Kālavañcana in the Konkan: How a Vajrayāna Haṭhayoga Tradition Cheated Buddhism’s Death in India

Abstract

In recent decades the relationship between tantric traditions of Buddhism and Śaivism has been the subject of sustained scholarly enquiry. This article looks at a specific aspect of this relationship, that between Buddhist and Śaiva traditions of practitioners of physical yoga, which came to be categorised in Sanskrit texts as haṭhayoga. Taking as its starting point the recent identification as Buddhist of the c.11th-century Amṛtasiddhi, which is the earliest text to teach any of the methods of haṭhayoga and whose teachings are found in many subsequent non-Buddhist works, the article draws on a range of textual and material sources to identify the Konkan site of Kadri as a key location for the transition from Buddhist to Nāth Śaiva haṭhayoga traditions, and proposes that this transition may provide a model for how Buddhist teachings survived elsewhere in India after Buddhism’s demise there as a formal religion.

1. Introduction

It has long been recognised by indologists that Vajrayāna Buddhist and Nāth1 Śaiva traditions have much in common, in particular adepts, sacred sites and metaphysical terminology. In recent years scholars have explained these commonalities either by pointing to the Nāths as their originators or by claiming that the two traditions share a common substratum. Early 20th-century Indian scholars, on the other hand, viewed Vajrayāna Buddhism as their source.2

The relationship between Vajrayāna and Nāth Śaiva traditions is but one part of the complex relationship between Vajrayāna and Śaivism as a whole, which has been the subject of detailed analysis since an article by Alexis Sanderson published in 1994 in which he demonstrated the dependence of certain Buddhist Yoginītantras on texts of the Śaiva Vidyāpīṭha.3 Shaman Hatley has shown that since the time of the earliest tantric texts there are likely to have been borrowings between the two traditions in both directions, albeit on a smaller scale than in the examples provided by Sanderson.4 David Seyfort Ruegg and Francesco Sferra, while accepting the borrowings demonstrated by Sanderson, have argued the case for a shared substrate, with Sferra proposing that “Buddhist and Hindu Tantric traditions only appear to be distant from one another at the theoretical level when the common practices and ‘substratum’ are imbued with a doctrinal content”.5 Sanderson has rejected the concept of a shared substratum because it is an entity that is only inferred, whereas everything we perceive in this context is either Śaiva or Buddhist.6

Recent studies in the field of haṭhayoga, which in previous scholarship is usually said to have originated within Śaiva Nāth traditions, have shown that the term haṭhayoga is first found in a range of Vajrayāna works dating from the 8th century onwards7 and that the c. 11th-century Amṛtasiddhi, the first text to teach any of haṭhayoga ’s distinctive practices and principles, was composed in a Vajrayāna milieu.8 The Amṛtasiddhi was directly drawn upon in the production of several subsequent haṭha texts, none of which was Buddhist and the earliest of which was probably the Nāth Śaiva Amaraughaprabodha.9 In this paper I shall draw upon textual, epigraphic and material sources to show that the Konkan (the coastal region of modern-day Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka), and in particular the Kadri monastery in Mangalore, is likely to be where the Amaraughaprabodha was composed, and that its composition was symptomatic of the appropriation from Vajrayāna Buddhists by the Śaiva Nāths of not only practice and terminology, but also the Kadri monastery itself. Unlike the parallels between earlier Vajrayāna and Śaiva traditions that have been the focus of recent scholarship, this transition coincides with the demise of Buddhism in India. The evidence presented suggests that the Kadri Vajrayāna Buddhist tradition was not destroyed or expelled, but absorbed into that of the Nāths, and provides a possible model for such transitions elsewhere.

2. Virūpākṣa

The Amṛtasiddhi makes no mention of any of the more celebrated adepts shared by the Vajrayāna and Nāth traditions, such as Matsyendra or Gorakṣa. Instead it attributes its teachings to a renowned Vajrayāna siddha called Virūpākṣa (or sometimes Virūpa), who is little known outside of Tibetan Buddhist traditions, in which he first appears in perhaps the 12th century.10 Tibetan hagiographic treatments of Virūpākṣa and textual cycles associated with him are particularly rich and diverse, 11 as are his depictions in Tibetan paintings12 and statuary. Here I shall draw upon these Tibetan materials to note only (1) that they indicate that after spending his early life in east India, Virūpākṣa was active in the Deccan and the south;13 (2) that the Sanskrit Amṛtasiddhi, whose teachings were attributed to Virūpākṣa, was translated into Tibetan (probably in the late 11th century)14 and an associated cycle of Tibetan texts (usually referred to in Sanskrit back-translation as Amarasiddhi),15 whose teachings were also attributed to Virūpākṣa, developed soon after; and (3) that Virūpākṣa is said to be the human conduit of the Tibetan Lamdre (lam ’bras) tradition, whose teachings include the practices of Trulkhor (’krul ’khor), some of which correspond to the three central techniques of the Amṛtasiddhi and which are predicated on an understanding of the yogic body first taught in the Amṛtasiddhi.16

The siddha Virūpākṣa has left few traces in Indian material and textual sources. Buddhist hagiographies mention a shrine to him at Somnath,17 but there is no evidence of one there now. The temple of Bhīmeśvara at Draksharama in Telangana, which predates 1130 ce18 and is associated with the Virūpākṣa legend in early Marathi texts and current Tibetan hagiographies, has a shrine to him; there are reliefs depicting him on the c. 1230 ce Mahudi Gate at Dabhoi in Gujarat (Figure 1), on the exterior wall of a c. 13th-century cave at Panhale Kaji in the north Konkan (Figure 2) and perhaps on the c. 14th-century Someśvara temple at Pimpri Dumala near Pune;19 there is a Virūpākṣa cave on Arunachala hill in which Ramaṇa Maharṣi spent long periods in retreat; and the Kāmākhyā temple in Assam has a relief which depicts him.20

