A KEY FIGURE IN THE 8TH-CENTURY transmission of Buddhism between the Sanskritic and Sinic worlds is a monk known by his Chinese name Bianhong (perhaps a.k.a Ājñāgarbha). To date, Bianhong's life and work have been known primarily from one account circulated in Japan by his more famous fellow student Kūkai. Here Bianhong's career will be examined in the light of the sole work attributed to him: the Ritual Manual for Initiation into the Great Maṇḍala of the Uṣṇīṣa-Cakravartin(Taishō Tripiṭaka 959), hereafter the Manual. Although Bianhong is often discussed in connection with the spread of Buddhism in his Javanese homeland, his Manual has been entirely overlooked to date. No other individual from Java is known to have travelled to the Tang and written in Chinese, but it will be argued here that the author of the Manual was indeed a foreign member of China's most prestigious lineage of Esoteric Buddhism. The Manual 's protocols were however determined not only by the twin–maṇḍalasystem of the Tang masters, but also the more obscure and archaic system of the Uṣṇīṣa kalpas. It was the Uṣṇīṣakalpas that offered the most compelling rituals for the coronation (abhiṣeka) of a universal emperor, a cakravartin —a process that interested many Buddhist cognoscenti in South, East, and Southeast Asia at the time. To facilitate the discussion of these rituals, a preliminary Chinese edition and annotated translation of the Manual is also presented for the first time here.

Bianhong emerges into history in the wake of the first transmissions of soteriology-oriented Tantric Buddhism to Tang China. The novelty of this form of Buddhism lay in the fact that it was transmitted from guru to disciple through initiation, and in its ability to harness the power of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas through mantras and yogic meditation. It had an exclusive character suited to talented monks and adventurous laypersons—especially those in the ruling elite, up to the level of the head of state, for whom the rituals of initiation (abhiṣeka) could be performed with full effect as a coronation (rājyābhiṣeka).