Thirty_Years_of_Buddhist_studies,Conze

24 Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies
composed by members of the lower classes who knew Sanskrit
only imperfectly. Its construction is positively chaotic, and
each topic is dropped almost as soon as it has been raised. The
primitive swing and vigour of the original, naturally lost in the
English version, will often stir the modern reader, but the
contents will rarely edify him. This Tantra attempts in fact to
combine the lofty Madhyamika philosophy with the magical
and orgiastic rites current in Indian villages living on the level
of the Old Stone Age. That was certainly worth doing at the
time, but the result can scarcely have an immediate message
to people living in our own extremely artificial and urbanized
social environment. Readers should therefore be warned that
this text, though a document of great historical importance,
contains little that could at present be assimilated by Western
Buddhists.
Three of the more important strands of the Tibetan tradition
have also become better known in recent years: The Nyingmapa
through Evans-Wentz f s The Tibetan Book of the Great
Liberation (1954), the Kahgyutpa by H. V. Guenther's admirable
translation of Sgam-po-pa J s The Jewel Ornament of Liberation
(1959), and the Gelugpa by the information which Alex
Wayman has provided on Tsongkhapa's Stages of the Path of
Enlightenment. 1 Nor should we omit to mention G. N. Roerich's
translation of Gshon-nu-dpaFs The Blue Annals (1949, 1953)
which throws much light on the development of Tibetan
thought up to 1478.
In addition there have been four reliable and authoritative
accounts of Tantric Buddhism, by H. von Glasenapp in 1940, 2
G. Tucci in 1949, 3 S. B. Dasgupta in 1950+ and D. L. Snellgrove
in 1957. s They all agree in presenting the Tantra as a perfectly
intelligible system of great religious value, which emerges
quite logically from the preceding phases of Buddhist doctrinal
formulation.
1 A rather inaccessible synopsis has appeared in Phi Theta Annual
Papers of the Oriental Languages Honor Society, University of California,
III (1952), pp. 51-82.
2 Buddhistische Mysterien. Also in French.
3 Tibetan Painted Scrolls. Three vols.
* A n Introduction to Tantric Buddhism. Also: Obscure religious cults as
background of Bengali literature (1946).
s Buddhist Himalaya.