Christian K. Wedemeyer: Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds: A Brief Genealogy of The Historiography of Tantric Buddhism

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds: A Brief Genealogy of the Historiography of
Tantric Buddhism
Christian K. Wedemeyer
History of Religions, Vol. 40, No. 3. (Feb., 2001), pp. 223-259.
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Christian K. Wedemeyer TROPES, TYPOLOGIES,

AND TURNAROUNDS:
A BRIEF GENEALOGY
O F T H E HISTORIOGRAPHY
O F TANTRIC BUDDHISM
In the nascence of scholarly disciplines, provisional theories are frequently entertained that serve to provide a general structure to the emerging field of knowledge and that enable more detailed studies to proceed.
These theories shape the course of initial research and-unless quickly
refuted or subsequently reconsidered-become part of the background of
the discipline's researches, its axioms. Having become "axiomatic," these
hypotheses-though
standing on no (or only the weakest) evidentiary
grounding-define, structure, and often delimit the lines (and consequent
results) of inquiry. Eventually, so much time and energy has been invested
in research that presupposes the truth of these "received views" that they
are never subsequently questioned, lest the calm facade of science become ruffled, disturbing the comfortable illusion of "progress." Indeed,
for this reason one sometimes sees a strong cross-generational scholarly
conservatism, in which older scholars are reluctant to encourage (not to
say, "allow") radical revisionings of a field's most basic assumptions.
In the academic study of Buddhism such tentative hypotheses were, of
course, initially necessary for scholars to make any headway at all in coming to understand the intricacies of a phenomenon with such an incomparably vast literature and such a prodigious historical span. As has been
shown elsewhere,' it took some time before scholars were even able to
conceive this congeries of seemingly disparate phenomena under the common rubric "Buddhism," much less provide a comprehensive r6sumC of its
Compare Philip Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988).
O 2M)I by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
W18-2710/2001/40(33-0002$02.00
224
Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds
most fundamental history. And, yet, given the exigencies of the modern
academic regime (standing as it does in the thrall of history), if Indian
and Buddhist studies were to take their places as legitimate fields for
scholarly inquiry, Buddhism required a history . . . and so one was constructed for it.
As with all human activity, of course, the process of this initial imagination of Indian Buddhist history has its own history. The range of data,
interpretative strategies, and ideologies employed in the construction of
historical knowledge does not issue from a privileged perspective whose
prerogative is to speak from "everywhere and nowhere." Rather, the production of knowledge is itself situated within a drama of human events no
less idiosyncratic, particular, and contingent than the events whose histories are thereby constructed as objects of discourse. It is this "metahistory"
that will occupy our attention in this article. We will not be concerned
with the history of Buddhism per se (though, of course, there are significant ramifications in that direction). Rather, our focus will be on the
history of the historiography of Buddhist Tantrism: the evolution of the
discourses that potentiated the construction of a history for Indian Buddhist Tantrism between the early nineteenth century and today, and how
that structural (and structuring) account fared as research progressed over
the next century and a half. Such an approach can serve a salutary end
with regard to the vitality of a field of study. When historiography is
viewed in this fashion-as the interplay of the data of the history being
constructed and the historical process of that construction itself-it becomes a critical historiography. Such criticism can do much to mitigate
the effects of the interpretative "tunnel vision" produced within academic
fields in a period of "normal science" (as described above) and provide
an avenue for fresh thinking about fundamental questions that may be
obscured or considered unproblematical from within the conventional
paradigm and its subtending axioms.
In what follows, then, I shall present a genealogy of the historiography
of Indian Tantric Buddhism that highlights the historical situatedness of
those researches and their ("human all-too-human") results. I will show
how the initial construction of a general schema of Buddhist history was
decisively informed by the precritical choice of narrative archetype used
to structure this history (Tropes), how that schema was justified by the
earliest interpretative models of Indian religion (Typologies), and howwithout further evidence or argument being adduced-the resulting historiography (and its implications) was enshrined in Buddhological orthodoxy
by the dramatic capitulation of an otherwise well-informed (and previously
incredulous) scholar, who was destined to become the most renowned and
influential professor of Buddhism in the twentieth century (Turnarounds).
In so doing, I hope to suggest that this fundamental imagining of Tantric
History of Religions
225
history-the "coin of the realm" among modem scholars for almost two
hundred years-is in need of serious, sustained reconsideration. While
there have been scattered researches, which suggest that the conventional
view (i.e., that Tantrism was the "final, decadent phase" of Indian Buddhism that only emerged after the seventh century) is inadequate to the
facts at our disposal, there has never been sustained criticism of the origins
of this view.2 It is my intention here to provoke such a debate, in the hope
that-whether or not the received view is ultimately rejected-it will result in a clarification and renewed self-consciousness of why we think we
know what we "know" about this most obscure province of Indian religious history.
I. THE POETICS OF HISTORY
Analogies prove nothing, that is quite true, but they can make one
feel more at home. (SIGMUND
FREUD)
In coming to understand the historiography of Indian religions, it is necessary first to consider the nature of historiography itself. In particular, it
should be understood that historical accounts consist of at least two elements-a "factive" element and a "fictive" element. That is, any historical
account consists of certain factual elements or "data" (which themselves
may be more or less independent of an interpretative framework) that are
organized and given meaning by a fundamentally fictive narrative struct ~ r e Once
. ~ a phenomenon has been constituted as an object of historical
discourse-itself an act of imaginative construction-a range of fictive,
rhetorical moves is potentiated. The phenomenon in question can now be
conceived as having an origin, a development, and a resolution-that is, it
now can become, in the Aristotelian sense, a story to be told.
Louis Mink, in his marvelous essays on the Historical Understanding,
has demonstrated that the narrative form is not merely an extrinsic packaging in which historians arrange their data but an indispensable "cognitive instrument" without which we could have no concept of the "history"
of a phenomenon at all. Mink argues that "even histories that are synchronic studies of the culture of an epoch inevitably take into account
the larger process of development or change in which that epoch was a
stage. . . . The most 'analytic' historical monograph, . . . , presupposes the
For instance, some of the writings of John C. Huntington, such as "Note on a Chinese
Text Demonstrating the Earliness of Tantra," Journal of the International Association of
Buddhist Studies 10, no. 2 (1987): 88-98. There are also highly suggestive data (and challenging methodological reflections) to be found in Giovanni Verardi's insightful "Homa"
and Other Fire Rituals in Gandhdra (Naples: Instituto Universitario Orientale, 1994).
Note that my use of "fictive" here does not mean to imply that such elements are necessarily "false" but, rather, to emphasize that they are elements native to the rhetoric used
to describe human activity and not part of such activity itself.
226
historian's more general understanding, narrative in form, of patterns of

historical change, and is a contribution to the correction or elaboration
of that narrative ~nderstanding."~
This view stands in direct opposition to what Mink maintains is a widespread positivistic bias in historiography that claims (implicitly) that "the
historian . . . finds the story already hidden in what his data are evidence
for; he is creative in the invention of research techniques to expose it, not
in the art of narrative constr~ction."~
Mink, quite rightly, finds this latter
view highly problematical. The reason why becomes clear when one considers that any given event can be cast rhetorically as either a beginning,
a middle, or an end-and, hence, its narrative role and historical "meaning" is indeterminate. It is the historian who imparts identity, meaning,
and narrative function to the otherwise mute and lifeless data. This much
is widely recognized today by professional historians and philosophers of
history, yet its implications are often overlooked in practice. Mink's insightful diagnosis notes that this ("closeted") positivistic stance in historiography is the modern secularization of the old notion of a Universal
History "out there" to be discovered-a notion now out of vogue but
"implicitly presupposed as widely as it would be explicitly reje~ted."~
Hayden White's Metahistory-a work highly esteemed by Minkadvanced this discussion by highlighting the mechanics of the fictive
modes of emplotment, explanation, and ideological implication operating
in ostensibly "scientific" historiography. Drawing on the work of Northrop
Frye, White explored the manner in which identical series of events could
be rhetorically cast in either a comedic, tragic, romantic, or satiric mode.
For instance, the history of any given phenomenon could be told as an instance of the triumph of good over evil (romance), the temporary triumph
of man (comedy), the temporary defeat of man (tragedy), or as the utter
failure of man to master a world in which he is a captive to death and the
specter of meaninglessness (satire).' What is important to note about
these choices is the irreducibly imaginative element in them. The narrative form is nowhere found in the data itself. Indeed, both Mink and
White are concerned to elucidate the extent to which "histories" are not
ultimately the products of the facts that inspire them but of the poetical
imagination of the historian who emplots them-an imagination that,
in short, situates these facts within one of several conventional narrative
structures.
Louis 0.Mink, "Narrative Form as a Cognitive Instrument:' in Historical Understanding,
ed. Brian Fay et al. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 184.
Ibid., p. 188.
Ibid.
Compare Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century
Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 9.
'
This is not per se a major problem for historiographical practice. Rather,

it has generally been understood as an issue relevant to the epistemological branch of the philosophy of history. The debates that resulted in this
understanding, however, took place with regard to subjects about which
the chronological data were generally well documented and established.
What have been less well noted are the difficult questions this type of critique poses for historiography in which this is not the case-that is, in
which these narrative models actually serve to structure historical hypotheses in areas of chronological obscurity. In such cases the historian-having decided (on extraevidential grounds) the "lesson" to be derived from
the history and its corresponding plot-then manipulates the scanty data
available to fit the demands of the narrative archetype. This, I argue, has
especially been the case in the historiography of Asia and, I will show,
has been quite specifically the case with the historiography of Buddhist
Tantrism. Let us consider, then, the ways in which classical narrative forms
have informed the writing of the history of Buddhism.
11. THE POETICS OF BUDDHIST TANTRISM
What modes of emplotment have typically been used for the two major
Indian religions, Buddhism and Hinduism? On the whole, the prejudices
of colonial dominance tended to dictate a synchronic narrative structure
for histories of the natives. That is, indigenous culture was generally cast
as the inverse of the progressive, post-Enlightenment civilization of the
European colonizers. It was thought to be characterized by the eternal
return of the same-and to be incapable of development, as "native peoples" are captives of their environmental conditions. . . brutish slaves to
instinct. In short, against the progressive comic or romantic narratives of
European civilization, native histories were cast in an ironic or, alternately,
tragic mode.s However, while the synchronic emplotment was a powerful
tool to invoke in dealing with the ideological and political pretenses of a
contemporary colonized Hindu people, Indian Buddhism was, as it were, a
different story. Buddhism had run its course in India and was thus a safely
"past" phenomenon. Hence, it was generally given a diachronic narrative,
with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Indeed, one of the central data of
relevance to historians of Buddhism was that its demise in India was a fait
accompli. One could thus tell the complete story of Buddhism in India
from "birth to "death."
Without a doubt, the poetic model that has been invoked more often
than any other in this regard is the metaphor of organic development.
This model was popular not only in the historiography of Buddhism but
Ronald Inden's Imagining India (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992) has nicely discerned some
of the discourses through which India has been represented as a timeless, changeless world.
228
was equally so in historiography more generally. Its use can be traced

