272 sØrensen
its developed iconographical programme, hardly had time to reach Shazhou
before the area was over-run by the Tibetans during the 780s and thereaf-
ter closed off from further contacts with the Central provinces of the Tang
Empire for more than half of century. Added to this is the fact that many of
the great Esoteric Buddhist institutions of the twin capitals, Chang’an (長安)
and Luoyang (洛陽), were damaged or ceased to function during the Huichang
(會昌) Buddhist suppression of the 840s. This meant that when Dunhuang
was ‘liberated’ after the disintegration of the Tibetan Empire in 848, Esoteric
Buddhism in the twin capitals of the Tang, together with Buddhism in gen-
eral, was busy reestablishing itself and trying to repair the extensive dam-
ages its temples and organisation had sustained. In such a situation it is hard
to imagine that a transmission of the most recent Esoteric Buddhist teachings to
such a far-flung place as Dunhuang would have had high priority. In combina-
tion, these two events prevented the tradition of the Dual Maṇḍalas and their
iconography from gaining foothold in Shazhou during the late Tang. On the
other hand, a whole series of rites and their texts featuring the ritual template
of the Five Buddhas arrived in neighbouring oasis of Anxi directly from the
heartland of Tibet, representing various forms of early Indo-Tibetan Tantric
Buddhism, forms, which were unknown to the Chinese at that time.
A representative of such new type of maṇḍala, one frequently encountered
at Dunhuang, is that related to the Sarvadurgatipariśodhanatantra,54 a Tantric
Buddhist development of the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana-uṣṇīṣavijayadhāraṇī-
sūtra, of which both Tibetan and Chinese examples have been identified
(fig. 7.6).55 The relatively large number of maṇḍalas for use in performing
the ritual of this tantra— designed for the expiation of evil karma—provide
us with an insight into the ways in which intercultural Buddhist practices
impacted and transformed Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang.56 The example of
P. tib. 389 is especially noteworthy because the Sarvadurgatipariśodhanatantra
itself was not translated into Chinese until much later.
54 For a study and translation of this tantra, see Skorupski, Tadeusz, Sarvadurgatipariśodhana
Tantra: Elimination of All Evil Destinies, Sanskrit and Tibetan Texts with Introduction,
English Translation and Notes (Delhi: Motilal Barnarsidass, 1983).
55 A fine example with Tibetan annotation can be seen in P. tib. 389. See Tanaka, Tonkō:
Mikkyō to bijutsu, 91, fig. 60.
56 For a study of maṇḍalas used in rituals of confession, see Kuo, Li-ying, “Maṇḍala
et rituel de confession à Dunhuang,” Bulletin de L’École française d’Extrȇme-Orient
85 (1998): 227–56. For some reason she fails in making a connection between the
Sarvadurgatipariśodhanatantra, its maṇḍala and the practice of confession, which is one
of the scripture’s primary objectives.