Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T04:44:37.805Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Kālacakra Tantra on the Sādhana and Maṇḍala: A Review Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2012

Extract

The Kālacakra Tantra was the last Buddhist tantra to appear in India, before the disappearance of Buddhism there, roughly a thousand years ago. This is the third book on Kālacakra by Vesna Wallace. We must be very grateful to her for another helpful contribution to our knowledge of this complex system. Her first one, The Inner Kālacakratantra: A Buddhist Tantric View of the Individual (New York, 2001), provides an overview of the whole system, drawing on all five chapters of the Kālacakra Tantra. Her next one, The Kālacakratantra: The Chapter on the Individual together with the Vimalaprabhā (New York, 2004), presents a translation of the second chapter of the Kālacakra Tantra along with the indispensable Vimalaprabhā commentary thereon. The Kālacakra Tantra is written entirely in the sragdharā metre, in which the length of every syllable is regulated. When a complex system is presented in a complex metre, we have a text that is hard to understand in the extreme. It would be almost incomprehensible without the full and detailed Vimalaprabhā commentary.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)