On Vāgīśvarakīrti’s Influence in Kashmir and among the Khmer

Abstract

The aim of this article is to point out the far-reaching influence of an East Indian tantric Buddhist scholar, Vāgīśvarakīrti ( floruit early 11th c.). In the first part I will show that his views were considered important enough to be contested sometime before 1057ce, probably still during his scholarly activity, in Kashmir. In the second part I wish to propose the hypothesis that although unnamed, he is amaster alluded towith great reverence on the SapBāk inscription from the Khmer Empire, dated 1067ce.* “Our” Vāgīśvarakīrti should not be confused with his namesake, a Newar scholar from Pharping, whence his epithet Pham mthiṅ ba (for what we can gather about this person, see Lo Bue 1997, 643–652). Nor should we confuse him with a rather nebulous person, whose name is re-Sanskritised as *Suvāgīśvarakīrti, author of a number of small works extant in Tibetan translation. Lastly, there is no good reason to assume that he is the same as a commentator of Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarśa; this person’s name is often re-Sanskritised from the Tibetan as *Vāgīśvara, but it is more likely that his name was Vācaspati or Vāgīśa. The writings of Vāgīśvarakīrti are fairly well known to scholars of esoteric Buddhism. A significant portion of his oeuvre survives in the original Sanskrit.