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T H U R S D A Y , M A Y 3 1 , 2 0 1 2

The Bell and the Sound Symbols of Dharma

Bell and Vajra. From the British Museum

© The Trustees of the British Museum

Today's blog entry is a continuation of this one.

 

"The world is sound. Immediately the question arises: What

kind of sound?" 

— Berendt, p. 19.

Just after the Buddha !"kyamuni attainedEnlightenment on the Vajra Seat (Vajr"sana)

 beneath the Awakening Tree, He was hesitant tospeak, certain that He would not be understood. He

 was even thinking to live out the rest of His days ina lonely forest retreat. The gods Brahma, famousfor his melodious speech, and Indra, famous for hispower, came to convince Him that it would be

 worth the effort to begin teaching His insights inthe form of the Dharma. The Wheel is one commonsymbol of the Dharma, since the Buddha is said tohave ‘set the Wheel of the Dharma in motion.’ As a

symbol of the same thing, Indra presented to theEnlightened One a Conch shell.

The s!tras, when they describe the Buddha’s firstacts of teaching, prefer sound metaphors  (orcouldn’t we in fact call them auditory symbols?)that emphasize a pealing or booming quality,sounds that are clearly identifiable and sustainedand that carry for a long distance. Such metaphorsas the Conch, the Large Drum, Melodious Brahma

 Voice, the Cymbal, the Lion’s Roar and the cry othe Kalapinka Bird are common in many s!tras.[1]

Less common is the Thunder, and later on we evenfind the cry of the Cuckoo Bird as a symbol oBuddha Word. These sounds are unified b their

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 startling quality, communicating not only theBuddha’s act of vocalization as a kind of ‘wakeupcall’ to greater awareness, but also therevolutionary nature of His revelation which, in Histime, seemed to be coming right out of the blue...In a time when Indian religious teachers wereemphasizing the ultimacy of the Self or Atman, Hisrevelation announced to the world that there is nosuch thing. In other words, these metaphors  (the

 were never simply  metaphors) served as symbolsnot only of the quality of the Buddha’s voice, but othe content of His message, with deep sounds tocorrespond to His depth of insight. But there is still

one further step to the symbolism that might be alittle difficult to follow. It is nevertheless essentialfor a fuller understanding of these symbols. Sincethe Buddha’s expression of the Dharma tells us theway things are, the ‘things,’ i.e., the elements oapparent existence as Buddhistically conceived, arealso called dharmas.[2]  Hence, our sonoroussymbols of Buddha Word are, besides beingidentified with the Buddhist scriptures whichpreserve His Word, equally identified with the

 world of phenomena.

The Bell as such (Gha#$a in Sanskrit and Dril-bu inTibetan[3]) is not listed among these metaphors oDharma in the Mah" y "na  S !tras we haveconsulted. Bells, in the plural, appear there ratheras a meritorious offering which came to form apermanent fixture of the Buddhist reliquaries

called St%pas. These bells, probably rather smallones equipped with cloth hangings attached totheir clappers that made them ring when the wind

 blew, were evidently hung in strings attached toSt%pas. Even without being explicitly identified

 with the Dharmas (scriptural or phenomenal) inthe Mah" y "na s!tras as far as we know at present,[4]  the brief explanations of the symbolisms of theBell in its entirety and in its parts all identify theBell as the Transcendent Insight S !tra, as well asthe Voidness of all phenomena which is the mainmessage of that  S !tra. The head of TranscendentInsight even looks out at us from the center of theBell’s handle.[5] Tsong-kha-pa, in his most famous

 work on the stages of the tantric Path, directlstates, “The Bell’s sound symbolizes theproclamation of the masses of Dharma.”[6]

 And Dragpa Gyeltsen says on the symbolism of the

Bell in its entirety: “Its empty interior means Voidness, the main point of the Transcendent 

nsight [S !tra] . The center [of the Bell] is thereality of Full Knowledge of awareness. Its soundindicates Voidness.”

Following closely Dragpa Gyeltsen’s brieexplanations of the individual parts of the Bell, westart with the handle. The handle is composed o(in descending order) [1] a half-Vajra, [2] a Lotus(or Crown?), [3] a  face, and [4] a vase of plenty.

