Abstract
This paper discusses the distinctive features of Vajrayana, which developed from the eighth to the beginning of the thirteenth century in India, which opened a new horizon in Indian Buddhism.
The author points to fundamentally different and new trends emerging with the Tattvasamgraha-sutra (TS) and other Vajrayana texts—such as sexually oriented religious practices, the justification of killing heretics, and the adoption of the custom of eating meat—and leading to the flourishing of Buddhist tantrism.
The TS uses the term “Vajrayana” for the first time in Buddhist history. The commentators of the TS not only adhered to its position of establishing Vajrayana as the best and highest form of Mahayana, but went on to classify Mahayana into two ranks: Vajrayana and Paramitayana. Followers of Vajrayana degraded all Mahayana doctrine and the practices prior to the TS to a lower position, and allocated all esoteric Buddhist literature to either of five stages of tantra classification.
The author divides Indian esoteric Buddhism into two frameworks or stages: pre-Vajrayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, with the demarcation line being the TS. Furthermore, the author proposes that Indian Buddhism had three yanas; Sravakayana, Paramitayana, and Vajrayana in its history.
