tantric threads between india and china 265protection while keeping a certain amount of independence with regard
to the emperor and his administration—may well be a reason for the
negligence, by which Amoghavajra’s legacy was treated in later Buddhist
historiography eager to represent Buddhism as a fully integrated institu-
tion of imperial order. Although the scope of his activities surpassed
that of Kumrajva and Xuanzang, he neither reached a comparably
lasting fame, nor was he conceived as a patriarch in the sense Huayan-,
Tiantai- and Chan patriarchal lineages were construed. What remained
after his death in 774 and the following persecutions of Buddhism in
ninth century,^66 that was a complex, seemingly unsystematic corpus of
Tantric scriptures, written in an awkward Chinese inaccessible to the
Buddhist laity and without any broader signi cance for Mahyna
scholasticism.
In Japan, where the “secret teachings” ( Jap. mikky ) proved to
be viable, Amoghavajra’s achievements were outshined by K kai’s
(774–835) and Saich ’s (767–822) efforts of re-evaluation and
systematisation in the institutional as well as doctrinal sphere. Saich
helped to restore common grounds for better relations between Bud-
dhist institutions and the new forming Heian-period imperial order. And
Amoghavajra’s spiritual heir K kai was able to position himself as a
religious guarantor of imperial authority and sanctity. His conception
of “secret teachings” as a form of ritual practice for aristocrats and
retired military leaders pointed towards a praxis of ritual services that
should lead Buddhism to a privileged position by which governmental
power could be in uenced and channelled.^67
In medieval India, the image of the Brahmanic priest, who ritu-
ally veri ed the divinity of the king and bestowed legitimacy upon
him, resonated in the Tantric recasting of the coronation ritual (Skt.
abhieka, Chin. guanding ) as a puri catory ceremony of consecra-
tion and initiation. With K kai and emperor Heizei (774–824,
r. 806–809) who had withdrawn from public life in the fourth year
of his reign, there is for the rst time an emperor asking a Buddhist
priest to grant him the ceremony of consecration, which nally led to
a re-implementation of this ritual as a regular part of enthronement
rites in medieval Japan.^68 Since then, Buddhist Tantric rituals retained
a certain proximity to varying demands of state protection. In 1945,(^66) Dalby 1979, pp. 666–669; Gernet 1995, pp. 298–299, 304–306.
(^67) Abé 1999, pp. 355–357.
(^68) Grapard 2000, pp. 146–149.
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