 Although less common, some Bell handlesincorporate a ring, below the face, which seems notto have any special symbolism, but serves theutilitarian purpose of a thumb-ring to keep a bettergrasp.[7]  This ring I think to be more common inNewar Buddhist examples. About the half-Vajra,Dragpa Gyeltsen says,

“As for the Vajra, its use as a decorativecovering is a symbol of Insight beingornamented by Method.”[8]

Like the prongs of the complete Vajra, the prongsof the half-Vajra are also supposed to be supported

 by a lunar disk resting on a Lotus, although theLotus is not always clearly distinguishable in everexample, frequently looking more like a crown forthe face below.[9] The face is one element which isclearly present in nearly every example of theTibetan Bell (if they have any designs on them atall) and, in nearly every explanation known to us,[10]  this face is identified as the face of Insight orTranscendent Insi ht sometimes sim l as the

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 Mother (Yum), while some authorities call it theface of Dharma[11]  (I would say the latter is, givenour earlier discussion, entirely apt, even if notdirectly supported in our particular Tibetan-language sources).

For an enlargement of the "thumbnail," look here.© The Trustees of the British Museum

Here is Dragpa Gyeltsen’s explanation of the face:

“Above [the vase] is a face of TranscendentInsight that indicates Dharma Body [and]

 Voidness.”

Dharma Body, usually understood to belong to thedoctrinal category of Three Bodies of the Buddha,is also interpretable in some contexts as ‘the corpusof [Buddhist] teachings,’ while Voidness is thequintessential message of the Transcendent nsight S !tra. The face looks somewhat different in

different examples. Usually it has a meditativeexpression, and very often a look of amusement,

and what we are tempted to call a ‘knowing smile,’such as the Buddha often has in the Transcendent nsight   s!tras when He knows what His

questioners really have in mind when they ask theirquestions, or when He knows what the future will

 bring for them. She faces east, the direction of therising sun (increasing light), and so in directalighnment with the seed-syllable of T"r", TA ', inthe eight-petalled lotus below.

 A Full Pot  from Amaravati, 2nd century CE

© The Trustees of the British Museum

Beneath the face is a vase or pot, which DragpaGyeltsen calls “an elixir pot, as a symbol of theorigination [or emergence] of all [magical andspiritual] attainments.” The attainments or siddhi smay mean either ‘common’ magical powers or the‘Supreme Siddhi’ which is just another way osaying Complete Enlightenment. Elixir often stands

as a metaphor for the siddhi s. The Indian artisticmotive of the Full Pot, the P%r#a Gha$a (or P%r#aKumbha), is generally a symbol of wealth andabundance, but to follow Dragpa Gyeltsen, we

 would have to say that when it occurs on the handleof the Bell, it must refer to a wealth of spiritualattainment much more than secular riches.[12] The

 vase is not always clearly distinguishable on everBell. Like the Makara faces on the Vajra’s prongs,the vase has often become artistically distorted orreinterpreted to the point that it is no longer clearlrecognizable as such. At times it is simply absent,or replaced by the ring. Since it has beenpersuasively argued[13] that the ‘inverted pot’ foundnear the tops of Indian pillars (including the

 

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amous o an p ars represen s e pourngdown of the heavenly waters, with all the crystalclear agrarian connotations of abundance andfertility that this entails, the upright overflowingpot has a similar symbolic meaning, if for theopposite reasons — it is not emptying out froabove, but has been filled  from above.

Proceeding down from the handle to the lower partof the Bell which is the Bell proper (T"ran"tha callsit the belly  of the Bell), we will divide it into twomain parts, the dome and the slope: [1] the dome atthe top of the Bell encircling the point where thehandle is attached (Tibetan texts on occasion referto this part as the shoulder) and [2] the slope, orthe external surface of the Bell which slopes downfrom the ‘dome’ to the ‘lip.’ The surface of the domeis always decorated with an eight-petalled lotusflower design.[14]  Within each of the eight petals isa ‘seed syllable,’ a Sanskrit letter represented inTibetan transcription, each letter with a circleabove it representing the Sanskrit anusv"ra  (inEnglish transcriptions, represented as ‘(’ usuallpronounced like the ‘ng’ in ‘sung’). The tops of theletters are pointing outward, away from the point

 where the handle is attached.[15]  These eightsyllables are the ‘seeds’ of eight female Buddhas,

 which might be used as a basis for fully generatingtheir forms in contemplative visualizations. Theseeight Buddhas are, to give their names according totheir meanings in English (but the femininegrammatical endings are not translated here) withtheir seed syllables: Buddha Eye—la#;  MotherMine—ma#;  White Robe— pa#;  CommitmentSaviour—ta#;[16]  Flowing Wealth—va#,  hererepresented in Tibetan as ba#; Encourager—cu#,here represented in Tibetan as tsu#;  FurrowedBrow—bhri #;  Vajra Rosary—ma#,  repeated.[17]

The presence of these female Buddhas on aninstrument identified as being feminine in genderis significant.

