esoteric buddhism at the crossroads 255
the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkā12 in which the highlights of the sūtra’s narrative is
presented in great detail.13 The importance of the Uṣṇīṣavijāyadhāraṇīsūtra as
an illustration of ritual procedures is matched by the relatively large amount of
manuscript copies found at Dunhuang.14
2 Esoteric Buddhist Cults and Iconography during the Second Half of
the Tang
When surveying the Chinese Esoteric Buddhist material from Dunhuang
broadly, including scriptural sources as well as the religious art, cults relat-
ing to the various forms of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara tend to dominate.
As such the overwhelming focus on the various Esoteric Buddhist forms of
Avalokiteśvara and their related practices conform very well with both the
extant scriptural sources as well with the religious art known from the Central
provinces of the empire. When looking at the Tibetan manuscripts reflecting
Tantric Buddhism, the cults are more variegated and polyvalent, reflecting a
great variety of sādhana-type texts, that is, ritual manuals, as well as canoni-
cal and non-canonical scriptures.15 For some reason, however, this diversity
is not reflected in the surviving examples of Buddhist art from the period of
the Tibetan rule over Shazhou, which—although a few cases of Indo-Tibetan
12 T. 262.9. For a study of the tableaux relating to this important sūtra, see Wang, Eugene Y.,
Shaping the Lotus Sūtra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2005).
13 A detailed and perceptive study of the depictions of the Uṣṇīṣavijāyadhāraṇīsūtra at
Dunhuang can be found in Schmid, Niel, “ ‘Whosoever Writes this dhāraṇī.. .’ The Ritual
Use of Dhāraṇī Lecterns in Medieval East Asia,” Pacific World Journal (forthcoming).
14 For an overview, see Hou Chong 侯沖, “Mijiao Zhongguo hua de jingdian fenkai: Yi
Dunhuang ben Jingangding yingqing yi, Jingangding xiuweng yujia yi he Tanfa yize wei
chuchu dian 密教中國化的經典分析：以敦煌本《金剛頂迎請儀》, 《金剛頂
修習瑜伽儀》和《壇法儀則》為切入點 [A Discussion of Esoteric Buddhism with
Chinese Characteristics based on Esoteric Buddhist Manuscripts found at Dunhuang such
as the Jingangding yingqing yi, Jingangding xiuweng yujia yi and Tanfa yize],” Yuanguang
foxue xuebao 圓光佛學學報 [Research Journal of Yuanguang Buddhist Studies] 19
(2012): 141–172. See also Schmid, Niel, “Dunhuang and Central Asia (with an Appendix on
Dunhuang Manuscript Resources),” in Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, ed.
Charles D. Orzech, Henrik H. Sørensen, Richard K. Payne (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 365–78.
15 See van Schaik, Sam, and Dalton Jacob, Tibetan Tantric Manuscripts from Dunhuang
(Leiden: Brill, 2006).