Historiography On Tibetan Buddhism

Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds: A Brief Genealogy of the Historiography of Tantric
Buddhism
Author(s): Christian K. Wedemeyer
Source: History of Religions, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Feb., 2001), pp. 223-259
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3176698
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Christian K. Wedemeyer TROPES, TYPOLOGIES,
AND TURNAROUNDS:
A BRIEF GENEALOGY
OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHY
OF TANTRIC BUDDHISM
In the nascence of scholarly disciplines, provisional theories are fre-

quently entertainedthat serve to provide a general structureto the emerg-
ing field of knowledge and that enable more detailed studies to proceed.
These theories shape the course of initial research and-unless quickly
refuted or subsequentlyreconsidered-become part of the backgroundof
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 researchthat presupposes the truthof these "received views" that they
are never subsequently questioned, lest the calm facade of science be-
come ruffled, disturbing the comfortable illusion of "progress."Indeed,
for this reason one sometimes sees a strong cross-generationalscholarly
conservatism, in which older scholars are reluctantto 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 scholarsto make any headway at all in com-
ing to understandthe intricacies of a phenomenon with such an incom-
parablyvast literatureand such a prodigious historical span. As has been
shown elsewhere,1 it took some time before scholars were even able to
conceive this congeries of seemingly disparatephenomenaunderthe com-
mon rubric"Buddhism,"much less providea comprehensiveresume of its
1
Compare Philip Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism(Cambridge:Cambridge
University Press, 1988).
? 2001 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0018-2710/2001/4003-0002$02.00
224 Tropes, Typologies, and Turnarounds
most fundamentalhistory. 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 con-
structedfor it.
As with all humanactivity, of course, the process of this initial imagi-
nation of Indian Buddhist history has its own history. The range of data,
interpretativestrategies, and ideologies employed in the construction of
historical knowledge does not issue from a privileged perspective whose
prerogativeis to speak from "everywhere and nowhere."Rather,the pro-
duction of knowledge is itself situatedwithin a dramaof humanevents no
less idiosyncratic,particular,and contingent than the events whose histo-
ries are therebyconstructedas 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 sig-
nificant ramificationsin that direction). Rather, our focus will be on the
history of the historiographyof Buddhist Tantrism:the evolution of the
discourses that potentiatedthe construction of a history for Indian Bud-
dhist Tantrismbetween the early nineteenth century and today, and how
that structural(and structuring)account fared as researchprogressedover
the next century and a half. Such an approachcan 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 be-
comes a critical historiography.Such criticism can do much to mitigate
the effects of the interpretative"tunnelvision" producedwithin 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
paradigmand its subtending axioms.
In what follows, then, I shall present a genealogy of the historiography
of Indian TantricBuddhism that highlights the historical situatedness of
those researches and their ("human all-too-human")results. I will show
how the initial constructionof a general schema of Buddhist history was
decisively informed by the precriticalchoice of narrativearchetypeused
to structurethis history (Tropes), how that schema was justified by the
earliest interpretativemodels of Indian religion (Typologies), and how-
without furtherevidence or argumentbeing adduced-the resultinghisto-
riography(and its implications)was enshrinedin Buddhologicalorthodoxy
by the dramaticcapitulationof an otherwisewell-informed(and previously
incredulous)scholar,who was destined to become the most renownedand
influentialprofessorof Buddhismin the twentiethcentury (Turnarounds).
In so doing, I hope to suggest that this fundamentalimagining 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 scatteredresearches,which suggest that the conventional
view (i.e., that Tantrismwas the "final, decadent phase" of Indian Bud-
dhism that only emerged after the seventh century) is inadequateto the
facts at our disposal, therehas never been sustainedcriticism of the origins
of this view.2 It is my intentionhere to provoke such a debate, in the hope
that-whether or not the received view is ultimately rejected-it will re-
sult in a clarificationand renewed self-consciousness of why we think we
know what we "know" about this most obscure province of Indian reli-
gious history.
I. THE POETICS OF HISTORY

Analogiesprovenothing,thatis quitetrue,but they can makeone
feel more at home. (SIGMUND
FREUD)
In coming to understandthe historiographyof Indian religions, it is nec-

essary first to consider the natureof historiographyitself. In particular,it
should be understoodthat historical accounts consist of at least two ele-
ments-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 independentof an interpretativeframework)that are
organized and given meaning by a fundamentallyfictive narrativestruc-
ture.3Once a phenomenonhas been constitutedas an object of historical
discourse-itself an act of imaginative construction-a range of fictive,
rhetoricalmoves is potentiated.The phenomenonin question can now be
conceived as having an origin, a development, and a resolution-that is, it
now can become, in the Aristoteliansense, a story to be told.
Louis Mink, in his marvelous essays on the Historical Understanding,
has demonstratedthat the narrativeform is not merely an extrinsic pack-
aging in which historians arrangetheir data but an indispensable "cogni-
tive instrument"without which we could have no concept of the "history"
of a phenomenon at all. Mink argues that "even histories that are syn-
chronic 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
2 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 chal-
lenging methodological reflections) to be found in Giovanni Verardi'sinsightful "Homa"
and Other Fire Rituals in Gandhara (Naples: Instituto Universitario Orientale, 1994).
3 Note that my use of "fictive" here does not mean to imply that such elements are nec-
essarily "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.
historian'smore general understanding,narrativein form, of patterns of

historical change, and is a contribution to the correction or elaboration
of that narrativeunderstanding."4
This view stands in direct opposition to what Mink maintainsis a wide-
spreadpositivistic bias in historiographythat claims (implicitly) that "the
historian... finds the story already hidden in what his data are evidence
for; he is creative in the invention of researchtechniques to expose it, not
in the art of narrativeconstruction."5Mink, quite rightly, finds this latter
view highly problematical.The reason why becomes clear when one con-
siders that any given event can be cast rhetoricallyas either a beginning,
a middle, or an end-and, hence, its narrativerole and historical "mean-
ing" is indeterminate.It is the historian who imparts identity, meaning,
and narrativefunction to the otherwise mute and lifeless data. This much
is widely recognized today by professional historiansand philosophersof
history, yet its implications are often overlooked in practice. Mink's in-
sightful diagnosis notes that this ("closeted") positivistic stance in histo-
riography 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 presupposedas widely as it would be explicitly rejected."6
Hayden White's Metahistory-a work highly esteemed by Mink-
advanced this discussion by highlighting the mechanics of the fictive
modes of emplotment,explanation,and ideological implication operating
in ostensibly "scientific"historiography.Drawingon the work of Northrop
Frye, White explored the mannerin which identical series of events could
be rhetoricallycast in either a comedic, tragic, romantic,or satiric mode.
For instance, the history of any given phenomenoncould be told as an in-
stance of the triumphof good over evil (romance),the temporarytriumph
of man (comedy), the temporarydefeat 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).7 What is important to note about
these choices is the irreduciblyimaginative element in them. The narra-
tive 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.
4 Louis 0. Mink, "NarrativeFormas a Cognitive Instrument,"in Historical Understanding,

ed. Brian Fay et al. (Ithaca,N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 184.
5 Ibid., p. 188.
6 Ibid.
7 CompareHaydenWhite, Metahistory:TheHistorical Imaginationin Nineteenth-Century
Europe (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 9.
This is not per se a majorproblemfor historiographicalpractice.Rather,

it has generally been understoodas an issue relevant to the epistemologi-
cal 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 difficultquestions this type of cri-
tique poses for historiography in which this is not the case-that is, in
which these narrativemodels actually serve to structurehistoricalhypoth-
eses in areas of chronologicalobscurity.In such cases the historian-hav-
ing decided (on extraevidentialgrounds) the "lesson" to be derived from
the history and its correspondingplot-then manipulatesthe scanty data
available to fit the demands of the narrativearchetype.This, I argue, has
especially been the case in the historiographyof Asia and, I will show,
has been quite specifically the case with the historiographyof Buddhist
Tantrism.Let us consider,then, the ways in which classical narrativeforms
have informed the writing of the history of Buddhism.
II. 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 narrativestructure
for histories of the natives. That is, indigenous culture was generally cast
as the inverse of the progressive, post-Enlightenmentcivilization of the
European colonizers. It was thought to be characterized by the eternal
returnof the same-and to be incapableof development, as "native peo-
ples" are captives of their environmentalconditions... brutish slaves to
instinct. In short, against the progressive comic or romanticnarrativesof
Europeancivilization, native histories were cast in an ironic or, alternately,
tragic mode.8 However, while the synchronicemplotmentwas a powerful
tool to invoke in dealing with the ideological and political pretenses of a
contemporarycolonized Hindupeople, IndianBuddhismwas, as it were, a
differentstory. Buddhismhad run its course in India and was thus a safely
"past"phenomenon.Hence, it was generally given a diachronicnarrative,
with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Indeed, one of the centraldata of
relevance to historiansof Buddhismwas 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 historiographyof Buddhism but
8 RonaldInden's
ImaginingIndia (Cambridge:Blackwell, 1992) has nicely discernedsome
of the discourses throughwhich India has been representedas a timeless, changeless world.
was equally so in historiographymore generally. Its use can be traced

from hoary antiquitythroughthe present,having been the model of choice
among discerningauthorsfrom the very adventof Westernhistoriography.
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 tra-
jectory. Thus, cities, nations, schools of thought,political parties,and even
religions have been conceptualizedin these terms, and the events of their
historiesinterpretedaccordingly.We must insist, nevertheless,on the meta-
phorical natureof this model. While we may quite genuinely speak of the
childhood, adulthood,decline, and death of individualmen, we are speak-
ing 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 "objec-
tive" reality.
This metaphoricalemplotmentbecame codified and objectifiedby Vico,
when his "scientific" historiographyposited cycles of organic develop-
ment in humanhistory.In Vico's historiographywe see a model of histor-
ical development, which holds that civilizations followed a regularcycle
of eras-a heroic period, a classical period, and a decline into barbarism.
R. G. Collingwood describes a furtheranalysis 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 spendthriftand wasteful opulence which
destroys what has been constructed."9Indeed, though it became the foun-
dation for much of the modern practice of history, this vision of a deter-
minate and regular succession of eras-eras that end in decline-is
nothing new. It is merely a refinementof 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 Krta,
Dvapara, Treta, and Kali Yugas. We find a similar series of four stages,
ending in decadence, in the sociohistorical theories of Ibn Khaldun.10
In more recent memory, one finds Rousseau, in a strangely Buddhistic
moment, commenting that "the body politic, like the human body, be-
gins to die from the very moment of its birth, and carries within itself the
causes of its destruction."'1
9 R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (London:OxfordUniversityPress, 1956), p. 67.

