. esoteric scriptures 221
century work that outlines the features of the future tantric pantheon
and tantric rituals. Strickmann locates the creation of the Consecration
Scripture (Guan ding jing , T. 1331), a sinitic Buddhist apocry-
phon containing the procedures for an early initiatory ritual (abhiṣeka)
and demon-subduing spells, in about 457 C.E. between Dharmarakṣa’s
translation of the Lotus Sūtra in 286, which contains a famous chapter
on dhāraṇī, and the Atikūta’s translation of the ̣ Dhāraṇī Collection
(Tuoluoni ji jing , T. 901), which was executed in 653–
- He also proposed that there was development, differentiation,
and specialization of the dhāraṇī genre over time (1990; 1996, 52–53,
428n70). Some scholars are concerned that an approach that classifies
all dhāraṇī as proto-tantric or esoteric Buddhism is tainted by teleol-
ogy, the analytical faux pas of adopting a grand narrative that proj-
ects the characteristics of a later development into the past, obscuring
more nuanced and problematical origins.
Dhāraṇī were indisputably important in medieval Chinese Bud-
dhism and many such texts were translated; but the extent to which
dhāraṇī sūtras are “esoteric” is debatable. Are they intrinsically eso-
teric or only esoteric if used in an esoteric manner? In early medieval
China, mantras were generally understood as one type of dhāraṇī.
Although Śubhākarasiṃha (Shanwuwei , 637–735) seems to
have held the position that dhāraṇī were actually a subset of mantra,
this approach was never adopted by Chinese Buddhists. All translators,
even such figures as the early esoteric masters Vajrabodhi (Jin’gangzhi
, 671–741) and Amoghavajra (Bukong , 705–774), made
no clear distinction between dhāraṇī, mantra, and vidyā—and used the
various terms interchangeably—in their translations of ritual materials
through the eighth century (Takubo 1967, 29, 36–37; McBride 2005).
The vast majority of translations of dhāraṇī, appearing either as parts
of sūtras or in collections, were executed by mainstream monks, such
as Xuanzang (ca. 600–664), who apparently had no sense that
they were translating anything but ordinary Mahāyāna ritual material
or, perhaps, works in the bodhisattva’s dhāraṇī piṭaka (see The Devel-
opment of the Esoteric Buddhist Canon). If they were “esoteric,” they
were no more esoteric than the Mahāyāna was an esoteric teaching
understood only by bodhisattivas.
The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom (Dazhidu lun
, T. 1509), attributed to Nāgārjuna (ca. 50–150 C.E.)
and translated into Chinese between 402 and 406 by Kumārajīva
(Jiumoluoshi , 344–413), describes the everyday Mahāyāna