from hoary antiquity through the present, having been the model of choice
among discerning authors from the very advent of Western historiography.
It has been utilized by writers such as Plato, Vico, Hegel, and Marx, to
name only a few. In brief, this archetype conceives that, just as plants
and animals are seen to go through a process of birth, growth, maturity,
decline, and death, so all phenomena can be traced across this same trajectory. Thus, cities, nations, schools of thought, political parties, and even
religions have been conceptualized in these terms, and the events of their
histories interpreted accordingly. We must insist, nevertheless, on the metaphorical nature of this model. While we may quite genuinely speak of the
childhood, adulthood, decline, and death of individual men, we are speaking in a poetic mode when we talk of the childhood of "Man." As with
all metaphorical usage, its discursive nature is often forgotten, and one
imagines that these poetic projections are in fact reflective of an "objective" reality.
This metaphorical emplotment became codified and objectified by Vico,
when his "scientific" historiography posited cycles of organic development in human history. In Vico's historiography we see a model of historical development, which holds that civilizations followed a regular cycle
of eras-a heroic period, a classical period, and a decline into barbarism.
R. G. Collingwood describes a further analysis into six periods thus: "first,
the guiding principle of history is brute strength; then valiant or heroic
strength; then valiant justice; then brilliant originality; then constructive
reflection; and lastly a kind of spendthrift and wasteful opulence which
destroys what has been constr~cted."~
Indeed, though it became the foundation for much of the modern practice of history, this vision of a determinate and regular succession of eras-eras that end in decline-is
nothing new. It is merely a refinement of the ancient mythopoeic vision
of the successive ages of civilization: the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron
Ages, in which the nature of man progressively declines. This trope is
operative, too, in the similar theory of the four ages in India: the Q t a ,
DvBpara, TretB, and Kali Yugas. We find a similar series of four stages,
ending in decadence, in the sociohistorical theories of Ibn KhaldQn.I0
In more recent memory, one finds Rousseau, in a strangely Buddhistic
moment, commenting that "the body politic, like the human body, begins to die from the very moment of its birth, and carries within itself the
causes of its de~truction."~
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 67.
Compare Ibn KhaldOn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1969).
" Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "On the Social Contract," in Basic Political Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), p. 194.
'O
229
Clearly then, this metaphorical reading of historical processes as conforming to the pattern of the individual organic life cycle has been endemic
to historiographical practice throughout its history. The early nineteenth
century, in which the historiography of Buddhism was initiated, marked
the zenith of popularity for this vision. Under the influence of compelling
philosophical thinkers such as Hegel, previous critiques of the excesses of
a priori historiography were forgotten, and history became a quest to find
the stories waiting "out there" in the data. Of these stories, at least one
thing was certain: they would follow, with lawlike regularity, a cycle of
organic development. "Hegel," says White, "broke down the history of
any given civilization and civilization as a whole into four phases: the
period of birth and original growth, that of maturity, that of 'old age: and
that of dissolution and death."12 For Hegel, not only the total structure of
civilizational development but all the microcosmic histories within it
traverse the selfsame four historical moments-moments that correlate
with his vision of the successive transformations of human consciousness.
It is in light of this narrative structure, so characteristic of European
historiographical practice, that I suggest one consider the following comment made by Cecil Bendall in the introduction to his edition of the Subhd~ita-samgraha,a compendium of Tantric knowledge: "Much (perhaps
too much, in proportion to the published material) has been written about
the glorious and vigorous youth of Indian Buddhism; something about its
middle age of scholasticism and philosophy; but next to nothing about
its decay, decrepitude and dotage, as shown in the ~antra-literat~re."'~
Bendall is right, of course, about the imbalance of attentions by scholars of
Buddhism (a fact still true today), yet what is of most interest is the acute
clarity with which the model of organic development is used to structure
the history of Buddhism. Some variant of this model is almost invariably
operative in the nineteenth-century constructs of Indian Buddhist history that have served as the foundation and exemplars of all subsequent
researches.
Using this model, the following common version of Buddhist history is
constructed. First there was ~gkyamuniBuddha, the original propounder
of "Buddhism" (about whom most reputable scholars will admit that we
really have no reliable data). The first period of Buddhism per se, then,
is said to be that of the so-called HinaygnaITheravgda. Here we see the
traditions and the literature of Theravgda Buddhism, the currently dominant school of Buddhism in Burma and Sri Lanka, defined as functionally
equivalent to "primordial B~ddhism."'~
This Buddhism, while not quite
White, p. 123.
Cecil Bendall, ed., Subhdsita-Samgraha (Louvain: J.-B. Istas, 1905), p. 2.
l4 I myself have worked with a scholar who insisted on speaking about the Dhammapdda
(and the Pali canon more generally) as if they had come "straight from the Buddha's mouth."
l2
l3
230
as "pure" as that taught by s2kyamuni (certainly not in its contemporary

form in colonial Ceylon), is nonetheless fairly faithful to the source.
Then, the story goes, the literature of the Mahgygna began to emerge. At
this point, after the "pure" ethical teachings of the early Buddhist schools
(which, we are cautioned, were a "philosophy" or a "way of life," not a
"religion"), Indians were no longer able to follow the dictates of such a
lofty path and began to rationalize their instinctive, plebeian bowing and
scraping to idols as orthodox Buddhist practice. At the terminal end of
this process, Buddhism finally goes "off the deep end." After being continually eroded by the lazy, sensual tendencies natural to Indians (and
other natives of warm clime^),'^ the Buddhist tradition finally decided
just to give free license to do whatever one wanted and to call it "Buddhist practice." To this end, however, it was thought necessary to fabricate apocryphal scriptures (Tantras) in which such sensual indulgences
could be passed off as orthodox practice, sanctioned by the Buddha.
This is clearly the view subscribed to by Monier Williams in his Buddhism. l 6 All of the foregoing models are brought together in this influential work. "The tendency of every religious movement," claims Williams,
"is towards deterioration and disintegration."" After the Buddha's death,
he claims, "the eternal instincts of humanity . . . insisted on making themselves felt notwithstanding the unnatural restraint to which the Buddha
had subjected them,"18 and Buddhists quickly began to give up the celibacy, ethics, and other teachings enjoined by the Buddha. Then, he claims,
"the Protean system called Mahg-ysna arose, and grew, by the operation
of the usual laws, . . . into a congeries of heterogeneous doctrines, including the worship of Bodhi-sattvas, deified saints, and personal gods."19
Yet, "far worse than this, Buddhism ultimately allied itself with Tgntrism
or the worship of the female principle (Sakti), and under its sanction
encouraged the grossest violations of decency and the worst forms of
profligacy."20 Repeatedly, the same story appears in the standard works on
the history of Buddhism. There is no need to multiply examples-anyone who has read works on Buddhist history has come across this story
or one very much like it. How, one wonders, did this story so quickly
become authoritative?
l 5 Such theories of a correlation between climactic conditions and psychosocial historical
determinism were an important element in conditioning the historical imagination discussed
here.
l 6 Known popularly in later years as "Sir Monier Monier-Williams," at the time this
book was published he went by the more efficient "Monier Williams."
I' Monier Williams, Buddhism, in Its Connexion with Brdhmanism and Hinduism, and in
Its Contrast with Christianity (London: John Murray, 1889), p. 148.
l8 Ibid., p. 151.
l9 Ibid., p. 159 (emphasis mine).
20 Ibid., p. 152.
23 1
The narrative of civilizational decline following upon moral (especially sexual) degeneracy was well established in the classical historical
tradition-and was thus readily available to the historical imagination of
early scholars of Buddhism, whose education was founded in large part
on the study of classical l i t e r a t ~ r e . ~Perhaps
'
the paradigmatic example
of this is the tale of the Etruscan decline. Here, in a significant and popular historical episode of Roman history, the fall of Etruria-a powerful
neighbor of early Rome (and subsequently incorporated into the empire)-is attributed to their moral degeneracy. This was also, it may be
observed, interpreted in some accounts as a valid justification for the Roman invasion. R. A. L. Fell states in his work on Etruria and Rome, "The
decline of the Etruscan people is often ascribed to the nature of their religion, and the depravation of their morals. Greek writers have much to
tell us of the luxury and the vices of the Etruscans, of their elaborate
feasts and flowery coverlets, silver vessels and numerous attendants, and
the Roman poets echo the taunt."22 It is worth noting that this trope is
later co-opted by Christian historians-developing from the Roman intellectual tradition-to explain the fall of Rome itself. The decrepit civilization of paganism with its Neros and Caligulas, phallic cults and "games,"
they claimed, must necessarily give way to the vigorous, youthful moral
power of C h r i ~ t i a n i t y It. ~is~ clear here from whence Vico derived his final
phase of "spendthrift and wasteful opulence."
It was precisely this historical archetype, I argue, that was functioning
in the fashioning of a history of Buddhism. Given the basic datum so strikingly evident to writers of British India-the absence of a Buddhist presence and, hence, the ostensible "disappearance" of Indian Buddhism-one
needed to account for this fact. For many, Tantrism fit the exigencies of
narrative quite nicely, providing a familiar and easily digestible story.
The idea most commonly associated with Tantra from the outset (and still
widespread today) was sex. Edward Thomas put this reductionistic portrayal in its most undisguised form when he reported, in his History of
Buddhist Thought, that Tantric Buddhism "consists in giving a religious
significance to the facts of sex."24 Inevitably, this conception of the
Tantric tradition suggested to the narrative imagination of the nineteenth
2 1 Compare the comment of Hayden White, who states that "the normally educated historian of the nineteenth century would have been raised on a staple of classical and Christian 11terature. The myrhoi contained in this literature would have provided him with a fund of story
forms on which he could have drawn for narrative purposes" (White [n. 7 above], p. 8, n. 6).
22 R. A. L. Fell, Etruria and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924), p. 139.
23 And, in the typical style of the Abrahamic traditions of one-upping each others' narratives, this trope was later turned on the Catholic Church itself by the vigorously youthful
Reformation schools.
24 Edward J. Thomas, The History of Buddhist Thought (1933; reprint, New York: Barnes
& Noble, 195 I), p. 246.
232
century the classical archetype of the "decline and fall." The resulting tale,
it should be apparent, is a familiar one, recapitulating that of Etmria: a once
strong and vital culture becomes seduced by pleasure and renounces its
earlier commitment to purity and virtue. In particular the lure of the "pleasures of the fleshH-so difficult to keep in check-overcomes the people,
and society becomes "decadent." The ultimate outcome is the death of the
once-great society.
As in the case of Etruria, this model conveniently explained not only
the disappearance of Buddhism in India, but further, it provided proof of
the supposed moral decline used to justify the conquest and colonization
of the Indian subcontinent by the British. With the schema of the three
vehicles ready-made in native Buddhist doxography, it was a natural step,
given the association of Vajrayiina with sensual indulgence and a falling
away from ethical behavior (in short, with sex) to appropriate this schema
and reconceive it in chronological terms. Thus, the Buddhist doxological hierarchies of HinayBna, Mahiiyiina, and Vajrayiina (and, within the
Vajrayiina, the Kriya, Caryii, Yoga, and Anuttarayoga Tantras) were transformed into a convenient sequential timeline of Buddhist doctrinal history. That is to say, what was originally conceived by Buddhist thinkers as
a soteric sequence of progressively more refined Buddhist teachings was
pressed into service by modern scholars as a temporal sequence of the development of apocryphal Buddhist texts and their commentaries. In this
fashion they were able to use this traditional model itself to lend authority
to their historical construct.
The fictive element of this mode of historiography becomes strikingly
apparent, however, when one considers alternative emplotments. Alexander
Cunningham, though well aware of Tantrism by this time, gives the following variant account of the Buddhist "decline":
Buddhism had in fact become an old and worn-out creed, whose mendicant
monks no longer begged their bread, but were supported by lands long since appropriated to the monasteries. The SrImanas and Bhikshus were not like those of
ancient days, the learned and the wise, whose bodily abstinence and contemplative devotion, combined with practical exhortations and holy example, excited the
wonder of the people. The modern Buddhists had relapsed into an indolent and
corrupt body, who were content to spend a passive existence in the monotonous
routine of monastic life. . . . there were still the same outward signs of religion;
but there was no fervent enthusiasm in the lifeless performance of such monotonous r ~ u t i n e . ' ~
Cunningham here invokes another archetype popular among nineteenthcentury historians. In this account we hear-not the echoes of the classical
25
Alexander Cunningham, The Bhilsa Topes (London: Smith, Elder, 1854), pp. 2-3
233
tale of the Etrurian debauches-but rather the strains of the (neoclassical)