10
CompareIbn Khaldfn, The Muqaddimah:An Introductionto History (Princeton,N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1969).
11
Jean-JacquesRousseau, "On the Social Contract,"in Basic Political Writings (Indi-
anapolis: Hackett, 1987), p. 194.
Clearly then, this metaphoricalreading of historical processes as con-

formingto the patternof the individualorganiclife cycle has been endemic
to historiographicalpractice throughoutits history. The early nineteenth
century, in which the historiographyof Buddhism was initiated, marked
the zenith of popularityfor this vision. Under the influence of compelling
philosophical thinkerssuch as Hegel, previous critiquesof the excesses of
a priori historiographywere 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."12For Hegel, not only the total structureof
civilizational development but all the microcosmic histories within it
traverse the selfsame four historical moments-moments that correlate
with his vision of the successive transformationsof humanconsciousness.
It is in light of this narrativestructure,so characteristicof European
historiographicalpractice, that I suggest one consider the following com-
ment made by Cecil Bendall in the introductionto his edition of the Su-
bhasita-samgraha,a compendiumof Tantricknowledge: "Much (perhaps
too much, in proportionto the published material)has been written about
the glorious and vigorous youth of IndianBuddhism;something about its
middle age of scholasticism and philosophy; but next to nothing about
its decay, decrepitudeand dotage, as shown in the Tantra-literature."13Ben-
dall is right, of course, about the imbalance of attentionsby scholars of
Buddhism (a fact still true today), yet what is of most interestis the acute
clarity with which the model of organic development is used to structure
the history of Buddhism. Some variantof this model is almost invariably
operative in the nineteenth-century constructs of Indian Buddhist his-
tory that have served as the foundation and exemplars of all subsequent
researches.
Using this model, the following common version of Buddhisthistory is
constructed.First there was SakyamuniBuddha, the original propounder
of "Buddhism"(about whom most reputablescholars 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 Hinayana/Theravada.Here we see the
traditionsand the literatureof TheravadaBuddhism, the currentlydomi-
nant school of Buddhismin Burmaand Sri Lanka,defined as functionally
equivalent to "primordialBuddhism."14This Buddhism, while not quite
12
White, p. 123.
13 Cecil
Bendall, ed., Subhasita-Samgraha(Louvain: J.-B. Istas, 1905), p. 2.
14 I have worked with a scholar who insisted on
myself speaking about the Dhammapada
(and the Pali canon more generally) as if they had come "straightfrom the Buddha'smouth."
as "pure"as that taught by Sakyamuni(certainly not in its contemporary

form in colonial Ceylon), is nonetheless fairly faithful to the source.
Then, the story goes, the literatureof the Mahayanabegan 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 con-
tinually eroded by the lazy, sensual tendencies natural to Indians (and
other natives of warm climes),'5 the Buddhist tradition finally decided
just to give free license to do whatever one wanted and to call it "Bud-
dhist practice."To this end, however, it was thought necessary to fabri-
cate apocryphal scriptures (Tantras)in which such sensual indulgences
could be passed off as orthodox practice, sanctioned by the Buddha.
This is clearly the view subscribedto by Monier Williams in his Bud-
dhism.16All of the foregoing models are broughttogether in this influen-
tial work. "The tendency of every religious movement,"claims Williams,
"is towards deteriorationand disintegration."17After the Buddha'sdeath,
he claims, "the eternalinstincts of humanity... insisted on making them-
selves felt notwithstandingthe unnaturalrestraintto which the Buddha
had subjected them,"18and Buddhists quickly began to give up the celi-
bacy, ethics, and otherteachings enjoinedby the Buddha.Then, he claims,
"the Protean system called Maha-yanaarose, and grew, by the operation
of the usual laws, . . . into a congeries of heterogeneousdoctrines, includ-
ing the worship of Bodhi-sattvas, deified saints, and personal gods."19
Yet, "far worse than this, Buddhism ultimately allied itself with Tantrism
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 appearsin the standardworks on
the history of Buddhism. There is no need to multiply examples-any-
one 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?
15 Such theories of a correlationbetween climactic conditions and

psychosocial historical
determinismwere an importantelement in conditioning the historical imaginationdiscussed
here.
16 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."
17 Monier Williams, Buddhism,in Its Connexionwith Brahmanismand Hinduism,and in
Its Contrast with Christianity(London: John Murray,1889), p. 148.
18 Ibid., p. 151.
19Ibid., p. 159 (emphasis mine).
20
Ibid., p. 152.
The narrative of civilizational decline following upon moral (espe-

cially 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 literature.21Perhaps the paradigmaticexample
of this is the tale of the Etruscandecline. Here, in a significant and pop-
ular historical episode of Roman history, the fall of Etruria-a powerful
neighbor of early Rome (and subsequently incorporated into the em-
pire)-is attributedto their moral degeneracy. This was also, it may be
observed, interpretedin some accounts as a valid justification for the Ro-
man invasion. R. A. L. Fell states in his work on Etruria and Rome, "The
decline of the Etruscanpeople is often ascribed to the natureof their re-
ligion, and the depravationof 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."22It is worth noting that this trope is
later co-opted by Christianhistorians-developing from the Roman intel-
lectual tradition-to explain the fall of Rome itself. The decrepitciviliza-
tion of paganism with its Neros and Caligulas, phallic cults and "games,"
they claimed, must necessarily give way to the vigorous, youthful moral
power of Christianity.23 It is clear here from whence Vico derived his final
phase of "spendthriftand wasteful opulence."
It was precisely this historical archetype,I argue, that was functioning
in the fashioning of a historyof Buddhism.Given the basic datumso strik-
ingly evident to writersof British India-the absence of a Buddhistpres-
ence and, hence, the ostensible "disappearance"of IndianBuddhism-one
needed to account for this fact. For many, Tantrismfit the exigencies of
narrative quite nicely, providing a familiar and easily digestible story.
The idea most commonly associated with Tantrafrom the outset (and still
widespread today) was sex. Edward Thomas put this reductionistic por-
trayal in its most undisguised form when he reported, in his History of
Buddhist Thought,that TantricBuddhism "consists in giving a religious
significance to the facts of sex."24 Inevitably, this conception of the
Tantrictraditionsuggested to the narrativeimagination of the nineteenth
21
Comparethe comment of Hayden White, who states that "the normallyeducatedhisto-
rianof the nineteenthcenturywould have been raisedon a staple of classical and Christianlit-
erature.The mythoicontainedin this literaturewould have providedhim with a fund of story
forms on which he could have drawnfor narrativepurposes"(White [n. 7 above], p. 8, n. 6).
22 R. A. L.
Fell, Etruriaand Rome (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1924), p. 139.
23
And, in the typical style of the Abrahamictraditionsof one-upping each others'narra-
tives, this trope was later turned on the Catholic Church itself by the vigorously youthful
Reformation schools.
24 EdwardJ. Thomas, The History of Buddhist Thought(1933; reprint,New York:Barnes
& Noble, 1951), p. 246.
centurythe classical archetypeof the "decline and fall."The resultingtale,

it shouldbe apparent,is a familiarone, recapitulatingthatof Etruria:a once
strong and vital culture becomes seduced by pleasure and renounces its
earliercommitmentto purityand virtue.In particularthe lure of the "plea-
sures of the flesh"-so difficultto keep in check-overcomes the people,
and society becomes "decadent."The ultimateoutcome is the death of the
once-greatsociety.
As in the case of Etruria,this model conveniently explained not only
the disappearanceof Buddhism in India, but further,it providedproof 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-madein native Buddhistdoxography,it was a naturalstep,
given the association of Vajrayanawith sensual indulgence and a falling
away from ethical behavior (in short, with sex) to appropriatethis schema
and reconceive it in chronological terms. Thus, the Buddhist doxologi-
cal hierarchies of Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana(and, within the
Vajrayana,the Kriya, Carya,Yoga, and AnuttarayogaTantras)were trans-
formed into a convenient sequential timeline of Buddhist doctrinal his-
tory.That is to say, what was originally conceived by Buddhistthinkersas
a soteric sequence of progressively more refined Buddhist teachings was
pressed into service by modernscholars as a temporalsequence of the de-
velopment of apocryphalBuddhist texts and their commentaries. In this
fashion they were able to use this traditionalmodel itself to lend authority
to their historical construct.
The fictive element of this mode of historiographybecomes strikingly
apparent,however, when one considersalternativeemplotments.Alexander
Cunningham,though well aware of Tantrismby this time, gives the fol-
lowing variantaccount of the Buddhist "decline":
Buddhismhad in fact become an old and worn-outcreed, whose mendicant

monksno longerbeggedtheirbread,butweresupportedby landslong since ap-
propriated The SramanasandBhikshuswerenot like thoseof
to the monasteries.
ancientdays,the learnedandthe wise, whosebodilyabstinenceandcontempla-
tive devotion,combinedwithpracticalexhortations
andholyexample,excitedthe
wonder of the people. The moder Buddhists had relapsed into an indolent and
corruptbody, 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 enthusiasmin the lifeless performanceof such monoto-
nous routine.25
Cunningham here invokes another archetype popular among nineteenth-

century 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.
tale of the Etruriandebauches-but ratherthe strainsof the (neoclassical)

