Conflicting Categories and Blurred Boundaries: Mahāyāna and Emergence of Tantric Buddhism in the Rock-Cut Western Deccan Caves

Despite broad-based scholarship on Tantric or Esoteric Buddhism over the last three decades, as Andrea Acri writes, “its genesis, development, and circulation remain poorly understood” (2016, 1-2). More specifically for the purposes of this study, the development of tantric Buddhism from within Mahāyāna contexts in ancient India remains unclear. Indeed, the very use of the terms “tantric” vs. “esoteric” Buddhism, particularly in reference to this nascent period, continues to create controversy. This paper presents a multi-site visual milieu, that of the sculptural programs within the western Deccan rock-cut cave monasteries of Nāsik and Kānherī, as evidence of the emergence of early esotericism within full-developed Mahāyāna sculptural programs of the late fifth to sixth centuries CE. In terms of approach, and given the controversial nature of the term “tantra” in the study of early esoteric Buddhism and its art forms, this paper carefully considers—through text-image comparison—how and when we might accurately characterize an object as “tantric” within the burgeoning ritual discourse represented in Mahāyāna visual culture. It is also self-reflective—theorizing what role texts should play in interpreting “tantric” subjects in visual material, as to privilege textual evidence over the visual is a major methodological misstep in the field of Buddhist art history.

The stone relief sculptures carved into the walls at Nāsik’s Pandavleni monastery include a three-dimensional Buddhist maṇḍala that clearly incorporates the earliest known depiction of lotus and vajra mantra families (kulas) of the bodhisattvas Avalokiteśvara and Vajrapāṇi (ca. mid-sixth century CE). This can be gleaned from comparisons two tantric ritual manuals of the kriyā and caryā classes respectively, namely the Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa (ca. sixth-to-eighth centuries) and the Abhivairocanasaṃbodhi Tantra (ca. seventh century). Sculptural panels carved into the walls at the nearby Kānherī cave complex, while differing in style from those at Nāsik and likely earlier (ca. late fifth-sixth centuries), reveal Avalokiteśvara and Vajrapāṇi again depicted in groupings with a central Buddha and female deities. Kānherī’s sculptural programs include large-scale triads of Avalokiteśvara flanked by two female figures, which scholars describe as the goddess Tārā and her ascetic counterpart Bhṛkuṭī via comparison with the same two tantric ritual manuals that shed light on the sculptures at Nāsik. This earlier imagery at Kānherī more overtly communicates the reverence of female deities. And here, the Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa proves to be the more evidentially fruitful and wide-ranging text among the two for purposes of comparison. It describes the event of Tārā’s creation from the compassionate mind of Avalokiteśvara, as well as the use of a specific type of mudrā that appears to have a visual counterpart at the Kānherī cave monastery. Shinohara has asserted that, in the early-to-mid first millennium, the recitation of mantras and mantra-based ritual practices became increasingly complex, eventually incorporating aspects of image veneration in early esoteric Buddhism (Shinohara 2014, 194). While his theories play out through the sculptural reliefs at Kānherī and Nāsik, this body of visual evidence has not previously been analyzed in any depth in connection with these two well-known texts. An additional element of the esoteric visual program Kānherī is a unique eleven-headed figure of Avalokiteśvara connecting directly to a ritual manual first translated into Chinese in the latter half of the sixth century CE (Shinohara 2014, 15).

In sum, putting these texts in conversation with visual imagery elucidates the development of early esotericism within the Mahāyāna Indian Buddhism of the western Deccan region. While the point of origin of specific practices is by no means secure, nor is the location of the composition of these texts, there are specific elements of early tantrism/esotericism preserved at Kānherī and Nāsik that have no extant counterparts outside of East and Southeast Asia prior to the second millennium. These monastic sites therefore provide material evidence for a much larger unsolved puzzle of early tantric Buddhist development that, while missing many pieces, nonetheless warrants greater attention.

Acri, Andrea, ed. 2016. Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia: Networks of Masters, Texts, Icons. Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute.

Shinohara, Koichi. 2014. Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals. New York: Columbia University Press.