tale of the Reformation (and Enlightenment). Here, the relevant connection is not sex but ritual. "Late" Buddhism is homologized with Romish
religion, as against the "pure" sermons of the Son of God. We see yet
another clergy that has become pampered and luxurious, content to defraud the populace with its "priestly mummery." The invocation of this
narrative model bears witness to Cunningham's place among the heirs of
the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment. Given the
scanty evidence he was working from, however, it is not a convincing witness to actual events in India. It is an equally fictive emplotment, derived
from equally wanting data-and is in direct competition with those who
would account for the "decline" of Indian Buddhism in terms sexual and
moral, rather than ritual and ecclesiastical.
In this regard, we may note the following, extremely illuminating,
statement of T. W. Rhys Davids, which reveals in a striking way the manner in which the exigencies of plot structure have far outweighed and
supplanted the testimony of concrete evidence. Starting from the premise
of the putative "decline and fall" of Buddhism, Rhys Davids leaves the
reader of his Buddhist India with the following considerations: "Gibbon
has shown us, in his great masterpiece, how interesting and instructive
the story of such a decline and fall can be made. And it is not unreasonable to hope that, when the authorities, especially the Buddhist Sanskrit
texts, shall have been made accessible, and the sites shall have been explored, the materials will be available from which some historian of the
future will be able to piece together a story, equally interesting and
equally instructive, of the decline and fall of Buddhism in India."26 Here
Rhys Davids (in 1903) as much as admits that, before we have even collected the evidence available from literary and archaeological remains,
we can a priori assume a narrative structure along the lines of Edward
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is, I believe, no coincidence that the history of Buddhism should find itself being fashioned
after the model of an Enlightenment morality play. This is precisely the
methodology that characterizes the nineteenth-century historiography of
Indian Buddhism-historiography that, though recast slightly in more
contemporary narratives, has nonetheless established the fundamental parameters of Indian chronology throughout the twentieth.
One might also consider the testimony of Alex Wayman who, although
he himself in general subscribes to the "received view" on Tantric chronology, nonetheless bears witness to the fundamental circularity of the
historical reasoning about Buddhist Tantrism on which this very view is
26 T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India (1903; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993),
p. 320 (emphasis mine).
234
based. He writes, "The Western survey-type books . . . have tended to ascribe to the Buddhist Tantras the nefarious role of contributing to, if not
hastening, the demise [of Buddhism in India], through particular doctrines
and practices quite at variance with the lofty ethics and practice enjoined
by Gautarna Buddha. There is a kind of circular reasoning here. The Tantra
is labeled 'degenerative' and so destructive of Buddhism's public image;
and to buttress the argument it is necessary to say that the Tantras are
composed very late, close to the time when they are credited with this
share in the downfall of B~ddhism."~'I shall now look more closely at the
actual process of the implementation of this view in historiographical
practice. I begin by looking at the most general, foundational frameworks
that were developed within which to understand the nature (and, indeed,
the very existence) of the Buddhist Tantras. Then I will look in some detail at the manner in which the career and writings of Louis de La VallCe
Poussin-while at first adumbrating a radical revisioning of the course of
Tantric historiography-instead served a pivotal role in fixing the received
view as unquestioned orthodoxy for most of the twentieth century.
111. ANALYTICAL HISTORY OF TANTRIC HISTORIOGRAPHY
In Reasoning of all . . . things, he that takes up conclusion on the

trust of Authors, and doth not fetch them from the first Items of every
Reckoning, . . . loses his labour; and does not know any thing, but
onely beleeveth. (THOMAS
HOBBES,
Leviathan)
Anyone who reads the literature purporting to establish the history and
chronology of Tantric Buddhism with a critical mind will immediately
be struck by the fact that nowhere in this literature is an argument advanced with sufficient strength to establish the conclusions claimed. Even
the best ultimately defer to a spectral consensus, which, it is averred, has
somehow already established the relative late chronological location of
Tantrism. As I have suggested above, this is accompanied (and "substantiated") more often than not by the notion that the lateness of Buddhist
Tantrism is linked inseparably with its "decline" (or "degeneratiodcontaminatiodadulteration") and supposed "disappearanceH-utterly ignoring,
of course, that Buddhism continued (and, in fact, flourished) in India for
centuries afterward, only experiencing a "decline" due to the wholesale
slaughter of many of its most eminent luminaries.
In the following analyses, I will trace the historical development of
modern notions concerning the Buddhist Tantric traditions. I will show
27 Alex Wayman, "Observations on the History and Influence of the Buddhist Tantra in
India and Tibet," in Studies in the History of Buddhism, ed. A. K . Narain (Delhi: B. R. Publishing, 1980), p. 361 (emphasis mine).
235
that these ideas are very much the product of the contingent historical
circumstances and evolution of the modem tradition of interpretation, a
tradition whose origins, development, and progress will be seen to be
highly problematical. I will describe the origination of the first theoretical hypotheses concerning the typology of Indian religions and demonstrate the manner in which these hypotheses became the foundation for
further hypotheses, historical in nature.
IV. B. H. HODGSON, H. H. WILSON, AND E. BURNOUF: FOUNDING
FATHERS
Perhaps the most influential figure in the early formation of notions of

Indian Tantric Buddhism was Brian Houghton Hodgson. Although best
known today for his work of procuring the texts of Sanskritic Buddhism
for Europe, his writings on the Buddhism of Nepal were vastly influential
and deeply formative of subsequent views on Buddhism and Buddhist
history. I emphasize the deep influence of Hodgson because I believe that
it is here that we can see the beginnings of the pattern that characterizes
the entire course of Tantric historiography, namely, that a preliminary
working hypothesis regarding the course of Buddhist history has been
passed down in a continuous tradition from the first researches on Buddhism through the most contemporary works, gaining credibility from
sheer force of repetition by eminent authorities. It is in Hodgson's writings
that we find the first firm distinction between Buddhism as such ("real"
Buddhism) and "degenerate" forms of Buddhism, which are said to be
characterized by later ~ a i v i t eadmixture (Tantric Buddhism). That is,
Hodgson had experienced ~ a i v i s m(no doubt seeing its practice in Bengal
and, later, in Nepal) and had also formed an idea of Buddhism before
coming to Nepal-an idea pieced together from the works of his colleagues, which were in turn based on travelers' accounts of Ceylon, Ava,
and Siam (modem Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand). Before he ever set
foot in Nepal, it is clear, Hodgson had an idCe fixe that "Buddhism" did
not include elements Tantric in form or nature.
Hodgson seems to have derived these notions from reports such as
those of William Erskine who, in his 1813 account of Elephanta, described what he considered to be the distinctive characteristics of the
"three grand sects" of India-"the Brahminical, Bouddhist, and Jaina."
Erskine's motivation in elaborating the main features of these three traditions was to enable subsequent progress in Indian archaeology and art
history. He sought to provide an analytical framework within which to
understand and classify Indian religious monuments such that, having
been "identified," the work of subsequent interpretation of these monuments (and, reflexively, their associated traditions) could proceed apace.
236
He states, "a strict attention to [these principles] will perhaps enable us

to judge with ease to which of these three classes any particular temple
belongs."28
In his subsequent discussion, Erskine gives an account of what he understands to be Buddhistical atheism. Asserting that Buddhism has a god
"like the god of the Epicureans," he nonetheless insists on the fundamental
anthropocentrism of the religion. He ends by summarizing the practical
implications of this view for the study of Buddhist art and architecture;
to wit: "As all the ideas of this religion relate to man, and as no incarnations or transformations of superior beings are recorded, it is obvious
that in their temples we can expect to find no unnatural images, no figures
compounded of man and beast, no monsters with many hands or many
heads."29 Thus, under the guidance of Erskine's pioneering study of Indian
religious architecture, early nineteenth-century colonialists-cum-amateurarchaeologists were provided with a clear and simple rule of thumb by
which to distinguish a "Bouddhist" from a "Brahminical" temple: "Any
monster, any figure partly human partly brutal, any multiplicity of heads
or hands in the object adored, indicate a Brahminical place of worship."30
Here, clearly, Erskine is working from a position that identifies "Bouddhism" with modem Theravada Buddhism. After mentioning the ignorance of the significance of Buddhist images among Brahminical Indians,
he tells the reader that for such information "we are forced to resort to
Ceylon and ~ i a m . " ~Indeed,
'
that such is the source of his opinions is
confirmed by the fact that he refers, in another article on a similar theme,
to Simon de La Loubkre's New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam
(1693), which he takes as an authoritative description of B ~ d d h i s m . ~ ~
Equally telling is another means Erskine provides for distinguishing between Buddhism and Brahmanism-this time linguistic, not iconographic.
We are led to believe that "the sacred language of the Bouddhists is . . .
Pali . . . The sacred language of the Brahmins is S a n ~ k r i t . " ~ ~
28 William Erskine, "Account of the Cave-Temple of Elephanta," in Transactions of the

Literary Society of Bombay (1819) 1:203.
29 Ibid., p. 202.
30 Ibid., p. 203.
3 1 Ibid., p. 206.
32 Simon de La Loubtre, cited in William Erskine, "Observations on the Remains of the
Bouddhists in India," Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay (1823; reprint, 1877),
3:529. This work of La Loubtre was a deeply influential account of the coastal Theravida
Buddhism encountered by late-seventeenth-century Europeans. It was also for many years the
primary account of the P2li language--only superseded by Eugene Burnouf and Christian
Lassen's Essai sur le Pali (Paris: SociCtC Asiatique), published in 1826. Compare the Oxford
University Press facsimile reprint of the English edition: Simon de La Loubtre, The Kingdom
of Siam (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1969).
3 3 Erskine, "Observations," p. 53 1.
237
Thus, we can see that already by 1813, with roots perhaps as early as the
late seventeenth century, there is unmistakable evidence of the construction of an essentialized concept of Buddhism. This construct was based
largely on the Theravsda Buddhists who inhabited the coastal areas familiar to European colonialists. Furthermore, this essentialized Buddhism was
constructed precisely for the practical, typological activity of distinguishing Buddhist from non-Buddhist phenomena. That it soon found employment in relegating Tantric Buddhist traditions to the latter category should
come as no surprise.
With the benefit of hindsight, one can immediately foresee the problems this template would raise when, soon after, Hodgson was confronted
with the evidence not only of Sanskritic Buddhism, but of Tantric Buddhism with its multilimbed and semibestial "monsters." As we shall see,
this model did in fact directly influence Hodgson, and, more important, it
required him to make important interpretative decisions in order to accommodate the anomalous data he encountered on reaching the Kathmandu Valley. I am quite deliberately using the terminology of Thomas
Kuhn here, as I feel that one can rightly understand Hodgson's position as
one of a researcher who, under the influence of the paradigm of a "normal science" (created by Erskine's typology of Indian religions), is faced
with unexpected anomalies-evidence that does not fit neatly within the
current paradigm. Indeed, Hodgson could not have avoided the conclusion
that Erskine's paradigm was inadequate as it stood. He was, however, as
we shall see presently, able to tweak the paradigm with the conceptual
tools available to him such that a "scientific revolution" was avoided.
Most illuminating is Hodgson's explanation of his initial hesitation to
publish plates depicting the Buddhist art he had encountered in Nepal. He
informs us that, "For years. . . I had been in possession of hundreds of
drawings, made from the Buddhist pictures and sculptures with which
this land is saturated. . . [but had not published them] . . . owing to the
delay incident to procuring authentic explanations of them from original
sources."34 Why did Hodgson feel it necessary to search out an explanation of these "Buddhist" images before publishing them? He continues,
"These images are to be met with everywhere, and of all sizes and shapes,
very many of them endowed with a multiplicity of members sufficient to
satisfy the teeming fancy of any Brahman of Madhya Desa! Start not, gentle reader, for it is literally thus, and not otherwise. Buddhas with three
heads instead of one-six or ten arms in place of two! The necessity of
reconciling these things with the so-called first principles of Buddhism,
may reasonably account for delay in the production of my pictorial
34 Brian Houghton Hodgson, Essays on the Languages, Literature, and Religion of Nepal
and Tibet (1841 ; reprint, Amsterdam: Philo, 1972), pt. 1: 102-3.
238
stores."35 Indeed, Hodgson here explicitly refers the source of his notions
of the "principles of Buddhism" to "Erskine's Essays in the Bombay
~ r a n s a c t i o n s . "And
~ ~ the cause of his caution was clear-for who would
have believed his assertion that such multilimbed figures could credibly be
called "Buddhist," when any well-informed reader of the Bombay Transactions knew quite well that good, anthropocentric Buddhists did not trade
in such phantastic idols?
Hodgson was aided in this dilemma by Erskine himself, who had already used the trope of "grafting" to accommodate phenomena that did not
fit neatly into his own system. For example, confronted with the presence
of "Brahminical" deities even in Theravgda Buddhism, Erskine avers "the
Bouddhists of India sometimes engrafted Brahminical notions upon their
mythology, and, for certain purposes, acknowledged the existence and
agency of the Brahminical deitiesH3' Erskine could thus avoid having to
consider seriously the implication that such deities might have been (as,
indeed, they seem to have been in fact) integral to the system itself.
Encountering Sanskrit Buddhist texts in praise of multilimbed deities
and their associated images, Hodgson was very naturally led to apply this
convenient conceptual tool and advance an hypothesis of religious "admixture." And, indeed, in his landmark essays he created a vision of Buddhism-widely cited and copied throughout the nineteenth century-that
viewed Tantric Buddhism in such a light. Finding in Nepalese Buddhism
an "immense, and for the most part useless, host" of deities, allied to what
he termed "naked doctrines" and "a secret and filthy system of Buddhas
and Buddha-Saktis," Hodgson informed the European public of his conclusion that Tantrism was "a strange and unintelligible adjunct of Buddhism, though," he was forced to admit, "vouched by numerous scriptural
here is the fact that Hodgson is already using
a u t h ~ r i t i e s . "Noticeable
~~
the language of ~ a i v i s d ~ g k t i s to
r n describe this form of Buddhism39indicating where he believed the source of the admixture to be. Thus
was born the tenacious notion that Buddhism (still Erskine's Buddhism)
became gradually "Sanskntized" and "Hinduized"-Tantric Buddhism being the terminal end of this process.
Hodgson's work in Nepal was augmented and consolidated by the researches of Horace Hayman Wilson in Calcutta. It was certainly the cachet
of collaboration with the great Sanskritist of the Court that gave a great
" Ibid., p. 103.

