Looking for Bhairava - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Orzech: Looking for Bhairava 163the Catalogue of the Dharma Treasure examined below should lay the issue torest.39. See, for example, Zhonghua da zang jing, volume 73, p. 420, which has allthree classifications.40. Ibid., 456.41. This second transliterated form occurs only in the Hevajra.42. The term zuishang yuqie 最 上 瑜 伽 occurs frequently but does not seem tofunction doxologically.43. Zhonghua da zang jing, volume 73, p. 472. Indeed, the Guhyasamāja isrendered in a way that without a mandala for reference and the explanationof an ācārya there is little that would set it apart from previously translatedworks.44. The translation was logged in Catalogue of the Dharma Treasure, Zhonghaudazing jing 73 434a. For a sample of various spells and mundane operations seeT. 1257 21.264b. The same catalogue notes the translation of the Mahādaṇḍadhāraṇī-sūtra 大 寒 林 聖 難 拏 陀 羅 尼 經 (T. 1392, translated by Fatian in 984),but this is really a dhāraṇī text and the śmaśāna ( 寒 林 indicated in the Chinesetitle) is little more than window dressing.45. For Zhipan see Jan Yun-hua, “Buddhist Historiography in Sung China,”Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 114 (1964): 371–372.46. A Vināyaka-sūtra (T. 1272) in four juan is indeed found in the Canon. It wastranslated by Dharmabhadra.47. Charles Willemen notes in his translation and study of the ChineseHevajratanra that Dharmapāla “rendered the Indian original in a very tactful,deliberately abstruse way, but remaining true to the actual proceedings of theIndian original.” Indeed, the translation appears to be a very sophisticatedeffort that negotiated both the linguistic peculiarities of the original and themoral limitations of the audience. See The Chinese Hevajratantra, OrientaliaGandensia VIII (Ghent: Rijksuniversiteit Te Gent, 1983), 29. Secrecy and itsopposite—deliberate and flagrant transgressiveness—are well-known tropesin the tantras. As Ronald M. Davidson has observed, secrecy coupled withtitillation may have been the most effective strategy for the propagation of areligious system. Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement(New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 245–247.48. The iconography of the vidyārājas and their role in homas for subjugationwas a prominent selling point of Tang esoteric Buddhism. For this see Orzech,Politics and Transcendent Wisdom, 160-162, and chap. 6, “Lords of Light,” 169–205.