Zeff Bjerken - On Mandalas, Monarchs, And Mortuary Magic - Siting the Sarvadurgatiparisodhana Tantra in Tibet

On Mandalas, Monarchs, and Mortuary Magic: Siting the Sarvadurgatiparisodhana Tantra in TibetZeff Bjerken

Recent scholarship on Indian Buddhist esotericism identifies the individual practitioner’s pursuit of kingship and dominion as the central defining m etaphor of Tantric literature. From this perspective the mandala is not simply a gnostic symbol of enlightenment but a model used for the realization of a Buddhist feudal polity. This article extends this line of argument by explaining why one Indian Buddhist text, the Sarvadurgatiparisodhana Tantra (SDPS), would play an im portant role in the conversion of Tibet to Buddhism. Drawing upon the theories of J. Z. Smith on locative religion and ritual, I argue that the ubiquitous mandalas featured in this text serve as “maps” and modes of emplacement that have political ramifications for an emerging Buddhist polity in Tibet. The mandalas, sovereignty symbolism, and m ortuary rites of this text also undermine the indigenous model of divine kingship that was present in Tibet prior to the arrival of Buddhism.

The realm of our experience is similar to a tapestry. Time is the warp and space is the woof; the myriad patterns appearing out of warp and woof are the metamorphoses of all things.

— Inoue Enryo (Grapard: 196)

Zeff Bjerken is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the College of Charleston, Charleston, SC 29424.

Journal o f the American Academy o f Religion September 2005, Vol. 73, No. 3, pp. 813-841 doi: 10.1093/jaarel/lfi080© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

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814 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

SCHOLARS OF TANTRA OFTEN begin their discussion of this complex tradition with an etymology, when they note that the original Sanskrit meaning of tantra was “the warp and woof” of a fabric. This storied etymology tells us that Tantric texts are akin to textiles, and from this metaphor it becomes evident how tantra can also be characterized by interwoven threads or “continuity,” as the term is translated in Tibetan (rgyud). The Tantric text as textile trope offers us a heuristic device for reading the Sarvadurgatiparisodhana Tantra (SDPS), one of the first Buddhist Sanskrit Tantras translated into Tibetan during the eighth century. What are some of the primary themes, the strands of thread as it were, that run through this text? Here I will focus on a few prominent features in the SDPS, namely, the ubiquitous mandalas, the pervasive symbols of royalty, the much advertised magical benefits, and the techniques for enabling the deceased to achieve a good rebirth, a feature promoted in the text's very name, The Purification of All Evil Rebirths. I have chosen to unravel these looping threads about mandalas, monarchs, and mortuary magic because they play a crucial role in the conversion of Tibet to Buddhism. What intrigues me about these prominent threads in the SDPS is their value for Buddhist missionary ideology, an ideology that sought to displace the native Tibetan cult of divine kingship. The religious and ideological values found in the SDPS were valuable for the Buddhist conversion project in Tibet, if not tailor-made for it. The purpose of this article is to examine the discourse about funerals and kings in the SDPS against the backdrop of Tibet's conversion to Buddhism and explain how its mandalas reordered native conceptions of power and place.

Imperial Tibet during the late eighth and early ninth centuries, when the SDPS was first translated into Tibetan, was an arena for contesting religious and political ideologies. Conflict often erupted over the religious authority of the king and the locus of his power. Early Buddhists in Tibet faced opposition from ministers and priests who upheld the indigenous cult of kingship, a tradition that paid homage to the king as a descendant from heaven, a divine being endowed with magical powers, and a magisterial brilliance (yphrul byin; Macdonald). Buddhists sought to displace the native model of kingship with the cakravartin ideal imported from India. They represented the spread of the Dharma as akin to the cakravartin's expansion of territory, the universal subjugation of local powers by a righteous conqueror. The image of the cakravartin featured a king who turns the wheel (cakra) of his empire from its center or an emperor whose chariot wheel has rolled around the perimeter of the Indian kingdom, without any obstruction from enemies. As elsewhere in Asia, much of the early Buddhist mission in Tibet was directed at the governing elite, with kings in particular targeted as potential promoters

Bjerken: On Mandalas, Monarchs, and Mortuary Magic 815

of the Buddha’s law. In turn, the Dharma was presented as a means for protecting the state (Kapstein; Urban).

