The Indian Buddhist Iconography, Mainly Based on the Sadhanamala and Other Cognate Tantric Texts of Rituals c9.6

c9.6

The edition of the Sādhanamālā comprises 312 Sādhanas and contains descriptions of numerous Buddhist deities. All new Sādhanas found in a different collection called the Sādhanasamuccaya have been carefully incorporated in their appropriate places in the present edition, which may very well represent a Vade Mecum of the Sādhana literature of the Buddhists. The Sādhanamālā not only gives valuable details regarding the deities, but a study of this work reveals much historical and cultural information on the Tāntric period, the Tāntric philosophy, and its psychic exercises, and on authors, Siddhas, Mantras, Maṇḍalas, and magic as prevalent among the Buddhists. The special form of Buddhism which developed in the Tāntric period is called the Vajrayāna, and the Sādhanamālā throws a great deal of light on this obscure path of Buddhism which was current in India from the 7th to the 13th century A.D.