Ruthless Compassion

Despite an enormous amount of illustrious study, little is known about the history of esoteric Buddhism in India. In order to establish the chronological order of their iconographic themes, the author collects hundreds of works of art and performs formal and stylistic analyses of them. The majority of the artifacts in this collection are sculptures that were found in eastern India, Europe, and America between the sixth and the thirteenth century. Collectively, the group offers a historical account of the development of esoteric Buddhist thought and practice that supports and frequently contradicts the findings of solely textual histories.