invoke the Tripurāsura imagery, while Crawfurd not only noted a now-missing panel image of the Tripurāsura but correctly identified it (Bernet Kempers 1949: 186). Griffiths’ (2011: 135) report that the Tryambaka inscription has gone missing is thankfully mistaken; it continues to stand in public in the National Museum in Jakarta. 31.  See Sanderson 1994: 93–94. A prime example of such supernaturally potent symbolism was the vajra-shaped plate recovered from the Ratu Boko plateau, where King Panaraban’s name was circumscribed within the vowel token of a mantra. See the Annex to the present chapter for an updated discussion of this mantra-foil as well as the contribution by Acri in this volume.

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that Kumbhayoni held firmly in mind when he was composing his Śaiva Sanskrit inscriptions and commissioning the Tripura mural.32 Kumbhayoni 32.  So far as I know from the evidence available to me, if Kumbhayoni’s material in any way addresses the nearby Buddhists of the Abhayagiri, it is through the device of the Tripura references which pervade his liṅga writings (de Casparis 1956: 244–79), both those that were found on the Ratu Boko as well as those from elsewhere along the bluff; that the Tripura concept was important at the Abhayagiri site is confirmed by Crawfurd’s 1815 notice of a long-vanished carved panel depicting this famous episode in Śaiva mythology (cf. Bernet Kempers 1949: 186). Gerd Mevissen provides an excellent itemization of the use of the Tripurāntaka story in the contemporary Dravidian kingdoms of the Pallavas, the Āy-vēḷs, the Irrukuvēḷs, the Early Western Cāḷukyas, and the Rāṣṭrakūṭas. As he (2006a: 134) notes, ‘only a limited number of the pre-10th century dynasties produced large sculptures of Tripurāntaka. There is no evidence that this form was depicted by the Pāṇḍyas, the Muttaraiyars, the Western Gaṅgas, the Noḷambas, or the Chāḷukyas of Veṅgi, not to speak of North India, where representations of Tripurāntaka became popular only after the 10th century’. In attempting to find the potential Abhayagiri-relevant significance to Kumbhayoni in the paradigms established in the early reifications of the Tripura myth enacted by such early figures as Narasiṁhavarman II Rājasiṁha at Kailāsanātha, I can only note Mevissen’s (2001: 755) observation that ‘the ancient myth of Śiva as destroyer of the three demon cities evidently attracted the attention of South Indian rulers as it appealed to their claim of paramount overlordship’. However, turning to the Tripurāntaka instances of the Cōḻa period suggests a much greater potential relevance to the situation on the Ratu Boko in 856, for such temples as Rājarāja’s Rājarājeśvara or Brihadīśvara at Tanjavur instantiate the variant of the myth which represents the form taken by Viṣṇu in his deceptive role of Māyāmohin, Buddha as Great Deceiver, in preliminary operations to confuse the Asuras (Mevissen 1997: 295). Mevissen (ibid.: 302) discusses Rājarāja’s conquest of the Buddhist Sinhalas as the reason for the prominent depiction of the Buddha as Great Deceiver at his temples. As an added element which supports this particular identification, Mevissen notes that in the specific version of the Tripura myth discussed by Doniger (1973), the Asuras had won from Brahmā the Three Cities as a result of their asceticism, and Lakṣmī, ‘won over by the demons’ asceticism, blessed them with Glory and Prosperity’, thus closely tying the Tripura myth to the Lakṣmī themes which are also the hallmark of Kumbhayoni’s inscriptions. In regard to these leads into Kumbhayoni’s motivations, the loss of the Ratu Boko Tripurāntaka mural seen by Crawfurd is felt with especial keenness, as it might have provided important definitive identifications of the exact permutation of the Tripura myth employed by Kumbhayoni. While

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Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java may therefore have responded to the conspicuous anti-Śaiva Buddhist myths by enacting his own destruction of the walls and taunted zealous Javanese Buddhists by the erection of his own durable Tripura as a token of Śiva’s power.33 The one element of the Ratu Boko fact pattern which perhaps indicates Kumbhayoni’s acknowledgement of the Abhayagirin might lie in the inscription, only half of which has been found,34 which describes his genealogy going back four generations (de Casparis 1956: 342–43, Griffiths 2009). The extant fragments were recovered not far from the proper left half of the Abhayagirivihāra inscription, along the pathway between the eastern wall of the Abhayagiri prākāra and the parallel oblong platform (Fig. 14.12) which had been consecrated to Buddhism (Sundberg 2014: 103). While nothing else is known about the role of this undecorated Buddhist platform, its position suggests that it was an integral component of the early Buddhist rituals conducted under the auspices of the Abha­ it is beyond my capacities to pursue this line of thought further, Mevissen (2006a: 135, nn. 1, 2, 4) provides a good bibliography of the Tripurāntaka in Sanskrit and Tamil sources, as well as Indian inscriptions referring to him. 33.  Gray (2007: 39) addresses the parallel Buddhist tale between hostility to Hindus by Buddhists and the war between gods and Asuras in the Triple City, noting that ‘the origin myths of the tantric Buddhist deities … were likely composed in reaction to such hostile discourse [referring to the Tripurāntaka legend]. Buddhist versions reproduce Hindu polemical discourse in describing a hostile encounter between Buddhist and Hindu deities, but, naturally, resolve it with the victory of the former over the latter’. Indeed, the Cūḷavaṁsa (51.39, Geiger 1953: 154) describes Sena II’s sacking of Madhurai with the same Tripurāsura imagery invoked by Kumbhayoni. 34.  Without knowing the depth of archaeological investigation in the Ratu Boko archaeological campaigns of the 1950s, it is difficult to assess the likelihood that the remainder of the inscription might be recovered in the vicinity of the extant fragments (I’m certain that the archaeologists looked carefully for the other elements). Given that the superstructure of the three miniature temples was actually found to the east of the oblong platform, it is not out of the question that the remainder of Kumbhayoni’s ancestor inscription is to be found in that location rather than to the west of the platform, further complicating any attempt to coherently describe the exact set of actors and sequence of events which led to the recovered distribution of artefacts on the Ratu Boko plateau.

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ya­girivāsins. Among the rather limited number of roles which might be plausibly proposed for this platform is as an abhiṣeka platform for either Esoteric Buddhist or royal consecrations. If the Abhayagirivāsins consecrated the Śailendra kings as cakravartins as Amoghavajra did for Suzong, then the location of Kumbhayoni’s inscription appreciating his royal ancestors might make sense if one or all of the ancestors he mentions was consecrated there, even if he no longer supported the religion under which these rites were conducted. In an effort to appreciate the full dimensions of Kumbhayoni’s contrivance against the Abhayagirivihāra, and specifically why his primary effort should be focused to the immediate south of the padhānaghara, it will be useful to examine the rituals and rites which likely served to sanctify and prepare that padhānaghara structure for use. We have no record or evidence of the rituals that may have been used to consecrate the Abhayagirivihāra in 792, nor has there been any sustained archaeological exploration of the deep structure of any of the Sri Lankan padhānaghara.35 It is quite reasonable to assume that Sinhalese consecration rituals shared the goal of those actions employed by, for example, Kūkai around 818 to make his signature monastery of Kongōbuji on Mount Kōya 高野山 habitable, or by the Tibetan king Trisongdetsen to create the propitious atmosphere which allowed the walls of his Samye monastery to be erected around the year 779 by deliberately and visibly introducing countervailing forces to any vighna present. Indeed, given the observations raised in, inter alia, Sundberg and Giebel (2011) about the South Indian or Sri Lankan provenance of some of the mijiao 密教 doctrines, it is possible that Kūkai effected at Kongōbuji a ritual strategy and regime which originated with the Sri Lankans of the prior century. The particulars of the ritual performed by Kūkai are unknown, but the underlying spiritual motivations have been thankfully preserved in some detail. In clearing a sacred space for Kongōbuji, Kūkai established sīmābandha (kekkai 結界) stones to mark out boundaries separating the sacred and profane (Gardiner 2000: 122) with two successive rites. The 35.  Woodward (1976) pointed out the merits of the professional excavation of at least one of Sri Lanka’s padhānaghara.

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first rite correlated to the ‘Text of Declaration for retinues, the Bodhisattva Vajragarbharāja 金剛藏 the First Consecration at the Founding of Mount 王38 and his retinue, the gods Brahmā 梵 (an abKōya’ (Kōya konryū no hajime no kekkai no toki no breviation of 梵天) and Indra 釋 (an abbreviation keibyaku no bun 高野建立初結界時啓白文; Gardiner of 帝釋天), the four kings 四王, and Nāgas 龍神 2000: 127–29) which initially invoked the chain of (Gardiner 2000: 129–30, with amplification by Rolf patriarchal transmission (from Mahāvairocana to Giebel). This second rite was formulated specifically Kūkai via Vajrasat­t va, Nāgārjuna, Vajrabodhi, and to sanctify the monastery’s altar by driving out Amoghavajra) of the Vajroṣṇīṣa texts which lay at ‘obstructers’ in the form of Vināyakas (binayakthe heart of the Shingon doctrine,36 and then called ya 毘那耶伽)39 as well as other maleficent spirits upon unnamed deities as well as the spirits of prior who oppose the True Dharma. Although Kūkai’s emperors and empresses37 to help him establish the second text was modelled upon an earlier work in Diamond and the Womb-World maṇḍalas at the Chinese (Tuoluoni jijing 陀羅尼集經, T 901.813c),40 Kongōbuji. The second rite, based upon the ‘Text the targets of both of the rites are cast specifically of Declaration for the Consecration of an Altar at as manifestations of Śiva, so it seems safe to say Mount Kōya’ (Kōya ni dōjō o konryū shite kekkai that Kūkai’s rite may have been indeed devised in suru keibyaku no bun, 高野建立道場結界啓白文), Greater India, where such concerns about purging was the basis for a purification of the Dharma Altar the Śaiva would have a greater immediacy. Indeed, that lasted one week. This second rite implicated these Kongōbuji sanctification rites are implicata number of Buddhist potentates: the palace of ed in the Śaiva-Bauddha doctrinal disputes and the Three Jewels, the reverend teacher Śākyamuṇi competition for patronage that led to the creation Buddha, the protector and liberator Avalokiteśvara of such mythological and narrative episodes as 觀世音, the Bodhisattva Vajrakuṇḍali 金剛軍荼利, the Trailokyavijaya myth. A manifestation of that the two Medicine King Bodhisattvas Bhaiṣajyarāja tension may exist in the golden vajra-shaped in藥王 and Bhaiṣajyasamudgata 藥上 and their scribed foil which was recovered near the great entry gate of the Ratu Boko plateau itself and which 36.  Kūkai mentions his patriarchal precursors Nāgārjuna, implicated the raka of Panaraban, the Javanese king Vajrabodhi, Amoghavajra, and Huiguo 惠果 in the chain that stretched back to Vajrasattva, but strangely omits the single figure of Nāgajñā (Longzhi 龍智; for the alternative rendering ‘Nāgabuddhi’, see Appendix A by Sinclair in this volume). Per the suggestion in Sundberg and Giebel (2011: 160) that Nāgajñā was a wilderness monk unaffiliated with any established South Indian monastery, it is not out of the question that Kūkai found his invocation inappropriate for Kongōbuji. 37.  It is interesting to observe that Kūkai’s Esoteric Buddhism accommodated a role for the spirits of prior Japanese emperors and empresses in Japanese sacred architecture. Such invocations of sacralized prior Javanese kings are known from the inscriptions, but the extant evidence allows a dating only to the year 880, where they are implied in the inscription of Wuatan Tija. While Sañjaya himself in his one extant inscription had recognized his immediate predecessor and his pedigree (‘a king of very noble lineage of the name of Sanna’ [Sarkar 1971a: 20]), the kings of subsequent centuries recognized Sañjaya as their progenitor, seemingly because it was he who surged out of Sundanese Galuh into the Merapi area. (Indeed, King Dakṣottama [r. early 10th century], in his four extant inscriptions, even dated his calendar with reference to Sañjaya’s coronation rather than the Śaka era that was customary for the inscriptions of the Javanese kingdom).

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38.  Giebel (2012: 215–16) notes that among the Siddham texts brought by Kūkai, one is called the King of Eulogies of Vajragarbha-Trailokyavijaya (Kongōzō gōzanze san’ō 金剛藏降三世讃王) while another is entitled Mantra of Thousand-Armed Amṛtakuṇḍalin. The fact that Sanskrit Siddham texts existed seems confirmation of the Indic origins of both these two removers of obstruction and the perceived character of the obstructions. 39.  Lancaster (1995: 283–84) discusses the Vināyaka-related rituals in Amoghavajra’s Mārīcīdharaṇīsūtra (see also Duquenne 1988 and Lokesh Chandra 1992c). One of the Siddham texts brought by Kūkai, the Mantra of Thousand-Armed Amṛtakuṇḍalin (Kuṇḍali-bodhisattva is also mentioned in Kongōbuji’s purification ceremonies), is devoted to a deity related to Vināyaka. The mantra oṃ āḥ bighnantak hūṁ phaṭ svāhā inscribed on a stone found in the Muara Takus site in Sumatra has been identified by Griffiths (2014c: 237) as a variant of ‘a mantra for the maṇḍala deity Amṛtakuṇḍali(n), a protective deity not unrelated to Kubera and Vināyaka (Gaṇeśa)’. 40.  This work was translated by Atikūṭa and its title should be restored as *Dhāraṇīsaṅgraha (Davidson 2002: 145).

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who held his crown when the Abhayagirivihāra Their building may have been retained as a mockery was founded.41 and reminder.42 With this examination of the metaphysical In evaluating Kumbhayoni’s actions, it seems cleansings and clearings which likely sanctified that the ca. ad 856 efforts were uniquely directed the Javanese Abhayagirivihāra and purified it for against the Abhayagiri. I know of no other evidence monastic habitation in a manner suited for con- that suggests a parallel Śaiva effort to expunge temporary Shingon practice, we are positioned to the grand traces of Buddhism in the other extant better appreciate Kumbhayoni’s intentions when monuments like Borobudur.43 The strenuous and he specifically endowed his temple platform system with statues of Vināyaka and consecrated it with gold-foil invocations of Rudra: Kumbhayoni may 42.  In the epigraph to the companion to this chapter (Sundberg 2014), I cited the British intelligence writer have deliberately and visibly introduced counterJohn Le Carré’s operational precept: find the facts then vailing forces, durably establishing the presence of search through explanatory scenarios, trying them on ‘like exactly those irksome Śaiva personalities that the clothes’. In this vein, it should be noted that Central Java is Buddhist rites were designed to expel. Further- seismically active, and it would be difficult to distinguish more, Kumbhayoni did so with an establishment between millennium-old archaeological sites which had to the south of the Abhayagiri that may have been been deliberately ruined by human agency and those ruined by geological forces. I am indebted to Peter Sharrock (email necessitated by some Buddhist cultic centre there. dated 31 March 2015) for a comparative observation, hopeWithout knowing any more about what the Abhaya- fully merely the first of many which explore this seemingly giri consisted of in 792 other than the characteristic rewarding avenue, which relies on the Khmer situation: double-platform structure, with the small stūpa and ‘Iconoclasm was rare in ancient Southeast Asia. In Angkor the two caves as adjuncts, the precedent of Kūkai’s king Jayavarman VII built shrines to Śiva and Viṣṇu in his vihāra at Kongōbuji—quite possibly derived from Bayon Buddhist state temple. He also donated a large statue of Viṣṇu to one of his predecessors’ Vaiṣṇava state temple, a Lanka-originated model—arguably provides a i.e. Angkor Wat, which was presumably still functioning. reason to suspect that an analogous Dharma altar The gods of previous reigns were venerated under the new was erected to the south of the Abhayagirivihāra, regime, their sacred power being appropriated rather than where it would have served as the functional and removed. Indeed there are far more Śaiva ṛṣi carved on ritual centre for this Śailendra monastic complex. the walls of Jayavarman’s temples than monks, reflecting In short, one compelling reading of the southern their still dominant presence in the city. This was perhaps more appropriation or accumulation than syncretism, for Ratu Boko evidence envisions Kumbhayoni working there was no fusion of deities nor presumably of ritual. diligently to contravene the Abhayagirivāsins with Kumbhayoni’s positioning of Śaiva icons at important Budthe physical and metaphysical resources available dhist sacred spots in Ratu Boko may have similarly been to him: crumbling their foundation inscription, appropriating or transforming their sacred power rather pushing down their walls, pegging śivaliṅgas than destroying it. (I should add that a century after Jayaaround their compound, and nullifying their ritual varman’s death there was indeed iconoclasm in the Bayon. Śaiva liṅgas were erected and Bodhisattva icons chiseled centre with his own sanctified ritual platforms and into liṅgas, and thousands of Buddha reliefs chipped out of Śaiva ‘holy water machine’ (Jordaan 1996: 45–60). the other Jayavarman temples. This appears to have been The inferred cultic statue of Avalokiteśvara may the work of King Jayavarman-Parameśvara who left an have been toppled and cast down the hillside before inscription dated 1327 making pūjā provisions for a new it was buried with rubble (Sundberg 2014: 64, fig. 8). liṅga in the first year of his brief reign, an isolated event

41.  See my Annex and Acri, this volume, for extended discussions of this artefact. The Sanskrit text entitled Vajragarbha-Trailokyavijaya, the Siddham text of which was brought from China by Kūkai, is of potentially great importance for studies of early tensions between the Buddhists and the devotees of Śiva. Unfortunately, it is not treated by Hase (1976) and may now be tragically lost (Giebel 2012: 215–16).

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that left a large scar)’. 43.  In Sundberg 2016b, I propose that the Candi Sewu temple complex fell victim to at least one sacking, which likely occurred during what the evidence suggests to be a bitter succession war around the year ad 887, although a date which lies closer to Kumbhayoni’s ad 856 actions against the Abhayagiri cannot be ruled out. The Sewu temple complex was only partially repopulated with inexpensive stone Buddha statues in the years between the sacking and the great but poorly understood disaster of

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia developed independent lay support, as their Sinhalese counterparts seemed to have enjoyed, cannot be known but I consider it unlikely; given the difficulty of access to the monastery, I surmise that they were strictly provisioned by the king and interacted solely with the court. In any case, their monastery had been ruined and its ability to function ritually had been deprived by Kumbhayoni.

densely focused effort by Kumbhayoni to thwart their presence suggests to me once again that the Abhayagiri paṁsukūlikas were not just an impotent, marginal ascetic group of myopic vinaya experts, but rather a group whose potency required repudiation via every valid force Kumbhayoni could muster, a group whose efficacy justified the close attention and support paid to them by the Lambakaṇṇa kings. If the actions taken by Kumbhayoni to countervail the structure are clear, I have no idea what he did with the Abhayagiri monks themselves. The possibilities are many. Perhaps, like the Sinhalese kings, they were deprived of rations or were parcelled out to other monasteries. Perhaps they suffered one of the grimmer fates associated with heresy, limned by extant Sinhalese and Pallava sources which attest to punishments which could range from a relatively benign exile to corporal punishments such as branding, whipping, stoning, and even impalement.44 Whether these monks had

The archaeological and textual evidence suggests Kumbhayoni’s unsolicited and ill-willed intrusion on to the sīmābandha of the Abhayagirivāsins. Lacking any explicit statement by the protagonist to describe the incident or explain his motivations, there is much latitude for historical speculation about why the Abhayagiri was so treated. The reasons might be found locally, in Java, and

929, when all inscriptional evidence of a thriving Central Javanese kingdom abruptly terminates. Kusen and Haryono (1992) present an inventory of the various recesses in the original pedestals of the Candi Sewu complex that indicates the astonishing size and quantity of the metal statuary that was originally installed in the 240 shrines there. There remains, however, a small, free-standing metal relic of the original thematic set which populated Sewu in one of its earlier configurations, and is extraordinarily diagnostic of the doctrines embodied in Candi Sewu: a statue of Śiva in the respectful and subordinate añjali posture (Haryono 1996). Such a statue clearly functioned in a Buddhist maṇḍala that subordinated the Hindu deities. The doctrine embodied in the middle phase of Sewu is uncertain—there is no evidence that it remained Buddhist, although the architectural amendments which instantiated the bearded siddha-like figures (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 165–68) seem to have been executed by King Garuṅ (r. 829–47) because they stylistically match what he was doing at the Plaosan temple, within sight to the east (Klokke 2006: 55–57). Further considerations on Garuṅ’s involvement in the Sewu refurbishments will be advanced in Sundberg 2016b. 44.  Indrapala (2005: 193), commenting on the contest between competing religions (Jain, Buddhist, Śaiva, and Vaiṣṇava) in Pallava domains observes that ‘one of the notable features of the Śaiva campaign was the conduct of public disputations between the Śaiva Nāyanārs and their opponents. Often harsh punishments seem to have been

meted out to those who were defeated. Śaiva traditions refer to opponents being impaled on stakes. Other traditions mention banishments…. Later Telugu works … refer to an eighth century Jaina teacher, Akalāṅka by name, from Sravana Belgola in Karnataka, as having disputed with the Buddhists of Kanchi and defeated them. These Buddhists, we are told, were in consequence banished to Sri Lanka. The substance of these accounts seems credible, for two Kannada inscriptions of earlier dates also refer to the same incident’. Hudson (2008: 79) provides an image of a temple frieze depicting Pallava Nandivarman Pallavamalla (ca. 731–96) attending the impalement of two men, one upside down, as a depiction of his use of righteous punishment (daṇḍa). Sharrock (2009: 114) draws attention to Yijing’s record that the Buddhist monks had all been killed or expelled by ‘a wicked king’ not many years before his visit to Cambodia. Bronkhorst (2011: 189, n. 274), citing Schopen (2006: 228) for his information, writes that ‘losing a debate at the royal court could presumably have dire consequences (death, slavery)’. But even elsewhere a lost confrontation can bring disaster, if we go by the testimony of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya: ‘When members of other religious groups (tīrthyas) are completely humiliated by the Buddhist Monk Śariputra in a contest of “magical” powers that humiliation is, at least in part, narratively signaled by the fact that, in order to remain in Śrāvastī, they are reduced to acting as day laborers on the monastery being built there, and must work under the eye of a latāvārikaḥ puruṣo, a “man in charge of the whip” or “work-boss’’’.

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iii. the ratu boko drama in context: turmoil in the esoteric buddhist world, ad 840–56

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Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java perhaps were particular to Kumbhayoni under his prerogatives as local raka lord. However, there is a broader context which might bear relevance to the instance of the Ratu Boko: royal support for Esoteric Buddhism darkened across large swathes of Buddhist Asia in a shockingly short time just after 840, suffering from official backlash against excesses, disappointments, or shortcomings in its practices or doctrines. There is clear and pertinent evidence of adversity in China, Tibet, and Laṅkā. In China, the stimulus for the anti-Buddhist Huichang 會昌 backlash (Chen 1956; Weinstein 1987: 114–36) seemed largely practical, undertaken for financial motives: so many Chinese had exploited the tax exemptions available for Buddhist monks that the Emperor Wuzong 武宗 (r. 840–46) in 841 to 845 was forced to purge the monasteries of their monastic tax dodgers. He shut down 4,600 monasteries and 40,000 temples and shrines, returning 260,500 monks and nuns to civil life and restoring vast acreage of farmland to the imperial tax registers. According to Li Jie 李節 and the Japanese monk Ennin 圓仁 (793–864), the destruction of both monasteries and statues was carried out quite thoroughly in places far from Chang’an 長安. Ennin describes the persecution of monks by Emperor Wuzong in 844, saying that all the stone pillars engraved with dhāraṇīs were destroyed as well as the monasteries (Chou 1945: 322–23, cf. Palmer 2009: 225ff.), thus accounting for the scarcity of these stone pillars today.45 In Tibet, quite remote from Java but still a powerful Buddhist kingdom, the 842 assassination of the king by a Buddhist monk set off 150 years of chaos and disorder known as the ‘dark period’, during which the empire disintegrated and little progress in Buddhist studies was made (Dalton 2011: 4–5). 45.  Since Ennin makes special mention of these stone pillars, they must have existed in great numbers prior to Suzong’s 肅宗 reign. Their loss constitutes an enormous tragedy for the history of Esoteric Buddhism. The reader will find in Sundberg 2014 remarks on a similar absence of Sinhalese inscriptions from before ad 839 and the parallel absence of royal administrative inscriptions from Java before the time of Kayuvaṅi (855–83), which was almost certainly the result of revocations of prior kings’ sīmā allocations like those enacted by Varak and Pikatan for the Pikatan monastery’s fields at Vanua Tṅah.

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The cumulative effect of this reaction on the northern periphery of the Buddhist world, as Matsunaga (1978: viii) notes, is that ‘the period from the middle of the ninth century until around the end of the tenth century was a dark age for Buddhism in both China and Tibet. Since there were hardly any translations of sutras made during this period, it is difficult to know and follow the history of the translations or the development of Buddhism in India at this time’. Whether these ripples in the Buddhist kingdoms to the far north had ultimately affected the Javanese court’s disposition towards the Abhayagirivāsins might depend on an appraisal of the tightness of the Javanese cultural and intellectual coupling to those Buddhist realms, but there can be little doubt that the cosmopolitan Abhayagirivāsins were attuned to trends in other countries, and their equally cosmopolitan Javanese patrons likely shared this interest. The most significant of the Buddhist adversities for the Javanese Abhayagirivāsins, with their presumably close links to their Sri Lankan homeland, was the comprehensive sacking and looting of the mother monastery when Sena I, certainly the last of Rājaraṭṭha’s Esoteric Buddhist kings, lost control of his capital at Anurādhapura to the South Indian Śaiva Pāṇḍyas, who, the reader will recall, had invaded Sri Lanka sometime between ad 839 and 845. For the decade prior to the advent of Kumbhayoni, then, the vihāras, palace, and ceremonial halls at Anurādhapura had stood vacant, devoid of wealth or costly devotional icons like the gem-eyed Buddha of the Ratnaprāsāda whose loss seemed particularly stinging (Cūḷavaṁsa 51.48, Geiger 1953: 151). During the two long intervening decades before Sena II turned the tables on the Pāṇḍya by plundering Madhurai in 862, the desolation of the capital’s monasteries would have been an unceasing reproach to the Abhayagirivāsins, whose state-protection doctrines maintained such a durable grip on the kings of Sri Lanka in the prior centuries. The latent tensions posed by a subordinated soteriology existed in both Sri Lanka and Java. In the former case that creed was the Theravāda, while in Java that creed was the Śaiva. They had both tolerated the slights and nursed their grievances in their lifetimes out of royal favour, and both proved

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ready to seize their moment.46 At the time that Kumbhayoni acted against the Abhayagirivāsins, royal Sri Lanka in its reversion to the Theravāda doctrines was striking out in a way which was new and yet old, for there had been a stock-taking and a radical change in ethos in the aftermath of the Pāṇḍya disaster. There can be no doubt that the vajra-inflected Mahāyāna of Sena II’s predecessors had given way to the Theravāda doctrines retained at the rival Mahāvihāra: Sri Lanka’s own abruptly impoverished king had broken with centuries of precedent and repudiated Abhayagiri primacy. At the time that Kumbhayoni set out to disrupt them and negate their potency, the Abhayagiri and the creeds it peddled may have been perceived not only in Sri Lanka but across the Buddhist world as a disastrous sham, the trick of charlatans. Indeed, Kumbhayoni was acting at precisely the instant that the Buddhist world began bifurcating into its Northern and Southern doctrinal schools, although it would take the Muslim conquests of Bengal and Bihar to achieve the final physical step of that process. Sena II had yet to enact his devastating and humiliating coup de main against a justifiably hated Pāṇḍyan enemy in Madhurai, the stunning feat which seemingly served to confirm and validate the efficacy of the Theravāda doctrines to which he had reverted. That glorious ad 862 victory, which imparted the momentum that sustained Sri Lanka on its orthodox course for the past eleven centuries, still lay six years in the future. Kumbhayoni, whether intending to assist Sena II or not,47 paralleled the contemporary project in the homeland 46.  A study of the multiple royal religious conversions of the Khmer kings, with solid attestations of Śaivism, Esoteric Buddhism, Vaiṣṇavism, and finally Theravāda Buddhism, would be both interesting by itself but would also serve as a valuable comparative reference for the sparsely documented kings of Central Java. I am grateful to Peter Sharrock for a profitable discussion of these kings and the motivations for the shifting doctrinal allegiances. 47.  One wonders whether there had been a formal communication between Sena II and Kayuvaṅi, advising the Javanese of the new Rājaraṭṭha stance towards the Sinhalese vihāra in his kingdom. Like many aspects of this 1,200-year-old story, little is known of the collaboration between kings across the greater Indic world.