tale of the Reformation(and Enlightenment).Here, the relevant connec-
tion 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 de-
fraud the populace with its "priestly mummery."The invocation of this
narrativemodel bears witness to Cunningham'splace among the heirs of
the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment. Given the
scanty evidence he was workingfrom, however, it is not a convincing wit-
ness 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, ratherthan ritual and ecclesiastical.
In this regard, we may note the following, extremely illuminating,
statementof T. W. Rhys Davids, which reveals in a strikingway the man-
ner in which the exigencies of plot structurehave far outweighed and
supplantedthe testimony of concrete evidence. Startingfrom 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 unreason-
able to hope that, when the authorities, especially the Buddhist Sanskrit
texts, shall have been made accessible, and the sites shall have been ex-
plored, 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."26Here
Rhys Davids (in 1903) as much as admits that, before we have even col-
lected the evidence available from literary and archaeological remains,
we can a priori assume a narrativestructurealong the lines of Edward
Gibbon'sDecline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is, I believe, no coin-
cidence that the history of Buddhism should find itself being fashioned
after the model of an Enlightenmentmorality play. This is precisely the
methodology that characterizesthe nineteenth-centuryhistoriographyof
Indian Buddhism-historiography that, though recast slightly in more
contemporarynarratives,has nonetheless establishedthe fundamentalpa-
rametersof Indian chronology throughoutthe twentieth.
One might also consider the testimony of Alex Waymanwho, although
he himself in general subscribes to the "received view" on Tantricchro-
nology, nonetheless bears witness to the fundamentalcircularity of the
historical reasoning about Buddhist Tantrismon which this very view is
26 T. W.
Rhys Davids, Buddhist India (1903; reprint,Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993),
p. 320 (emphasis mine).
based. He writes, "The Westernsurvey-typebooks ... have tended to as-

cribe to the Buddhist Tantrasthe nefarious role of contributingto, if not
hastening,the demise [of Buddhismin India], throughparticulardoctrines
and practices quite at variance with the lofty ethics and practice enjoined
by GautamaBuddha.Thereis a kindof circular reasoninghere. The Tantra
is labeled 'degenerative'and so destructive of Buddhism'spublic image;
and to buttress the argument it is necessary to say that the Tantrasare
composed very late, close to the time when they are credited with this
sharein the downfall of Buddhism."27I 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, foundationalframeworks
that were developed within which to understandthe nature (and, indeed,
the very existence) of the Buddhist Tantras.Then I will look in some de-
tail at the mannerin which the career and writings of Louis de La Vallee
Poussin-while at first adumbratinga radicalrevisioning of the course of
Tantrichistoriography-instead served a pivotal role in fixing the received
view as unquestionedorthodoxy for most of the twentieth century.
III. ANALYTICAL HISTORY OF TANTRIC HISTORIOGRAPHY

In Reasoningof all... things,he thattakesup conclusionon the
trustof Authors,anddothnotfetchthemfromthefirstItemsof every
Reckoning,... loses his labour;and does not know any thing,but
onely beleeveth. (THOMAS Leviathan)
HOBBES,
Anyone who reads the literaturepurportingto establish the history and

chronology of TantricBuddhism with a critical mind will immediately
be struck by the fact that nowhere in this literature is an argument ad-
vanced with sufficient strengthto establish the conclusions claimed. Even
the best ultimately defer to a spectralconsensus, which, it is averred,has
somehow already established the relative late chronological location of
Tantrism.As I have suggested above, this is accompanied(and "substan-
tiated") more often than not by the notion that the lateness of Buddhist
Tantrismis linked inseparably with its "decline" (or "degeneration/con-
tamination/adulteration") and supposed"disappearance"-utterlyignoring,
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 Tantrictraditions. I will show
27 Alex
Wayman, "Observationson the History and Influence of the Buddhist Tantrain
India and Tibet,"in Studies in the History of Buddhism,ed. A. K. Narain (Delhi: B. R. Pub-
lishing, 1980), p. 361 (emphasis mine).
that these ideas are very much the product of the contingent historical
circumstances and evolution of the modem traditionof interpretation,a
tradition whose origins, development, and progress will be seen to be
highly problematical. I will describe the origination of the first theoreti-
cal hypotheses concerning the typology of Indian religions and demon-
strate the manner in which these hypotheses became the foundation for
furtherhypotheses, 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 procuringthe texts of SanskriticBuddhism
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 patternthat 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 traditionfrom the first researches on Bud-
dhism through the most contemporary works, gaining credibility from
sheer force of repetitionby eminent authorities.It is in Hodgson'swritings
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 Saivite admixture (Tantric Buddhism). That is,
Hodgson had experienced Saivism (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 col-
leagues, 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 idee fixe that "Buddhism"did
not include elements Tantricin 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, de-
scribed what he considered to be the distinctive characteristics of the
"three grand sects" of India-"the Brahminical, Bouddhist, and Jaina."
Erskine'smotivation in elaboratingthe main features of these three tradi-
tions 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 interpretationof these monu-
ments (and, reflexively, their associated traditions) could proceed apace.
He states, "a strict attention to [these principles] will perhaps enable us

to judge with ease to which of these three classes any particulartemple
belongs."28
In his subsequentdiscussion, Erskine gives an account of what he un-
derstandsto be Buddhistical atheism. Asserting that Buddhism has a god
"like the god of the Epicureans,"he nonetheless insists on the fundamental
anthropocentrismof the religion. He ends by summarizingthe 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 incarna-
tions or transformationsof superior beings are recorded, it is obvious
that in their temples we can expect to find no unnaturalimages, no figures
compounded of man and beast, no monsters with many hands or many
heads."29Thus, underthe guidanceof Erskine'spioneeringstudy of Indian
religious architecture,early nineteenth-centurycolonialists-cum-amateur-
archaeologists 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 humanpartly brutal, any multiplicity of heads
or hands in the object adored,indicate a Brahminicalplace of worship."30
Here, clearly, Erskine is working from a position that identifies "Boud-
dhism" with modem TheravadaBuddhism. After mentioning the igno-
rance of the significance of Buddhist images among BrahminicalIndians,
he tells the reader that for such information "we are forced to resort to
Ceylon and Siam."31Indeed, that such is the source of his opinions is
confirmedby the fact that he refers, in anotherarticle on a similar theme,
to Simon de La Loubere'sNew Historical Relation of the Kingdomof Siam
(1693), which he takes as an authoritativedescription of Buddhism.32
Equally telling is another means Erskine provides for distinguishing be-
tween Buddhismand 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 Brahminsis Sanskrit."33
28 William
Erskine, "Accountof the Cave-Templeof Elephanta,"in Transactionsof the
LiterarySociety of Bombay(1819) 1:203.
29
Ibid., p. 202.
30 Ibid., 203.
p.
31
Ibid., p. 206.
32 Simon de La
Loubere, cited in William Erskine, "Observationson the Remains of the
Bouddhists in India,"Transactionsof the Literary Society of Bombay (1823; reprint, 1877),
3:529. This work of La Loubere was a deeply influentialaccount of the coastal Theravada
Buddhismencounteredby late-seventeenth-centuryEuropeans.It was also for many years the
primaryaccount of the Pali language-only supersededby Eugene Burouf and Christian
Lassen'sEssai sur le Pali (Paris:Soci6t6 Asiatique), publishedin 1826. Comparethe Oxford
UniversityPress facsimile reprintof the English edition: Simon de La Loubere, TheKingdom
of Siam (KualaLumpur:Oxford University Press, 1969).
33 Erskine, "Observations,"p. 531.
Thus, we can see that alreadyby 1813, with roots perhapsas early as the
late seventeenth century,there is unmistakableevidence of the construc-
tion of an essentialized concept of Buddhism. This construct was based
largely on the TheravadaBuddhistswho inhabitedthe coastal areas famil-
iar to Europeancolonialists. Furthermore,this essentialized Buddhismwas
constructedprecisely for the practical,typological activity of distinguish-
ing Buddhist from non-Buddhistphenomena.That it soon found employ-
ment in relegatingTantricBuddhisttraditionsto the lattercategory should
come as no surprise.
With the benefit of hindsight, one can immediately foresee the prob-
lems this template would raise when, soon after, Hodgson was confronted
with the evidence not only of Sanskritic Buddhism, but of TantricBud-
dhism 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 importantinterpretativedecisions in order to ac-
commodate the anomalous data he encountered on reaching the Kath-
mandu Valley. I am quite deliberately using the terminology of Thomas
Kuhnhere, as I feel that one can rightly understandHodgson'sposition as
one of a researcherwho, under the influence of the paradigmof a "nor-
mal science" (created by Erskine'stypology of Indian religions), is faced
with unexpected anomalies-evidence that does not fit neatly within the
currentparadigm.Indeed, Hodgson could not have avoided the conclusion
that Erskine'sparadigmwas inadequateas 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 encounteredin Nepal. He
informs us that, "For years... I had been in possession of hundredsof
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 procuringauthenticexplanations of them from original
sources."34 Why did Hodgson feel it necessary to search out an explana-
tion 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 sufficientto
satisfy the teeming fancy of any Brahmanof MadhyaDesa! Startnot, gen-
tle 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.
stores."35Indeed, Hodgson here explicitly refers the source of his notions

of the "principles of Buddhism" to "Erskine'sEssays in the Bombay
Transactions."36 And the cause of his caution was clear-for who would
have believed his assertionthat such multilimbedfigurescould crediblybe
called "Buddhist,"when any well-informed readerof the Bombay Trans-
actions knew quite well that good, anthropocentricBuddhistsdid not trade
in such phantasticidols?
Hodgson was aided in this dilemma by Erskine himself, who had al-
readyused the tropeof "grafting"to accommodatephenomenathatdid not
fit neatly into his own system. For example, confrontedwith the presence
of "Brahminical"deities even in TheravadaBuddhism,Erskineavers "the
Bouddhists of India sometimes engraftedBrahminicalnotions upon their
mythology, and, for certain purposes, acknowledged the existence and
agency of the Brahminicaldeities."37Erskine 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.
EncounteringSanskrit Buddhist texts in praise of multilimbed deities
and their associated images, Hodgson was very naturallyled to apply this
convenient conceptual tool and advance an hypothesis of religious "ad-
mixture."And, indeed, in his landmarkessays he createda vision of Bud-
dhism-widely cited and copied throughoutthe nineteenthcentury-that
viewed TantricBuddhism in such a light. Finding in Nepalese Buddhism
an "immense, and for the most partuseless, host" of deities, allied to what
he termed "naked doctrines"and "a secret and filthy system of Buddhas
and Buddha-Saktis,"Hodgson informed the Europeanpublic of his con-
clusion that Tantrismwas "a strange and unintelligible adjunct of Bud-
dhism, though,"he was forced to admit, "vouched by numerousscriptural
authorities."38Noticeable here is the fact that Hodgson is already using
the language of Saivism/Saktism to describe this form of Buddhism39-
indicating where he believed the source of the admixture to be. Thus
was born the tenacious notion that Buddhism (still Erskine's Buddhism)
became gradually"Sanskritized"and "Hinduized"-Tantric Buddhismbe-
ing the terminalend of this process.
Hodgson's work in Nepal was augmented and consolidated by the re-
searchesof HoraceHaymanWilson in Calcutta.It was certainlythe cachet
of collaborationwith the great Sanskritistof the Court that gave a great
35 Ibid., p. 103.
36 Even if he were not so
explicit, this referentialityis clearly implicit in his use of the ex-
pression "teeming fancy of any Brahmanof MadhyaDesa," which echoes the idiom used by
Erskine.
37 Erskine, "Observations,"p. 557.
38 Hodgson, pp. 15, 40, 59, and 29.
39 He thus initiated the ratherunfortunateuse of such terms as sakti in reference to Bud-
dhist Tantricconsorts (more accurately described as mudrdor vidya).
boost to Hodgson'swork. One of the most importantand influentialof the

