262 sØrensen
years ago the American scholar Kenneth Eastman presented a summary of the
research he had done on the Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang with special
focus on Tantric Buddhism. Part of this concerned his identification of two
manuscripts, IOL Tib J 419 and P. tib. 42,26 which he proved belonged to one
and the same text.27 Among the practices of this long but incomplete text, con-
sisting of a lengthy Tantric Buddhist ritual, appears the group of Ten Wrathful
Protectors (Skt. mahākrodha/ vidyārājas).28 While this group would have been
current in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism during the time of the Tibetan Empire, it
was as yet unknown in Tang China, where we can only identify groups of five
or eight of these wrathful protectors in the context of mainstream Esoteric
Buddhism.29 Eastman’s discovery therefore indicates that the cult of the Ten
Wrathful Protectors was current among practitioners of Esoteric Buddhism at
Dunhuang well before it was introduced to China proper. It also throws light
on the process (or processes) by which the original group of Five Vidyārājas,
one for each of the Five Dhyani Buddhas of the Mahāvairocana-cycle, was
gradually expanded to a group of ten due to religious developments beyond
China’s borders.30 Although this may appear to be a minor detail, it never-
theless underscores the importance of intercultural exchanges between the
Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist communities on the local level, and how these
26 For a correlation of these manuscripts and a description of their contents, see Dalton,
Jacob and Sam van Schaik, Tibetan Tantric Manuscripts from Dunhuang: A Descriptive
Catalogue of the Stein Collection at the British Library (Leiden: Brill, 2006), cat. no. 134.
27 Eastman, Kenneth, “Tibetan Tantric Texts at Dunhuang” (paper presented at the
conference “The Esoteric Buddhist Tradition Conference,” Samsø College Denmark,
August 21–24, 1989) (unpublished paper).
28 These appear in IOL Tib J 419, lines 11b3–10b2 according to Eastman’s numbering.
29 For a brief discussion of the Ten Vidyārājas in later Chinese Buddhism, see Sørensen,
Henrik H., “The Life of the Lay-Buddhist Saint Liu Benzun as Sculptural Tableaux,” in
Embodying Wisdom: Art, Text and Interpretation in the History of Esoteric Buddhism, ed.
Rob Linrothe and Henrik H. Sørensen (Copenhagen: SBS Publications, 2001), 57–100 (esp.
68–69).
30 By the time of the Northern Song the group of the Ten Vidyārājas would appear to have
become standard in Chinese Esoteric Buddhism, something which can be testified to
among the carved images at Mt. Baoding (寶頂山) in Dazu (大足) in Sichuan from
the Southern Song and in the votive paintings accompanying the Ritual for Water and
Land (Chin. shuilu zhai 水陸齋) of the Ming Dynasty. Cf. Baoning si Ming dai shuilu hua
寶寧寺明代水陸畫 [Eng. subtitle: Ming Dynasty Shui Lu Paintings at Bao Ning Si—
Painting of Buddhist or Taoist Rituals], comp. Shanxisheng Bowuguan] (Beijing: Wenwu
Chubanshe, 1988), pls. 20–31. Obviously the iconography seen in these later paintings only
match partly with the earlier examples.