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to rein in the Abhayagiri, an endeavour which, by the twentieth year of Sena II’s reign, had resulted in the departure en masse of the type of Abhayagiri monk hosted in the padhānaghara on the Ratu Boko plateau. Whatever the happenings in the contemporary Buddhist world, the decision to act against the Abha­yagirivāsins was ultimately decided locally, in Central Java. Whether the actions of Kumbhayoni (however he acquired raka-lord primacy on the Gunung Kidul) were stimulated by King Kayuvaṅi or whether the Javanese regent merely concurred with Kumbhayoni’s desires, the ability to act was restricted to a few aristocratic and possibly sacerdotal figures who had come to power upon the death of King Pikatan in 855. The pronounced Śaivism of this new group may have represented a royally ordained reversion to an alternate, but long dormant, religious tradition of the island, a correlate to the shift towards the Theravāda in Sri Lanka, but there are suggestions that the precipitating disaster was local and may have been related to the circumstances that brought about Pikatan’s death.48 If the success of the counter-strike against Madhurai sealed the rehabilitation of the Theravāda against the Abhayagiri doctrines, the military success implied by Kumbhayoni’s apparent pillar of victory (jayastambha) may have had a corresponding effect for the Śaivas in Java, reinvigorating royal favour based on demonstrated results. The sharp reaction to the Abhayagirivāsins may have been necessitated by the royal readoption of a mainstream form of Śaiva religion, as the failures associated with the Abhayagirivāsins may have served as exemplars of the excesses connected 48.  As will be argued more expansively in Sundberg 2016b, Pikatan’s death may have been related to events in the old domains of Sumatran Śrīvijaya, but in a slightly different manner than surmised by de Casparis (1956: 288, 300), who translated his funeral stele. A willing Buddhist in his younger years, Pikatan affirmed his youthful donation of two of the Buddhist shrines at the Plaosan temple by validating them with his new royal title. His ‘Śivagṛha’ funeral memorial inscription (de Casparis 1956: 280–330), the only such material yet recovered for any of the Javanese kings, shows surprisingly that he was interred in a Śaiva context. Sadly, the inscription offers merely minimal legibility in the portions that would seem to shed most light on the events surrounding his death.

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Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java with Tantric forms of Buddhism and Śaivism;49 as an honour-driven response to the Buddhist disparagement of Śaivism; or even, as suggested in Section II above, active suppression of it spearheaded by the Abhayagirivāsins. Finally, Kum­ bhayoni’s efforts may represent the repudiation of the often-reviled Yoginītantra-related transgressive character of certain strands of Esoteric Buddhism, whose doctrines may have been primarily carried by these paṁsukūlika monks and may have been no more welcome to the Javanese populace than they were to the emperors of China from whom the excesses were concealed, or to the Tibetans whose 10th-century king stamped them out only with great effort (Dalton 2011: 97ff.). If I am correct about the transgressive character of the Buddhism allowed to surface during the reign of King Garuṅ (r. 829–47) and his associate Śrī Kahulunnan (Sundberg 2016a), and the supplementary evidence that the Abhayagirivāsins channelled, if not originated, the very same advaya doctrines known by Amoghavajra and practised by Garuṅ, then Kumbhayoni’s selective response is comprehensible. Our final glimpse of the Ratu Boko Abhayagirivāsins leaves them in their new and doubtlessly embittering situation, the dismaying conclusion to a collaborative interregnal endeavour which had seemed so important sixty years before, as well as a repudiation of the sophisticated Buddhist doctrines which that royal endeavour sought to promote. What must have been felt when, one morning, 49.  As suggested by Acri (2010, 2011b), who interprets both the allegorical sections of the Rāmāyaṇa kakavin as well as the Śivagṛha inscription of ad 856 as a critique directed by the mainstream religious (and political) establishment towards marginal groups of siddha-like antinomian ascetics of both Śaiva and Buddhist persuasion. Analogous dynamics have been described by Dalton (2011: 104), who noted that the Tibetan king ‘Yeshe Ö targeted the nonmonastic tantric communities that had flourished in the social fragmentation of the late ninth and tenth centuries. His edict was explicitly addressed to the tāntrikas of central Tibet, “you tantrists who live in the villages”, and it complained of the “Bajiwa” (‘Ba jiba), Buddhist heretics who claimed for themselves the highest enlightenment and to have transcended all distinctions of sacred and profane, moral and immoral’. In Sundberg 2016a, I will argue that transgressive texts and practices may have been allowed to surface not only in the Panaraban years of Central Javanese history but in the Garuṅ-Kahulunnan era as well.

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Śrī Kumbhayoni, his attendants, his sheriffs, and his architects first ascended the great staircase of the Ratu Boko and appeared at the threshold of Abha­yagiri padhānaghara? Did the monks have an inkling that it would occur? Had there been a series of public disputes and accusations by the seemingly erudite Kumbhayoni himself; possibly ever since questions about the efficacy of their apotropaic skills had arisen in the wake of the disastrous fall of Anurādhapura more than a decade prior; or possibly because of the very recent decision of the newly crowned Sinhalese monarch Sena II to repudiate their monastery, reform its institutional creed, and take his shower-bath into kingship in a novel Theravāda rite devised by the rival Mahāvihāra, held within its precincts and incorporating soil sacralized by the presence of prior Buddhas on the grounds of the Mahāvihāra itself? (Walters 2000: 125ff.) Or did a quorum of Śaiva religious advisers quietly point out to Kayuvaṅi that this small, stranded group of Abhayagiri monks had to go, tasking Kumbhayoni with the errand? Sadly, the passage of twelve centuries prevents any certain answer to this well-defined question, important for the broader study of the historical relationships between Śaivism and the Esoteric Buddhism that seems to have borrowed heavily from it. *

annex: further considerations on the ratu boko mantra

Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.50

A fascinating relic, an inscribed double-diamond vajra-shaped gold foil invoking the mantra Oṁ ṭakī huṁ jaḥ svāhā, was discovered in front of the Great Gate on the Ratu Boko plateau (see Fig. 1 on p. 324, this volume). The scribing of the word panarabvan within the circle of the ī vowel in ṭakī seemingly implicated the Śrī Mahārāja Rakai Panaraban who reigned from ad 784 to 803 (Kusen 50.  John Harington, Epigrams. Cf. Kevin Costner’s monologic courtroom summation in the Oliver Stone film JFK.

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1994: 95), while the other word within the circle, khanipas, possibly referenced another personality. I observed (Sundberg 2003: 166) that the script of the Ratu Boko mantra seemed to be quite early as it contained an archaic form that was also found in the ad 792 inscription of Mañjuśrīgṛha from Candi Sewu. Furthermore, I argued that the panarabvan of the gold-plate inscription almost certainly refers to the king with that approximate raka title, who reigned during the time of the ad 792 installation of the Abhayagirivāsin delegation at the southern end of the same plateau. I first offered an exploration of this artefact in Sundberg (2003), which I explicitly denoted as a preliminary study as it was clear that I lacked the mastery of languages and access to texts that would allow a fuller exploitation of the material. It is satisfying to see that the intervening decade has offered welcome new facts that better control the range of the plausible interpretations which might be draped over the factual skeleton. The amplified factual base extends in many directions, including a novel contextual understanding of the strife-ridden relationship between Panaraban and his son, the raka of Varak (Sundberg 2011), as well as the new textual attestations of the core mantra turned up in the investigation of Griffiths (2014a) and Acri (this volume), which yield new understandings of the range of interpretations that may be assigned to the vajra-plate. The new textual attestations of the mantra all seem to derive from the themes of opposing obstruction (vighna) and controlling obstructers, which in Esoteric Buddhist mythology are subsumed under the figure of Śiva. While the genre of Esoteric literature in which these new instances have been found is not wholly unanticipated given the vidyarāja/krodharāja and vajra-hook (aṅkuśa) context initially discerned in 2003,51 51.  To those novel attestations adduced by Griffiths and Acri I add one more notice which convenes with the original identification of the mantra from Lokesh Chandra’s notice of an Aizen Myōo 愛染明王/Rāgarāja/Ṭakkirāja nexus in the Sūtra of all Yogas and Yogīs of the Pavilion with the Vajra-top (Jingangfeng louge yiqie yuqie yuzhi jing 金剛峯 樓閣一切瑜伽瑜祇經, Goepper 1993: 15, excerpted in Sundberg 2003: 171–72), one of the five fundamental texts of the Shingon school and ascribed to either Vajrabodhi or

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what is fundamentally novel to the study of the vajra-plate mantra is the attestation of the ‘oṁ… svāhā’ pairing in a hostile rather than benedictory context (cf. the gold foil inscription reading oṁ rudrāya namaḥ svāhā found at the miniature Triple Temple ‘consecration water machine’ to the southeast of the Abhayagirivihāra at Ratu Boko). Based on the erroneous supposition that the vajra-foil mantra must be benedictory and involve Panaraban in a benign way, I (Sundberg 2006: 112, n. 25) wrongfully dismissed a valid interpretation offered by Jordaan and Colless (2004). On the circumscription of Panaraban’s name (as well as the mysterious word khanipas) on the gold plate, Jordaan and Colless (2004: 62) wrote of ‘the encircling of Panarabvan’s name to convey the idea of his being caught and tied up with ropes and rendered powerless’. Supplemental grounding for their conceptualization is offered by Goble’s (2013: 17) recent examination of the Trisamaya texts translated by Amoghavajra and apparently employed by him in his defeat of Tang enemies about four decades before the production of the Ratu Boko mantra, in which the texts instruct the ritual technician to ‘imagine those enemies bound with ropes by the envoy [Acala], lead to the southern direction of stifling suffering, vomiting blood, and perishing. Those [enemies] and their ilk will all be unable to recover. Not a single one will survive’. The final set of new information derives from narrative passages in the 16th-century Carita PaAmoghavajra, where the mantra was employed in sweeping away dangers for the Buddhist monks by unsavoury characters. Dalton’s (2011: 87–88) recent researches turn up an elaboration of the Vajra-Peak Pavilion Sūtra’s theme: ‘Next a final purification of the victim’s mental impurities is performed, in conjunction with the ritual master’s imaginative transformation of himself into the wrathful Buddha Ṭakkirāja. The Guhyasamāja Tantra includes a brief description of this deity. ‘‘The great wrathful Ṭakkirāja,” it reads, “has three terrifying faces and four supremely terrifying arms”. The mere appearance of this fearsome Buddha, our Dunhuang manual explains, with his apocalyptic gaze and wild laughter, completes the cleansing of the victim’s karmic imprints. From his right eye burst flames that incinerate the impurities, from his left eye flood waters that wash them away, and the winds of his laughter blow away any that remain, leaving him thoroughly purified’.

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Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java rahyaṅan that uniquely record the circumstances around King Sañjaya (r. 717–46?), his predecessors, and his successors. While early scholars of this text recognized that the Carita Parahyaṅan correctly identified Sañjaya’s immediate predecessor, they were mystified by inexplicable references to his successors, which commenced with the kings ‘Panaraban’ and then ‘Manarah’. In a previous study (Sundberg 2011) I employed data made available only by the 1983 discovery of the Wanua Tengah III inscription, with its revelation of the kingships of the raka of Panaraban (personal name presently unknown) and the raka of Varak dyah Mānara (r. 803–27), to show that another two crucial generations of Javanese kings could be recognized in the Carita Parahyaṅan before it trailed off into a featureless recitation of the historically unknown kings of West Java, who were different than the epigraphically well-attested post-Varak sequence who ruled Central Java. My 2011 essay addressed the startling events offered up in the Carita Para­ hyaṅan’s brief narration of the reigns of Panaraban and Varak. Those pertinent claims made by the Old Sundanese chronicle included Sañjaya’s instruction to his putative son Panaraban to adopt a new religion; Panaraban’s own relish for destroying ascetics (tapasvin); and Panaraban’s subsequent imprisonment by his son Varak, who was crowned king after a fight against a brother who rose to defend Panaraban. In my essay, I concluded that the Carita Parahyaṅan was likely correct in its claim of both a Sañjaya-stipulated conversion and a Varak-led rebellion against his father. Both of these claims contribute valid context to the vajra-foil and its circumscription of Panaraban’s name. Regarding the last of the Carita Parahyaṅan’s claims, I deduced from the alien post-Varak West Javanese king-list that the unitary power implied by the 8th-century Arab epithet ‘Mahārāja of the Isles’ seemed to have split into the tripartite kingdoms of Sumatra, Sunda, and Java, at a time coincident with or after Varak’s coup;52 furthermore, the Javanese 52.  The formerly unitary late 8th-century archipelagic kingdom had been divided, with no implication by the Carita Parahyaṅan that the division into Western and Central Javanese portions was a violent or contested event. Such a consensual division finds precedent in the division of the Pallava domains in Nanidivarman’s time, while it

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raids on, or even subjugation of, Cambodia and Campā came to a halt around the time of Varak’s successful treason. Regarding the other of the Carita Parahyaṅan’s claims, i.e. that Sañjaya himself commanded his putative son Panaraban to change religions, I pointed out that every time the successors of the Śaiva Sañjaya are visible in the historical epigraphical record in the century following his death, they are seen in a Buddhist context engaged in Buddhist activities: Sañjaya’s sibling’s establishment of a Buddhist vihāra at Pikatan which existed without interruption throughout the 8th and 9th centuries, even when the kings had seemingly resumed a preference for Sañjaya’s epigraphically attested Śaivism around ad 855, at the tail end of the decade of disenchantment and setback for the Esoteric Buddhist world noted in Section III above; the endowment of royal lands at Vanua Tṅah for the Pikatan vihāra by Sañjaya’s seeming successor and descendant the raka of Panaṅkaran; the same Panaṅkaran’s building of a Tārā temple and vihāra at Kalasan, possibly within his personal raka domain,53 at the may have served as the precedent for the later Eastern Javanese division of his kingdom by Airlaṅga (Jordaan 2007). Regarding the multiple branches of the Cāḷukya who may have been even more widely scattered than the Śailendra, Davidson (2002: 41) wrote: ‘despite their eventual loss of power in their homeland, in a manner similar to that of the Kāḷachuris of Madhya Pradesh, branches of the house of Chāḷukya continued to operate in various milieus throughout the early medieval period’. The Sumatran Śailendras are visible not because they are known through their own domestic inscriptions, but only because of the chance preservation of the evidence in their interactions with kings of India, both with the Pālas in the 9th century and the Cōḻas in the 11th. I am grateful to Marijke Klokke (personal communication) for drawing my attention to aspects of the paleography of the undated side of the Ligor inscription that negate my assumption (Sundberg 2011: 127, n. 8) that the two sides were written by the same hand and that this implied a Śailendra regency high in the Malay Peninsula in ad 775. I will modify the expression of my 2011 argument in Sundberg 2016b 53.  One of the two lithic sīmā inscriptions recently unearthed at the ad 869 Kedulan temple in the Kalasan district specifies the sīmā to originate at ‘Panaṁṅgaran’ (Pramastuti et al. 2007: 31), which seems to be an orthographic variant of Panaṅkaran (personal communication with Tjahjono Prasodjo and Andrea Acri), the vatak designated

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suggestion of the Śailendrarājaguru; Panaraban’s the term khanipas encircled with panaraban on the acceptance of the Vanua Tṅah sīmā; Borobudur vajra-plate is that of Panaraban’s other son ‘Baṅga’ arguably being erected during Varak’s reign and who loyally came to his father’s aid, who battled within his home vatak (Sundberg 2006); Garuṅ’s Varak, and who also might need to be warded from uncoerced actions in 829 to restore the Vanua the kraton gate by mantric means. Tṅah sīmā and his building of the primary Plaosan Thanks to the scholarly efforts of Jordaan, temples; Pikatan’s post-inaugural validation of the Colless, Griffiths, and Acri, fundamental inforshrines that he sponsored at Plaosan during his pre- mation about the core mantra and its context is now decessor Garuṅ’s regency; and finally the inscribed much more broadly and thickly documented than statue that I observed in illicit hands (Sundberg in 2003, with a correspondingly greater refinement 2014: 167, n. 190). of the interpretive possibilities. I think that there is While I know of no evidence that confirms the still some need for research into the implications of Buddhist adherence of Panaraban other than his the selection of gold as the material on which the maintenance of the royal sīmā provisions for the mantra is inscribed, as the selection of that noble family vihāra recorded in the Wanua Tengah III metal deviates from the bone or inflammable cloth inscription, I know of no fact at the time of this enjoined for hostile Buddhist wizardry by those writing that mandates or even sustains an an- textual sources and ritual manuals which have ti-Śaiva interpretation for the Ratu Boko mantra. thus far come to scholarly attention. It is possible However, I now look quite favourably upon the that deeper understandings of the manufacturer’s interpretation advanced by Jordaan and Colless, selection of the precious metal might once again now ably buttressed by the novel and well-expli- tip the interpretation of the artefact towards one cated material discussed by Acri, which perceives of benevolence towards Panaraban. hostility to Panaraban but relies upon the vighnāntaka character of the mantra, for Panaraban ** represented a potent threat to an individual who potentially had access to the Great Gate area of As a finale to the topic of the Ratu Boko mantra, the Ratu Boko plateau which quite possibly served I should report the results of enquiries by the evas a kraton/kaḍatvan (Sundberg 2014: 170, n. 199), er-productive and astute Roy Jordaan (p.c.) into the and who was motivated to struggle against him disposition of the mantra plate. The 1950 Annual with every available resource, including the su- Report of the Indonesian Archaeological Service pernatural means which were so widely accepted (Laporan Tahunan 1950: 2) reported that shortly in 8th-century Indic religions. Quite specifically, I after his return from Holland, Soehamir requestnow believe that the potent, antagonistic individual ed resignation from the Archaeological Service, who instigated the mantra was Panaraban’s son permission for which was granted to him (with Varak, who was every bit as disloyal to his father as honours) shortly afterwards. Jordaan surmises that the multitude of contemporary Sinhalese princes his resignation may have been motivated by the and queens whose treacheries were documented in explicit criticism of his refusal to bring the archaethe Sinhalese Cūḷavaṁsa and labelled as such in the histories only because their treasons were unprosperous.54 Indeed, it is not out of the question that Parahyaṅan has Panaraban unjustly murdering the prior for the regent from 746 to 783. The greatest and grandest of the early Śailendra Buddhist temples, the Candi Sewu once so astonishingly richly endowed with metal statuary, had been both constructed during the latter part of Panaṅkaran’s reign and likely within his personal vatak (in Sundberg 2006, I argued that the same relationship held for Borobudur and the reign and vatak of King Varak). 54.  In order to preserve Varak’s legitimacy, the Carita

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incarnation—as a blameless pandit­—of Varak, who in his new royal embodiment took revenge upon his father and murderer. It was clearly of some importance to the Sundanese author of the Carita Parahyaṅan to delegitimize Panaraban even while sustaining the reputation of the treasonous son Varak. Presumably some dynastic issue was at stake, with others of Panaraban’s descendants still potent some place in the Archipelago, possibly in Central Java and possibly in Sumatra or the Malay Peninsula. I will explore the issue in greater depths in Sundberg 2016b.

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Mid-9th-Century Adversity for Sinhalese Esoteric Buddhist Exemplars in Java ological archives of the field office at Prambanan into safety before the Dutch attack on Yogyakarta. Soehamir’s argument was that the office had remained undamaged during the Japanese invasion and occupation, so was likely to remain so when the Dutch attacked. Not so: Dutch artillery and guns damaged the building and its doors, enabling the

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local inhabitants to enter and loot the place. The Annual Report (1950: 10) reported that the people took away the safe containing the money of the Archaeological Service and all the gold artefacts that had been stored away in it. This was seemingly the sad end of the 1,200-year-old gold plate and Ratu Boko mantra.

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Chapter 15

A Śaiva Text in Chinese Garb? An Annotated Translation of the Suji liyan Moxishouluo tian shuo aweishe fa r o l f w. g i e b e l

T

he taishō canon attributes (in some Yuanzhao’s 圓照 addendum to the Kaiyuan catacases spuriously) more than 160 translations logue (Da Tang Zhenyuan xu Kaiyuan shijiao lu to Amoghavajra (Bukong 不空; 704–74), and 大唐貞元續開元釋教錄), compiled in 795–96, among they cover a wide range of subject matter.1 One of translations attributed to Amoghavajra, where it is the more unusual translations attributed to him listed under the title Suji liyan Moxishouluo tian is the Suji liyan Moxishouluo tian shuo (jialouluo) shuo jialouluo aweishe fa 速疾立驗魔醯首羅天說迦 aweishe fa 速疾立驗魔醯首羅天說(迦樓羅)阿尾奢 樓羅阿尾奢法.3 It was first brought back to Japan 法 (T 1277.329b–331a), or The (Garuḍa) Āveśa Rite by Kūkai 空海 (774–835) in 806.4 There can thus Explained by the God Maheśvara Which Swiftly be little doubt that even if this text was not actuEstablishes Its Efficacy (hereafter: The Āveśa Rite), ally translated by Amoghavajra, it was circulating the greater part of which describes the use of child in China by the late 8th century. It is to be noted, mediums in rites of spirit possession (āveśa) for however, that Yuanzhao states that the text occupies the purpose of divination. The text itself would six sheets,5 whereas Kūkai gives its length as four seem to be entirely devoid of any Buddhist content sheets,6 although it is not clear what the discrepancy (apart from one reference to a Buddha when de- between these figures may signify.7 scribing the iconography of Maheśvara), and Alexis Sanderson (2009: 136–38, n. 318) has pointed to the 3. T 2156.753c13–14, 768b18–19. possible influence of Śaivism, but to the best of my 4. T 2161.1062a13–14. knowledge it has not yet been fully translated in a 5. T 2157.1032b5. Western language. The aim of this brief study, then, 6. T 2161.1062a14. is to provide a complete annotated translation of 7. Matsunaga Yūkei (1980: 322–24; 1985: 889–91) has The Āveśa Rite in the hope that it may serve as a used the fact that Kūkai gives the length of Amoghavabasis for others more qualified than myself to de- jra’s translation of Chapter 41 of the Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa termine with greater precision the influences, Śaiva (MMK) (‘Garuḍapaṭalaparivarta’; Wenshushili pusa genben dajiaowang jing jinchi niaowang pin 文殊師利菩薩根本大 or other, that may be present in the text and the 教王經金翅鳥王品 [T 1276]) as three sheets to argue that text’s possible provenance. Before presenting the the version Kūkai brought back was considerably shorter translation itself I wish to touch briefly on textual than the current extant version, which, he states, ‘is almost three times as great as that recorded’ by Kūkai and other matters, including prior research. The Āveśa Rite is not included in the list of trans- and was, he maintains, later expanded. But Yuanzhao lated works Amoghavajra submitted to the Tang already gives the length of Amoghavajra’s translation of the ‘Garuḍapaṭalaparivarta’ as eleven sheets. The lengths court in 771,2 and it appears for the first time in of texts as recorded in sheets by Yuanzhao and Kūkai are 1. I gratefully acknowledge helpful comments from Andrea Acri and Arlo Griffiths and detailed feedback from Iain Sinclair and Michael Slouber in the course of preparing this study. The responsibility for the views expressed here and the errors committed is of course entirely my own. 2. T 2120.839a25ff.

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sometimes the same, but often they differ, with the number of sheets given by Yuanzhao tending to be larger than that given by Kūkai. Does this mean that there were differences in the size of paper used or in the size of the writing? Or, in view of the considerable discrepancy in the case of the ‘Garuḍapaṭalaparivarta’, did Kūkai bring back a shorter version even though a longer version already existed?

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That there was a demand for texts pertaining to spirit possession and the use of child mediums in 8th-century China is evident from the activities of Vajrabodhi (671–741; a.k.a. Vajrabuddhi: see Appendix A), Amoghavajra’s teacher. Not only do two texts supposedly translated by him into Chinese include instructions for the use of child mediums,8 but according to one of his biographies he himself performed such a rite, using two seven-year-old girls, when one of the emperor’s daughters was on the verge of death.9 Amoghavajra too was a renowned thaumaturge, skilled in a wide repertoire of rituals, and although it is not known whether he performed rites of the type described in The Āveśa Rite, they would undoubtedly have fallen within the ambit of his expertise, given the fact that āveśa rites are mentioned in several other texts translated by him, starting with the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha.10 Shortly after Vajrabodhi’s death in 741, Amoghavajra travelled to Sri Lanka and possibly India,11 returning to China in 746, and even if The Āveśa Rite was not actually translated by Amoghavajra, it may have been acquired by him during his travels, perhaps in Java or Sri Lanka, where Tantrism, both Buddhist and Śaiva, was being practised to some extent around this time. Alternatively, the text Matsunaga does not elaborate on how he calculated the extant version to be ‘almost three times as great as’ the three sheets recorded by Kūkai, but the difference between Yuanzhao’s and Kūkai’s figures raises questions about Matsunaga’s thesis (which is cited without comment by Sanderson [2009: 129, n. 300], whereas Slouber [2012: 83] is more critical of Matsunaga’s reasoning). This is perhaps a subject deserving further investigation. 8.  Jingangfeng louge yiqie yuqie yuqi jing 金剛峯樓閣一切 瑜伽瑜祇經 (T 867.269b23–28) and Budong shizhe tuoluoni mimi fa 不動使者陀羅尼祕密法 (T 1202.24b15–21). The attribution of the former to Vajrabodhi is problematic. Cf. Strickmann 2002: 206–8. 9.  T 2061.711c6–18. Cf. Chou 1945: 278–79. 10.  On āveśa as employed during initiation in the Sarva­ tathāgatatattvasaṅgraha, see Sanderson 2009: 132–39. For an English translation of the corresponding section in Amoghavajra’s translation of the Sarvatathāgatatat­ tvasaṅgraha (T 865.218a29–c9), see Giebel 2001: 76–78. On examples of spirit possession in other texts translated by Amoghavajra, see Strickmann 2002: 233–37. 11.  On the destination and objective of Amoghavajra’s journey see, e.g., Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 44–47.

