other supernatural beings. Still we are not here breathing the
atmosphere of the Pitakas. The object is not to share Brahma's heaven
but to become temporarily identified with a deity, and this is not a
byway of religion but the high road.

But there is a further stage of degradation. I have already mentioned
that various Bodhisattvas are represented as accompanied by a female
deity, particularly Avalokita by Tara. The mythological and
metaphysical ideas which have grown up round Siva and Durga also
attached themselves to these couples. The Buddha or Bodhisattva is
represented as enjoying nirvana because he is united to his spouse,
and to the three bodies already enumerated is added a fourth, the body
of perfect bliss.[301] Sometimes this idea merely leads to further
developments of the practices described above. Thus the devotee may
imagine that he enters into Tara as an embryo and is born of her as a
Buddha.[302] More often the argument is that since the bliss of the
Buddha consists in union with Tara, nirvana can be obtained by sexual
union here, and we find many of the tantric wizards represented as
accompanied by female companions. The adept should avoid all action
but he is beyond good and evil and the dangerous doctrine that he can
do evil with impunity, which the more respectable sects repudiate, is
expressly taught. The sage is not defiled by passion but conquers
passion by passion: he should commit every infamy: he should rob, lie
and kill Buddhas.[303] These crazy precepts are probably little more
than a speculative application to the moral sphere of the doctrine
that all things are non-existent and hence equivalent. But though
tantrists did not go about robbing and murdering so freely as their
principles allowed, there is some evidence that in the period of
decadence the morality of the Bhikshus had fallen into great
discredit. Thus in the allegorical Vishnuite drama called
Prabodhacandrodaya and written at Kalanjar near the end of the
eleventh century Buddhists and Jains are represented as succumbing to
the temptations of inebriety and voluptuousness.

It is necessary to mention this phase of decadence but no good purpose
would be served by dwelling further on the absurd and often disgusting
prescriptions of such works as the Tathagata-guhyaka. If the European
reader is inclined to condemn unreservedly a religion which even in
decrepitude could find place for such monstrosities, he should
remember that th