Only one Indian Buddhist text other than the Amṛtasiddhi mentions Virūpākṣa: the Caryāgīti, a c. 11th-century collection of fifty middle Indic dohā verses attributed to various siddhas. One of its dohās is by Biruā (i.e., Virūpa/Virūpākṣa), who, in highly esoteric language, summarises a yoga method which is similar to that of the Amṛtasiddhi but is couched in a metaphor of alcohol production rather than the Amṛtasiddhi’s alchemy.21 The Caryāgīti’s place of composition is uncertain.22 I know of eight non-Buddhist texts which mention Virūpākṣa. One is the Varṇaratnākara, an early 14th-century Maithili compendium on a variety of subjects which gives a list of 84 siddhas and includes the name Virūpa.23 The remaining seven texts are connected in some way with the Śaiva Nāth tradition and are from the Deccan or south India. The two oldest are Mahānubhava works in Marathi (which corroborates statements elsewhere that Virūpākṣa was from the Maratha region):24 the c. 1280 ce Līḷācaritra, a hagiography of the Mahānubhava guru Cakradhara composed by his devotees,25 and the Tattvasāra of Cāṅgadeva, a compendium of Mahānubhava teachings which was completed in 1312 ce. After these Marathi works, the next texts to mention Virūpākṣa are the c. 1400 ce Telugu Navanāthacaritramu, an account of the lives of the nine Nāths composed by Gauraṇa at Srisailam, the contemporaneous Vikramārkacaritramu of Jakkana, which includes Virūpākṣa’s name among those of the nine Nāths,26 and the Sanskrit Haṭhapradīpikā, a compilation by Svātmārāma of teachings on haṭhayoga whose parallels with the Navanāthacaritramu (and other Telugu texts) suggest it is from the same period and region. The Tārārahasya, a 16th-century Sanskrit treatise on the worship of the goddess Tārā by the Bengali author Brahmānandagiri, includes Virūpākṣa in a list of eight human gurus to be worshipped.27 The last non-Buddhist text to mention Virūpākṣa is the c. 17th-century Sanskrit Kadalīmañjunāthamāhātmya, a celebration of the temple of Mañjunātha at Kadalī (now known as Kadri, a part of the coastal town of Mangalore), in which Virūpākṣa is again one of nine Nāths, seven of whose stories, including that of Virūpākṣa, are taught in extenso.

In the Līḷācaritra, Cakradhara tells his disciples how Virūpākṣa broke in two the Bhīmeśvara śivaliṅga at Drākṣārāma in modern-day Telangana. Gorakṣa converted Virūpākṣa from vajraolī, i.e., the [Buddhist] Vajra lineage, to amaraolī, the [Śaiva] Amara lineage, and gave him the name Adaṇḍīnātha.28 The Marathi Tattvasāra includes Virūpākṣa in a list of 84 siddhas.29

In the Navanāthacaritramu, Virūpākṣa is one of the nine Nāths of the text’s title and his life story is told in detail. He is the second son of king Gaṇyāvanta and Añjani, who were from Maharashtra.30 Matsyendranātha, the first of the nine Nāths and the guru of the other eight, meets him in a forest. After Virūpākṣa recounts how he has eaten the heart of a bird which a hunter had informed him would make him a siddha,31 a voice from the sky confirms his story and tells that of his previous birth, at which Matsyendra initiates him and instructs Gorakṣa to teach him yoga. After receiving instruction, Virūpākṣa travels to the Karṇāṭa, Lalita, Kanauj, and Māḷava regions, and initiates several disciples.32 In his Vikramārkacaritramu, Jakkana gives a list of nine Nāths almost identical to that of Gauraṇa. He does not tell their stories but for each of them highlights one characteristic, which for Virūpākṣa is devotion.33

In the Haṭhapradīpikā nothing is said about Virūpākṣa other than that he, along with 28 other mahāsiddhas, broke the rod of time by means of the power of haṭhayoga.34 Virūpākṣa is at number 11 in the list, immediately after Cauraṅgi, Mīna (who is here differentiated from Matsyendra)35 and Gorakṣa. As will be explored in more detail below, these three siddhas are closely associated with Kadri and the Amaraughaprabodha,36 approximately twenty verses from which are found in the Haṭhapradīpikā.

In six chapters and more than 300 verses the Kadalīmañjunāthamāhātmya gives a detailed account of several episodes in Virūpākṣa’s life.37 He is born to a pious Brahmin couple from the northern Konkan as an incarnation of Mañjunātha of Kadalīvana, i.e., the Śiva of the Kadri temple and monastery complex. He wanders across India and has various adventures, including the conquest of a demon threatening all the gods; the assumption of the appearance of an ascetic and subsequent humbling of the Veda-obsessed brahmins of Drākṣārāma (an episode which brings to mind the Līḷācaritra’s story of his breaking of the Bhīmeśvara liṅga at Drākṣārāma);38 and a sojourn in Kāñcī, where he teaches the citizens by day and sports with women by night. This last episode includes an echo of the popular Tibetan story in which Virūpākṣa stops the sun in its course until the king pays the bill for his drinks.39 Here he falls for one of the women of Kāñcī and, in order to impress her, grabs the moon and makes it into a goblet with which to ply her with drink. The gods become concerned and, at Brahmā’s instruction, go to Virūpākṣa and sing his praises, at which he puts the moon back in its rightful place.

With this, the historical trail left in India by Virūpākṣa goes cold,40 but he has left enough clues for a tentative identification of the region in which his teachings were transmitted from Vajrayāna Buddhism to Nāth Śaivism. As noted above, Tibetan hagiographies point to south India and the Deccan as being central to his activities and almost all Indian material and textual sources associated with him are from the Konkan and Deccan.41 The Navanāthacaritramu identifies him as the author of the Amṛtasiddhi42 and anchors his story in the Deccan: the Navanāthacaritramu was composed at the request of the pontiff of the Bhikṣāvṛtti monastery in Srisailam43 and Virūpākṣa is said therein to have been born in present-day Maharashtra and to have travelled to Karnataka.44 The Haṭhapradīpikā adds nothing to his lore, but strengthens the connection with Srisailam since it has many parallels with the Navanāthacaritramu and was probably composed in the same region and in the same period.45 The Kadalīmañjunāthamāhātmya, one of whose manuscripts is likely to have been copied in 1730 ce and may not, in its present form, be much older than that, but which preserves some old legends from the Kadri site,46 identifies Virūpākṣa with Śiva Mañjunātha of Kadri. All of the Nāths whose stories are told in the Kadalīmañjunāthamāhātmya are similarly identified with Mañjunātha, but Virūpākṣa is further tied to the region by virtue of being the only one to be given the epithets koṅkaṇādhīśa, koṅkaṇeśvara and koṅkaṇa.47

3. Nāth Śaivism and Vajrayāna in the Konkan

Virūpākṣa’s legend thus points to the south of the Indian subcontinent and in particular the Konkan as the likely location of the transition of his teachings from Vajrayāna to Nāth Śaivism, but gives little detail of how it might have happened, with only the Marathi Līḷācaritra actually indicating a transition from Buddhism to Śaivism. I shall now widen the enquiry from Virūpākṣa to evidence for the presence of Vajrayāna and Nāth Śaivism in the Konkan, which will further support the supposition that such a transition occurred there and provide more detail on how it happened.