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may have been brought to China via Central Asia, possibly from Kashmir. Moving on to past research on The Āveśa Rite, the most detailed treatment is probably that by Michel Strickmann (2002: 229–32), who translates or paraphrases the entire text. Excerpts had been earlier translated in French in the Hôbôgirin (I: 7), and it is also mentioned by Edward Davis (2001: 125) in his discussion of Tang-dynasty precedents for the use of child mediums. As noted above, Alexis Sanderson cites it, with a summary of its content, in the context of the assimilation of the Śaiva Kaula practice of ‘possession’ in the Sarvatathāgatatat­ tvasaṅgraha, although it is debatable to what extent practices involving possession can be regarded as specifically Śaiva or even Tantric. On the subject of oracular possession and the use of child mediums in Esoteric or Tantric Buddhism, a useful summary is provided by James Robson (2011), and on the broader Indian context reference should be made to Frederick Smith’s comprehensive study.12 A perusal of the above studies would suggest that The Āveśa Rite has until now attracted the attention of scholars almost exclusively on account of its description of spirit possession, specifically oracular possession. But in view of the fact that the main rite described in the text involves Garuḍa and is referred to as ‘the most excellent among all Garuḍa rites’, there is perhaps also a need to consider it as a Gāruḍic text in a broad sense of the term, even though it does not deal with what Michael Slouber has called ‘Gāruḍa Medicine’, the primary concern of the Gāruḍatantras.13 In this connection it is worth noting the inclusion in the Chinese canon of the Jialouluo ji zhutian miyan jing 迦樓羅及諸天 密言經 (Scripture of Mantras of Garuḍa and Gods [T 1278]), which is essentially a manual of Gāruḍic medicine, primarily the treatment of snakebites, that was translated, or perhaps compiled, by ‘the venerable (bhadanta) *Prajñābala (Boreli 般若力), a Trepiṭaka from the land of Kashmir’, possibly in 12.  See Smith 2006; on Chinese sources in particular, see ibid.: 435–40, 444–48. 13.  See Slouber 2012. In a personal communication (21 April 2014) Michael Slouber informed me that he no longer uses the phrase ‘Gāruḍa Medicine’ and now prefers to call it just Gāruḍam or Gāruḍa Tantra and not draw any artificial lines between its medical and magical aspects.

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A Śaiva Text in Chinese Garb? the latter part of the 8th century.14 This means that, along with the ‘Garuḍapaṭalaparivarta’, three texts pertaining to Garuḍa were translated into Chinese during roughly the same period, although it is not clear whether this was a mere coincidence or some other factors were at play. Lastly, while I do not feel competent to comment in detail on the content of The Āveśa Rite, it can at least be noted that Maheśvara (or Rudra, as he is referred to in three of the mantras), who dispenses the teachings of The Āveśa Rite, is here not presented in his normal role in Esoteric Buddhist scriptures, namely, as the pre-eminent of evil and deluded beings who is vanquished by Vajrapāṇi, most notably in the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha, or by Heruka in some later scriptures, to become a protector of Buddhism.15 This fact alone should suffice to show that our text is not Buddhist in either its inspiration or provenance, and along with the Jialouluo ji zhutian miyan jing it is perhaps one of the least ‘Buddhist’ texts in the entire esoteric section of the Taishō canon. The pivotal role played 14.  Although the Jialouluo ji zhutian miyan jing is not mentioned in any Chinese catalogues and the base text for the Taishō edition is a Japanese manuscript copied in 1173 (Jōan 承安 3), a ‘Trepiṭaka from Kashmir’ named  *Prajñābala (Zhu 2003 has ‘Banruoli, Prajñabhava?’) is mentioned in the biography of Huaidi 懷迪 in the Song gaoseng zhuan 宋高僧傳 (T 2061.720c23–28), according to which he arrived in China in 758 (Qianyuan 乾元 1) together with two other Trepiṭakas, one from central India and the other also from Kashmir. If we assume that this *Prajñābala is the same person as the translator of the Jialouluo ji zhutian miyan jing, then this text would have been translated during roughly the same period as our Āveśa Rite and the aforementioned ‘Garuḍapaṭalaparivarta’, although it has also been suggested that *Prajñābala who translated the Jialouluo ji zhutian miyan jing was the same person as the well­-known translator Prajña/Prajnā (733/734–ca. 810) (for details see Yoritomi 1979: 32–33). While a detailed examination of the Jialouluo ji zhutian miyan jing must await another occasion, it can be pointed out that it includes permutations of the Vipati mantra (kṣipa oṁ svāhā), the most important Gāruḍa mantra, evidence for which, according to Slouber (2012: 101), is weak before the 10th century (oṁ kṣipa svāhā oṁ pakṣi svāhā [T 1278.332a9–10], which is treated as a single mantra, and oṁ pakṣi svāhā [338b29]). If the Jialouluo ji zhutian miyan jing does indeed date from the latter part of the 8th century, then it may contain valuable material for tracing the evolution of the Gāruḍatantras. 15.  See, e.g., Iyanaga 1985; Davidson 1991.

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by Maheśvara/Rudra as both expositor of the text’s teachings and as object of the practitioner’s invocations, along with the text’s links with Gāruḍic lore, would seem to suggest that it is indeed a Śaiva text in Chinese garb. In the following translation, the page and register of the Taishō edition have been inserted in square brackets. Tentative translations of the mantras have been added in parentheses; ellipses indicate word(s) the meaning of which is uncertain.

translation The Āveśa Rite Explained by the God Maheśvara Which Swiftly Establishes Its Efficacy Respectfully translated at Imperial Command by Bukong (Amogha[vajra]), a Trepiṭaka and śramaṇa of Daxingshan Monastery who was a Commander Ceremonially Equal to the Three Monitoring Offices, a [Lord] Specially Advanced, Probationary Chief Minister of the Court of State Ceremonial, and Duke of the Kingdom of Su with a fief of three thousand households, upon whom was bestowed the purple [robe], and who was posthumously appointed Minister of Works, posthumously named Dajianzheng,16 and titled Daguangzhi (Great and Extensive Wisdom). At that time the god Nārāyaṇa was on the summit of Mount Gandhamādana.17 He made a request of Maheśvara in Īśvara’s palace,18 making 16.  The posthumous name conferred on Amoghavajra by the emperor Daizong 代宗 was Dabianzheng 大辨正 (T 2120.848a10), not Dajianzheng 大鑒正, but in translations attributed to Amoghavajra his posthumous name, when mentioned, is generally given as Dajianzheng. It is conceivable that this was due to a taboo associated with the character bian 辨, but I have not come across any discussion of this anomaly. 17.  Nārāyaṇa is usually equated with Viṣṇu, as whose mount Garuḍa is perhaps best known, but according to Slouber (personal communication) it is extremely unusual in Śaiva Gāruḍatantras for Garuḍa to be associated with Viṣṇu, who is, moreover, here made to appear incompetent. 18.  Vv.ll. ‘his palace’ (自宮) for ‘Īśvara’s palace’ (自在宮). If qing 請 is taken in the sense of ‘to invite’ rather than

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offerings, bowing down at his feet, and saying to [days].21 Bathe [the children], rub unguent all over Maheśvara, ‘The messenger Garuḍa whom I ride is their bodies, dress them in clean clothes, and have able to accomplish things sought by worldlings but them hold in their mouths camphor and cardamom. is unable to do so quickly. I but beg you, O Great ‘The incantator sits facing east. In front of him he God (Mahādeva), to explain for future sentient smears a small altar, about one cubit in size,22 with beings the āveśa rite which swiftly establishes its white sandalwood paste. He has [one of] the girls and [boys] stand on the altar, scatters flowers in efficacy.’19 Thereupon Maheśvara addressed Nārāyaṇa, front of the girl, and sets down a vessel23 of argha saying, ‘You should listen attentively as I expound (water). Taking some Parthian incense (benzoin), for you the messenger’s rite of swift accomplishment. One is able to perform [thereby the rites for] ‘year star’ does indeed refer to Jupiter, but it is uncertain the cessation of calamities (śāntika), the increase whether this is what is meant by suisu. In the Hôbôgirin of benefits (pauṣṭika), subjugation (abhicāraka), (I: 7b) it is equated with Abhijit. and [the gaining of] respect and love (vaśīkaraṇa). 21.  Strickmann (2002: 230) translates ‘a day on which Again, one can send [the messenger] to and from sweet dew has fallen’ and goes on to say that ‘“sweet dew” the realm of Yama and is able to know of future was a long-standing Chinese portent of greatest auspiciousness’. But, as he also mentions, ganlu 甘露 ‘sweet good and evil, fortune and misfortune, success dew’ was used to translate Sanskrit amṛta, especially in and failure, irregularities in droughts and floods, its meaning of ‘nectar’, and here it probably corresponds aggression by neighbouring countries, rebellions to amṛta in the sense of various conjunctions of planets by wicked persons, and various favourable and supposed to confer long life. In this connection it is worth noting the following passage in the Wenshushili pusa ji unfavourable omens. ‘If you wish to know future events, you should zhuxian suoshuo jixiong shiri shan’e suyao jing 文殊師利 菩薩及諸仙所說吉凶時日善惡宿曜經, a manual on Indian select four or five (virgin) boys or (virgin) girls, astrology, which provides a definition of ‘nectar days’ seven or eight years of age, their bodies free of scars (T 1299.398b21–26): and moles, and intelligent and astute. First, make When the moon and [the lunar mansion] Cross Board them eat plain [vegetarian] food for seven days or (Hastā) meet on a day governed by the Sun, when the alternatively for three days. moon and [the lunar mansion] Net (Rohiṇī) meet ‘Whenever you wish to perform the rite, you on a day governed by the Moon, when the moon and [the lunar mansion] Tail (Mūlā) meet on a day should do so on an auspicious day, governed either governed by Mars, when the moon and [the lunar by the lunar mansion Ghost (Puṣya) or the lunar mansion] Willow (Aśleṣā) meet on a day governed mansion Year;20 best of all is a day governed by nectar ‘to request’, this passage could perhaps be translated (in accordance with the variae lectiones): ‘He invited Maheśvara to his palace.’ But it is perhaps more reasonable to suppose that Nārāyaṇa visited Maheśvara rather than vice versa. The position of Maheśvara as a divinatory deity is noted by Smith (2006: 434). 19.  The Sanskrit equivalent of the phrase ‘swiftly establishes its efficacy’ (suji liyan 速疾立驗), used also in the title of our text but not attested anywhere else in Chinese translations of Indian texts, is quite possibly sadyaḥpratya­yakāraka, which occurs, e.g., in the Kubji­k āmatatantra (4.1, 4.3, 5.100), Kriyākālaguṇottara (1.3), and Mālinīvijayottaratantra (11.22, 21.20). That Gāruḍatantras offer instant proof of the efficacy of mantras is regarded as one of their hallmarks, on which see Slouber 2012: 86ff. 20.  Suisu 歳宿. Strickmann (2002: 230) interprets this as the lunar mansion ‘Year Star’ (Jupiter). Suixing 歳星

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by Mercury, when the moon and [the lunar mansion] Ghost (Puṣya) meet on a day governed by Jupiter, when the moon and [the lunar mansion] Room (Anurādhā) meet on a day governed by Venus, and when the moon and [the lunar mansion Seven] Stars (Maghā) meet on a day governed by Saturn—the above are called ‘nectar (*amṛta) days’. They are very auspicious and are suitable for coronations, receiving initiation rites, constructing temple buildings, as well as receiving the precepts, studying scriptural doctrine, and leaving home to cultivate the path. They are propitious for everything.

22.  Strickmann (2002: 230) makes the size of the ‘small ritual area’ ‘perhaps a yard square’. But zhou 肘 ‘elbow’ is a standard translation for hasta as a measure of length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, and it is so rendered in the Hôbôgirin (coudée; I: 7b). Thus, while Strickmann has all the children stand in the ritual area, I have assumed that there would be room for only one of them. 23.  Vv.ll. Base text has ‘censer’.

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A Śaiva Text in Chinese Garb? he empowers it seven times with the mantra of the great seal (mahāmudrā),24 lights it, and has the girl fumigate her hands with it. Then he takes some red flowers, empowers them seven times, and places them in the girl’s palms, whereupon she covers her face with her hands. The incantator then binds the great seal: it is formed by clasping the two hands together [with the fingers] interlocking on the outside, the left pressing against the right, and leaving the palm hollow. [329b] With this seal he empowers five places on his own person, namely, the forehead, right shoulder, left shoulder, heart, and throat. He disperses the seal on the crown of his head and then recites [this] mantra: namo bhagavati mahāmudre kaṭalaśi­ khe triśire trilocani īśāni paśupate svāhā (Homage! O Blessed One! great seal! you who are …,25 three-headed, and threeeyed! Īśānī! Paśupati! All hail!) ‘Then he rests this seal on the crown of the girl’s head and visualizes on top of her head the radiance of a blazing circle of fire (agnimaṇḍala), triangular and red in colour, and recites the mantra seven times. The fire circle mantra is: oṁ agni śikhe svāhā (oṁ, fire on the topknot.26 All hail!) ‘Then he rests this seal on the girl’s mouth and visualizes inside her mouth a circle of water 24. Although mahāmudrā became an important term in later Tantric Buddhism with several meanings, referring in particular to a state of enlightened awareness, here it refers simply to a specific hand gesture (mudrā), described below. It may be noted that virtually identical descriptions of a mahāmudrā appear in the Gāruḍic Jialouluo ji zhutian miyan jing (T 1278.334a12–13, 337a7–8). 25.  The meaning of kaṭala (or possibly kaṭara or a variation thereof with lengthened vowels) is uncertain. 26.  Or, if read agniśikhe, ‘O flame (or: you who have a point like fire)!’ I have provisionally read agni and śikhe separately (and taken śikhe as an example of the common Middle Indic phenomenon of a masculine ending with a feminine noun) on the assumption that the mantra is indicating the part of the girl’s body that the practitioner is sanctifying (cf. nn. 27, 30).

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(vārimaṇḍala), white in colour and shaped like a half-moon, and recites the mantra seven times. The mantra is: oṁ jala cūḍāmaṇi27 svāhā (oṁ, water [in] the crest-jewel! All hail!) ‘Next, he should move the seal and rest it on her heart, visualizing a circle of earth (pṛthivīmaṇḍala), square in shape and yellow in colour, and reciting [the mantra] seven times. The mantra is: oṁ mahābala parākrama28 svāhā (oṁ, O you who are very strong and courageous! All Hail!) ‘Next, he should move the seal and rest it on her navel, visualizing a circle of wind (vāyumaṇḍa­ la), circular in shape and black in colour, and reciting [the mantra] seven times. The mantra is: oṁ vinatākulana[n]da svāhā (oṁ, O joy of Vinatā’s family!29 All Hail!) ‘Next, he should empower both her legs with the great seal, visualizing Garuḍa and reciting the mantra: oṁ pakṣirāja pada svāhā (oṁ, king of birds [i.e., Garuḍa] [at] the feet!30 All hail!) 27.  Text reads jalacurṇāmaṇi, possibly for jala­ cūrṇamaṇi ‘jewel ground by water’. I have provisionally adopted the reading cūḍāmaṇi (suggested to me by Andrea Acri) and separated jala and cūḍāmaṇi on the assumption that the mantra is indicating the part of the girl’s body that the practitioner is sanctifying (cf. nn. 26, 30). 28.  Text reads parakrama, which could also be interpreted as prakrama if the interlinear gloss specifying a conjunct is assumed to have been omitted. 29.  Vinatā is the name of Garuḍa’s mother. The same phrase (with °naḍa for °na[n]da) occurs also in a mantra for donning armour in the aforementioned Jialouluo ji zhutian miyan jing: namo tattvasuvarṇa­pakṣamahāteja vinatākulanaḍa rakṣa rakṣa mahābala svāhā (T 1278.336c5–7). Phrases similar to this, indicating that Garuḍa is a joy to his mother or her family, are common epithets of Garuḍa (e.g., vinatānan­ da[kara], vinatānandana, vinatākulanandana). 30.  Or, if read pakṣirājapada, ‘O feet of the king of birds!’

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‘Next, he should recite the armour mantra with the great seal to empower the girl, going around her entire body. [330a] The mantra is: oṁ kavaca ma[hā]bhūtādhipate svāhā (oṁ, O armour! Great overlord of beings!31 All hail!) ‘The practitioner should next turn himself into the god Maheśvara. He has three eyes, on his head there is a crown decorated with strings of jewels, and on top of the crown on his head are a Buddha and a half-moon; his throat is blue, and he has eighteen arms, holding in his hands various weapons; he has a dragon (nāga) for a girdle32 tied together at the ends, and he also has a blood-smeared elephant-hide. Having [thus] visualized himself in an instant, [the practitioner] should next protect the girl’s one hundred and eight life-nodes33 with the great seal. The mantra is: oṁ pṛthivyapastejovāyurākāśam34 (oṁ, earth, water, fire, wind, and ether) ‘Binding the great seal and reciting [this] mantra, he empowers clockwise her entire body, thereby Here too I have provisionally separated pakṣirāja and pada on the assumption that the mantra is indicating the part of the girl’s body that the practitioner is sanctifying (cf. fns. 26, 27). 31.  ‘Great overlord of beings’ (mahābhūtādhipati) is a common epithet of Śiva in the Bhūtatantras (Slouber, personal communication). 32.  Shenxian 紳線. If one adopts the variant reading shenxian 神線 ‘sacred thread’, this could possibly refer to the yajñopavīta. 33.  This and the second occurrence immediately below appear to be the only instantiations of the term mingjie 命節 in Chinese translations of Buddhist texts. It probably refers to marman, lethal or vulnerable points on the body, of which there are, according to Vāgbhaṭa’s Aṣṭāṅgahṛdaya, 107; cf. Wujastyk 2003: 236–44. In classical Āyurvedic acupuncture, there are said to be traditionally 108 major, or original, marman and 160–220 minor marman. The Japanese scholar-monk Chōen 長宴 (1016–81) speculated that the term in question might correspond to hyakue (Ch. baihui) 百會, a point on the top of the head used in acupuncture and moxibustion (T 2408.960a), but this is unlikely. 34.  Text reads pṛthivyaṭatajavāyurakaśam (v.l. pṛthi­v y­aṭtaja° = pṛthivyaptejo°). I am indebted to

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protecting the one hundred and eight kinds of life-nodes. ‘Next, again with the great seal and mantra, he empowers flowers, incense, argha, and so on. Next, again with the great seal and mantra, he binds the realms in the ten directions. Then he should face the girl and recite the mantra of Maheśvara’s messenger: ḷ[ṁ]35 ceṭaka matanāga viṣada[r]paṇa samānagara vikramavilāsagati ḷ[ṁ] ceṭaka pratipātraṃ cala cala cali cali36 paṇa paṇa paṇi paṇi panni panni kaṭṭi kaṭṭi āviśa āviśa ḷ[ṁ] ceṭaka rudro ’jñāpayati svāhā (ḷ[ṁ], O servant! esteemed nāga!37 you who are arrogant with venom! you who have homogenous venom! you who have a valiant and playful manner! ḷ[ṁ], O servant! Tremble, tremble in each vessel!  …! Enter, enter! ḷ[ṁ], O servant, Rudra commands [you]! All hail!) ‘He should recite this mantra seven times, whereupon the girl will tremble. Know that the Holy One has entered her body. Then he further snaps his fingers and recites the mantra [again]. If there is no apparent effect, he next recites the mantra for coercing the messenger: ḷ[ṁ] ḷ[ṁ] yamalohitasurāsurapūjita hana hana brahmānaṇina truṇi truṇi moṇi moṇi panni panni kaṭṭi kaṭṭi āviśa āvi[330b]śa ḷ[ṁ] ceṭaka rudro ’jñāpayati svāhā (ḷ[ṁ] ḷ[ṁ], O you who are worshipped by Yama, lohitas, gods, and demi-gods!38 Iain Sinclair for assistance in deciphering this somewhat corrupt transliteration. On the use of r as an internal sandhi consonant in vāyurākāśam (instead of vāyvākāśam), see, e.g., Pischel 1900: §353. 35.  Li 唎. Here and below uncertain; alternatively, possibly ṛ[ṁ]. 36.  Text reads praripātraṁ cala cala cali cali (vv. ll. cara cara cari cari). 37.  Or possibly ‘furious nāga’ if matanāga is taken as an error for mattanāga. 38.  Both the reconstruction and translation are uncertain. In the Chinese transliteration the words read and are

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A Śaiva Text in Chinese Garb? Strike, strike! …! Enter, enter! ḷ[ṁ], O servant, Rudra commands [you]! All hail!) ‘If he recites this mantra, there will most certainly be a swift effect in response, and he may ask about future good and evil and all favourable and unfavourable omens. If [the messenger] does not speak [through the girl], or speaks slowly, then he binds the staff seal (daṇḍamudrā): the two hands are clasped together, the two ring fingers are intercrossed outwards, the two middle fingers are raised side by side, the two forefingers are each hooked over the tips of the ring fingers, and the two thumbs each press down on the middle [fingers], intercrossed. Recite the mantra: oṁ mudgara turu turu svāhā (oṁ, O hammer! Hurry, hurry! All hail!)39 ‘Bind this staff seal, and then when you have finished asking about various matters, empower the argha with the great seal and mantra, and sprinkle it three times on the girl’s face, whereupon she will be released. ‘This messenger’s mantra should have been recited ten thousand times previously, and then the rite will be successful, that is, you will see him come in person. You must offer him argha and make your wish: that you wish to employ the Holy One in all places and at all times to attend to everything. He will then vanish and be no longer visible. Thereafter, when you wish to employ him, mark out a small altar, place on it incense, flowers, food, and drink, and recite the mantra one hundred and eight times, whereupon he will appear in person. Then tell him to fetch the elixir of longevity or wish-fulfilling divided as follows: ḷ[ṁ]ḷ[ṁ]ya malohitā (maruhitā, marohitā?) surasurā pujita. 39.  As well as occurring in the Gāruḍic Kriyākālaguṇot­ tara (available from http://www.muktabodha.org; NGMPP B 25/32, 125a), the phrase turu turu also appears in numerous Buddhist mantras, and in the case of the mantra oṁ turu turu hūṁ, used for dispatching a carriage to convey the deity to the ritual site in invocation rites, Toganoo Shōun (1935: 302) interprets it as a variant of tara tara in the sense of ‘run (or operate) [the carriage]!’ presumably deriving from √tṝ. I have tentatively assumed that it is related to √tur ‘to hurry, press forwards’.

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gem from the dragon palace, or dispatch him to the place of King Yama to prolong your life and increase your life span, or dispatch him [to heaven] above to fetch wondrous nectar, or dispatch him to other countries to inquire about their good and bad points. He can also help an army to destroy its enemies. Employ him in various ways, and he will be able to accomplish everything. ‘This rite is the most excellent among all Garuḍa rites, secret and difficult to obtain. You should select a Dharma-vessel worthy of being initiated and transmit it to him. If you transmit it to someone who is not a [suitable] vessel, then it will harm him and thereafter the rite will not work [for you either]. Therefore it must be kept most secret and must not be transmitted recklessly.40 ‘The garuḍa-dhāraṇī of Maheśvara is: namo bhagavate rudrāya chinnaka­ pālāya41 sarvavinayaṅkarāya sarva­ kar­ma­sādhanāya sarvavaśīkaraṇāya sarva­śatruvināśanāya oṁ kapālacit­ aṃ chin­­nakapālabhūtaṃ rudro ’jñā­ payati svāhā (Homage to the Lord Rudra, whose head has been severed and who makes all rules, accomplishes all deeds, exercises control over everything, and destroys all enemies! oṁ, him who is covered with skulls and whose head has been severed, Rudra commands.42 All hail!) ‘To subjugate someone [with] this dhāraṇī take a red banana leaf, draw that person [on it], inscribe 40.  This passage is quoted in the Hishū kyōsō shō 祕宗教 相鈔 (completed in 1139) by Chōyo 重誉 in a discussion of the requirements for initiation (T 2441.645b12–16). 41.  I have found no other attestations of chinnakapāla, but it is presumably a synonym for chinnamastaka ‘decapitated’ (assuming that kapāla may, like mastaka, sometimes mean ‘head’ rather than just ‘skull’), which appears most famously in the name of the Hindu deity Chinnamastakā (or Chinnamastā), who holds her own severed head in one hand and a knife in the other; see, e.g., Kinsley 1997: 144–66. However, I am not aware of any references to Rudra’s self-decapitation. 42. Since chinnakapāla would appear to be an epithet of Rudra, perhaps the text ought to be emended to kapālacitaś chinnakapālabhūto and translated ‘Rudra, who is covered with skulls and whose head has been severed, commands’.

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his name on the [figure’s] heart, [330c] recite the dhāraṇī one hundred and eight times, and then bury it in cow dung, whereupon he will be subjugated. ‘If you wish to make foolish people43 hate each other, draw the figures of the man and the woman on a tāla (palm) leaf, inscribe their names back to back, take a cord to tie it, take the hairs of rats and wolves, the feathers of pheasants, and the discarded skins of snakes, burn them, fumigate [the leaf], recite the dhāraṇī one hundred and eight times, place it inside a kapāla (skull), and then bury it in charnel grounds, whereupon they will hate each other. If you remove [the leaf], they will revert to their former state. ‘If you [wish to] make people love each other, then draw the figures of the husband [and wife?]44 on a tāla leaf, inscribe their names merged together, take a white cord to tie it, take sparrows’ feathers and snakes’ skins, burn them, fumigate [the leaf], and recite the dhāraṇī one hundred and eight times, whereupon they will love each other. ‘Another rite: if you wish to make people fight each other, on the skin of a tiger45 or on oxhide draw two people grabbing each other’s hair, inscribe their names, take a cord to tie it, fumigate it over a fire, 43.  Shuzi 竪子, meaning ‘child’ or, as a term of abuse, ‘imbecile’. It is thus similar in meaning to bāla, but was seldom used in Chinese translations of Buddhist texts. Interestingly, apart from two further occurrences below, it is used twice in the very succinct instructions for rites suggestive of those described more fully here and below that appear at the end of the Chinese translation of the ‘Garuḍapaṭalaparivarta’ (T 1276.329a22, 24), in the section that has no parallel in the Sanskrit text of the MMK. 44.  V.l. ‘that person / those people’. 45.  Dachong 大虫 (or 大蟲). The use of dachong (literally, ‘large insect’) in the sense of ‘tiger’ can be seen in the term dachong rou 大蟲肉, used in the Chinese translation of the ‘Garuḍapaṭalaparivarta’ as the equivalent of vyāghramāṁsa ‘tiger flesh’ (T 1276.328b8–9 = MMK 360.13). But it should be noted that the same term dachong rou 大虫肉 (or 大蟲肉) is also used in the same text as the equivalent of mahāmāṁsa ‘great (i.e., human) flesh’ (T 1276.328a13–14 = MMK 360.3; 328b10 = MMK 360.13; 328c2 = MMK 360.19), on which see Matsunaga 1980: 323; 1985: 890. Matsunaga cites this use of the term ‘meat of large insects’ (dachong rou) as evidence for his thesis that the latter part of the Chinese translation of the ‘Garuḍapaṭalaparivarta’ was not translated by Amoghavajra and is a later accretion (cf. n. 7).

