What happens between death and the tomb?
The funerals of the ancient Tibetan kings (the tsenpos) were solemn ritual affairs involving a range of specialist priests and lasting months or even years. At the end of the whole process, the tsenpo was buried in a huge mausoleum made of packed earth. It is not very clear exactly what happened during the long period between the tsenpo’s death and his interral in the tomb. But there is a crucial passage in one of the stories in the Old Tibetan Chronicle from Dunhuang, which tells of how the first funeral ceremony for the Tibetan tsenpos came about.
The vital passage appears in the story of Drigum Tsenpo, the first of the royal line not to pulled back up to heaven on a sky cord. In the story, the tsenpo’s body has remained on earth and, to add insult to injury, been kidnapped by a spirit. The spirit demands a child as a ransom for the body of the tsenpo. When a child fitting the purpose is found, the child’s mother makes certain demands that set the precedent for the funeral rituals of the tsenpos for all futurity:
When he asked the mother, “What do you want in recompense for her?” the mother answered: “I want nothing but this: that in all future when a bTsan-po, who has withdrawn as a ruler, dies, a top-knot of the hair should be bound like a braid, the surface (ngo, of the body) should be anointed with vermilion (mtshal), the body should be lacerated and scratched, incision should be made into the corpse of the bTsan-po, and it should be taken away from men that it may decay. Food should be eaten and drunk. Will you do like that, or will you not do like that?” Thus she spoke. (Haarh 1969: 405)
Now, Haarh’s work is a tour de force, but I have some doubts about his translation here. And since one often sees it repeated in accounts of the funerals of the tsenpos, it seems worth having another look at it. Since it’s such an important passage, I don’t want to be dogmatic here. I will just suggest an alternative way of reading the text.
The piercing of the tsenpo’s corpse is mentioned in the Old Tibetan Annals for the tsenpo Dusong (in 778/9) and the regent Tri Malo (712/3). As Haarh says, this probably refers to an embalming treatment of the corpse. But there seem to be no references to cutting off the tsenpo’s hair, anointing his face with vermilion and lacerating his body. And another reason to think the mother is not talking about the tsenpo here is that ordinary words for face and body (ngo and lus) are used, rather than honorific ones (zhal and sku). I also think that it’s logical to translate this passage so that the mother starts to talk about the treatment of the corpse when she specifically says “the corpse of the tsenpo” and not before that.
So, here’s a different way of reading this crucial passage:
When he asked the mother, “What do you want in recompense for her?” the mother said: “I want nothing but this: that forever to come when a noble tsenpo dies, [the mourners] cut off their topknots, anoint their faces with vermilion, and lacerate their bodies. The corpse of the tsenpo is to be pierced, and taken away to the people. The food is to be eaten and drunk. Will you do it like that?”
