Kurtis R. Schaeffer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Himalayan Hermitess: The Life of a Tibetan Buddhist Nun (OUP, 2003).

This is a splendid contribution to the growing body of materials about Saraha and his famed treasury of tantric songs with a special focus on the Tibetan creation, and recreation, of both over the centuries. Schaeffer examines both in the larger contexts of Tibetan literature, history and aesthetics, tracing the development of the figure of Saraha and his esoteric poetry in Tibetan narratives, ritual cycles, visions, iconography, and polemical debate. He reveals Saraha's famous anthology, The Treasury of Doha, to be a rich, creative and fluid communal tradition that had an organic life in Tibet, rather than a static composition with origins lost in an Indian past. This wonderful blend of the social analysis, aesthetics, and translation is an important work for Tibetan, Buddhist, and Tantric studies.