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and bury it under a mortar,46 whereupon they will fight each other daily. If you remove [the leaf], they will stop [fighting]. ‘Another rite: if you wish to subjugate someone, take a palm leaf, draw the person’s figure on it, inscribe his name, recite the dhāraṇī one hundred and eight times, and then bury it under his bed, whereupon you will succeed in subjugating him. ‘Another rite: to make someone pass blood in his urine, take a tāla leaf, draw that person, inscribe his name, take a nail, recite the dhāraṇī one hundred and eight times [over it], and nail [the leaf] down for seven weeks, whereupon you can remove it. ‘Next, I shall explain a rite for eye ointment. If you [wish to] subjugate foolish people, take a snake’s head, gara (poison), añjana (collyrium), costus root, weevils,47 and two bees, on the fourteenth day of the dark [half-]month pound them to make powder, mix it with meat, and apply it in the corner of the eye. All foolish people will follow you, and those in heaven above will also come, not just those in the human realm.’ [331a] [Here ends] The Garuḍa Āveśa Rite Ex­ plained by the God Maheśvara Which Swiftly Es­ tablishes Its Efficacy in one roll.

Asian Language Sources Kriyākālaguṇottara: Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project ms. 3/392, reel no. B 25/32 (e-text by anonymous, Cat. No. M00278, accesible at http://www.muktabodha.org). Kubjikāmatatantra: Teun Goudriaan and Jan A. Schoterman, eds., The Kubjikāmatatantra: Ku­ lā­likāmnāya Version. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988. Mālinīvijayottaratantra: Madhusūdan Kaul Shāstrī, ed., Śrī Mālinīvijayottara Tantram. Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies 37. Srinagar: Research Department, Jammu and Kashmir State, 1922. Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa [MMK]: see Vaidya 1964. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō [T] 大正新修大藏經.

46.  Duijiu 碓臼. Strictly speaking, a mortar for hulling grain with a pestle worked by the foot. 47. Reading xiangjia 象甲 (vv.ll.) for xiejia 冩甲.

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Appendix A: The Names of Nāgabuddhi and Vajrabuddhi iain sinclair Attempting to understand the lives of South Asian remote from the Buddhist mainstream, namely Buddhists documented primarily in non-South the Rasaratnasamuccaya attributed to VāgbhaAsian sources can be a difficult enterprise, impeded ṭa (v. 1.4, ed. Bāpaṭa 1890: 1). The pseudonym by barriers of language that cause names to be *NāgajÒ āna adopted by Sundberg in Sundberg and obscured or simply reinvented. Leonard van der Giebel 2011: 179, n. 27 has no currency whatsoever Kuijp (2007: 1006) has recently argued that the in original Sanskrit texts, nor is it supported by original names of Longzhi 龍智 and Jingangzhi Tibetan sources. 金剛智 should now be understood as NāgabudAny assumption that Vajrabodhi/Vajradhi/Nāgabodhi and *Vajrabuddhi respectively. A (3) bud dhií s teacher Nāgabuddhi lived too early to root-and-branch investigation of these important have been familiar with the Guhyasamājatantra figures, whose lives lie at a confluence of Sanskritic, is untenable in the light of Tomabechií s (2008) Sinic, and Tibetan traditions of Tantric Buddhism, findings that date major developments in the while certainly desirable, is a task far beyond the exegesis of the Guhyasamāja to the mid 8th scope of the present Appendix. For now, the folcentury at the latest. Nāgabuddhi is reported to lowing observations may be offered: have been alive during Amoghavajraí s visit to Sri (1) The name Nāgabuddhi is attested in extant Lanka in the 740s (cf. Goble 2012: 262ñ63) and Sanskrit works reliably credited with Nāgabud- even later (cf. Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 133ñ dhi/Nāgabodhií s authorship: the Guhyasamāja- 34). According to Haiyun and others following maṇḍalopāyika-Viṁśatividhi (ë asyaiva Nāgabud- Amoghavajraí s tradition, Nāgabuddhi is supposed dhi[pādaiḥ]í , ed. Tanaka 2010: 688) and the Samā- to have lived for a hundred years (T 2081.783c25, jasādhanavyavastholī (ë kṛtir ācāryaNāgabuddhi- annotation). This claim of a very long lifespan pādā[nām]í , ed. Tanaka 2012: 73), etc. These two can be accepted even if exaggerated by one or two works correspond to the Dkyil í khor nyi shu pa decades. An individual born in the 640s or 650s (Sde dge 1810) and Rnam gzhag rim pa (Sde dge could have mastered the STTS in his youth, taught 1809) respectively, which are counted in a corpus the system in the late 7th century, and expounded of five works attributed to Kluí i blo or Kluí i byang the Guhyasamāja throughout the first half of the [chub] by Bu ston (van der Kuijp 2007: 1015, nos. 1 8th century. The report of Nāgabuddhií s advanced and 3). The two forms Kluí i blo (*Nāgabuddhi) or age has some credibility in that it originates in his Kluí i byang chub (*Nāgabodhi) are both found in own lifetime, among persons said to have known about equal measure in the Tibetan Bstan í gyur; him. In the more fragmented and fantastic milieu this no doubt reflects the diversity of readings of 12th-century Tantric Buddhism, by contrast, ë it is translated by the Tibetans. However, the name said that he [Nāgabuddhi] will live for two thousand Nāgabodhi has barely any currency in the extant yearsí (in the words of the Grub thob brgyad cu rtsa bzhií i lo rgyus, trans. Robson 1979: 235). Sanskritic tradition. (2) The Sanskrit source that gives the name Nāgabodhi, in a lineage of alchemists, is quite

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(4) It is apparently believed by some traditionalists that the Guhyasamāja (solely associated with

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Nāgabuddhií s oeuvre in the Sanskritic corpus) is fundamentally unconnected to the STTS (with which Nāgabuddhi is associated in East Asia)ó such that the Tibetan and Chinese teaching lineages are similarly unrelated. This is now unsupportable. By the middle of the 8th century both Tantras were part of a large Tantric corpus that is recognizably similar in the accounts of Amoghavajra (cf. Giebel 1995), in the Indo-Sinic tradition, and Śāntarakṣita (cf. Moriguchi 1993), in the Sanskritic tradition. Although different versions of the corpus are articulated in different transmissions, these varied corpora nonetheless share crucial similarities: eighteen constituent texts, or a very large size (e.g., ë 16,000í stanzas); a set core of texts, including one or both of the STTS or Guhyasamāja; and the classification of most or all texts as mahāyogatantra. An eighteenfold corpus is alluded to in the Sanskritic tradition with expressions such as aṣṭādaśaśatagranthaśrīSamāja (Nāropāí s Sekoddeśaṭīkā, ed. Sferra 2005: 68). Some exegetes familiar with the Guhyasamāja expressed the view that the STTS was its mūlatantra (see, e.g., Moriguchi 1993: 185).

it undoubtedly also, if secondarily, translates buddhi. See for example Hirakawaí s index to the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (T 1558, 1559): gauravādibuddhi 自黑等智, buddhyantara 別智, and other expressions translating buddhi with zhi 智 are attested (1977: 401, 415, 425). Under the headword zhi 智 in Hirakawaí s ChineseñSanskrit dictionary (1997: 605ñ7, ß 1626) there is, further, buddhyabhāva 智即無, buddhivadha 智害, buddhiśabdārcis 智 聲光 etc. (2) The Sanskrit name of Jingangzhi was recorded as *Vajra-buddhi or -bodhi in Chinese transcription during his lifetime. In the year 730, in the well-known Kaiyuan shijiao lu 開元釋教錄, his name is transcribed as Variluo-puti 跋日羅菩 提 (T 2154.571b27), EMC pronunciation -*bəkdhei. This catalogue was widely read; it was probably the source for Haiyun, who gives the similarlooking gloss *VajrajÒ āna < Furí luojí niangnan 嚩曰囉二合吉孃二合曩 (T 2081.786b19, copied with inserted Siddhamātṛkā in T 2706.504b15ñ16). In all likelihood these semi-learned ë correctionsí drew on the crude lexicographical material used by Tantric Buddhists of the Tang (e.g., T 2134.1217c29). These same sources may have informed the writing of the 9th-century portrait inscriptions discussed by Sundberg in Sundberg and Giebel (2011: 179, n. 27). In the 9th century there seems to have been a fad among Chinese Tantric monks to adopt fanciful back-Sanskritizations of monastic names. *Arthanarta 阿囉他捺哩荼, the alias of Yicao 義操, is an example. Likewise, Chen (2013: 129ñ30) has identified *PrajÒ ācakra 般若斫迦, the pseudonym of Zhihuilun 智慧輪 (d. 879), as ë very likely Chineseí in ethnicity.

(5) The tradition of Nāgabuddhií s tremendous longevity and his studentship under Nāgārjuna, conveyed in both Chinese and Tibetan lineage histories, is widespread in the Sanskritic tradition. It reached beyond Tantric Buddhism and into alchemical works such as the aforementioned Vāgbhaṭaí s Rasaratnasamuccaya 1.4 (ed. Bāpaṭa 1890: 1). Nāgabuddhií s fame as an adept extended even to late non-Buddhist scripture such as Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa III 19.75 (ed. Ksẹmarāja Śrīkrṣṇạdāsa 1935: 221r) et al. It is unlikely that this South Asian ë common knowledgeí about It so happens that Vajrabuddhi is the Nāgabuddhií s age refers to a Nāgabuddhi distinct (3) initiatory name of the Bodhisattva Vajratīkṣṇa from either the Tibetan or Chinese traditionó ë prima facie incredibleí , in van der Kuijpí s words in the STTS: tataḥ sarvatathāgatair ë Vajrabuddhir Vajrabuddhir!í iti vajranāmābhiṣekeṇābhiṣiktaḥ (ed. (2007: 1008). Horiuchi 1983 I: 60 ß 99). This passage was of course known to Jingangzhi, whose translation here As for Vajrabodhi/Vajrabuddhi: employed the normal Chinese rendition of buddhi, (1) Regarding the old back-translation of jue 覺 (T 866.231c5ñ6); Amoghavajraí s translation Jingangzhi as *Vajrabodhi, van der Kuijp rightly here preferred huÏ 慧 (T 865.211c1ñ3). It may be points out that zhÏ 智 usually never translates that Vajrabuddhi received his name after identibodhi (2007: 1006). Although jÒ āna is by far fying with Vajratīkṣṇa during initiation. This the most common word translated by zhi 智, possibility seems especially compelling in view of

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391

work credibly attributed to Nāgabuddhi (email, Kimiaki Tanaka, June 2014); but, as Godakumbura implies, the Tantric Buddhist author is the only person named Nāgabodhi/Nāgabuddhi to whom it may be credited. Secondly, one Vajirabuddhi wrote a subcommentary on the Pali Vinaya, the Anugaṇṭhipada, some time after Buddhaghoṣaí s Samantapāsādikā. Internal features of this subcommentary locate its author in South India, as opposed to Sri Lanka, and date it to between the 7th and 9th centuries, according to Petra KiefferP¸ lz (2013). This approximate time and place (4) Finally, there is a previously unremarked is consistent with Vajrabuddhií s early activity. connection between persons called Nāgabuddhi Although Vajrabuddhi seems to have worked and Vajrabuddhi in the exegetical literature sur- only with Sanskrit texts in China, Kieffer-P¸ lz has rounding Buddhaghoṣa. Tenuous though this determined that the author of the Anugaṇṭhipada connection may be, it is enticing enough to ë was familiar with Sanskrit texts and capable of mention here with the aim of stimulating further translating them into Pālií (2009: 145, n. 8). Such investigation. First, a Sanskrit verse attributed erudition indeed seems to be the work of a monk to a Nāgabodhi-sthavira is quoted in the 13th- who ë for six years Ö studied the vinaya of the century Viśuddhimārgasanne (-sannaya?), as was Mahāyāna and Hīnayānaí (六年學大小乘律, T noticed by Godakumbura (1943: 91). This verse 2157.875b6; cf. trans. Sundberg and Giebel 2011: has not been traced in any Sanskrit or Tibetan 134), as Vajrabuddhi is said to have done.

the fact that Vajratīkṣṇa is the manifestation of MaÒ juśrī in the STTS. It was, after all, Vajrabuddhií s ë sincere vow to go to the land of China to pay his respects to MaÒ juśrī and spread the Buddhist dharmaí (Sundberg and Giebel 2011: 138); and likewise Vajrabuddhií s chief disciple Amoghavajra sought to enshrine MaÒ juśrī on Mount Wutai 五 台山 ë as the preeminent seat of Imperial Buddhism and its inextricable relationship to Esoteric Buddhist practice in the Tang Dynastyí (Goble 2012: 253).

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Appendix B: Notes on the Alleged Reading vālaputra on the Pikatan Funeral Stele jeffr ey r. su ndberg In another venue (Sundberg 2009: 310, n. 45), I have written of my inability to confirm de Casparis’ (1956: 312) published reading of the word vālaputra on the Indonesian National Museum’s inscription D28, commonly known as ‘Śivagṛha’, the ad 856 funereal stele of King Pikatan. Because his reading stands at the basis of a nexus de Casparis’ claims about the history of the Ratu Boko plateau and his interpretation of an end to Buddhist Śailendra rule in Java, it is worth some energy to provide a minute analysis for those interested specialists who read Kawi. My notes on my original observations on are no longer available to me, but I can offer an analysis de novo to refute de Casparis’ reading thanks to an image of the pertinent section of the stone which was kindly furnished by Andrea Acri. The reading of the first six akṣaras of line 10 (marked by the red circle on the photograph) per de Casparis (1956: 312) is ‘hī vā la pu tra //’. In order to register my comments and objections­—which are by no means as skillful or nuanced as I would have wished because I have not practised reading the script in over a decade—to most of de Casparis’ transliteration, I have imposed Roman letters on to the photograph and will take up the pertinent features of the stone in turn. (A) The concentric arcs to the right of the ‘A’ must be the elements that de Casparis reports as a ha, a character which in Kawi assumes the serpentine form ഗ. The proper form is obviously lacking on the stone.

than a subscripted ga from the line above (nu­mer­ ous examples of such an open form exist on the ad 792 inscription of Mañju­śrīgṛha), there is no indication of a vowel-lengthening element. (For ref­erence to how the i-vowel is lengthened in Mañjuśrīgṛha, see the twenty-first akṣara of line 7). (C) Below this letter must be the akṣara read by de Casparis as vā. The leftmost margins seem­ ingly originate very close to the terminus of the concentric arcs described in B, and there is some rather clear structural element at the right which seemingly does signify the vowel-lengthening stroke. Un­for­tunately for the reading that de Cas-­ paris proposes, there is seemingly intact stone to the right of the leftmost curvature, and seemingly a solid chisel stroke at the margin of the lower left which seems to emphatically open up the primary character. The pronounced inflection point chiseled on the lower horizontal limb seems mirrored by one on the upper limb as well. (According to Andrea Acri [email dated 27 December 2015], the sequence of akṣaras represented here may be bā). (D) The element of the akṣara to the lower left does indeed seem to be an element denoting a vowel-lengthening and is possibly to be com­pre­ hended by being interpreted in conjunction with the concentric arcs de­scribed in A.

(E) Above this letter lies the akṣara that de Casparis proposes to read as la, the Kawi form of which is the reflection (taken either vertically or horizontally) of the ha. To achieve his reading, (B) De Casparis reads a long vowel ī. While it de Casparis ignored several features of the stone, is not out of the question that the open semi­cir­­ including a serif at the apex and the seemingly cle does indeed represent a superscript i rather intentional occlusion of what should be the left

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Fig. 1: The first characters on lines 9, 10, and 11 of the ‘Śivagṛha’ funereal stele of Rakai Pikatan. (Photo courtesy of Andrea Acri)

side of de Casparis’ la, forming an irregular circle reminiscent of some instances of ca or even a lumpy va. (F) Below this character lies a vertically de­ scending element which was capped by a serif and seemingly embellished with a medial hori­zontal chisel stroke, a lithographic tech­nique used on, inter alia, the Mañjuśrīgṛha as an aid to clearly identify the akṣara. This line bends leftward as it descends, and is possibly conjoined with the oblong circle at a sharp angle which approaches 120° rather than the fluid spline dictated by the canonical form of the la. While more study of the junction of the akṣara on the stone is required, it is not out of the question that the akṣara lying directly under F is a ra.

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fig­ (G) While this character is seriously dis­ ured, the serif that appears underneath the G as well as the upward-facing line to the left seems to convincingly mark this akṣara as a pa, and there are two serif-like engravings below which are candidates for a very short u marker. (H) The tra to the upper left and the // stropheclosing marks to the upper right of the H are unobjectionable readings. On this, de Casparis is indisputably correct. In short, I cannot endorse de Casparis’ assertion of a mention of a vālaputra on Pikatan’s funereal Śivagṛha inscription, much less accept it as a reference to a cross-straits Sumatran Śailendra king.

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THE CONTRIBUTORS

Andrea Acri was trained at Leiden University (PhD 2011, MA 2006) and at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ (Laurea degree, 2005). He is Maître de Conférences in Tantric Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris since fall 2016. Prior to joining EPHE he has been Visiting Assistant/Associate Professor at Nalanda University (India) and, since 2013, Visiting Fellow at the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute (Singapore). He has spent several years in Indonesia, and held postdoctoral research fellowships in the Netherlands, Australia, the UK, and Singapore. His main research and teaching interests are Śaiva and Buddhist Tantric traditions, Hinduism and Indian Philosophy, Yoga traditions, Sanskrit and Old Javanese philology, and the comparative religious and intellectual history of South and Southeast Asia from the premodern to the contemporary period. His publications include Dharma Pātañjala (2011) and From Laṅkā Eastwards (2011, co-edited with Helen Creese and Arlo Griffiths). David Bade studied linguistics and library science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of The Mongolia Society (Bloomington, Indiana) and editor of its journal Mongolian Studies, a member of the Executive Committee of the International Association for the Integrational Study of Language and Communication, an officer of the Council and Executive Committee of the Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Society of North America, and a founding member of Signum: International Society for Mark Studies. He has published several bibliographies on Mongolian studies, a three volume catalog of African language texts in the Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwest-

authors bionotes.indd 395

ern University, and a number of books and papers on Mongolian studies, library and information science, philosophy of language and linguistics. In 2014 he retired from the University of Chicago where he was for many years a librarian and now devotes much of his time to raising livestock on his family’s farm in Illinois. Claudine Bautze-Picron studied at the Universities of Brussels, Lille, Jawaharlal Nehru in New Delhi, and Aix-en-Provence. Since 1980 she has been research fellow at the National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UMR 7528 ‘Mondes Iranien et Indien’, Paris) and since 1992 she has taught Indian art history at the Free University of Brussels. Her research focuses on the late Buddhist iconography of South Asia, on the art of Eastern India and Bangladesh, and the murals of Bagan (Burma). Emma C. Bunker, Research Consultant at the Denver Art Museum, is a world authority on ancient Chinese and ancient Khmer bronze, whose pioneering work has produced exhibitions and publications over some decades. On Southeast Asia, she wrote a seminal work on the bronzes of Prakhon Chai, and, with Douglas Latchford, the latest classics on Cambodian icons and jewelry: Adoration and Glory: the Golden Age of Khmer Art (2004); Khmer Gold (2008); Ancient Khmer Bronzes: New Interpretations of the Past (2011). Swati Chemburkar is an architectural historian whose work focuses on Southeast Asia, especially Cambodia. She directs a post graduate diploma course on Art and Architecture of Southeast Asia

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at Jnanapravaha, Mumbai. She is the editor of Arts of Cambodia: Interactions with India (2015) and has published articles on the Khmer monuments. Rolf W. Giebel is an independent researcher who has translated Two Esoteric Sutras (2001) and The Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi Sutra (2005) and co-translated Shingon Texts (2004) and Esoteric Texts (2015) for the BDK English Tripiṭaka. He has a particular interest in the reconstruction of Sanskrit as preserved in Chinese transliteration in the Chinese Buddhist canon, on which he has published several studies. Geoffrey Goble is a specialist in Chinese Religions and Tantric Buddhism. He earned his PhD from Indiana University in 2012. He is presently a Postdoctoral Fellow in East Asian Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. He is currently revising a monograph concerning Amoghavajra and the establishment of Tantric (or Esoteric) Buddhism in China and is engaged in ongoing research on violence and religion in medieval China, the role or Esoteric Buddhism in contemporary Chinese lay Buddhist practice, and the formative influence of Esoteric Buddhism on Daoism in the Song Dynasty (960–1279).

Studies from 2000 to 2015. He is an academic adviser to the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Sub-Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts. He received a Special Recognition Award from the Ministry of Information, Communication, and the Arts, the Pingat Bakti Setia from the government of Singapore, and the title of Kanjeng Raden Haryo Temenggung from the Susuhunan of Surakarta (Indonesia). His specialty is the archaeology of maritime trade and communication in Southeast Asia. Kate O’Brien earned her doctorate in 1995 with the University of Sydney through research into Tantric Buddhist influences on Javanese rulership during the 13th and 14th centuries. The subsequent awarding of an Australian Research Fellowship allowed her to continue in that research, resulting in the publication of Sutasoma—The Ancient tale of a Buddha Prince from 14th century Java, an updated translation and analysis of a Javanese kakavin of the same name.

Hudaya Kandahjaya, born in Bogor, Indonesia, is currently employed at the BDK America in Moraga, California, USA. He graduated from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, in 2004 with a PhD in Buddhist Studies. In addition to scholarly and literary study particularly on Indonesian Buddhism, he has engaged in practical aspects of Buddhism. All these gear his interests in Buddhism, education, and theoretical and practical understanding of engaged Buddhism.

Natasha Reichle studied literature at Yale, and received her PhD in the History of Art from U.C. Berkeley. She is currently Associate Curator of Southeast Asian Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. At the museum she has curated exhibitions on a wide range of subjects, including Javanese puppets, Asian performing arts, batik textiles, Southeast Asian jewelry, and the first major U.S. exhibition on the arts of Bali (Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance, 2010). Her early research focused on Esoteric Buddhism in Indonesia (Violence and Serenity: Late Buddhist Sculpture from Indonesia, 2007). Most recent endeavors have focused on art and global trade in the seventeenth century (China at the Center: Ricci and Verbiest World Maps, 2015).

John N. Miksic is Professor in the Southeast Asian Studies Department, National University of Singapore. He received his PhD from Cornell University. He spent four years in Malaysia as a Peace Corps Volunteer, worked as a Rural Development Advisor in Sumatra for two years, and taught at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, for six years. In 1987 he moved to the National University of Singapore. He served on the board of the Center for Khmer

Jan A. Schoterman (Amersfoort 1948–1989) studied Indo-Iranian and Dravidian languages at Utrecht University (PhD 1982); he was research assistant at the same University, lecturer at the Kern Institute, Leiden University, and research fellow of the KITLV, Leiden. He published on Sanskrit, Hindu Tantrism, history of Sanskrit and Indian culture in Indonesia. Among his various publications are The Yoni Tantra, critical edition and

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The Contributors translation (New Delhi, 1980), and The Ṣaṭsāhasra Saṃhitā, chapters 1-5, edited, translated and annotated (Leiden, 1982). Peter D. Sharrock researches the art history of the Angkorian Khmer Empire and the Esoteric Buddhist and Hindu art of Maritime Asia from ad 800 to 1400. He lectures at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where he is a Project Board member of the School’s growing Southeast Asian Academic Art Programme (SAAAP). Iain Sinclair studied Sanskrit, philology and Buddhist philosophy at the Unversity of Hamburg and Monash University. He lived and worked in Nepal and Southeast Asia for several years. His research currently specialises on the formation of Newar Buddhism during the 11th to 14th centuries. He is

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397

interested more generally in the history of ideas and art in Asian civilisations. Jeffrey Sundberg is an independent researcher. His primary interest lies in Central Javanese history and religious culture, but his investigations into the background of the Śailendra sponsorship of Abha­ yagirivāsins have led to recent collateral publications on the Esoteric Buddhist monk Vajrabodhi (in collaboration with Rolf Giebel) and the dedication of a number of early Second Lambakaṇṇa kings to an Esoteric Buddhism promoted at the Abhaya­ girivihāra in Rājarattha. In prior publications, he has addressed the gold-foil mantra unearthed on the Ratu Boko prominence, the dating of the Borobudur stūpa, and an evaluation of the historical claims of the Old Sundanese Carita Parahyaṅan in light of the new dynastic data in the Wanua Tengah III inscription.

