BUDDHAGUPTANATHA: A LATE INDIAN S/DDHA IN TIBET by David Templeman, Melbourne Introductory 1 have been struck by frequent reference to the apparently quite late survival of certain Buddhist strands of instruction in India. It has become clearer that what was once considered the period of the demise of Buddhism in India was not necessarily such a final and irrevocable blow after all. Groups did survive, either due to their isolated location orto the resilience of their lineages, which in certain cases might even have receded “underground” into the wider and potentially less assailable Hindu background from which several might well have sprung in the frst place. Buddhisms late survival should be seen as more than an historical anachronism. It is entirely possible that it allowed for the recrudescence and the revitalisation of certain teachings in Tibet which by then were almost moribund in India. Their introduction into the Land of Snows thereby opened up the possibility for a new climate of debate in Tibet as material was from time to time re-contextualised and incorporated into lines of instruction Which already existed there. This powerful and ongoing influence on Tibetan praxis was wrought by a series of visiting siddtas and pantiss who came from India to various parts of Tibet. The names of many are well known but the full extent of their numbers and precisely what they transmitted is less well known, at least until the widest possible range of Tibetan biographies is perused with this specific information in mind.' Nevertheless, the persistence of vital and intact sida lineages, into at least the 17th century is now a legitimate topic for discussion and may now be regarded a8 more than a mere footnote in Buddhist history. Buddhaguptaniths was one such late siddha and has earned more renown than many others simply because of his relationship with the polymath Tarandtha.’ However there are certain ‘other aspects of his life, apart from the relationship with his young acolyte, that are of equal interest to me here. Certainly several areas of Buddhaguptanitha's life have been worked on by scholars far more competent than I, and my hope is simply that with this small note the picture cof what was accomplished and how-it was achieved may become a little clearer. Giuseppe Tucci studied the purely geographical aspects of the siddh's travels and was disinclined to Pursue anything further, to the extent that he virtually omitted the meeting with Taranitha " Bven the small publication Dus abs bdum nas dus ras bow Bun pl barry gar gyi pape bod drm byv0 chang bod ky mkhas pa raya gar drm par byon pashan tho dang lo ds mead rod re bsdos bess ply ‘debs rin chen nor bu do shal which lists among other things the Indian papas who visite Tibet betwen te Tih and 17th centuries, enumerates 128 Indians who vsted the Land of Sows, but only lists 5 who came thers uring the 17th century. The list effectively ceases inthe time of the Sth Dalai Lama. The reader wil slo note a significant gap in the book’s records of Indian vistors betwen the T3th and the T7th centuries, even though i it known from Tibetan biographical iterate that the I4th and 15h centres were ertods in which considerable numbers of Indian visitors arved in Tibet, 2 take this opportunity to slightly revise the dates I surmised fr Buddhaguptanta in footnote 37 of my translation of Tiranitha’s text, pal bu dea” yed sa skyong gi rtogs bod, found in Vol. 12 of The Collected Works of Tarnitha. The work hasbeen published as Templeman 1992, | ow believe his dates tobe 1514-1610 rahe than 1530-1610 which I tated previously.56 Templeman completely, as well as much other detail including references to several holy places of Considerable interest which in the present context are quite germane.’ Ariane Macdonald ‘employed Taranatha’s biography of the siddha and gave a detailed description of certain aspects ‘of the meeting itself'in the broader context of the travel fo ‘Bras spungs / Dhanyakataka of Man luis Guru.! The Ven. Champa Thubten Zongtse has recently explored the episode dealing with the sidds journey to Sri Laika” Buddhaguptanitha demands attention for several reasons. His observations are vital for a reconstruction of the later Buddhist geography of India and its neighbours and are equally valuable for the data they give on the types of Buddhist practices which appear to have flourished in various parts of the Indic world in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. However itis also of interest as a small window through which we may catch a glimpse of the relation- ship he had with Tarandtha and it is this aspect which I feel merits the present study. My own effort is based upon a translation of the complete biography," ‘The genre into which this work fits best is that of Hagiography. However it eould just as ‘well have been that of Geography or simply a eategory of its own such as "Curiosities of the ‘Outer World” ete. It bears some slight similarity