What connection these Kapalikas had with the votaries of the Sahajia cult is not known. There is however evidence to show that the Kapalika sect existed as early as the time of Asanga and Harivarman about the fourth century A.D. Evidently both of these sects were offshoots of Tantrik Buddhism and both practised similar rites. Abhinava Gupta, to defeat whom Sankaracharva came all the way to Kamarupa, was the author of two well-known works on Tantra viz, the Tantrasara and the Tantraloka. Evidently, in the ninth century, Abhinava Gupta had a great following in Kamarupa and that is why Sankaracharva found it necessary to fight him. These Tantriks have of course been painted in the blackest colours by the Brahman revivalists of an earlier age and by the Vaisnava reformers of a subsequent period, but a considerable mass of Tantrik literature has now become accessible to scholars some of whom do not seem to subscribe to the sweeping condemnation of Tantrikism as a tenet. Here is what Giuseppe Tucci, a competent authority, has got to say on the subject:-  The probability is that the esoteric teachings of the tenet were high and sublime but they were actually comprehensible only to a few, called Siddhas, whereas the common folk were mystified by the feats of sorcery performed by the lower order of the preachers who could thus trade on the credulity of the common people and compel them to submit to their demands. It is therefore well that these esoteric teachers and their practices were suppressed by the Brahmans and the Vaisnavas, of a later period, not so much with the help of the ruling kings but chiefly by appeal to the common people themselves. The influence of Kamrupi Buddhist preachers in Tibet incidentally proves the close cultural connection between Tibet and Kamarupa in the early ages. It is find the Tibetan Buddhist scholar Stunpa acting as preceptor to a Kamarupa king, probably Balavarman I, in the early part of the fifth century. The image of Buddha found at Guwahati, exhibiting the Abhaya Mudra, with its distinctly Mongolian physiognomy and a thick shawl covering the whole body, down to the ankles, seems to be unmistakably of Tibetan origin. It will appear from what have stated above that several noted Buddhist scholars, as well as critics of the Buddhist doctrines, flourished in Kamarupa between the eighth and the tenth centuries.