3.1. Nāth Śaivism in the Konkan

Nāth Śaivism has a long history in the Konkan. Western India and the Konkan region were important centres of early Paścimāmnāya Kaula Śaivism, elements of which were preserved by subsequent Nāth lineages.48 Matsyendranātha, the revealer of the Kaula doctrine in the Kali age and the first human guru of the later Nāth sampradāya, is closely associated with the region. His consort was called Kuṅkuṇāmbā, “the mother of the Konkan”;49 a c. 13th-century anthology of his teachings, the Matsyendrasaṃhitā, is associated with the Konkan and was composed either there or in the Tamil region;50 and among the earliest material evidence of the Nāth sampradāya is the c. 13th-century statuary at Panhale Kaji on the Konkan coast between Mumbai and Goa, which includes at least two images of Matsyendra.51

The monastery at Kadri is today the most important Nāth site in south India. Statues of three Nāths at the Mañjunātha temple below the monastery have been dated on stylistic grounds to the 14th or 15th centuries.52 The first firmly datable evidence of the presence of the Nāths at Kadri is in a Kannada inscription of 1475 which records a grant of land to Maṅgalanātha Oḍeya “at the pure place of Śiva, Kadire”, the income from which will support the worship of Gōrakṣanātha and Candranātha, a deity at the temple.53 Bhatt notes an inscription from Bārakūru dated 1490 ce which refers to the position of arasu or king at Kadri in the context of one Subuddhinātha Oḍeya, disciple of Anupamanātha Oḍeya, and to the worship of Gōrakhanātha at the maṭha of the latter.54 Subsequent descriptions of the head of the Kadri monastery also call him the “King of the Yogīs” and until the demise of the Vijayanagara kingdom and resultant depredations by the Nāyaka kings he lived in great style. Writing at the beginning of the 16th century, the Italian traveller Ludovico di Varthema said that the king ruled over 30,000 people and travelled about India with an impressive entourage including a troop of warrior yogis.55 By the 17th century the king lived in much reduced circumstances56 and it seems that at this point the Kadri monastery was taken over by a northern Nāth lineage intent on creating a pan-Indian yogi order. By 1820 ce Kadri was recognised as the southern seat of the four seats of the Nāth sampradāya.57 To this day the head of the Kadri monastery, who retains the title of “King Yogi” (rājā yogī), is drawn from northern Nāth lineages. The changes at Kadri in the 17th century resulted in the migration southwards from Mangalore to northern Kerala of the yogi caste associated with the previous royal lineage.58 Some members of the caste remained at Kadri, but they have a fraught relationship with the King Yogi, whom they look to for leadership but who cannot speak their language. The King Yogi is elected once every 12 years at a council of the Nāth sampradāya at the Nasik Simhastha festival (which nowadays is recognised as one of the four Kumbh Melas), after which he and several hundred Nāths walk barefoot for six months to Kadri, where he is installed in a lengthy consecration ritual called the rājyābhiṣeka, which has parallels with traditional royal initiations.59

3.2. Vajrayāna in the Konkan

Buddhism was well established in the Konkan when Hsüan-Tsang visited the region in the seventh century,60 and Vajrayāna had a small but significant presence there and in surrounding areas from the sixth to thirteenth centuries, and perhaps later. Sixth-century statues of Tārā and Avalokiteśvara are found in the western Deccan.61 The colophon of the ninth-century Cakrasaṃvarapañjikā of Jayabhadra (who was also known as Koṅkaṇapāda) says that its author visited a temple of Tārā at the Konkan site of Mahābimba.62 A statue of Mañjughoṣa from the Kadri monastery but now in the Mangalore government museum dates to the ninth century or earlier.63 One of the 29 caves at Panhale Kaji contains a tenth-century image of the Vajrayāna deity Acala (Figure 3).

The early ninth-century Vajrayāna adepts Dharmākara and his fellow initiate Pālitapāda lived in the Konkan.64 Pālitapāda was twice visited there, probably at Kadri, by Jñānapāda, the founder of an important eponymous tradition of exegesis of the Guhyasamājatantra.65 The Vajrayāna teacher Śākyamitra visited the Konkan region in the tenth century66 and the same century saw the composition of the Hevajratantra, which includes Koṅkaṇa in a list of 24 sacred sites.67 An illustrated manuscript of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā dated 1015 ce68 includes six sites in the Konkan among 72 Vajrayāna places of worship.69 An inscription at Baḷḷigāve in Karnataka (80 kilometres inland from Gokarṇa) dated 1065 ce records the construction of a vihāra containing images of Buddha, Lokeśvara and Tārā Bhagavatī70 and another inscription from the same location dated 1067 ce records the establishment of a temple of Tārā Bhagavatī.71 An 11th-century stone statue of Tārā from Baḷḷigāve is still visible at the site and may be one of those mentioned in the contemporaneous inscriptions.72 As will be explored in more detail below, the Kadri Mañjunātha temple contains bronze sculptures of the Vajrayāna deities Lokeśvara and Mañjuvajra (as well as a bronze of the Buddha), with an 11th-century inscription recording the establishment of the Lokeśvara image in the kadirikā vihāra, i.e., a Buddhist monastery at Kadri. An image dated to the 11th century in the Lokanātha temple at Haṭṭiyaṅgaḍi, Coondapur, might be of Jāmbāla.73 A 12th-century inscription at Dharmavolal (today known as Ḍambaḷ, 60 km east of Hubli) records the worship of Buddha and Tārā.74 An image of Akṣobhya from Puttige, Mūḍabidure, dates to the 12th or 13th century.75 A 13th-century inscription from the village of Koḷivaḍ (20 km east of Hubli) records the worship of Tārā.76 According to the Jain exegete Vīrānandī, Buddhist ascetics called Ājīvakas were active in the Kanara region in the 12th century.77 Finally, two Tuḷu inscriptions, one dating to 1187 ce, the other to 1545 ce, mention Buddhism.78

