ABSTRACT
As this book has demonstrated, scholarly understandings of, and attitudes towards, the history of Buddhist institutions and thought in India have changed considerably in recent years. Tantric Buddhism, with its focus on particular sorts of meditation and ritual, is no exception. The present chapter takes on the task of depicting the ‘sort of animal’ that tantric Buddhism is, a task that in a number of respects should deter the wise. One problem is the lack of availability of materials, although this has begun to improve over the last decade. A large number of primary texts – tantric scriptures, commentaries and related works – survive in Sanskrit, and in Chinese and Tibetan translation, yet only a few have either been edited (to give a reliable text from surviving manuscripts) or translated into European or other modern languages.1 This has inevitably limited attempts to understand the nature and development of tantric Buddhism in India. The tantric tradition is also complex and multiform, containing what may appear to the beginner as a baroque and dizzying array of deities, practices and symbols that challenge his or her previous understanding of Buddhism. As a result many introductory works make little more than passing reference to tantric Buddhism.2
