The Kalacakra Tantra is more properly called the Kalacakra Laghutantra, as it is an abridged form of the original text - the Kalacakra Mulatantra.

It is said by the Tibetan historian Taranatha, that the Mulatantra was taught by the Buddha on the full moon of the month Caitra in the year following his enlightenment, at the great stupa of Dhanyakataka in India. This teaching had been requested by the king Sucandra from Sambhala (often written "Shambhala").

Sucandra returned to Sambhala and wrote the Tantras in textual form there. He composed the explanatory Tantra in 60,000 lines as a commentary on the original Mulatantra of 12,000. A later king of Sambhala, Yashas, wrote the abridged form of the Tantra, the Kalacakra Laghutantra. This is about one quarter of the length of the original Mulatantra. This text survives today, and is generally known simply as the Kalacakra Tantra.

The next king was Pundarika, and he composed a commentary on the Laghutantra known as the Vimalaprabha. This also survives to this day, and both these texts are available in the original Sanskrit and Tibetan translation. However, the original Mulatantra, if it ever existed, has been lost, although significant sections remain in quotations in the Vimalaprabha and some other texts. The existence of these quotations do not of course prove that the Mulatantra ever existed as a complete text.

Having been preserved in Sambhala for many centuries, the teachings of the Kalacakra cycle were brought into India around the middle of the 10th century. Roughly 60 years later, in 1027, the Kalacakra was introduced into Tibet. Naturally, the period of translation and adoption took a couple of hundred years, and the significance of the date 1027 is that the new Tibetan chronology, based on the Kalacakra system, started in that year.

Among the early teachers of the Kalacakra in Tibet, two, who happen to be almost exact contemporaries, are normally agreed to stand out: Dolpopa Sherap Gyaltsen (1292-1361) and Buton Rinchen Drup (1290-1364). Kalacakra is practised my most of the different traditions within Tibetan Buddhism, but the two foremost are the Gelug, based largely on the teachings of Buton, and the Jonang, based on Dolpopa.

Picture : Manjushri Yashas, said to be the author
of the Kalacakra Laghutantra