The accounts of tantric Buddhism in India by the 17th-century Tibetan scholar Tāranātha include several references to the Konkan. Tāranātha’s histories are notoriously unreliable, but some of his reports of teachers visiting the Konkan are corroborated by the older evidence noted above. Thus he says that Jayabhadra lived for some time at Mahābimba,79 describes Jñānapāda’s visit to Pālitapāda and his initiation into the Guhyasamājatantra,80 and confirms that Pālitapāda’s co-initiate Dharmākara was from the Konkan.81 Tāranātha makes several more mentions of the Konkan in his accounts of early Vajrayāna adepts and teachers.82

Writing of more recent events, Tāranātha says that Śāntigupta, the guru of his own guru Buddhaguptanātha, who lived during the 16th century and had close links with the Nāth saṃpradāya, went to Suvarṇadhvaja in the Konkan, which was “...a noble well-proportioned place. Its monastic colleges flourished. There were about fifty fully ordained monks there and at most about one thousand upasakas”.83 Subsequently “[t]he monks of Maharata and Kongkuna invited him and he went to all their temples giving empowerments, upadesas, alms, sermons on the tantras, etc., and he clearly explained the Vajrayana teachings”.84

These references to a flourishing Vajrayāna tradition in 16th-century Konkan are intriguing, but are likely to be garbled reports from earlier times. In Tāranātha’s detailed account of the travels of his guru Buddhaguptanātha, he writes the following:

Then in Koṅkaṇa he embarked and went to the west up to an island called ḥgro ling[,] in Sanskrit Dramiladvīpa. In the language of the Muhammadans, the barbarians and [the inhabitants] of the small island, it is called la sam lo ra na so (in Śambh: sam lo ra na so). In that island the teachings of the guhyamantras are largely diffused. He heard these from a paṇḍit called Sumati who had acquired the mystic revelations (abhijñā), the mystic power of the Saṃvara (tantra) and of the Hevajra (tantra) and then he learnt the detailed explanation of the Hevajratantra. This Hevajratantra belongs to the system of the Ācārya Padmasambhava. Generally speaking, the tradition of the fourfold tantras is still uninterrupted in that island, and if we except the sublime and largely diffused Kālacakratantra, whatever is in India is also there such as the (Vajra)kīlatantra and the Tantra of the daśakrodhas, many Heruka-tantras, Vajrapāṇi, mkhaḥ ldiṅ (Garuḍa), Māmakī, Mahākāla, etc. Then the sublime order of Hayagrīva which is largely spread in India is to be found there. Moreover there are many sacred teachings (chos) belonging to the Tantras expounded by Padmasambhava. Though the community is numerous, the rules of the discipline are not so pure. The monks wear black garments and usually drink intoxicating liquors …”.

(Tucci 1931, p. 690)

The likely location for this small island is among those near Karwar on the coast of northern Karnataka, with Anjediva the best candidate,85 but it and all the other islands off the Konkan coast were taken over by the Portuguese at the beginning of the 16th century, well before Buddhaguptanātha would have visited the region.86 Tāranātha appears to have been mistaking Jesuit priests for bibulous black-clad Buddhists.87

4. Vajrayāna-Śaiva Interaction

Of the Konkan sites mentioned above, there are two where both Vajrayāna and Śaiva traditions flourished and which are thus possible locations for a transition from the former to the latter.88

4.1. Panhale Kaji

At Panhale Kaji, which is eight kilometres inland from the Konkan coast about halfway between Mumbai and Goa, there are 29 rock-cut caves dating from approximately the 6th century ce onwards.89 As noted above, one of them houses a statue of the Vajrayāna deity Acala. Two others contain multiple images of Nāths, including depictions of Matsyendra overhearing Śiva teach Pārvatī the Kaula doctrine, Virūpākṣa,90 groups of 9 (or perhaps 10) and 84 siddhas, and a relief of Tripurasundarī. An impressive but damaged statue of Gorakṣa was also found at the site when it was restored in the 1970s.91

There are no textual or epigraphic sources to suggest that either the Vajrayāna or Nāth presence at Panhale Kaji was of wider significance, and the site fell into disuse from the 14th century onwards.

4.2. Kadri

It is the Kadri Mañjunātha temple and monastery complex that gives us our best evidence of links between Vajrayāna and Nāth traditions in the Konkan, with a wealth of material showing that both traditions flourished there.92 There is a gap of more than four centuries between the last firmly datable evidence of Vajrayāna Buddhism at the site and the first of a Nāth presence, but there is much to indicate continuity between the two.

The Kadri statuary is a key indicator of such continuity. The three bronzes housed in passages to the north and south of the central shrine of Mañjunātha (a svayambhū or “self-born” liṅga representing Śiva), are perhaps the finest Buddhist images still worshipped in India (albeit now as Hindu deities, on which see below). The inscription on the plinth of the single bronze in the corridor on the south side of the Mañjunātha shrine records how the Āḷupa king Kundavarman established an image of the god Lokeśvara in the Kadirikā vihāra on the 16th of January 1068 ce.93 The iconography and workmanship of the image support this date and the two other bronzes appear to be of a similar age.

The three images are currently worshipped as Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Vyāsa, and have been since at least 1730 ce because they are identified as such in the Kadalīmañjunāthamāhātmya.94 Their iconography, however, is clearly Buddhist. The statue on the inscribed plinth is worshipped as Brahmā, but is in fact a form of the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, most likely Mañjuvajra (Figure 4).95

Of the two bronzes in the northern corridor, that which is worshipped as Viṣṇu is a form of the Bodhisattva Lokeśvara (better known as Avalokiteśvara), who can be identified by the representation of the cosmic Buddha Amitābha on his crown of matted hair, his antelope skin, his hand gestures and his sattvaparyaṅka seated position (Figure 5).96

The bronze worshipped as Vyāsa is the Buddha, in a form which closely matches Sri Lankan, Tamil and some Southeast Asian Buddha images; his seated position with the legs half-crossed (sattvaparyaṅka) rarely occurs in Buddha images from India, apart from in the Tamil region (Figure 6).97

These identifications are well supported by comparison with other such images. Muddying the waters, however, is the inscription on the plinth of the Mañjuvajra image, which records the establishment of an image of Lokeśvara. It seems that at some point the image of Lokeśvara was removed from its original plinth and replaced with the image of Mañjuvajra.98

In the Mangalore Museum is a stone statue of Matsyendranātha, the first human guru of the Nāth saṃpradāya (Figure 7).99 The statue is said in its label to be from the Kadri monastery and is cracked across its neck, which may account for its having been removed from its original location.