paperspenned by Wilson was his "Notice of Three TractsReceived from
Nepal," published in 1828 in Asiatic Researches, immediately follow-
ing and supplementingHodgson's "Notices." This article representedthe
firstEnglish translationof SanskritBuddhisttexts, and it was clearly start-
ling to its first readers,as the three tractswere decidedly Tantricin nature.
In his analysis of the "ThreeTracts,"we see many of the key interpre-
tative notions that would characterizethe study of TantricBuddhism for
the next centuries: "Saivism/Saktism,""admixture,""corruption,"and so
forth. Here Wilson lends the authorityof a translation(original authori-
ties) and the concurrenceof a noted Sanskritist (himself), to the "field-
work" of Hodgson. In these texts, Wilson states, "the worship of SIVA,
and Tantrarites, are ... widely blended with the practices and notions of
the Bauddhists."40The works, he continues, "shew how far the Buddha
creed has been modified by Tdntrikaadmixture."41"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, el-
evated 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 Brahmans."42It is clear that Wilson, too, is
here alluding to the theories of Erskine. He goes on to elaboratehis view
of the source of these differences, claiming that "the Sakta form of Hin-
duism is ... the chief source of the notions and divinities foreign to Bud-
dhism 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 Tintrika Puranas,
form a literaturealmost peculiar to the eastern provinces of Hindustan,
the origin of which appears to be traceable to KAMARUP or western
Asam."43He adds an historical assertion that the Tantrikaritual seems to
have originatedin the twelfth century,though he does not give any source
for this claim.
It should be no cause for surprisethat Western scholars were thus led
to consider the Vajrayanaas a form of "Buddhist Saivism/Saktism."In-
deed, this notion was also likely to have been secondedby most of the (un-
informed)South Asian informantswho were availableto them. This would
have been true of nearly all informants-Buddhist and non-Buddhist
alike. In fact, this idea continues to hold currencyto 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.
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... Vajrayana is simply not
known to the rankand file. I asked a sarpanch in the Maharregion of Ma-
harashtrawhether he knew anything about Vajrayana.... I drew a com-
plete blank. When I elaboratedon some points made by Shashi Bhushan
Dasgupta [authorof An Introductionto TantricBuddhism]to a Barua in-
structorin political science ... he said all this sounded like Saktism with
which he, as an East Bengali, had some neighborly acquaintance."44
Thus, the basic course of early Europeanthoughton BuddhistTantrism
is clear. "Buddhism"was invented by Erskine. Sakta Tantrismwas ob-
served in the Bengali center of British administration.The anomalous di-
vergences of Buddhist Tantrismfrom Erskine'sBuddhism were noted-
their Sanskritsources, polylimbeddeities, and "nakeddoctrines"-as were
their similarity to Sakta elements. The theory of admixture-which had
alreadybeen used to allow the theistic elements of Theravadato meet the
strict standardsof the Europeanconstructof Buddhism-was invoked to
reconcile these data. Some basic elements of a Tantric"history"now be-
gan to settle into place: "original(Pali) Buddhism"was non-Tantric,San-
skritic"Tantra/Saktism" is Hindu,thus "BuddhistTantra"is a later mixture
of Buddhist elements with Tantricelements developed elsewhere and in-
corporatedperhapsas late as the twelfth century.These are the conceptual
tools that were bequeathedto subsequentresearcherson Buddhismand its
history.It was not long before these tools reachedthe hands of the eminent
French OrientalistEugene Burnouf.
Bumouf, more than anyone else perhaps,can be regardedas the founder
of modem Buddhist studies. His chief work on the subject,Introductiona
l'histoire du BuddhismeIndien (1844), became the touchstone and exem-
plar for all subsequentstudies. Most important,his methodology-draw-
ing data "firsthand"from Buddhist texts, rather than from secondhand
reportsof missionaries and colonialists-quickly became standardin the
field,45and orientalstudies (the flower of the "Second Renaissance")took
its honored place next to classical studies (for which Burnouf pere was
widely renowned).
Among the texts Bumouf discusses in his Histoire were a number of
Tantrasand Tantriccommentarialworks, and he devoted considerableat-
tentionto them-more attention,in fact, thanwould be paid for nearlyfifty
years. The betterpartof his analysis is devoted to restatingthe conclusions
44 Agehananda Bharati, TantricTraditions,2d ed. (Delhi: Hindustan Publishing, 1993),

p. 321.
45 Bumouf himself was not an entirelysuccessful practitionerof the new method,however;
as we shall see, he drew much of his materialdirectly from Hodgson, the colonialist who had
procuredcopies of these texts and sent them to the BibliothequeNationale.
of Hodgson andWilson and reiteratingthatthe contentsof these texts seem

to bear a strong resemblanceto Saivism. Sadly, he does not actually give
any clear examples to illustratein what exactly he understoodthis similar-
ity to consist. He merely indicates that these texts include deities (ostensi-
bly) drawn from the Saiva pantheon,which, however, he also indicates is
the case with the Mahayana Sutras in his collection. As a consequence,
Burouf does not actually contributeto the discussion about the possible
Saiva influenceon TantricBuddhism.He merely parrotsthe conclusions of
Hodgson. The authorityof his imprimatur,however-backed by his claim
that he confirmedthese conclusions by his own study of the relevanttexts
(studies the steps of which are not sharedwith his readers)-did much for
establishingthe "truth"of this claim in orientalistcircles.
Furthermore,Burouf's work consecrated the first widespread dis-
course about the concrete dating of the Buddhist Tantras.Drawing on the
published writings of Csoma de Koros, Burouf was led to the conclusion
thatTantrism"couldnot have been introducedbefore the Xthcenturyof our
era."46On what evidence was this date-which quickly became the com-
mon touchstone in Tantric historiography-fixed? It was precisely and
solely based on the testimony of Alexander Csoma de Koros. This testi-
mony consisted of three nearly verbatim references to the Kalacakra
Tantra,an idiosyncraticTantrawhich is of admittedlylate provenance.In
his influential "Analysis" of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, Csoma notes
that the Kalacakra"was introducedinto India in the tenth centuryby CHI-
LUPA,and into Tibet in the eleventh,"and later repeats that the Kalacakra
system was "introducedinto India in the tenth century after CHRIST."47 He
appears in these places to be repeating the claim made in an earlier article
of his on the "Originof the Kalacakraand Adi-BuddhaSystems,"in which
he also says that "The Kala-Cakrawas introducedinto CentralIndia in the
last half of the tenth century after Christ."48
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 Sakya" and that they are more similar to the
sutrasof the Mahayanathan those of non-Mahayanists,but this, again, is
to be expected, as they are in fact Mahayanascriptures.What is important
to note is that his entire conclusion (and the discourses it subsequently
enabled) regardingthe chronology of Buddhist Tantrismis based on the
46
Eugene Burnouf, Introduction a l'histoire du Buddhisme Indien (Paris: Imprimerie
Royale, 1844), p. 526 (my translation).
47 Alexander Csoma de Kdros, "Analysis of the Sher-chin, p'hal-ch'hen,dkon-seks, do-
de, nyang-das, and gyut," Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 20, pt. 2 (1839): 488,
564.
48 Alexander Csoma de K6ros, "Note on the Origin of the Kala-Cakraand Adi-Buddha
Systems," Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 2 (1833): 57.
sole (and ratherirrelevant) testimony of Csoma de Koros regardingthe

(admittedly late and idiosyncratic) Kalacakra Tantra.
This initial fixing of the date of Tantrismis importantin the subsequent
developmentof Tantrichistoriography,as this entireevolution can be seen
as a gradual (if extremely reluctant)moving back of this date against a
strong and perpetualresistanceby scholars loathe to admit its provenance
in a period any earlierthan absolutely necessary.More than once scholars
have writtenof their reluctanceto admit the antiquityof certaintexts that
did not confirm their prejudices about Buddhist history-even in light of
strongevidence.49Although the putativedate of the "emergence"of Bud-
dhist Tantrismhas been moved back to the seventh century,50this is a
process that continues to the present day.
V. LOUIS DE LA VALLEE POUSSIN: THE BEGINNINGS OF AN