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INDEX

Abang, cylindrical stone inscription 334 Abeyadana 20n7; temple 20 Abhayagiri(vihāra) 9n29, 10, 15, 17, 343–44, 349–52, 353nn6–7, 355–61, 362n22, 363–69, 371–72, 374–76; esoteric doctrines 351; inscription 324, 350, 361, 365, 367, 369; monks 350, 352, 356–358n16, 361, 362n20, 364, 366–67, 369, 371–76; prākāra walls of 351; ‘replicas’ in Southeast Asia 17n56, 359n16; structure 362n22; stūpa 366; abhicāra (ābhicāraka, ābhicāruka) 330, 333, 346, 384 Abhidharmakoṣa 201n39 Abhidharmakośabhāṣya 390 Abhisamayālaṅkāra 262–63; literature 11, 19 abhiṣeka 4, 7, 17, 29, 39, 43, 193–94, 201, 223, 240, 245, 252, 278, 357, 369; ācārya- 39n60; cakravarty- 39; pañca- 39n60; pañcakula39n60; rājya- 29, 39, 43, 47; *saptaratna- 39; *Vajradhātu- 33–34 Acala, Bodhisattva 118, 340, 340n72, 376; rites 137; mantra 137 ācārya(s) 7, 34, 40, 57n163, 99, 134n49, 358; three great ācāryas of mid-Tang period 14 Account of Activities 131n27 Account of Conduct (T 2056) 132 Acri, A. 326n12, 329n24, 345, 378, 393 *Adbhutakalpa (*Ekākṣara-adbhutoṣṇīṣakalpa, T 953) 37, 43, 46–48n93, 50n102, 51n103 Adhyardhaśatikāprajñāpāramitāsutra (T 243, APP) 69, 71, 90 Ādityavarman, King 8, 20n68, 21, 22n73, 149, 269 Ādi-Buddha 19n61, 100, 232, 278n9; see also Vajrasattva advaya 76, 375 Aek Sangkilon inscription 266–68, 270 Advayavajra 21n69 Āgamas (Buddhist) 39 Agastya 363n24 Aggabodhi IV, King 354n9, 357

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Aggabodhi V, King 356–57 Aggabodhi VI, King 353–54, 356, 365n25 Agni 56 Agnipurāṇa 47n88, 321, 321n38, 338n63 Airlaṅga, King 377n52 Aizen 376n51; subjugation of Īśvara and Nārāyaṇa 323 Ajaṇṭā 215–16 Aji Dharma (Aṅliṅ Darma, Aridharma) 275, 278n16, 279n16, 284, 285n25, 289, 290n32, 291, 294, 296, 298–99, 304n48, 317n64 *Ājñāgarbha 29, 38, 50; see also Bianhong Akalāṅka 372n44 ākarṣaṇa 330–34, 336, 336n57, 338n62, 338n64, 339n66, 342–43, 345 Ākāśagarbha, Bodhisattva 52n115, 90, 135 akṣamālā 353n6 Akṣayamatisūtra 77 Akṣobhya 57, 81, 88–89, 90n64, 91, 149, 192, 198, 201, 219, 232–33, 234n29, 243, 248, 264, 267, 280n21, 335; head of the vajra family 243 Alan Gua 153 Alaungsitthu 20n67 Allinger, E. 171 Aluonashun (*Aruṇāśa?) 194 Amarakośa 110n107 Amaramālā 110n107 Amarāvatī 18n60 Amitābha 52n113, 88–89, 90n64, 91, 232–33, 178, 192, 202, 264, 267, 268, 278n9, 280n21, 281n22 Amitāyus 57 amoghapāśa (amogha-chain) 277, 281, 282, 284n24, 292–93, 295, 315n58–59, 319 Amoghapāśa (Avalokiteśvara/Lokeśvara) 53n129, 54n134, 149, 234n32, 244, 268–69, 277–78, 281, 317, 318n68; inscription of 142, 149; iconography at Candi Jago 277; statue of Jago 278n13; maṇḍala of 280–81 Amoghapāśakalparāja (AKR, T 1092) 43n67, 48n93, 55n144

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442

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

Amoghapāśasādhana 21n73 Amoghasiddhi 57, 88–89, 178, 202, 232–33, 264, 267, 280n21, 316, 338n64, 340n72 Amoghavajra (Bukong) 5n15, 10, 12, 14–15, 17, 30–31, 33, 34n27, 37–40, 42–43, 45, 47–48, 51n102–54n141, 56n156, 86, 90, 99, 101, 111, 125–28, 125n7, 130–34, 132n32, 136–38, 137n53, 203–206, 237, 239–41, 242n10, 244, 338, 338n64, 339, 341n73, 351, 353–58, 360, 365n25, 369–70, 375–76, 381, 383, 388n45, 389–91; biographies 86; journey to the Five Indias 358; meeting with Vajrabodhi in Java 12, 86n47, 205n58, 358; memorial stele inscription 131n27, 132, 137; travels of 382 Amṛtakuṇḍali(n) 46, 54, 337, 337n60, 347, 370n39; mantra 337n60; Amṛtakuṇḍalivināyakabandhadhāraṇī 337, 337n60 Amṛteśa (Amṛteśvara, Amṛteśabhairava) 332–34 Ānandagarbha 99n78, 324, 337n60 Anaṅgavajra 76, 82 Anaṅgavarman 20n68 Angkor 19–20, 244, 248–49, 252, 266, 371n42 Angkor Thom 20n66 Angling Darma (Aridharma) 275n4; see also Aji Dharma Anige 145 Aniko 317n67 An Lushan Rebellions 34n31, 128–31, 131n31, 137 An Thai stele 12n38 Anugaṇṭhipada 391 Anurādhapura 10, 15, 240, 350, 352–53, 354n9, 355n9, 356, 360–61, 366, 373, 375; period 352 Anuttarapūjā 105, 107–109, 111 Anuttarayoga 82, 93n72 An Xinggui 133, 133n37 Aparājita 40, 54, 56 ārāma 215, 218 Arapacana 88 Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) 191, 193n5, 194n9, 195n15 Ardhanārīśvara 329, 366 Aris (or Araññavāsins) 20n67, 166n17 Arjuna 279n16, 289, 291, 293–94, 296, 298–99, 302–305, 309n53, 315–16 Arjunavivāha 279n16, 296n41, 299, 304, 316, 318 Arjunavijaya 158 Arthaśāstra 18n59, 345 Āryadeva 75, 98 Āryamañjuśrīmūlakalpa 212 Āryapāda (or Ārya tradition) 71

Index.indd 442

Asaṅga 77, 83 Asher, F.M. 195n19 Aśoka, Emperor 114, 211; tree 219 Aśokakāntā-Mārīcī 219 Aṣṭadikpālas 43n69 Aṣṭa-mahā-bhaya-kliṅ 85n43, 87 Aṣṭamahābhaya Tārā, see Tārā Aṣṭamīvrata 277 Aṣṭāṅgahṛdaya 386n33 Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā 8, 10n32, 12, 115, 166, 170, 180, 260; Chinese (T 224, T 227) 54n142 Astrology, Indian 384n21 Asuras 368n32, 369n33 Aśvaghoṣa 98 Atharvaveda 330 Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa 333n47 Atikūṭa 14, 39 Atiraṇacaṇḍeśvara inscription 17 Atīśa (a.k.a. Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna) 11, 19–20, 87n53, 107, 113, 115–21, 166, 174, 178, 241, 252, 261–63, 265–66, 278n9, 339n66; account of journey to Suvarṇadvīpa 19n63; relics of 120; school 119; see also Candragharba Atwood, C.P. 147–48 Avadānas 110 avaivartaka (Mahāyāna) monks 169n27 Avalokiteśvara (Lokeśvara) 8, 13, 52, 53n129, 80–81, 90, 107, 165, 166n11, 171, 173n53, 175–78, 180–82, 184, 189, 190, 217, 219–22, 225, 227, 229–30, 239–40, 242–43, 257, 259, 277, 366, 370–71; icons from Chaiya, Perak and Wonogiri 12; images of 211 āvāsa 215, 218 āveśa rites 382, 384 Āyurvedic acupuncture 386n33 Bacon, F. 155 Bagan 166, 170–71, 183, 187–89; visual culture linkages with Bengal 166 Bahal II 268 Bajradevī 158, 278 Bajradhātu (Subhūti) Tantra, see Subhūti Bajradhātvīśvarī 110 Bajrapāṇi 91 Bālaputra(deva), King 18, 176, 207, 213, 265, 345, 393–94 Balinese ‘Bauddha Brahmins’ 13n40 Bangladesh 172, 175–77, 189, 191n3, 195, 200n37, 207; and Java 175 Banteay Chhmar 20n66, 21

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Index Baosiwei 14 Baphuon 247 Barong 3n10 Batanghari, River 19, 83n41, 259–61, 263, 268 Batu Pahat inscription 85 Batujaya 85 Bauddha-Śaiva dynamics 349, 350n3, 351n3, 366; antagonistic paradigm 21; anti-Śaiva Buddhist myths 369; anti-Śaiva polemics 323–24, 337, 341–45, 347; Buddhaicized Śaiva deities in Sri Lanka 365; divide 9; doctrinal disputes 370; Hindu gods and goddesses in Buddhist contexts 182–83; problem of syncretism 21; subordination of Hindu deities at Candi Sewu 372n43; violence 372n44 Bautze-Picron, C. 20, 79, 197, 265n4, 268, 268n6 Bay of Bengal 195, 205, 211; interaction sphere 211; as the ‘Kaliṅga Sea’ 212 Bayon state temple 20n66, 21, 244, 278n15 Behera, K.S. 213 Bell, Sir C. 120 Bena, King 194 Benedict, A. 151–52 Bengal 165–90, 200–201, 207; copperplate inscriptions 167–69, 167n21, 168n28; Muslim conquest 374; relations with Bagan 170, 190; relations with Tibet 167, 175, 190, 188n113; see also Gauḍīdvīpa Benisti, M. 213 Berg, C.C. 141–43, 151, 158 Bernet Kempers, A. J. 285n26, 318 Beyer, S. 87, 119 Bhadracarī 87, 107, 109–11, 265 Bhadreśvara 87–88 Bhagavatavyākhyātantra 75 Bhairava/Mahākāla 4, 134n48, 268, 332–33, 345; rituals 150–51n14 Bhairavika Priest 21n71 bhairab naach 3n10 Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabhasūtra 107 Bhaiṣajyarāja 370 Bhaiṣajyasamudgata 370 Bhairava 184 Bhājā 215 bhakti 110 Bharāla 76 Bhartṛhari 81n36 Bhāskaravarman, King 202 Bhaṭāra Divarūpa 90–91 Bhaṭāra Hyaṅ Buddha 110

Index.indd 443

443

Bhaṭāra Samyaksambuddhāya 93 Bhaṭāra Śivabuddha 278n14, 318 Bhaṭāra Viśeṣa, (or the Saṅ Hyaṅ Divarūpa) 100 Bhattacharya, V. 76, 88n56 Bhauma-Kara, dynasty 7, 9n25, 217 bhāvanā 76, 110 Bhāvanākrama 77–78, 81, 111 Bhāvanāyogāvatāra 76 Bhikṣu(s), 113, 250; Mahendra 114 Bhoja 241; see also Vijaya Bhomāntaka 345n81 Bhṛkuṭī 52, 176, 277 Bhujang Valley 241 Bhūmisambhāra 102 Bhūtaḍāmaratantra 119 Bhūtanātha 332–34 Bhūtatantras 332, 346, 386n31 Bhūvācārya 9n25 Bi’an, Dharmācārya Nirvāṇa 83–84 Bianhong (Ājñāgarbha?) 12n35, 13n41, 15, 29, 31–37, 39–41, 43, 45, 47–50, 59, 86–87, 99–100, 101n84, 206–208 Biaro Bahal 21 Biaro Bahal II 218 Bidor 243 Bihar 165–91, 193–95, 200–207; copperplate inscriptions 167; Muslim conquest 374 bījas 88n61 Bisa Sāgar, stūpa 195 Blandongan, gold leaf inscriptions of 85n45 Blue Annals 19n63 Bodh Gayā 1, 116, 164–66, 170, 178, 183, 185, 187–89, 213, 262; images 184, 188, 165n6, 197, 204; inscriptions of 194n14 Bodhi (tree/temple) 37, 40, 185, 229, 239; see also Mahābodhi Bodhicaryāvatāra 21n69 bodhicitta (vodhicitta) 77, 82, 242 Bodhigarbhālaṅkāralaksa 216n12 Bodhipathapradīpa 107 Bodhiruci (Dharmaruci) 14, 36, 48n92, 50n101, 54n135, 56n158 Bodhisattva(s) 4, 8n23, 13, 21n73, 29, 41, 43, 106, 124, 134–35, 193n7, 197, 211, 216–17, 220–21 232, 234, 239, 242, 244, 248, 257, 275, 277–78, 281n22, 291, 353n7, 370, 371n42; cult in Mon– Khmer land 250; group of six 80–81; Eight Great Bodhisattvas (aṣṭamahābodhisattvas) 41, 52n115, 78–79; maṇḍala of eight 270; medicine kings 370; path 227; Svastika 38

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444

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

Bodhisattvahood 216 Bodhisattvayāna 250 bodhyagrī-mudrā 338–39, 339n67 Boechari 264 Borobudur 11–12, 21n69, 67, 71, 79, 82, 87, 101, 103–105, 107, 109–12, 191–92, 193n5, 195–202, 204, 206, 208, 233, 238, 242, 253, 262, 265, 279–80, 281n22, 291n36, 293, 306, 314, 317, 349, 371, 378; art and architecture of 176, 191–92, 196–202, 206–207; Buddhism of 11, 101–102; iconography of 102; lead-bronze inscription, see Mahāraudranāmahdaya Bosch, F.D.K. 87–88, 258, 266–68, 270 Bourdieu, P. 152 Brahmā 90–91, 182–83, 194n13, 368n32, 370 Brahmajāla Sutta 134n47 Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa 390 Brahmanical, ascetics 134n47; social order 5 Brahmanism 6 Brahmans (Brahmins, brāhmaṇas) 14n46, 21n71, 114, 167n19, 168–69, 175, 282, 300, 365 brahmavihāras 77, 82, 89 Brahmayāmala 331 ‘Brāhmic’ (Fantian) tradition of astrology 46 Brandes, J.L.A. 68, 275, 290, 293n37, 307, 311, 314, 318 Bṛhatkathā 36n45 Brief Explanation of the production, Recollection, and Recitation of the Yoga of the Diamond Peak Scripture (T 866) 135 Brihadīśvara 368n32 ’Brom ston 120, 262 Bronkhorst, J. 372n44 Brown, R.L. 213 Bsam yas Monastery 77 Bubrah see Candi Bubrah Buddha(s) 29, 38, 40, 50–51, 91, 106, 127, 135, 200–202, 220, 234n29, 239n4, 247, 253, 257, 259–60, 262, 267, 269, 271, 278, 281n22, 334, 337n58, 338, 344, 368n32, 371n42, 376; 108 names of 134; as a universal and divine king ruler (cakravartin) 164, 201–202; as Bhairava 142; biography of 163, 188–90, 193; depictions/ images/statues of 164–66, 174, 177n73, 178n82, 183, 186–89, 191–93, 194n13, 195–96, 198–202, 204, 206, 209; Dhyāni/Jina-Buddha(s) 141, 141n2, 143, 219, 229, 232–33, 248, 278, 280n21, 316, 318 (see also Five Tathāgatas); directional 243; discourses/preaching/sermon/teaching/utterance of 164; donations to 168–69; Eight Great

Index.indd 444

Events of Buddha’s life (Aṣṭamahāpratiharya) 187–88, 189n121; footprint 356; gem-eyed 373; images at Kesariya 199; in Brahmanical images 184; of Bhadrakālpa 202; of Borobudur 238; pentad of 242, 245, 252 (see also Jina-Buddhas, Pañcatathāgatas); nāga-enthroned 244; of the present and future 78–79; oneness with Śiva 278, 318; of Sambor Prei Kuk 250; of the past 78–79; Supreme 278n15; see also Śākyamuni (Buddha), Tathāgata(s) Buddhabhadra 87 Buddhacarita (Vuddhacarita) 98, 110 buddhacārya 110–11 Buddhaghoṣa 391 Buddhaguhya 44n75, 99n78, 123n1 Buddhagupta 81n37; inscription 256 Buddhahood 216, 239, 277, 316 Buddhajñāna (or Buddhaśrījñāna) 71, 76 Buddhakapāla 178 Buddhakara, King 14n45; dynasty 14n45 Buddhasamayoga 74 Buddhism/Buddhist, and royal power 169–70, 167n19; council, first 203; cult of books 176, 180, 187; donations 167–69; donors 167–70, 177, 180; interaction with Brahmanism 168–69, 175, 182–84, 190, 182n94, 190n122; monasticism 182, 169n27; pilgrimage 165, 165n10, 173; transmission between the Sanskritic and Sinitic worlds, 29 Buddhist iconography, incorporation of local beliefs 225 Bühnemann, G. 330n33–n32 Bukit Seguntang, inscription 257 Bureaucracy, in Tang China 127–131 Bu ston 389 caitya 8, 103, 216; window 224; dharmakāya- 103; worship of 103 caityavandana, inscription of 103 Cakranegara, raid of the Puri of 68n4 Cakrasaṁvara(tantra) 9n27, 154n18, 240, 248, 338n62; -maṇḍala 178n81, 190n122 Cakrasaṃvarapañjikā 18n57 Cakravarticintāmaṇi (Bodhisattva) 31–32, 35, 46n83, 53, 99–100; -dhāraṇī 50n99 cakravartin 29, 36, 39, 42, 43n69, 45–46, 48–50, 56n162, 100, 145, 154–55, 188n116, 193–94, 201–203, 206, 208n72, 346, 358n16, 369; as a maṇḍala’s central Buddha or Bodhisattva 201–202; vidyādhara- 36; stūpa, see stūpa

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Index *Cakravartitantra(s) 36–44n73, 46n83, 50n101– 55n152 Cāḷukya, dynasty 377n52; Early Western 368n32 Campā 18, 377 Cāmuṇḍā 163n4 Caṇḍavajrapāṇi 335, 335n51, 340, 342 Candi Angsoka 258 Candi Bongkol, stone post inscription 334n48 Candi Bubrah 201, 208 Candi Bukit Batu Pahat 253 Candi Bungsu 88n61, 110n108 Candi Gumpung 263–64, 266, 272; gold foil inscription 335, 335n51; maṇḍala 264 Candi Jago 21–22, 68, 88n58, 143n8, 157, 244, 268, 275–319; artisans of 279; cella statuary of 281; maṇḍala 278; reliefs 176, 275–319 Candi Jawi 88 Candi Kalasan 90n63, 207–208, 238, 377 Candi Kedulan 377n53; inscriptions 351n3, 377n53 Candi Lumbung 18n59, 201, 207–208, 252 Candi Mahligai 263, 269, 273 Candi Mendut 8n23, 12, 79, 199, 201n39, 202n41, 219, 226–27, 238, 244; iconography of 219n18; and Ellorā caves 219n18; Bodhisattvas at 79 Candi Pawon 199 Candi Plaosan 12, 79, 201, 208; inscriptions 208; Lor, 350n3, 351n3, 362n21, 372n43, 374n48 Candi Pulau Sawah 269 Candi Sewu 11n35, 12, 17, 18n59, 177, 191n3, 201, 202n41, 207–208, 238, 252, 349, 366n26, 371n43, 372n43, 376, 378n53 Candi Śiva 326n12 Candra, dynasty 167–69, 174; inscriptions 169 Candragarbha 262; see also Atīśa Candraguhyatilaka 74 Candrakīrti 75, 98, 116; pseudo 45n79 Candras, dynasty 7 Carita Parahyaṅan 323, 343–44, 344n79, 351, 363n23, 377, 378n54 Caryā 93 caryāntya 3n10 Caryāmelāpakapradīpa 29n2, 75 Caryātantras 71, 217, 346 Casparis, J.G. de 18n58, 85, 101, 102n86, 256, 270, 374n48, 393 Catuṣpīṭhatantra 6n17 Ceṭiyagiri Monastery 9n29 Chaiya 12, 240, 243–44, 252; 775 inscription 244 Chakaravarti, D.K. 195 Champāran 192–96, 200

Index.indd 445

445

Cāmuṇḍā 345 Chang’an (present–day Xi’an) 1, 15, 32–34, 99–100, 205–207, 241, 373 Chapoholo, battle site of 194n14 Chattopadhyaya, B. 202 Chaurasi, temple 232 Chengguan 92 Cherok Tokun inscription 85n45 Chientowei, River 194n14 Chinese monks/pilgrims 213, 216, 226, 258, 266; in the Indonesian Archipelago 113–14 Chinggis Khan 147, 153, 158; cult of 147 Chinnamastakā (or Chinnamastā) 387n41 Chōen 386n33 Chou, Y–L. 11, 86 Chōyo 387n40 Clay sealings/votive tablets 85 Coedès, G. 1n1, 82, 113, 237, 241, 253, 257, 263 Cōḻa, dynasty 115, 207, 253, 262, 266, 377n52; attack on Sumatra 260, 262, 266; fleet 241; inscriptions 207n68; interregnum in Sri Lanka 368n29; period 368n32; Rājarāja 174, 207n68; texts 241; Colless, B. 323n3–24n5, 331, 341, 343, 347, 376, 378 Compendium of Principles of All Tathāgatas 239 Comprehensive Mirror for Aiding Government 123–24 Confucian tradition (Confucianism) 48n91, 124; canon 130 Consecration deposits (ritual deposits) 264, 268, 272–73 Conti, P. 248 Conze, E. 71n12 Cool, W. 68 Cornelius, H.C. 193n5 Crawfurd, J. 368 Cūḍāmaṇivarman, King 10n30, 19, 117–18, 174, 207, 244, 262; -vihāra, see Śrīśailendracūḍāmaṇivarman Vihāra Cui Gan 129 Cūḷavaṁsa 352–53, 356–57, 365, 369n33, 378 Cundā, goddess 227 Cunningham, A. 79 191, 193, 199n29 Dafangguang fo huayan jing shu (T 1736) 92 Daijizaiten-hōsoku-giki (Maheśvara–vidhi–kalpa?) 339n66 Daizong, Emperor 8, 48n90, 86n51, 126–29, 126n12, 133, 137, 203, 383n16 Ḍākinītantras 4

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446

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

Dale-jingang-bukong-zhenshi-sanmeiye-jing-banruo-boluomiduo-liqushi (T 1003) 90 Dali, Kingdom 21, 123, 178 Dalton, J. 93n72, 335n52, 337n60, 342, 345n82, 347, 375n49 Damais, L.C. 212 Dāmodaradeva, King 170 Daoism 240 Daolin 83 Dapunta Hyaṅ Śrī Jayanāśa 82 Dara–Jiṅga 151 Dara–Petak 151 daśapāramitā 71, 76–77, 82, 111 Dasgupta, S.B. 74 Davidson, R. 4–6, 123, 145–46, 148, 154–55, 202, 233, 265–66, 273, 335n51–37n58, 342, 344–45, 377n52 Davis, E.L. 382 Daxingshan, monastery 33, 383 Dawangsari inscription 344n80 Deccan, western 8 Degroot, V. 363, 366 Des Routers, R. 127n14 Desai, D. 231 Deśavarṇana (Nāgarakṛtāgama) 20n69, 33n20, 68, 98, 102, 141–42, 148–50, 158, 266, 278n13–14 devadāsīs 228 Deva dynasty 169–70, 200 Devahuti, D. 194n12 Devapāla, King 18, 167–68, 176, 207, 265, 358n16 devī 110; catur- 71, 110; pañca- 71 Dhammapada368 (Aṅguttara Nikāya) 77 dhāraṇī(s) 3n8, 4, 7, 9n25, 32, 36, 58, 80–81, 83, 85, 93n74, 123n1, 136, 216, 324, 339, 340n69, 357n13, 373, 387; garuḍa- 387–88 dhāraṇīghara 9n29, 357n13 Dhāraṇī of the Great Protectress (T 1153) 136; see also Mahāpratisarādhāraṇī/Mahāpratisarā– vidyārājñī Dhāraṇī Piṭaka 83–84 dharmadhātu 103, 354n9; maṇḍala 102 Dharmakīrti (of Suvarṇadvīpa) 11, 19–20, 116–21, 174, 241, 252; relics 121 Dharmakīrti (7th-century Buddhist logician) 120 Dharmapāla (Dharmakīrti), Chief Abbot of Nālandā 205, 261–62, 265 Dharmapāla, King 11n34, 19, 81–82, 111, 113, 117–18, 167–68, 172–73, 195, 199; Dharmarakṣa 91 Dharmasaṅgraha 107n102

Index.indd 446

Dharmasetu 90n63 Dharmasraya 268 Dharmasvāmin 166, 166n11 Dharmayaśas 17 Dharmendra 76 Dholagaon 174n59 dhyāna 328 dhyāna-mudrā 338n64 Dhyāni-Buddha(s), see under Buddha(s) Diamond Maṇḍala, see Vajradhātu[mahā]maṇḍala Diamond Pinnacle Scripture/Cycle, see Vajra­śekha­ ratantra/Vajroṣṇīṣa Dieng Plateau 272 Dignāga (Diṅnāga) 67, 76, 81–82, 84, 87, 101, 111, 113 Dignāgapāda, Ḍaṅ Ācāryya Śri 76, 81, 84, 111 Dīpaṅkara 260 Dīpaṅkarabhadra 12, 71, 92, 101 Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna, see Atīśa Divyāvadāna 279, 282n23, 293 Donaldson, T. 214, 219, 223, 231 Đông Dương 13n38; stele 12n38; temple 18 Dongson bronzes 255 Dorjee 103n92 Droṇasiṁha, King 202 Druma, King 314 Duddā, Queen 202 Du Hongjian 128–31, 129n20 Dumarçay, J. 176, 205 Dunhuang 376; monastery 203n46; Tibetan manuscript 335n52 Dupont, P. 244 Durbodhāloka 11, 19, 262, 263 Durgā 184, 255 Durgottārā 169 Dutt, S.N. 215, 217 Du Xian 128 dvāra–lalāṭa–bimba 223 dvārapāla 224, 229, 232 Dvāravatī 13, 251 dveṣa (vidveṣana) 330, 332n41 Eastern India, art 163–66, 175; Gupta period 194n8, 195–96, 205; Kuṣāṇa period 194n8; Pāla period 163–206; Sena period 204; Śuṅga period 194n8 Edwards McKinnon, E. 271 Ekādaśamukhadhāraṇī 1 Ellorā 8, 201, 217, 227 Elverskog, J. 147, 152–53 Enchin 33–34

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Index Ennin 35, 47n89, 373; diary 204 Esoteric Buddhism 2–5, 7, 10–11, 13–15, 18–22, 99, 102, 237–40, 244, 252, 318, 351–53, 370n37, 374n46, 375; and early mediaeval polities 5; and magical sovereignty 36; and politics 46–47, 123–24, 137–38; and the ethos of power 133–35; and war 137; archaic nature outside of the Subcontinent 13; as distinct sectarian tradition in China 125n7; at Phimai 20n66; bestowing Buddhahood in life 277; bestowing supernatural powers 278; collapse of institutional support after 840 ad 351; conflict with Thera­ vāda 66; cult of wrathful deities 178–80, 184, 190; decline after 840 A.D. 8, 18; denominator, vis-à-vis Tantric Buddhism 29n2; definition 2–3; Esoteric teachings (mijiao 密教) 129n7; in China 205, 207; in India 172, 190, 196, 206; in Java 11–12, 86, 207, 242; in Sri Lanka 9n27, 351; loss of royal support after 840 A.D. 373; origin 4–5; relationship with śaivism 2; royal and mercantile models 5–6; scholarly construction of 125n7; significant features 4; soteriology-oriented, transmission to China 29; Three Phases 7, 252n19; waves 13, 19 Eurasia 1, 2n3 fang sheng 109n103 Fanyu zaming (T 2135) 90n 63 Faxian 13n42, 85, 114, 191 Fa-yü 261 Fazang 203 Feixi 358 Ferrari, A. 120 Five Indias 19n62 Fontein, J. 268, 279, 281n22 Foucher, A. 88n56 Fozu lidai tongzai 147 Franke, H. 144, 146n11, 147 Fuhōden (Himitsu Mandarakyō Fuhōden) 31, 33, 34n33 Funan 212, 245 Gajalakṣmī 223 Gajavaktra 47n88, 338–39n67, 342; see also Gajendramukha, Gaṇapati, Vināyaka Gajendramukha 338 Gambhīraśīla 76 gaṇacakra 98, 150 Gaṇapati (Gaṇeśa) 118–19, 182, 253, 255, 267, 324, 326, 329–30, 333–34, 337–42, 344n80–347,