Mandalas were valuable tools in the Buddhist mission civilisatrice. They served as a new “map” for reorganizing the religious and political landscape. Mandalas introduced a hierarchical polity centering on the Buddhist king and expanding outward in concentric circles, representing degrees of accommodation to the not so sacred or politically powerful. As we shall see, the mandala offers what Jonathan Z. Smith calls a “locative map” of the cosmos, an ordered grid that “guarantees meaning and value through structures of congruity and conformity” (1978: 292). The mandala s social and political coordinates serve the interests of the imperial figure and his ministers at the center. Thus it is politically conservative, as it puts everyone into his proper place in a hierarchy, whereby each individual’s purpose was fulfilled by keeping his place.

Our investigation of the SDPS will reveal, however, that mandalas involve much more than the static model implied by a “locative map.” Mandalas are well suited to assimilate or replace native figures in the landscape, whether they are divine figures or political agents, making the mandala a potent weapon in the arsenal of Buddhist apologists. The dynamic function of the mandala is celebrated in its magical ability to transform the social and religious status of the initiated during the present and in future lives. The SDPS claims that what “takes place” inside the mandala may be radically transformative. Not only can it alter one’s karmic destiny and achieve the goal of Buddhahood but also a variety of mundane boons (often related to kingship) become available to the initiate. The tension between these ambivalent aspects of the mandala, serving both as a static map and a dynamic method for acquiring power, made it a potent instrument for reconfiguring the religious landscape of Tibet.

Our destination lies in siting the SDPS in Tibet, but we will not be able to catch full sight of the text’s role in the Tibetans’ conversion to Buddhism. The gaps that remain between text and context can only be bridged by historical speculation. But for now, even the analysis of this text and its historical context remains distant in time and space. Rather than plunging directly into the sacred space of the SDPS mandalas, I will take a circuitous route toward this topic, drawing inspiration from the Tibetan pilgrim’s practice of circumambulating sites (ykhor ba).

GUIDES TO THE MANDALA AS SACRED REPRESENTATION: METHODOLOGICAL EXCURSIONS

As pilgrims know, the straight line is not the customary route for approaching sacred spaces. Unlike mountaineers of the Himalayas such


as Mallory, who plotted a direct line of ascent to Everest's summit and hoped to conquer it for no other reason than “because it's there,'' Tibetans take an entirely different approach to their sacred mountains in the “Land of Snows.” In place of a compass, pilgrims may be equipped with a guidebook (gnas yig) on their leisurely journey to their destination, with numerous detours made to retrace footsteps left by saints in stone. On my own approach to the mandalas of the SDPS, I too shall take a roundabout route and pay homage to my intellectual guides. An oblique approach seems to be an apt method for the historian. As Smith has suggested the direction of the historian's line of argument and even his point of departure are both quite problematic. The philosopher or theologian may start his linear arguments with First Principles or with the theological opening, “In the Beginning.. . . ” As for the historian, however, Smith notes that

There is for him no real beginning, but only the plunge which he takes at some arbitrary point to avoid the unhappy alternatives of infinite regress or silence. His standpoint is not discovered; rather it is erected with no claim beyond that of sheer survival. The historian’s point of view cannot sustain clear vision. The historian’s task is to complicate, not to clarify. He strives to celebrate the diversity of manners, the opacity of things, the variety of species. He is barred, thereby, from making a frontal assault on his topic. Like the pilgrim, the historian is obligated to approach his subject obliquely. He must circumambulate the spot several times before making even the most fleeting contact. His method, like that of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman, is that of digression. (1978:129)

In our roundabout route toward the SDPS Tantra in Tibet, our first digression takes us through an imaginary city named Eudoxia, where we will gain some bearing on our Tibetan destination. Eudoxia will provide an occasion for meditating on religious space and particularly for thinking about the features of a mandala-like structure. The city of Eudoxia that we shall explore appears as a site in the landscape charted by Italo Calvino in Invisible Cities. For those who have yet to set their minds in this text, I will summarize some of its salient features.

Invisible Cities features two figures engaged in dialogue, the young Venetian trader Marco Polo and the aging Tartar emperor Kublai Khan. The Khan, ruler of a vast but crumbling empire, feels that his territory is slipping out of his control. He searches for some ultimate order to his boundless empire, so that he may really grasp and possess it. The Khan entreats Marco Polo, the seasoned traveler and consummate storyteller, to describe the cities that he has visited during his trading expeditions.


Polo obliges the Khan with fabulous descriptions of invisible cities; but with these cities he charts an imaginary topography, more plastic than material. The Khan tries to discern in these bewildering places “the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing” (Calvino: 6). What the emperor seeks in these subtle patterns is a lasting map of his decaying empire. It is a map of sorts that is featured in Polo's description of Eudoxia, identified as one of the “Cities and the Sky,” for it is seemingly patterned after the harmony of the celestial spheres.

