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146Pacific Worldin the first two decades of the Institute’s operation had on SongBuddhism. Both Jan and Sen—following earlier Chinese scholars—alsoraise the possibility that the new texts were suppressed because theyoffended Chinese moral sensibilities. I will address this thesis below,but the evidence is scant and equivocal. As Huang Qijiang has shown,successive Northern Song emperors spent a great deal of money andpersonal prestige on these efforts in the face of mounting criticism fromnativistic members of the Guwen (“ancient literature”) movement. Theprinted Chinese translations certainly circulated outside of the Song—and new teachings and deities were prominent in Liao and Xixia, andin Tibet and Nanzhao of the time. Indeed, as new translations wereproduced, new blocks were cut and new scriptures printed and theprinted canon and its “updates” figured importantly in state-to-statediplomacy in the late tenth and the first half of the eleventh century. 30Can we accept that these texts were thoroughly suppressed withinthe Song borders while being promoted and coveted outside of them?Finally, I argue much of what we call “esoteric Buddhism” found ahome in the interstices of already present Chinese Buddhist ideologiesand practices and was thus rendered “invisible.” 31NAMINGBefore examining these issues in detail it is helpful to considerhow modern scholarship understands esoteric Buddhism and howthat might differ from Tang and Song understandings of esotericliterature and the religious practices it reflects. Much of the confusionsurrounding the topic of esoteric Buddhism stems from a failure torecognize that “esoteric Buddhism” is “the creation of the scholar’sstudy.” 32 Simply put, the English category esoteric Buddhism came intobeing in the early twentieth century as a part of the rise of the study ofreligion, and of Asian religions in particular. It represents a synthesisbased upon a wide range of data (South Asian, Central Asian, East Asian)and has its own history and agendas that are distinct from varioustraditional discourses involving mantrayāna, vajrayāna, mijiao, mikkyō,etc. Contemporary scholarship has often treated “esoteric Buddhism,”“tantric Buddhism,” the fourfold doxology of kriyā, caryā, yoga, andannutarayoga tantra, as well as other more specialized terms like Yoginītantra as unproblematic, natural, and universal categories. But all ofthese terms have specific histories. 33 The term “esoteric Buddhism”
Orzech: Looking for Bhairava 147as it is now widely used (let alone “tantric Buddhism”) cannot in anyunproblematic way be equated with the terms mijiao or mikkyō. 34 Tounderstand Song reception of the newly translated works requires notonly historical research, but also research guided by an awareness ofthe indigenous taxonomies of the time. These taxonomies dictatedwhat could be easily seen and assimilated and what posed problems,went unnoticed, or went unreported. In short, the question is whetheranyone at the time regarded these texts as distinctive, if so, in whatways, and consequently how their circulation was handled. As we willsee, different types of texts were handled in different ways.Much of what modern scholars now classify as esoteric or tantricBuddhism fell into a variety of other indigenous taxonomies. Forexample, the eighth-century monk Amoghavajra ( 不空金剛 ) labeled hisBuddhism variously as “the Yoga of the Five Families” ( 五部瑜伽 ), “theYoga of the Eighteen Assemblies” ( 十八會瑜伽 ), “the Great Teachingof Yoga” ( 瑜伽大教 ), “the Adamantine Vehicle of Yoga” ( 瑜伽金剛乘 ),and even “the Esoteric Wheel of Teaching and Command” ( 祕密教令輪 ). But, in his own words, much of what he taught was “Mahayana”and the “Yoga” was in no way incompatible with that teaching. 35 TheseTang dynasty distinctions are the foundation for Song taxonomies.A search for Song understandings of the new works beingtranslated leads us first to Zanning ( 贊寧 , 919–1001). 36 The greatexegete and monastic leader, writing in the early Northern Song inhis Lives of Eminent Monks Composed in the Song ( 宋高僧傳 , Song gaosengzhuan), distinguished three kinds of Buddhist teaching, Exoteric ( 顯教 , which he characterizes as “the Vinaya, Sutra, and Abhidharma ofall the vehicles”), Esoteric ( 密教 , “which is the method of Yoga: theabhiṣeka of the five divisions, the homa, the three secrets, and themethods for the mandala”), and Mind ( 心教 , “which is the methodof Chan”). He associates the esoteric teaching with the Tang mastersVajrabodhi ( 金剛智 ) and Amoghavajra and places them in a taxonomyof “wheels,” calling this one the “Wheel of Instruction and Command”( 教令輪 , jiaoling lun). Elsewhere, in the “Transmission of the EsotericBasket” ( 傳密藏 , Chuan mi zang) found in Outline of Clerical History ( 大宋僧史略 , Da Song Seng shi lue, T. 2126, commissioned in 998), Zanningpresents another taxonomy based on the technology of dhāraṇīs, theuse of powder mandalas, and Amoghavajra’s introduction of altars forabhiṣeka ( 灌頂 ). 37
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