ORTHODOXY
Following the work of Bumouf, there was no significant scholarshippro-

duced on the literatureand history of Indian Buddhist Tantrismuntil the
work of Louis de La Vallee Poussin in the closing decade of the nineteenth
century.In 1894, La Vallee Poussin published an initial study of the Pan-
cakrama that was to become, in 1896, the first edition of this important
work.51 He subsequently continued his work on the Tantras,concluding
with the publication(in 1898) of an ambitiousand remarkablework on the
historyof Buddhismand the Tantras-the firstof a series of worksbearing
the title Bouddhisme:Etudeset materiaux.Perhapsthe chief interestof this
book for the developmentof Buddhist studies is his sharpcriticism of the
credulityof the rapidlyadvancingtraditionof those he termedles palisans
(what in colloquial English we might call "Paliheads")toward the ortho-
dox Theravada understanding of Buddhist history. This view-which
49 Consider the
following statementin regardto the Lotus Sutra (Saddharma-pundarika):
"If we did not know that it had already been translatedinto 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.
50 This change is primarilydue to claims made by Toganoo Sh6un in his 1933 work Hi-
mitsu bukkyo-shi(reprintedin Gendai BukkyoMeicho Zenshu, ed. H. Nakamura,F Masu-
tani, and J. M. Kitagawa [Tokyo:Ryubunkan,1964], 9:1-200); cf. Huntington(n. 2 above),
pp. 89-90 and 97. Note, however, that while Huntingtonis probablyright thatthe "scientific"
legitimationof this view derives primarilyfrom Toganoo'swork (and the equally problemat-
ical work of Benoytosh Bhattacharyya),the seventh-centurydate had already been asserted
by La Vallee Poussin in 1909 (cf. ChristianK. Wedemeyer, Vajrayanaand Its Doubles: A
Critical Historiography,Exposition, and Translationof the TantricWorksof Aryadeva [Ann
Arbor, Mich.: University MicrofilmsInternational,1999], and below).
51 Louis de La Vallee Poussin, "Note sur le Paficakrama,"in Proceedings of the Tenth
International Congress of Orientalists (Geneva, 1894), pt. 1:137-46. This article was sub-
sequently reprinted(with the revision of the brief introductorysection) as the introduction
to the Pancakramaedition of 1896. See also his Etudes et textes Tantriques:"Pancakrama"
(Gand: H. Engelcke; Louvain:J.-B. Istas, 1896.
considers post-Buddhaghosa(fourth century) Theravadaas the "original,

pure Buddhism"-still remains a tenacious bugbear in research on Bud-
dhism. The criticisms leveled at this historically problematicalmethod by
La Vallee 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 retreatfrom his initial position not due to factual concerns but, rather,
to professional ones.
La Vallee Poussin devoted the First Partof Bouddhisme:Etudes et ma-
teriaux to an extended essay on "the History of Buddhism."In this work,
he vigorously criticized the typical, Pali-dependentapproachof Buddhist
studies, suggesting that "Preoccupied with establishing the history of
Buddhism [and] fixing straight away its origins, Orientalists have aban-
doned the road so intelligently blazed by Burnouf;they have given up ex-
amining the sources of the North or taking them into account; they attach
themselves passionately to the exegesis of the southern Scriptures."52In
particular,he mentions H. Oldenberg,M. Miller, 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 approachwas endemic to contem-
poraneousBuddhist 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 problematizea method
that, as he put it, "describes the fortunes of the Community,the constitu-
tion of the Sarhgha,the formation of the Scriptures, and the life of the
Master according to documents which date from the 1Stor the 4th century
of our era."53In 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 Pali canon,
itself composite, allows us to know only partof 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 metaphysical."54
Further,he insisted on the likely ancient provenance of Buddhist Tan-
trism, and it is here that the early La Vallee Poussin is at his most coura-
geous and most revolutionary.He confidently asserted, for instance, that
"the Tantras ... existed already from [the time] of the redaction of the
52 Louis de La Vallee Poussin, Bouddhisme:ltudes et materiaux(London: Luzac, 1898),
p. 2 (my translation).
53 Ibid., p. 3 (my translation).
54 Ibid., pp. 5-6 (my translation).
books of the Mahayana,if not written and in their actual form, at least in
effect and in an embryonic form."55And, furthermore,that "it is permis-
sible to suppose the ancient existence of Mahayana and Tantrayana:in
any case, it is hazardousto place the Hindu and Tantricschools 'upstage'
of our researches,in the dark,like parasiticalgroups without historical or
doctrinal importance. The scope of research enlarges at the same time
that the official frameworkof Buddhist history is broken."56This "official
framework,"it should be apparent,was the paradigmof most of his con-
temporaries:the modern, "scientific,"secularizationof the orthodox doc-
trinal history of the Theravadamonastic cartel that interpretsBuddhist
history throughthe lenses of Buddhaghosa's"Reformation"and precisely
considers the Mahayanaand Vajrayanaschools as "late degenerations."
Interestingly,much of La Vallee Poussin'scriticism has since been vin-
dicated in the interim by the Buddhological community, and no doubt
some improvementis evident in the methodof late twentieth-centurystud-
ies on Buddhism. However, even these improvementstook some time to
blossom and were not accepted in their fullest form in his lifetime.57His
radicalrevisioning of Tantrichistory,on the other hand, was immediately
and efficiently snuffed out. For within ten years (by 1909), La Valle
Poussin himself was compelled to renounce his view that TantricBud-
dhism could have existed before the seventh century, and he thenceforth
consistently espoused the views of the "officialframework"he had previ-
ously (and so devastatingly) critiqued. Subsequent to his capitulation in
this regard,this received view was to become (and remain) an absolutely
unquestionedorthodoxy.
How did this happen? How is it possible that the Louis de La Valle
Poussin who so courageously questioned the methodological and doc-
trinal orthodoxy of the Buddhological community of his time with his
groundbreakingstudies of the long-ignored Tantric literature could so
quickly (in the space of merely a few years) capitulateto this same ortho-
doxy? 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 literaturewas concerned with the central text of the Arya Tra-
dition of the GuhyasamajaTantra-a brief analysis and edition of Nagar-
juna's Pancakrama.In this early work, based on his own firsthandstudy
of the text itself, La Vallee Poussin writes that the Pancakramahas as its
author "the celebrated Nagarjuna,probable initiator of great schools of
metaphysics and, definitely, the head of the Madhyamikaschool."58
55 Ibid.,
p. 72 (my translation).
56
Ibid., p. 5 (my translation).
57 He died in 1939.
58 La Vallee
Poussin, "Note sur le Paficakrama,"p. 139 (my translation).
Thus, in 1894, the young La Vallee Poussin felt it perfectly coherent to

maintainthe possibility that the Nagarjunawho authoredthe Mulamddh-
yamikakarikaand the Nagarjunawho authoredthe Paicakrama were one
and the same. He goes on to give a brief summary of the conclusion of
Burnouf; in particularhe makes the importantobservation that "Burnouf
does not examine the question of authenticity and does not debate the
question of knowing if the Paicakrama should be attributedto Nagar-
juna, as the tradition maintains. The problem... remains difficult to re-
solve."59How refreshing it is to see such candor concerning this issue!
It is indeed "difficultto resolve." However, as we shall soon see, the pro-
blem 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 conclu-
sions reached by La Vallee Poussin were given voice by none other than
the eminentCambridgeIndologistEdwardJamesRapson.Rapson,not sur-
prisingly perhaps,found the revolutionarytheses put forth in Bouddhisme:
Etudes et materiaux"startling":"[La Vallee Poussin] protests against the
view very generally accepted that the Pali scripturesare the best extant
representatives of Buddhism in an early form, and contends that the
Northern scripturespreserve the traces of a far older state of things. He
also lays stress on the importance for the comprehension of early Bud-
dhism of a study of the tantras-works which have been universally re-
garded as not only extremelylate in point of date, but also as embodying
ideas of an essentially non-Buddhistic characterdue entirely to foreign
importation."60 This was clearly a sharprebuke coming from a respected
English scholar, and it seems, in fact, to have intimidatedand traumatized
La Vallee Poussin so much that-at least according to his French eulo-
gizers-he droppedthe study of Tantrismentirely. 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 appearedonly in
the "correspondence"section of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
Consider the testimony of this 1939 recountingof the events surrounding
the publication of this work on Buddhist Tantrism:
Notwithstandingthe tactandfinessewithwhichit was treated,the subjectun-

leashedtherighteousindignationof the greatRapsonwho,in a longbookreview
59 Ibid., p. 141 (my translation).
60 E. J. Rapson, review of Bouddhisme:Etudes et materiaux,by Louis de La Vallee Pous-
sin, 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 Vallee Poussin's "very wide and varied learning" but regrets that it is
"too often of the kind which seems to delight in raising imposing superstructureson very
inadequatefoundations"(p. 915)!
protestedwith severityagainstthis displayof "foultantrism." . . . The criticism

musthavebeenbitterlyresentedby the youngscholar.
Onemightthinkthatafterthis... workon the manifestations of popular[sic]
Buddhismwouldcontinueto holda largeplacein the activityof the youngmas-
ter, but he did no such thing,as, save for a studypublishedin 1901, Thefour
classesof BuddhistTantras, thedocumentsof thisgenre,a newandvitalfield,did
not againformthe objectof his publications.Afterthis excursionin the Indian
jungle,so poorlyviewedby traditionalist science,Louisde La ValleePoussinre-
discoveredmonasticBuddhismneveragainto leaveit.61
There should be no doubt that this was indeed a ratherconvenient time to

"rediscover"monastic (i.e., non-Tantric)Buddhism. And, it is readily ap-
parentthatthe worksof his lateryears demonstratea fairly strictadherence
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 Buddhismbut held the party line that
full-blown Tantrismof la main gauche (the left hand) was a late and alien
infestation.
In point of fact, however, the above claim that La Vallee Poussin
stopped publishing on Tantrais not accurate,for he was to authorseveral
pieces in additionto the one mentioned in that memorial-including sev-
eral articles in J. Hastings'sEncyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (such as
his highly influentialarticles 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
proposthe Cittavisuddhi-prakarana of Aryadeva."This articleis important
for two reasons. For one, it is an importantnotice of anotherof the chief
works attributedto Arya Traditionauthors-a logical place for his atten-
tion to proceed, following his work on the Pancakrama. On the other
hand, it is noteworthythatthis work was only publishedafter a thirty-five-
year hiatus. Furthermore,this article reflects La Vallee Poussin's post-
Rapsonreversionto the received view on Tantrichistory,insisting on a late
BuddhistTantrism-and even uses the rhetoricof a "tantricAryadeva."62
Is it a coincidence, then, thatthis article was publishedin a special number
of the Bulletin of the School of OrientalStudies-a numberthat was titled
A Volumeof IndianStudiesPresentedby 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 consummationof the events we have seen above. This article repre-
sents nothing less than a formal capitulation-indeed, an apology of
61 Marcelle Lalou and Jean
Przyluski,"Louis de La Vallee Poussin,"in Melanges Chinois
et Bouddhiques(1938-39), 6:6-7 (my translation).
62 "Le 'tantricisant'
Aryadeva."CompareLouis de La Valle Poussin, "A propos du Cit-
tavisuddhiprakarana d'Aryadeva,"Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 6, no. 2 (1931):
415.
sorts-by La Vallee Poussin to Rapson. He could have publishedanything