Polo depicts it as a confusing city with labyrinthine streets and deadend alleys, making it “easy to get lost in Eudoxia.” Fortunately, a magic carpet is preserved in the city. Its magic is found in the carpet's design, for its geometric pattern represents the city's true form. At first glance, there would seem to be no relationship whatsoever between the chaotic city and the carpet's ordered design, “laid out in symmetrical motives whose patterns are repeated along straight and circular lines, interwoven with brilliantly colored spires, in a repetition that can be followed throughout the whole woof.” Upon closer examination, the citizen becomes convinced that the carpet is actually a miniature version of the city, a map that faithfully corresponds to all of its places, “arranged according to their true relationship, which escapes [the] eye distracted by the bustle, the throngs, the shoving.” What at first seems disorienting about the city is merely a result of the citizen's incomplete perspective, “but the carpet proves that there is a point from which the city shows its true proportions, the geometrical scheme implicit in its every, tiniest detail.” If a person loses his way in the city, but then stares at the carpet long enough, he will recognize the street he was looking for as one of the carpet's colorful threads, which loops around to his destination. Thus, dwellers in Eudoxia do not escape the implicit geometry of life; when each confronts the carpet's symmetry, he superimposes that order onto his own image of the city. Even his own destiny can be found in the carpet's patterns: “each can find, concealed among the arabesques, an answer, the story of his life, the twists of fate” (Calvino: 96-97).

An oracle is consulted about the mysterious connection between two such dissimilar objects, the city and the carpet. The oracle answers that only one of the two objects “has the form the gods gave the starry sky and the orbits in which the worlds revolve; the other is an approximate reflection, like every human creation.” The augurs who interpret the oracle's speech argue (predictably) that the carpet was fashioned by a divine hand according to the cosmic design, and this interpretation aroused no controversy among Eudoxia's inhabitants. However, in a final ironic twist the reverse possibility is also suggested, which undermines the very existence of cosmic order:


But you could, similarly, come to the opposite conclusion: that the true map of the universe is the city of Eudoxia, just as it is, a stain that spreads out shapelessly, with crooked streets, houses that crumble one upon the other amid clouds of dust, fires, screams in the darkness. (Calvino: 97)

Without providing any definitive answer, Calvino leaves us to reflect on order and chaos in negotiating the mental cityscape of Eudoxia. Do we read this story as a Platonic parable about the carpet's true form? Or are we left with the existential anguish of uncertainty, bereft of any ultimate religious order?

Here we need not dwell on these ultimate questions. To do so might strand us in the confusion of Eudoxia, lost amidst “the mules' braying, the lampblack stains, the fish smell.'' Instead, we shall consider the allure of the carpet as a mandala-like structure. The most obvious parallelism between the carpet and a mandala lies in their geometrical form, in their pattern of circles and squares in repeating motives. This abstract geometry gives the carpet-mandala a static quality, and its “immobile order'' can be replicated. The carpet's value as a map depends on its ability to be copied and transported, for how else could one actually locate streets in its colored threads without having a replica of the carpet before him? The promise of the carpet for Kublai Khan lies in the possibility that it could be duplicated by Polo and transferred to the Khan's capital without ever losing its accuracy. After all, the citizens of Eudoxia regard it as the pattern of the universe, and viewers of it gain a perfect perspective on their destiny. Not only is this miniaturized universe easy to grasp conceptually, it may also have magical qualities, as it concentrates the power of the cosmic order into its design, saturating it with meaning and power. Magic is, of course, related to artifice and fabrication. The creators of cosmograms such as the mandala are traditionally believed to gain magical power over the object, with which they can manipulate reality. What is mysterious about the carpet is that the very conditions of its production remain unknown, much like the obscure origins of a revelatory text. It is only the augurs who interpret the oracle's ambiguous words and assure the city's inhabitants that the carpet's design is indeed divine.

But how exactly do the carpet, the city, and the cosmos interconnect? Missing in Polo's description is any fixed reference point or a center by which to orient oneself on the carpet. Although an Archimedean point is implied by the viewer's perspective, “the point from which the city shows its true proportions,” a central locus is never specified in the carpet's geometrical patterns. Here lies the major difference between the carpet and the mandala. A mandala's center is unmistakable, serving as the focal


point and the apex of value in a hierarchy that extends downward and outward in emboxed squares and concentric circles to the periphery, where marginal beings dwell. The mandala's center, where the king or buddha resides, plays such an important part in making it a potent structure that we must leave behind Eudoxia's eccentric carpet. But before we draw any closer to the mandalas of the SDPS, I beg the reader's indulgence to pursue another diversion and follow the tracks laid by Mircea Eliade and Smith in their theorizing about sacred space and place. Another digression seems in order.