The mūrti shares many features with the Lokeśvara bronze: it is three and a half feet high; it is seated in sattvaparyaṅka, an easy cross-legged position; its right hand rests on its right thigh, palm open;100 and it has a crown of jaṭā, matted locks, on which is depicted an indistinct icon. This latter is of particular significance, because no other non-Buddhist sculpture in India includes such an element.

Today the Matsyendra shrine in the Kadri monastery houses an apparently newer and whole mūrti of Matsyendra, which is very similar to that found in the museum and was presumably made to replace it (Figure 8).

There are two small but significant differences between the two Matsyendra images. In both statues Matsyendra wears on a thread around his neck a siṅgī, the small horn signifying membership of a Nāth lineage. That on the older statue is shaped like an antelope’s horn, while that on the later statue is a whistle like that worn by yogis of today’s Nāth saṃpradāya. Mughal miniatures depict the earlier style of horn from the mid 16th-century onwards; the whistles are not seen until the 18th century.101 On its label in the museum, the older image is dated to the 10th century. I do not know the grounds for this dating, but Bhatt (1975, plate 302(b)) gives the same date so may be its source. He accepts the incorrect reading ${}^{\circ }$gate found in the published transcription of the inscription on the plinth of “Lokeśvara” (i.e., Mañjuvajra) so takes the image to be dated 968 ce and proposes the 10th-century date for Matsyendra because he believes the Nāth tradition to have predated Buddhism at the site. I see no need to propose such an early date for the Matsyendra image in the Mangalore Museum. The other difference between the two images of Matsyendra is that the icon on the crown of jaṭā on the older image is unclear (Figure 9), unlike that of the newer one (Figure 10).

Images of Bodhisattvas wear small representations of one of the five Tathāgatas, indicating their lineage. The cosmic Buddha on Lokeśvara is Amitābha (Figure 11) and that on Mañjuvajra (and on his prabhāvalī) is Akṣobhya (Figure 12). The icon on the newer Matsyendra is clearly a four-armed deity with the jaṭāmukuṭa, club and fish seat of the Matsyendra image itself, together with the ḍamaru drum usually carried by Śiva, especially in his Bhairava form. Pai (1946, p. 64) identifies this icon as Ādinātha, i.e., the form of Śiva seen as the founder of the Nāth saṃpradāya. The fish seat, however, which is also faintly identifiable on the older Matsyendra image in the Mangalore Museum, indicates that this is an image of Matsyendra himself, while his four arms suggest that he has been deified.

The 1068 ce inscription on the plinth supporting the image of Mañjughoṣa at the Mañjunātha temple says that an image of Lokeśvara was established in the Kadirikā vihāra, i.e., a Buddhist monastery at Kadri. No mention of a separate temple is made in the inscription, but today there are two sites at Kadri, the Mañjunātha temple and, a few minutes walk up a neighbouring hill, the Kadri maṭha or monastery. It is unclear whether the Kadri temple and monastery have always been separate sites. The first reference to the existence of both is from the report of a visit to Mangalore of Pietro della Valle in 1624 ce.102 There are meditation caves at the monastery which date to approximately the 12th to 13th centuries ce.103 The oldest inscription in the temple courtyard is dated śaka 1308, i.e., 1385 or 1386 ce.104 Today the temple is in the control of Mādhva priests and the Nāth presence is confined to the monastery,105 but three stone statues in the middle of the south, west and north exterior walls of the inner shrine of the temple which sport yogi iconography (earrings, jaṭā and, for two of them, a cross-legged seated position) are said in accompanying labels to be Matsyendranātha (Figure 13), Gorakṣanātha (Figure 14) and Cauraṅginātha (Figure 15).106

Bhatt dates these images to the 14th or 15th century,107 which seems plausible and renders the ascription of a date of the 10th-century to the image of Matsyendra in the Mangalore Museum even more unlikely, since that statue has the siṅgī or horn otherwise found only in north Indian depictions of Nāth yogis from the 15th century onwards, and which is not found on the three images in the Mañjunātha temple. The statues indicate that there was previously a stronger Nāth presence at the temple than there is now.

The Āḷupa king Kundavarman, who the 1068 ce inscription says established the image of Lokeśvara, is described in the sixth verse of the inscription as pādāravindabhramaro bālacandraśikhāmaṇeḥ, “a bee at the lotus feet of he whose crest-jewel is a young moon”, i.e., a devotee of Śiva. There are no indications that the region’s primary religion was ever Buddhism; when Kadri was Buddhist it would have been an enclave within a Śaiva kingdom. Today the central shrine of the temple at Kadri contains a self-born liṅga worshipped as a form of Śiva called Mañjunātha. This name of Śiva is attested nowhere other than the Tuḷu region (and possibly its environs),108 where it is understood to mean “the gentle Lord”, mañju meaning “gentle” in Sanskrit. It is of course also redolent of Mañjuśrī (or Mañjuvajra, the form in which Mañjuśrī is found at Kadri), for which it is an alternative name,109 and it is likely that the primary focus of worship at Kadri when it was Buddhist was the Bodhisattva Mañjuvajra, a sādhana of whom was written there by Jñānapāda in the ninth century110 and an icon of whom was installed there in the eleventh century. Within two centuries of the establishment of the Lokeśvara image at the Kadirikā vihāra, the temple may already have become a Śaiva shrine: in an inscription of the Āḷupa queen Ballamahādevī who ruled 1277–92, she calls herself a worshipper of Machinātha.111 Bhatt sees this as possibly the first reference to Śiva as Mañjunātha.112 Machinātha could alternatively refer to Matsyendra, whose name is a compound of matsya, “fish”, and indra, “lord”: ma[c]chi is a middle Indic form of matsya, and nātha a synonym of indra. Two late 14th-century inscriptions at Kadri mention the worship of Mañjinātha113 and della Valle, who visited the site in 1624, says that the temple deity (which he was not allowed to see) was called “Moginato”.114 In contrast, two copper plate Tuḷu inscriptions dated 1329 ce kept inside the Kadri monastery mention Kadire Mañjunātheśvara and Kadre Śrī Mañjunāth.115

The specific referents of the name Mañjunātha and its variants as found in historical sources pertaining to Kadri are thus often uncertain, but they are likely to have referred, in sequence, to the Buddhist deity Mañjuvajra, the Nāth Matsyendra, and a localised form of Śiva.