Moving down to the slope of the Bell, we encounterfirst a circular band of horizontal Vajras. At the

 bottom of the slope, circling the outer part of the‘lip,’ is still another circular band of Vajras thatstand vertically. Both of these are protective circles;the upper band of Vajras is called the Vajra Rosary,

 while the lower one is called the Vajra Wall in theTibetan texts. Between these two bands is the

greater portion of the surface area of the slope, andit is here that we find interesting differences in thedesigns which allow us to categorize various typesof Bells.

To end for now with a few of the interestingdetails... The following typology of Bells isprovided on the basis of an eighteenth-centurTibetan text,[18]  since Dragpa Gyeltsen doesn’tmention the designs on this part of the Bell. [19] 

There are six types of Bells. The first, called theHero Bell, may have either five- or nine-pointed

 Vajra,[20]  while the remaining five, named forthe five Buddha Families, always have fivepoints; hence we have the Tath"gata Family Bell,the Vajra Family Bell, the Jewel Family Bell, theLotus Family Bell, and the Deed (or Sword)

Family Bell. It is not entirely clear whichpresently-available type of Bell the Hero Bellmight be intended to designate.[21]  The mostcommonly encountered type of Bell has eightdifferent symbols depicted around the centralpart of the slope.[22] These eight symbols includethe emblems of the five Buddha Families,although the symbols are not always distinctenough to identify them with certainty, andthere appears to be a certain amount o

 variation. The Tath"gata Family has as itsheraldic emblem the Wheel of the Law, and sothe Tath"gata Family Bell has a number o

 Wheels arrayed around the upper side of theslope. The Vajra Family Bell has Vajras, the

 

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 Jewel Family Bell has Jewels, the Lotus FamilBell has Lotuses, and the Deed Family Bell hasSwords.

To be continued...

[1] For examples of all of these, see the life of the Buddha astold in the Lalitavistara S !tra, Chapter 26 entitled “Turningthe Wheel of the Dharma.”

[2] The lack of initial capital on the word dharma when usedfor the constituents (or qualities) of apparent existence is aBuddhological convention used when translating Buddhist

texts into western languages. The original languages —Tibetan, Sanskrit, P"li etc. — have nothing comparable tocapital letters, and so the observance of this convention hasnothing to do with Buddhist conventions. For believingBuddhists, the distinction between Buddha Word[s] andconstituent[s] of apparent existence is an unnecessary one.

[3]  Although this might create some confusion, the Bell isoften called in the texts Dorjé Drilbu (Rdo-rje-dril-bu), or

 Vajra Bell, since the Bell possesses a Vajra at its top. Thereare some places in the texts where the conjunctive syllablemay be dropped (often for reasons of meter), and “Rdo-rje-dril-bu” may have to be read as meaning Vajra and   Bell.Furthermore, Rdo-rje-dril-bu may appear in an abbreviatedform as Rdor-dril. The ritual Bell of the Bon religion is quitedifferent from that used in the other Tibetan schools. It is a

 very shallow, and might look more like a cymbal, except thatit is equipped with a clapper. For a study of this Bon Bellcalled, in Tibetan, gshang, see Helffer (1981). It is evidently of Persian or Turkish origin. Mention of this instrument is notlimited to Bon texts of the tantric types, but is also found,together with the drum, as a metaphor for the proclamationof the Golden Light Radiant Jewel   (Gser-’od Nor-bu

