turn to premodern Asian sources the evidence is ambiguous at best. Take, for example, the many important Buddhist exegetical works that delineate the Bud - dhist marga or ‘path to liberation’ — works such as ‘Stages on the Bodhisattva Path’ (Bodhisattvabhumi), ‘The Stages of Practice’ (Bhavanakrama), ‘Path of Purity’ (Visuddhimagga), ‘The Great Calming and Contemplation’ (Mo-ho chih-kuan), ‘The Great Book on the Stages of the Path’ (Lam rim chen mo), and so on. These texts are frequently construed as descriptive accounts of meditative states based on the personal experiences of accomplished adepts. Yet rarely if ever do the authors of these compendiums claim to base their expositions on their own experience. On the contrary, the authority of exegetes such as Kamalasila, Buddhaghosa, and Chih-i, lay not in their access to exalted spiritual states, but in their mastery of, and rigorous adherence to, sacred scripture (Sharf, 1995a). This situation is by no means unique to Buddhism: premodern Hinduism was similarly wary of claims to authority pred