Textual, material and epigraphic sources point to Kadri’s importance as a centre of Vajrayāna Buddhism from the early 9th to late 11th centuries, and indicate that it had become Śaiva by the early 14th century at the latest. The similarities between the statues of Lokeśvara and Matsyendra from the site indicate a direct continuity between Vajrayāna and specifically Nāth Śaiva traditions, but the Nāth presence is not confirmed by epigraphic evidence until the late 15th century, and the details of the transition from Buddhism to Śaivism are not inferrable from material and epigraphic sources. If we return to our textual sources, however, some further information may be obtained.

The c. 1400 Telugu Navanāthacaritramu of Gauraṇa tells the stories of seven of the nine Nāths of its title, including Matsyendra, who is the guru of the other eight, and Mañjunātha, the only one of the eight to be identified as the son of Matsyendra. Mañjunātha’s story takes place in Mangalore116 and is one of the earliest tellings of a famous Nāth legend found in many different sources and versions.117 Matsyendra travels to Mangalore with a group of his disciples. On their arrival the king of the city dies. His minister Prabuddha conceals his death, but Matsyendra, through his yogic sight, knows what has happened. He decides to leave his body and enter that of the king in order to experience worldly pleasures and thereby confirm that the way of the yogi is superior to worldly life. He uses a yogic technique to enter and reanimate the body of the king. Prabuddha realises what has happened but decides not to tell the people and advises Matsyendra on how to rule. Matsyendra enjoys sexual relations with his queens, and fathers a son by the chief queen. His disciples, who have been guarding his body in a mountain cave in the meantime, realise that he has forgotten himself and Gorakṣa is sent to rescue him. Gorakṣa manages to convince Matsyendra to shed all his worldly attachments with the exception of his love for his son. Gorakṣa kills the boy and the shock brings Matsyendra to his senses. He returns to his body, Gorakṣa revives the prince, and Prabuddha joins Matsyendra after arranging the king’s succession.

Matsyendra’s son is initiated as a siddha, placed on a kūrmāsana and given the name Mañjunātha. Leaving him there, Matsyendra and the other siddhas go to a cave in the Narendra mountains,118 where Prabuddha is initiated, thus becoming one of the nine Nāths of the text’s title, and given the name Buddhasiddha. Matsyendra instructs his disciples in yoga and they go on a tour of the the holy sites of north India to disseminate his teachings.

The story is in part an origin myth for the shrine of Mañjunātha at Kadri. Mañjunātha is placed on a kūrmāsana, which Śaivasiddhānta Pratiṣṭhātantras identify as the altar on which an image of a deity is to be installed.119 He is left in Kadri, while Matsyendra and his disciples continue to have adventures across India. Gorakṣa’s rescue of his guru Matsyendra from a life of debauchery is an allegory of his reformation of Nāth religious practice, i.e., the triumph of his celibate haṭhayoga over Matsyendra’s Kaula sexual rites.120 Sexual ritual was central to the practices of the Vajrayāna traditions which flourished at Kadri; the Kadri Matsyendra legend as told in the Navanāthacaritramu may also reflect the specific takeover by celibate Nāth yogis of the Kadri Vajrayāna tradition. There are faint traces of Buddhism in the Navanāthacaritramu. Gauraṇa mentions two types of yoga, a royal (rāculī) method as practised by Matsyendra, and a “peerless” (anuturya) method which Matsyendra teaches to Cauraṅgi.121 The name anuturya may be a contraction, metri causa,122 of anuttarīya, which is unattested as a name for a type of yoga in Sanskrit but which, as anuttara, has parallels in Tibetan works.123 The element buddha in the pre- and post-initiation names of the minister of the Kadri king, Prabuddha and Buddhasiddha, is also suggestive of a connection with Buddhism.

If we turn now to doctrinal texts, we find further details of the transition from Vajrayāna Buddhism to Nāth Śaivism at Kadri. This is demonstrated most clearly by the parallels between the Buddhist Amṛtasiddhi and the Śaiva Amaraughaprabodha. The Amaraughaprabodha borrows five verses from the Amṛtasiddhi and paraphrases it extensively elsewhere.124 As shown above, the Amṛtasiddhi’s place of composition is uncertain but is likely to have been in the Deccan. There is similarly no firm evidence for the place of composition of the Amaraughaprabodha, but its dependence upon the Amṛtasiddhi suggests a southern origin, which is supported by all its extant manuscripts being written in southern scripts and further corroborated by parallels with other southern texts and traditions, which will be explored below.

In addition, the new formulation of yoga taught in the Amaraughaprabodha may be traced to both the Amṛtasiddhi and tantric Buddhist traditions of haṭhayoga which are known to have been practised at Kadri. The Buddhist scholar Jñānapāda, who, as we have seen, is likely to have resided at Kadri during the first half of the ninth century, wrote a sādhana of Mañjuvajra, who is the chief deity of the Guhyasamāja in his teaching125 and is depicted in the most spectacular of the three Kadri bronzes. The Guhyasamājatantra advocates haṭhayoga, albeit as a fallback method of achieving awakening.126 The Amaraughaprabodha draws on this understanding of the term haṭhayoga when it uses it as the name of the yoga method of the Amṛtasiddhi, which, it states, is subordinate to rājayoga. As suggested by the primacy of celibate practice implied by the Navanāthacaritramu’s legend of Matsyendra’s rescue by Gorakṣa (who, like all his co-disciples, is avowedly celibate), the Amaraughaprabodha teaches that the control of bindu, i.e., semen, is central to haṭhayoga. It refers to the practice of vajrolimudrā, a method of controlling semen which is likely to have been part of certain traditions of Vajrayāna sexual ritual, but makes no mention of its use in such rites, saying that in the Amara tradition it is equanimity and the flowing of the breath in the central channel.127 This transition from Vajrayāna to Śaiva haṭha practice evident in the Amaraughaprabodha is echoed in the story from the Līḷācaritra referred to above,128 in which Virūpa, the first teacher of the yoga of the Amṛtasiddhi, is said to switch allegiance from the Vajra to Amara lineage after his conversion by Gorakṣa. The polyvalence of the term ogha in the name of the Amaraughaprabodha (whose teachings are attributed to Gorakṣa), allows it to mean both “Awakening (prabodha) by the Stream (ogha) of the Nectar of Immortality (amara)” and “Awakening in the Amara lineage (ogha)”.