If it is the mourners who cut off their hair, paint their faces and cut their bodies, and not the tsenpo, that means we need to revise our ideas of the funeral practices of the early Tibetans a little. What interests me most is the way this reading of the text brings the funeral rituals of the tsenpos closer to those of other Eurasian cultures - for example, the Scythians. We know quite a lot about the funerals of the Scythian kings because Herodotus wrote about them in the 5th century BC. Here’s what he wrote:
The tombs of their kings are in the land of the Gerrhi, who dwell at the point where the Borysthenes is first navigable. Here, when the king dies, they dig a grave, which is square in shape, and of great size. When it is ready, they take the king’s corpse, and, having opened the belly, and cleaned out the inside, fill the cavity with a preparation of chopped cypress, frankincense, parsley-seed, and anise-seed, after which they sew up the opening, enclose the body in wax, and, placing it on a wagon, carry it about through all the different tribes. On this procession each tribe, when it receives the corpse, imitates the example which is first set by the Royal Scythians; every man chops off a piece of his ear, crops his hair close, and makes a cut all round his arm, lacerates his forehead and his nose, and thrusts an arrow through his left hand.*
And as a commentator on Herodotus recently wrote: “The magnificent funerals of the Scythian kings have several parallels among Eurasian nomads of every age…” Indeed, restricting ourselves to the practices of cutting off the hair and self-laceration among mourners, we can easily pick out the following further examples. It was reported that at the funeral of Attila the Hun, mourners cut off their hair and made deep cuts in their faces. They kept the body in a ceremonial tent for a time before being buried. The Xiongnu (a nomadic empire that ruled northern China for a while in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD) buried their kings in large tombs, and plaits of hair have been found in some of those that have been excavated. The Khazars (around in the 7th-11th centuries) buried their dead in mausoleums near rivers, and at the funerals they beat drums, whistled and lacerated their faces. And so on
What we see again and again is the mourners cutting off their hair and lacerating their faces and bodies. This seems to me to be quite persuasive circumstantial evidence for rereading the Old Tibetan Chronicle in the same way. It also shows just how much the religion of the early Tibetan clans preserved the culture of their nomadic ancestors from the northern steppes. Other aspects of the tsenpo’s funerals which I haven’t mentioned here are also found among Eurasian nomadic peoples - like the long period elapsing between death and burial; the sacrifice of animals, especially white ones, and especially horses; and the killing and entombment of the king’s retainers.
I think all this helps us to see the early Tibetan religion (at least the myths and rituals surrounding the tsenpos) in the wider Eurasian cultural matrix shared by Scythians, Huns, Khazars, Turks, Mongols, and many more people of nomadic origin. If course that was only one part of the rich cultural heritage that characterized Tibet’s pre-Buddhist religion, but thanks to the success of the tsenpos, a particularly important part.
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Tibetan text
Pelliot tibétain 1287, ll.44-47: de blu na ji ‘dod ces ma la drIs na / ma na re gzhan myI ‘dod / nam nam zha zhar / btsan po rje dbyal zhig nongs na / thor to ‘phren mo ni bcings / ngo la mtshal gyis byugs / lus la ni bzhags / btsan po ‘i spur la nI ‘tshog / myI la ‘phrog lom / zas la nI za ‘thung / de ltar bya ‘am myi bya zhes mchi nas /
And another note…
I also have doubts about the latter part of Haarh’s translation, that is, the line (referring to the tsenpo’s corpse “and it should be taken away from men that it may decay.” In Tibetan, this is myI la ‘phrog phom. For a start, I’m pretty certain the last syllable is not phom. I’ve been pouring over the image (see left) and I think the most likely reading is lom, though I’m not sure what this could mean in the context. In any case, that’s not a pha. Haarh interpreted this phom as a form of ‘bam pa, “decay”. There being no reason to read phom, there’s no reason to think the text is talking about decay. Why should it, when the point of piercing the tsenpo’s corpse was embalmment?
It’s also interesting that the Tibetan has myi la, not myi las — that is, it is not clear that the corpse is to be taken “from” the people. The point of the long delay before burial among the Scythians, Ossetians and the Mongols was to bring the corpse to various clans so that they could make offerings and pay homage. Could we read this line then as “it should be taken to the people”? As Haarh pointed out (on pages 358-60), the Old Tibetan Annals mentions corpses being placed in a ring khang, which he interpreted as a Totenhaus, or “house of the dead.” But this doesn’t necessarily exclude the possibility that the tsenpo’s corpse — like those of Scythian and Mongol leaders — was also taken of a grand tour of the major clans first.
Suggestions are welcomed, as ever…
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See also
Buddhism and Bon I: the religion of the gods
The Red-Faced Men I: warriors with painted faces
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References
1. Asheri, David, Alan Lloyd and Aldo Corcella. 2007. A Commentary on Herodotus, Books I-IV. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Baldick, Julian. 2000. Animal and Shaman: Ancient Religions of Central Asia. London: I.B. Tauris.
