74 ronald m. davidsonregnal, and while the metaphor of kingship was occasionally inferred,
it was seldom explicit. Instead, the other meanings of abhiṣeka were
exploited: cleansing, recognition, bathing, and so on. Other meanings
were added as well, including pacification of emotions or spiritual lib-
eration from a sense of self, and extended to markers of the medita-
tive path, but not markers indicative of coronation per se. The diffuse
nature of the abhisekạ under these circumstances indicates a ritual
and cultural distance from the regular performance of abhiṣeka as an
imperial rite, so that alternative forms of signification can be attrib-
uted to the term.
The earliest surviving work for which an abhiṣeka rite is employed
for the transmission of Buddhist authority from one person to the next
appears to be the well-known Consecration Scripture (Guandingjing,
T. 1331, Fo shuo guanding qiwanerqian shenwang hu bichiu zhoujing
), studied by Strickmann in his
various works (1990, 1996). Strickmann thought that the importance of
this text was not recognized by Japanese scholars for sectarian reasons
and dismissed their opinions on the matter (Strickmann 1990, 85).
However, while the Guandingjing does implicate the imperial metaphor
for the transmission of the teaching, the text does not employ abhisekạ
to inaugurate a candidate into a mandala, transmit mantras, or do any
of the other specific items associated with mature tantric Buddhism. It
uses the rite to transmit the text itself from one person to the other (T.
1331.21:497b5–24), which has not been a function of Indian tantrism
for most of its history. This employment appears to reflect the Chinese
fixation on specific texts, with Buddhists in China ordering their sec-
tarian affiliation along textual lines (e.g., Huayan, Sanlun) in a man-
ner unseen in South Asia. It is arguable that the idea of abhiṣeka as
a transmission rite was stimulated by the increasing emphasis on the
coronation ritual in translations into Chinese, including the sections
on regnal abhiṣeka in three earlier translations of the Daśabhūmika (T.
285.10:491a4–10; T. 286.10:529a23–28; T. 278.10:572b15–21), where
the cakravartin’s coronation rite is explained. In the Guandingjing, we
see that Chinese civilization tends to collapse the distinction between
the religious and political spheres, as Indian Buddhists were to do
almost two centuries later in the formation of Buddhist tantrism.
The earliest abhiṣekas observed in the esoteric Buddhist system were
patterned after the coronation rites, with ritual details influenced by
other practices—pavilion consecration, Brahmanical initiation (dīkṣā),