. taimitsu 757
understandings of ritual forms as skillful means to achieve enlighten-
ment (usō hōben ), they gave them ontological weight by
deeming them to be the embodiment of the ultimate truth. In this
way, they created a solid theoretical ground for the preeminent place
tantrism would come to occupy in the history of Tendai. In summary,
while the founding fathers of Taimitsu fell short of providing unam-
biguous evidence for the unity of Tiantai and esoteric Buddhism, they
succeeded in reconceptualizing the esoteric vis-à-vis Kūkai’s formula-
tion, a necessary step for the creation of an alternate tantric system to
the existent one. Indeed, this may be seen as the real purpose of their
speculation.
The threefold system (sanbu): Ennin and Enchin put forward a
threefold paradigm of interpretation of tantric reality, in which the
nonduality of the two mandalic categories, Womb and Diamond,
was crystallized into a third element, called the accomplishment class
(soshitsuji bu ). This contrasted with Kūkai’s understanding
of the indivisible relation between the Womb and Diamond Mandalas
(ryōbu funi ), and it became a distinctive feature of Tendai
esotericism in hermeneutical and ritual terms.
The origin and content of this tripartite scheme (sanbu ) can be
found in the training acquired by Ennin and Enchin in late Tang China.
Scholars have argued that the divergence between the two traditions of
Japanese tantrism reflects the different environment that two genera-
tions of monks experienced during their Chinese sojourns. Although
biographical records offer evidence that some forms of threefold initi-
ations were already practiced in early Tang China at the time of Saichō
and Kūkai, and were known to Amoghavajra and Huiguo (Misaki
1994b, 300–301), not until the mid-ninth century did the soshitsuji
became a discrete category in Chinese tantrism, due to a renewed
interest in ritual practice (Misaki 1988, 483–513; Hunter 2004). Ennin
and Enchin’s catalogues record the transmission they received from
Faquan as “the great teaching in three categories” (sanbu daikyō
). Enchin also recorded that Faquan transmitted the soshitsuji
class in ascending order after the Womb and Diamond Mandala ini-
tiations and considered the soshitsuji the most important of the three
(Hunter 2004). A comparison of this material with Kūkai’s narrative
about the transmission he received makes clear that the taxonomy of
the major tantric scriptures shifted in the mid-Tang period, and that
different initiatory traditions coexisted.