The strongest indication of a link between Kadri and the Amaraughaprabodha is found in the siddhas it invokes. It opens with a maṅgala verse to Ādinātha, Mīnanātha,129 Cauraṅginātha and Siddhabuddha, and in the next verse ascribes its teachings to Gorakṣa.130 Ādinātha is the name of the form of Śiva to which many Nāth lineages trace their origin. The triad of Mīna, Gorakṣa and Cauraṅgi has primacy only in Nāth lineages from the Deccan and Konkan. Cauraṅgi rarely features in Nāth traditions from further north131 and no Sanskrit haṭha texts apart from the Amaraughaprabodha, Haṭhapradīpikā and derivative works mention him. Matsyendra, Gorakṣa and Cauraṅgi are the main protagonists in both the Navanāthacaritramu and Kadalīmañjunāthamāhātmya.132 The invocation of these three Nāths thus supports a southern origin for the Amaraughaprabodha, with Kadri a strong candidate not only because they are central to its māhātmya, but also because, as we have seen, the same triad adorns the main shrine of Mañjunātha.

The mention of Siddhabuddha in the Amaraughaprabodha’s maṅgala verse points more specifically to Kadri as the location of that text’s composition. Unlike the other three siddhas named in the verse, Siddhabuddha is little known; within the Sanskrit haṭha corpus his name is otherwise found only in the list of 29 siddhas in the Haṭhapradīpikā and texts deriving from it.133 The Haṭhapradīpikā borrows twenty verses directly from the Amaraughaprabodha and may have taken Siddhabuddha’s name from its maṅgala verse. Arguing against this possibility, however, is that in the Haṭhapradīpikā’s list of siddhas, Siddhabuddha is not grouped with the other three siddhas named in the Amaraughaprabodha’s maṅgala verse. A more likely source, or milieu, for the Haṭhapradīpikā to have taken the name Siddhabuddha from is suggested by the only other texts known to me in which he is mentioned. These are two Telugu works, the c. 1400 ce Navanāthacaritramu and the contemporaneous Vikramārkacaritramu of Jakkana. The Haṭhapradīpikā has several parallels with the Navanāthacaritramu, in particular in the names of the siddhas found in both texts,134 some of which are otherwise obscure. As we have seen, the Navanāthacaritramu includes Buddhasiddha among the nine Nāths of its title. That this Buddhasiddha is simply Siddhabuddha with the elements of his name transposed is indicated by his name being found as Siddhabuddha in the Vikramārkacaritramu, which gives a list of nine Nāths almost identical to that of the Navanāthacaritramu (Mañjunātha is replaced by Ādinātha). A further detail supports the identification of the Siddhabuddha of the Amaraughaprabodha with the Buddhasiddha/Siddhabuddha of the Navanāthacaritramu and Vikramārkacaritramu. In the Navanāthacaritramu, before his initiation Buddhasiddha is Prabuddha, the crafty minister of the king of Mangalore. The Vikramārkacaritramu highlights a quality of each of the nine Nāths. Siddhabuddha comes after Ādinātha, Matsyendra, Sāraṅga (the pre-initiatory name of Cauraṅgi) and Gorakṣa, and is praised for his intellect.135 In the Amaraughaprabodha’s maṅgala verse Siddhabuddha is the only siddha to have an epithet, which is dhīmate, “the wise one”. These parallels allow for a tentative identification of the Siddhabuddha of the Amaraughaprabodha’s maṅgala verse with the Buddhasiddha of the Navanāthacaritramu, who resided at Kadri.

5. Final Remarks

Our available evidence indicates that the transition from Buddhism to Śaivism at Kadri was peaceful. No textual sources related to Kadri suggest a violent takeover and the Vajrayāna bronzes at the site remained more or less in situ without being damaged.136 Furthermore, the later Nāth statues of Matsyendra are modelled on that of the Buddhist Lokeśvara, indicating direct continuity between the Nāth tradition at Kadri and its Vajrayāna forerunner. Other than the icon on Matsyendra’s crown of matted locks, however, all material traces of Buddhism were removed, or, as in the case of the three bronzes, reassigned as Hindu. This is true also for the Amaraughaprabodha, which, in adopting and adapting the teachings of the Amṛtasiddhi, removes features that are obviously Buddhist but leaves traces of more obscure Buddhist doctrines which were not recognised by its redactors.137

The Śaiva tradition which took over at Kadri thus absorbed elements of the earlier Vajrayāna tradition but tried to efface anything overtly Buddhist. This is in contrast with the Newar tradition in the Kathmandu Valley, where Avalokiteśvara/Lokeśvara and Matsyendra have been identified since at least the 15th century, and Buddhism and Śaivism remain inextricably entangled.138 19th-century chronicles claim an 11th-century Karnatakan origin for the Newar kings and mention connections with the Konkan,139 hinting at a possible origin in south India for the Newari identification of Avalokiteśvara and Matsyendra, and at links with the Kadri tradition, but the earliest record of their identification in Nepal whose date is certain is from the 15th century.140 Buddhism’s survival in the Kathmandu Valley is in stark contrast with its almost complete demise in India. There is no clear reason for either of these outcomes, but the Kathmandu Valley’s isolation was responsible for other divergences from the history of the subcontinent, such as its not being subjugated by the Mughals or British, and is likely also to be at least partly responsible for Buddhism’s survival there.