’Od-’bar)  S !tra, and it is explicitly called one of the ‘symbolsof the Word’ (bka’ rtags,  the other symbols being the drum,conch and something called slang, possibly a metal bowl usedas a ‘gong’ or some other cymbal-like instrument) in theapparently eleventh-century biography of Lord Shenrab, theCondensed Scripture  ( Mdo-’dus), to give two examples. Itoccurs in Bon religious art as an attribute of deities bothpeaceful and wrathful. That Bonpo teachers mightnevertheless make use in rituals of the usual Buddhist Vajraand Bell is proven by photographs in Tucci (1989: 182, andtext on p. 184), although this would seem to be acharacteristic of New Bon (Bon Gsar). One further interestinguse of the Bell ought to be mentioned. Certain groups of non-Buddhist peoples in northern Assam, people who gained theirlivelihoods through hunting and gathering, employed the Bellin a secular way, as a form of ‘currency’ which they used in

 bartering. The Tibetans who originally supplied them with theBells would remove the handles before using them topurchase goods from the Assamese. Evidently, Bells devoid of their half-Vajra-tipped handles were no longer viewed assacred objects.

[4] We can be fairly certain of what we are saying here on the

absence of Bells-as-symbols-of-Dharma, since we were able toconsult the texts of the Transcendent Insight  and a number of other important Mah" y "na s!tras in electronic versionsprepared by the  Asian Classics Input Project. This makes itpossible to locate quickly every occurrence of a word in thetext of the s!tra (of course one still must take care to considerthe possibility of wrong or unusual spellings andtypographical errors as well as synonyms, epithets, etc.,

 which computers have not been trained to ‘catch’). Thesedays, we also have the Vienna site, subject of this Tibeto-logic

 blog page. I haven’t had time to look into the several hundredoccurrences of the word  Dril-bu  in the Kanjur texts, but my impression is that in nearly all cases they are the strings ornetworks (dra-ba) of bells used to decorate st ! pas. The worddril-bu is frequently used together with g.yer-ka in the s!tracontexts. A quite typical phrase is gser-gyi dril-bu g.yer-ka'i dra-ba. There is often a mention of how they make theirsounds when the wind blows, which does tend to make usthink of wind chimes more than bells. In any case thematerial on bells in the Tibetan canon overall is so great that I

hope some ambitious person will take up the challenge of studying it all. I haven’t.

[5]  For the symbolism of the Bell and its parts, we arefortunate to have a set of excellent contributions by MireilleHelffer (1982, 1985a, 1985b), and our discussion is in somedegree based on them, but with our emphasis given to theTibetan-language work by Dragpa Gyeltsen.

[6] Tsong-kha-pa (n.d.: 564).

[7] According to Rong-tha (n.d. 79), the ring is placed here onno other authority than the craft tradition itself (meaning itisn’t justifiable from scriptural and commentarial works).Kun-grol-grags-pa (1974: 533) says that the hole (bug-pa) isnot taught in any transmission lineage (brgyud , but I think he intends rgyud , ‘tantra’). One example of a remarkableMing Dynasty Bell (a Chinese inscription in its interioridentifies it as belonging to the reign of Yongle) whichincludes a ring in its handle has been published ( Precious

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 rings seem to be of Nepalese origin. Even much more rarely,Phurpas may have rings attached (a purportedly 12th-century example from the Dali Kingdom of presentday YunnanProvince was offered for sale in Rossi & Rossi 2002), andprobably with a similar motive, to keep the implement fromflying out of the hands during ritual usage.

[8] Feminist thinkers may find it cause for delight or dismay that here Dragpa Gyeltsen makes Father Method subservient(‘ornamental’) to the face of Mother Insight. She wears the

 Vajra of Voidness as Her crown, since Voidness is Herultimate insight.

[9]  The face is often described in the non-Tibetan-languageliterature as being ‘crowned,’ but among our Tibetan textsonly Rong-tha (n.d. 78) states this explicitly. Ignoring thetexts, and basing ourselves entirely on visual aspects, it often

does look as if there is a crown, but a crown ought to have five‘lobes’ for the five Buddha Families. On the example in hand,there are eight ‘lobes’ entirely encircling the handle.Therefore we prefer to interpret these ‘lobes’ as being ratherlotus petals intended to ‘support’ the Vajra prongs (as in thesymbolism of the Vajra discussed above) rather than to‘crown’ the face.

