24 ronald m. davidsonor bodhisattvas to magical battle in the opening narrative of the text
(T. 901.18:785b–c). Similar themes were to be found in Usṇ̣īsa texts ̣
translated by Bodhiruci II (T. 951 and 952) and by Amoghavajra
(T. 950 and 953), to name but a few.
The greatest competition to the Usṇ̣īsa system did not initially ̣
come from the later works included in the Vajra-usṇ̣īsa canon, but ̣
from the Amoghapāśa literature, which highlighted the impor-
tance of Avalokiteśvara in the emergence of esoterism (Reis-Hab-
ito 1999; Grinstead 1994; Amoghapāśahṛdaya [Meisezahl 1962];
Amoghapāśamahākalparāja [Kimura 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004]).
Avalokiteśvara had stood as an early mediating figure in the ritual and
iconographic integration of non-Buddhist inspiration, evident in both
Xuanzang’s description (T. 2087.51:932a20) and in the Kāraṇḍavyūha,
this latter curiously not translated into Chinese prior to the Song
(T. 1050) even though there is a Gilgit manuscript testifying to its early
seventh-century existence. Avalokiteśvara’s position remained central
through late Indian tantrism, with the cult sites of Potalaka in the
south and Khasarpaṇa in the east of particular importance. Likewise,
Amitābha was a figure associated with certain tantric systems, ulti-
mately becoming enshrined in the fully developed mandalas along
with the other great Mahāyānist buddhas, Vairocana and Aksobhya.̣
The Usṇ̣īsa system was to be the most important tantric system for ̣
the next several decades, eventually eclipsed by and subsumed into the
scriptures included in a Vajra-usṇ̣īsa (̣ Jin’gangding ) canon in
the mid-eighth century; has been mis-rendered in Japanese lit-
erature as Vajraśekhara, but Giebel (1995, 109) has correctly discerned
its identity, and it is probable that the Vajra-uṣṇīṣa idea was under-
stood as a higher development, over and above the Usṇ̣īsa literature.̣
By the mid-eighth century, tantrism became increasingly radicalized,
with nascent transgressive practices found in the Subhāhuparipṛcchā,
the Amoghapāśamahākalparāja, and the Sarvabuddhasamayoga gain-
ing increasing importance. These sanctified the involvement with tribal
or outcaste spirits—yakṣas, vetālas, ḍākinīs, yoginīs, herukas, etc.—usu-
ally under the aegis of the greatest yakṣa of them all, Vajrapāṇi, whose
career in esoteric literature has yet to be mapped in detail. Vajrapāṇi,
indeed, became a marker for the full development of a rhetoric of
sanctification of locality, so that he destroyed Śiva-Maheśvara and
incorporated the associated spirits or gods into the mandala by pref-
acing all their names with the designation “vajra-” (Sarvatathāgata-
tattvasaṃgraha [Yamada Isshi 1981, 172–173]).