tantric threads between india and china 249hermeneutic, devotional, ritual and altruistic pragmatics. Their trans-
mission and development can be better understood in terms of social
function than in terms of fundamental doctrines.
Considering the dif culty in tracking down any clear cut criteria
of Tantric Buddhism, one will have to take into account the various
local and historical contexts in order to understand the meaning of its
religious pragmatics,^7 especially paying attention to its promulgators’
promotional strategies. As many of them were not Chinese, their com-
mitment did not exclusively refer to the political and social circumstances
of a given Chinese locale, but was also motivated by competing or
authenticating practices prevalent at other locales, reminiscent debates,
and also by individual convictions. Needless to say, the complexities of
human thought and social action should not be reduced to mere effects
of local economic, political or historical conditions.
Hence, trying to isolate a seminal “Chinese” context would mean
to neglect the dialectics of comprehensive thinking, taking the risk
of confusing historical knowledge with an illusory “representation of
the other in its own terms”. Imposing an isolated “Indian” frame of
reference, one would underrate for example the “exotic appeal” of the
Tantric Buddhist pantheon to the Chinese or the variability of a Chi-
nese terminology related to Sanskrit^8 concepts and notions the Chinese
Buddhists had to cope with even if they were unfamiliar with Sanskrit
language. Buddhist texts composed by Chinese totally ignorant of any
foreign language are still traversed by some sort of unmarked notional
stratum affected by Indic languages, which conditions speci c forms of
expression—such as rhetorics, terminology and imagery—at least as far
as the linguistic aspects refer to translated literature. The same applies to
textual production in India: the skilful use of allusions to non-Buddhist
literature for recursive strategies of adapting Buddhist tenets is a vital
part of Buddhist rhetorics in medieval India and Central Asia.^9
Understanding means comparing and relating alterity without any
reference to identity: that was already the case in medieval China
during the process of translation and exegesis, as can be seen in the
various ways Chinese exegetes collated different translations of a certain(^7) As documented by archaeological remnants, historical records and documents,
biographies, iconography, ritual manuals, commentaries etc.
(^8) By conventionally using the term “Sanskrit” I refer not only to Sanskrit language
but also to the other Indic languages in which Buddhism reached China.
(^9) For a socio-linguistic discussion of Tantric language, see Davidson 2002, pp.
232–290.
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