3. Haarh, Erik. 1969. The Yar-lun Dynasty. Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gad’s Verlag.
4. Heller, Amy. 2003. “Archeology of Funeral Rituals as revealed by Tibetan tombs of the 8th to 9th century.” Transoxiana (Ērān ud Anērān Webfestschrift Marshak 2003). Click here.
5. Herodotus. (translated by George Rawlinson). 1885. The History of Herodotus, New York: D. Appleton and Company.
* You can see the Herodotus quote above in its proper context, which is Book 4 of the Histories, here.
Images
1. Scythian tomb-ware, from the website of CAIS (see here).
2. Pelliot tibétain 1287 (The Old Tibetan Chronicles).
3 comments October 27, 2008
Phagpa’s Arrow, or Buddhists vs Daoists
I think it might be fair to say that Tibetan Buddhism hasn’t often come into direct conflict with other religions. And although I’m all for the harmonious coexistence of religions, I find the few instances of head-on confrontation quite interesting. So let’s look at what happened once when Buddhism and Daoism came to blows.
It was in the cosmopolitan court of Kubilai Khan, during the height of Mongol power. There was a new, vigorous school of Daoists, called Quanzhen. The school had been founded in the eleventh century, and by the twelfth it already had 4,000 monasteries and 20,000 priests. The school advocated an inner alchemy which rejected the use of elixirs, previously popular with Daoists, in favour of cultivating one’s inner nature (xing) and life-force (ming). More to the point, they were quite enthusiastic, shall we say, about propogating their religion.
During the 1250s, Quanzhen monks were roaming around China taking over small Buddhist monasteries and converting them to Daoist ones. Even worse, they were piling up the sacred books of these monasteries and burning them. They were also hanging around at the Mongol court, like everybody else, looking for patronage. It was here that the Daoists and the Buddhists started to squabble. Kubilai’s predecessor Mongke Khan convened two debates in 1255 and ‘56 which the Buddhist side was represented by a mysterious monk called Namo. The second Karmapa, Karma Pakshi was at Mongke’s court at this time, and took part in the debate of ‘56.
These were opening skirmishes. It was in the reign of Kubilai that the decisive debates took place. The monastery-occupying and scripture-burning activities of the Daoists had not abated. And now, adding insult to injury, they were also circulating printed copies of the Laozi huahu jing, a polemical text telling the story of how the found of Daoism, Laozi, travelled to India and invented Buddhism there as a lesser doctrine for the barbarians.
Kubilai’s imperial preceptor at this time was Chögyal Phagpa, the head of the Sakya school, and by the Khan’s command, ruler of Tibet. Phagpa was upset by the Daoists’ activities and asked the Khan to convene another debate. This time, the stakes would be higher - the losers would surrender their own scriptures to be burned.
We know that this debate really took place in the summer of 1258, thanks to Chinese and Tibetan historians. We also have Phagpa’s own account of it - “Verses on the Defeat of the Quanzhen Teachers” - preserved in his collected works….
Urged by the Lord of Men himself,
Who possesses a great analytical mind
And increases merit and well-being everywhere,
The arrow transmitting the authentic scriptures,
Tipped with the vajra arrowhead of logic,
Was placed on the bow of analysis
And shot by the archer of inspired speech.
The Lord of Men is Kubilai, the secular parallel to the Lord of Sages, the Buddha. After offering his patron suitable praise, Phagpa characterizes himself as a sacred archer with an impressive extended metaphor. But did Phagpa’s arrow hit its target? He doesn’t tell us straight away, but instead goes on to desribe his Daoist opponent:
By striving on the path of the seer,
He has gained eyes of clairvoyance
And the powers of magic,
But due to the imprints of his countless previous lives,
He believes that the self exists in the material aggregates.
Thus he will never be a vessel
For the path to liberation.This supreme teacher of the Quanzhen school,
Followers of the one they call Lao Jun,
Is well-versed in the texts of his tradition,
But has become completely intoxicated
By pride in his considerable fame,
And has looted and burned
Our books of scripture.
