Cakrasaṃvara Tantra
[1][page needed][2] The full title in the Sanskrit manuscript used by Gray's translation is: Great King of Yoginī Tantras called the Śrī Cakrasaṃvara (Śrīcakrasaṃvara-nāma-mahayoginī-tantra-rāja).
Tsunehiko Sugiki writes that this "Cakrasaṃvara cycle", "is one of the largest collections of Buddhist Yoginītantra literature from the early medieval South Asian world.
"[6] The British Indologist Alexis Sanderson has also written about how the Cakrasaṃvara literature appropriated numerous elements from the Shaiva Vidyapitha tantras, including whole textual passages.
Instead, they seem to have developed among and/or been influenced by liminal groups of renunciant yogins and yoginis, who collectively constituted what might be called the "siddha movement."
... who chose a deliberately transgressive lifestyle, drawing their garb and, in part, sustenance from the liminal space of the charnel ground that was the privileged locus for their meditative and ritual activities.
[9] The Cakrasaṃvara commentators consider the tantra to be a timeless divine revelation of either the Dharmakāya Buddha Mahāvajradhara or of the goddess Vajravārāhī.
[11] In the tantra it appears in various compounds, such as "the binding of the dakini net" (ḍākinījālasamvara), which is associated with the term "union with Śrī Heruka."
[13] Asko Parpola has argued that Samvara and other similar deities which are associated with the power of illusion (maya) are remnants of pre-Aryan cults.
Heruka also appears as a charnel ground deity which is said to be "the guise assumed by the Buddha Vajradhara in his effort to subdue evil doers," in the Samayoga Tantra.
In it, Vajrapāṇi forces Mahadeva, i.e. Shiva (along with a host of deities) to appear in Akanishtha ( Highest Realm of Rūpadhātu lokas), whereupon he is annihilated when he refuses to turn from his evil ways.
Then Vajrapāṇi revives Mahadeva with his mantric power, and Shiva then becomes a Buddha in the Future, known as "Bhasmeśvara", included in Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra.
47-48 Then the myth also tells of how Vajradhara Buddha created body known as Śrī Heruka in order to subdue Bhairava and Kalaratri who had taken over the world with their hateful and lustful ways.
[19] Samvara is typically depicted with a blue-coloured body, four faces, and twelve arms, and embracing his consort, the wisdom dakini Vajravārāhī (a.k.a.
He stands in the archer (alidha) stance on Bhairava and Kalaratri who lie on a solar disk atop the pericarp of the lotus.
He has a row of five skulls above his forehead, and a crest of black dreadlocks topped by a left-oriented crescent moon and a double vajra.
[20]As Gray writes, the tantra's cryptic and obscure chapters mostly focus on "the description of rites such as the production of the mandala, the consecration ceremonies performed within it, as well as various other ritual actions such as homa fire sacrifices, enchantment with mantras, and so forth.
[22] Most of these texts show no internal evidence they consider themselves as subsidiary to the root Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, and it is likely they were grouped into this category by the later tradition.