[10] Except for a late Dge-lugs-pa text, which says that whenthe Bells are distinguished by Buddha Families (see below),the face should be the face of the main Buddha of the family to which the Bell belongs (Helffer 1985b: 58). T"ran"tha(1983a) suggests that a wrathful Bell ought to have a face with

 wrathful appearance. Stag-tshang (n.d. 32) refers to the Faceas that of the ‘Blessed Lady’ (Bcom-ldan-’das-ma) or, inanother place, that of ‘Transcendent Insight’ (Sher-phyin).Dpal-sprul (1994: 187), writing in the nineteenth century,says “The bell bears the image of a face which, according tothe outer tantras, is that of Vairochana and, in the view of higher tantras, is Vajradhatvishvari.” (Most surprising here isthe possibility of identifying the face as Vairocana’s,

 Vairocana being a Buddha with male form.)

[11]  Olsen (1950: 35), for example, says, “the head of the

goddess Dharma or Prajna, ‘Supreme Wisdom’.” Onescriptural source, the Sampu$ a Tantra (Derge Kanjur, vol. 79[GA ], fol. 289 recto), is quite explicit about the face at thecenter being that of ‘Goddess Prajñ"p"ramit"’ ( Lha-mo Shes-rab Pha-rol-phyin), further specifying that it should, in itsshape, be beautiful and endowed with qualities. This text alsodescribes a lotus as being above the face, with no mention of acrown. This scriptural evidence strengthens the impressionthat the globular part at the center of of the Vajra is meant tocorrespond to the face at the center of the Bell.

[12]  On the Indian symbolism of the Full Pot, see Gairola(1954), Rosu (1961), Agrawala (1965: 10-11, 43-46),Coomaraswamy (1971, pt. 2: 61-64), and especially Bhattacharya (2000). Smith (1989) gives evidence for itsantiquity in Buddhist architecture in which it is associated

 with pillars. See as well Harvey (1991: 74-76), where anargument is made for a Buddhist interpretation which wouldemphasize the ‘fullness’ of the Buddha’s Teachings, theDharma, which fits nicely with the other symbolic motivesfound on the Bell. The lotuses or Bodhi tree sometimesdepicted growing from the pot would then be a symbol of spiritual growth nourished by the resources of the Buddha’s

Teachings. The reference to an ‘elixir pot’ reminds us of theIndian cosmogonical story of the churning of the Milk Oceanthat resulted in, among other things, the production of thedivine sustenance or ‘elixir,’ a drink of immortality, which

 was placed in a pot. Pots filled with water, with leaves andother decorations decorating their mouths, have been, andstill are, used during deconsecration/reconsecration rituals,as temporary abodes for the deities when images or st ! pasare being repaired. I would further suggest that all   theelements of the Bell handle above the Full Pot ought to beconceived as emerging out of it.

[13] Vajracharya (1999: 53-64).

[14]  See Ronge (1980), where the process of bell-making isdescribed in some detail. The decorations on the ‘dome’ aredirectly transferred to the mold from the ‘blank’ prototypeBell that is used to form the mold, but the decorations on the‘slope’ have to be subsequently stamped onto the inside of the

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mo . s exp a ns w y e ecora ons on e s ope areoften less distinct than the decorations on the ‘dome.’ Weought to emphasize that the names ‘slope’ and ‘dome’ do notcome from our Tibetan-language sources, while the term ‘lip’is in fact used by them.

[15]  The ‘garland of letters’ is very deeply rooted in Indianreligious history, and we will not attempt to trace its history here. One finds it in the Cakrasamvara tantric system’s

 visualization of the ‘seat’ of the deity. Here the vowels (for‘insight’) circle counterclockwise twice and transform into thelunar disk, while the consonants (for ‘method’) circleclockwise twice and transform into the solar disk. The seat

 being the ‘site’ of the enlightened being t hat is seated on it,the letters, in this case the Sanskrit letters transcribed intoTibetan, are both the seeds of the sacred scriptures and theinitial definition of the sacred space. (See, for example, Beyer

1973: 112.) Quite similar, even with its differences, is the ritethat forms a part of Catholic church consecration ritualscalled the abecedarium, in which two lines of the Latin andGreek alphabets (the alphabets of the two sacred languagesused in traditional [pre-Vatican II] Catholic scriptures andsacred chants) are inscribed from corner to opposite cornerforming an ‘X’-shaped cross. These alphabets are “the

 beginnings and basics of sacred doctrine... and the beginningsof the Word of God” (Repsher 1998: 82; see also Bowen 1941:475). Given the obviously different arrangements of theletters in circles and crosses, nevertheless the similar in theirusages of ‘seed’ letters of scripture to define sacred spaces isimpressive.

