The Spread of Buddhism

the later spread of buddhism in tibet 353

scriptures and commentaries that had not found their way into Tibet
(or did not yet exist) in the period of the “earlier spread”. Foremost
among these were the monasteries of mTho-lding (Tho-ling), the royal
capital of Gu-ge, where much of the translation work was done. Ye-
shes-’od and lHa-lde invited further Buddhist scholars from India; the
chos-’byungs gives long lists of their names and scholarly activities.
With the collaboration between Rin-chen bzang-po and the Western
Tibetan kings of the late tenth^ to early eleventh century, Buddhism
once again became a governmental sponsored religion on Tibetan soil
and probably also the religion favoured by the nobility of the Western
Tibetan regions. If Davidson is right, the West-Tibetan Buddhist move-
ment deserves much less credit to the country-wide revival of Tibetan
Buddhism than the chos-’byung texts suggest. Buddhist life in the
Central Tibetan regions dBus and gTsang remained largely outside their
in uence. Up to the twelfth century Central Tibet seems to have been
a dominion of multiple Buddhist groups including the “Eastern Vinaya
monks” who con icted with older established Buddhist family traditions
and functionaries laying claim on the responsibility for the maintenance
of the old temples. Some of these older communities later established
a shared identity and became known as the rNying-ma-school. Even
after Atia, the most famous Indian missionary of the period who was
invited to Tibet to foster the religious programme of the kings of Gu-ge
Pu-hrangs—we will turn to him in a moment—, visited Central Tibet,
his success seems to have been rather modest.^31

3.3. Tantric Buddhism

Perhaps one of Rin-chen bzang-po’s greatest impacts on Tibetan Bud-
dhism was that he made tantric Buddhism presentable to the court.
In the following centuries more and more tantric teaching traditions
arrived from different parts of India and were transplanted into Tibetan
religious society. With the “later spread” movements tantric concepts
and symbols became omnipresent in Tibetan Buddhism, and virtu-
ally no Tibetan school would have disagreed that tantric practice was
an integral part of the Buddhist path and even a supreme method
to realise buddhahood. Hence, it is necessary to say a few words on
tantric Buddhism in general. I will con ne myself to some sociological

(^31) Cf. Davidson 2004, pp. 84–116.