ABSTRACT
Religious sexual symbolism excites as much repugnance in the average Chinese or Japanese as in the breast of a pious Scots Presbyterian, so it is not to be wondered at that tantric Buddhism had failed, on the whole, to take firm root in China Proper and Japan (although many Chinese individuals practised it). The representations of wrathful deities and the no less astonishing depictions of Buddhas and Dakinis locked in ecstatic embrace had been largely responsible for the demise, some centuries before, of the Mi Tsung, a native Chinese esoteric sect devoted to tantric practice. Most have in common an arrangement that suggests a progressive multiplication and specialisation of energies (symbolised by tiny figures of meditation Buddhas and other such figures or by single syllables or letters) as one moves outward from the centre, and a progressive unity as one moves towards it.