Index.indd 447

447

365n25; Gaṇapati-Vināyaka 337, 337n60, 341, 347; Krodhagaṇapati 339n66; Mahāgaṇapati 337, 339n66 Gaṇapatitattva (Tatva Gaṇapati) 324–34, 336n58, 337, 339n68, 340, 340n71, 342, 342n74, 346–47 Gaṇḍakī, River 194n14 Gaṇḍavyūha 10n32, 111, 281n22; -(mahāyāna)sūtra (T 293) 87, 171n45, 176, 242, 281n22; -bhadracarī 206–207; reliefs of Borobudur 253 gandhakūti/mūlagandhakūṭi 228 Gandhamādana, Mount 383 Gandhāra, art 189 gandharva 304n48, 305 Gaṇeśa, see Gaṇapati, Vināyaka Gaṅgā, River 191, 195, 225 Ganges, Valley 237, 239; monsteries 252 Gaozong, Emperor 203n47 Garbhadhātumaṇḍala 99, 111, 206, 370; garbha­ maṇḍala 35, 42–43, 99–100, 335n50 Garuḍa 272, 382–85, 387; rites 382 Gāruḍa medicine 382 Garuḍa, Mount 383n17 Garuḍapaṭalaparivarta (T 1276) 381n7, 383, 388n43, 388n45; see also Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa Garuḍapurāṇa 47n88, 338n63 Gāruḍatantras 382, 383n14, 384n19; Śaiva 383n17 Gāruḍic lore 383; texts 382 Garuṅ, King 351n3, 363, 372n43, 375, 378; period 351n3 Gauḍīdvīpa (present-day Bengal) 18n59, 87, 101, 112, 177, 207 Genzu maṇḍala, 36n43, 38, 41–42, 48n92, 53n119, 53n125, 54n137, 55n146; see also Mahākaruṇodbhava–garbhamaṇḍala Geographia 212 Geshu Han 131–33 Ghanavyūhasūtra (T 682) 86n51 Ghaznī 115 Giebel, R.W. 12, 15, 17, 86, 101n84, 240–41, 252, 361n20, 369–370n36 Girikaṇḍivihāra 353, 355–56; Pallava-Grantha Sanskrit inscription 356 Godan/Köden 144, 145n10 Gold plates, Buddhist inscriptions from Java 85 Golden Monastery 115 ‘Gold Island’/‘Gold Land’, see Suvarṇdvīpa Gomez, L.O. 227 Gopāla II, King 167, 197n21; Goris, R. 69, 71, 101 Go shōrai Mokuroku (T 2161) 46n81

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448

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

Goudriaan, T. 85n43, 325–26n12, 330–32nn40–41, 335–36, 338, 345–46n83 Govindacandra, King 169–70; grahas 46, 190n125 Grand Councillors 128–29 Gray, D.B. 248 Great Leiden Charter 117 Great Song Brief History of the Saṅgha 128n16 Green Dragon, Monastery 99 Griffiths, A. 11, 19n63, 88n61, 265–66, 270n7, 273, 278n13, 324, 326n12, 334–37n60, 340, 344n80, 346n85, 347 Gser gliṅ pa 19n63, 120 Guangzhou 19n62 Guanshiyinshuo mieyijiezuiguode yijiesuoyuan tuoluoni 100 Guhasena, King 202n42 Guhyakādhipatinirdeśa 92 Guhyasamāja(tantra; also Śrīguhyasamāja) 14n44, 20n66, 45n79, 71, 74–75, 77, 81–82, 85, 88–93, 98, 100, 112, 149, 240, 246, 248, 278n9, 324, 328n20, 335n51, 336n57, 359n18, 376, 389–90 Guhyasamājamaṇḍala, rituals 71 Guhyasamājamaṇḍalavidhi (GSMV; also Śrī–) 71, 73, 80, 88, 92, 98, 100–101, 111 Guhyasamājamaṇḍalopāyikā 73 Guhyasamājamaṇḍalopāyikāviṁśatividhi (GSVV; also Śrī-) 38n50, 71, 73–74, 86, 88, 92, 98, 100–101, 107, 111, 389 Guhyasamājanidānakārikā 80 Guhyatantra 43, 47n88, 56n159 Guhyendutilaka 74–75, 111 Gujarat 194, 208; see also Gurjaradeśa Guluṅ Guluṅ inscription 334 Gumpung, see Candi Gumpung Guṇabhadra 357n13 Guṇavarman 85, 205–206 Gunung Kidul 363; inscriptions 349 Gupta dynasty 194–96; art and architecture of 195–97 Gupta, S. 211 Gurjaradeśa (present-day Gujarat) 12, 208 Gurjara-Pratihāra dynasty 12, 208 Gurumaṇḍalapūjā 88n61 Gurupañcaśikhā 73–74, 76, 98–99, 111 Guy, J. 204, 252 Gyantse 201n39 Haiyun 31, 389–90 Hall, D.G.E. 142

Index.indd 448

Han dynasty 124 Han Prince 127 Hanguang 360, 365n25; biography of 17n54 Hanumān 333 Hārītī 211, 226, 235 Harivarman 170–71, 181–82; manuscript 182 Harṣa, King 36n45, 194–95, 202–203; Harṣavijaya, kiduṅ 151 Harṣavijaya (nephew of Kṛtanagara) 151 Hastadaṇḍaśāstra 83n40 Hayagrīva 40, 56, 58, 175, 221, 277 Heian period 8 Heissig, W. 146 Heling (or Holing), Kingdom 31, 208, 212; see also Kaliṅga, Keliṅ Hermann-Pfandt, A. 201n39 Heruka 13, 20–21, 166, 177n76, 178–80, 189n1210, 190, 184n96–97, 218, 248, 252, 267–68n6, 340, 345, 383; see also Hevajra Herukasādhana 335 Heshang 77 Hetu Vidyā 84 Hevajra 13, 20–21, 166, 172, 177n76, 178–82, 184, 186, 189, 166n16, 265n4, 268, 335, 339n67, 345; maṇḍala 252, 265; see also Heruka Hevajra(dākinījālasambara)tantra 13, 20–21, 88n61, 141, 144–45, 149–50, 153, 240, 242, 252, 261, 265, 265n4, 278n15, 332n39, 338n61; cult in Southeast Asia 252n19 Hevajrābhiṣeka 141n2 Hevajratantra 149, 115, 240, 252 Hilsa 119 Hīnayāna 3n8; monks 217; śāstras 217; sūtras 217 Hinduism in Sumatra 253, 255 Hindu temples 213; in Odisha 213, 223, 231; in Bhubaneswar 222 Hiraṇyadāman 346 Hishū kyōsō shō 387n40 History of Buddhism in India 217 Hobbes, T. 155 Hôbôgirin 382, 384n20 Hock, N. 214, 217 Hodge, S.75– 76 Hodgson, B. 193n5 Holt, J. 15 homa 135, 199, 240 Hongfa 99 Hooykaas, C. 85n43, 325–26n12, 329nn28–30, 332n44 Hor Chos’byung 157n21

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Index Hpayathonzu 20n67 Huaidi 383n14 Huayang, Princess 126–27 Hucker, C.O. 127n14, 131n26, 131n31 Hudson, D.D. 372n44 Huichang 373 Huiguo 12n35, 15, 31–36, 38–39, 50n99, 86, 99–101, 206, 370n36 Huilang 15, 48n94 Huilun 204 Huining 85 Huiri 99 Hülegü 146 Humphrey, C. 158–59 Hunlunweng 353n7 Hunter, T.M. 296 Huntington, J.C. 216, 226, 252 Huntington, S.L. 197, 252 Hyecho 15, 358 Hye-il 33 Ijzerman, J.W. 88n61, 269–70n7 Ikṣvāku, dynasty 9n25 Indian Ocean, trade network 2 Indra 148, 134n43, 164, 182, 279n16, 296n41, 299, 304n48, 305, 316, 328n23, 339, 363n24, 370; see also Śakra Indrabhūti 75, 203 Intan shipwreck 259–60 Iron stūpa 9, 353n7, 354 Īśān (modern Isan) 250 Īśāna, dynasty 69 Īśāna (form of Śiva) 55 Īśānavarman, King 14n46, 237 Īśvara(s) 90–91, 323, 328n23, 329; five 88; palace 383 Jagaddala Mahāvihāra 172 Jagchid, S. 146–47 Jagjivanpur, 172n47; inscription 167–68, 167n21, 169n28 Jago, see Candi Jago Jaini, P.S. 279 Jaka Dolog inscription 148–49, 159 Jambhala 119 Jambi 88n61, 240, 258–65, 268 Jambudvīpa 203 Jamspal, L. 92n70 japa 106, 328, 353n6, Japasūtra (JS) 73

Index.indd 449

449

Jātaka(s) 110, 258, 284, 287, 302; -mālā 110 Java 176, 191, 195, 205–209, 213, 358; ad 1293 invasion by Khubilai 143; and Bangladesh 175; and China 11–12, 31–34, 207; and India 165–66, 176–78, 184, 189, 191, 195, 205–209; and Kaliṅga 212; connections with Odisha 213 Javanese literature, magical aspect of 142 Jawi, Candi 88 Jayabhadra 18n57 Jayakatoṅ 150–51 Jayākhyasaṁhitā 332n41; see also Pāñcarātra, Vaiṣṇava Jayanagara see Lakhi Sarai, Jaynagar Jayanāśa, King 256, 265 Jayanta (Rājasthavira) 118 Jayaśīla 117 Jayavarman II, King 346, 358 Jayavarman V, King 12n37; Sanskrit inscription (K. 111) 346 Jayavarman VI, King 248 Jayavarman VII, King 8, 20, 252, 278n9, 278n15, 371n42 Jayavarman-Parameśvara, King 371n42 Jesuits 118 Jialouluo ji zhutian miyan jing (‘Scripture of Mantras of Garuḍa and Gods’ [T 1278]) 382–83, 385n24, 385n29 Jianfusi, monastery 203n47 Jianzhong 99 ’Jig-med-rig-pa’i-rdo-rje 157n21 Jina 88; -temple (jinamandira) 12; -Buddha(s) 200–201; see also Buddha(s), Tathāgata(s) Jing’ai, monastery 204n53 Jinge, monastery 204 Jingshe 365n25 Jingangfeng louge yiqie yuqie yuzhi jing 376n51 Jingangding jing yuqie shibahui zhigui 14n49 Jingangzhi 14, 389–90; see also Vajrabodhi Jiu Tangshu (JTS) 125–33, 137 Jīvakāmravana 215n10 jñāna 77 Jñānabajreśvara 88, 149, 278n14 Jñānabhadra 85 Jñānacandra 76 Jñānagarbha 76, 77 Jñānapāda (Jñāna tradition) 71 Jñānasiddhānta 326nn12–14 Jñanasiddhi 29n2, 75 Jñānaśiwabajra 148 Jong, J.W. de 69, 71, 93n72

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450

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

Jordaan, R.E. 100, 113n1, 208–209, 234n31, 323n3, 324, 326n12, 331, 341, 343–45, 347, 363, 376, 378 Jūhachieshiki 341n73 Juynboll, H.H. 68 Kabajradharan 21n69 Kaḍiri-Siṅhasāri 20 Kah-gyur 279, 281n22, 282n23, 284 Kailāsa, Mount 184n97 Kailāsanātha 17, 368n32 Kaiyuan catalogue (Kaiyuan shijiao lu) 381, 390 Kakārakuṭarahasyam 231 Kāla, faces of 259; see also Kīrttimukha Kālacakra 141, 141n1 Kālacakratantra 19, 171, 217, 262 Kāḷachuri, dynasty 377n52 Kāla-makara, architectural motif 213 Kalasan, inscriptions 86, 87, 89n63, 100, 118–20, 234; see also Candi Kalasan Kālī 231 Kālidāsa 212 Kālikāpurāṇa 184 Kaliṅga (Heling, Kәliṅ) 8, 31, 34–35, 48, 85, 87, 99, 211, 213; in trade networks 212; maritime prowess of 212; traders from 212 Kaliṅgapatana 9 Kaliṅgoḍra 12 Kalki Śrīpāla 19 Kālottara 44n73 Kāma 316 Kāmākhyā 184 Kamalarakṣita 117 Kamalaśīla 76–78 Kāmarūpa (present-day Assam) 202 Kanauj 194 Kāñcī 9, 10n30, 14n46, 15, 18, 113, 205, 237, 240–41, 352–53, 357, 372n44; Pallava–style Buddhism at 237 Kandahjaya, H. 206 Kānherī 8 kapāla 387n41, 388 Kāpālika(s)/kāpālika 4, 342n76, 344–45 Kapstein, M.T. 3n8 Kāraṇḍavyūha(sūtra) 13n38, 54n138, 171, 181 Karang Berahi inscription 261 Karma, family 107 Karmavibhaṅgasūtra 104–105 Karpūrādistotram 231 Kārttikeya 53n118; see also Skanda

Index.indd 450

karuṇā 229 Kāśyapaparivartasūtra 77 Kāśyapaśilpa 272 Kats, J. 67–69 Kaula, stream of Śaivism 332n45 Kauz, R. 2 kavinayan 21n69 Kayumvuṅan inscription 102, 103n90, 110–111, 206 Kayuvaṅi, King 346n86, 353n8, 361, 363, 373n45, 374n47, 375 Kedah (Kaṭāha) 10n30, 12, 19n63, 115, 174, 240–41, 244, 253, 255–56, 258, 260, 262–63, 265, 272; inscription 85n45 Kedulan, see Candi Kedulan Kedulan inscriptions 351n3, 377n53 Keichin 35n38 kәliṅ 212 Kelurak inscription 18n59, 86–87, 89, 90n63, 91, 100–101, 112, 207, 209, 241, 252 Kempers, B. 267 Ken Aṅrok 158 Kern, H. 141n2 Kesariya 191–93, 195–202; inscription 195; stūpa architecture 193, 196–202; Ketu 46n83 Khaḍgarāvaṇa 329, 332, 332nn43–44, 334 Khagarbha 79–80; among the Eight Great Bodhisattvas 79; among the group of six Bodhisattvas 80 Khalimpur, charter 195n18 Khanipas 323–24, 331–32, 346, 346n86, 376 Khao Sam Kaeo 255 Khmer, Khorat plateau 237–38; art 244 Khön clan 145 Khotan 114 Khri Srong Lde Bstan 77 Khubilai Khan 8, 20n68, 21, 141–51, 153–59, 242, 252, 275, 278, 317–18; and Buddhism 144, 148, 153; and foreign policy 151; and Kṛtanagara 141, 142, 158; consecration of 141n2, 142, 153n18; historiography on 148; invasion of Java 143, 252; wife of (Chabi) 157 Kiduṅ 148, 151, 155, 158 Kim, J. 1, 168, 170, 187 King of Eulogies of Vajragarbha-Trailokyavijaya (Kongōzō gōzanze san’ō) 370n38 kinnarī 278; jataka 315 Kīrttimukha, architectural motif 199, 259 Kīrtipaṇḍita, purohita 12, 244, 246, 248–50, 252, 346 Kitan 144

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Index Klokke, M.J. 176, 238n2, 346n86 Kōbō Daishi Zenshū 31n8 Kongōbuji 360, 365n25, 369–71; monastery 351 Koṅkana/Konkan coast 8, 18n57 Kota Cina 271 Kōya, Mount 99, 360, 369–70 Kōya ni dōjō o konryū shite kekkai suru keibyaku no bun (‘Text of Declaration for the Consecration of an Altar at Mount Kōya’) 370 Krairiksh, P. 241 Kramrisch, S. 214 Kriyā 93 Kriyākālaguṇottara 332nn43–44, 384n19, 387n39 Kriyāsaṅgraha (KS) 71, 73, 106n99 Kriyāsaṅgrahapañjikā 71, 103n93, 106 Kriyātantra(s) 45n80, 214, 217, 346 Krodhagaṇapati 118 Krodhagaṇapatisādhana 118 Krodha(-vighnāntaka) deities 166, 180, 335, 339n67–343n77 Krom, N.J. 79, 82, 98, 101–102, 107, 142, 279, 293 Kṛṣṇa 279n16 Kṛṣṇāyaṇa 278n16, 279n16, 317n64 Kṛtanagara, King 8, 20n68, 21–22, 88, 141–43, 148–51, 153–59, 252, 268, 275, 278, 318, 345; and Buddhism 141, 148, 151, 153; and foreign policy 151; and Khubilai 142, 158; consecration of 141n2; iṣṭadevatā of 141n2 Kṣemarāja 331, 331nn37–38 Kṣitigarbha 80; among the group of six Bodhisattvas 80; among the Eight Great Bodhisattvas 79 Kubera 55, 224, 282, 311n55, 370n39 Kubilai, Kublai, see Khubilai Kubjikāmatatantra 384n19 Kudṛṣṭinirghāṭana 21n69 Kuijp, L. van der 389 Kūkai 12, 14–15, 29, 31–35, 39, 46n81, 100, 101n84, 238n2, 241, 351, 360, 365n25, 369–71, 381, 382n7 Kuladatta 103n93, 106 Kulottuṅga Cōḻa inscription 209n74 Kumāraghoṣa 18n59, 87, 100–101, 112, 207 Kumārajīva 84 Kumbhayoni, Lord 349–51, 361–64, 368–69, 371–75; inscriptions 351, 362, 365–369n33; Śaiva structures 349; Śaiva symbology 349; temple 367; temple platform 368 Kunlun 85 Kuñjarakarṇa, character 303–305, 307, 309, 315 Kuñjarakarṇa, tale 275, 284, 285n26, 302, 305n50, 308–309, 315–16

Index.indd 451

451

Kurkihār 250 Kusen 351n3 Kuśinagara 193 Kutai inscriptions 114 Kyanzittha, King 20n67 Laḍahancandra, King 169, 169n33 Laghusaṁvara/Herukābhidhāna 18n57 Lakhi Sarai/Jaynagar 173, 167n19, 180, 184 Lakṣmaṇa 17n56 Lakṣmaṇasena, King 171 Lakṣmī 223, 271, 315–16, 368n32, Lalitagiri 8, 195n17, 197, 213, 218 lalitāsana 224, 299, 309, 310n55 Lalitavistara 110 Lālmai, Buddhist centre 195 Lamaism 146 Lamaist church 146 Lambakaṇṇa (Second), dynasty 7, 10n30, 240, 244, 349n2, 350–53, 356, 359, 372 Licchavi, (Nepalese) dynasty 193–95 Lidai minghua ji (‘Records of the Famous Painters of All the Dynasties’) 204n53 Lumbung, see Candi Lumbung Lamdré 145 Lamotte, É. 228n21 Lang Darma, King 18, 116, 119 Laozi 130 Laporan Tahunan 362n22 la Vallée Poussin, L. de 82 Lévi, S. 1n1, 92n70, 98 Leviathan 155 Lhasa 1, 120 Liangbu dafa xiangcheng shizi fufa (T 2081) 31 Liang, dynasty 80 Li Baoyu 128, 133 Liezi 130 Ligor inscription 118, 260 Li Guangbi 129, 133 Li Gui 133n37 Li Heng 129, 131 Li Jie 373 liṅga 362, 367, 368n32, 371n42; inscriptions 367–68 Liṅgapurāṇa 366n26 Linrothe, R. 1, 3n8, 7n20, 163, 166, 214, 217–18, 252n19, 333, 336n55, 339n67–341 Little Leyden Charter 118 Li Xiyan 132, 132n32 Liyan 90n63 Locanā 88–89, 110, 278, 318

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452

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

van Lohuizen-de Leeuw, J.E. 196n20 Lokaṣema 114 Lokanātha 8, 12, 115, 260, 267; see also Avalo­k i­teś­ vara, Lokeśvara Lokesh Chandra 68n7, 69, 71, 103n88, 144, 149, 159, 212, 252 Lokeśvara (Avalokiteśvara) 12, 48n92, 87–88, 90–91, 234n32, 278n15; among the Eight Great Bodhisattvas 79; among the group of six Bodhisattvas 80; see also Avalokiteśvara Long, M. 102n86, 113n1, 196 Longzhi 14, 389; see also Nāgabodhi lontar (palm leaf manuscript) 68 Lopburi 244 Loro Jonggrang 326n12, 344 Lumbinī 104n95 Lumbung, see Candi Lumbung Lunsingh Scheurleer, P. 175, 247 Luoyang 34–35, 92, 130, 204n53 Lü Xiang 240, 353; biography 14n46, 353n7, 356n11 MacKenzie, C. 193n5, 367 Madhurai 360, 373–74 madhyadeśa 11n34, 21n72 Madhyamaka 77, 262 Mädigiriya 354n9, 357 Magadha 11n34, 116, 165, 173, 183, 188, 190, 194–95; Turkic invasion 21n72 Magetsari, N. 71, 101–102 Mahābhārata 311n55 Mahābimba 8, 18n57 mahābodhi 110 Mahābodhi Temple 104n95, 165n6, 166, 189, 197, 203–204 Mahādeva 328n23, 336, 337n58, 384 *Mahādūtavidyā (T 1268.299b21–28) 47n88 Mahā-guhya 111–12 Mahāhdayadhāraṇī 340n71 Mahākāla 20–21, 144–45, 158, 180, 184, 268–69, 338, 339, 342, 345 Mahākālantantra 154 Mahākaruṇodbhava-garbhamaṇḍala 30; see also Genzu maṇḍala Mahākṣobhya 141, 148; see also Akṣobhya mahāmāṁsa 388n45 Mahāmaṇivipulavimānaviśvasupratiṣṭhitaguhya­ dhāraṇī 36n45 Mahāmāyūrī 54n136 Mahāmitābha 141; see also Amitābha Mahānāvika Buddhagupta inscription 85n45

Index.indd 452

Mahāparinirvāṇa 84 Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra 85 Mahāprajñāpāramitā 205 Mahāpratisarā 11n35, 136n50, 178, 266 Mahāpratisarādhāraṇī/Mahāpratisarāvidyārājñī 136n50, 136n51; see also Dhāraṇī of the Great Protectress mahārājalīlāsana 229 Maharashtra 164, 166n17, 167, 182 Mahāratnakūṭa 77 Mahāraudranāmahṛdaya (Borobudur lead-bronze inscription) 206–207, 324, 328n21, 335n51, 335n51, 337n60, 339, 340, 342, 347 Mahāsiddhas 9, 14n50, 166, 186, 166n17, 190n125; see also siddhas Mahasthangarh 172 Mahāvairocana 31, 41, 44, 232–33, 329n24, 338n64, 339n67, 370; as Śākyamuni 57n169; Dharma­ kāya Tathāgata 238n2; Great Maṇḍala 99; Tantra 9; see also Vairocana Mahāvairocanābhisaṁbodhitantra (MVA, MVT, Mahāvairocanatantra) 69, 71, 73, 75, 77; see also Mahāvairocanasūtra, Vairocanābhisaṁbodhi(tantra) Mahāvairocanamahākaruṇagarbha-mahāmaṇḍala 99 Mahāvairocanasūtra (T 848) 14, 86n48, 353n7 Mahāvajrakrodha 335n51 Mahāvaṁsa 9n29, 361n19 Mahāvastu 77, 279, 284, 287, 315; jataka 284n24, 295, 302, 315 Mahāvihāra at Anurādhapura 349n2, 350, 352, 355, 360–61, 374–75; chronicles 352n5 Mahāvyutpatti 50, 55n151, 92, 92n70, 94 Mahāyakṣasenāpati 340 Mahāyāna 3, 4, 7–13, 21n69, 77, 82n37, 98, 102, 116, 118, 125n7, 135, 164–67, 169–70, 175, 190n125, 196, 211, 216–18, 221, 233–34, 239–44, 256, 270, 355, 374; Avaivartaka Bodhisattvas 169n27; Bhikṣu 217; bhūmi 169n27; conflict with Theravāda 166; emergence of icons in the Malay peninsula 241; images 163; introduction in China 114; liturgy 227; monks 217; śāstras 217; Scriptural Collection 3n8; sūtras 19n63, 217; Tantric 101 Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra 92, 94 Mahāyānism 68n4 Mahāyoga 244; second wave of 246; -tantras 30, 33n19, 48–49, 390 Mahendrapāla, King 167–68, 169n28

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Index Maheśvara 90–91, 134, 134n47, 138, 239n5, 337n60, 338, 338n64, 340n69, 343–44, 347, 366, 384, 386–87; as Indra or Śiva 134n43; iconography of 381; or Rudra 383; subjugation/taming of by Vajrapāṇi 133–36, 138, 323, 336, 338, 341–44 Mahīdhara, dynasty 248, 330, 332 Mahinda II, King 364–65 Mahmūd of Ghaznī 115 Maināmatī 169–70, 174–75, 177–78, 181, 167n19, 195, 200–101, 208; see also Vikrampura Maitreya 53, 79, 167n19, 184n101, 189, 203, 204n53, 206, 229; among the Eight Great Bodhisattvas 79 Maitreyanātha 116 Maitrika, dynasty 202, 208 Majapahit 20, 21n69, 295n39 Majumdar, R.C. 212, 213n7 makara 219, 367 Malandra, G.H. 219n18 Malay Peninsula 12, 19, 205 Malay, people and culture 253, 255–56 Malayu 149, 151, 258–63, 268; Kṛtanagara’s expedition against 149 Mālinīvijayottaratantra 384n19 Māmakī 53–54, 88–89, 110, 318 Mānavarman, King 15, 240, 350n3, 352–59 Manchu state/rulers 152 Maṇḍala(s) 4, 5n13, 40, 42, 44n73, 57, 105–106, 123, 132, 136, 201–203, 205, 208–209, 233, 237, 238n2, 240, 244, 248, 256, 277, 278n9, 280n21, 281, 316–17, 365, 366n26, 372n43; fourfold typology 57n164; Hevajra 252; in stone images 166n17, 180, 188–90, 197; in structures (stūpa-maṇḍala) 191–93, 198–99, 201–202; Japanese Matrix World 30; living 128; model of Indic polity/political authority 6, 18n59, 124; Newar and Sakya-pa 317n65; of agni, vāri, pthivī, and vāyu 385; of Candi Jago 278, 318; of secret rituals 245; of the Eight Bodhisattvas 227; of the Guhyasamājatantra 20n68, 248; of the Vairocanābhisaṁbodhi 38; Perfected Body 341; sculptural 234n29; see also Garbhadhātumaṇḍala, Vajradhātu(mahā)maṇḍala Maṇḍalāṣṭasūtra 238, 244 Manguin, P.–Y. 262 Maṇicintana/*Maṇicinta 14 Maniyār Maṭha 197 Mañjughoṣa 18n59, 88, 252; among the Eight Great Bodhisattvas 79; image of 252 mañjunātha 88, 88n60

Index.indd 453

453

Mañjuśrī 10n32, 11n35, 13, 41, 53, 87–90; 145, 165, 170–72, 175–77, 183–85, 184n101, 188–90, 197, 203, 205n57, 206–207, 217, 229, 232–33, 238–39, 242, 251–52, 257, 262, 391; among the group of six Bodhisattvas 80; Arapacana 184–86, 189; cult of, maritime aspect 11; pavilion 127; see also Mañjughoṣa, Mañjuvajra Mañjuśrīgṛha (Mañjuśrī sanctuary) 177, 208; inscription 376, 393–94 Mañjuśrīkrodha 74 Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa (or Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa, MMK) 4n11, 12, 31, 36n45, 37, 43n67, 52n109, 53n126, 58n183, 80, 203, 388n43, 388n45; maṇḍalas of 56n159; see also Garuḍapaṭalaparivarta (T 1276) Mañjuśrīnāmasaṅgīti (‘Litany of Names of Mañjuśrī’) 88n60, 233 Mañjuśrīsamaguhyānuttaradhyānamukhamahātantrarājasūtra 88n61 Mañjuśrīvarman 358n16 Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa (MMK) 381n7, Mañjuvajra/Mañjuśrīvajra 88, 117, 184–86, 189–90, 248; -maṇḍala 88n61; see also Mañjuśrī Mañjuvāk 88, 90 Mantra (s) 4, 84, 106, 110, 239, 244, 323–47, 353n6, 376; Gāruḍa 290n35, 383n14; armour 386; four vajra- 58; five-part mantra of Vairocana 57; of the great seal (mahāmudrā) 385; mantric deities 41 Mantramahodadhi 330–31, 336n56 Mantramārga 3n9, 4, 332; Tantras 333n47; see also Paścimasrotas Mantra of Thousand-Armed Amtakuṇḍalin 370n38 Mantra school (Zhenyanzong) 86n49, 99; of the Old Believers 74 Mantranaya 2, 3n8, 4, 8, 10n30, 11, 20n67, 71, 357; and dhāraṇī practice 4; shift to Theravāda in Sri Lanka 350; Tang tradition 29 Mantrayāna 3, 5–6, 244, 257, 265–66, 353n7 mantrin 5n13 Manusmṛti 345 Māra 243 māraṇa 329n28, 330, 332nn40–41, 333n45, 339n66, 342n75 Māravijayottuṅgavarman, King 118, 244 Mārīcī 172–73, 177, 182, 184n101, 186–87, 189–90, 184n100 Mārīcīdharaṇīsūtra 370n39 Maritime Asia 1–2, 6–7, 13; Buddhism in 6; Esoteric Buddhist circles in 15

