TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)to Kiikai. Kiikai, the architect of Shingon, recounts his meeting with Hui-kuo: "I
called on the abbot in the company of five or six monks from the Hsiming
Temple. As soon as he saw me he smiled with pleasure and joyfully said, 'I knew
that you would come! I have waited for such a long time. What pleasure it gives
me to look upon you today at last! My life is drawing to an end, and until you
came there was no one to whom I could transmit the teachings.' "^1 Based on this
account, on the conflicting needs of establishing a legitimate line of transmission
from India through China to Japan, and on the underscoring of the purity and
uniqueness of Japanese Shingon, the Shingon tradition and scholars influenced by
it have consigned Chen-yen to a fleeting moment in Chinese history. According
to this perspective "true" Chen-yen existed as a moment of "pureness" between
"miscellaneous" unsystematized tantra (tsa-mi) which existed before the iiciiryas
and later teachings which were influenced by Chinese and Indian folk tradition
and by "degraded" forms of Hindu tantrism.^2 The obvious point of reference is
the Shingon system of Japan. Works and rites produced before the iiciiryas who
had direct lineal contact with Kiikai are regarded as "unsystematic," "miscel-
laneous," and fragmentary. Works and rites developed in China or India after
Kiikai returned to Japan are either unrecognized or "impure."
Modem scholars have found it hard to examine the Chinese Vajrayana criti-
cally. For example, one specialist in Indian Vajrayana recently recounted the
story of the transmission ofVajrayana from China to Japan thus:Kiikai ... reached Ch'ang-an the capital towards the end of the year
[804] and in the sixth month of the following year he visited master
Hui-kuo at Ch'ing-lung Temple. Hui-kuo had inherited the branch of
Tantric Buddhism represented by the Tat(vasaf!!graha-tantra from
Amoghavajra, of whom he was the successor, and the branch represen-
ted by the Vairocaniibhisambodhisutra from Hsiian-ch'ao, a disciple of
Subhakarasirpha. Therefore he was the first person in the history of
Tantric Buddhism to have received initiations into both branches. He
welcomed Kiikai's arrival as if he had been expecting it, and initiated
Kiikai into the two branches of Tantric Buddhism, transmitting to him
the whole body of his teachings. As a result, Kiikai became his one and
only successor to the integral form of Tantric Buddhism consisting of
the two branches of the Tattvasaf!lgraha-tantra and Vairocaniibhisam-
bodhi sutra, for until then none of Hui-kuo's disciples had been initi-
ated into both branches. Then, as if he had been living solely in order to
transmit his teachings to Kiikai, Hui-kuo died in the twelfth month of
the same year.^3This account is part of the piously embellished mythic corpus of the founding
of the Shingon school, yet to this day it is repeated without caveat or circum-
spection by fine scholars.^4 The Chen-yen tradition is thus compressed into the
life of a single individual, that of Hui-kuo. This is particularly ironic since, by