The Maha-Vairocana-Abhisambodhi Tantra with Buddhaguhya's Commentary.

• Author: Wedemeyer, Christian K.

The Maha-Vairocana-Abhisambodhi Tantra with Buddhaguhya's Commentary. Translated by STEPHEN HODGE. New York: ROUTLEDGECURZON, 2003. Pp. 572. $150.

This book is devoted to translating and briefly commenting on not two (as suggested by the title), but four very important works of esoteric Buddhist literature: the Enlightenment of Vairocana Tantra, its appendix tantra (uttara-tantra: what Hodge calls a "continuation tantra"), and two commentaries by the eighth-century author Buddhaguhya. The bulk of the work (pp. 43-392) is a translation of the large commentary of Buddhaguhya, with the scripture it comments upon set off in bold face. This is supplemented by a brief introduction (pp. 3-40) and translations of the appendix tantra (pp. 393-443) and of Buddhaguhya's shorter commentary (pp. 445-537). These translations are based largely upon the Tibetan translations found in four Kangyur and three Tengyur redactions, with occasional reference to significant variant readings in a Chinese translation of the mulasutra and an independent Chinese commentary. While the translation into English is, in general, very competently done, the book as a whole has not been produced in a manner that would make for the most effective contribution to scholarship on esoteric Buddhism.

Indeed, evaluating this work in this context is challenging, since it is not clear at all that it was meant primarily as a contribution to academic scholarship. (1) The lack of any substantial scholarly apparatus is perhaps the most striking thing about the book in this regard. Twenty-five pages of rather uneven endnotes (for a work of 572 pages) and a thirty-eight-page introduction are all the readers has to fall back upon in attempting to situate and interpret the work translated. The introductory material is cursory and thinly argued; no edition of the work translated has been provided (nor is systematic editorial work in evidence "behind the scenes"); there is no bibliography and no index; and the glossary is inadequate. To be charitable, the sheer magnitude of the translation may be largely to blame for these lacunae, considering that an edition alone would practically double the size of the (already large) book. However, given the challenges of research on esoteric Buddhism, to provide such a translation without more substantial interpretative writing and apparatus renders the work of limited--and almost entirely pedagogical--utility.

First and foremost, given the highly technical...