[16] The syllable ta# is symbolically oriented toward the east,and the Face in the middle of the handle is also supposed to

 be oriented in the same direction. Stag-tshang (n.d. 33) callsthis an ‘Inner Bell.’ He also describes as an ‘Outer Bell’ onethat has a ring below the Face as well as the seed syllable oremblem of Buddha Eye in the east. The arrangement of seedsyllables in Kun-grol-grags-pa (1974: 531-532) is quitedifferent.

[17] The lists of eight female Buddhas are not always the same.Especially the last four frequently vary from our list, which isderived from Dragpa Gyeltsen’s work. We have notattempted to sort out the reasons for this variation. The ‘seedsyllables’ of these Buddhas are formed simply by taking thefirst letters of their names (in their original Sanskrit form)and adding anusv"ra.

[18]  This work by Kun-grol-grags-pa, an eighteenth-century Bon-po teacher in Eastern Tibet, is discussed in Helffer(1985), and we have based our explanation on this.

[19]  Although this cannot be accomplished here, it will beinteresting in the future to consider how the designs on thispart of the Bell might have developed over time. It is apossibility that Dragpa Gyeltsen doesn’t mention thesedesign elements because they were not commonly in use inhis time. One Tibetan text suggests that earlier Bells mighthave been less decorated. See Khams-ston (1990: 256), whereit says that there exist unornamented bronze Bells in Tibet

 which were made by India n craf tspersons. These are s aid to be Bells especially me ant t o be used in d ance p erformances,and are sometimes called ‘old Tibetan’ ( Bod rnying) Bells. Ihave seen a set of relatively unornamented Vajra and Bell

offered for sale in Kathmandu at a tremendous cost (300,000Nepalese rupees, to be exact; perhaps 3,000 US dollars), aprice justified by the dealer since, according to her belief, theset had been imported to Tibet from India in the eleventhcentury. The Bell was unornamented except for the half-Vajraat the top and a few highly-worn decorative bands around the‘slope.’ Buyers beware, however, especially since nowadaysmany if not most Bells are manufactured to have a wornappearance, and so the indistinctness of the decorativeelements (which may also result from the method of casting,as mentioned in an earlier note) is not in itself necessarily aproof of antiquity.

[20] According to Kun-grol-grags-pa (1974: 530), “Nowadays[most common are the] five-pointed Vajra used in peacefuland extending [ritual actions] and the nine-pointed Vajraused in influencing and overpowering [ritual actions].”Evidently Bells topped by Vajras of like number of points

 would share the same ritual usage.

[21]  The problem is discussed in some detail in the works of Helffer listed below. According to Rong-tha, as well as Dkon-mchog-bstan-’dzin, it has the two Vajra bands as the only decoration on its slope. It lacks the emblems as well as the

pearl strings (to be described presently). Sangs-rgyas-rdo-rje(1995: 13) distinguishes three types of Bells. The first is the

 Vajradh"ra Bell (nine-pointed only), the second the Hero Bell(five- or nine-pointed), and the third the Particular Family Bell (five-pointed only). The last one includes the fivedifferent Bells belonging to the five Buddha Families. Hedefines the Hero Bell (on p. 17) as a five- or nine-pointed Bell

 which has the Vajra Rosary, but in which the latticework of pearl strings is replaced by insets of precious substances(gold, silver or gems).

[22]  According to Dkon-mchog-bstan-’dzin (1994: 314), thistype of Bell with eight different emblems is called the VajraBeing Full Knowledge Bell (Rdor-sems Ye-shes-kyi Dril-bu).

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 An Old Bell in Patan Museum, Nepal

§ § §

Literary works

 V.W. AGRAWALA 

 Studies in Indian Art , Vishwavidyalaya Prakashan (Varanasi 1965).

Joachim-Ernst BERENDT Nada Brahma, the World is Sound: Music and the Landscape of 

Consciousness, tr. by Helmut Bredigkeit, East-West Publications(London 1983). This book may make you think about sound like

 you never did before. Each chapter ends with footnotes to recordedmusic.

Stephan BEYER 

The Cult of T "r": Magic and Ritual in Tibet , University of California Press (Berkeley 1973).