As is well known, Eliade establishes his basic program for the study of religion in The Sacred and the Profane, where he privileges the experience of the sacred as his starting point. Thus he begins his exploration of humankind's religious origins in true theological form: In the Beginning was the Sacred, manifested as a hierophany in the experience of homo religiosus. This primordial experience of the Sacred is akin to the creation of the world, for it reveals a Center, the reference point by which humans can then orient themselves in the world (Eliade: 21). Once the Center has been located, the religious world can be founded. All human religious activity thereafter, in myth, in ritual, or in the construction of religious spaces, is nothing more than a repetition of this basic cosmogonic model. Eliade's theory that humans' religious activity repeats the work of the gods will sound familiar to us. For not only has this leitmotif resounded as a monotonous refrain in Eliade's studies of the sacred; it also echoes the augur's interpretation of the carpet as an imago mundi. Eliade's theory of sacred space, based on the Center and cosmogony, is superimposed onto whatever religious landscape he interprets, just as Eudoxia's citizens project the image of the carpet's ordered symmetry into their city. But whereas the carpet seems to help the citizens wend their way through chaotic streets, Eliade's interpretive structure is not an accurate map that adequately charts all the territory of religion.

The most outspoken critic of Eliade's search for the Sacred has been Smith, whose own theories invert this orientation. Smith dismisses the need for a Center as an eccentric exception in the history of religions, and he replaces Eliade's priority of homo religiosus with homo faber. An excellent example of his polemic appears in To Take Place. Smith stands Eliade on his head when he affirms that “the language of ‘center' is preeminently political and only secondarily cosmological. It is a vocabulary that stems, primarily, from archaic ideologies of kingship and the royal function” (1987: 17). Put bluntly, for Smith, it is royal power that serves as the catalyst for discourse about the center, not religious cosmology or cosmogony. This is a strong claim, and curiously it receives very little textual support. By locating the center primarily in terms of politics rather


than religion, Smith implies that these two domains are easily separated. Yet when we consider models such as the mandala's cakravartin, can we distinguish easily between “political” domain and “religious” cosmology in understanding this figure? The king certainly occupies the center in a mandala, but is that due to sheer power alone? Smith's etiology for mythic discourse about the “center” seems to me as problematic and one-sided as Eliade’s theory and, ultimately, as difficult to support. A more charitable interpretation would view it as an “exaggeration in the direction of truth” (to steal one of Smith's favorite phrases), a reminder that political ideology plays a formative role in the creation of symbolic centers. This approach will prove more fruitful for understanding how mandalas operate “on the ground” in Tibet, in contrast to Eliade's depoliticized cosmological orientation.

Smith's description of the “locative map” seems better suited for the mandala, with its central orientation. He identifies the “locative map” as an all-encompassing microcosmic grid, which attempts to eliminate any incongruity by fixing everything in its proper place, relegating the anomalous to the periphery. The locative map thus demands strict conformity, and it serves as a place of clarification for the hierarchical rules of status and power implicit in its organization. Politically, such a map is conservative, as it preserves the status quo while functioning as propaganda for the figure at the center. The locative map serves the interests of this imperial figure, who is regarded as the guardian of the cosmic and social order, and he is supported by a group of “well-organized, self-conscious scribal elites who [have] a deep vested interest in restricting mobility and valuing place” (Smith 1978: 293). The priests and scribes promote their royal patron, but their work also ensures their own elite status as the inscribers of the locative map in texts, in ritual activity, and in society. Finally, the locative map is a synchronic structure that encourages formal replication, for it is based on systematic relations within a hierarchy. The name “locative map” may seem somewhat misleading, because it need not be grounded in any specific location. Instead, it is an abstract topography that can be transported to various kinds of social space, allowing a “prescission from place” (Smith 1987: 109).

