Early Literary History of the Buddhist Tantras, Especially the Guhyasamāja-Tantra*

There are several reasons for discussing literary history of the Buddhist Tantras in general, while taking main evidence from the Guhyasamāja cycle. For one thing, the texts and commentaries of Tantric nature are replete with remarkable matters, intriguing to any scholar with the philological background to read them. Besides the inevitable “tantric secrets”, there are numerous problems of Indian textual history to be solved to the extent these texts can be reliably dated in terms of centuries. Such an investigation is undoubtedly challenging, because the cult of Tantra, whether Hindu or Buddhist, has something of an anti-historical tone to it, by the very nature of esotericism.