Journal of theInternational Association

of Tibetan Studies

Issue 3 December 2007

ISSN 1550-6363

An online journal published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library (THDL)

www.jiats.org

Editor: Jos Ignacio CabeznBook Review Editor: Kurtis Schaeffer

Assistant Editors: Alison Melnick, Zoran Lazovic, and Christopher BellManaging Director: Steven WeinbergerTechnical Director: Nathaniel Grove

Contents

Articles

A Look at the Diversity of the Gzhan stong Tradition (24 pages) Anne Burchardi

BeyondAnonymity: PaleographicAnalyses of the DunhuangManuscripts (23 pages) Jacob Dalton

Emperor Mu rug btsan and the Phang thang ma Catalogue (25 pages) Brandon Dotson

An Early Seventeenth-Century Tibeto-Mongolian Ceremonial Staff (24 pages) Johan Elverskog

The Importance of the Underworlds: Asuras Caves in Buddhism, and Some OtherThemes in Early Buddhist Tantras Reminiscent of the Later PadmasambhavaLegends (31 pages)

Robert Mayer

Re-Assessing the Supine Demoness: Royal Buddhist Geomancy in the Srong btsansgam po Mythology (47 pages)

Martin A. Mills

Modernity, Power, and the Reconstruction of Dance in Post-1950s Tibet (42 pages) Anna Morcom

Book Reviews

Review of Thundering Falcon: An Inquiry into the History and Cult of Khra brug,Tibets First Buddhist Temple, by Per K. Srensen et al (5 pages)

Bryan Cuevas

Review of Tibetan Songs of Realization: Echoes from a Seventeenth-Century Scholarand Siddha in Amdo, by Victoria Sujata (6 pages)

Lauran Hartley

Review ofHolyMadness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas, ed. Rob Linrothe and Reviewof The Flying Mystics of Tibetan Buddhism, by Glenn H. Mullin (8 pages)

Serinity Young

ii

The Importance of the Underworlds: Asuras Caves inBuddhism, and Some Other Themes in Early Buddhist

Tantras Reminiscent of the Later Padmasambhava Legends

Robert MayerUniversity of Oxford

Abstract: The story of Padmasambhava taming non-human females at the AsuraCave at Pharping is well known. Much less widely known is the wider tradition ofAsuras caves as the entrances to Ptla, the magical underworlds of Asuras andNgas, a colorful and often eroticized and popular belief which played a prominentrole in early Indian and Chinese Buddhist tantras. This paper surveys these nowlargely forgotten beliefs, and then proceeds to raise (but not answer) the question:might further widely attested Kriytantra themes, such as treasure recovery, klas,and water magic, have influenced the popular mythology of Padmasambhava?

Asuras Caves in BuddhismThis article will look at a set of practices deriving from popular Indian culture thatwere once widely attested within Indian and Chinese Buddhism. However, perhapsas a consequence of their aims and methods eventually beginning to appearsomewhat tangential to those of mainstream Vajrayna Buddhism as it evolvedover the last centuries of the first millennium CE, they seem to have ended upsomewhat marginal within Tibetan Buddhism, despite their survival in extant Bkagyur texts. Sometimes known as attainment of Ptla (ptlasiddhi), these practiceswere focused on gaining access to the subterranean kingdoms of the Asuras andNgas, which were often generically referred to as Ptla, and which theadventurous could enter via any one of the many Asuras caves identified withinthe sacral landscape. Once in Ptla, the yogin could gain such boons as longevity,magical knowledge (vidy), fabulousmaterial treasures, and, not least, extraordinarypleasures, especially erotic ones.

Asuras Caves in the Dunhuang Text Tib J 644Despite being somewhat marginalized in contemporary Tibetan Buddhism, westill have substantial surviving evidence from Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese

Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 3 (December 2007): 1-31.www.thdl.org?id=T3102.1550-6363/2007/3/T3102. 2007 by Robert Mayer, Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, and International Association of Tibetan Studies.Distributed under the THDL Digital Text License.

http://www.thdl.org?id=T3102http://www.thdl.org/xml/showEssay.php?xml=/tools/THDLTextLicense.xml

sources that such practices were probably once more central. Some of the mostrecently identified evidence in the Tibetan language can be found in a valuablearticle recently published by Jacob Dalton.1 In this article, Dalton discusses theprobably tenth-century Dunhuang text Tib J 644, which describes inter alia thethree levels of holders of magical knowledge (vidydhara) associated with theTantric Buddhist vehicle of Kriytantra. Dalton writes,

According to this text, there are three vidydhara levels that can be attainedthrough the practice of the Kriytantras: the vidydhara of accomplishments (grubpai rigs dzin), the vidydhara who dwells on the levels (sa la gnas pai rigsdzin), and the spontaneously accomplishing vidydhara (lhun gyis grub pai rigsdzin).2