That the locative map conforms to many of the generic features of the mandala is certainly no accident. Smith acknowledged the influence of Paul Mus, Giuseppe Tucci, and Paul Wheatley in the formulation of this “map,” all of whom have contributed much to our understanding of the mandala as a modeling structure in Buddhist cultures. The mandala maps the cosmos in miniature, and it overcomes incongruity by creating correspondences between macro- and microcosm. Like the “locative map,” the mandala is also a synchronic model, because the entire cosmos


is thought to be always present within it. The mandala’s systemic structure can be replicated so it adapts readily to various contexts and uses, making it extremely productive.

MAPPING THE M AND ALA’S MULTIPLE COORDINATES

Fabio Rambelli has identified five interrelated functions of the mandala that are worth summarizing here in order to grasp the mandala’s multiple features. Modern scholarship has tended to focus on the mandala as (1) a meditation device, used by yogins for the purpose of transforming their body, speech, and mind to yield a different understanding of reality. This meditative function of the mandala overlaps with its use as (2) a scholastic schema and mnemonic device. As the cosmos represented in miniature, the mandala presupposes rules of correlation that can be applied by an exegete eager to incorporate all kinds of diverse phenomena. For instance, the mandala’s cardinal orientation can generate long lists of “quadratic equations,” setting up homologies between the four directions, the four elements, the four colors, the four kayas, and so on, until the quadratic equations become an index for the entire cosmos. This elaboration of correspondences is modular: the all-encompassing mandala can expand to include all sorts of heterogeneous elements without ever compromising its cohesion (Rambelli: 7-8; White: 10). This seems suited for scholastics, with their passion for systematic totalization. But it is important to recognize how the mandala serves a didactic purpose here by organizing and encapsulating doctrines and practices, as it may be used to transmit esoteric knowledge. Such a feature would make it especially attractive as a portable “memory palace” for missionaries who spread the Dharma from India throughout Asia.

Not only is the mandala manifested in the mental machinations of yogins and scholastics, but it can also be actualized in space, as an image, or a shrine, or in the landscape itself. Once represented spatially, the mandala becomes (3) an object of devotion, the site of offerings to buddhas and the focus of pilgrimage practices. Too, the mandala can serve m undane (4) magical functions. For instance, entry into a mandala was thought to produce magical effects (e.g., longevity, wealth, or security) or a mandala image might be worn on the body as an amulet to ward off negative forces. In these examples, we see how it is a generative device endowed with innumerable powers of transformation. Finally, the mandala has (5) an ideological function by representing an idealized hierarchy of status and power that could be imposed on society to form a feudal Buddhist polity (Davidson: 131-144; Strong: 306). It is these last two features, the magical and the ideological functions, that will serve as the focus of my


analysis of the SDPS. It may be a relief to arrive finally at our destination after this long methodological excursion. Equipped with the maps that we have picked up during our circuitous approach, we can begin to chart the topography of this text and locate it in the historical context of Tibet's imperial period.

The SDPS appears twice in the Tibetan Tripitika. Within the Tantra section of the Tripitika there are two different versions in Tibetan, which differ considerably in content and organization. The first Tibetan version of the Tantra (no. 116), translated by a pair of Indian and Tibetan translators named Santigarbha and Jayaraksita in the late eighth century, is based on a Sanskrit edition of the SDPS that is no longer extant. This early Sanskrit edition was quite different from the Sanskrit text available in the late thirteenth century that served as the basis for the second Tibetan translation (no. 117), translated by another Indian-Tibetan team of translators. Although both Tibetan versions of the SDPS are arranged in three chapters, they only overlap significantly in the second chapter, and they diverge considerably in their third chapters. Here my analysis will be limited to the first two chapters of the earlier version translated in the late eighth century (no. 116). For in these two chapters appear most prominently the mandalas, the mortuary practices, and the royalty rhetoric, the very features that I will argue made the text so valuable for early Buddhist missionaries in Tibet.1 My method for interpreting these two chapters will be to isolate certain threads in the text's discursive narrative and then establish some connections to the socio-historical context, with the goal of explaining why this text would have appealed to missionaries and the royal court of imperial Tibet.

