346 charles d. orzech
between Amoghavajra and the government, Daizong chao zeng sikong
dabianzheng guangzhi sanzang heshang biaozhi ji
( T. 2120).
Life and Career
According to most accounts, Vajrabodhi was a South Indian Brahman
whose father served as a royal priest and architect in Kanchipuram. He
appears to have converted at the age of sixteen, though some accounts
put him at Nālandā at age ten. As is typical of many important mas-
ters, Vajrabodhi’s biographers portray him as a precocious child who
was well read (including in Jain treatises), and he is said to have stud-
ied under the famous Buddhist logician Dharmakirti. He studied the
STTS—what would have then been the latest teaching—with a teacher
named Śāntijñāna. Vajrabodhi sought out more of this new teaching,
traveling to Sri Lanka and Śrī Vijaya. Having heard that Buddhism
was flourishing in China, he then sailed to China and arrived in the
capital in 720, with Amoghavajra (705–774) in tow.^3 He
was initially lodged at Ci’en Temple and then shifted to Jianfu
Temple (Chou 1945, 275).^4
Like Śubhākarasiṃha, Vajrabodhi spent most of his time perform-
ing rituals, granting abhiṣeka (consecration), teaching, and translat-
ing. Among his famous disciples are the Chan monk Yixing
(673–727), to whom the emperor gave the task of learning as much as
possible about Vajrabodhi and his new teachings and assisting in the
translation work.^5 But the strong Daoist proclivities of Emperor Xuan-
zong (r. 712–55) and the power of already established teaching
lineages meant that Vajrabodhi’s influence was limited, so the lau-
datory accounts of his stature and importance need to be read with
a certain degree of circumspection.^6 Vajrabodhi was famous for his
(^3) Lü Jianfu’s (1995, 216) account puts Vajrabodhi in Luoyang in 720 before moving
to Ch’ang’an. For Amoghavajra, see Lehnert, “Amoghavajra: His Role in and Influence
on the Development of Buddhism,” in this volume. 4
The former was the temple where the famous monk-pilgrim-translator Xuanzang
(602?–64) was lodged, while the latter housed an office for translation that had
been set up for Yijing (635–713).
(^5) Yixing, a Chan monk in Puji’s (651–739) lineage, had assisted Śubhākarasim ̣ha
in his translation of the Mahāvairocanābhisaṃbodhi sūtra and is the co-author of the
Great Commentary Dari jing shu ( T. 1796) on it. For Yixing, see Keyworth,
“Yixing,” in this volume.
(^6) For Xuanzong’s Daoist interests, see Benn 1977.