Tantric Buddhist Apologetics, Or Antinomianism As a Norm

Abstract

I BUDDHIST' may be the best understood and least problematic of the three words in the title of this work, 'Tantric Buddhist Apologetics'. In indigenous Indian etymological terms the analogous Sanskrit bauddha is analysed as 'the teachings of the Buddha' (tena proktam; ~rAdh 4-3-101), or with ,reference to a person, 'one who studies or knows the sam~' (tad adhite tad veda; A~rAdh 4.2.59, with 4,2.60: proktau luk), Our Buddhism is, however, based on revelations granted not so much bySiddhartha Sakyamuni in the fifth century BC, but on scripture revealed later and in the form ofTantras by a large cast of Buddha-beings.