Jacob Dalton's book, The Gathering of Intentions: A History of Tibetan Tantra, is, despite the ambitious subtitle, a study focusing on a single scripture. Noting this is not to belittle this work. Tibetan Buddhist tantric traditions are extremely complex, and still not very well understood. By focusing on a single root scripture and exploring the development of the tradition surrounding it in Tibet, Dalton makes a major contribution to our understanding of Tibetan Buddhism by focusing on commentary and ritual texts as a primary way in which traditions adapt over time.
The work on which he focuses is The Gathering of Intentions, which is arguably a singular work. Its colophon claims that it was translated into Tibetan from the Burushaski language; apparently it is the only work in the Tibetan Buddhist canon to make this claim. Dalton surveys previous scholarship and suggests that the work centers around an...