" Even if he were not so explicit, this referentiality is clearly implicit in his use of the expression "teeming fancy of any Brahman of Madhya Desa," which echoes the idiom used by
Erskine.
37 Erskine, "Observations," p. 557.
Hodgson, pp. 15, 40, 59, and 29.
39 He thus initiated the rather unfortunate use of such terms as Sakti in reference to Buddhist Tantric consorts (more accurately described as rnudrri or vidyd).
239
boost to Hodgson's work. One of the most important and influential of the
papers penned by Wilson was his "Notice of Three Tracts Received from
Nepal," published in 1828 in Asiatic Researches, immediately following and supplementing Hodgson's "Notices." This article represented the
first English translation of Sanskrit Buddhist texts, and it was clearly startling to its first readers, as the three tracts were decidedly Tantric in nature.
In his analysis of the "Three Tracts," we see many of the key interpretative notions that would characterize the study of Tantric Buddhism for
the next centuries: "~aivism/~iiktism,"
"admixture," "corruption," and so
forth. Here Wilson lends the authority of a translation (original authorities) and the concurrence of a noted Sanskritist (himself), to the "fieldwork" of Hodgson. In these texts, Wilson states, "the worship of SIVA,
and Tantra rites, are . . . widely blended with the practices and notions of
the B a u d d h i ~ t s . " The
~ ~ works, he continues, "shew how far the Buddha
creed has been modified by Tiintrika admi~ture."~'"It is clear that the
Bauddha religion, as cultivated in Nepal, is far from being so simple and
philosophical a matter as has been sometimes imagined. The objects of
worship are far from being limited to a few persons of mortal origin, elevated by superior sanctity to divine honours, but embrace a variety of
modifications and degrees more numerous and complicated, than even
the ample Pantheon of the B r a h m a n ~ . "It~ is
~ clear that Wilson, too, is
here alluding to the theories of Erskine. He goes on to elaborate his view
of the source of these differences, claiming that "the Siikta form of Hinduism is . . . the chief source of the notions and divinities foreign to Buddhism with those Bauddhas, amongst whom the Panchavinsati is an
authority [i.e., the Nepalese Buddhists]. It could only have been brought
to their knowledge by contiguity, for the Tantras, and Tiintrika Puriinas,
form a literature almost peculiar to the eastern provinces of Hindustan,
the origin of which appears to be traceable to KAMARUPo r western
A ~ a m . "He~ ~adds an historical assertion that the Tiintrika ritual seems to
have originated in the twelfth century, though he does not give any source
for this claim.
It should be no cause for surprise that Western scholars were thus led
to consider the Vajrayiina as a form of "Buddhist ~aivism/~iiktism."
Indeed, this notion was also likely to have been seconded by most of the (uninformed) South Asian informants who were available to them. This would
have been true of nearly all informants-Buddhist
and non-Buddhist
alike. In fact, this idea continues to hold currency to this day among South
40 H. H. Wilson, "Notice of Three Tracts Received from Nepal," Asiatic Researches 16
(1828): 451.
41 Ibid., p. 452.
42 Ibid., p. 468.
43 Ibid., pp. 470-71.
240
Asian Buddhists (excluding Tibetans, of course). Agehananda Bharati

gives the following account of his experience in the mid- to late twentieth
century: "Among South Asian Buddhists . . . Vajraysna is simply not
known to the rank and file. I asked a sarpanch in the Mahar region of Maharashtra whether he knew anything about Vajrayana. . . . I drew a complete blank. When I elaborated on some points made by Shashi Bhushan
Dasgupta [author of An Introduction to Tantric Buddhism] to a Barua instructor in political science . . . he said all this sounded like h k t i s m with
which he, as an East Bengali, had some neighborly acquaintance."44
Thus, the basic course of early European thought on Buddhist Tantrism
is clear. "Buddhism" was invented by Erskine. ~ a k t aTantrism was observed in the Bengali center of British administration. The anomalous divergences of Buddhist Tantrism from Erskine's Buddhism were notedtheir Sanskrit sources, polylimbed deities, and "naked doctrinesn-as were
their similarity to ~ g k t aelements. The theory of admixture-which had
already been used to allow the theistic elements of Theravada to meet the
strict standards of the European construct of Buddhism-was invoked to
reconcile these data. Some basic elements of a Tantric "history" now began to settle into place: "original (Pali) Buddhism" was non-Tantric, Sanskritic "~antra/~Fiktism"
is Hindu, thus "Buddhist Tantra" is a later mixture
of Buddhist elements with Tantric elements developed elsewhere and incorporated perhaps as late as the twelfth century. These are the conceptual
tools that were bequeathed to subsequent researchers on Buddhism and its
history. It was not long before these tools reached the hands of the eminent
French Orientalist Eugirne Burnouf.
Burnouf, more than anyone else perhaps, can be regarded as the founder
of modem Buddhist studies. His chief work on the subject, Introduction a
l'histoire du Buddhisme Indien (1844), became the touchstone and exemplar for all subsequent studies. Most important, his methodology-drawing data "firsthand" from Buddhist texts, rather than from secondhand
reports of missionaries and colonialists-quickly became standard in the
field,45and oriental studies (the flower of the "Second Renaissance") took
its honored place next to classical studies (for which Burnouf phre was
widely renowned).
Among the texts Bumouf discusses in his Histoire were a number of
Tantras and Tantric commentarial works, and he devoted considerable attention to them-more attention, in fact, than would be paid for nearly fifty
years. The better part of his analysis is devoted to restating the conclusions
44 Agehananda Bharati, Tantric Traditions, 2d ed. (Delhi: Hindustan Publishing, 19931,
p. 321.
45 Burnouf himself was not an entirely successful practitioner of the new method, however;
as we shall see, he drew much of his material directly from Hodgson, the colonialist who had
procured copies of these texts and sent them to the Bibliothkque Nationale.
24 1
of Hodgson and Wilson and reiterating that the contents of these texts seem
to bear a strong resemblance to ~aivism.Sadly, he does not actually give
any clear examples to illustrate in what exactly he understood this similarity to consist. He merely indicates that these texts include deities (ostensibly) drawn from the ~ a i v pantheon,
a
which, however, he also indicates is
the case with the Mahgyana Siitras in his collection. As a consequence,
Burnouf does not actually contribute to the discussion about the possible
Saiva influence on Tantric Buddhism. He merely parrots the conclusions of
Hodgson. The authority of his imprimatur, however-backed by his claim
that he confirmed these conclusions by his own study of the relevant texts
(studies the steps of which are not shared with his readers)-did much for
establishing the "truth" of this claim in orientalist circles.
Furthermore, Burnouf's work consecrated the first widespread discourse about the concrete dating of the Buddhist Tantras. Drawing on the
published writings of Csoma de Ktiros, Burnouf was led to the conclusion
that Tantrism "could not have been introduced before the Xthcentury of our
era."46 On what evidence was this date-which quickly became the common touchstone in Tantric historiography-fixed? It was precisely and
solely based on the testimony of Alexander Csoma de KCiros. This testimony consisted of three nearly verbatim references to the Kdacakra
Tantra, an idiosyncratic Tantra which is of admittedly late provenance. In
his influential "Analysis" of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, Csoma notes
that the Kglacakra "was introduced into India in the tenth century by CHILUPA, and into Tibet in the eleventh," and later repeats that the Kglacakra
system was "introduced into India in the tenth century after CHRIST."^^ He
appears in these places to be repeating the claim made in an earlier article
of his on the "Origin of the Kglacakra and Adi-Buddha Systems," in which
he also says that "The Kda-Cakra was introduced into Central India in the
last half of the tenth century after C h r i ~ t . " ~ ~
Beyond this testimony, Burnouf presents no evidence that bears on the
absolute dating of the Buddhist Tantras. He makes two arguments (on
the basis of differences of content and style) to establish that they are not
the "primitive teaching of S2kya" and that they are more similar to the
sMras of the Mahgyana than those of non-MahFiySnists, but this, again, is
to be expected, as they are in fact MahZySna scriptures. What is important
to note is that his entire conclusion (and the discourses it subsequently
enabled) regarding the chronology of Buddhist Tantrism is based on the
46 Eugkne Burnouf, Introduction a l'histoire du Buddhisme Indien (Paris: Imprimerie
Royale, 1844), p. 526 (my translation).
47 Alexander Csoma de K&os, "Analysis of the Sher-chin, p'hal-ch'hen, dkon-seks, dode, nyang-das, and gyut," Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 20, pt. 2 (1839): 488,
564.
48 Alexander Csoma de K&os, "Note on the Origin of the Kala-Cakra and Adi-Buddha
Systems," Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 2 (1833): 57.
242
sole (and rather irrelevant) testimony of Csoma de Ktiros regarding the

(admittedly late and idiosyncratic) Kdacakra Tantra.
This initial fixing of the date of Tantrism is important in the subsequent
development of Tantric historiography, as this entire evolution can be seen
as a gradual (if extremely reluctant) moving back of this date against a
strong and perpetual resistance by scholars loathe to admit its provenance
in a period any earlier than absolutely necessary. More than once scholars
have written of their reluctance to admit the antiquity of certain texts that
did not confirm their prejudices about Buddhist history-even in light of
strong evidence.49Although the putative date of the "emergence" of Buddhist Tantrism has been moved back to the seventh century,50 this is a
process that continues to the present day.
V. LOUIS DE LA V A L L ~ EPOUSSIN: THE BEGINNINGS OF A N
ORTHODOXY
Following the work of Burnouf, there was no significant scholarship produced on the literature and history of Indian Buddhist Tantrism until the
work of Louis de La VallCe Poussin in the closing decade of the nineteenth
century. In 1894, La VallCe Poussin published an initial study of the Pan"cakrama that was to become, in 1896, the first edition of this important
work.5' He subsequently continued his work on the Tantras, concluding
with the publication (in 1898) of an ambitious and remarkable work on the
history of Buddhism and the Tantras-the first of a series of works bearing
s materiaux. Perhaps the chief interest of this
the title Bouddhisme: ~ t u d e et
book for the development of Buddhist studies is his sharp criticism of the
credulity of the rapidly advancing tradition of those he termed les palisans
(what in colloquial English we might call "P2liheads") toward the orthodox Theravada understanding of Buddhist history. This view-which
49 Consider the following statement in regard to the Lotus Sutra (Saddharma-pundarika):
"If we did not know that it had already been translated into Chinese between 255 and 316
A.D., we should not consider it as so ancient." G. K. Nariman, Literary History of Sanskrit
Buddhism (1919; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), p. 71.
This change is primarily due to claims made by Toganoo Sh6un in his 1933 work Himitsu bukkya-shi (reprinted in Gendai Bukkys Meicho ZenshU, ed. H. Nakamura, F. Masutani, and J. M. Kitagawa [Tokyo: Ryiibunkan, 19641, 9:l-200); cf. Huntington (n. 2 above),
pp. 89-90 and 97. Note, however, that while Huntington is probably right that the "scientific"
legitimation of this view derives primarily from Toganoo's work (and the equally problematical work of Benoytosh Bhattacharyya), the seventh-century date had already been asserted
by La VallCe Poussin in 1909 (cf. Christian K. Wedemeyer, Vajraydna and Its Doubles: A
Critical Historiography, Exposition, and Translation of the Tantric Works of Aryadeva [Ann
Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 19991, and below).
Louis de La VallCe Poussin, "Note sur le Paficakrama," in Proceedings of the Tenth
International Congress of Orientalists (Geneva, 1894), pt. 1:137-46. This article was subsequently reprinted (with the revision of the brief introductory section) as the introduction
to the Paficakrama edition of 1896. See also his Etudes et textes Tantriques: "Paficakrama"
(Gand: H . Engelcke; Louvain: J.-B. Istas, 1896.
243
considers post-Buddhaghosa (fourth century) Theravada as the "original,