Gouriswar BHATTACHARYA 

The Enigmatic Pot, contained in: Maurizio Taddei and Giuseppe DeMarco, eds.,  South Asian Archaeology 1997 , Serie Orientale Roma

no. 90, Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente (Rome 2000), vol. 3,pp. 1342-1365. For a list of this author's publications in PDF, try thislink .

Lee BOWEN

The Tropology of Medieval Dedication Rites,  Speculum, vol. 16, no.4 (October 1941), pp. 469-479. Available at JSTOR throughsubscribing institutions.

 Ananda K. COOMARASWAMY 

Yak%as, Part I and Part II, Munshiram Manoharlal (New Delhi1971).

DKON-MCHOG-BSTAN-’DZIN

 Bzo-gnas Skra Rtse’i Chu-thigs [‘The Arts: A Drop at the Tip of theBrush Hairs’] Krung-go’i Bod-kyi Shes-rig Dpe-skrun-khang(Beijing 1994). A modern textbook on Tibetan art history andtechniques, ‘Drop of Liquid on the Tip of the [Brush-]hairs.’

DPAL-SPRUL O-RGYAN-’JIGS-MED-CHOS-KYI-DBANG-PO

The Words of My Perfect Teacher: Kunzang Lama’i Shelung,translated by the Padmakara Translation Group, Harper Collins(San Francisco 1994).

DRAGPA GYELTSEN

See Grags-pa-rgyal-mtshan.

C.K. GAIROLA 

Évolution du  p!r&a gha$ a  (vase d’abondance) dans l’Inde et l’Indeextérieure, Arts Asiatiques, vol. 1 (1954), pp. 209-226.

GRAGS-PA-RGYAL-MTSHAN

 Rdo-rje Dril-bu dang Bgrang-phreng-gi De-kho-na-nyid   [‘TheTrue Reality of Vajra, Bell and Rosary’], contained in: Sa-skya-pa’i 

 Bka’-’bum, Toyo Bunko (Tokyo 1968), vol. 3, pp. 271-2-4 through272-3-6.

Peter HARVEY 

 Venerated Objects and Sy mbols of Early Buddhism, contained in:Karel Werner, ed.,  Symbols in Art and Religion, MotilalBanarsidass (Delhi 1991), pp. 68-102.

Mirielle HELFFER 

— Notes à propos d’une clochette gshang: Tibet et régions deculture tibétaine, Objets et mondes, vol. 21, no. 3 (Autumn 1981),pp. 129-134.

— Du texte à la muséographie: données concernant la clochettetibétaine dril-bu, Revue de musicologie, vol. 68, no. 1/2 (1982) 248-269.

— A Typology of the Tibetan Bell, contained in: B.N. Aziz &M.Kapstein, eds.,  Soundings in Tibetan Civilization, Manohar(N.Delhi 1985a), pp. 37-41. This is an abstract of the longer study inFrench in Arts Asiatiques (see below).

— Essai pour une typologie de la cloche tibétaine dril-bu,  Arts

 Asiatiques 40 (1985b) 53-67.

KHAMS-STON

 Rgya Bod-kyi Nor-rdzas-kyi Ris Brtags-shing Dpyad-pa’i Dpyad 

 Don Yid-kyi ’Dod-’jo, contained in:  Bzo-rig Nyer-mkho Bdams

 Bsgrigs  (Gangs-can Rig Mdzod series no. 14), Bod-ljongs Bod-yigDpe-rnying Dpe-skrun-khang (Lhasa 1990), pp. 229-262. A treatiseon how to recognize highly valued objects in Tibetan materialculture, probably composed in the fifteenth century.

KUN-GROL-GRAGS-PA (b. 1700)

Gsang-sngags Theg-pa Chen-po’i Bsten-par Bya-ba’i Dam-rdzas

 Ji-ltar ’Chang-ba’i Rnam-bshad Rnal-’byor Rol-pa’i Dga’-ston

(‘Feast of the Playacting Yogis: An Explanation on How to Hold theCommitment Substances for Use in the Great Vehicle of SecretMantra’), contained in: Mkha’-’gro Bde-chen-dbang-mo, et al.,Yum-chen Kye-ma-’od-mtsho’i Zab Gsang Gcod-kyi Gdams-pa Las

 Phran dang bcas-pa’i Gsung-pod , Tshering Wangyal, TBMC(Dolanji 1974), pp. 515-599.