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454

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

marman 386n33 Mataram, Kingdom 344n79 Matsunaga, Y. 88n60, 93n72, 373, 381n7, 382n7, 388n45 Maukhari, dynasty 14n46 Māyājāla 4n11, 9n27, 14n44, 74 Māyāmata 272n8 Mayer, R. 341–42, 342n76, 344 McBride, R.D. II. 91, 125n7 Meditationes sacrae 155 Melaka Strait 241, 253, 255, 258–59, 261–63, 266, 271 Memorials and Edicts (T 2120) 126, 128 Mendis, V.L.B. 143 Mendut, see Candi Mendut Meru, Mount 184n97 Methods of Having Requests Heard by Ākāśagarbha (T 1145) 135 Mijiao 354, 369 Miji jingang lishi hui 91–93, 100 Mikkyō daijiten (MDJ) 39n56, 46n83, 51n108, 53n125 Mikkyō jiten (MJ) 39n56 Miksic, J. 207 Mishra, U. 217 Mitra, D. 213–14, 219, 224, 229, 232, 234n29, 363n24 mithuna 231 Mizhunna 14n46, 15 Mkhyen brtse 120 Moens, J.L. 141, 141n2, 269 mohana 330 Mohipur inscription 167–68, 167n21 Mon 244; iconography 244 Mongolian Buddhism 144 Mongol-Manchu relations 152 Monsoon Asia 1 Moriya 352n6 Moses, L.W. 144–45 Mṛtyujit 332–33; see also Mṛtyuñjaya Mṛtyuñjaya 332, 334; mantra 327, 329–30, 332–34; see also Mṛtyujit Muara Jambi 83n41, 263, 266, 268–69, 272–73 Muara Takus 21, 88n61, 110n108, 268–70, 370n39; stone inscription 337n60 Mucilinda 188–89 mudrā(s) 38, 54n132, 106, 110, 232, 239, 245; abhaya- 232, 316; añjali- 281n22, 366n26; bhūmisparśa- 198, 229, 232, 234n29, 243; daṇḍa(staff seal) 387; dharmacakra- 232–33; dhyāna107, 232; mahā- (great seal) 386–87; varada- 219, 221, 232–33, 252; vitarka- 107

Index.indd 454

Muhammed, K.K. 195–96 Mukhāgama 101 Mukherjee, P. 217 Mukhopadhyay, S.P. 281n22 Muktesvara, temple 213, 232 Mula Maluruṅ inscription 21n71 Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya 372n44 Mūlavarman, King 114 Mūrdhaṭaka 41, 45–47, 53, 56n162, 58–59 Murshidabad inscription 167, 167n21 Mus, P. 1n1, 98, 101 Musi, River 253, 257–59, 261 Nadaungmya 166 Nafuti (or Tinafuti), Kingdom see Tīrabhukti nāga(s) 43, 54n136, 225, 232, 244, 281n22, 282, 284, 289–95, 315n58, 319, 338, 342, 366n26, 370, 386; -rāja 315n59; seven-hooded 229; three headed 229 Nāgabodhi (a.k.a Nāgabuddhi) 10, 14–15, 17, 30, 71, 73, 86, 92, 101, 358n15, 370n36, 389–91; see also Nāgajñāna Nāgajñāna/Nāgajñā 15n50, 240, 370n36 Nāgānanda 36n45 Nāgarakṛtāgama, see Deśavarṇana Nāgarī script 21, 88n61, 266–68, 270–71, 273, 318n68 Nāgārjuna 9, 14n50, 73, 76–77, 83–84, 98, 116, 370, 390; Bodhisattva 84 Nāgārjunakoṇḍa 9, 10n32, 201 Nakamura, H. 76, 81n36 Nākappaṭṭiṉam 9, 10n30, 11, 20, 117, 174, 204–205, 240, 244, 266; Chinese-style Buddhist temple in 15, 205; Mahāvihāra 207 Nakhon Si Thammarat 244 Nakhon Pathom 13 Nakhon Ratchasima 20n66 nakṣatras 46 Nālandā 8, 10–11, 17–19, 21n69, 81, 83, 101, 119, 170–71, 173, 176, 178, 183, 184, 193, 195, 205, 206n60, 215n10, 237, 239, 241, 253, 258, 260–61, 265, 270, 317n66, 353, 356–357n12; archaeological remains 194n11, 197; art and architecture of 196–97; copper-plate inscription 165, 167–68, 167n21, 207n67, 207n70, 213; influence on pan-Asian Esoteric Buddhism 17; Mahāvihāra 170, 177, 194–97, 202–208; monastery 6, 74, 213; University 113, 115 Nālandā (locality in Sri Lanka) 18, 352n5 Nāmasaṅgīti 185n105 Namo 153

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Index Nanda 84 Nandadīrghika Udraṅga Mahāvihāra 169n28 Nandamanya, temple 20n67 Nandangaṛh 191–92, 195, 366n26; stūpa architecture 196n20 Nandivarman II Pallavamalla, King 372n44, 377n52 Narasiṁha(pota)varman II Rājasiṁha, King 15, 17, 204–205, 368n32 Nārāyaṇa 90, 323, 383–84 Nāropā (or Advayavajra) 71n12, 390; relics of 120 Naṭarāja see Śiva, dancing Naturalis Historia 212 Naudou, J. 118 Navakampa 326n12, 340n70 nāvātman (mantra) 329n26 Nāyanārs 372n44 Neelis, J. 6 Netang 116, 120, 262 Netratantra 331–33n47, 346 Newar, art 143n9; artesans, diaspora of in Central, East, and Southeast Asia 21, 317, 329n19, 338n63; Buddhists 277; paubha 316 Newer Tang History 127n14, 131n29 Nganjuk, bronze maṇḍala 19, 265 Nham Biền stele 12n38 Nihom, M. 14, 148–49, 141n3, 264–65 nikāya 350, 353 Nikāyasaṅgraha 9, 355n9 Nīlapaṭadarśana 9 Niruttarayoga 93, 93n72 Niruttarayogatantras 14, 214 nirvāṇa 106, 225, 277 Niṣpannayogāvalī 88n61, 248 Niśvāsatattvasaṁhitā (Niśvāsa) 4n11, 44n73 Nivātakavaca 279n16, 296n41, 299, 305, 309n53 Novum Organum 155n19 O’Brien, K. 151, 157–58 Odisha 163, 165, 175, 178, 194–95, 197, 204–206, 212; conquest of 211; in Tibetan accounts 217; maṇḍala states of 202n43; maritime connections with Southeast Asia 9n25, 211–12; stylistic connections with Java 213; temple building within 213; see also Lalitagiri, Ratnagiri, Udayagiri, Older Tang History 130, 131n30 Old Javanese, 9th century stone inscription 323n3, 324, 336; glosses to Sanskrit verses 326–30, 332, 334, 336

Index.indd 455

455

oṃ maṇi padme huṁ, mantra 265 Orlando, R. 86 Orzech, C.D. 3n8, 14n48, 86n51, 125n7, 238–39 Otochi 153 Padang Lawas 20, 166, 174, 178–79, 218, 259, 265–68, 270; Hindu images at 267 Padang Roco 268, 269, 273 padhānaghara 352, 359, 363, 366–67, 369, 375; at Ratu Boko 352, 374n47; at Anurādhapura 352; at Tiriyāy 355 padmakula 48n93, 53n129, 54n131, 54n141, 233 Padmapāṇi 88, 219, 224–25, 229, 235, 243, 252 Padmapurāṇa 193 Padmasambhava 14, 123n1 Padoux, A. 331, 331n38, 338n62 Pag Sam Jon Zang 82n37, 201n39 Pahārpur, see Somapura Mahāvihāra Pahlavi, language 46 Pak Hidayat 88n61 Pal, P. 280, 317 Pāla, dynasty 7, 167–68, 172, 191, 193–97, 199–201, 203–209, 237–38, 245, 260, 265, 273n9, 377n52; art and architecture of 191, 193, 195–97, 199–200, 204, 208; features in Southeast Asian bronzes 239, 251; inscriptions 167, 167n21, 206n60; political and religious ideology 237; religious synthesis 71n12, 168; reviseed chronology 18n59 Palembang 82–83, 113, 205, 240, 242, 256, 260 Pali Buddhism(s) 7, 8n22, 19n63 Pallava, dynasty 10n30, 237, 357, 366n26, 368n32, 372, 377n52; and competing religions 372n44; army 240, 352, 357; inscription 356; relations with Tangs 15 Paṁsukūlika(s) 352n5, 355, 359–61, 372, 375; monks 349–50, 354 Panai 266 Panakawan 294, 296, 299, 302–203, 311–12, 316n64 Panaṅkaran, King 118, 351n3, 377 Panaraban, King (panarabvan, Panarabwan) 323–24, 331–32, 343, 343n77, 345–47, 351, 368n31, 370, 375n49, 376, 378 Pañcakāṇḍastava (pañcakāṇḍa) 325–33n46, 336n58, 337, 340, 342, 342n74, 346–47 Pañcakrama 79, 82 Pañcarakṣā 180; goddesses 190 pañca-ratha 229 Pāñcarātra, Vaiṣṇava 332n41 Pañcāla 287

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456

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

Pañcaviṁśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā 170, 180 Pāñcika (or Jambhala) 211, 224–26, 229, 235 Pāṇḍaravāsinī 52, 88–89, 110 Pāṇḍava, clan 279n16 Pāṇḍya, dynasty 366n26, 368n32, 373–74; disaster 360, 374; invasion of Anurādhapura 350n3, 360; king 361 ~· Panhāle Kājī, Maharashtra 167n17 Parama-guhya 111–12 Paramādya 9n27 paramasaugata 167–69 Paramaśiva 328; see also Paśupati, Rudra, Śaṅkara, Śiva Pararaton 148–50, 155, 158, 278n13–14 Pāramitās (perfections), 77; four 77; six 77, 82; ten 41 Pāramitāyāna (Perfection Path) 4, 71, 242, 244, 256–57, 265 Paranavitana, S. 356 Parṇaśabarī (Parṇaśavarī) 48n92, 50, 52, 186–87, 340n72 Pārthayajña 279n16, 284, 289, 290n32, 293–94, 296, 298–300n44, 302–305n50, 311, 315–16 Pārvatī 182, 335n51, 340, 340n69, 366 pāśa, see amoghpāśa 278 Paścimasrotas, stream of Śaivism 332 Pasir Panjang rock inscription 18n59 Paśupati 335n51, 385; weapon 279n16; see also Rudra, Śiva Pāṭaliputra 195n18, 213; council of 114 Paṭṭikerā 20, 169 pauṣṭika 384 Perak 12 Pereng inscription 344n80 Perfected Body maṇḍala 341 Periplus of the Erythraean Sea 212 Petech, L. 147, 120 ’Phags-pa 144–47, 145n10, 153, 155, 157, 317; spiritual master of Khubilai Khan 145 Phimai 21, 248, 252, 340n72 Pigeaud, Th.G. 68 Pilgrims, Japanese travelling to China 35, 40 Pikatan, King 18n59, 345, 346n86, 351n3, 353n8, 362–63, 374n47, 378, 393–94; locality in Central Java 377; monastery/vihāra 351n3, 373n45 Pinakin liṅga inscription 362n22 Piṇḍīkrama 78–79, 93n74, 111 Piriya Krairiksh 241 Plaosan (Lor), see Candi Plaosan Pliny 212

Index.indd 456

Plumpungan inscription 40n61 Polonnaruwa 354n9, 355n9 Porlak Dolok inscription 267 Poruṣāda 158 Possession, and the use of child mediums in 8th-century China 382; Śaiva Kaula practice, 382; see also āveśa rites Post-Gupta period 1n3 Post-Marxist historiography 142n5 Potala(ka), Mount 177, 181, 189, 366 Poulara, port 212, 213n7 Pradīpodyotana 45n79, 75 Prājña/Prajña (monk) 10, 13n41, 15, 17–18, 34n29, 48, 74, 86–87, 206–207, 229, 383n14; travel to the Southern Seas 207 Prājñā, as companion of Hevajra 172, 178 Prajñābala 382, 383n14 Prajñāpāramitā (deity and text) 11, 48n92, 52–53, 168, 262–63, 278n15; Mahā-Āryaprajñāpāramitā 53; statue 269; see also Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, Pañcaviṁśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā *Prajñāpāramitā-kavaca 43n69 Prajñāpāramitā Nayaśatapañcaśatikā 71n12, 203; commentary by Jñānamitra 203n45 Prajñopāyaviniścayasiddhi 76, 82 Prākāra 349 Prakāśacandra, King 99n78 Prambanan 12, 17, 120, 208, 279, 323, 345, 351n3, 362–63 Prāmodavarddhanī 110 Prapañca, Mpu 20n69, 149–50, 152n16, 155, 278n13 Prasad, B.N. 216 pratipatti 77 Pratītyasamutpādagāthā (Pratītyasamutpādasūtra, ye dharmā formula) 85, 217n16, 257, 266, 270 pratyālīḍha posture 334–35, 340n69, 366n26 ‘proto-Tantric’ Buddhist (and Śaiva) textual corpora 4 Przyluski, J. 1n1 Ptolemy 212 Pūjā Kṣatriya 330n32, 332n43, 333n46 Pulga Saui 15 puṇya 77 Puṇyodaya 10, 12, 14, 244 Purāṇa 363 Puri 9 Purnadih, stūpa 195 Purohita 5, 14n46, 282–83, 300, 302 puṣṭi 330, 330n34, 332n41, 333n45

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Index Qianlong 152 Qing, dynasty 152 Qinglong temple/monastery 32, 59, 100 Qionghua Zhenren 127 Quanya 34–35 Quaritch Wales, H.G. 241 Qubilai, see Khubilai Raffles, S. 193n5 Raghuvaṁśa 212 Rāhu 46n83 Raja Kĕliṅ (Cōḻa king) 212n6 rājaguru 5 Rājarāja Cōḻa I, King 10n30, 117, 174 Rājaraṭṭha 350n3, 357, 364, 373; throne 352 Rājasanagara, King 158 Rājendra I, inscriptions 368n29 Rājgīr/Rājagṛha 197, 203, 215n10 Rājiṇāvihāra 18, 352n5, 353, 356–57; temple 357n14 Rājinīdīpika 357n14 Rāma 17n56 Rāmacaritam 195n18 Rāmapāla, King 172, 195n18; Rāmāyaṇa kakavin 17n56, 345, 346n86, 375n49 Ranakīrti 116 Raṇavaṅkamalla Harikāladeva, King 169 Ranawella, S. 357n13, 359n17, 361n19 Raṅga Lave 151 Rangda 3n10 Raniwās 193 Rasaratnasamuccaya 389–90 Rāṣṭrakūṭa, dynasty 368n32 Ratna, family 106 Ratnabodhi 17, 353n7, 358, 362n20 Ratnagiri 8, 9n25, 178, 195n17, 197, 207; Ratnakūṭa Sūtra 9n29 Ratnamegha 73 Ratnameghasūtra 73, 77–78, 101, 111–12; Dunhuang manuscript of 203n46 Ratnasambhava 57, 88–89, 202, 264, 267 Ratneśvara 88 Ratnatraya 90 Ratih 316 Ratnagiri 37, 213, 218, 227–29, 234–35; Buddhist rituals at 216; monastery/Mahāvihāra 211, 214–17, 219, 226–27 Ratnasambhava 136, 219, 232–33, 280n21 Ratu Boko hillock/promontory (Ratu Boko Buddhist site, Ratu Boko complex) 17, 24, 101, 323–24, 343–345n80, 349–52, 355–56, 359–65,

Index.indd 457

457

367–73, 375, 393; gold foil/artifact (artifact) 323–24, 327, 330–31, 339, 341, 343, 345, 347; mantra/yantra 323–24, 331–33, 340–41, 343n77–47, 351, 368n31, 375–76, 378–79; Śaiva structures at 349 Rāvaṇa 17n56, 332 Ray, H.P. 2n5 Ṛddhiprabhāva 279n20, 281, 315 Record of the Buddhist religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago 228 Record of the Dharma Transmission 238n2 Reichle, N. 268 Relic, Collarbone 354; Buddha hair 355–56 Renwangjing (T 246) 86n51 Reting, monastery 120–21, 262 Riṭigala 359–60 Ritual Manual for the Initiation into the Great Maṇḍala of the Uṣṇīṣa-Cakravartin (T 959) (Manual) 29–31, 33–34, 36–38, 40–49 Robson, J. 382 Rohaṇa, Kingdom 240 van Ronkel, Ph.S. 82 Rosenstock-Huessy, E. 153n17; theory of 141 Rossabi, M. 144–45 ṛṣi(s) 282–83, 298, 302–203, 319, 371n42 Ṛtasaṅgraha 50, 58n180 Rudra 55n154, 328n23, 330, 332, 339n68, 344, 371, 386–87; with severed head 387; see also Maheś­ vara, Paśupati, Śiva Ruizong, Emperor 203 Rukmiṇī 279n16 Rulai miyao jing 91 ryōbu Tantras/Tantric system 31n7, 38, 43–44, 48; (‘twinned’) maṇḍala(s) 31, 33, 35n38–37, 41, 43, 48 Sab Bāk inscription 19n61, 20n66, 247, 358n16 Sabokingking inscription, see Telaga Batu inscription ṣaḍaṅgayoga 148 Sadāśiva 169 Saddharmapuṇdarīka-sūtra (Lotus Sūtra), sādhana 277, 278n9, 317–18 Sādhanamālā 80, 118, 170, 335n50, 335n52, 338n61 Saicho 47n89 Śailendra-Cūḍāmaṇivarmavihāra 10n30, 11 Śailendra, dynasty (era of Java) 7, 8n21, 9n25, 12, 15, 17, 18n59, 69, 191, 195, 199, 201, 203, 205–209, 242, 323–24, 344, 345, 347, 349, 351, 353, 355, 358–59, 369, 377n52, 378n53, 393; art and architecture of 191, 201, 207–209; court 350;

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458

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

diplomatic links with Tangs and Lambakaṇṇas 10n30; foreign roots of 212; inscriptions 207, 209, 349; kings 361; links with Pāla dynasty 191, 193, 203, 207–209; origins 9n25, 207–208, 212 Śailendrarājaguru 378 Śailodbhava, dynasty 9n25, 212 Śaiva 3, 5, 9n26, 12n38, 14n43, 21, 69, 362n21, 364–68, 370–71, 372n44, 373, 375n49, 377; dynasties 10, 17; inscriptions 362, 367–68; Kings 8n21; liṅgas 371n42; priests of Bali 325, 342n74; (proto-)Tantric scriptures 4n11; recension of SHK 69; ṣi 371n42; scriptures from Bali 324–26, 330n32, 346; Siddhānta 3n9; Tantras 39n61, 331, 331n36, 333n47, 345–46; teachings 69 Śaivism (Śaiva religion) 5, 8n21, 10, 90n63, 150, 350n3, 366, 374n46, 375, 377, 381; adoption of mainstream form in Central Java 374; Atimārga branch 10n30; boundaries between Buddhism and Śaivism 4; incorporation of texts into Buddhism 382–83; influence of in The Āveśa Rites 381; in Java 12, 39; Tantric 3n9, 4, 21n69 Śakra 55, 182; see also Indra Sakya (Sa-skya) sect/monks 145–47; monasteries 144 Śākyakīrti 19n62, 82, 83, 258 Śākyamitra 99n78, 341n73 Śākyamuni (Buddha) 41, 46n83, 78, 90–91, 103– 104, 133, 164–65, 184, 186–89, 221, 232–33, 235, 239, 243–44, 260, 370; image of 219; as (Mahā) Vairocana 37, 41–42, 57n169; see also Buddha Sakya-pa 146, 317 Sakya Paṇḍita 144–45, 145n10, 317 Śākyaśrībhadra 21n73, 167n19, 173, 277, 317–18 Saloṇapura Mahāvihāra 228n23 samādhi 51n103, 57, 100, 110, 134, 206, 240 Samājasādhanavyavastholī 389 Samantabhadra 17n54, 53n125, 79, 88, 107, 109–110, 201, 206, 281n22, 357, 358n15; among the Eight Great Bodhisattvas 79 Samānta feudalism 123, 202; maṇḍala 265 Samantapāsādikā 391 Samaratuṅga, King 323–24 śamatha-vipaśyanā 77 samaya(s) 51, 56n161, 90, 106 sambhogakāya 134n45 Saṁvara 13, 178, 180, 189n120, 240, 242, 248–49, 252n19, 339–40n72; cycle 9n25; see also Cakra­ saṁvara Saṁvarodayā 9n25 Samye Mahāvihāra 201n39

Index.indd 458

Sanchi/Sañci 191, 201 Sanderson, A.G.J.S. 4, 12n38, 330n36–33n47, 342n75, 346, 366, 381–82 Sandhyākaranandin 195n18 Sanfoqi 11, 240, 256, 260–61, 263 saṅgha 216–17, 227, 235 Saṅghabhadra 83 Saṅ Hyaṅ Advayajñāna 91 Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānikan (SHK) 12n38, 49, 67, 68n3, 69, 71, 75–79, 81–82, 86, 90, 93, 98–103, 106n99, 110–13, 278, 339n68; manuscripts 68; Śaiva version 68n7; three versions of 68 Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānan Advayasādhana (SHKAS) 69, 71, 76–77, 82, 88–91, 100 Saṅ Hyaṅ Kamahāyānan Mantranaya (SHKM) 69, 71, 73–79, 91, 100–101, 105, 112 Saṅ Hyaṅ Pustaka Kamahāyānan 93 Saṅ Hyaṅ Samaya 73 Saṅ Hyaṅ Tantra Bajradhātu Subhūti, see Tantra Bajradhātu Sañjaya, line of kings 344, 351n3, 370n37, 377; ancestor 323, 343 Śaṅkara (appellative of Śiva) 328n23 Ṣaṇmaṇḍalavidhi 47n86 Sanskrit 67; texts, in the Indonesian Archipelago 67; -Khmer inscription of Bo Īkō 367n27; -Khmer inscription of Sdok Kak Thom 346 Śāntākaragupta 279n18 Śāntarakṣita 3n9, 74, 76–77, 390 śānti 116, 330, 330nn34–35, 332n41, 333n45, 336 Śantideva 21n69, 73, 75, 78, 92, 98, 107 śāntika 384 Sap Bak, village 359n16 sapta-ratha 224–25 Sarasvatī 329 Śariputra 372n44 Sarkar, H.B. 212 Sārnāth 187, 218, 228n21, 245 Sarvabuddhasamāyoga 14n49 Sarvadurgatipariśodhana(tantra) (SDP) 21n69, 73, 106n100, 107, 334, 339n67 Sarvajñāna 91 Sarvanivaraṇaviṣkambhin 79–80; among the group of six Bodhisattvas 80; among the Eight Great Bodhisattvas 79 Sarvāstivādin 270, 358n16 Sarvatathāgatādhiṣṭhāna 357n13 Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha (STTS, ‘The Compendium of Principles’) 9, 14n49, 29n2, 30, 31n10, 33, 44–45, 47n88, 48n93, 53n129–130,

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Index 54n131, 58n179, 71, 133n40, 201, 203, 205, 207, 208n72, 238–39, 240n6, 242, 248, 264, 323–24, 327n19, 334–39, 341–43, 353n7, 357n13, 365, 382–83, 389–91; Sanskrit manuscript 201n40; -sūtra 86 Sarvavajrodaya (SV) 73, 99n78, 324, 334–36, 339n67, 340n69 ṣaṭkarmāṇi (six rites of magic) 330–32nn44–45, 331n46, 339n66, 345 *Ṣaṭpāramitāsūtra 34n29 Satyadvayāvatāra 118 Satyavarman 358n16 Schnitger, F.M. 258, 267–68, 270 Schoemaker, W. 208 Schopen, G. 216n13, 217, 227, 228n21 Schoterman, J. 113n1, 318 Scripture for Humane Kings 128 Sdok Kak Thom Sanskrit-Old Khmer inscription 346 Secret History (Mongyol-un niyuca tobčiyan) 153 Seguntang Hill 258; see also Bukit Seguntang inscription Sejarah Melayu 212n6 Sekoddeśaṭīkā 390 Sen, T. 2n4, 10, 15n53, 17, 194n12 Sena, dynasty 169, 174 Sena I, King 9n27, 353n8, 354n9, 355n9, 359–60, 373 Sena II, King 18, 350n3, 351, 359n17, 361, 365, 369n33, 373–75 Sewu, see Candi Sewu Seyfort Ruegg, D. 5, 144 Shanxing 83–84 Sharrock, P.D. 317n66 Shāstri, H. 91–92 Shengshan-si, monastery 34, 50 Shibahui zhigui 337n60, 338, 341n73 Shibian, Dharmācārya 83–84 Shihu (Dānapāla) 11, 206 Shijuhō-kyō (Shizhoufa jing) 339n66 Shilifoshi 260; see also Śrīvijaya Shingon 354, 370; order 31; school 99, 376n51 Shōkai (alias Dōkai) 40 Shōrai Mokuroku 39n58 Shouzhang-lun 83n40 Shilun jing (or Daśacakrasūtra) 80–81 Shūei 40 Si Thep 20n66 Sichuan Basin 129 siddha(s) 4, 9n26, 13n40, 47, 154, 166n17, 186n110,

Index.indd 459

459

231, 265, 345, 372n43 Siddhamātṛkā, script 17, 18n59, 32n12, 35, 38, 45, 55n151, 112, 195, 207n65, 239, 290; inscriptions 12, 17n55, 18, 357n13 Siddham texts 370n38, 371n41 Siddhāntatantras 326n12 siddhayātra 13n38, 257 Siddhayogeśvarīmata 332n45 siddhis 47, 93, 106, 134n44, 136, 265, 333n45, 347, 353n6 Sidha Karya 3n10 Śikhin 79 Śikṣāsamuccaya 75, 92, 97–98, 107 Śikṣāsamuccayābhisamaya 117 Śikṣāsamuccayakārikā 117 Śilāmegha 356 Silk Road(s) 2n4, 114; maritime 2, 7; southern 114 Silla, dynasty 8 Sima Guang 123–25 sīmā, inscriptions 351n3 sīmābandha 372 Simpang statue 141n3 Sinclair, I. 12 Siṇḍok, King (Śrī Īśāna Bhadrottuṅgadeva) 69, 93, 99 Singhal, S.D. 252, 325–26 Siṅhasāri, kingdom/dynasty 21n69, 88, 141, 158, 268; inscription of ad 1351 278n14 Si Pamutung 267 Śiśireśwara 223 Śiva 134n43, 167, 174, 181–82, 184, 187, 225, 239, 253, 255, 268, 282, 318, 326–32, 335, 338, 340–44, 362n22, 366, 368n32–72n43, 376, 386n31; dancing 184, 187, 190n125; oneness with Buddha 278, 318; temple 351; see also Mahādeva, Paśupati, Rudra, Śaṅkara Śiva-Buddha (Bhaṭṭāra) 150–51, 278; cult of 21, 241 Śivadharma 44n73 Śivagṛha, funeral memorial inscription/stele 18n58, 345, 351n3, 374n48, 375n49, 393–94 Śivaliṅgas 362n22, 367n27, 371; see also liṅgas Skanda 184, 184n95, 352n6; see also Kārttikeya Skilling, P. 10–11, 19, 168n27, 241, 262–63, 273n9 Skorupski, T. 71 Ślączka, A. 267, 272–73 Slouber, M.J. 382, 383n14 Slusser, M.S. 317n65 Smith, F.M. 382 Snellgrove, D.L. 238n2, 334, 336, 342n75 Soekmono, R. 272