pure Buddhismn-still remains a tenacious bugbear in research on Buddhism. The criticisms leveled at this historically problematical method by
La VallCe Poussin have, in recent years, been more widely appreciated.
However, we shall see below that, at the time, this position was to yield
serious professional fallout for the young scholar-leading him, in effect,
to retreat from his initial position not due to factual concerns but, rather,
to professional ones.
La VallCe Poussin devoted the First Part of Bouddhisme: ~ t u d e et
s materiaux to an extended essay on "the History of Buddhism." In this work,
he vigorously criticized the typical, Psli-dependent approach of Buddhist
studies, suggesting that "Preoccupied with establishing the history of
Buddhism [and] fixing straight away its origins, Orientalists have abandoned the road so intelligently blazed by Burnouf; they have given up examining the sources of the North or taking them into account; they attach
themselves passionately to the exegesis of the southern scripture^."^^ In
particular, he mentions H. Oldenberg, M. Miiller, and T. W. Rhys Davids
as the preeminent palisans, but it is clear that he believed (rightly, it
seems) that the flawed method of this approach was endemic to contemporaneous Buddhist studies. He speaks of the typical notions of Buddhist
history (especially the trope of decline) as "illusions." Few informed
scholars would today doubt that he was correct to problematize a method
that, as he put it, "describes the fortunes of the Community, the constitution of the Samgha, the formation of the Scriptures, and the life of the
Master according to documents which date from the 1" or the 4thcentury
of our era."53 In place of this problematical method, he advocates the
following program: "The Indologist must study with equal interest the
Hinayana (the vehicle of the rationalist monks of which the Psli canon,
itself composite, allows us to know only part of the history and the sects)
and the diverse churches of the Mahayana, which covered India and all
the Orient with a luxuriant profusion of their theologies and rites. One
commonly regards idolatrous and superstitious Tantrism as 'no longer
Buddhism'; one forgets that Buddhism is not separable from Buddhists,
and that the Indian Buddhists (les Hindous bouddhistes) were willingly
idolatrous, superstitious, and metaphy~ical."~~
Further, he insisted on the likely ancient provenance of Buddhist Tantrism, and it is here that the early La VallCe Poussin is at his most courageous and most revolutionary. He confidently asserted, for instance, that
"the Tantras . . . existed already from [the time] of the redaction of the
5 2 Louis de La VallCe Poussin, Bouddhisme: ~ t u d e et
s materiaux (London: Luzac, 1898),
p. 2 (my translation).
53 Ibid., p. 3 (my translation).
54 Ibid., pp. 5-6 (my translation).
244
books of the MahByBna, if not written and in their actual form, at least in
effect and in an embryonic forrn."j5 And, furthermore, that "it is permissible to suppose the ancient existence of Mahsysna and Tantraysna: in
any case, it is hazardous to place the Hindu and Tantric schools 'upstage'
of our researches, in the dark, like parasitical groups without historical or
doctrinal importance. The scope of research enlarges at the same time
that the official framework of Buddhist history is broken."j6 This "official
framework," it should be apparent, was the paradigm of most of his contemporaries: the modern, "scientific," secularization of the orthodox doctrinal history of the Theravsda monastic cartel that interprets Buddhist
history through the lenses of Buddhaghosa's "Reformation" and precisely
considers the Mahsysna and Vajraysna schools as "late degenerations."
Interestingly, much of La VallCe Poussin's criticism has since been vindicated in the interim by the Buddhological community, and no doubt
some improvement is evident in the method of late twentieth-century studies on Buddhism. However, even these improvements took some time to
blossom and were not accepted in their fullest form in his lifetime.j7 His
radical revisioning of Tantric history, on the other hand, was immediately
and efficiently snuffed out. For within ten years (by 1909), La VallCe
Poussin himself was compelled to renounce his view that Tantric Buddhism could have existed before the seventh century, and he thenceforth
consistently espoused the views of the "official framework" he had previously (and so devastatingly) critiqued. Subsequent to his capitulation in
this regard, this received view was to become (and remain) an absolutely
unquestioned orthodoxy.
How did this happen? How is it possible that the Louis de La VallCe
Poussin who so courageously questioned the methodological and doctrinal orthodoxy of the Buddhological community of his time with his
groundbreaking studies of the long-ignored Tantric literature could so
quickly (in the space of merely a few years) capitulate to this same orthodoxy? The record indicates that this reversal was not due to any further
data coming to light but was, rather, the issue of what can only be called
intense academic "peer pressure." As noted above, his initial work in
Buddhist literature was concerned with the central text of the Arya Tradition of the Guhyasamaja Tantra-a brief analysis and edition of Nsgsrjuna's Paiicakrama. In this early work, based on his own firsthand study
of the text itself, La VallCe Poussin writes that the Paiicakrama has as its
author "the celebrated Nsgsrjuna, probable initiator of great schools of
metaphysics and, definitely, the head of the Msdhyamika school."58
55
56
57
58
Ibid., p. 72 (my translation).
He died in 1939.
La Vallie Poussin, "Note sur le Paficakrama," p. 139 (my translation)
245
Thus, in 1894, the young La VallCe Poussin felt it perfectly coherent to

maintain the possibility that the Niigiirjuna who authored the Miilamddhyamikakdrikd and the NiigPrjuna who authored the Paficakrama were one
and the same. He goes on to give a brief summary of the conclusion of
Burnouf; in particular he makes the important observation that "Burnouf
does not examine the question of authenticity and does not debate the
question of knowing if the Paficakrama should be attributed to Nggiirjuna, as the tradition maintains. The problem . . . remains difficult to resolve."59 How refreshing it is to see such candor concerning this issue!
It is indeed "difficult to resolve." However, as we shall soon see, the problem was de facto "resolved" by the overwhelming consensus of the
Buddhological community that, it seems, "resolved" not to allow such
a far-reaching assault on the fundamental imagination of the course of
Buddhist doctrinal history.
The strong reaction in the Indological community against the conclusions reached by La VallCe Poussin were given voice by none other than
the eminent Cambridge Indologist Edward James Rapson. Rapson, not surprisingly perhaps, found the revolutionary theses put forth in Bouddhisme:
~ t u d e est materiaux "startling": "[La VallCe Poussin] protests against the
view very generally accepted that the Piili scriptures are the best extant
representatives of Buddhism in an early form, and contends that the
Northern scriptures preserve the traces of a far older state of things. He
also lays stress on the importance for the comprehension of early Buddhism of a study of the tantras-works which have been universally regarded as not only extremely late in point of date, but also as embodying
ideas of an essentially non-Buddhistic character due entirely to foreign
i m p ~ r t a t i o n . "This
~ ~ was clearly a sharp rebuke coming from a respected
English scholar, and it seems, in fact, to have intimidated and traumatized
La VallCe Poussin so much that-at least according to his French eulogizers-he dropped the study of Tantrism entirely. After this experience,
they inform us, he was only to publish one page of original research on
the topic-which page is itself very noncommittal and appeared only in
the "correspondence" section of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
Consider the testimony of this 1939 recounting of the events surrounding
the publication of this work on Buddhist Tantrism:
Notwithstanding the tact and finesse with which it was treated, the subject unleashed the righteous indignation of the great Rapson who, in a long book review
E. J. Rapson, review of Bouddhisme: Etudes et mate'riaux, by Louis de La VallCe Poussin, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1898), p. 909 (emphasis mine). It is an exquisite
irony that Rapson's review (which defends the sand castle of the received view) concludes
with praise for La VallCe Poussin's "very wide and varied learning" but regrets that it is
"too often of the kind which seems to delight in raising imposing superstructures on very
inadequate foundations" (p. 915)!
59
246
protested with severity against this display of "foul tantrism." . . . The criticism
must have been bitterly resented by the young scholar.
One might think that after this . . . work on the manifestations of popular [sic]
Buddhism would continue to hold a large place in the activity of the young master, but he did no such thing, as, save for a study published in 1901, The four
classes of Buddhist Tantras, the documents of this genre, a new and vital field, did
not again form the object of his publications. After this excursion in the Indian
jungle, so poorly viewed by traditionalist science, Louis de La VallCe Poussin rediscovered monastic Buddhism never again to leave it.61
There should be no doubt that this was indeed a rather convenient time to
"rediscover" monastic (i.e., non-Tantric) Buddhism. And, it is readily apparent that the works of his later years demonstrate a fairly strict adherence
to the view "very generally accepted" of the late and foreign provenance
of Buddhist Tantrism. He continued quietly to maintain that there were
Tantric "elements" present in early Buddhism but held the party line that
full-blown Tantrism of la main gauche (the left hand) was a late and alien
infestation.
In point of fact, however, the above claim that La VallCe Poussin
stopped publishing on Tantra is not accurate, for he was to author several
pieces in addition to the one mentioned in that memorial-including several articles in J. Hastings's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (such as
his highly influential articles on "Tantrism," "Adibuddha," and "Tantrism
[Buddhist]") and the lengthy Bouddhisme: Opinions sur l'histoire de la
dogmatique. Among his later works one also finds a short article titled "A
propos the Cittaviiuddhi-prakarana of Aryadeva." This article is important
for two reasons. For one, it is an important notice of another of the chief
works attributed to Arya Tradition authors-a logical place for his attention to proceed, following his work on the Paficakrama. On the other
hand, it is noteworthy that this work was only published after a thirty-fiveyear hiatus. Furthermore, this article reflects La VallCe Poussin's postRapson reversion to the received view on Tantric history, insisting on a late
Buddhist Tantrism-and even uses the rhetoric of a "tantric A r y a d e ~ a . " ~ ~
Is it a coincidence, then, that this article was published in a special number
of the Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies-a number that was titled
A Volume of Indian Studies Presented by His Friends and Pupils to Edward
James Rapson on His Seventieth Birthday, 12th May 1931? I maintain
(and it seems clear) that this was not an historical coincidence but, rather,
the consummation of the events we have seen above. This article represents nothing less than a formal capitulation-indeed, an apology of
61 Marcelle Lalou and Jean Przyluski, "Louis de La Vallee Poussin," in Milunges Chinois
et Bouddhiques (1938-39), 6:6-7 (my translation).
6 2 "Le 'tantricisant' Aryadeva." Compare Louis de La Vallee Poussin, "A propos du Cittaviiuddhiprakarana d'Aryadeva," Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 6 , no. 2 (1931):
415.
247
sorts-by La VallCe Poussin to Rapson. He could have published anything

