8 charles d. orzech, richard k. payne, henrik h. sørensen
paid to the more diffuse esoterization of Chinese, Korean and Japanese
Buddhism. At the same time there is evidence that there was conscious
lineage formation going on from the mid-eighth century almost until
the end of the ninth century, and that a variety of Buddhists from
the late Tang through the Song period regarded esoteric Buddhism
as distinctive.^8 A second proposal by Sharf (2002b) is that much of
what we today regard as esoteric Buddhism was seen more as a new
technology—a ritual technology—applied to already widely accepted
Mahāyāna goals.
Tantra, Tantric Tantrism
And what of the relationship between esoteric Buddhism and the
tantras? Our title pointedly avoids the term “tantrism.” The issue of
“tantrism”—as opposed to texts labeled tantras—has recently been
analyzed by Hugh Urban. Urban argues that tantrism comes into being
as an imagined category (like the category Hinduism), a category pro-
duced in the dialectical encounter between Indians and Europeans.^9
Urban does not argue that there were no tantras before the colonial
period—there obviously were.^10 Nor does Urban argue that there are
no premodern discourses concerning the tantras. There certainly were
tantras translated from Indic and other languages and circulated in East
Asia, and it is clear that the idea of the tantras and their meanings as
a coherent system is not a modern invention. Buddhaguhya proposed
a three-fold classification in his commentary on the Mahāvairocanā,
and Jacob Dalton has recently explored the variety of doxological tax-
onomies involving tantras dating back to the eighth century.^11 What
Urban cautions against is the too easy elision of modern discourses
with a variety of premodern discourses involving the word tantra, and
the tendency to accept the recent construct “tantrism” and project it
onto a variety of texts from widely ranging periods in South Asian
(^8) See Orzech, “After Amoghavajra: Esoteric Buddhism in the Late Tang,” in this
volume, and Chen 2010, 83–109. 9
Urban 2003, 27.
(^10) In his brief examination of Abhinavagupta (ca. 950–1050), author of Tantrāloka
and Tantrasāra, he points out that Abhinavagupta does not present tantra as the sort
of “singular, comprehensive category that embraces most of the traditions modern
interpreters identify by the term.” Urban 2003, 34.
(^11) For Budhaguhya’s comments see Hodge 2003, 43–46. Dalton, 2005, 115–181.