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460

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

Sogdian, language 46 Sogdiana 131, 131n28 Somapura Mahāvihāra 8, 101, 165n10, 168, 170, 172, 174, 195, 196n20, 197, 199–201, 208–209, 366n26; see also Paharpur Somnāth 115 Song, dynasty 98, 124, 125n8, 132n33, 259, 264, 269; biography 241 Song Fazhi 204 Song gaoseng Zhuan 383n14 Songtsen Gampo 115, 119 Songwang 114 South and Southeast Asia, relations and cultural exchanges, 175, 177n77, 178–80, 183–84, 190–91, 193, 200–209; and Sanskrit 205 Spirit possession 382n10 śramaṇa 34, 127, 383 Śrāvastī 187, 372n44; miracles of 85 Śrī Canāśā 250 Śrīcandra, King 169, 174 Śrī Ghananātha 103, 111 Śrī Hariwarddhana, King 148 Śrī Jñāneśvarabajra 278n14 Śrī Jayawardhanī 148 Śrī Kahulunnan 375 Śrīparamādya 14n49 Śrī Sambhara Sūryāvaraṇa 93 Śrī Saṅgrāmadhanañjaya, King 18n59 Śrī Sūryavarmadeva, King 20 Śrīśailam 9, 14n50, 212 Śrīśailendracūḍāmaṇivarman Vihāra 118, 244; Śailendra-Śrīvijayan monastery 11 Śrīśīla 240, 356n11 Śrīvijaya, Buddhist kingdom of 7, 8n21, 11–12, 18, 19n62, 82–85, 113, 115–16, 118–21, 123, 205–206, 238, 240–41, 243–44, 253, 255–56, 258, 260–63, 265, 269, 358n16, 374n48; bronzes 238; centres of learning 19n62; influence on Tibetan Buddhism 115; inscriptions 244n12; -pura 113, 115–17, 174n57; renowned seat of Buddhism 116; see also Sanfoqi Śrī Jñānamitra 116 stambhana 330, 336 Stein Callenfels, P.V. van 275 Stele Inscription, see Amoghavajra Strickmann, M. 382, 384n21 Stūpa(s) 41, 44, 103–105, 191, 209, 218, 253, 257–58, 265, 267, 269–70, 354–56, 362n21, 371; architecture 104–105, 191, 197–98; at Abhayagiri 357n13; cakravartin 193; donative 213; of

Index.indd 460

Bharhut 79; of parinirvāṇa 104–105; of Victor 104–105; -prāsāda 101–103; votive 103 stūpikās 102–103, 209, 257; see also stūpa Stutterheim, W.F. 101 Subāhu 41, 45–46, 53, 56n162, 58 Subāhuparipṛcchā 45 Śubhākaradeva, King 9n25, 202 Śubhākarasiṁha 14–15, 18, 30, 31, 33n19, 34, 38, 45, 86, 101, 125, 135, 205–206, 329n24, 339n68, 365n25 Subhūti (Tantra), see Tantra Bajradhātu Subhūtipālita 99n78 Sudhana and Manoharā tale, on Borobudur reliefs 206; on Candi Jago reliefs 275–319 Sudhana(kumāra) 107, 171, 175–76 Sudhanakumārāvadāna (avadāna) 279–81, 284, 287, 289–91, 293, 295–96, 298, 300–302, 304, 306, 308–11, 314–16, 318; Nepalese 281n22; Newar version 280 Sumeru, Mount 50, 336, 336n55, 343 Sum pa 116–17 Sundberg, J.R. 12, 15, 17, 86, 102n86, 240–41, 252, 323–24, 331, 332n39, 336, 336n55, 340n69, 341, 343–47, 350n3, 361n20, 362, 369, 370n36, 373n45, 376, 389 Sungai Tekarek inscription 85 śūnyatā 257 Śūrapāla, King 167 Surocolo, bronze maṇḍala 19, 252, 265 Surowono 317n65 Sūrya/Āditya 174, 187, 190n125, 337n60 Susiddhikarasādhanasaṅgraha 47n86 Susiddhikara(sūtra or -[mahā]tantra) 3n9, 14n49, 33n19, 45n80, 50n100, 53n126, 337n60, 346 Sutasoma, character 338–40n71 Sutasoma kakavin 20n69, 143n7, 157–58, 278, 280n21, 338–40n71, 342 Suvarṇabhūmi, see Suvarṇadvīpa Suvarṇadvīpa 11, 19, 20n68, 87n53, 113–19, 166, 174, 241, 256, 260–263, 265, 339n66 Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra 269 Suzong, Emperor 39, 124–26, 128–29, 131, 131n31, 133, 136, 203, 369, 373n45 Svastika (Bodhisattva) 38 Svastika (śramaṇa) 50, 59 Śyāmatārā 277; see also, Tārā Szántó, P.D. 99 Tabo, monastery 11, 201n39, 262 Taishō, Canon 381, 383; Tripiṭaka 361n20, 365n25

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Index Taizong, Emperor 5n15, 133n37, 135n49 Taizō Zuzō 38n51 Taji Gunung inscription 351n3 Takakusu 81n36 Ṭakkirāja 327n19, 334–37nn59–60, 342n75, 376n51 Talang Tuwo inscription 82–83, 85, 242, 256 Tāmralipti 13n42, 83 Tandihet gold plaque (Tandihet I, Tandihet II inscriptions) 266, 267 Tang, dynasty 7, 85n43, 90n63, 123–27, 123n2, 125n8, 126, 133n37, 136–37, 145, 194, 203–205, 238, 259–61, 382; biography 239–40; bureaucracy 127–31; capital 133n39; court 5n15, 15, 381; diplomatic links with Śailendras and Lambakaṇṇas 10n30; emperors 239, 358; lines of communication with Java 48; masters 29; military 129, 131; period 10; relations with Pallavas 15; society 133; Tanjung Medan 270 Tanjur Canon 19n63 Tantra Bajradhātu (or Tantra Subhūti/Bajradhātu Subhūti) 93, 98–100, 150 Tantrayāna, introduction to China 217 Tantric magic 134n44, 136, 146, 324, 330, 332, 341, 345–47, 388; ses also ṣaṭkarmāṇi, siddhis, war magic Tāntrikas 231, 375n49 Tantular, Mpu 157–58 Tārā 8, 9n29, 13, 20, 52, 54n141, 87–89, 110, 118–20, 166n11, 171–73, 175–78, 181–82, 186, 189, 207, 217, 232, 234, 238, 265; Aṣṭamahābhaya 186, 189–90, 234; cult of in Tibet and Indonesia 87, 119–120; cult of, maritime aspect 11; Mahācīna(krama)- 10n32; mantra of 119; temple at Somapura 207; temple in Central Java 8, 87, 120, 377; temple in Sri Lanka 240; Vajratārā 189n120, 264; see also Śyāmatārā Tāraka 337n60, 342n75 Tārāmūlakalpa 87 Tāranātha 11n34, 18n57, 21n72, 81, 82n37, 111, 113, 166n11, 167n18, 175, 217; History of Buddhism in India 113 Tathāgata(s) 51n103, 76, 82, 88, 90, 92, 102n87, 103, 104n95, 106, 110, 134, 329, 335n51; Five (Pañca­ tathāgatas) 88, 177, 186, 189, 232–33, 264, 331; in the STTS 201; worship of in Java 101; see also Buddha(s), Jina-Buddhas Tathāgata-bhasmeśvara-nirghoṣa 239 tathāgathakula 233

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461

Tathāgataguhya (or -guhyaka, -guhyakasūtra) 91–92, 94, 98; Tathāgatācintyaguhyanirdeśa 91; see also Tathāgataguhya Tathāgatoṣṇīṣa see uṣṇīṣa Tattvasaṅgraha 12n37; tantra 99n78; sūtra 14; see also Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṅgraha (STTS) Tattvasiddhi 3n9, 29n2, 74–75 Taxila 201 Telaga Batu inscription (Sabokingking inscription) 256, 258, 265, 345 Tendai order 31, 35n38 The (Garuḍa) Āveśa Rite (Suji liyan Moxishouluo tian shuo [jialouluo] aweishe fa) 381–84, 388 The Blue Annals 74 The Great Tang dynasty record of the Western Regions 193n4 The Scripture for Humane Kings (En wang hu guo ban ruo bo luo mi duo jing) 86n51 Theravāda 8n22, 77, 239n4, 240, 361, 375; conflict with Esoteric Buddhism 166; monks 190; shift in Sri Lanka 350, 374 Tholing 201n39 Three Jewels 106 Thūpārāma 353–56, 359–60; stūpa 353 Tian Liangqiu 132, 132n36 Tiantai, Mount 35, 39 Tibet, military conquest by Khubilai 141 Tibetan Buddhism 74, 115, 144, 145; influence on Śrīvijaya 115; influence by Śrīvijaya 115 Tibetan Canon 117 Tibetan, invaders of China 131, 131n30 Tibetan Lamas 146n11, 147 Tibetan literature, and information on Śrīvijaya 113, 261–62, 264–65 Tibetan monks 175 Tigawangi 317n65 Tilopa 175 Tīrabhukti, Kingdom 194n14 Tiriyāy 353–56, 357n12, 359–60 tīrthyas 372n44 To-ji 35, 40 Tomabechi, T. 389 Tortoise-shell inscriptions 168n22 Trailokyavijaya 52, 239, 252n19, 335, 336n55, 340n69, 340n72; myth/cycle of 323–24, 336, 338–43, 347, 370; see also Vajrapāṇi Trailokyavijayamahākalparāja 337n59 Trailokyavijayamahāmaṇḍala 264, 334, 338 Trayastrīṁśa 104, 105n97

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462

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

Trepiṭaka 383; from Kashmir 382, 383n14 Tri Tepusan inscription 101 tridhātu 101 Trimūrti 90–91 Triple Hall (sandian) 123, 123n2 Tripura 368–69 Tripurāntaka 362n22, 368n32, 369n32 Tripurāsura 368n30, 369n33 Triratna (Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha) 50n101; 90–91; see also Ratnatraya Trisamaya 376 Trisamayarāja 75, 75n23 Tryambaka inscription 368n30 Tucci, G. 103n92, 104n96, 105n97 Tuoluoni ji jing 38–39 Turfan 83 Turk 131 Tutur Ādhyātmika 326nn13–14 Tutur Bhuvanasaṅkṣepa 326n12 Tutur Kamokṣan 326nn12–14, 329n29 Tutur literature, Old Javanese and Balinese 39n61 uccāṭana 330, 332n41 Ucchuṣma 48n92, 54 Udaya II, King 9n25, 365 Udayagiri 8, 195n17, 197, 207, 213, 218 Uddaṇḍapura (Otantapurī Mahāvihāra) 8, 195, 201n39 Uḍra (present-day Odisha) 206; see also Odisha Ujeed, H. 158–59 Umā 366 Üpa losel 19n63 Upadeśa 85 uṣṇīṣa 107; buddhoṣṇīṣa/tathāgatoṣṇīṣa 36–37, 39, 41, 43; deities 42 Usṇīṣacakravartin, 37; Ekākṣara- 36, 38n53, 39n56, 41, 43, 46, 47n86, 51n103; -tantra, 36n46, 37 Uṣṇīṣakalpas 29, 36–39, 41, 44–45, 48n92 Vāgbhaṭa 386n33, 389–90 Vāgīśvarakīrti 20n66 Vairocana 42, 45n79, 57, 88–91, 99, 164, 187, 201–202, 206, 208n72, 232–33, 238–39, 244, 252, 264, 335n51, 336, 338–39nn66–67, 278, 280n21, 294, 296, 298, 309, 315, 363; five-part mantra 57; heaven 302; Khmer 244; see also Mahāvairocana Vairocanābhisaṁbodhi(tantra) (VAT) 3n9, 29n2, 30, 32–35n39, 38, 43–44, 46; 52n109, 55n151, 57n168; maṇḍala of 38, 43, 53n127; see also

Index.indd 462

Mahāvairocanābhisaṁbodhitantra (MVT) Vaiśālī 187, 193 Vaiṣṇava religion (Vaiṣṇavism) 3, 372n44, 374n46; fogure from Abhayagiri 366; state temple (Angkor Wat) 371n42; texts 272 Vaiśravaṇa (yakṣa king and form of Kubera) 55n152, 283, 315n58–59; Vaital Deul 223 Vājiriyavāda 9, 355n9 Vajra(s) 3n8, 7, 42, 45, 59, 106, 171, 186, 220, 239, 245, 247, 252, 253, 259–60, 266–68, 270, 270n7, 273, 323, 331, 335nn51–52, 338n64, 339, 339n67, 344–46, 355, 359n18, 368n31, 370, 374–76; family 106; finials at Thūpārāma 359; -kāya 82; mantras 41, 58; -mastaka (kīrtimukha) 223; -śarīra 82, 242, 257; single-pronged 52n110, 53n128; viśva- 88n61, 270n7, 273 Vajrabodhi (a.k.a. Vajrabuddhi) 10n30, 12, 14–15, 17–18, 30–32, 73, 86, 92, 100–101, 125, 135–36, 237–42, 205–207, 244–45, 252, 352–53, 355–56, 358, 361n20, 362n20, 365n25, 370, 376n51, 382, 389–91; biographies of 86, 136n51, 239–40, 351, 353n7, 382; journeys 13n41; meeting with Amoghavajra in Java 86n47, 205n58, 358 Vajrabodhisattvas 264 vajrācārya 4, 13n40, 18n57, 32 Vajradeva, 168, 169n28 Vajradhara 270, 336n55; see also Vajrasāttva Vajradharma 106 Vajradhātu(mahā)maṇḍala (‘[Great] Diamond Realm/World Maṇḍala’) 30, 33, 35n38, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47n88, 52n110, 55, 99, 134–35, 200–201, 202n40, 203, 208, 239, 240, 264–65, 280n21, 335, 370 Vajradhātumahāmaṇḍalopāyikāsarvavajrodaya 99n78 Vajradhātvīśvarī 89 vajradhṛk 90–91; see also Vajradhara Vajragarbha-Trailokyavijaya 371n41 Vajragarbharāja 370 Vajrahūṁkāra (Huṅkāravajra) 334–36n55, 339n67, 340n69; -mudrā 339n67 Vajrakarma 106 vajrakula 233 Vajrakuṇḍali 370 Vajramuṣṭi Bodhisattva 339n67 Vajrapāṇi 13, 53, 88, 90–92, 107, 124, 134, 154, 201, 219–22, 227, 229–30, 235, 239, 242–43, 252n19, 257, 323–24, 335–44, 346–47, 383; among the Eight Great Bodhisattvas 79; among the

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Index group of six Bodhisattvas 80; as the Supreme Lord of All Tathāgatas 88; images of 211; see also Vajradhara, Vajrasattva, Vajrahūṁkāra, Trailokyavijaya, Caṇḍavajrapāṇi Vajraparvata 9; -dwelling monks 9n27; see also Śrīśailam Vajrarāja 335 Vajraratna 106 Vajrasattva 9, 13, 19, 88, 90–91, 106, 124, 134, 175, 232, 240, 242, 245–52, 336n55, 339, 339nn67–68, 354n9, 359n18, 370n36; as Ādi–Buddha/Sixth Buddha 242 278n15; as overlord of the Vajra­ dhātu pentad (śrīpañcasugata) 248; icons 246–47; Khmerized bronzes. 248–49; Khorat 252; Lovea Em icon 245–46, 252; Mahā- 88; school 102; see also Mahāvairocana Vajrasattvaniṣpādana 337n59 Vajraśekharatantra (VT, Vajraśekharasūtra, *Vajraśikhara, Vajroṣṇīṣa) 30, 33n19, 86, 132, 264, 335, 335nn50–51, 337n59, 338, 341n73, 353n7, 370; cycle 135 Vajrasūkṣmadharmamaṇḍala 45 Vajratārā, see Tārā Vajratīkṣṇa 390–91 Vajravāda 360 Vajravarāhī 178 Vajrayāna 3–4, 6n17, 8n22, 9n27, 10n30, 11, 12n37, 13n40, 14, 20n66, 21n69, 98, 218, 234, 237, 241, 280n21, 353, 355; Buddhism 4, 8, 11, 19, 217; South Indian innovators 353 Vajrayoginī 174; (Vikrampur) inscriptions 168n22 Vajroṣṇīṣa, see Vajraśekharatantra Valabhī Mahāvihāra 194, 202, 208 Valaiṅ 212 Vālavatī, Mount 12, 115 Vāmasrotas, Śaiva stream 346 Vaṁsatthappakāsinī 361n19 Vanaratna 175 Vanua Tṅah 351n3, 373n45, 377–78; crown 351n3; see also Wanua Tengah III inscription Vāpilladatta 99 Varak, King 353n8, 358n16, 363, 373n45, 376–78 Vārāṇasī 18 Varman, dynasty 169, 174 Varuṇa 55, 282, 363n24 vaśīkaraṇa, 329n25–332n39, 335n50, 336, 336nn56–57, 339n66, 342–43, 345–47, 384 Vasubandhu 92 Vasudeva 282 Vasudhārā 234n29

Index.indd 463

463

vaṭadāge 354, 355–57, 359 Verardi, G. 21 Vespasianus 114 Vessagiri 355n9 Vetāla-rituals 4n11 Vibhaṅga 85, 270 vidyās 4, 106 Vidyā(dhara) Piṭaka (Mingzhou) 4n11, 84 vidyādharas 17, 223–24 Vidyāmantra 83 Vidyottamātantra 346 Vighnāntaka 340n72; see also krodha-vighnāntaka deities vihāra 12n38, 18, 214–16, 218–19, 221–22, 228, 231, 233, 235, 373, 374n47, 377–78; architecture 199, 201; Kūkai’s at Kongōbuji 371; of Jingesi 360 Vijayabāhu 352n6 Vikramapura 116 Vikramaśīla Mahāvihāra/monastery 8, 10, 18n57, 21, 71, 101, 116, , 165, 168, 173, 195, 196n20, 197, 199–201, 207–209, 317n66; see also Antichak Vikrampur/Vikramapura 167n19, 169–71, 174, 177–79, 180, 185n105, 187; inscription 168n22, 169; see also Maināmatī Vimalaprabhā 170–71 Vimalamitra 14 Vimalosṇīsadhāraṇī 216n12 Vīṇāśikhatantra 326n12, 346 Vinatā 385n29 vinaya 134n49, 169n27, 216–17, 227, 352n5, 372; Pali 391 Vināyaka/vināyakas 37, 46, 135, 182, 333, 337–42, 344, 344n80, 347, 365, 370n39, 371; rituals 339n66; series of eight 47, 56n162, 59n185, 370; vajra- 47n88; see also Gaṇapati Vipulaśrīmitra 165 Vīrabhadra 333 Vīrāṅkurārāma 355n9 Virūpa 145 Viśakhapatnam 9 Viṣṇu 90–91, 167, 168n22, 169, 174, 177n77, 187, 190n125, 195n16, 255, 271, 366, 368n32, 371n42, 383n17 Viṣṇuvardhana, King 158–59, 275, 278n13 Viśuddhimārgasanne 391 Viśvapāṇi 88 Viśveśvara 87–88 vyāghramāṁsa 388n45 Vyākhyāyukti 92 Waddell, L.A. 120

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Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia

Wang Xuance 194, 204 Wang Xuanguo 84 Wanua Tengah III inscription 18n59, 323, 377–78, War magic 5n15 Wat Hua Wiang, inscription 243 Wat Keow 243 Wat Phra Maen 13 Wat Sithor inscription 246, 250 Weinberger, S.N. 239 Wang Jin 128–31 Wayman, A. 79 Wedemeyer, C. 75, 98 Weerasinghe, S.G.M. 86n50 Wendan 358n16 Wenshushili pusa ji zhuxian suoshuo jixiong shiri shan’e suyao jing 384n21 Wenxian 129 Wenzi 130 Western Ghats, rock cut architecture 215–16 White, D.G. 5, 9n26, 13, 332–33 Wijesuriya, G. 355 Williams, J. 201 Williams, P. 93n73 Wolters, O.W. 256, 260, 266 Wonogiri 243 Woodward, H.W. Jr. 6, 11, 12n35, 231, 239, 244, 248, 252, 257, 264–66, 273 Wuatan Tija inscription 370n 37 Wulff, K. 69 Wutai, Mount 10n32, 127, 145, 203–204, 360, 391 Wuwei 132n32 Wuwei Sanzang Chanyao (T 917) 45 Wu Xiuyue 127 Wu Zetian, Empress 203 Wuzong, Emperor 18, 240, 242, 373 Xian 86n48 Xinping, Commandant of 130 Xin Tangshu (XTS, ‘New History of the Tang Dynasty’) 127–29, 131, 132n32, 137n52, 194n12 Xiping, see Geshu Han Xuanchao 33n19 Xuanzang 5n15, 113, 119, 135n49, 191, 193–94, 261, 366 Xuanzong, Emperor 8, 39n6, 126, 128n17, 129–30, 244 Yab-yum 278n11 Yama 384, 386–87 Yamāntaka 180, 335

Index.indd 464

Yamarāja 55 Yamunā, River and Goddess 211, 225 Yan Zhenqing 130 yantra 244, 273, 327n19, 330–32, 341, 343, 345; see also Ratu Boko mantra/yantra Yapahuwa 359–60 Yarlung, dynasty 7, 131 ye dharmā formula 257, 266, 270; see also Pratītya­ samutpādagāthā Yeshe Ö 375n49 Yijing 10, 13n42, 14, 19, 82–85, 93n74, 103, 113, 202n43, 205, 216, 226–28, 234, 250, 258, 261, 353n7, 372n44; in Śrīvijaya 10, 19n62, 82–83, 205n55 Ying Chua 145 Yixing 34, 46 Yoga 14, 41, 57, 74, 76, 84, 93, 98–100, 106, 110–11, 125–26, 239, 343, 353n7; deity 239; four yogas of the SHKAS 76; Yogabhāvanāmārga 76–77, 111 Yogācāra 77, 81–83, 101–102, 262 Yogācāryābhāvanātātparyārthanirdeśa 76 Yogaratnamālā 115, 261 Yogasūtras of Patañjali 77 Yogatantras 12n37, 71, 240n6, 264, 323, 346, 351, 353n7, 357; syncretic maṇḍalas 264 Yogāvatāra 76, 81–82, 87, 111 Yogāvatāropadeśa 76, 111 Yoginīs 21, 151n14; circle of 143, 178 Yoginītantras 4, 11, 231, 240, 242, 244, 265, 375 Yogīśvara 110 Youyang zazu 261 Yuan, dynasty 147, 178, 242, 275; court 143, 317; emperor 144 Yuan shi 143, 149 Yuan Zai 128, 130–31, 132n32 Yuanzhao 12, 15, 132, 132n32, 381, 382n7 Yudhiṣṭhira 284, 289n29 Yüeh-chih 114 Yunnan 1, 21 Yunqi 85 Zanning 14n46, 128n16, 237, 241, 358 Zhang 126 Zhao Qian 358 Zhen Jin (as Bodhisattva Imperial Prince) 147 Zhenla 249 Zhenyuan Catalogue 131n27, 132 Zhenyuan xinding shijiao mulu 12 Zhi’an Jñānapārin 83–84

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Index Zhidu fushi 129n18 Zhongnan, Mount 203n47 Zhongzong, Emperor 203

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465

Zhou dynasty 124 Zhou Zhiguang 137 Zhuangzi 130

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Front Matter.indd 6

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NALANDA-SRIWIJAYA SERIES

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa: Reflections on the Chola Naval Expeditions to Southeast Asia, edited by Hermann Kulke, K. Kesavapany and Vijay Sakhuja Early Interactions between South and Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange, edited by Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani and Geoff Wade Hardships and Downfall of Buddhism in India, by Giovanni Verardi Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past, edited by Geoff Wade and Li Tana Portuguese and Luso-Asian Legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511–2011, Vol. 1: The Making of the LusoAsian World: Intricacies of Engagement, edited by Laura Jarnagin Portuguese and Luso-Asian Legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511–2011, Vol. 2: Culture and Identity in the Luso-Asian World: Tenacities & Plasticities, edited by Laura Jarnagin Sino-Malay Trade and Diplomacy from the Tenth through the Fourteenth Century, by Derek Heng Tradition and Archaeology: Early Maritime Contacts in the Indian Ocean, edited by Himanshu Prabha Ray and Jean-François Salles The Sea, Identity and History: From the Bay of Bengal to the South China Sea, edited by Satish Chandra and Himanshu Prabha Ray Early Southeast Asia Viewed from India: An Anthology of Articles from the Journal of the Greater India Society, edited by Kwa Chong-Guan The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History, by Thomas T. Allsen Ethnic Identity in Tang China, by Marc S. Abramson Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road, by Johan Elverskog The Tongking Gulf Through History, edited by Nola Cooke, Li Tana and James A. Anderson Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times, edited by Prasenjit Duara Eurasian Influences on Yuan China, edited by Morris Rossabi Of Palm Wine, Women and War: The Mongolian Naval Expedition to Java in the 13th Century, by David Bade Offshore Asia: Maritime Interactions in Eastern Asia before Steamships, edited by Fujita Kayoko, Momoki Shiro and Anthony Reid Literary Migrations: Traditional Chinese Fiction in Asia (17th–20th Centuries), edited by Claudine Salmon Trails of Bronze Drums Across Early Southeast Asia: Exchange Routes and Connected Cultural Spheres, by Ambra Calo Buddhism Across Asia: Networks of Material, Intellectual and Cultural Exchange, volume 1, edited by Tansen Sen A 14th Century Malay Code of Laws: The Nītisārasamuccaya, by Uli Kozok China and Beyond in the Medieaval Period: Cultural Crossings and Inter-Regional Connections, edited by Dorothy C. Wong and Gustav Heldt

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24. Buddhist Dynamics in Premodern and Early Modern Southeast Asia, edited by D. Christian Lammerts 25. Imperial China and Its Southern Neighbours, edited by Victor H. Mair and Liam C. Kelley 26. Indian and Chinese Immigrant Communities: Comparative Perspectives, edited by Jayati Bhattacharya and Coonoor Kripalani 27. Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia: Networks of Masters, Texts, Icons, edited by Andrea Acri

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