Mediating the Power of Buddhas offers a fascinating analysis of the seventh-century ritual manual, the Manjusrimulakalpa. This medieval text is intended to reveal the path into a ritual universe where the power of a buddha abides. Author Glenn Wallis traces the strategies of the Manjusrimulakalpa to enable its committed reader to perfect the promised ritual, uncovering what conditions must be met for ritual practice to succeed and what personal characteristics practitioners must possess in order to realize the ritual intentions of the Buddhist community. The manual itself was written at a key point in Buddhist history, one when Hindu forms of practice were still imitated and on the cusp of the shift from Mahayana to Vajrayana (or Tantric) Buddhism. In addition, the Manjusrimulakalpa presents a rich compendium of Buddhist life in an earlier era, containing information on a variety of its readers' concerns: astrology, astronomy, medicine and healing, ritual practice, iconography, devotion, and meditation.


Mediating the Power of Buddhas, Glenn Wallis, SUNY, Paperback, 265 pages, $29.95

Glenn Wallis is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia.

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction	1
Aims	1
Methods	5
The Text: Manjusrimulakalpa	9
The Ritual	23
The Source of Power: The Assembly (sannipata)	55
Cosmology	59
Mmk 1: vision and cult	61
The text as cult image	67
Revelation and transmission	68
The Refraction of Power: The Cult Image (pata)	87
The pata as image and animated object	87
Creation of the cult object (patavidhana)	91
The Empowered Practitioner (sadhaka)	127
The practitioner in the text	127
The sadhaka	128
Epithets and space	129
Summary and Conclusion	159
Appendices	171
Notes	229
Bibliography	251
Index	259