Criticaly edited and translated by Luo Hong with a preface by Harunaga Isaacson and Alexis Sanderson 

Critically edited and translated by Luo Hong

The Buddhakapālatantra, Chapters 9 to 14

The volumes of the series "Sanskrit Texts from the Tibetan Autonomous Region (SSTAR)" which have appeared until now have made contributions to our knowledge of Indian Buddhism which are of such importance that they may be called revolutionary.



The volumes which we are introducing here, however, mark an important new phase in the long-term project of incorporating the treasures preserved in Sanskrit manuscripts in Tibet into the intellectual and spriritual history of mankind. They present, critically edited and translated with annotation, the texts of a scripture, the Buddhakapalatantra, belonging to what was commonly regarded by followers of tantric Buddhism as the highest category of esoteric scriptures, the yoginitantras, and of a commentary thereon by one of the most learned and most influential of Indian Buddhist masters of the early second millenium: Abhayakaragupta. 

Abhayākaragupta’s Abhayapaddhati, Chapters 9 to 14

This is the first critical edition of the Sanskrit text together with the Tibetan translation of the Vajrasattvani?padanasutra (VS) ascribed to the Buddhist tantristic author Candrakirti. The text deals with the process of meditational realization of the state of the primordial Buddha Vajrasattva, and belongs to the corpus of the so-called Arya School of the Guhyasamaja exegesis. The text expounds the Steps of Generation (utpattikrama) of the Arya School, essentially as a symbolic process of the birth of deities from the sexo-yogic union between the practioner and his yogic consort. The Sanskrit edition is based on copies of two new manuscripts from Tibet (A, ca second half of the 12th cent.; B, 1301? CE) and one photographed by Rahula San. kr. tyayana at N. or Monastery (G, ca 12th–13th cent.). The edition of the Tibetan translation is based on the four versions of Derge, Narthang, Peking, and the Golden Manuscript. Two additional testimonies are provided in the appendices: a collection of passages of the VS quoted in an anonymous text also photographed at N. or, and an edition of the Mantroddhara on the basis of the same manuscript as G. A synoptic analysis of the VS, as well as notes on related texts, descriptions of the manuscripts, a map of the thirty-two deity man. d. ala are provided in the introduction. 

Luo Hong

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The Buddhakapālatantra, Chapters 9 to 14

Abhayākaragupta’s Abhayapaddhati, Chapters 9 to 14

Candrakīrti’s Vajrasattvaniṣpādanasūtra (Vajrasattvasādhana)