Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and Transgression in the Indian Traditions

337 Pages·12.043 MB·English

by  Christian K. Wedemeyer, Christian Wedemeyer

MAKING SENSE OF TANTRIC BUDDHISM
SOUTH ASIA ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
SOUTH ASIA ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
♦ ♦ ♦
EDITED BY DIPESH CHAKRABARTY, SHELDON POLLOCK,
AND SANJAY SUBRAHM AN YAM
Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and jointly
published by the University of California Press, the University of
Chicago Press, and Columbia University Press.
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by A. Azfar Moin (Columbia)
South Asia Across the Disciplines is a series devoted to Publishing first books
across a wide ränge of South Asian studies, including art, history, philol-
ogy or textual studies, philosophy, religion, and the interpretive social Sci­
ences. Series authors all share the goal of opening up new archives and
suggesting new methods and approaches, while demonstrating that South
Asian scholarship can be at once deep in expertise and broad in appeal.
MAKING SENSE
OF TANTRIC BUDDHISM
HISTORY, SEMIOLOGY, AND TRANSGRESSION
IN THE INDIAN TRADITIONS
Christian 'K.'Wedemeyer
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2013 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wedemeyer, Christian K.
Making sense of Tantric Buddhism: history, semiology, and transgression in the
Indian traditions / Christian K. Wedemeyer.
pages cm—(South Asia across the disciplines)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-16240-1 (cloth : alk. paper)-ISBN 978-0-231-53095-8 (electronic)
1. Tantric Buddhism—India. I. Title.
BQ8912.9.I5W43 2013
294.3'925-dc23
2012006168
©
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-ffee paper.
This book was printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 987654321
Cover image: Photographed by John C. and Susan L. Huntington, June 1994.
Rajshahi Museum, Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Accession #851
Cover design: Katie Poe
References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that
may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
For
Josie,
who gave so much to so many,
and
Gita,
who waited so patiently for me to write a “real book”
♦ ♦ ♦

For the scholar ofcomparative religions,
Tantrism must represent the ultimate challenge.
—Michel Strickmann

CONTENTS
List ofFigures and Tables xiii
Preface and Acknowledgments xv
List of Abbreviations xix
INTRODUCTION: MAKING SENSE IN AND OF
THE HUMAN SCIENCES 1
PART I: HISTORIOGRAPHY
1. ORIGINS, RELIGION, AND THE ORIGINS OF TANTRISM 17
Understanding Tantric Buddhism Through Its Origins 18
The Quest for Origins as Method in the History of Religions 3 2
2. NARRATING TANTRIC BUDDHISM 37
The Poetics of Historiography 38
Tantra as End: The Decline and Fall of Indian Buddhism 43
Tantra as Beginning: The Primordial Undercurrent 51