in that volume, and his range of researchinterestswas certainlyvast. Such
a choice of topic could only have been deliberate.By publishing this arti-
cle, La Vallee Poussin was formally and strikinglycreating a Buddholog-
ical orthodoxy. From this moment on, it became "established"that the
literatureof the Arya Tradition"could not have been" written by the as-
cribed Madhyamikaauthors,as the late and alien Tantricvirus had not yet
infected Indian Buddhism.
Thus, in line with this professionalcapitulation,La Vallee Poussin aban-
doned cautionin his lateryears in declaringthatthe Tantricworks ascribed
to Nagarjuna and company were false attributions.63In his influential
Bouddhisme:Opinionssur l'histoire de la dogmatique(which ran through
no less than five editions between 1909 and 1925), he states, "There are,
no doubt, some tantricwritingswhose promulgationis attributedto Nagar-
juna, Saraha, [and] Aryadeva-illustrious doctors of the Great Vehicle.
But this literaryfraudcannotfool anyone, and the authorsof our books are
very probably the sorcerers subsequent to the sixth century that are de-
scribed by Taranatha-by profession 'evokers'of divinities of the second
rank, with a smatteringof 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'espritde la Bonne Loi") functioninghere in La Vallee Poussin'sassess-
ment of TantricBuddhismthat is very little differentfrom the iconograph-
ical template created by Erskine and employed by Hodgson. La Valle
Poussin begins to espouse the notion thatTantrismis a foreign importation
from Hinduism, stating that "Buddhist tantrism is practically Buddhist
Hinduism, Hinduism or Saivism in Buddhist garb."65This view stands in
radicalopposition to his earlierinsistence 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 aroundthe "Good Law"-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
spiritualin which the adepts ignore the gods, the demons, all the necessi-
ties of the present life."66
63 One wondersif this

might have been the result of the misattributionby careless bibliog-
raphersof Le nitratede Norvege (presumablya chemical treatise,composed by one L[udovic]
de La Vallee Poussin) to our indomitablescholar of Buddhism(cf. The National Union Cat-
alog: Pre-1956 Imprints[Chicago:AmericanLibraryAssociation, 1968-81], 318:691).
64 Louis de La Vallee-Poussin, Bouddhisme: Opinions sur l'histoire de la dogmatique
(Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne, 1925), pp. 382-83 (my translation).
65 Louis de La Vallee Poussin, "Tantrism(Buddhist),"in
Encyclopaedia of Religion and
Ethics, ed. James Hastings (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1921), p. 193.
66 La Vallee Poussin, Bouddhisme:
Opinions, p. 362 (translationand emphasis mine).
The extent to which this "evolved" understandingof Buddhism reca-

pitulates the essential parametersof Erskine'sprimitive notion of the an-
thropocentrismof 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 tradi-
tions): "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'sexact attitude, or the confront-
ing of essentialisms, from a 'lesser' Buddhism that involves supernatural
powers, the worship of spirits or deities, ordinary folk, and indigenous
beliefs."67The similarity to the situation in historiography-in which no
scholar would profess belief in a Universal History "out there"to be dis-
covered 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 Tantrismin the Buddhist tradition.In point of
fact, the work of the later La Vallee Poussin is not substantiallydifferent
from the naive yana-based chronology that he himself criticized so
forcefully and insightfully in his earlier work: "Criticism can admit this
tripartitedivision: a Buddhism undevotional and exclusively monastic,
or the Little Vehicle, which goes back without doubt [!!] to the founder;
a Buddhism much more composite, monastic and secular, devotional,
polytheistic, at times monotheistic, highly commingled with pure philos-
ophy and gnosticism (gnose): this is the GreatVehicle ... finally, the de-
graded 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 Tantrismare based.
The subsequent course of Tantrichistoriographyhas been characterized
by a perpetualrehearsalof the view "established"by La Vallee 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
Vallee Poussin's capitulation to the pressures of Rapson and the rest of
67 Richard S.
Cohen, "Naga, Yaksini, Buddha: Local Deities and Local Buddhism at
Ajanta,"History of Religions 37, no. 4 (May 1998): 361.
68 Louis 0. Mink
(n. 4 above), p. 188.
69 La Vallde Poussin, Bouddhisme:
Opinions, p. 19 (translationand emphasis mine).
the Indological community to conform to the conventional wisdom about

Tantrichistory, there has begun a traditionof asserting the received view
as a scholarly commonplace. In general, most authorshave not even felt
it necessary to cite any authorityin supportof this position, merely noting
that "scholarsknow" or "scholarssay"-a spectraland hollow consensus.
Others are more careful to cite authorities such as Louis de La Vallee
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 Tantrismin the late twentieth century: Giuseppe Tucci and
David Snellgrove. The great Italiansavant 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 twentiethcen-
tury. His student, David Snellgrove, has taken up his mantle and has au-
thored perhapsthe most cited and approvedworks on Buddhist Tantrism
in circulation today.70In large part, they recapitulate the position be-
queathed them by their mentor, La Vallee Poussin.
Tucci, for instance, begins his landmarkarticle "AnimadversionesIndi-
cae" with an apologetic that-since it was first echoed by Snellgrove in
the introductionto his work on the Hevajra Tantra-has become some-
thing of a ritual introductionto subsequent works on Buddhist Tantra.71
He defends the academic study of BuddhistTantrismby making the claim
that "the Tantrascontain almost nothing which can justify the sweeping
judgment of some scholars who maintainthat they representthe most de-
generatedform of Indianspeculation."72 This is notable,because while we
do not see the universalmoral condemnationof the Tantrasthat character-
ized earlierresearchesand that subtendedthe view of Tantrismas "degen-
erate,"nonetheless, the historical model that was predicatedon this view
remains.73
It is instructiveto observe how Tucci treats the question of the Tantric
writings attributedto Nagarjuna,on which issue (as we have seen above)
Louis de La Vallee Poussin demonstratedsuch a remarkableturnaround.
Interestingly,while Tucci criticizes his colleagues who maintain that the
Tantrasoriginated in or after the seventh century (based on some reflec-
tions on evidences of early Tantrism,such as the Somasiddhantasect), 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: ShambhalaPublications, 1987).
71
Snellgrove's essay is actually titled "Apologetic."
72
Giuseppe Tucci, "AnimadversionesIndicae,"Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,
n.s., 26 (1930): 128.
73 This is also characteristicof the work of the late La Vallee Poussin (though he seems
to have become somewhat more prone to moral condemnation of Tantrismas he aged).
acknowledges that this had become the universal view in Buddhological

scholarship.He was, no doubt, aware of how weak the previous founda-
tions of this view were, based as it was on the bare assertion of Louis de
La Vallee Poussin's Opinion(s). When it comes to providing evidence,
however, one finds him resorting to the following: "That there were two
Nagarjunashas been clearly pointed out by Dr. Benoytosh Bhattacarya
and this view is supportedby the comparativestudy of the materialat our
disposal, the remarksmade above and even by the brahminicaltradition."74
This "argument,"needless to say, is problematicalin the extreme.75The
contributionof Bhattacharyyaconsists of a series of highly speculative at-
tempts to fix the dates of the majorTantricauthors.I have analyzed these
argumentsat length elsewhere; suffice it to say that they do not establish
what he claims they do.76Further,Tucci'ssecond bit of evidence-the "re-
marks made above"-present no more than dogmatical assertions of this
position unsupportedby evidence. Next, the testimony of the "brahminical
tradition"boils down to a footnote that reads "Goraksasiddhantasafigraha,
which knows: Malayarjuna,p. 19, Nagarjuna, Sahasrarjuna,p. 44"-a
cryptic tradition,no doubt. Certainly there was more than one person in
first millenniumIndia with the name "Nagarjuna";how this fact bears on
the question at hand is left unexplained.
74 Tucci, p. 141.
75 In fact, it is not
significantlymore helpful than (and very similar in form to) the earlier
"contribution"of P. L. Vaidya(a studentof La Vallee Poussin),who is quotedas an authority
on the same questionby P. B. Patel in the introductionto his edition of Aryadeva'sCittavisud-
dhi-prakarana(Santiniketan:Visva-Bharati,1949). The work of Vaidyato which Patel refers
is his ttudes sur Aryadeva et son "Catuhsataka"(Paris:LibrairieOrientalistePaul Guenther,
1923). Besides the fact that this work is almost completely devoted to (and largely based on)
an explorationof the exoteric literatureattributedto Aryadeva (chiefly, in fact-as is clear
from the title-just one work, the Catuhsataka),this study cannot be consideredto have ad-
vanced inquiryinto the question of the attributionof Tantricworks to this writer.Indeed, it is
somewhatstrangethatPatel includes him as an independentvoice on the matter.In raisingthe
question of the Cittavisuddhi-prakaranaand Aryadeva'srelationship to Tantricismin this
work, Vaidya contents himself with merely mentioning that Louis de La Vallee Poussin
believes that Aryadeva could not have writtenTantrictreatises and states, "Je suis d'accord
avec lui et pense que c'est un autreAryadeva"(I am in agreementwith him and thinkthatit is
anotherAryadeva) (Etudes, p. 64). In addition-true to a venerablerhetoricaltradition-he
consistently (indeed, almost reflexively) qualifies the noun tantrisme with the adjective
degenere.
76 In brief, Benoytosh Bhattacharyya'sargumentis based on two Tantriclineage lists-
"one given in the Tangyurcatalogueof P. Cordierand anotherin the Pag Sam Jon Zan quoted
in the edition of the Chakra Sambhdra [sic] Tantraby the late Kazi Dawasam Dup [sic]"
(Sadhanamala [Baroda:Oriental Institute, 1968], 2:xl-xli). These lists are as follows: the
first list runs Padmavajra,Anafigavajra,Indrabhuti,Bhagavati Laksmi, Lilavajra,Darikapa,
SahajayoginiCinta, and Dombi Heruka;the second list reads Saraha,Nagarjuna,Sabaripa,
Luipa, Vajraghanta,Kacchapa, Jalandharipa,Krsnacarya,Guhya, Vijayapa, Tailopa, and
Naropa.Assuming thatthe "Indrabhuti" in the firstlist is the Indrabhutiwho was the fatherof
Padmasambhava(a figure whose date is fairly certain due to his involvement with Tibetan
royalty),Bhattacharyyaassigns him the date 717 C.E.He then makes the assumptionthatthere
would be a twelve-yeargap between masterand disciple. He then assigns correspondingdates
to the other figures in this list. The coup de grace comes when he can then link this list with
We are left, then, with the supportof the "comparativestudy of the ma-
terial at our disposal."I have no doubt that Tucci undertooksuch a study,
and we see the valuable results of it elsewhere, but in the absence of his
explicit sharingof the steps of his reasoning, it boils down to a matterof
Tucci'sopinion.77One must certainlyrespecthis opinion, but I believe that
we may take a suspicion of mere opinion as a fundamentalmethodologi-
cal premise of modern humanistic study. Indeed, it is precisely the lack
of such suspicion that, it appears, has allowed a largely unsubstantiated
historicalhypothesis to be perpetuatedfor the betterpartof this centuryas
the "scientific results"of researchon Indian Buddhism.
the other. On the principle that Padmavajra(who is reputed to have introduced the Heva-
jra Tantra)must be one generation earlier than Jalandhari (who is reputed to have been
"the first to profess the Hevajratantraand to compose a work on the subject"), he assigns
the date 705 to Jalandhari.It is then a simple matter to count back to Nagarjuna who, he
concludes, lived around 645 C.E. A very neat argument this makes on some levels; nev-
ertheless, 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 noth-
ing 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'smethod. Suffice it to say that there are
three principal assumptions on which this argument relies. For one, the identity of this
"Indrabhuiti"is by no means as clear as he would like. Second, there is the highly arbi-
trary 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, Bhattacharyyaclaimed to have "dated"the chief authors of the Tantric com-
mentaries and began to enable and popularize a discourse that spoke in terms of two
Nagarjunas-one could now refer to a "Siddha Nagarjuna"(of the 84 Mahasiddhas text)
in contradistinction to a "Madhyamik Nagarjuna" and cite the authority of concrete
dates. The complete discussion by Bhattacharyyamay be found in the introduction to his
edition of the Sadhanamdld, 2:xl-xliii. My detailed analysis is to be found in Wede-
meyer (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, 1950], 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 Maijusri: Text and Translation of the
Maijusrindmasamgiti,"in Melanges Chinois et Bouddhiques (Brussels: Institut Belge des
Hautes ltudes Chinoises, 1981), 20:4-5.
77 Tucci adds the following argument. The
biographies of the 84 Mahasiddhas (a Ti-
betan work) gives the succession: Nagarjuna,Vyadi, Kambala, Indrabhuti.There is an In-
drabhutiwho is connected with Padmasambhava,who lived in the eighth century (a major
premise in Bhattacharyya'sargument). Vyadi was an alchemist. Therefore, "we can safely
assume with Doctor Benoytosh Bhattacaryathat the Alchemist or Siddha Nagarjunalived
in the VII century A.D." (Tucci, p. 142). He gives the furtherargumentthat there is a suc-
cession that reads Nagarjuna,Sabara,Advayavajra.This Advayavajrawas connected with
Naropa, and so "the Nagarjunahere 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
Bhattacharyyaso dubious apply equally to the nearly identical claims of Tucci.
The historiography of Buddhist Tantrismhas been dominated in re-