NARRATING THE GEOGRAPHY OF DEATH AND THE AFTERLIFE

We will begin by rehearsing the narrative elements of the Tantra, for the introductory setting (gleng gzhi) will help us to grasp how this text might serve as a locative map for its readers. At the very outset, the Tantra introduces us to basic cosmological themes when it tells of a god's fate who has fallen from heaven into the hell realms. This event provides an opportunity for the Buddha to teach how one can avoid such a fate,

1 Tadeusz Skorupski has compiled the various Tibetan editions of the Sarvadurgatiparisodhana Tantra and offered an English translation of the later text (no. 117). W hen I quote or summarize from the earlier edition of the SDPS (no. 116), I will refer to the pages of the edition presented by Skorupski as Tibetan Text o f Version A, 305-379.


and even how to rescue those who are suffering a bad rebirth as a hell dweller, a hungry ghost, or an animal. The Tantra opens in the grandiose fashion of a Mahayana Sutra, with the Buddha Sakyamuni present in the Trayastrimsa heavens, surrounded by an enormous entourage of buddhas and bodhisattvas, all of whom worship him. Although the scene is set in a pleasure grove, we soon learn that this paradisiacal garden is not beyond the reach of suffering. Even here the gods are subject to karma and death, and they can fall to a horrible rebirth.

The action begins dramatically with a miraculous feat. Sakyamuni, seated on the throne of Brahma, enters into a deep state of concentration, during which rays of light stream out from the hair tuft (urna) between his eyes. So bright are these rays of light that they illuminate the entire universe and free all sentient beings from the bonds of the defilements (klesa), setting them on the path to enlightenment. All the divine beings gathered around the Buddha are awestruck by this spectacular light show. Indra, chief of the gods, approaches the Blessed One to ask how he performed such a wondrous act of salvation. Sakyamuni answers that his deed is nothing special, for all buddhas have acquired so much merit that they can do anything with their unlimited wisdom and magical powers. So effective and limitless are the methods of the buddhas that they are capable of converting any being (SDPS: 306.3-307.2).

Indra then inquires about the fate of the god Vimalamaniprabha, who only one week earlier had died and fallen from the Trayastrimsa heavens to be reborn elsewhere. Without offering any explanation for why the god had died, Sakyamuni launches into a list of the horrific hells and rebirths that this god must endure, which he describes in ascending order. The former god must agonize for thousands of years in the lowest hell realm (Avici), and then endure less severe hells before moving up through the world of the tormented hungry ghosts, and be reborn subsequently as an animal. After tens of thousands of years have past, he will eventually be reborn as a human, but he must undergo being reborn deaf and dumb among the “border people.” Thereafter he will be reborn among those of lower race, where he will be tormented by plagues, leprosy, hemorrhages, and boils. He will experience continual suffering, and he will be a source of others’ suffering too (SDPS: 307.20-35).

So upset are the gods upon hearing the fate of their divine companion that they swoon and “fall down on their faces.” Indra manages to arise and begs the Blessed One to teach how Vimalamaniprabha or any god can be spared such suffering. This serves as the formal request for the Buddha to reveal how they might be freed from the three bad rebirth realms. The Blessed One proceeds to instruct all those present in the mantras and the mandala that will effectively eliminate any future negative


rebirth, a teaching that takes up much of the first chapter. But before he delivers his teaching, the Buddha promotes it with this plug. He promises that those who hear, utter, or write down the secret spell of the SDPS and wear it on their body will not experience the eight signs of death, whereas those who enter the mandala correctly will never suffer a bad rebirth. Furthermore, for those who have already passed away to an unfortunate rebirth, if their corpses are properly placed in the mandala and consecrated, they will instantly be freed from suffering as non-returners (phyir mi Idogpa; SDPS: 310.1-24).

Let us pause here to consider what the Tantra has introduced so far. The introductory setting (gleng gzhi) places the reader in a moral universe, a Buddhist geography of the afterlife. The narrative assumes familiarity with the general terrain of this geography, for it is sketched only in rough form, with sentient beings inhabiting six rebirth destinies. The most conspicuous feature of this universe is its integrated hierarchical structure. The hierarchy first becomes apparent when the Buddha traces the fall of Vimalamaniprabha from the august assembly of the gods down to Avici hell. From there he must over millennia slowly make his way in successive lives up through the graded hell realms, then suffer as a hungry ghost, and then as an animal. Even after he is finally reborn as a human— a rebirth so often celebrated in Buddhist literature as precious and fortunate— he will be subjected to a social hierarchy. He will be reborn first among the “border people” (yul mtha khob kyi m f i.e., the barbarians who know nothing about Buddhism), and then he will take rebirth among impure people of low caste. These unfortunate human rebirths illustrate two different hierarchical principles. First, there is a center- periphery structure in which the center is marked by the presence of a Buddha, the teaching of the Dharma, and the flourishing of the Sangha, whereas the periphery is marked by their absence. Second, there is the purity-pollution structure that forms the basis of the Indian caste system. These hierarchical values are replicated throughout the Tantra, but they are most rigorously repeated in the mandalas, which serve as devices that clarify the principles of status and power implicit in the organization of the cosmos.

