Preface; List of Maps, Figures, and Tables; Pronunciation Guide; Introduction; Pakpa and the Mongol Endgame; Historical Agents in the Renaissance; The Sakya Paradigm and the Present Work; Renaissance as a Trope; 1 Early Medieval India and the Esoteric Rhapsody; Sociopolitical India in the Medieval Period; The Buddhist Experience and Institutional Esoteric Buddhism; The Perfected: Siddhas and the Margins of Society; Tantric Literature and Ritual; Naropa the Legend: The Great Pandita Goes Native; Virupa's Hagiography: Mr. Ugly Comes to Town; Hagiography, Lineage, and Transmission.
Conclusion: Emerging Indian Rituals2 The Demise of Dynasty and a Poorly Lit Path; Good Intentions at the End of the Empire; Fragmentation: Flight in the Dark, Light in the Tombs; Religion on an Uneven Path; Clans in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries; Conclusion: A Change of Fortune in Tibet; 3 Renaissance and Reformation: The Eastern Vinaya Monks; In Pursuit of Virtue in the Northeast; To Central Tibet on a Mission from Buddha; Conflict on the Roof of the World; West Tibet and the Kadampa Connection; History as the Victory of Great Ideas and Good Organization.
Conclusion: A Tradition Under the Imperial Shadow4 Translators as the New Aristocracy; Mantrins and Motivation for New Translations; Trans-Himalayan Coronation; The Curious Career of Ralo Dorjé-drak; Tantric Action in Practice; The Mysterious Master Marpa; Gray Texts, New Translation Apocrypha, and Zhama Chökyi Gyelpo; The Invention of Neoconservative Orthodoxy; The Cult and Culture of Knowledge; Conclusion: The Translator as Prometheus; 5 Drokmi: The Doyen of Central Tibetan Translators; The Nomadic Translator; Drokmi in India; An Eventual Return to Tibet.
The Indian Contingent: Gayadhara and the Other PanditasDrokmi's Work and the Origin of the Root Text of the *Margaphala; The Contents of the Root Text of the *Margaphala; The Eight Subsidiary Cycles of Practice; Drokmi's Other Translations; Conclusion: Fallible Characters with Literary Genius; 6 Treasure Texts, the Imperial Legacy, and the Great Perfection; Buried Treasures Amid the Rubble of Empire; Guarded by Spirits: The Hidden Imperial Person; Terma in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries; Give Me That Old-Time Religion; The Alternative Cult of Knowledge: Rig-pa.
Conclusion: The Absent Imperium as an Eternal Treasure7 The Late Eleventh Century: From Esoteric Lineages to Clan Temples; The Little Black Acarya: Padampa and His Zhiché; Popular Expressions and a Zeal to Spread the Message; The Late-Eleventh-Century Intellectual Efflorescence; Drokmi's Legacy and the Next Generation; The Khön Clan Mythology and Sakya Beginnings as a Clan Temple; Conclusion: New Beginnings in the Wake of the Translators; 8 The Early Twelfth Century: A Confident Tibetan Buddhism; The Kadampa Intellectual Community; The Kalacakra Comes of Age.
