Canon and Identity in Indian Esoteric Buddhism as the Confluence of Cultures

Abstract

Canon formation in Indian Buddhism operated along very different lines than canonicity found in the Semitic religions, primarily because the process not only entailed leaving the canon open in some measure, and therefore incomplete, but also because Buddhists resisted all efforts at final closure, long after Buddhist communities had been introduced to such ideas both within India and from abroad. By the end of the eighth century, the author finds small esoteric communities formed in proximity to the larger orthodox monasteries but separate from them. Because of the preeminent position of the tantric master in such communities, and because the parameters of the tantric canon were so amorphous and unclear, such tantric communities took the ritual and ideological texts and statements affirmed by the teachers as the focus and defining characteristics of community membership and identity. Keywords:Canon formation; esoteric canon; esoteric community identity; Indian esoteric Buddhism; tantric communities