266 martin lehnertonly a few days before the fall of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, monks are said to have enacted an immolation ritual (Skt.
homa) at Mount K ya to vanquish the United States.^69- The Failure of the “Second Transmission”
Due to changing socio-political circumstances and uprising Confucian
claims to recon rm imperial and social order in norms established by
the Confucian classics, Buddhism gradually lost support at the court
only a few decades after Amoghavajra’s death. Amoghavajra’s disciple
Yuanzhao (ca. 730–810) attempted to ameliorate the status of Bud-
dhism in polity by emphasising the apotropaic bond between hierophant
and emperor as vital for imperial authority. Although emperor Dezong
(r. 779–805) changed his initial anti-Buddhist attitude and started
to patronise the monk Prajñ (?–810), the last Tang-period promulga-
tor of “secret teachings”,^70 the praxis established by Amoghavajra was
nally displaced along with the mid-ninth century persecutions of
Buddhism and could not retrieve its former status anymore. Buddhist
transmission and translation work was suspended because of the politi-
cal and economic decline of the late Tang and the subsequent social
disorder during the Five Dynasties period.
Since the beginning of the Song dynasty, Buddhist monasteries were
restored and mass ordinations by imperial decree revived institutional
monastic as well as lay practice. Buddhists were no longer regarded as
representatives of a creed “incompatible with traditional values” and
regained mainly for political reasons a privileged status at the court.^71
Subsequently, related to ceremonial expressions of state formation
and sancti cation of rather delicate political relations to the states of
Western Xia and Liao,^72 the Tang-period Buddhist contribution to(^69) Saso 1991, p. 32; cf. Strickmann 1996, p. 41.
(^70) Weinstein 1987, pp. 97–99.
(^71) Eichhorn 1973, pp. 290–293.
(^72) The political and hegemonic relation between the Song, Liao and the Tangut Xia
were quite unstable. In 984, the Tanguts rebelled against the Song dynasty and formed
an alliance with the Liao empire that has been founded 907 in the northeast and
successfully attacked the Song empire. A short-lived peace agreement that the Tangut
leader Li Jiqian negotiated with the Song emperor in 997 was followed by new
agreements between the Liao and Song which were arranged by Li Jiqian’s son Li Dem-
ing. Subsequently he became a military commissioner and King of the Great
Xia. After having conquered territories in the west, Li Deming started to reign
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