Eleanor OLSENCatalogue of the Tibetan Collection and Other Lamaist Articles in

the Newark Museum: Volume II , The Newark Museum (Newark 

Institute of Tibetan Classics

Ladakhi Phrasebook 

Lalou's Dunhuang Catalogue

Learning Amdo Dialect

Lexicon of Zhangzhung & Bonpo

Terms - PDF

Mipam's Gateway to Knowledge

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Notes on Marco Polo

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The Bell and the Sound Symbolsof Dharma

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1950, reprint 1973).PRECIOUS DEPOSITS

 Precious Deposits: Historical Relics of Tibet, China, Morning Glory Publishers (Beijing 2000), in five volumes.

Brian REPSHER 

The Rite of Church Dedication in the Early Medieval Era , TheEdwin Mellen Press (Lewiston 1998).

RONG-THA 

Rong-tha Blo-bzang-dam-chos-rgya-mtsho (1863-1917), Thig-gi 

 Lag-len Du-ma Gsal-bar Bshad-pa Bzo-rig Mdzes-pa’i Kha-rgyan. An 85-folio t reatise on Bu ddhist sacred arts, purchased in Lhasa in1996. The printing blocks for this edition were originally kept atRgyud-smad Grwa-tshang, the Lower Tantra College in Lhasa.

 Veronica RONGE and N.G. RONGE

Casting Tibetan Bells, contained in: Michael Aris and Aung San SuuKyi, eds., Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson, Aris and

Phillips, Ltd. (Warminster 1980), pp. 269-276. Anna Maria ROSSI and Fabio ROSSI

 Beyond Lhasa: Sculpture and Painting from East and West Tibet 

(exhibition catalogue), Anna Maria & Fabio Rossi Publications(London 2002).

 A. ROSU

P%r#aghata et le symbolisme du lotus dans l’Inde,  Arts Asiatique, vol. 8, no. 3 (1961), pp. 163-194.

Mkhas-dbang SANGS-RGYAS-RDO-RJE

 Responses to Various Polemical Writings, Sherab Gyaltsen Lama & Acharya Shedup Tenzin (Rewalsar 1985).

R. Morton SMITH

Pots without Pans, contained in: Devendra Handa and Ashvini Agrawal,  Ratna-Chandrik": Panorama of Oriental Studies [Shri 

 R.C. Agrawala Festschrift] , Harman Publishing House (New Delhi1989), pp. 59-64.

STAG-TSHANG LO-TS ) -BA SHES-RAB-RIN-CHEN (1405-1477 or 1478)

 Rten Gsum Bzhugs-gnas dang bcas-pa’i Bsgrub-tshul Rgyas-par

 Bshad-pa Dpal-’byor Rgya-mtsho. Microfilm of a 54-foliomanuscript in the possession of Gyaltsen (Swayambhunath, Nepal)courtesy of the Nepalese National Archives (reel no. E574/29;running no. E15094). A treatise on Buddhist sacred arts composedin 1459.

TSONG-KHA-PA 

Tsong-kha-pa Blo-bzang-grags-pa (1357-1419),  Rgyal-ba Khyab-

bdag Rdo-rje-’chang Chen-po’i Lam-gyis

 Rim-pa Gsang-ba Kun-gyi Gnad Rnam-par

 Phye-ba  (= Sngags-rim Chen-mo; = Rje’i 

Gsung-’bum Ga-pa), Tibetan Cultural PrintingPress (Dharamsala n.d.). A very famoustreatise on Buddhist tantra in general by Tsong-kha-pa, credited with founding the Dge-lugs-pa School.

Giuseppe TUCCI

 Sadhus et brigands du Kailash: Mon voyage

au Tibet occidental , Editions R. Chabaud(Paris 1989).

Gautama V. VAJRACHARYA 

Symbolism of Ashokan Pillars: A Reappraisalin the Light of Textual and Visual Evidence,  Marg  (Mumbai), vol.51, no. 2 (Dec. 1999), pp. 53-78.

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Portland Veterinarian Sunday, June 03, 2012

awesome stuff! More power to your blog!

Reply 

 Vandana Friday, May 02, 2014

 very well explained, thanks for the wonderful post.

Reply 

 Anonymous Friday, May 02, 2014

excellent

Reply 

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