The name of the Daoist who went head to head with Phagpa is not preserved in any of the histories. A pity, since he was obviously well-known at the time. For Phagpa his first crime is philosophical: since he believes in the existence of a self, he will never understand Buddhism, the philosophy of nonself. His second crime is the pride that has led him to burning Buddhist books. So, who won?
Applying the elixir that transforms
The iron of a sound intellect
Into the golden teachings of the authentic scriptures,
I turned him into an upholder of the vows
Of the excellent yogic conduct of the Sage.
Ah, Phagpa won, and it seems his opponent, in the traditional way, converted to Buddhism. In fact, in the colophon Phagpa states that seventeen Daoist monks converted to Buddhism. By the way, did you see what Phagpa did with the metaphors in this verse? Rather sarcastically turning the Daoist tradition of alchemy against his opponent, Phagpa characterises his own Buddhist logical arguments as a kind of alchemy, transforming his opponents iron-like intellect into the golden Buddhist teachings. From archer to alchemist.
Phagpa ends by hoping the the news of his victory helps others turn to the Buddha’s path:
The learned enjoyed this very much,
And because of their enjoyment, news of this
Spread to the limits of the sky through the realms of men.
May this help all beings on the wrong path,
Or with no path, to enter the teachings.
What he doesn’t mention is that the after the debate, 45 Daoist scriptures were burned. Presumably these were the Daoist books kept at the Mongol court. That wasn’t the end of the problem. Another debate was convened in some decades larer, in 1281 (after Phagpa’s death). The Buddhists won again, and this time the entire Daoist canon (except for the Daodejing) was burned. And though that does seem to have been the end of Daoist influence at the Mongol court, it wasn’t the end of the Quanzhen school. They survived and remain to this day the largest school of monastic Daoism.
* * *
Colophon
For the sake of completeness, here’s the colophon to Phagpa’s verses:
In the past in China, the one called Tawo Shang Lao Jun was born after 82 years in his mother’s womb, and delighted in solitude. Striving for meditative absorption, he attained clairvoyance and magical powers. He gave advice on this path of his to students, and a religious system similar to the Śāṃkhya arose. His followers grew very numerous and came to be known as the Quanzhen school. Seeing that they were doing harm to the teachings of the Sūgatas, the Lord of Men Kubilai commanded a refutation this false system. On the 23rd day of the midsummer month of the male earth horse year (1258), Phagpa, having studied for a long time to achieve expertise in our own philosophical system, defeated seventeen [teachers] who became monks. This has been written as a commemoration.
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References
1. Drogön Chögyal Phagpa. “Verses on the Defeat of the Quanzhen Teachers.” Sa skya bka’ ‘bum: 7.304.
2. Eskilden, Stephen. 2004. The Teachings and Practices of the Early Quanzhen Masters. New York: SUNY.
3. Tao-Chung Yao. 2004. “Quanzhen—Complete Perfection.” In Kohn, Livia (ed.), Daoism Handbook. (2 vols.) Leiden: Brill. II.567–593.
Images
1. Kubilai Khan, portrait (13th c?), National Palace Museum, Taipei.
2. Chögyal Phagpa, 18th century painting. Rubin Collection, HimalayanArt.com.
9 comments September 30, 2008
Padmasambhava II: the dark Padmasambhava
Recently browsing the excellent Himalayan Art website, I came across this 17th century painting of Padmasambhava, or as the inscription has it, “the honoured Mahāguru of all the Conquerors”, also known as Guru Rinpoche. The composition is unusual: the central figure is surrounded by 356 small Padmasambhavas, their clothes in recurring sequences of different colours that gives the whole painting a striking geometric pattern.
But what is more striking to anyone familiar with the usual depictions of Padmasambhava is the colour of the central figure. His skin is dark brown, apart from the palms of his hands, which are pink. This is not a representation of Padmasambhava I’ve ever seen before, even though in his other manifestations he does appear in other colours — and I’ll come to that in a minute.
