436 george a. keyworth
division of kriyā (shi ), caryā (xing ), yoga (yuqie ), and
anuttarayoga (wushang yuqie ) (Matsunaga 1980, Lü 1995,
10–12). Dalton (2002) has recently demonstrated that this classifica-
tion scheme is 1) Tibetan rather than Indian in origin, and 2), is late
(twelfth century), which has lead Orzech (2006b) to suggest these
should be discarded as superfluous anachronisms when approaching
Chinese tantra. The fact that scholarship on Buddhist tantric literature
has overwhelmingly accepted the sorting of its literature according to
Tibetan accounts, which stem from the self-styled Tibetan renaissance
(ca. 950–1200) that support the gsar ma tantras reintroduced after
the imposing efforts of the translator (Tib. lo tsa ba) Rin chen bZang
po (958–1055) in the western Tibetan kingdom of Gu-ge (Guge ),
remains a weighty obstacle for those wishing to explore both Indic
and indigenous manifestations of tantra across Asia (Davidson 2002a,
2004; Samuel 2008).
Scholars remain deeply divided over what should and should not be
classified as tantra. One need only consider the question of the twofold
mandalas of East Asia, primarily Japan: the Womb (Skt. garbhadhātu,
Ch. taizangjie, taizōkai ) and Diamond (vajradhātu, jin’gangjie,
kongōkai ) mandalas, from the Mahāvairocana sūtra ( Dari jing
, T. 848) and the Vajraśekhara sūtra (Jin’gangding jing
, T. 865), respectively. These texts have been classified as either
tantric, esoteric (mijiao ), or both (Orzech 1998, 2006b; Tachikawa
2009).
To make matters even worse, it is extremely difficult to identify
what terms the Chinese have used to classify texts and practices sub-
sumed under the rubric of tantra. For example, the modern transliter-
ation dateluo for tantra cannot be found in the Sino-Japanese
Taishō edition of the Buddhist canon. There are several other terms,
including “secret teachings” (mijiao), “secret canon” (mizang ),
“secret canon of the Mahāyāna” (Dasheng jingzang mimibu
), and so forth, all of which have been shown to refer to mate-
rials both within and beyond the fruitful limits of tantra suggested
by Orzech (2006b) and Davidson (2002a). Other, more technically
accurate terms, such as yoga, mantra (zhengyan ), and diamond
or adamantine ( jin’gang )—as in the Vajrayāna (Jin’gangsheng
)—are testimony to the reception of tantric Buddhism in
China; however, they do not signal a distinctly separate tradition of