in that volume, and his range of research interests was certainly vast. Such
a choice of topic could only have been deliberate. By publishing this article, La VallCe Poussin was formally and strikingly creating a Buddhological orthodoxy. From this moment on, it became "established" that the
literature of the Arya Tradition "could not have been" written by the ascribed Mgdhyamika authors, as the late and alien Tantric virus had not yet
infected Indian Buddhism.
Thus, in line with this professional capitulation, La VallCe Poussin abandoned caution in his later years in declaring that the Tantric works ascribed
to Ngggrjuna and company were false attribution^.^^ In his influential
Bouddhisme: Opinions sur l'histoire de la dogmatique (which ran through
no less than five editions between 1909 and 1925), he states, "There are,
no doubt, some tantric writings whose promulgation is attributed to NBggrjuna, Saraha, [and] Aryadeva-illustrious
doctors of the Great Vehicle.
But this literary fraud cannot fool anyone, and the authors of our books are
very probably the sorcerers subsequent to the sixth century that are described by Tgrangtha-by profession 'evokers' of divinities of the second
rank, with a smattering of Buddhist philosophy, but totally foreign to the
spirit of the Good Law."64
It is clear that there is an essentialized notion of a "real Buddhism"
("l'esprit de la Bonne Loi") functioning here in La VallCe Poussin's assessment of Tantric Buddhism that is very little different from the iconographical template created by Erskine and employed by Hodgson. La VallCe
Poussin begins to espouse the notion that Tantrism is a foreign importation
from Hinduism, stating that "Buddhist tgntrism is practically Buddhist
Hinduism, Hinduism or ~ a i v i s min Buddhist garb."65 This view stands in
radical opposition to his earlier insistence that the teaching of the Buddha,
as far as we know, might just as easily have been thoroughly involved
with rites, deities, and so forth-that is, all the "religious accretions" that
formed around the "Good Laww-from the very beginning. In this light it
is instructive to observe just how he began to conceptualize this Bonne
Loi. He says, "The Good Law consists essentially in a discipline entirely
spiritual in which the adepts ignore the gods, the demons, all the necessities of the present life."66
63 One wonders if this might have been the result of the misattribution by careless bibliographers of Le nitrate de Norvege (presumably a chemical treatise, composed by one L[udovic]
de La VallCe Poussin) to our indomitable scholar of Buddhism (cf. The National Union Catalog: Pre-1956 Imprints [Chicago: American Library Association, 1968-811, 318:691).
Louis de La VallCe-Poussin, Bouddhisme: Opinions sur l'histoire de la dogmatique
(Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne, 1925), pp. 382-83 (my translation).
65 Louis de La VallCe Poussin, "TBntrism (Buddhist)," in Encyclopaedia ofReligion and
Ethics, ed. James Hastings (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1921), p. 193.
66 La Vallte Poussin, Bouddhisme: Opinions, p. 362 (translation and emphasis mine).
"
248
The extent to which this "evolved" understanding of Buddhism recapitulates the essential parameters of Erskine's primitive notion of the anthropocentrism of Buddhism should be all too clear. Further-in case it
is not immediately and absolutely clear that this hypostatization of the
"essence" of Buddhism is still widely prevalent in Buddhist studies at
present-the
May 1998 issue of History of Religions contained the
following observation (describing an on-line debate among scholars of
Buddhism about the importance of local spirit cults in Buddhist traditions): "Almost no participant in the discussion was comfortable with
[the] use of the word 'essential'; yet, almost every post attempted to
pinpoint criteria for delimiting normative Buddhism. Typically, these
criteria described a two-tier model, distinguishing the 'true' Buddhism,
founded in pure philosophy, the Buddha's exact attitude, or the confronting of essentialisms, from a 'lesser' Buddhism that involves supernatural
powers, the worship of spirits or deities, ordinary folk, and indigenous
beliefs."67 The similarity to the situation in historiography-in which no
scholar would profess belief in a Universal History "out there" to be discovered but which is "implicitly presupposed as widely as it would be
explicitly rejected"-is striking.68This academic view of Buddhism is a
more modern variation on (and reinforces) the earlier theme of the late
and foreign provenance of Tantrism in the Buddhist tradition. In point of
fact, the work of the later La VallCe Poussin is not substantially different
from the naive ygna-based chronology that he himself criticized so
forcefully and insightfully in his earlier work: "Criticism can admit this
tripartite division: a Buddhism undevotional and exclusively monastic,
or the Little Vehicle, which goes back without doubt [!!I to the founder;
a Buddhism much more composite, monastic and secular, devotional,
polytheistic, at times monotheistic, highly commingled with pure philosophy and gnosticism (gnose):this is the Great Vehicle . . . finally, the degraded and denatured Buddhism of the Tantras, attested since the VIIth
Christian century."69
VI. THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY
These, then, are the foundations upon which the "scholarly consensus"
concerning the history and chronology of Buddhist Tantrism are based.
The subsequent course of Tantric historiography has been characterized
by a perpetual rehearsal of the view "established by La VallCe Poussin
without significant advance being made with regard to the evidence and
argument on which this view is ostensibly based. From the time of La
VallCe Poussin's capitulation to the pressures of Rapson and the rest of
67 Richard S. Cohen, "NBga, Yaksini, Buddha: Local Deities and Local Buddhism at
Ajanta," History ofReligions 37, no. 4 (May 1998): 361.
6 8 Louis 0. Mink (n. 4 above), p. 188.
6y La Vallke Poussin, Bouddhisme: Opinions, p. 19 (translation and emphasis mine).
249
the Indological community to conform to the conventional wisdom about

Tantric history, there has begun a tradition of asserting the received view
as a scholarly commonplace. In general, most authors have not even felt
it necessary to cite any authority in support of this position, merely noting
that "scholars know" or "scholars sayw-a spectral and hollow consensus.
Others are more careful to cite authorities such as Louis de La VallCe
Poussin or other giants of the field in defense of this view-a clear case
of the blind leading the blind. This is true even of the two most eminent
scholars of Tantrism in the late twentieth century: Giuseppe Tucci and
David Snellgrove. The great Italian savant Giuseppe Tucci was one of the
most widely respected (and widely traveled) scholars of Buddhism, and
his authority quickly led to his conclusions becoming among the most
influential-if not the single most influential-views of the twentieth century. His student, David Snellgrove, has taken up his mantle and has authored perhaps the most cited and approved works on Buddhist Tantrism
in circulation today.70 In large part, they recapitulate the position bequeathed them by their mentor, La VallCe Poussin.
Tucci, for instance, begins his landmark article "Animadversiones Indicae" with an apologetic that-since it was first echoed by Snellgrove in
the introduction to his work on the Hevajra Tantra-has become something of a ritual introduction to subsequent works on Buddhist Tantra.7'
He defends the academic study of Buddhist Tantrism by making the claim
that "the Tantras contain almost nothing which can justify the sweeping
judgment of some scholars who maintain that they represent the most degenerated form of Indian speculation."72 This is notable, because while we
do not see the universal moral condemnation of the Tantras that characterized earlier researches and that subtended the view of Tantrism as "degenerate,'' nonetheless, the historical model that was predicated on this view
remains.73
It is instructive to observe how Tucci treats the question of the Tantric
writings attributed to NBgBrjuna, on which issue (as we have seen above)
Louis de La VallCe Poussin demonstrated such a remarkable turnaround.
Interestingly, while Tucci criticizes his colleagues who maintain that the
Tantras originated in or after the seventh century (based on some reflections on evidences of early Tantrism, such as the Somasiddhanta sect), he
70 Notable are David Snellgrove's edition and (bowdlerized) translation of the Hevajra
Tantra (David Snellgrove, ed., The Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study [1959; reprint,
London: Oxford University Press, 1980]), the account of his travels in South Asia titled
Buddhist Himalaya (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1957) and his monumental Indo-Tibetan
Buddhism, 2 vols. (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1987).
7 1 Snellgrove's essay is actually titled "Apologetic."
Giuseppe Tucci, "Animadversiones Indicae," Journal of the Asiatic Sociery of Bengal,
n.s., 26 (1930): 128.
73 This is also characteristic of the work of the late La Vallee Poussin (though he seems
to have become somewhat more prone to moral condemnation of Tantrism as he aged).
''
250
acknowledges that this had become the universal view in Buddhological

