. amoghavajra 357
apotheosis of mutual recognition between the Son of Heaven and his
ācārya: the former was granted sanctity while the latter gained factual
power.
In 769, Amoghavajra was allowed to establish Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī
as the official tutelary deity to be worshiped all over the country, two
years after the costly completion of the palatial Golden Monastery
(Jinge si ) on Mt. Wutai, the site Amoghavajra had chosen
to become the center of this cult (Weinstein 1987b, 79–82). He was
vested with the title State Preceptor (guoshi ), and subsequently,
by imperial decree, his scriptures were distributed among the Buddhist
clergy to be memorized and recited.
Amoghavajra’s emphasis on ritual expertise can be qualified as an
“expertocratic instrumentalism” based on generic relations between
the warring state, social disorder, and occult pragmatics. The Son of
Heaven’s readiness to rely on a ritual expert implementing “techniques”
in conjunction with the demands of the military elite was legitimized
by the unspoken premise that imperial sovereignty could no longer be
grounded in moral wisdom, legal measures, and traditional notions of
universal order alone. Triggered by the social and political disintegra-
tion following the An Lushan Rebellion, the “expertocratic” strain also
referred to a conceptual shift in imperial sovereignty, inasmuch as it
reflected the crisis of its mythological foundation. The legitimacy of
the Son of Heaven was no longer deemed self-evident and therefore
had to be reconfirmed by divine force, initially conceived of as being
beyond the immediate reach of human influence. Amoghavajra’s
achievement was to position ritual practice as a technique by which
such force could be manipulated—not only for apotropaic ends but
also to validate the legitimacy of imperial sovereignty. In other words,
Amoghavajra’s ritual expertise anticipated the insight that imperial
order was constituted by human action.
Amoghavajra’s Translations and Redactions of Scriptures
Amoghavajra’s extensive and eclectic body of scriptures superseded
traditional standards of textual transmission, translation, and exege-
sis. According to his own account, he translated “one hundred and
twenty odd fascicles, seventy-seven works” (T. 2061.50:713a29; cf.
list in T. 2120.52:839a–840a, dated 771 C.E.), though the number of
texts ascribed to him is significantly larger. His translations of the
STTS (T. 865), the Adhyardhaśatikā (T. 243), and his redaction of the