272 martin lehnertdivine force. Nowadays, Daoist praxis still contains and actualises the
inheritance of Tantric Buddhism in the sphere of religion.^92- Afterthought
Without reducing the manifold facets of Tantric pragmatics to the idea
of a certain readiness to become instrumental as a Buddhist liturgy of
state protection fashionable with the elite at the imperial court, one
may conclude that an essential point of attraction consisted in the
“technocratic” implementation of rituals. The technological appeal in
conjunction with the demands of the ruling and military class for a
sacral con rmation of social order and governmental authority sustained
their spread not only in India but also in China, Korea and Japan.
Relating divine empowerment and ritual practice, social and imperial
order, sanctity and legitimacy, Tantric Buddhism became instrumental
in different cultural spheres under different historical conditions. Gener-
ally, the rise of new concepts of leadership, political frameworks and
procedures of state formation determined these conditions, whether it be
the case of medieval India, eighth century Tang- and early Song-period
China, the Three Kingdom period of Korea or early Heian-period
Japan. But the “secret teachings” should not be understood simply in
terms of religious policy, propaganda and ideology, insinuating a ratio-
nalist, secular concept of political power. Rather they seem to refer to
a crisis of the mythological foundations for imperial sovereignty, a crisis
inscribed in the sphere of divine empowerment: to remain authentic,
legitimacy and spiritual attainment had to be con rmed by reference
to divine forces, initially conceived of as being beyond the immediate
reach of human competence. The novelty was the introduction of techne
which promised not only control of these forces but also their utilisa-
tion for social or individual ends. Principally, the Buddhist formation
called “secret teachings” is a hybrid belief in (religious) “technology”.
Therefore, what appears to be a deliberate propagandistic con ation
of the political and religious sphere in fact anticipates the insight that
social order and imperial sovereignty are constituted by autonomic
human action only.(^92) Strickmann 1996, pp. 406–411.
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