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76 ⁄ the medieval buddhist experience
This chapter aims to articulate the Buddhist experience in the midst of the
early medieval ebb and flow of political, economic, and religious cultures. The
frame of reference is reduced from that of chapter 2, so that we can examine
how the larger sociopolitical realities affected the minority Buddhist culture.
Subsequent chapters will cover the development of esoteric Buddhism within
this reduced frame of reference. As shown below, this new form of Buddhist
praxis evolved both as a response to the eroding sociopolitical environment
and as a strategy for religious reaffirmation in the face of unparalleled challenges
to Buddhist institutions. The evidence suggests that the rise and development
of the Buddhist esoteric forms were the result of a complex nexus of
external social forces and internal Samgha dynamics. Consequently, it appears
that the Mantrayana was at once the most socially and politically involved of
Buddhist systems and the variety of Buddhism most acculturated to the medieval
Indian landscape.
In the course of our investigation, we might keep in mind questions of
agency and authority, for the esoteric turn was accompanied by changes in decision
systems at the social level. In this respect, three groups appear at the
center of medieval Buddhist decision-making—the monks of the orthodox
Samgha, the informed Buddhist laity, and the new form of Buddhist personality
represented by the Perfected (siddha). However, the narrowly Mahayanist-type
informed laity became less influential as the medieval period
progressed, for they were the first to experience the radical alteration of Indian
life in the economic and political arenas, and consequently they became the
first casualties of the era. Thus authority shifted to an uneasy alliance between
the monastic community, on the one hand, and the increasingly radical siddhas
at the margins of Buddhist society, on the other. Accordingly, the following
chapters consider this distinction between institutional and noninstitutional
esoterism, the former based on decisions predominantly made within
the monastic community, and the latter the product of the Buddhist siddha
culture. This chapter explores the circumstances that define and circumscribe
the medieval Buddhist experience and, by extension, that of the Mantrayana.
The present chapter concerns six specific realities of the post-Gupta Buddhist
world. Several were consequences of the transformation in cloister/lay
involvement, while others were primarily monastic in nature. First, the older
Buddhist patronage system lost its bearings and required the search for new
directions of support. Second, because these new directions were of limited
success, Buddhist institutions experienced a contraction in both the number
and the geographical distribution of sites. Monasteries fundamentally ceased
operation in the Krsna and Godavari River valleys and became concentrated in