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290 ⁄ siddhas, literature, and language
least should know the worst. To me it all reads like an obscene caricature of
the teachings both of earlier Buddhism and of legitimate Yoga. 144
Yet caricature is also a form of comedy, even if Christian Europe of the day
(or any day) had difficulty accommodating the idea that the sacred could be
hilarious. These scholars did not learn the Indian message that, as in the figure
of Hanuman, laughter is not necessarily ridicule but the honest correction
of a distorted perception, a rectification that can be afforded only by an acknowledgement
of truth. This seems to be part of the intimation about siddhas
in their early reference in the Milindapañha, that siddhas sing truth. 145
Thus esoteric scripture might convey the perception that, in all probability,
Buddhist monks and reverend laity were unlikely ever to have been as sanctified
as their Mahayanist hagiographical representations depict them. Esoteric
literature is likely in some measure to be both shocking and compensatory: it
tells a story as extreme in the direction of unmeritorious conduct as the earlier
Buddhist ideal depicted on the positive side of the ledger. Certainly, neither
representation could have been entirely accurate. It is unlikely that siddhas
could have survived in India for half a dozen centuries acting in a wholly barbaric
manner, and it is equally unlikely that Buddhist monks were, as a group,
as saintly as their literature represents them. The symbiotic relationship between
esoteric advocates of both institutions appears to reinforce their actual
commonality, as shown in chapter 7, on community.
conclusion: the literature of perfection
The development and elaboration of Buddhist scripture employed a new application
of language that had both continuities and discontinuities with earlier
Buddhist usage. These scriptures were revealed, as in earlier Buddhist
times, but the manner of their revelation was decidedly different, privileging
laity rather than monks or the celestial bodhisattvas of the Mahayana. The
tantras were probably composed in the social horizon of ritual instruction,
moving smoothly from supplemental instruction to the articulation of new
meditations, to full blown scriptural texts. Their language was challenging,
even hostile at times, and the tantras’ consistent representation of the Buddha
in erotic environments cannot have provided Buddhist Indian communities
with much confidence in the new scriptures’ authenticity.
Perhaps the answer to the issue of the new scriptures is that they represented
new linguistic and aesthetic communities, ones that arose as a result of