M. NIHOM NOTES ON THE ORIGIN OF SOME QUOTATIONS IN THE SEKODDESATIKA OF NAD. APADA Thirty years ago H. Hoffman published what is yet one of only two studies 1 of Na.dap~da's 2 Sekodde~a.tiMi. 3 In his paper, written at a time when a printed Sanskrit edition of the K~dacakratantra was not yet available, 4 Hoffman endeavoured to delineate some of the SDT's consequences from the viewpoint of literary history, as well as the provenance of its manifold quotations.
Before starting on an examination of points raised bY Hoffman, an observation: the Sekoddega.tik~ (Toh. 1351) is indeed a commentary on the eponymous text, the Sekoddega. s Carelli, the editor of the Sanskrit text of the .t~k?~, provided the subtitle "A Commentary of the Sekodde~a Section of the K~tlacakra Tantra". Since reiterated by Wayman, 6 this evaluation is misleading, inasmuch as it implies that the Sekodde~a is a portion of the KNacakratantra itself, rather than perhaps but a short explanation, udde~a, on consecration as practised in the Kalacakra cycle. In turn, such an assertion depends on a suitable definition of that very Kalacakratantra.
According to tradition, the Kglacakra originally consisted of 12,000 verses. 7
This text, the so-called rn~latantra, not extant in Tibetan nor Sanskrit, may be regarded as lost. 8 The Kalacakratantra proper, or more precisely the Param~di-buddhoddhrta~r~kNacakratantrarraja 9 composed in five chapters of Sragdhar~ meter, is also known as laghutantra, lo As stated by Hoffman:
Nach den Ausfiihrungen NadapT~das liegt jedes Tantra in zwei Rezensionen als Mralatantra ("grundliegendes, d.i. ausffihrliches Tantra") und als Laghutantra ("kurzes Tantra") vor. 11
The presumption is, then, that the lost mftlatantra was succeeded by the Laghutantra, both of which form a tantrasahgTti, a Tantra text-complex (Tantrakomplex). Moreover both of these are to be seen as promulated by the Buddha. As such they are thus both part of the Buddha-word. 12 As observed by Hoffman, according to Na.dapSda, the tantrasahgfti of the mfilatantra is termed a nirde~a, while that of a laghutantra is called an uddeka. Now because the Sanskrit colophon of the fifth chapter of the KCT specifies that it has been extracted from the 12,000 verse mMatantra, logically the KCT must be the laghutantra. However, by its title alone the SD is also a laghutantra because it is udde~a. Yet, as the Tibetan Sekodde~a cannot possibly conform to the KCT written in Sragdhar~ meter, we now have, within the scheme of classification found in the SDT as set forth by Hoffman, both the KCT and the SD as laghutantra, or, equivalently, both as uddeka. Hence, either