The Indian Buddhist Iconography, Mainly Based on the Sadhanamala and Other Cognate Tantric Texts of Rituals c23.3

c23.3

The teachings of the Guhyasamāja remained dormant for some 300 years, and was handed down secretly from Gurus to disciples, but later, when it became popular, gradually the process of deification rapidly grew with newer and newer gods and goddesses. Each image received and absorbed cultural currents and cross-currents, and as a living organism took newer and newer forms according to time and according to space. It has now become so unwieldy and its ramifications have been so intricate and vast, that it has become a highly specialized study requiring experts to handle the gods and goddesses of Buddhism. The study is fascinating to the extreme, and the interest in the subject is bound to grow with the lapse of time and with the publication of the original MSS on the subject, such as the Vajrāvalī, Kriyāsamuccaya, the original Tantras like the Kālacakra Tantra, Heruka and Hevajra Tantras, Vajrayoginī and Vajravārāhī Tantras, vast in number and voluminous in extent. Let us hope that India will take care of these priceless original manuscripts, preserve them in good libraries, and gradually through publications make them available to the world of Buddhists comprising a third of the population of the globe. Just at the present moment however, for unravelling the mysteries of the Buddhist images of gods and goddesses, there are only two books of outstanding value. These are the Sādhanamālā and the Niṣpannayogāvalī both published in the Gaekwad’s Oriental Series for the first time. The Sādhanamālā was composed in A. D. 1165 since the earliest manuscript of the work bears a date in the Newari era which is equivalent to 1165 A. D. Niṣpannayogāvalī was written by the famous Buddhist author and mystic Mahāpaṇḍita Abhayākara Gupta whose time is co-eval with that of the Pāla king Rāmapāla who flourished in A. D. 1084-1130. Both these works were written at a time when the psychic phase of Buddhism reached its very zenith, before being destroyed by the sword of Islam. Both the Sādhanamālā and the Niṣpannayogāvalī therefore record faithfully the highest development of the psychic phase of Buddhism in the 12th century.