Provincial or Providential: Reassessment of an Esoteric Buddhist “Treasure”

China in medieval Indian imagination: “China”-inspired images in medieval South Asia

“…Mañjuśrı̄'s function and identity transformed from that of an exoteric, Mahāyāna bodhisattva whose cult was associated with a sacred mountain in a specific locality, Wutaishan, known for his power for protection and wish-granting, to one of the great eight bodhisattvas that form a maṇḍala for meditation and protection, to a supercharged esoteric bodhisattva/deity who commands his own entourage as the lord of a maṇḍala (as in Mañjughoṣa or Mañjuvajra of the Guhyāsamajatantra ). Although the historical entry point of each type may be staggered with the first one the earliest and the last one the latest, these three types of Mañjuśrı̄ coexisted by the eleventh century, much like the three-phase model of Esoteric Buddhism that Robert N. Linrothe (1999) articulated. An early-eleventh century manuscript from Nepal now in the Cambridge University Library suggests that Wutaishan Mañjuśrı̄ was known and understood in medieval South Asia.…”