SEEING CHEN-YEN BUDDHISMments that had a broad appeal to the Chinese people. But this popular
side tended to be despised or at best ignored by those eminent monks
who enjoyed the patronage of the imperial family and the aristocracy. It
is no coincidence that as military men and local officials assumed the
role of sponsors of leading monks in the capital, the "popular" elements
in Buddhism-particularly as represented by the Ch'an and Pure Land
traditions--came to be increasingly stressed.^21The Chen-yen tradition should be added to this list along with Ch'an and Pure
Land. It was supported by the military, by the T'ang imperial family with its
rough military roots in the northwest, and by provincial officials.^22 This support
continued in the widespread use of Chen-yen rites at small hereditary temples
especially for the laity.^23 Chen-yen rites and techniques permeated other Bud-
dhist schools, Taoism, and folk tradition.
But during the Sung dynasty, Chen-yen lineages faded into obscurity. Occa-
sional notices by Japanese pilgrims shed small areas of illumination on the lin-
eages that existed, but by then Chen-yen had become a conglomeration of ritual
techniques handed down in the context of other lineages.^24 Given taxonomic cat-
egories based on great men, on schools, and on lineages, the standard evaluation
of Chen-yen is perfectly understandable. Chen-yen's formal lineage vanished,
and therefore it ceased to exist as a "school" in the eyes of Asian and Western
high culture.^25 The Shingon claim thus appears quite reasonable.
Another significant factor in the disappearance of Chen-yen is a pervasive
bias in high culture against religion practiced for "worldly" ends. Modem sino-
logical evaluations merely echo the proper Confucian and even Buddhist bias
against religion practiced for worldly gain. Thus, Tsan-ning, the compiler of the
Sung kao-tseng chiian, notes: "According to the scheme of the Mai)Qala of the
Five Divisions, young boys or virgins must be used as the media to summon
spirits. It was once extremely easy to cure illness or exorcise evils. People in
modem times, however, use this method to profit their body or mouth, therefore
little result is obtained. Generally, these methods are held in contempt by the
world. Alas, the deterioration of the Good Law has gone so far as this!"^26
This last view is not merely the bias of the Buddhist establishment. It is also a
bias of some contemporary interpreters of the Vajrayana. It has become a com-
monplace in textbook treatments of Indian religion that the rise of the Vajrayana
signaled the decline of Buddhism in India, a decline that was triggered by Bud-
dhism's loss of pristine purity.^27 I think it is no accident that some sinologists
have applied the same reasoning to their own turf.
Evaluations of Chen-yen as materialistic fundamentally misunderstand the
nature of the Vajrayana in China and its role in the development of Buddhism
from the mid-T'ang onward. Many scholars of Buddhism regard the pursuit of
enlightenment as somehow necessarily detached from the various "applications"
of Vajrayana ritual to everyday life. Both pursuits are termed siddhi, but these
mundane "applications" are clearly denigrated as being secondary to the pursuit