cent decades by Tucci's English student, David Snellgrove. His work has
been absolutely essential to the growth of Tantricstudies in this period,
both through his groundbreakingedition 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 re-
quire 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 con-
stitute 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 Vallee Poussin,
stating, "I must acknowledge my great indebtedness to... Louis de la
Vallee Poussin ... whose theories of the development of Buddhism I
have learned to accept as fundamentally sound."78He further defers to
the authorityof Tucci stating that "without doubt the one great scholar in
Indo-TibetanBuddhism is my old revered professor Giuseppe Tucci."79
One sees very clearly here the development of a style of appealing to
authorityin the matter of Tantrichistory-authority that, while perhaps
well earned in other areas of Buddhist studies, is not warrantedin the
specific area under scrutiny. From what we have seen, if Snellgrove has
adequate reasons for accepting the historical views of (the later) La
Vallee Poussin and Tucci, it is clear that he must either have arrived at
these reasons on his own or else be privy to argumentsand evidence not
shared by these authors in their published writings. One does not, how-
ever, find anything of the sort in Snellgrove's works.
In his magnum opus on Indo-Tibetan Buddhism-which, he notes,
"representsan overall survey of all the work done throughoutmy univer-
sity career"-Snellgrove begins his discussion of Buddhist Tantrismby
referringto it as the "final astounding phase of Indian Buddhism."80He
proceeds immediately to produce two reasons ("doctrinaland 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
TantricBuddhism using explicit rhetorical models of "degeneration"or
78 David
Snellgrove, p. vi. Curiously, Snellgrove mentions in this regard-not La Vallee
Poussin's Opinions sur l'histoire de la dogmatique, in which La Vallee Poussin supports
the conventional view that Snellgrove has "learned to accept"-but his Etudes et materi-
aux (n. 52 above), which work challenges this very view in no uncertain terms.
79 Snellgrove, Indo-TibetanBuddhism (n. 70 above), 1:4.
80 Ibid., l:xxiii, 117.
"popularization,"he nonetheless continually describes it himself with

such terms as "a latecomer,""this last IndianBuddhistphase,""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 TantricBuddhism. Much of this material is of great in-
terest to scholars of Indian Buddhism in its own right, but justifying his-
torical claims seems not to have been a high priority in this work.82It is,
in fact, somewhat generous to even describe these discussions as "argu-
ments," as he nowhere directly addresses the possibility that the con-
ventional view may be anythingbut true. They may betterbe understood,
perhaps, as reasoned apologetics for a field that had long since made up
its mind thatthese (ultimately,perhaps,insoluble) questions of Tantrichis-
tory had been previously resolved.
Snellgrove appearsto be caught in the predicamentof all those consci-
entious scholars of Indian history who-faced with the dilemma of up-
holding high standardsof 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 standardsof historical proof, and he stresses the deep un-
certainty that characterizesthe historiographyof first-millenniumIndian
Buddhism. He admits, for instance, that "to give a date to a particular
tantrais a difficult, indeed an impossible task" and that "the whole ques-
tion of datings [sic] remainsopen to speculationand consequentdisagree-
ment."83Nonetheless, 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'sdiscussion of Tantrism(and what
seems to be his most importantcontributionin this area) is his claim to
have discerned a developmentalpatternin Buddhist thought and practice.
He claims, for instance, that there is a progressionevident in the Tantras
that shows a "developmentof the theory of Buddha-familiesfrom threeto
four and then to five with eventually a sixth Buddhaadded."84By compar-
ing BuddhistTantrasagainst this model, then, Snellgrove believes one can
establish a chronological relationshipbetween these texts. Unfortunately,
81 Ibid., 1:119, 121, 129.

82
Indeed, the primary aim of the chapters on Tantrismwould appear to be to establish
the Unexcelled Tantrasas somehow radically different in kind from the rest of Buddhism
and, further, to argue quite stridently and repeatedly for the literal interpretationof the
mulatantras against a vaguely defined conspiracy of "modern apologists," consisting
chiefly of "TibetanBuddhist enthusiasts"and "truthseekers,"who argue for a "symbolic"
interpretation.This latter concern takes on a rather ironic cast when one considers Snell-
grove's earlier claim that "it is oneself who becomes the fool, when one sets about a literal
interpretationof the [Tantric]text" (Hevajra Tantra[n. 70 above], p. 46).
83 Ibid., pp. 147, 184.
84
Ibid., p. 184.
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 patternsof development in the literatureand
ideas of Buddhist Tantrismbears inquiry-indeed, it is precisely in the
construction of a relative chronology of Buddhist Tantrictexts that the
most promising avenue of historiographicalinquirylies-scholarship has
not yet reached the point where such claims can be adequatelyjustified.
There is, especially, the problem of the circularityinherentin most such
arguments.For example, Snellgrove makes the claim that "we may suspect
the teachings [of the Tantras]to be comparativelylate as an acceptable
form of Buddhistpractice,quite as late as the sixth or seventh century."His
evidence for this claim is that the practice of "self-identificationwith a
chosen divinity [taughtin these works] ... has no obvious earlierBuddhist
affinities."85However, 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 Tantrasa priorifrom inclusion in the formercat-
egory. Such self-fulfilling inferences are characteristicof latter-dayhisto-
riographyof BuddhistTantrism,which seems content to accept the model
of TantricBuddhist history inherited from the great Louis de La Valle
Poussin and which does not seem to feel that it need justify this view, con-
stitutingas it does its fundamentalhistoriographicalaxiom.
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 putativeplace of Tantrismin the historyof Buddhismthat, 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 ques-
tion of the provenance of the Arya literature.As an indication of the
official position on this issue at present, it is worthwhileto review the ar-
ticle on Aryadevain the Encyclopediaof Religion (1987). This monumen-
tal work drew on the best talent among internationalscholars 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 clas-
sical claim that "we" need to distinguish an Aryadeva I from an Arya-
deva II-figures he defines exclusively in terms of the genre of their
ostensible literary output. In this context, he makes the following claim:
"'Aryadeva II,' was a Tantricmaster whose date [is] ... probably at the
beginning of the eighth century ... because he cites the Madhyamakahr-
dayakarikaof Bhavaviveka (500-570) and the Tarkajvala,its autocom-
mentary,in his Madhyamakabhramaghata,and because verse 31 of his
Jndnasarasamuccayais cited in the Tattvasamgrahapaijikaof Kamalasila
85 Ibid.
(740-95)."86 Looking on the bright side, we do see here a definite advance