The apparently peaceful transition at Kadri does not support arguments that Brahmanism or Islam violently removed Buddhism from India.141 Textual and epigraphical sources do however suggest that interactions between tantric Buddhists and Śaivas in the region of Kadri were not always friendly. Desai notes two late 12th-century south Indian inscriptions from Karnataka which indicate that Śaiva aggression may have been responsible for the destruction of Buddhist vihāras.142 And, as we have seen above, several texts tell the story of Virūpa himself destroying a śivaliṅga at Drākṣārāma.143 The Nityāhnikatilaka, a text of the Paścimāmnāya Kaula tradition from which some Nāth lineages developed, reports that Unmanīśanātha destroyed 125,000 Buddhist vihāras in heaven, as a result of which nine Buddhists fell to earth and were subsequently initiated by him.144

But these hints of a violent transfer are exceptional. Other sources point to debate or instruction as the means by which one doctrine superseded the other. Unsurprisingly, the Śaiva sources at our disposal almost always tell of Buddhists capitulating to Śaiva arguments. Of particular relevance to the topic in hand is a story in the Līḷācaritra of Virūpa, after his conversion by Gorakṣa from Buddhism to Śaivism,145 defeating in debate kṣapaṇakas, i.e., Jain or Buddhist ascetics, and re-establishing the Vedic religion at Ellora.146 Kularatnoddyota 11.31 includes the Buddha (and the Jina and Matsyendra as well as many others) in a list of siddhas who were taught the Kaulajñāna of the Pūrvāmnāya by Mitranātha.147 I know of one instance in which the transmission went the other way, suggesting a willingness by Śaiva traditions to accept at least some Buddhist teachings: the Ṣaṭsāhasrasaṃhitā, a Paścimāmnāya Kaula Śaiva text, tells the story of eight Nāths being given teachings by a teacher whose name, Vajrabodhi, indicates a Buddhist affiliation.148

The demise of Buddhism, at Kadri and elsewhere, thus seems to have usually been peaceful. It may in fact have been imperceptible to all but a few. Boundaries between Śaiva and Vajrayāna siddha traditions were porous. Some siddhas were clearly originally either Śaiva or Vajrayāna,149 but others cannot be tied to one or other tradition.150 The Amṛtasiddhi has some features which definitively identify it as Buddhist, such as a metaphysics that has only four basic elements, not the five of Hindu traditions, but it is also peculiarly Śaiva for a Buddhist work, including such un-Buddhist notions as jīvanmukti, liberation while living.151 Patronage and devotion were similarly non-partisan. We have seen how the Kadri Lokeśvara inscription records the installation of a Buddhist icon by a Śaiva king. Further north in the subcontinent, some Gāhaḍavāla and Pāla monarchs had both Buddhist and Kaula gurus.152 Thus there was a shared siddha world, especially of praxis, from which, in India, the Śaiva siddha tradition emerged, mostly free from Buddhist vestiges.

The above evidence for the existence of Vajrayāna Buddhism in the Konkan is compelling, but scant. Vajrayāna was never a state religion in the Tuḷu region, whose rulers were Śaiva, but the 1068 ce Kadri inscription shows that it was patronised by at least one Tuḷu monarch. It may also have had patrons from further afield. Gomin Avighnakāra, a Buddhist devotee from Gauḍa, made an endowment at Kanheri in the northern Konkan in 854 ce153 and it is not impossible that Kadri was also supported by patrons from Gauḍa. But there is much more evidence for a Tamil connection. Unlike all other inscriptions at Kadri, which are written in the Kannada script and make no reference to Buddhism, the 1068 ce inscription recording the installation of Lokeśvara is in Grantha, the script used in the Tamil region for writing Sanskrit. In the c. 13th-century Matsyendrasaṃhitā, which was composed in either the Tamil or Konkan regions,154 Gorakṣa is a Coḷā king before he becomes a yogi.155 The Tamil Tirumantiram, whose composition, like the installation of Lokeśvara at Kadri, dates to the second half of the 11th century ce,156 has both Buddhist and Śaiva elements in its yoga, and several features of its cult are shared with the Kadri yogi tradition.157 The bronzes of Lokeśvara and Mañjuvajra at Kadri are similar to contemporaneous Coḷā pieces.158 The Kadri Buddha may also be from the Tamil region, or perhaps Sri Lanka or southeast Asia, bringing to mind Mangalore’s importance as a trading port (whose cosmopolitanism in the 12th-century has been vividly reimagined by Amitav Ghosh).159 A connection between Kadri and Sri Lanka is supported by the inclusion of Matsyendranātha among a list of eight forms of Avalokiteśvara (who in Sri Lanka is also commonly known as Nātha) described in the Śariputra, a text of uncertain date used by the makers of images in Sri Lankan temples.160 In addition, the Guhyasamāja exegete Jayabhadra, who spent some time in the Konkan before travelling to Vikramaśīla, was originally from Sri Lanka.161 Kadri was at the western extremity of a Buddhist maritime world whose hub was Sri Lanka and which extended to southeast Asia. The possibility of Nāth influence on the mixed Śaiva-Buddhist traditions of Java and Bali is hinted at by the presence of an image of Matsyendra on a statue of Cāmuṇḍī in Java dated 1292.162 The links between Kadri and the Tamil sphere of influence point to Kadri being supported by the Coḷā empire, which would have been connected to Mangalore by sea and land: the most important centres of Buddhism in the Coḷā empire were the ports of Kanchi and Nagapattinam, and its territory reached near Mangalore until its demise in the 14th century. Like Kundavarman, who established the Lokeśvara image at Kadri, certain Coḷā rulers such as Rājarāja I (pp. 985–1014 ce) were Śaivas who also patronised Buddhism.163 The Kadri vihāra may thus have benefited from Coḷā patronage as well as that of its local overlords. When these sources of support dried up, either as the result of increasingly exclusive patronage of Śaivism by both the Āḷupa164 and Coḷā kings or the demise of the Coḷā empire, the Kadri Buddhist tradition was left isolated and unsupported.

Padmanabh Jaini, analysing the very different historical outcomes for Buddhism and Jainism in India and citing the example of Kadri, argues convincingly that Hinduism was able to assimilate Buddhism — and not Jainism — because the Bodhisattvas that were central to Buddhist devotional cults could be reconfigured as Śaiva deities and siddhas.165 The Vajrayāna cult at Kadri had the Bodhisattva Mañjuvajra as its central deity, hence Jñānapāda’s writing a sādhana of him there in the ninth century and the name of the temple being Mañjunātha, an alternative for Mañjuvajra. But then the Śaiva king Kundavarman established an image of the Bodhisattva Lokeśvara in the temple. Lokeśvara’s iconography is closely related to that of Śiva — with whom he shares a dual role as ruler and ascetic yogi166 — and thus also to that of Matsyendra, who subsequently became the central object of worship at the Kadri monastery. Legend has it that Matsyendra used the yogic technique of parakāyapraveśa, entry into another’s body, to revive the dead king of Kadri; historical sources indicate that Kundavarman’s act of inclusive benevolence at Kadri paved the way for a moribund tantric Buddhism to use the same technique to achieve the yogic aim of kālavañcana, cheating death, by entering both the iconic body of Matsyendra and the corpus of teachings attributed to his putative disciple Gorakṣa.