It is the description of the second of these, the vidydhara who dwells on thelevels, that is relevant to this discussion. Here the text describes the BodhisattvaVajrapi appearing and granting attainments (siddhis) to the yogin, who thenproceeds to an Asuras cave, where an emanation of Vajrapi grants him a vision.The yogin is then able to strike his foot into a rock, as though the rock were madeof dough. From the footprint comes a sacred flow, a spring with eight streams.One of them flows to the south face ofMountMeru, and hence is called Avakara.The seven others flow inside the Asuras cave. By bathing himself in this sacredwater, the practitioner becomes purified, and achieves attainments. This is howthe yogin achieves the accomplishment of a vidydharawho dwells on the levels.3

It is surely more a testament to the comparative marginalization of the practiceof attainment of Ptla within mainstream Tibetan Buddhism, and not a reason forcriticism of Dalton, that even such an erudite specialist in early Tibetan Buddhismas he was initially unaware of what exactly these rites in Tib J 644 were referringto.4 Hence Dalton limited himself to speculations surrounding their interestingresemblance to well-known themes from the legends of Padmasambhava, notablyhis stay in the Asura Cave at Pharping in Nepal. Yet a close examination of theTibetan text of Tib J 644 in its full context shows that it seems to be a reasonablystandard abstract presentation of doctrine, which is quite similar to descriptions ofattainment of Ptla as found in other Kriytantra texts in its structure, itsgrammatical use of the third person to imply the yogin, and its content. So rather

1 Jacob Dalton, The Early Development of the Padmasambhava Legend in Tibet: A Study of IOLTib J 644 and Pelliot tibtain 307, Journal of the American Oriental Society 124, no. 4 (2004): 759-72.2Dalton, Early Development of the Padmasambhava Legend, 761.3 de nas phyag na rdo rje gshegs nas/ dngos grub sbyin ba dang / a su rai brag phug du phyin pa

dang / de na phyag na rdo rjei sprul pa gcig bzhugs pai zhal mthong nas brag la rkang pa gcig brgyabpa dang / zan la brgyab bzhin snang ngo / rjes de nas dam babs nas/ nang de na chu myig yan lagbrgyad dang ldan ba brgyad yod pa la/ gcig ni ri rab kyi lho ngos su rdol te chu myig rta rna zhesbyao/ bdun a su rai nang na bab pa la khrus byed cing bsgrub pa de/ sa la gnas pai rigs dzin cesbyao/ (Dunhuang Tibetan manuscripts held at the British Library, London: IOL Tib J 644, 2a.6-2b.1).4 Despite their occasional appearance in Tibetan sources, topics like ptlasiddhi are not primarily

seen as the domain of Tibetologists or even of Sanskritic Buddhologists, but more of Indologists andSinologists. Our established traditions of academic compartmentalization that tends to inhibitknowledge of popular Indian religions among Buddhologists can have drawbacks for tantric studies.

2Mayer: The Importance of the Underworlds

than representing an earlier version of the Padmasambhava story as such (a pointwhich I am certain Dalton now understands, even though his actual words are alittle ambiguous on this point), the passage more likely describes a nowlong-forgotten generic Ptla-based ritual practice that many early Tantric Buddhistsmight well have attempted.

In this paper, I wish to pick up where Dalton left off, and try to contextualizethe reference to the Asura cave in Tib J 644. Not only will this help us rediscovera little about the largely forgotten Buddhist practice of Asura caves and attainmentof Ptla, but it also offers an opportunity to draw our attention to the noteworthybut as yet seldom mentioned continuities between several prominent Kriytantrapractices5 and the later legends of Padmasambhava (unfortunately, we still haverather little idea about the historical reality of Padmasambhava).

Asuras Caves in the Context of Buddhist KriytantraIn fact, despite Tibetan Buddhisms comparatively meager interest in the subject,Asuras caves feature surprisingly prominently in Indian mythology, magic, tantricritual, folklore, and cosmology, where they function as the entrances or gatewaysto the subterranean paradises of immense beauty, wealth, and pleasure, oftenenumerated as seven in number, and often generically called Ptla. It is withinthese subterranean paradises that Asuras (along with Ngas and various other spiritstoo) are believed to dwell. Ptla moreover became the focus of a substantial bodyof magical practices in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism alike. Asuras cavesserving as the gateway to Ptla are thus found in the epic literature, in tantricscriptures, in magical texts, in tantric ritual manuals, and in narratives of manykinds. More importantly for Tib J 644s presentation of the vidydharas ofKriytantra, Ptla, its Asura inhabitants, and Asuras caves as Ptlas entrancesare also specifically found in several canonical Buddhi