There is a four line verse written on the back of the painting, in nice cursive writing, punctuated with the double circles that indicate these verses come from the tradition of rediscovered texts, or terma. I would think then, that this form of Padmasambhava is a special terma tradition. The verses are full of the imagery of Dzogchen, the “great perfection,” and three rainbow circles - tiglé - corresponding to Padmasambhava’s body, speech and mind, are painted on the other side of the main figure.
The verses seem to be referring to Padmsambhava as Padmarāga - meaning “lotus-hued.” According to the dictionaries, this can refer to the ruby, to something bedecked with rubies, or something ruby-coloured.But wait, surely that should be Padmarāja: “Lotus King”?
Anyway, I’d better explain why I’m going on about a 17th century painting on this website, where I generally stand politely behind an invisible line drawn across the boundary of the 10th and 11th centuries. What this painting reminded me of, when I came across it first, was a tantric text discovered in the Turfan basin of Eastern Central Asia, written in Turkic. (In what comes below, I rely on the work of Georg Kara and Peter Zieme, since I don’t read Turkic.)
The manuscript, actually a series of fragments, is part of a group of manuscripts, all tantric sādhanas (meditation instructions) found in Turfan and dating to the 13th and 14th centuries. By this time the Mongols had taken over Eastern Central Asia and the Mongol influence is clear enough here. One of the tantric texts, a Cakrasaṃvara maṇḍala, has a lineage that goes through Indian siddhas like Saraha, Luipa, Tilopa and Naropa, before coming to Tibet with Mal Lotsawa, and then going through the five patriarchs of Sakya, ending with Phagpa.
It was Phagpa, of course, who is said to have been given the rulership of Tibet by Khubilai Khan and to have acted as the Khan’s spiritual preceptor, granting numerous empowerments, including Cakrasaṃvara.
Why is the text in Turkic then? Well the Uighur Turks once ruled Turfan (which is at the northeast of the Takalakan desert) as well as Dunhuang itself. Like almost everybody else, they fell under Mongol rule in the 13th century. As the more established culture, the Uighurs became the teachers of their conquerors, influential in the fields of literature, science, military affairs, and of course, religion. The Mongols, who had no writing system of their own, used Uighur scribes, and many Turkic words (including Buddhist concepts) were adopted into the Mongolian language
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The tantric text that concerns us here is a sādhana of Avalokiteśvara. The meditator is instructed in self-visualization as Avalokiteśvara, as one would expect. More surprisingly, the meditator is instructed visualize Padmasambhava (padma sanbaua baxšï) above his head. Now, Padmasambhava is described as having the form of a teacher of yoga (yogačari), wearing bone ornaments and dancing on a lotus throne. Furthermore his skin is described as black (qara) and shiny.
Here is a Padmasambhava who is very much the Indian mahāsiddha - yet quite unfamiliar. The form looks a little like one of the classic “eight manifestions” of Padmasambhava transmitted in the Nyingma tradition, known as Light Rays of the Sun (Nyima Özer), but he is always painted with orange or yellow skin, like the sunbeams of his name. Then there is the form known as Dorjé Drolö, also known as the wrathful guru, who has dark red or brown skin, but also has other wrathful features like three eyes, and always rides a tiger.
So none of these known forms fits our Turkic Padmsambhava. Is this perhaps a form of Padmasambhava once transmitted in the Sakya tradition, whose roots go back to the tantric Buddhism of early Tibet? The colophon tells us that this text was printed by a certain Upasi Böri Buqa in 1336. An earlier version also found in Turfan dates to 1276, which is just a couple of years after the period when Phagpa was resident at the court of Khubilai — he returned to Tibet in 1274.
* * *
And so… I’m not going to try to offer any conclusions here, but I hope others might find these rare manifestations of Padmsambhava interesting as well.
