TANTRIC THREADS BETWEEN INDIA AND CHINA
Martin Lehnert (Zürich)- Tantric Buddhism—Approaches and Reservations
Around the beginning of the common era, when Buddhism slowly
started to spread in China, it was not yet perceived as a distinct reli-
gious teaching that came from India, but as some new formation of
autochthonous religion. Only from the fourth century onward, as the
translated textual corpus, ritual services and iconography reached a
certain magnitude, Buddhism was apprehended as a salvi c praxis in
its own right, gradually gaining more and more popularity. Put under
governmental control, it entered into rivalry with Daoism for imperial
support. The emperors expected from Buddhism new forms of expert
knowledge and an increase of sacral authority. Since then, the devel-
opments of Buddhism in China followed a course of appropriation
of devotional, altruistic and ritual pragmatics backed by the institu-
tion of monastic order and imperial patronage. As far as Buddhism
was regarded being a book religion, the validity of its truth claim was
assured by textual authenticity and reference to so-called “masters of
the law” (Skt. dharmcrya) who transmitted texts, took part in the
process of translation and exegesis. They constantly introduced new
forms of Buddhist praxis (Skt. cary) as well, thereby extending the
ground for further developments in China, Korea and Japan. In most
cases, these “masters of the law” were monks from India and Central
Asia.^1
With regard to this background, there is an ongoing scholarly debate
on what praxis could be justi ably identi ed as “esoteric Buddhist”
or placed in a heuristic category of “Tantrism”.^2 Academic discourse(^1) Hung 1999, pp. 226–232.
(^2) For an attempt to determine some formative patterns common to most Tantric
practices, see White 2000, pp. 7–18, 24–34. For a recent debate on the foundations of
esoteric Buddhism, cf. the positions of Orzech 1998, pp. 125–128, 205–206; Abé 1999,
pp. 202–204; Sharf 2002, pp. 263–278. For a detailed historical account of the concep-
tion of “Tantrism” as a western phantasm see the work of Hugh B. Urban 2003.
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