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Bengali Language and Lit. pp. 30-37, and also B.K. Sarkar, Folklore Element in Hindu Culture, p. 192, and elsewhere. Puri." He gives a curious account of one of his temples in Calcutta. See Winternitz, Gesch. Ind. Lit. Id. Pancakrama, 1896. De la Vallée Poussin, Bouddhisme, Études et Matériaux, pp. 213 ff. For Japanese tantric ceremonies see the Si-Do-In-Dzon in the Annales du Musée Guimet, vol.

Nagendranâth Vasu has published some interesting details as to the survival of Buddhist ideas in Orissa. He traces the origin of this hardy though degraded form of Mahayanism to Râmâi Pandit, a tantric Âcârya of Magadha who wrote a work called Śûnya Purâṇa which became popular. Orissa was one of the regions which offered the longest resistance to Islam, for it did not succumb until 1568. A period of Śivaism in the tenth and eleventh centuries is indicated by the temples of Bhuvaneshwar and other monuments. But in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the reigning dynasty were worshippers of Vishnu and built the great temples at Puri and Konârak, dedicated to Jagannâtha and Sûrya-nârâyaṇa respectively. We do not however hear that they persecuted Buddhism and there are reasons for thinking that Jagannâtha is a form of the Buddha and that the temple at Puri was originally a Buddhist site. It is said that it contains a gigantic statue of the Buddha before which a wall has been built and also that the image of Jagannâtha, which is little more than a log of wood, is really a case enclosing a Buddhist relic. King Pratâparudra (

The date when these beliefs first became part of the accepted Mahayana creed cannot be fixed but probably the symmetrical arrangement of five Buddhas is not anterior to the tantric period of Buddhism. The most important of the five are Vairocana and Amitâbha.

Tantric training assumes a certain constitution of the universe and the repetition in miniature of this constitution in the human body which contains various nervous centres and subtle channels for the passage of energy unknown to vulgar anatomy.

But many tantric treatises are chiefly concerned with charms, spells, amulets and other magical methods of obtaining wealth, causing or averting disease and destroying enemies, processes which even if efficacious have nothing to do with the better side of religion. The religious life prescribed in the Tantras commences with initiation and requires the supervision of the Guru.

At the same time such views are more often implied than formulated. The Dharma is spoken of as the teaching of the Buddha rather than as Cosmic Order like the Tao of the Chinese and though tantric theory assumes the existence of certain forces which can be used scientifically, the general impression produced by tantric works is that they expound an intricate mythology and ritual.

The change probably occurred in the next half century for Padma-Sambhava, the founder of Lamaism who is said to have resided in Gaya and Nalanda and to have arrived in Tibet in 747 A.D., is represented by tradition as a tantric wizard, and about the same time translations of Tantras begin to appear in Chinese.

Such ideas are widely disseminated in almost all modern sects, though without forming their essential doctrine, but I must repeat that to say all sects are tantric does not mean that they are all Śâktist. But Śâktist sects are fundamentally and thoroughly tantric in their theory and practice.

In other ways the Pâncarâtra seems to have some connection with late Buddhism. Though it lays little stress on the worship of goddesses, yet all the Vyûhas and Avatâras are provided with Śaktis, like the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of tantric Buddhism, and in the period of quiescence which follows on the dissolution of the Universe Vishṇu is described under the name of Śûnya or the void.

When a new idea wins converts it is the instinct of the older sects to declare that it is compatible with their teaching or that they have something similar and just as good. It was in this fashion that the Buddhists of Magadha accepted Śâktist and tantric ideas.