Jñānapāda (autonym: Buddhajñāna, also referred to as Buddhaśrījñāna, *Buddhajñānapāda, *Śrījñānapāda; fl. c. 770–820 CE), was one of the most influential figures of mature Indian esoteric Buddhism. He is remembered first and foremost as the founder of the earlier of the two most important exegetical schools of the Guhyasamājatantra (→BEB I, Guhyasamāja), but he was also very likely a guru of some note in the Pāla court, the dominant power in East India at the time, and the first warden of the famous Vikramaśīla monastery. Jñānapāda was a fairly…

Introduction Indian Buddhist tantric literature is vast; what survives of it – in original Indian languages or in Chinese or more commonly Tibetan translations – seems to be larger in extent than nontantric Indian Mahāyāna literature. The authors of this literature are sometimes unknown, sometimes celebrated masters whose lives are the subjects of rich hagiographies (mainly by Tibetan authors); often they appear to have only written on the mantranaya (that is, the tantric form of Mahāyāna Buddhis…

The Guhyasamājatantra (Scripture of Esoteric Assembly) is one of the most influential scriptures in later Indian tantric Buddhism. The key term “esoteric assembly” here is explained in the scripture itself (ch. 18) as the aggregate ( samāja) of body, speech, and mind ( guhya). It is the principal scripture of the yogottaratantra class, the wave following the yogatantra in the historical development of tantric literature. In this scripture, esoteric eroticism, only marginal in the yogatantras, has moved to the foreground, and multi-faced, multi-armed male deities are r…

The Sarvabuddhasamāyogaḍākinījālaśaṃvara (hence-forth Śaṃvara) is a significant transitional scripture between what later came to be viewed as the yogatantra and the yoginītantra (or yoganiruttara) classes (Tanaka, 2010, 340); in modern scholarship, it is sometimes referred to as the “proto- yoginītantra” (Tomabechi, 2007, 904; Sanderson, 2009, 147). Along with the Guhyasamājatantra, it bridges the gap between the type of esoteric Buddhism that by and large still operates within the realm of ritual purity and that of transgressive, antinomian esoteric revelation. The Śaṃvar…

Vāgīśvarakīrti (Tib. Ngag gi dbang phyug grags pa; abbr. Ngag dbang grags) was a Buddhist teacher, most likely from Eastern India, a renowned tantric master at the monastery of Vikramaśīla in the late 10th to early 11th centuries. Several tantric works are attributed to his authorship. The details of his biography are uncertain. According to Gzhon nu dpal (1392–1481), Vāgīśvarakīrti was an outstanding teacher in Vikramaśīla, and a colleague of Ratnākaraśānti, Prajñākaramati, Naro, Ratnavajra, and Jñānaśrī ( Deb ther sngon po, ch. 4, ed. Lokesh Chandra, 1976, 185; trans. Roe…

Prakaraṇas are usually short or mid-length treatises on a particular aspect of doctrine and/or practice, either tacitly endorsing and promoting a viewpoint or phrased in an apologetic style; in other words, they are descriptive or argumentative, essay-style exegetical writings. While there is nothing specifically tantric about the term prakaraṇa itself, in the present article it refers to those related to esoteric literature. These treatises do not claim to be revelation: the author is known, or there is at least supposed to have been a human…

The “new” ( gsar ma) tantric ritual literature was the product of the translation activity of the “latter transmission” ( phyi dar) of Buddhist teachings to Tibet, which began in the late 10th century and concluded circa the 14th century, when the flow of texts and practices between Tibet and India was reduced to a trickle. It includes translations of Indian Buddhist works as well as Tibetan ritual literature composed by scholars in the “new” schools of Tibetan Buddhism that were established on the basis of the new …

Catuṣpīṭha may be either an abbreviation of the scriptural title Catuṣpīṭhatantra or the name of the textual cycle and teachings directly or supposedly based on that scripture. The Catuṣpīṭhatantra is one of the earlier yoginītantras, the penultimate wave of scriptural revelation in Indian esoteric Buddhism. It was composed most likely in the late 9th century in northeast India (Szántó, vol. I, 2012, 35ff.). Like other examples of the genre, the text for the most part teaches a pantheon, the initiation rite meant to create a qua…

Kamalaśīla (740–795 ce?), one of the most outstanding figures in the history of Indian Buddhism, composed and glossed works on logic, epistemology, and Madhyamaka; commented on important Mahāyāna sūtras such as the Vajracchedikā and the Śālistamba; and, besides being versed in Tantra, authored treatises in defense of the view that salvation results from a gradual cultivation process extending over innumerable lifetimes. Mutatis mutandis, the same can be said of the most revered Indian Buddhist authorities, Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, …