on prior studies. Mimaki quite intelligently approachesthe issue by con-
sidering the relative chronology of the literaturebased on a close study of
the texts themselves, ratherthanjumping immediatelyto absolute chrono-
logical claims based merely on the general tenor (Tantricor 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 anotherquestion of tex-
tual attribution. It is indeed odd that, in speaking of this man he has
defined as a "Tantricmaster,"Mimaki subsequentlycites not Tantrictexts
attributedto Aryadeva but two Madhyamakatexts. More problematically
still, subsequent Buddhist traditionis equally incredulous of the attribu-
tion of these works to the "MadhyamikAryadeva."For example, the at-
tribution of the Madhyamakabhramaghatato Aryadeva is considered
spurious by Bu-ston, who does not mention it in his list of Aryadeva's
Madhyamakaworks. No doubt he too was struckby this anachronism.All
this establishes, however, is that this one Madhyamakatext in the bsTan-
'gyur is spuriously attributedto Aryadeva (provisionally defined as the
authorof the Catuhsataka).Mimaki has yet to establish that the authorof
this text is the same as that of the Caryamelapakapradipaand (possibly)
the other Guhyasamajatreatises. With regardto the Jnanasdrasamuccaya
antedatingKamalas'ila,this is surely to be expected according to the tra-
ditional historical account. This terminusante quem (which is perhaps as
dubious as the other attempt at a terminus post quem) does nothing to
establish a necessarily late date for "TantricAryadeva."
Mimakigoes on to make the sweeping claim that "all the works ascribed
to Aryadeva in the Tantricsection of the Tibetan canon are unquestion-
ably attributed to Aryadeva II. The most important and well-known
texts among them are the Cittavisuddhiprakarana... the Caryamelapa-
kapradipa... and the Pradipoddyotana-ndma-tikd."87 One cannot avoid
agreeing somewhat with Mimaki here, for it is only "unquestionably"that
one would attributethe latter of the three texts to Aryadeva, as this text is
manifestly a commentaryon Candrakirti'sPradlpoddyotanaand thus must
be of later provenance than even the putative Aryadeva II! Not even the
representativesof the traditionitself are so credulous as Mimaki. Indeed,
this attributionis rejected by both Bu-ston and Tsong-kha-pa.What we
see here is critical doubt about the attributionof works unevenly applied.
What Mimaki might have more consistently claimed is that "all of the
works ascribed to Aryadeva in the Tantricsection of the Tibetan canon
86
Mimaki Katsumi, "Aryadeva,"in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed., M. Eliade (New York:
Macmillan, 1987), 1:431.
87 Ibid.
are unquestionablynot attributableto Aryadeva I." Instead, he is selec-

tively critical-in the process falling into the same errorof credulitythat,
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 modem, "critical"Buddhiststudies, Mimaki has left be-
hind a crucial prerequisite-a truly critical method.
It is not my intentionhere to malign the generally excellent scholarship
of Mimaki. The essential point to be grasped is that, given the sloppy
foundations of Tantrichistoriography,it is almost inevitable that further
scholarship based on it will be inadequate. The absolute certainty with
which most scholars imagine they can trustthe received view blinds them
to the very data that lie in front of them. The historiographyof Tantrism
has long been resting comfortably in its dogmatic slumbers. It is time,
perhaps, for a wake-up call.
VIII. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
I do notknowif thereis anyotherfieldof knowledgewhichsuffers
so badlyas historyfromthe sheerrepetitionsthatoccuryear after
year, and from book to book. (HERBERTBUTTERFIELD)
The history of historiographyis, for the most part,a history of plagiarism.

In the centuries since Herodotusthere have been very few truly original
thinkersand writers.Most have not done original researchthemselves and
are thus forced to recycle the "facts"providedby other authorities(many
of whom are themselves recycling the "facts"of others).This procedureis
what R. G. Collingwood (intending to characterizetraditional,not mod-
ern, historiography)has referredto 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 adequatelyinterpretingorigi-
nal evidence, and, perhaps more important, most are not accomplished
poets and thus tend unconsciously to fit what evidence they have into the
Procrusteanbed of the timeworn narrative models inherited from the
earliest historians.
What is true of historiographymore generally is all too clearly the case
in the field of Tantrichistoriography.We have seen in the foregoing how,
based on a premature,essentializing constructof Buddhism put forth by
William Erskine,subsequentscholarshave employed a rhetoricof "admix-
ture"and "grafting"to describe the elements of Buddhismthat seemed to
them most foreign to the Theravada-styleBuddhismwhich was the model
for the original construct.Tantrismespecially was subjectto this discourse
that, when the rudimentsof the contentsof these works were revealed,was
soon augmentedby the a prioridiscourse 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 trans-

formedinto a tale of "popularization," in which Buddhismbecame watered
down with rites and so forth to appeal to the "masses"-reflecting the
popularEnlightenment/Protestant narrativeof the decline of Catholicism.
The fundamentalparametersof the story, however, remainedthe same.
We have further seen how Louis de La Vallee Poussin-notably
(a) Catholic and (b) among the only nineteenth-centuryscholars 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 Bud-
dhist 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 "authori-
ties," many of whom have never done any significant research on the
Tantras. To provide merely one example, in discussing the age of the
Laksmi Tantrain her (otherwise excellent) 1972 translationof this text,
Sanjukta Gupta cites Edward Conze's authority that "the Buddhistic
Tara worship was not openly practised before 500 or 600 A.D."88She
refers the reader to Conze's Buddhism: Its Essence and Development,
which-besides bearing a title that clearly betrays its author's commit-
ment to an essentialized Buddhism-bears absolutely no trace of any
serious original research on the Vajrayana.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"humanall-too-human"
underpinningsof 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 Tantrichistoriography in order
to reveal the deep influence of narrativearchetypes on the imagining of
Buddhist history; the mannerin which the prevailing view of the history
of the TantricTraditionsactually 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 imagi-
nation of the history of TantricBuddhism. 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 PanicardtraText (Leiden and Cologne: E. J. Brill,
1972), p. xx.
date. It is this recognition that, to my mind, constitutes the crucial pre-

requisite 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, con-
structive, 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 narrativefictions layered on the available evidence. Once
they have been bracketed,the data alone remains-data of which the re-
ceived view is only one, ratherproblematical, 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 numberof very talented scholars of Tantrism,whose re-
searches are bringing to light much new information that will be essen-
tial if this new imagination is to be any less arbitrarythan 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-pressedto
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 consti-
tute a step backwardin the historiographyof 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 re-
searches, have frequently longed to retreat into the safe, comfortable
embrace of the conventional paradigm where all values are given a pri-
ori. 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 regardingthis most crucial and
fascinating chapterin world intellectual history.Any approachthat breaks
out of this one-trackmode of interpretationwill be a clear advance for re-
search in this area,whetherimmediatelypalpableor not. Giovanni Verardi
has stated the same in relation to studies of GandharanBuddhism, where
scholars have ignored substantial evidence of esoteric Buddhist forms
(forms that, needless to say, contradictthe received view). His work out-
lines the concrete effects that the common "historical-evolutionisticpara-
digm" applied to this region (and Buddhism more generally) has had on
the work of scholars to date. Given the presuppositionsof this view, he

states, although most scholars of this early phase of northwesternIndian
Buddhism"cautiouslyacknowledge ... the presence ... of Mahayanacur-
rents,"nevertheless"the presenceof forms of esoteric Buddhismis usually
denied throughthe well-known appealto 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 earththat revolved aroundthe 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 promptlyobserved that had always been
there. A paradigm,as such, shuts out from the startalternativeways of un-
derstandingreality."89This, I argue, has been the case across the board in
studies of Indian Buddhist history. The historical paradigmsthat are the
common currency of Indological scholars-many of which derive from
the earliest period of Indological research (and, ultimately, from ancient
narrativemodels)-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
duck/hare.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 chro-
nology of Buddhist Tantrism.90The evidence available from which we
may imagine a history of Indian Buddhist Tantrismis extremely scarce,
and all of it is highly ambiguous. To the extent that we are "always al-
ready"convinced of the late historical provenanceof these traditionsand
their literatures, scholars will not be able to see beyond the "duck" this
mode of narrativeimagination foregrounds. And with no one to raise a
voice of dissent, some may even convince themselves that it quacks.
University of Copenhagen
89 Verardi
(n. 2 above), p. 3.
90 An
important difference is that, in the case of Indian history, there are many more
than two possible interpretations.

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

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In the nascence of scholarly disciplines, provisional theories are fre-

? 2001 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

most fundamentalhistory. And, yet, given the exigencies of the modern

I. THE POETICS OF HISTORY

In coming to understandthe historiographyof Indian religions, it is nec-

historian'smore general understanding,narrativein form, of patterns of

4 Louis 0. Mink, "NarrativeFormas a Cognitive Instrument,"in Historical Understanding,

This is not per se a majorproblemfor historiographicalpractice.Rather,

II. THE POETICS OF BUDDHIST TANTRISM

was equally so in historiographymore generally. Its use can be traced

9 R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (London:OxfordUniversityPress, 1956), p. 67.

Clearly then, this metaphoricalreading of historical processes as con-

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

15 Such theories of a correlationbetween climactic conditions and

The narrative of civilizational decline following upon moral (espe-

centurythe classical archetypeof the "decline and fall."The resultingtale,

Buddhismhad in fact become an old and worn-outcreed, whose mendicant

Cunningham here invokes another archetype popular among nineteenth-

tale of the Etruriandebauches-but ratherthe strainsof the (neoclassical)

based. He writes, "The Westernsurvey-typebooks ... have tended to as-

III. ANALYTICAL HISTORY OF TANTRIC HISTORIOGRAPHY

Anyone who reads the literaturepurportingto establish the history and

IV. B. H. HODGSON, H. H. WILSON, AND E. BURNOUF: FOUNDING

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

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

34 Brian Houghton Hodgson, Essays on the Languages, Literature,and Religion of Nepal

stores."35Indeed, Hodgson here explicitly refers the source of his notions

boost to Hodgson'swork. One of the most importantand influentialof the

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

44 Agehananda Bharati, TantricTraditions,2d ed. (Delhi: Hindustan Publishing, 1993),

of Hodgson andWilson and reiteratingthatthe contentsof these texts seem

sole (and ratherirrelevant) testimony of Csoma de Koros regardingthe

V. LOUIS DE LA VALLEE POUSSIN: THE BEGINNINGS OF AN

Following the work of Bumouf, there was no significant scholarshippro-

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

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

Notwithstandingthe tactandfinessewithwhichit was treated,the subjectun-

protestedwith severityagainstthis displayof "foultantrism." . . . The criticism

There should be no doubt that this was indeed a ratherconvenient time to

sorts-by La Vallee Poussin to Rapson. He could have publishedanything

63 One wondersif this

The extent to which this "evolved" understandingof Buddhism reca-

VI. THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY

the Indological community to conform to the conventional wisdom about

70 Notable are David

acknowledges that this had become the universal view in Buddhological

The historiography of Buddhist Tantrismhas been dominated in re-

"popularization,"he nonetheless continually describes it himself with

81 Ibid., 1:119, 121, 129.

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

are unquestionablynot attributableto Aryadeva I." Instead, he is selec-

The history of historiographyis, for the most part,a history of plagiarism.

due, perhaps,to a relaxing of sexual mores-it has sometimes been trans-

date. It is this recognition that, to my mind, constitutes the crucial pre-

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

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