scholarship. He was, no doubt, aware of how weak the previous foundations of this view were, based as it was on the bare assertion of Louis de
La VallCe Poussin's Opinion(s). When it comes to providing evidence,
however, one finds him resorting to the following: "That there were two
Ngggrjunas has been clearly pointed out by Dr. Benoytosh Bhaffgcgrya
and this view is supported by the comparative study of the material at our
disposal, the remarks made above and even by the brahminical t r a d i t i ~ n . " ~ ~
This "argument," needless to say, is problematical in the extreme.75 The
contribution of Bhattacharyya consists of a series of highly speculative attempts to fix the dates of the major Tantric authors. I have analyzed these
arguments at length elsewhere; suffice it to say that they do not establish
what he claims they do.76Further, Tucci's second bit of evidence-the "remarks made aboveu-present no more than dogmatical assertions of this
position unsupported by evidence. Next, the testimony of the "brahminical
tradition" boils down to a footnote that reads "Goraksasiddhgntasa~igraha,
which knows: Malaygrjuna, p. 19, Ngggrjuna, Sahasrgrjuna, p. 44"-a
cryptic tradition, no doubt. Certainly there was more than one person in
first millennium India with the name "NggBrjuna"; how this fact bears on
the question at hand is left unexplained.
Tucci, p. 141.
In fact, it is not significantly more helpful than (and very similar in form to) the earlier
"contribution" of F? L. Vaidya (a student of La VallCe Poussin), who is quoted as an authority
on the same question by F? B. Pate1 in the introduction to his edition of Aryadeva's CittaviSuddhi-prakarana (Santiniketan: Visva-Bharati, 1949). The work of Vaidya to which Pate1 refers
is his ~ r u d e sur
s Aryadeva et son "CatuhSataka" (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Guenther,
1923). Besides the fact that this work is almost completely devoted to (and largely based on)
an exploration of the exoteric literature attributed to Aryadeva (chiefly, in fact-as is clear
from the title-just one work, the CatuhSataka), this study cannot be considered to have advanced inquiry into the question of the attribution of Tantric works to this writer. Indeed, it is
somewhat strange that Pate1 includes him as an independent voice on the matter. In raising the
question of the CittaviSuddhi-prakarana and Aryadeva's relationship to Tantricism in this
work, Vaidya contents himself with merely mentioning that Louis de La VallCe Poussin
believes that Aryadeva could not have written Tantric treatises and states, "Je suis d'accord
avec lui et pense que
un autre Aryadeva" (I am in agreement with him and think that it is
another Aryadeva) (Etudes, p. 64). In addition-true to a venerable rhetorical tradition-he
consistently (indeed, almost reflexively) qualifies the noun tantrisme with the adjective
d4gPnere.
j h In brief, Benoytosh Bhattacharyya's argument is based on two Tantric lineage lists"one given in the Tangyur catalogue of P. Cordier and another in the Pag Sam Jon Zan quoted
in the edition of the Chakra Sambhdra [sic] Tantra by the late Kazi Dawasam Dup [sic]"
(Sddhanamdld [Baroda: Oriental Institute, 19681, 2:xl-xli). These lists are as follows: the
first list runs Padmavajra, Anangavajra, Indrabhiiti, Bhagavati Laksmi, LilBvajra, DBrikapB,
Sahajayogini CintB, and Dombi Heruka; the second list reads Saraha, NBg%juna, sabaripB,
LuipB, Vajraghanta, KacchapB, JBlandharipZ, KrsnBcBrya, Guhya, VijayapB, TailopB, and
NBropB. Assuming that the "Indrabhuti" in the first list is the IndrabhDti who was the father of
Padmasambhava (a figure whose date is fairly certain due to his involvement with Tibetan
royalty), Bhattacharyya assigns him the date 717 C.E. He then makes the assumption that there
would be a twelve-year gap between master and disciple. He then assigns corresponding dates
to the other figures in this list. The coup de grdce comes when he can then link this list with
74
j5
test
We are left, then, with the support of the "comparative study of the material at our disposal." I have no doubt that Tucci undertook such a study,
and we see the valuable results of it elsewhere, but in the absence of his
explicit sharing of the steps of his reasoning, it boils down to a matter of
Tucci's opinion.77 One must certainly respect his opinion, but I believe that
we may take a suspicion of mere opinion as a fundamental methodological premise of modern humanistic study. Indeed, it is precisely the lack
of such suspicion that, it appears, has allowed a largely unsubstantiated
historical hypothesis to be perpetuated for the better part of this century as
the "scientific results" of research on Indian Buddhism.
the other. On the principle that Padmavajra (who is reputed to have introduced the Hevajra Tantra) must be one generation earlier than Jalandhari (who is reputed to have been
"the first to profess the Hevajratantra and to compose a work on the subject"), he assigns
the date 705 to JBlandhari. It is then a simple matter to count back to NSgarjuna who, he
concludes, lived around 645 C.E. A very neat argument this makes on some levels; nevertheless, it should be obvious that there are major problems with it. In brief, it makes so
many assumptions and uses such problematical data that, in the end, it would take nothing less than a fantastic stroke of luck for it actually to be correct. This is not the place
to dilate on the shortcomings of Bhattacharyya's method. Suffice it to say that there are
three principal assumptions on which this argument relies. For one, the identity of this
"Indrabhuti" is by no means as clear as he would like. Second, there is the highly arbitrary twelve-year gap he assumes between master and disciple (a gap of at least thirty
years would seem more likely). And finally, and most important, is his assumption that
these lists themselves are free of gaps. Based entirely on these (highly problematical)
arguments, Bhattacharyya claimed to have " d a t e d the chief authors of the Tantric commentaries and began to enable and popularize a discourse that spoke in terms of two
Nagarjunas-one could now refer to a "Siddha N2gBrjunan (of the 84 Mahasiddhas text)
in contradistinction to a "MBdhyamik NZgZrjuna" and cite the authority of concrete
dates. The complete discussion by Bhattacharyya may be found in the introduction to his
edition of the Sddhanamdld, 2:xl-xliii. My detailed analysis is to be found in Wedemeyer (n. 50 above), pp. 50-57. I am not alone in making this claim. Bhattacharyya's
conclusions came under heavy criticism soon after he published them. Even his close
contemporary and fellow scholar of Tantricism, S. B. Dasgupta, said of his work (in An
Introduction to Tantric Buddhism [Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 19501, p. 60) that
"so vast and confused is the field and so scanty and doubtful are the materials that the
structure [of his history] does not seem to be very well built." More recently, he has been
sharply criticized by Ronald Davidson, who has accused him of using "very unhistorical
methods." Compare his "The Litany of Names of MafijuSri: Text and Translation of the
MafijujuSrindmasa?ngiti,"in Melanges Chinois et Bouddhiques (Brussels: Institut Belge des
Hautes 6tudes Chinoises, 1981), 20:4-5.
77 Tucci adds the following argument. The biographies of the 84 Mahasiddhas (a Tibetan work) gives the succession: NagIrjuna, VyBdi, Kambala, Indrabhnti. There is an Indrabhati who is connected with Padmasambhava, who lived in the eighth century (a major
premise in Bhattacharyya's argument). Vyadi was an alchemist. Therefore, "we can safely
assume with Doctor Benoytosh BhattIcSrya that the Alchemist or Siddha Nigarjuna lived
in the VII century A.D." (Tucci? p. 142). He gives the further argument that there is a succession that reads NBgBrjuna, Sabara, Advayavajra. This Advayavajra was connected with
NaropB, and so "the Nagarjuna here referred to must have flourished about the beginning
of the X century A.D." (p. 143). And this seems to agree with Alberuni. The reader, again,
may draw her or his own conclusion, but in my opinion there are glaring problems with
this method of argument. It is certainly not an advance on that of Bhattacharyya. The same
problems with such lineage lists and claims of succession that render the conclusions of
Bhattacharyya so dubious apply equally to the nearly identical claims of Tucci.
252
The historiography of Buddhist Tantrism has been dominated in recent decades by Tucci's English student, David Snellgrove. His work has
been absolutely essential to the growth of Tantric studies in this period,
both through his groundbreaking edition and translation of the Hevajra
Tantra (which inspired many to pursue research in this area) and through
his training of many fine Indologists. In his works, he makes claims to
knowledge of the history and chronology of Tantrism with which any
genealogy must take account. A full treatment of his works would require a paper in itself (if not a small book). Here, then, I shall merely
note some aspects of his work that demonstrate the extent to which it
is firmly situated within (and draws much of its legitimation from) its
genealogical forebears and, historiographically speaking, does not constitute an advance on previous contributions.
In the preface to his edition of the Hevajra Tantra, Snellgrove very
clearly betrays his dependence on the authority of La VallCe Poussin,
stating, "I must acknowledge my great indebtedness to . . . Louis de la
VallCe Poussin . . . whose theories of the development of Buddhism I
have learned to accept as fundamentally sound."78 He further defers to
the authority of Tucci stating that "without doubt the one great scholar in
Indo-Tibetan Buddhism is my old revered professor Giuseppe ~ u c c i . " ~ ~
One sees very clearly here the development of a style of appealing to
authority in the matter of Tantric history-authority that, while perhaps
well earned in other areas of Buddhist studies, is not warranted in the
specific area under scrutiny. From what we have seen, if Snellgrove has
adequate reasons for accepting the historical views of (the later) La
VallCe Poussin and Tucci, it is clear that he must either have arrived at
these reasons on his own or else be privy to arguments and evidence not
shared by these authors in their published writings. One does not, however, find anything of the sort in Snellgrove's works.
In his magnum opus on Indo-Tibetan Buddhism-which, he notes,
"represents an overall survey of all the work done throughout my university career"-Snellgrove
begins his discussion of Buddhist Tantrism by
referring to it as the "final astounding phase of Indian ~uddhism."~'He
proceeds immediately to produce two reasons ("doctrinal and moral") to
justify his calling it "astounding"-yet
he does not seem to have felt an
equally pressing need to justify describing it as a "final . . . phase." While
Snellgrove (like Tucci before him) chastises those scholars who represent
Tantric Buddhism using explicit rhetorical models of "degeneration" or
David Snellgrove, p. vi. Curiously, Snellgrove mentions in this regard-not La VallCe
Poussin's Opinions sur i'histoire de la dogmatique, in which La VallCe Poussin supports
the conventional view that Snellgrove has "learned to acceptn-but his Etudes et materiaux (n. 5 2 above), which work challenges this very view in no uncertain terms.
79 Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (n. 70 above), 1 :4.
Ibid., I:xxiii, 117.
"popularization," he nonetheless continually describes it himself with
such terms as "a latecomer," "this last Indian Buddhist phase," "a new and
distinct 'way,'" and so on.81 In his subsequent discussion, he marshals a
vast amount of (chiefly textual) data concerning Buddhist Tantrism in
order to give what he considers a complete, scholarly account of the
"evolution" of Tantric Buddhism. Much of this material is of great interest to scholars of Indian Buddhism in its own right, but justifying historical claims seems not to have been a high priority in this
It is,
in fact, somewhat generous to even describe these discussions as "arguments,'' as he nowhere directly addresses the possibility that the conventional view may be anything but true. They may better be understood,
perhaps, as reasoned apologetics for a field that had long since made up
its mind that these (ultimately, perhaps, insoluble) questions of Tantric history had been previously resolved.
Snellgrove appears to be caught in the predicament of all those conscientious scholars of Indian history who-faced with the dilemma of upholding high standards of rigor in their methods and yet also appearing
confident in their claims-want to have it both ways. At times, he is more
rigorous in his standards of historical proof, and he stresses the deep uncertainty that characterizes the historiography of first-millennium Indian
Buddhism. He admits, for instance, that "to give a date to a particular
tantra is a difficult, indeed an impossible task" and that "the whole question of datings [sic]remains open to speculation and consequent disagreement."83 Nonetheless, in the bulk of his presentation, he continues to fall
back on the conventional sixth- to eighth-century guesstimate without
much, if any, qualification.
What is distinctive about Snellgrove's discussion of Tantrism (and what
seems to be his most important contribution in this area) is his claim to
have discerned a developmental pattern in Buddhist thought and practice.
He claims, for instance, that there is a progression evident in the Tantras
that shows a "development of the theory of Buddha-families from three to
four and then to five with eventually a sixth Buddha added."84 By comparing Buddhist Tantras against this model, then, Snellgrove believes one can
establish a chronological relationship between these texts. Unfortunately,
Ibid., 1:119, 121, 129.
Indeed, the primary aim of the chapters on Tantrism would appear to be to establish
the Unexcelled Tantras as somehow radically different in kind from the rest of Buddhism
and, further, to argue quite stridently and repeatedly for the literal interpretation of the
mijlatantras against a vaguely defined conspiracy of "modern apologists," consisting
chiefly of "Tibetan Buddhist enthusiasts" and "truth seekers," who argue for a "symbolic"
interpretation. This latter concern takes on a rather ironic cast when one considers Snellgrove's earlier claim that "it is oneself who becomes the fool, when one sets about a literal
interpretation of the [Tantric] text" (Hevajra Tanrra [n. 70 above], p. 46).
83 Ibid., pp. 147, 184.
'"bid.,
p. 184.
"
254
this rather interesting discussion is presented in piecemeal fashion over

several chapters and is nowhere adduced in a clear and precise manner.
While the entire question of patterns of development in the literature and
ideas of Buddhist Tantrism bears inquiry-indeed, it is precisely in the
construction of a relative chronology of Buddhist Tantric texts that the
most promising avenue of historiographical inquiry lies-scholarship has
not yet reached the point where such claims can be adequately justified.
There is, especially, the problem of the circularity inherent in most such
arguments. For example, Snellgrove makes the claim that "we may suspect
the teachings [of the Tantras] to be comparatively late as an acceptable
form of Buddhist practice, quite as late as the sixth or seventh century." His
evidence for this claim is that the practice of "self-identification with a
chosen divinity [taught in these works] . . . has no obvious earlier Buddhist
affinitie~."'~However, such a premise presupposes that we have already
established which works are "early" and which are not and, in so doing,
have excluded these very Tantras a priori from inclusion in the former category. Such self-fulfilling inferences are characteristic of latter-day historiography of Buddhist Tantrism, which seems content to accept the model
of Tantric Buddhist history inherited from the great Louis de La VallCe
Poussin and which does not seem to feel that it need justify this view, constituting as it does its fundamental historiographical axiom.
What is the result of this laissez faire historiography? It has led, not to
mince words, to careless scholarship. So certain have scholars become of
the putative place of Tantrism in the history of Buddhism that, in their zeal
to conform to this dogma, they often lose sight of even the most basic
methodological rigor. By way of example, let us again consider the question of the provenance of the Arya literature. As an indication of the
official position on this issue at present, it is worthwhile to review the article on Aryadeva in the Encyclopedia of Religion (1987). This monumental work drew on the best talent among international scholars of religion,
and one would expect it to contain the state of the art on the subjects it
covers. Indeed, the article in question was written by the well-regarded
Japanese scholar, Mimaki Katsumi. Mimaki begins with the now classical claim that "we" need to distinguish an Aryadeva I from an Aryadeva 11-figures he defines exclusively in terms of the genre of their
ostensible literary output. In this context, he makes the following claim:
'"Aryadeva 11,' was a Tantric master whose date [is] . . . probably at the
beginning of the eighth century . . . because he cites the Madhyamakahydayakdrikd of Bhavaviveka (500-570) and the Tarkajvald, its autocommentary, in his Madhyamakabhramaghdta, and because verse 31 of his
Jfidnasdrasamuccaya is cited in the Tat~asarpgrahapafijika
of KamalaSila
255
(740-95)."86 Looking on the bright side, we do see here a definite advance

on prior studies. Mimaki quite intelligently approaches the issue by considering the relative chronology of the literature based on a close study of
the texts themselves, rather than jumping immediately to absolute chronological claims based merely on the general tenor (Tantric or non-Tantric)
of the texts. This is all to the good, and, in this limited sense, Mimaki's
work is to be commended.
On the other hand, Mimaki here merely raises another question of textual attribution. It is indeed odd that, in speaking of this man he has
defined as a "Tantric master," Mimaki subsequently cites not Tantric texts
attributed to Aryadeva but two Madhyamaka texts. More problematically
still, subsequent Buddhist tradition is equally incredulous of the attribution of these works to the "Madhyamik Aryadeva." For example, the attribution of the Madhyamakabhramaghata to Aryadeva is considered
spurious by Bu-ston, who does not mention it in his list of Aryadeva's
Madhyamaka works. No doubt he too was struck by this anachronism. All
this establishes, however, is that this one Madhyamaka text in the bsTan'gyur is spuriously attributed to Aryadeva (provisionally defined as the
author of the CatuhSataka). Mimaki has yet to establish that the author of
this text is the same as that of the Carycimelcipakapradipa and (possibly)
the other Guhyasamgja treatises. With regard to the JZiinascirasamuccaya
antedating Kamalaiila, this is surely to be expected according to the traditional historical account. This terminus ante quem (which is perhaps as
dubious as the other attempt at a terminus post quem) does nothing to
establish a necessarily late date for "Tantric Aryadeva."
Mimaki goes on to make the sweeping claim that "all the works ascribed
to Aryadeva in the Tantric section of the Tibetan canon are unquestionably attributed to Aryadeva 11. The most important and well-known
texts among them are the CittaviSuddhiprakarapa . . . the Carycimelcipakapradipa . . . and the Pradipoddyotana-ncima-tikci."s7One cannot avoid
agreeing somewhat with Mimaki here, for it is only "unquestionably" that
one would attribute the latter of the three texts to Aryadeva, as this text is
manifestly a commentary on Candrakirti's Pradipoddyotana and thus must
be of later provenance than even the putative Aryadeva II! Not even the
representatives of the tradition itself are so credulous as Mimaki. Indeed,
this attribution is rejected by both Bu-ston and Tsong-kha-pa. What we
see here is critical doubt about the attribution of works unevenly applied.
What Mimaki might have more consistently claimed is that "all of the
works ascribed to Aryadeva in the Tantric section of the Tibetan canon
86 Mimaki Katsurni, "Aryadeva," in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed., M . Eliade (New York:

Macmillan, 1987), 1:43 1.
Ibid.
256
are unquestionably not attributable to Aryadeva I." Instead, he is selectively critical-in the process falling into the same error of credulity that,
the story goes, the Tibetans fell into in lending too much credence to the
colophons of the received texts. It would seem that, in conforming to the
received view of modern, "critical" Buddhist studies, Mimaki has left behind a crucial prerequisite-a truly critical method.
It is not my intention here to malign the generally excellent scholarship
of Mimaki. The essential point to be grasped is that, given the sloppy
foundations of Tantric historiography, it is almost inevitable that further
scholarship based on it will be inadequate. The absolute certainty with
which most scholars imagine they can trust the received view blinds them
to the very data that lie in front of them. The historiography of Tantrism
has long been resting comfortably in its dogmatic slumbers. It is time,
perhaps, for a wake-up call.
VIII. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
I do not know if there is any other field of knowledge which suffers

so badly as history from the sheer repetitions that occur year after
year, and from book to book. (HERBERTBUTTERFIELD)
The history of historiography is, for the most part, a history of plagiarism.
In the centuries since Herodotus there have been very few truly original
thinkers and writers. Most have not done original research themselves and
are thus forced to recycle the "facts" provided by other authorities (many
of whom are themselves recycling the "facts" of others). This procedure is
what R. G. Collingwood (intending to characterize traditional, not modern, historiography) has referred to as the "cut and paste method." This
method, however, did not pass with the birth of the American Historical
Association (or History of Religions). Many historians do not devote
enough of their energies to uncovering and adequately interpreting original evidence, and, perhaps more important, most are not accomplished
poets and thus tend unconsciously to fit what evidence they have into the
Procrustean bed of the timeworn narrative models inherited from the
earliest historians.
What is true of historiography more generally is all too clearly the case
in the field of Tantric historiography. We have seen in the foregoing how,
based on a premature, essentializing construct of Buddhism put forth by
William Erskine, subsequent scholars have employed a rhetoric of "admixture" and "grafting" to describe the elements of Buddhism that seemed to
them most foreign to the TheravBda-style Buddhism which was the model
for the original construct. Tantrism especially was subject to this discourse
that, when the rudiments of the contents of these works were revealed, was
soon augmented by the a priori discourse of a Buddhist "decline and fall."
At first, this theme of decline and fall was based on the classical Etruscan
model of decline through sexual degeneracy. In the twentieth century-
due, perhaps, to a relaxing of sexual mores-it has sometimes been transformed into a tale of "popularization," in which Buddhism became watered
down with rites and so forth to appeal to the "masses"-reflecting
the
popular EnlightenmentJProtestant narrative of the decline of Catholicism.
The fundamental parameters of the story, however, remained the same.
We have further seen how Louis de La VallCe Poussin-notably
( a )Catholic and (b)among the only nineteenth-century scholars to have
actually read the Tantras-challenged this story's legitimacy but was
forced to recant and fall into line with a research climate hostile to such
a radical reassessment of the "very generally accepted axioms of Buddhist historiography. This "orthodoxy" has subsequently been passed
down from authority to putative authority, believed to be the result of
rigorous research. Even otherwise excellent scholars fall into the trap of
blind reliance on the received view-merely quoting previous "authorities,'' many of whom have never done any significant research on the
Tantras. To provide merely one example, in discussing the age of the
Laksmi Tantra in her (otherwise excellent) 1972 translation of this text,
Sanjukta Gupta cites Edward Conze's authority that "the Buddhistic
TBrB worship was not openly practised before 500 or 600 A.D."" She
refers the reader to Conze's Buddhism: Its Essence and Development,
which-besides bearing a title that clearly betrays its author's commitment to an essentialized Buddhism-bears absolutely no trace of any
serious original research on the VajrayBna. Nor is such to be found in
Conze's other works. Surely something is wrong with this picture.
It has been said that there are two primary techniques by which one
may problematize an intellectual view. One can do so by describing its
history--exposing the problematical, idiosyncratic "human all-too-human"
underpinnings of that view, or one may attack head-on and argue against
the view on its own terms. In the foregoing, I have employed the former
technique: elucidating the genealogy of Tantric historiography in order
to reveal the deep influence of narrative archetypes on the imagining of
Buddhist history; the manner in which the prevailing view of the history
of the Tantric Traditions actually came to be imagined in the first place;
and, ultimately, how it was perpetuated over the years until it became
official scholarly dogma without any substantive historical argument to
support it.
It is long past time that scholars reassessed their fundamental imagination of the history of Tantric Buddhism. The received view concerning
this history is at present nothing more than one (reasonably) plausible
hypothesis. It has by no means been established with the certainty many
claim. This has not, I believe, been widely recognized by scholars to
88 Sanjukta Gupta, Laksmi Tantra: A Pdficardtra Text (Leiden and Cologne: E. J. Brill,
1972), p. xx.
258
date. It is this recognition that, to my mind, constitutes the crucial prerequisite to advancement of research in this area. To the extent that one
believes that these authors have established important historical truths
about the history of Buddhist Tantrism, to that extent is authentic, constructive, and creative investigation of the matter impeded. We must be
very careful to distinguish the poetic elements that "predetermine" the
choices we make in deploying the data at our disposal. It is important
that the myths of "degeneration" of Buddhism-and their products in
the form of chronological "information" about Buddhist history-be
recognized as narrative fictions layered on the available evidence. Once
they have been bracketed, the data alone remains-data of which the received view is only one, rather problematical, interpretation. Only when
this is fully realized will scholars be able to determine which "facts" in
this historical morass are worthy of our confidence-and which are not.
There is reason for optimism, however, for recent decades have seen
the advent of a number of very talented scholars of Tantrism, whose researches are bringing to light much new information that will be essential if this new imagination is to be any less arbitrary than the last. Most,
it is true, continue to work from within the paradigm of the received
view, but this is not in itself a problem, as one would be hard-pressed to
conduct research as a tabula rasa. I would recommend, however, that
scholars adopt a more critical stance with regard to the parameters (not
to say the truth value) of this paradigm. Such a move would not constitute a step backward in the historiography of Indian Buddhism, though it
may seem so from within the paradigm being overturned. To deviate
from the received view opens up a vast range of new questions in need
of resolution, and this can be quite daunting. I myself, in my own researches, have frequently longed to retreat into the safe, comfortable
embrace of the conventional paradigm where all values are given a priori. There, one seems to find answers (right or wrong) to major structural
questions, and the questions that remain are clearly delimited-just the
kind of haven a scholar longs for. This is, in fact, what paradigms are
meant to provide.
On the other hand, it should be clear that such paradigms occlude as
much as they illuminate. The hegemony of the received view has served
to suppress inquiry and truncate debate regarding this most crucial and
fascinating chapter in world intellectual history. Any approach that breaks
out of this one-track mode of interpretation will be a clear advance for research in this area, whether immediately palpable or not. Giovanni Verardi
has stated the same in relation to studies of Gandharan Buddhism, where
scholars have ignored substantial evidence of esoteric Buddhist forms
(forms that, needless to say, contradict the received view). His work outlines the concrete effects that the common "historical-evolutionistic paradigm" applied to this region (and Buddhism more generally) has had on
259
the work of scholars to date. Given the presuppositions of this view, he

states, although most scholars of this early phase of northwestern Indian
Buddhism "cautiously acknowledge . . . the presence . . . of Mah?iy?inacurrents,'' nevertheless "the presence of forms of esoteric Buddhism is usually
denied through the well-known appeal to actual 'facts.' But facts, of course,
emerge within paradigms. No 'fact'-to take a famous example-ever
came out to show that it was the earth that revolved around the sun within
the Ptolemaic system: it was the recovery of Aristarchus' theories, made
possible by Humanism, that led to the construction of the Copernican
system, within which 'facts' were promptly observed that had always been
there. A paradigm, as such, shuts out from the start alternative ways of understanding reality."89 This, I argue, has been the case across the board in
studies of Indian Buddhist history. The historical paradigms that are the
common currency of Indological scholars-many of which derive from
the earliest period of Indological research (and, ultimately, from ancient
narrative models)-are in urgent need of criticism and, perhaps, revision.
The data available for constructing the history of Buddhist Tantrism
may be said to resemble Wittgenstein's epistemological example of the
ducklhare. In this famous sketch, there is little to go on in "reading" the
image-the content is ambiguous, as it consists of only a few lines. It
may legitimately be read either as an image of a duck or as that of a hare.
Interestingly, one tends to see only one or the other. When read as a duck,
the hare disappears; likewise, when read as a hare, one cannot perceive
the duck. The same may be said of our convictions concerning the chronology of Buddhist T a n t r i ~ mThe
. ~ ~ evidence available from which we
may imagine a history of Indian Buddhist Tantrism is extremely scarce,
and all of it is highly ambiguous. To the extent that we are "always already" convinced of the late historical provenance of these traditions and
their literatures, scholars will not be able to see beyond the "duck" this
mode of narrative imagination foregrounds. And with no one to raise a
voice of dissent, some may even convince themselves that it quacks.
University of Copenhagen
Verardi (n. 2 above), p. 3.

An important difference is that, in the case of Indian history, there are many more
than two possible interpretations.
89
90

Christian K. Wedemeyer: Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds: A Brief Genealogy of The Historiography of Tantric Buddhism

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Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds: A Brief Genealogy of the Historiography of

Christian K. Wedemeyer TROPES, TYPOLOGIES,

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

historian's more general understanding, narrative in form, of patterns of

This is not per se a major problem for historiographical practice. Rather,

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

was equally so in historiography more generally. Its use can be traced

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

as "pure" as that taught by s2kyamuni (certainly not in its contemporary

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

tale of the Etrurian debauches-but rather the strains of the (neoclassical)

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

In Reasoning of all . . . things, he that takes up conclusion on the

Perhaps the most influential figure in the early formation of notions of

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

He states, "a strict attention to [these principles] will perhaps enable us

28 William Erskine, "Account of the Cave-Temple of Elephanta," in Transactions of the

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

" Ibid., p. 103.

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

Asian Buddhists (excluding Tibetans, of course). Agehananda Bharati

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

sole (and rather irrelevant) testimony of Csoma de Ktiros regarding the

considers post-Buddhaghosa (fourth century) Theravada as the "original,

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

Ibid., p. 72 (my translation).

Ibid., p. 5 (my translation).

La Vallie Poussin, "Note sur le Paficakrama," p. 139 (my translation)

Thus, in 1894, the young La VallCe Poussin felt it perfectly coherent to

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

sorts-by La VallCe Poussin to Rapson. He could have published anything

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

the Indological community to conform to the conventional wisdom about

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

acknowledges that this had become the universal view in Buddhological

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

this rather interesting discussion is presented in piecemeal fashion over

(740-95)."86 Looking on the bright side, we do see here a definite advance

86 Mimaki Katsurni, "Aryadeva," in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed., M . Eliade (New York:

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

I do not know if there is any other field of knowledge which suffers

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds

the work of scholars to date. Given the presuppositions of this view, he

Verardi (n. 2 above), p. 3.

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