Kimiaki Tanaka's book An Illustrated History of the Maṇḍala: From Its Genesis to the Kālacakratantra represents a milestone in research about the development of the Buddhist mandala, made available with this publication in English eight years after the Japanese version (289). What distinguishes this book from other studies on the topic available so far is its approach, the breadth of the sources used—covering multiple languages from South Asia to Japan—and its methodology. Concerning the latter, the author states that he aims “to elucidate the historical development of esoteric Buddhism and the maṇḍala, paying particular attention to proper names, mudrās and mantras” (11). More precisely, the author uses proper names of deities, their gestures or symbols (mudrā), their speech forms (mantra), and the doctrinal categories associated with them to establish connections between textual sources and to draw conclusions from these on the interrelations between texts. He then...

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