The introduction, which sets the stage for the Buddha's discourse on mandalas, thus demonstrates a concern with mapping modes of emplacement, with situating beings according to their status and power, and with replacing their rebirth. Sakyamuni and other buddhas are found at the very apex of the hierarchy, and their pure status and magical power are honored by the gods. In fact, the Buddha's superiority over the gods is repeatedly emphasized, as the Buddha displaces Brahma by sitting on his throne at the very center of the divine assembly, while Indra, chief


of the gods of the Trayastrimsa heavens, serves as his unsure interlocutor. In addition, the gods are warned that they must not develop a sense of false security while dwelling in their blissful heavens. The fate of Vimalamaniprabha produces a sense of urgency in the gods, like a fire and brimstone sermon. Upon hearing the misery that their former friend must endure, the gods can only respond by falling on their faces before the Buddha, in a reenactment of their former divine companion’s unexpected fall from heaven. Arising to their knees in supplication to the Buddha, they plea to be spared from a bad rebirth.

It is not difficult to imagine the appeal of these themes for Tibetans who were just becoming acquainted with Buddhism in the eighth and ninth centuries. The SDPS addresses the timely topic of death’s inevitability, to which all beings are subject, even the gods. In line with other Buddhist texts, our Tantra reinforces a vision of the afterlife, the doctrines of karma and continual rebirth, and the hierarchical Indian social norms that would be novel to Tibetans. Buddhist missionaries could use the ominous threat of a bad rebirth with strong effect, in order to impress upon potential Tibetan converts the value of the apotropaic rites, the funerary practices, or the magical spells that only Buddhist adepts could provide. Similarly, Sakyamuni first determines Vimalamaniprabha’s dire destiny, and then he skillfully introduces the SDPS mandalas to his audience, once he has their full attention. Judging from the number of Tibetan texts found in Dunhuang that invoke the deities and mantras that originate in the SDPS Tantra, these magical spells that were designed to prevent a bad rebirth were popular among Tibetans during the eighth and ninth centuries. For example, there are two manuscripts from Dunhuang that preserve a short text entitled Conquering the Three Poisons (Dug gsum ydul ba)y a text which prominently features mantras taken from the SDPS (Imaeda 1979: 71-76).

Another important Buddhist missionary work, contemporaneous with the translation of the SDPS into Tibetan, is The Story of the Cycle of Birth and Death (Skye shi Thor loyi lo rgyus; SCBD), which survives in nine Dunhuang manuscripts (Imaeda 1981: 6, 83). The SCBD narrates the quest of a boy named Rinchen, who seeks the means to bring his deceased father, a former god, back to life. After traveling from one spiritual teacher to another without gaining the desired teaching, Rinchen finally meets Sakyamuni, who teaches him that birth and death are the result of karma. Only the rituals taught by the Buddha will have any positive effect by purifying past karma. The Buddha then proceeds to teach the young boy how to master the mantras and make the proper fire offerings in a mandala. These teachings are but a synopsis of the instructions that are prescribed at great length within the SDPS (Imaeda 1981: 73).


The SDPS and SCBD share more than a concern with transforming the deceased by means of mantras and mandalas, for they both present stories that feature the death of a god. The death of a god motif was a common missionary strategy used to subvert the cult of local deities found in pre-Buddhist traditions. This strategy involved subordinating the minor “mundane gods” (’jigs rten p a i lha)y who were not free from samsara, to the supra-mundane deities and buddhas (jigs rten las ’das p a i lha), who are liberated from the cycle. When the gods of the Trayastrims'a heavens fall on their faces before the Buddha, this act demonstrates their subordination to Sakyamuni, their superior savior, with no small dramatic flair.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR THE SDPS TEXT AS ROYAL PROPAGANDA

Another feature of the SDPS that illustrates how it might serve as Buddhist propaganda are the numerous advertisements made throughout the text that celebrate its efficacy. Each chapter of the work follows a set pattern: before the Buddha introduces a new topic, whether ritual instructions or descriptions of mandalas, he heralds them with an advertisement. After presenting his teachings, these advertisements are reiterated, followed by effusive praise from the gods, who testify to the truth and efficacy of the Buddha’s teachings. The overwhelming majority of these advertisements promise some form of magical success in the world (laukika siddhi) rather than the supermundane goal of enlightenment (lokottara siddhi). This emphasis is in reversal of the priorities often found by modern western commentators on Tantra, who tend to underscore the transcendent goal of Buddhahood and only grudgingly accept the worldly benefits. For instance, the text mentions the purpose of performing the fierce rites, such as destroying or mutilating one’s enemies, attracting pretty young girls, bewitching armies, or producing rain.

