TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)Buddhist community and prevented its complete absorption by Hinduism, as
happened in India. What is surprising is that so much of the tradition has sur-
vived to the present day.
The question of the deterioration of the Buddhist tradition of the Valley is
somewhat vexed. It has generally been presumed that the Valley, and especially
Patan, had a glorious Buddhist past characterized by large communities of celi-
bate monks and a great number of scholars and pandits. Speaking of Patan,
Snellgrove has written: "Patan must have been a kind of vast university-city, dif-
fering little in its mode of life from similar towns in medieval Europe. In fact its
buildings, its traditions, its way of life, must have been modelled on the great
monastic universities of central India."^67 Again: "This city was once a place of
sanctity and learning, where monks and pandits were glad to come and visit.
Some came from India to teach. Others from Tibet to learn."^68
From Nepalese sources we have little to support such a thesis. We know that
in the medieval period there were a great number of monasteries and a great
number of bhilcyus and siikya-bhilcyus, especially in Patan and Kathmandu. We
know that a lot of manuscripts were copied in this period. Manuscript copying is
not scholarship, and the evidence from the colophons is that the manuscripts
were copied, often on commission, to gain merit either for the copier or for the
one who commissioned them. Internal evidence suggests that the manuscripts,
like the manuscripts of early medieval Europe, were copied by monks who did
not understand the language. Manuscript copying was a profession which did
not presuppose a knowledge of Sanskrit or of Mahayana philosophy. Many of
the manuscripts were tantric ritual texts and we see a growing influence of
tantric ritual and the dominance of the whole Buddhist scene by the Vajraciiryas.
Vihiiras continued to be built and repaired, often by the Hindu elite, caityas
were erected, and Buddhist art flourished, especially the making of metal caste
images and woodwork. The cache of palm leaf land deeds from this period sug-
gests that the bhilcyus were very busy with buying and selling land and the man-
agement of such property. They also contain several references to Sakyas as
suvan:tiikara: goldsmiths. By 1440 it is clear that bhilcyus of the biihiis of Patan
are married men and the sailgha a family and caste affair.
From Tibetan sources we know of a number of learned scholars and famous
siddhas who flourished in the Valley from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.
Some of these were Indian, some Nepalese, but none of them are remembered
today by the Nepalese. In Kathmandu the memory of four great siddhas has
remained alive: Mafijuvajra, Lilavajra, Suratavajra, and Vakvajra. To these must
be added Santikaracarya who is revered as the first Vajracarya. All of these men
were tantric siddhas, and even they are mere shadows. No one knows when they
lived or what they did beyond some legendary accounts of their use of tantric
power. The scholars have been totally forgotten, as though they were irrelevant
to the whole tradition. Perhaps the medieval picture is much closer to what we
find in the late Malia period. Scholars there were, but they were the exception to
the rule; and what scholarship there was, withered once it was cut off from a