Connections of Nepal to Buddhism go back to the time of the birth of the Buddha in Luṁbinī, then in the aristocratic republic in North India ruled by the Śākya clan, but now in South Nepal and called Rummindeī. The territory of the Buddha's preaching activities in the Gangetic basin is separated from Nepal proper, centred around Kathmandu valley, by Himalayan mountains which slowed down the spreading of Buddhism into Nepal, but it was established there by the time the Emperor Aśoka paid a visit to Luṁbinī (249 ce) and commemorated it by erecting an inscribed stone column. He is said to have come also to Kathmandu and initiated the building of four stūpas in the outskirts of Patan, still preserved, and possibly also of Bodhnāth (while Svayaṁbhunāth is believed to be much older, with a pre-Buddhist layer). In Nigalisagar he enlarged a stūpa for the previous Buddha Konākamana and commemorated it by an inscription (255 ce). A local rāja, Devapāla, won his daughter Carumatī for wife; her name still lives in connection with a stūpa and a monastery in Cabahil. Buddhism received a further boost when a branch of the Licchavi clan from Vaiśālī founded a dynasty in Nepal which was recognised by Indian Guptas when either Candra Gupta I (320–335 ce) or II. (380–413 ce) married a Licchavi princess. From this time stem many small stūpas with reliefs in Gupta style in several locations in Nepal. (Bigger monuments were in subsequent centuries enlarged: around 460 ce the ancient Svayam.bhunāth, and when it was destroyed by the Muslim invasion in 1336 or 1346, it was completely rebuilt in the mid-seventeenth century; Bodhnāth was embellished several times.)

Originally the prevailing type of Buddhism in Nepal was Sthaviravāda, but sectarian Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna developments kept arriving from India with little delay. However, Brahminic influence soon made itself felt, too, both among the people and at the court where Brahminic ceremonies were always held and the consecration ritual of the king was carried out by Brahmins even if the king was leaning towards Buddhism. But the Chinese pilgrims Xuanzang (Hsüan-tsang, 643 ce) and Yijing (I-ching, around 680 ce) describe monasteries with thousands of monks. At that time King Aṁśavarman Thākuri, who won the throne by marrying the daughter of the last Liččhavi king Vāsudeva, Bhṛku⃛ī – Tib. Thri-tsun, (Khri-btsun) – to the powerful Tibetan King Songtsan Gampo (Srong-brtsan sGam-po, 627–650). She is credited, together with her Chinese co-wife, with converting the king to Buddhism (and is still revered both in Nepal and Tibet as the incarnation of the Green Tārā). This was the beginning of Tibetan Vajrayāna influence on Nepalese Buddhism.

Nepal also had close contact with Bengal ruled by the Pāla dynasty (770–942). From there came strong Hindu influence which also infiltrated Buddhist institutions. For a time the Sanskrit Buddhist tradition was enhanced by the influx of monks who managed to escape the wholesale slaughter by Islamic conquerors of Northern India in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; the monks carried with them books of all three schools. However, soon they were followed by scores of Brahmins and aristocratic clans as the bloody Islamisation of Northern India progressed. Nepalese Buddhism was thus influenced also by Buddhist/Hindu Tantric teachings from India. Politically Nepal became fragmented at the time because of the rivalry of local rājas and on top of that it received a further blow in the form of a devastating invasion by the Bengal Sultan Shams-ud-din Ilyās (1336 or 1346). The furor islamicus manifested itself in destroying hundreds of temples, slaughtering thousands of monks and Brahmins and abducting a large proportion of inhabitants into slavery, besides carrying away an enormous booty. The country was consolidated by the rāja Jayasthiti from Bhadgaon who founded the Malla dynasty (1376) which lasted 400 years, although the country was often divided between members of the clan. According to its tradition the Malla clan came from South India and brought with it the cult of the virgin goddess Kanyā Kumārī (still venerated in the temple at Cape Comorin) under the name Taleju, which was the beginning of the phenomenon of the ‘living goddess’ still in existence in Kathmandu. This further strengthened the Hindu tradition in Nepal. Surviving Buddhist monasteries still cherished some rescued Sanskrit manuscripts from India, but the mixing of Indian Vajrayāna Buddhism, Tibetan Lamaism and Hindu Tantrism resulted in the transformation of some monasteries into mixed Tantric communities and in the decline of spiritual practices. Monks often married nuns and formed a hereditary priestly caste, hardly distinguishable from the Hindu Brahminic caste, and a number of monasteries became hereditary feudal estates.

