DOI: 10.46586/er.13.2022.9653 License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Entangled Religions 13.7 (2022) er.ceres.rub.de A Buddhist Bhairava? Kṛtanagara’s Tantric Buddhism in Transregional Perspective ANDREA ACRI EPHE, PSL University, France ALEKSANDRA WENTA University of Florence, Italy ABSTRACT This article discusses some key aspects of the historical and religious back- ground of the period of Kṛtanagara and his aftermath in East Java and Sumatra. Our analysis is based on a comparative study of Old Javanese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan textual sources and artistic vestiges (“medias”) to highlight the transregional networks of tantric Buddhism (“traditions”) that may have contributed to shape the king’s religio-political agenda. Having identifed the enigmatic colossal statue at Padang Roco/Sungai Langsat in Dharmasraya (Central-Western Sumatra) as a Mahākāla bearing Śaiva iconographic con- taminations, and as a product of Siṅhasāri-period East Java from Sino-Tibetan prototypes, we revive Moens’ (1924) idea of an association between the icon and Kṛtanagara. Adding to the discussion on the Eastern Indian-style icon of Arapacana Mañjuśrī found near Candi Jago, we highlight further parallels that complement and fne-tune the idea advanced by previous scholars about the commonality of the tantric Buddhist paradigms practiced at the courts of Kṛtanagara and Kublai Khan, and propose that their legacy was adopted by the political elites of the subsequent generation in both Nusantara and China. KEYWORDS Ādityavarman, Mahākāla, Gur gyi mgon po, Bhairava, Mañjuśrī, Kṛtanagara Introduction 1 A fascinating and still lingering problem in the religious history of Nusantara 2 is the question [1] of what tantric Buddhist systems were adhered to by Siṅhasāri King Kṛtanagara (r. 1268– 1 Translations from Old Javanese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan are our own unless otherwise specifed. All dates are in the Gregorian calendar. 2 We refer to Nusantara as the region comprising the modern nation states of Indonesia and Malaysia.