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This paper is a continuation of an earlier study published by the current author dedicated to the virtually unexplored tantric Buddhist scholar of the phyi dar period, *Jñānākara (11th century), through the textual analysis of his masterpiece, the Introduction to the [Path of] Mantra (Skt. *Mantrāvatāra), now available only in the Tibetan translation as Gsang sngags ‘jug pa. In the previous paper, I have discussed the broader historical framework of the eleventh-century Indo-Tibetan world and *Jñānākara’s role in establishing, what I called, the “orthodoxy of tantric practice”. I have also provided a critical edition of the root text, the *Mantrāvatāra, accompanied by an English translation. While the previous study focused mainly on the debatable and highly controversial issue of tantric sexual initiations adopted by the monastics and hermeneutical tools employed by *Jñānākara to refute the literal interpretation of tantric scriptures, the current paper will concentrate on the exposition of tantric practice understood as the accumulation of causes and conditions (hetu-pratyaya) leading to the status of the siddha. This paper will trace tantric and non-tantric elements in *Jñānākara’s construction of the Buddhist siddha that integrated the kāya doctrine of the Yogācāra. My analysis will be based on *Jñānākara’s auto-commentary to his root text, the Commentary to the Introduction to the [Path of] Mantra (Skt. *Mantrāvatāravṛtti, Tib. Gsang sngags ‘jug pa ‘grel pa) which has not received any scholarly attention so far. Special attention will be paid to the intertextual dimension of his discourse that integrates the Mahāyāna models of the bodhisattva path. Full article

Mahāmudrā—an Indo-Tibetan phenomenon of Buddhist spirituality—constitutes in its systematic presentation a path that maps out the mystical quest for direct experience of ultimate reality. Despite the post-15^th century bKa’-brgyud attempts at a codified Mahāmudrā genealogy, the early Tibetan sources speak little with regards to how the different Indian Mahāmudrā threads made their way over the Himalayas. To fill this gap, the article investigates, via philological and historical approaches, the lineage accounts in the 12^th-century Xixia Mahāmudrā materials against the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist landscape. Three transmission lines are detected. Among them, two lines are attested by later Tibetan historiographical accounts about Mahāmudrā, and thus belong to an Indo-Tibetan continuum of the constructed Buddhist yogic past based upon historical realities—at least as understood by Tibetans of the time. The third one is more of a collage patching together different claims to spiritual legacy and religious authority—be they historically based or introspectively projected. Not only does the Mahāmudrā topography, jointly fueled by these three transmissions, reveal the Xixia recognition and imagination of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist legacies, it also captures the complexities of the multi-faceted picture of Mahāmudrā on its way over the Himalayas during the 11^th/12^th century. Full article