This is the point at which the book under review comes in. In his Introduction (listed as Chapter 1) the author says that “by the 15th century it was clear that preservation of the textual tradition would not suffice to maintain the vitality and authority of Sanskrit Buddhism in Nepal”. To uphold it, new texts began to be produced, often modelled on older texts, but with emphasis on story-telling which was popular among Nepalese Buddhists, so the new texts tended to be “revised versions . . . of didactic and inspirational stories about the adventures of great Bodhisattvas and the efforts of the Buddhas in their previous lives”. One such text is Guṇakāraṇḍavyūha (GKV) based on the older Indian Tantric text Kāraṇḍavyūha. It is about interventions of Avalokiteśvara to set on the Buddhist path individual beings needing rescue from misery in all six realms of existence so that they can be reborn in the Sukhāvatī paradise and eventually attain enlightenment. The author then provides the text's brief history, with a summary of the contents and analysis of the text from different angles, including grammatical and methodological ones.

In Chapter 2, ‘Form, genre and dating’, the author places GKV into the context of Newar Buddhist Sanskrit literature of the so-called Garland (malla) genre, “a set of massive compilations of didactic stories associated with the performance of lay vows”. To define the characteristic features of this genre the author surveys four further Garland texts: several versions of the Svayaṁbhū Purāṇa, Mahajjātakamālā, Bhadrakalpāvadāna and Ratnamālāvadāna. In pointing out the existence of other genres of Newar Buddhist Sanskrit literature, he discusses the confusion which still exists in sorting out texts according to genre and in understanding their interrelatedness. Dating remains vague, but the author places the Garland texts to roughly 1400–1480. Chapter 3, ‘Authority and Insecurity’ is prompted by the apparent desire of the compilers of Guṇakāraṇḍavyūha to validate it as canonical by presenting it as the extension of Kāraṇḍavyūha, which stems from the fourth or fifth century, and claiming lineage authority from early historical personages, by showing the past Buddha Viśvabhū as predicting its composition and by citing the revered Indian text Bodhicaryāvatāra. Also discussed are general problems of the authentication of Sanskrit texts composed in Nepal which was for centuries the destination of scholars and pilgrims from Kaśmīr, Tibet and other Himalayan states seeking transmission of Vajrayāna lineages and eager to study Sanskrit canonical text. This is put into historical context by Chapter 4, ‘Historical Considerations’. Loss of patronage for Buddhism (in addition to its declining spirituality) under the Malla dynasty meant a loss of its prestige at home and abroad, and that was what prompted the fifteenth-century renaissance manifesting itself in the production of Garland and other types of texts, presenting themselves as canonical; thus came about the ‘re-invention’ of Nepalese Buddhism.

Chapter 5, ‘Amoghapāśa and the Po⋅adha vrata’, is concerned with the elucidation of two central purposes of Guṇakāraṇḍavyūha, namely the promotion of Po⋅adha vrata, a lay ritual of taking up eight precepts, and the role in it of Amoghapāśa, a relatively early Tantric form of Avalokiteśvara, known from sculptures and images depicted on paubhas, Nepalese scrolls akin to Tibetan thangkas. The ritual of Po⋅adha vrata used to be performed by kings who patronised Buddhism for the benefit of the nation. The Garland texts try to encourage the king's participation in the ritual again, presumably with little or no success, until perhaps the seventeenth-century when King Śrīnivās Malla had a window made in his palace which depicted him as Avalokiteśvara. Chapter 6, ‘Conclusion’, summarises the issues. The author does not seem to accept the tentative conclusions from semi-legendary sources about the arrival of Buddhism and its subsequent developments in Nepal, as described above, and refers to the pre-1200 period as ‘Nepalese tradition within Indic Buddhism’. The burst of literary production of dozens of new Sanskrit texts after 1400 marked the beginning of what he calls Newari Buddhism; but “after the Garland texts”, which “anchor historical research”, he maintains, “we must speak of Nepalese Buddhism”. (I am not quite clear about the appropriate application of the terms for these three stages of Buddhism in Nepal.)

The fifteenth century was the time of the decline of Sanskrit Buddhism generally; the Nepalese in fact wrote the last Buddhist works in Sanskrit, which were assumed by western and Japanese scholars, even in the twentieth century, to be Indian texts. (Elsewhere, like in Tibet, China and Korea, new works were written in national languages, even if some adopted a style trying to indicate that they were translations from Sanskrit and came from India, but that was usually easily recognised.) The new approach marks the inception of a new field of comparative Himalayan studies of Buddhism in which the relevance of Nepalese material is undeniable.

This book is a scholarly research work, in some way even pioneering, which addresses mainly specialists and is in some aspects open to discussion or controversy. Substantial chunks of the book are of interest to religionists and historians and interpreters of Buddhism and even educated readers of Buddhist literature among the general public, but the style of writing and lack of explanations of some terms and names current to specialists may on first perusal put them off from deeper study. On the technical side there is scope for minor improvements. The Index is not comprehensive enough which goes also for the list of abbreviations (which is not entirely alphabetical). The Bibliography would benefit from putting surnames of authors first. Some restructuring of the text, which would include incorporating some materials from notes into the main text, might also improve the readability of the book, should it ever come to its reprint. On the whole it is a valuable contribution to Buddhist scholarship.