Alexis Sanderson is a prominent scholar known for his groundbreaking contributions to the study of Indian and Tibetan religions, particularly the Shaiva tradition. Born in 1948, he specialized in the field of Sanskrit literature and religious texts, focusing on the history, philosophy, and ritual practices of Shaivism.
Sanderson’s work is characterized by meticulous research, linguistic expertise, and an interdisciplinary approach that combines textual analysis, historical investigation, and comparative studies. He has made significant contributions to our understanding of Shaiva traditions through his translations, interpretations, and critical editions of ancient texts.
One of Sanderson’s notable achievements is his research on the Shaiva rituals known as the “Kaula” or “Kula” practices. His work shed light on the esoteric aspects of Shaivism, exploring the complex rituals, symbolisms, and doctrinal foundations of these traditions. Sanderson’s meticulous analysis of primary sources and his ability to unravel the intricacies of the Kaula practices have been influential in shaping our understanding of these ancient traditions.
Sanderson’s scholarship also extends to other areas, such as the study of Tibetan Buddhism and the relationship between Indian and Tibetan religious traditions. He has delved into the historical and philosophical connections between these traditions, examining the transmission of ideas and practices across different cultural contexts.
Sanderson has shown through meticulous scholarship that Buddhist tantric traditions were extensively influenced by Saiva tantric traditions. In October 2014 he gave the following presentation at SOAS in London, The Creation and Revision of the Buddhist Yoginitantra Herukabhidhana:
“The scripture Herukābhidhāna, also known as the Laghuśaṃvara, Cakraśamvara, or Cakrasaṃvara, was considered to be the core Yoginītantra at the heart of the extensive cycle of revelations structured around the propitiation of various forms of the Heruka known as Śaṃvara or Cakrasaṃvara and the goddess Vajravārāhī or Vajrayoginī. I shall show how this seminal Buddhist Tantra was put together, probably during the ninth century and certainly in eastern India, from diverse scriptural sources, both Śākta-Śaiva and Buddhist Tantric, by a process of montage or bricolage in which there is little trace of sustained authorship on the part of the creator or rather creators of the final product. I shall show that the text has been transmitted in two redactions, the later and longer distinguished by a chapter added at the end, and I shall argue that the purpose of this addition was to add explicitly Buddhist content to a composition that conspicuously lacks it….”
Tibetan Buddhist scholar/practitioner Robert Mayer wrote in his paper, The Figure of Mahesvara/Rudra in the rNin-ma-pa Tantric Tradition:
“Most academic scholars of Buddhist Tantra should by now be reasonably familiar with Alexis Sanderson’s work on the dependence of the Buddhist Yoginitantras on Saiva scriptural sources – all the more so now that increasing quantities of this material is beginning to filter down from the somewhat hermetic confines of the academic research seminar, and into the bibliographical bases of such popular and best-selling works as Gavin Flood’s widely praised Introduction to Hinduism, and Miranda Shaw’s more controversial Passionate Enlightenment. Sanderson’s work I am referring to includes his published paper “Vajrayana: Origin and Function”, as well as a number of unpublished (yet nevertheless quite well-known and widely-circulated) seminar papers and public lectures given over the years at various universities and institutes. For specialists in Tantric Buddhism, the most significant result of Sanderson’s work has been to seriously call into question the previously dominant view accepted by a majority of Buddhological scholars, who had suggested that any such observable parallels between the specifically kapalika or ‘cemetery’ strands within the Buddhist Vajrayana and a number of very similar Saiva systems, were primarily the result of both traditions arising from a common Indie cultural substrate. While Martin Kalff since the 1970’s and David Snellgrove since the mid-1980″s had already begun to question the validity of this unsatisfactorily vague position on the grounds of common sense and more generalised observation, it was only with the presentation of Sanderson’s minutely detailed and substantially documented philological analysis that we have finally been able to conclude with a reasonable degree of certainty that such similarities are much better explained as a result of direct Buddhist borrowings from the Saiva sources.
In his papers, lectures and seminars, Sanderson has analysed and discussed the phenomena of such Vajrayana dependence on Saivism from a number of different perspectives and has used a number of different types of primary sources. Firstly, he has presented detailed philological evidence showing the movement of substantial passages of text from specific Saiva scriptural sources into specific Buddhist Herukatantras. Secondly, he has shown how many of the general categories of the Buddhist Vajrayana appear to be caiques on Saiva prototypes. Thirdly, Sanderson has cited passages of Saiva mythology, which have provided an additional and valuable source of information for the relation of these two Tantric traditions. In particular, Sanderson has shown how the Saiva myths agree in most instances with the Buddhist ones already analysed by Tibetanists that the predominant direction of the borrowings were from Saivism into Buddhism, even though the two traditions might offer quite different interpretations of the religious significance of this fact.”
Here is the complete text of Alexis Sanderson’s published paper “Vajrayana: Origin and Function:”
Tantric Deception 