* * *
References
1. Kara, Georg and Peter Zieme. 1976. Fragmente tantrischer Werke in uighurischer Übersetzung. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Images
1. Padmasambhava, 1600-1699, Collection of Moke Mokotoff. (c) Himalayan Art
2. British Library manuscript Or.8212/109 (Uighur tantric text — but not the one discussed here, which is in Berlin).
See also
Padmasambhava I: the early sources.
12 comments September 9, 2008
Buddhism and Empire III: the Dharma King
Among the most celebrated figures in Tibetan history are the “dharma kings” (chögyal in Tibetan) who supported Buddhism and helped it to take root in Tibet. And probably the most important of all the dharma kings is Tri Song Detsen. Prince Song Detsen was given the title Tri - meaning “throne” - when he came of age, and he wasted little time in curbing the anti-Buddhist movement that had taken root in recent years since the death of his father, the previous king.
Seeking Buddhist teachers, first from China, then from Nepal and India, he went about getting Tibet its first proper monastery. That monastery, Samyé, was built with the help of the Nepalese abbot Śāntarakṣīta and the tantric adept from modern Pakistan, Padmasambhava. The king also supervised the ordination of the first Tibetan monks, and a vast project for the translation of Buddhist scriptures into Tibetan.
That is the briefest of summaries of the traditional Tibetan view of Tri Song Detsen’s achievements. If we turn to the Dunhuang manuscripts, we find - for once - that they are much in agreement with that traditional view. Tri Song Detsen is celebrated in quite a few Dunhuang poems and prayers as a great Buddhist king. Most of these celebrations of the king have already been translated (see the References section below) but I recently came across one that seems to have been missed. And it’s really quite interesting indeed…
* * *
IOL Tib J 466 is a scroll with a long prayer of offerings to the buddhas, bodhisattvas, deities, dharma kings and patrons of Buddhism. First among the kings is, of course, Tri Song Detsen.
I make offering to the spiritual teachers of our own Tibet,
The great dharma kings, like the great king Tri Song Detsen,
He who has mastered the royal methods of fortune,
And rules the kingdom with the sword of the sky-gods,
The magically emanated lord Tri Song Detsen;
And to those teachers who have gone to nirvāṇa,
Including Dharmāśoka, Kaniṣkā, Śīla Atidāna and so on;
To all of these propagators of the teachings
I respectfully make the offering of homage.
I suspect that this prayer dates from not too long after the reign of Tri Song Detsen himself. Every aspect of the scroll - paper, ink, handwriting, and the arrangement of the text on the page - is similar to the sutras commissioned by the last Tibetan kings at the end of the Tibetan Empire in the 840s. So the scroll may have been written only a half-century after the end of Tri Song Detsen’s reign.
The prayer puts Tri Song Detsen right into the historical tradition of dharma kings. Dharmāśoka is of course the famous Aśoka, ruler of the great Mauryan Empire in the 3rd century BC, and patron of Buddhism. Some of the edicts that he had carved throughout his empire still survive, and confirm that he was, to some extent, a Buddhist king. He is said to have convened the third council of the Buddhist sangha to clear up some doctrinal issues. As for Kaniṣka, he was the ruler of the Kushan Empire, based in Gandhara in the 2nd century AD, and we have evidence from the coins made in his reign that he supported Buddhism (among other religions). He is also credited with organizing a Buddhist council for the compilation of a Sanskrit Buddhist canon.
Considering the importance of the councils that Aśoka and Kaniṣka are supposed to have convened, it’s not surprising that the debate between Indian and Chinese Buddhism organized by Tri Song Detsen is often considered to be another council - in the grand tradition of dharma kings.
