One of the strong points of Ruegg's argument for a 'pan-Indian religious substratum' as a common source for the emergence of similar forms of religious praxis among tantric traditions is his identification of specifically non-sectarian literary traditions that were themselves identified as 'common' to all religious systems, at least by Buddhists, such as the first four of the five sciences. Ruegg's clarification that his 'substratum' is in no way external to the traditions in which it plays some role is also helpful. Yet there are some problems with both arguments. First, the initial four pañcavidyāsthānas are considered to be held 'in
common' because Buddhists regard them as containing no religious content that might cause them to be identified with any specific religious sect. Ruegg is, after all, arguing for a pan-Indian religious substratum. His example of the sciences of grammar, logic, medicine, and the arts are, by the very definition given by the Buddhist architects of this system, not religious. Of course in the hands of Buddhist artists, the curriculum for disciplines such as the 'science the arts' or śilpakarmasthānavidyā may take on religious aspects when they provide schemata for drawing Buddhist deities, creating Buddhist statuary, and providing directions for the construction of Buddhist architecture, but the category of śīlpa has a strong literary presence across traditions, each of which will have its own approach to the 'arts,' usually found in the textual genre of śīlpaśāstra to contain instructions and guidelines for the construction and creation of religious objects pertaining to a particular sect.
Certain works within the 'common' sciences take on distinct sectarian identities by being identified as the revelation of a particular deity. Ruegg points out a relevant example in Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī. The Tibetan translation of this text preserved in the Bstan 'gyur and in
the works of Butön (Bu ston rin chen grub, 1290–1364) and Tāranātha (Jo nang rje btsun tā ra nā tha, 1575–1634) consider the text to have been revealed by the Bodhisattva
Avalokiteśvara, while the inherited Brahmanical textual tradition attributes its revelation to Śiva.25 Ruegg, following Deshpande, appeals to the argument of Avalokiteśvara or
Padmapāṇi as "the Buddhist reflex of Śiva."26 But once a specific religious identity can be located in a work belonging to the 'common' sciences, the argument that these works provide evidence of a pan-Indic substratum inevitably begins to weaken. While the evidence for localized traditions that recognized the same deity as both Maheśvara and Avalokiteśvara provides a clear example of a hybridized sectarian identity, the possibility that such a cult is behind Buddhists and Śaiva claims to their own deity's role in the revelation of Pāṇini's grammar does not actually remove sectarian identity from the equation—it merely introduces the possibility of a dual or hybrid Buddhist-Śaiva sectarian identity. Such hybrid identities, which are extremely common throughout South Asia, actually strengthen the argument against the existence of a non-affiliated pan-Indic religious substratum because they rest on the implicit assumption that two distinct religious sects have laid claim to the same deity. In short, hybridity does not necessarily imply commonality.27 Perhaps more importantly, aside from competing claims among Buddhists and Śaivas as to which deity inspired Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyi, his grammar is further evidence that the four divisions of the pañcavidyāsthāna that are considered to be 'common' are classified in this way because they lack any religious content.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
25!Ruegg,!The(Symbiosis(of(Buddhism(with(Brahmanism/Hinduism,!12.!On!this!topic!see!Madhav!M.!
Deshpande,!"Who!Inspired!Pāṇini?!Reconstructing!the!Hindu!and!Buddhist!CountermClaims,"!JOAS!117!
(1997):!444–65.!
26!Ibid.,!12.!
27!It!does,!however,!offer!some!basis!from!which!to!critique!the!overly!reified!sense!of!sectarian!identity!
that!appears!to!be!at!work!in!Sanderson's!'borrowing!model.'!This!topic!is!taken!up!in!chapter!five.!
The classical medical sciences, however, do contain elements that constitute a non-sectarian and extremely widespread cultural substratum that, by some definitions, might rightfully be termed 'religious.' These elements are found in the Āyurvedic literature on demonology (bhūtavidyā),28 a subfield of medicine whose expansion appears to have coincided with the tantric cults' rise to prominence throughout the first half of the first millennium CE. The relationship between the scholastic discourse on demonology or
bhūtavidyā and the initiatory cults commonly referred to as 'tantra' is best exemplified in the emergence of the literary genre of bhūtatantra. The bhūtatantras are recognized as a
distinctly Śaiva literary development, but there were certainly Buddhist works like the Mahāmāyurīvidyārājñīsūtra containing taxonomies and prescriptions for addressing and manipulating the world of spirit deities.29 It would be careless to assume that the discursive culture of knowledge regarding the world of spirit beings that the Āyurvedic science of bhūtavidyā, the Buddhist dhāraṇī literature, and the bhūtatantra have in common is
exclusively Śaiva. Ruegg's argument that the vidyāsthānas provide evidence of a 'pan-Indian
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
religious substratum' is correct in this case, but the evidence that Ruegg provides fails to locate a specifically religious substratum among the five sciences because it neither addresses the topic of bhūtavidyā nor acknowledges the discourse that demonology shares with popular religious spirit deity cults across South Asia. The Āyurvedic discourse on demonology actually does provide evidence for the existence of a 'pan-Indian religious substratum,' and this substratum is particularly (though not exclusively) important to the shared ritual and ascetic cultures of Śaiva and Buddhist tantric literature. Ruegg's failure to acknowledge this example, which would provide ample response to Sanderson's critique, is likely a result of a long-standing bias within the modern European scholastic tradition he has inherited toward a categorical distinction between 'magic' and 'religion.'