to the remarkable work of ‘Jigs med gling pe (1730-1798), which has been so ably discussed by Aris, although Buddhaguptandtha appears rot to have been so able to seperate the legendary from the real as “Jigs med ling pa was.” Nevertheless there are rewards in the moments of abandoned delight asthe siditha describes his sojours in various wonderful places and the reader may forgive him for his continual desire to fit the natural world he observes into a mould which simply adds more to the glories of Buddhism. In Taranitha's-Life of Buddhaguptandtha, much solid, quasi-ethnographic data is ceri present, bt the authors eric fcuies ae equ suspended in favour of the Buddhaguptandtha's Nath origins What sort of yogin was Buddhaguptanatha? We know from his biography by Tarandtha that he commenced his religious life as a Gorakhnathi yogi.’ Moreover, we are later informed, almost casually, that in his 30th year he had a vision of Vajrayogint while at the Nath pita of Rathor in Maru.” Taranatha, although acknowledging his master as @ great Buddhist siddfa apparently Tae 191 * asdonald 1970 * Zags 1983 “The et by Thain, writen tne yas afr i mesing wth the ska she Grace Buia ppt tn tr aun ol ng chon i ag a as 4 8 ah OF The Coles Wake of Tsar Al age teres he grap ath pr eto, wi! is referred to hereafter as Grub chen. se mes = ‘Arita en ont bt ammo te fone at I ily inre creat than the eon refered fo above and was supplied by coun of the Insti for Religious Sues China Tibetology Research Centre, Beijing, meas ~ ae ‘ sanaton of he entire work and esl ion ofthe ett Be pubs by the Libary of Teta ‘Works and Archives. a * = * aris 1994 * Grub chen 325-5385, Grub chen 36,34Buddhaguptandtha:a Late Indian sith in Tibet 9s7 ignored recording or retelling any details of the actual process by which his master “became” a Buddhist and all the ramifications which might have arisen from his Gorakhnathi origins. The important conversion process itself would almost certainly have been recorded in detail by Tarandtha when discussing the lives of any other siddha, and one is struck by its complete absence when reading the present biography. One is easly led to the idea that there was indeed. rno conversion at all. Such a view might arise because Buddhaguptandtha came, conveniently ‘enough, from a sub-sect of the Gorakhndthis known as the Natesvaris / Natesvoris / Natesori who were the holders of a Buddhist lineage of instruction, while still remaining Nath siddhas."” ‘The name of the NateSvaris is certainly known from works such as Briggs (1982), but its Buddhist affiliations are referred to nowhere else that I have had access to."" We simply have ‘Tiranatha's word that this was the case. To allow us some measure of comparability however it should be noted that there was indeed a sub-group of the Naths which adhered in part to Jaina tenets, so Buddhaguptandtha’s statement about the NateSvaris may eventually also turn out to be verifiable.” As an aside, the first quasi-Buddhist text which Buddhaguptandtha heard is said to have been the linguistic text the Candravyakarapa.” If this isthe same work as that composed by the mid-7th century Buddhist saint Candragomt (Candragomin) then his introduction to the formalities of Buddhism might appear to have been effected almost as much via a grammatical text as much as it might have been through doctrine and direct experience! A shared praxis ? It should no longer be contentious to suggest that Buddhist and Nath yogins shared sacred sites and common yogic practices. Following the studies of Prof. Alexis Sanderson on the close textual links between the early Saiva Tantras and the Samvaratantras, the suggestions of Nath and Buddhist textual syncretism should come as no surprise at all." One might even go so far as to venture that in a sense Buddhist and Nath yogins might have felt they were sharing to a {great extent, a common path. Pethaps it is even true to say that the community of yogias in the 17th cent. was far more grounded in a sense of comity than upon other more specious distinctions such as the division into Buddhist and Hindu or even more abstrusely in the Buddhist experience at leas, into divisions such as "snuttarayoga practitioner" or "lower level practitioner” Certainly right until the end of his life Buddhaguptandtha continued to travel to the recognised pilgrimage places sacred to the KAnphaga sect of Nath yogis, Indeed even when he ‘was a mature siddha and had practised all the major Buddhist tantras he continued to visit pilgrimage sites of three clearly distinct types; (1) those which were specifically Buddhist in their significance, (2) those of "dual occupancy”, where the pitas were sacred within both the Buddhist tantric tradition and the Kanphata yogic tradition. It is of interest that many of these sites crop up "This is discussed in Grub cen 535, 3362. " riggs 1982 especially Chart A. opposite p.74 " Briggs 1982; 72-73, Gut oten 83.2, "Sanderson (in pres); Sanderson 1990,