Of the identity of the king called Śīla Atidāna I have no idea. The first part of his name means “moral conduct” and the second “supreme giving”. The extreme generosity of bodhisattvas in some Buddhist stories is sometimes called “supreme giving”. One of the most popular of these stories is that of Prince Vessantara, who gave away his wife and children to a cruel Brahman (perhaps we should translate atidāna as “extreme giving”). In the end of the story the family is reunited and Vessantara is crowned king. So it could be this king that is intended here. I welcome any alternative suggestions…
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As well as associating Tri Song Detsen with this Indian tradition of dharma kings, the prayer highlights the divine and magical nature of Tibetan kingship. The king has “mastered the royal methods of fortune.” What I’ve translated here as “fortune” is the enigmatic word phywa. In later Tibet it refers to luck, fortune-telling and the like. During the time of Tibet’s imperial kings, it seems to have been the special possession of the kings, but it as a method rather than a personal quality.
In any case, there wasn’t much distinction between the kings and the gods. The prayer also says that Tri Song Detsen “rules the kingdom with the sword of the sky-gods.” What does this mean? The Tibetan kings were thought to be the descendents (literally!) of a race of gods who lived in the sky, and came down to earth to perform their kingly duty. Instead of dying, they ascended back to the sky - beamed up along a “sky-cord” made of light. Later generations, including Tri Song Detsen, were said to have lost the sky-cord connection. Nevertheless, they were still the children of the gods (lhasé). That sword is an interesting symbol of the king’s military power, something that is downplayed - if not totally ignored - by many later Buddhist historians. Did Tri Song Detsen really carry a sword said to be inherited from his divine ancestors?
So it seems to me that in this prayer Tri Song Detsen stands somewhere between the earlier vision of Tibetan kings as agents of the divine - with magical military power and special royal methods of prognostication - and ideal of the Buddhist king as a patron and practitioner of Buddhism above all else.
* * *
Tibetan text
IOL Tib J 466/3: 5r.9–12: bdag cag bod khams kyI dge ba’I bshes gnyen//rgyal po chen po khri srong lde brtsan lastsogs pa//chos kyI rgyal po chen po rnams la mchod pa//phyva’i rgyal thabs mnga’ brnyes shing//chab srId gnam gyI lde mtshon can//’phrul rje khrI srong lde brtsan dang//dar ma sho ka/ka ni skā/shI la a tI da ṇya lastsogs//ston pa mya ngan ‘das phyIn//bstan pa rgyas mdzad thams cad la//phyag ‘tshal bsnyen bkur mchod pa dbul//
References
1. Karmay, Samten. 1998. “King Dza / Tsa and Vajrayāna” in The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet. Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point.
2. Richardson, Hugh Edward. 1998. “The Dharma that fell from Heaven” in High Peaks, Pure Earth: Collected Writings on Tibetan History and Culture, Edited with an Introduction by Michael Aris. London: Serindia.
Images
1. Tri Song Detsen: detail of 20th c. painting, sourced from Wikipedia.
2. Coin of Kanishka, (c) The British Museum.
3. Sky-cord (OK, a tornado).
See also:
Buddhism and Empire I: A Soldier’s Prayer
Buddhism and Empire II: Portrait of a Monk
4 comments August 21, 2008
Rama in early Tibet
The British Library exhibition on the Rāmāyaṇa has reminded me of one of the most surprising finds from the Dunhuang library cave: a group of manuscripts telling this classic Indian story in Tibetan. Most people know something of story of the Rāmāyaṇa, which tells of how King Rāma’s wife Sītā was abducted by the demon Ravāṇa and rescued with the help of the monkey king Hanumān and his army. The first Rāmāyaṇa is attributed to the poet-sage Vālmīki and is thought to date back to the middle of the first millenium BC. Since then, many other versions of the story have appeared in India and beyond, most recently in that hugely popular television series of the 1980s. Rāma was accepted into the Buddhist world as well, in a jātaka story which tells of Rāma’s banishment from the kingdom by his father.
