Tibet
In this country, the stronghold of Buddhism, all superstition circles around the national religion, which at the same time has absorbed into itself the aboriginal beliefs and demonology. Nowhere perhaps has such a vast amount of pure superstition crystallised around the kernel of Buddhism, the pure doctrines of which were found by the Hindu conquerors of the Tibetans to be totally unsuited to the Hunnish aborigines of the country, who before the advent of Buddhism were in the aministic stage of religion. This was allowed to revive and rites and ceremonies, charms and incantations, of the very nature which Buddha had so strongly condemned, clustered quickly around his philosophy in Tibet. From this sprang the tantra system, which is almost a purely magical one. It was founded by Asanga, a monk of Peshawar, who composed its gospel, the Yogachchara Bhumi Sastra in the sixth century A.D.
Basing his pantheon upon the debased system of Buddhism then prevalent, Asanga reconciled it to native requirements by placing a number of Saivite devil-gods and goddesses in the lower Buddhistic heavens. These he made subservient to the Buddha. His religion was speedily adopted by the barbarian tribes of Tibet, who sacrificed readily to the deities of this new religion. Very naturally they exaggerated the magical side of it, their main object being to obtain supernatural power by means of spoken spells and words of power. A very considerable literature sprang up in connection with the new faith, which has been scathingly commented upon by disciples of the purer Buddhism as being nothing more or less than mere barbarian sorcery. Of course the monkish class of lamas found it impossible altogether to ignore the tantra system, but Tsongkapa in the middle of the fourteenth century unhesitatingly condemned the whole system. The lamas had and have an esoteric form of Buddhism, which has but little in common with the tantra system of the people, but we find them at festivals and so on unbending so far as to represent the various devils and fiends of this faith. As literature, the tantras may be considered as a later development of the puranas, but they are without any poetic value. They are regarded as gospels by the Saktas, or worshippers of Kali, Durga or Purvati the wife of Siva, or some other creative agency. They abound in magical performances and mystic rites-a great many of which are of a quite unspeakable character. They usually take the form of a dialogue between Siva and his wife. There were originally sixty-four tantras, but as yet no satisfactory scholarly examination has been made of them.