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The origins of Vajrapi are, like most other complex figures in the history of Hindu polytheism, multiformed and ambiguous. After a thorough examination of all of the relavent materials prior to thte eight century, two main themes emerge.
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A careful examination
of the materials has revealed that there is no clear manner in which
we can affirm one hypothesis while rejecting the other.
The bottom-up and top-down models of cultural exchange and assimilation are both equally useless in the case of Vajrap€Ši. |
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It would have been easy to give
a stock history of Vajrapi chronicling his rise from a Yaka,
to the complexification of his character by Indra mythology and
Indo-European Warrior Ideology, to then show how this is complexified
by the bodhisattva ideal, and finally to show how Vajrapi progressively
extricates himself from his position as an acolyte and rises to
fame with the growing popularity of Vajrayna. |
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The performance thatfollows, though significantly more complex and confusing, is more accurate. It is more honest to the paucity of materials. As a result, the performance that follows assumes a dual structure. There are basically two arguments that are reconciled in the form of the performance and the concluding remarks. I will develop both theses in parallel, yet quite independent lines. The reader can choose to read either argument seperately or both together. These divergent lines of argumentation will however, coalesce in a final argument, written not from the position of origins, but development, but these conclusions are best left for later...
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