Anyway, the Tibetan Rāmāyaṇa is found in several manuscripts from Dunhuang, which suggests that it enjoyed some popularity this area, far from India but connected to it by the trading routes we call the Silk Road. This version is a retelling of the Indian tale, though it differs in several ways from the Indian versions. It is a condensed retelling of the original story in which many episodes are drastically shortened, making it short enough, perhaps, for a travelling storyteller to relate at one sitting.
Although it is a shortened version, some parts of the Tibetan Rāmāyaṇa are not found in any of the Indian versions (at least as far as I know). An slightly odd addition to the original is the theme of letter-writing. For example, when Hanumān travels to find Sītā, he takes a love letter written by Rāma, and Sītā sends back a love letter in reply. In another episode, Rāma chides Hanumān for forgetting to correspond regularly. A crestfallen Hanumān apologizes: “I should have continually enquired by letter after your health.”
Now, I am not sure that letter-writing was a feature of ancient or medieval Indian culture (perhaps someone more knowledgeable will contest or confirm this). On the other hand, polite enquiries about the health of the addressee are indeed common among the Tibetan letters found at Dunhuang. High ranking Tibetans sent letters back and forth, sometimes containing no more than polite enquiries after the health of the recipient. This social practice explains why Hanumān committed a faux pas when he neglected to send a continual steam of letters to Rāma.
So, if it’s not Indian, where does this version of the Rāmāyaṇa story come from? Some have suggested Khotan, a great little Silk Road kingdom. It’s true that there are a couple of Khotanese manuscripts containing fragments of the stary of Rāma. However, while this Khotanese Rāmāyaṇa contains some of the same elements as the Tibetan story, it also differs from the Tibetan in many ways. There is no letter-writing in the Khotanese version, and the whole story is given a Buddhist moral at the end. The narrative of the Tibetan Rāmāyaṇa, on the other hand, shows no interest in Buddhism at all.
In fact, the Tibetan Rāmāyaṇa seems generally less moralistic than the classic version, in which Rāma and Sītā are ultimately estranged due to Rāma’s suspicion of Sītā’s infidelity. The Tibetan version has a happy ending, in which Rāma’s apology is accepted by Sītā: “They were happier than before. King Rāma, Queen Sītā, husband and wife and the sons together with a large retinue lived happily in the palace Old Earth.” In the end, one can’t help feeling that the reason for the popularity of this version of the Rāmāyaṇa was simply that it’s a great story.
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Manuscripts
The manuscripts of the Rāmāyaṇa are: IOL Tib J 737.1 (A), IOL Tib J 737.2 (B & C), IOL Tib J 737.3 (D), Pelliot tibétain 981 (E), Pelliot tibétain 983 (F). In de Jong’s works, these manuscripts are referred to only by the letters A to F, which I have given in brackets after the shelfmarks. Two other small fragments of the Rāma story are IOL Tib J 1197 and IOL Tib J 1200.
References
1. Bailey, H.W. 1940. ‘Rāma’, (I) BSOAS 10.2 (1940): 365–376; (II) BSOAS 10.3: 559–598.
2. de Jong, J.W. 1971. ‘Un fragment de l’histoire de Rāma en tibétain’ in Études tibétaines dédiées à la mémoire de Marcelle Lalou. Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient.
3. de Jong, J.W. 1977. The Tun-huang Manuscripts of the Tibetan Ramayana Story’, Indo-Iranian Journal 19.
4. Kapstein, Matthew. 2003. ‘The Indian Literary Identity in Tibet’, in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, edited by Sheldon Pollock. Berkeley: University of California Press.
5. Thomas, F.W. 1929. ‘A Rāmāyaṇa Story in Tibetan from Chinese Turkestan’ in Indian Studies in Honor of Charles Rockwell Lanman: 193–212. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Images
1. British Library manuscript Add. MS 15296(1), from the Rāmāyaṇa exhibition at the British Library. See this site for images of the manuscript.
2. The manuscript IOL Tib J 737.2, containing part of one version of the Tibetan Rāmāyaṇa.
2 comments August 7, 2008