In terms of the central topic of the SDPS, the text claims that those who enter the mandala will be liberated from all evil destinies, and they will be reborn in the heavenly realms. That they will eventually attain enlightenment is added almost as an afterthought; what the text makes most appealing is how one may avoid the suffering associated with unfortunate rebirths, such as disease, famine, or a premature death. These concrete goals were certainly one of the selling features of the SDPS and Tantric Buddhism in general. It was precisely these kinds of magical, wonder-working characteristics of the Buddhist thaumaturge that appealed to the general populace. The advertisements can be read as an affirmation that the Tantric Buddhism of the SDPS can compete quite


successfully on the ground of Tibet's autochthonous traditions, in defending against demons and conferring other magical powers.

It would be a mistake, however, to interpret the missionary message of the SDPS as a popularized concession for the ordinary layperson. If the text targets a specific audience it would be the elite classes, especially the ministers and the kings as I will argue below. Although the rhetoric of the advertisements might make the SDPS seem appealing to anyone, its actual practices are wrapped in a veil of secrecy, described in ambiguous language that refers elliptically to secret consecrations. The text always assumes that the reader is familiar with its esoteric terminology. The modern scholar must remember that the SDPS was never intended for an English audience of nonbelievers and that its secret character made the commentaries and guru mandatory, thereby safeguarding their power. Thus the text's air of secrecy is deliberately exclusivistic, limiting its comprehensibility to the initiated elite. The novice must accept a Buddhist teacher as a preceptor as the prerequisite for gaining entry into this elite group.

When the Buddha finally responds to Indra's query about the rites for the purification of evil rebirths, his description is remarkably condensed and cryptic. First, the Buddha states quite simply that there is nothing difficult about liberating beings from hell and purifying their sins. All that is required is for the Tantric adept to draw a mandala in the proper fashion, then place a symbolic representation of the sinner in the mandala's center, consecrate it, and—voilà!— all his sins will be purified. There at the center of the divine palace he will be freed from hell or from wherever he suffers. Moreover, he is assured rebirth into the abode of the gods where he will have easy access to the Buddha's teaching and gain enlightenment in due course (SDPS: 319.18-30). With this rousing preview, the Buddha then proceeds to elaborate on how to perform the tantric rites that will benefit anyone who is reborn into a lower realm.

MORTUARY MAGIC: REPLACING THE SINNER’S REBIRTH

The practitioner first requires a substitute representation of the beneficiary, which may involve forming an effigy of the deceased, or inscribing the deceased's name on a card (tsag li). The symbolic substitute is placed in the mandala that has been carefully constructed in advance. The effigy or name card is consecrated by the Tantric master when he utters mantras and performs the requisite müdras, which are never specified in the Tantra (although the Indian and Tibetan commentaries often list them in detail). The officiant writes the secret spell of the buddha assigned to his family on the heart of the effigy or in the center of the


name card. Then, while conceiving the sinner/buddha as one in his mind, he places the effigy in a stupa, where family members and friends can honor him. The Tantric ritualist recites the name of the deceased and the secret spell of the buddha thousands of time to purify the sinner's karmic effects. This practice is said to free the sinner from hell or as an animal and lead directly to a divine rebirth (SDPS: 319.32-320.5).

If the body of the deceased is available, then the Tantric officiant will cremate the corpse in a homa sacrifice seven days after death has occurred. Before the cremation the corpse is cleansed with consecrated water and milk, purified with incense and perfume, wrapped in a clean cloth, and decorated with flowers. The Tantric yogin then writes the syllables of the mandala's mantra on a card and touches the card at various points on the body while reciting the mantra. Placing the corpse in the center of the hearth, the yogin performs the homa rite. He envisages Agni, the consumer of the fire offerings, and Vajrapani in wrathful form as Trailokyavijaya (“Conqueror of the Three [Evil] Rebirths”). They serve as the divine recipient and the agent for transforming the deceased person's karmic condition. What apparently effects the purification of the deceased is the invitation of this wrathful buddha, with noose and dagger in hand, to stomp fiercely on the sins of the deceased. Once the corpse has been burned, the ashes and bone particles are gathered, mixed with pure substances, and formed into a statue or a stupa. When this statue smiles, or the stupa blazes with light, or another auspicious sign appears, then the purification rite is thought to have been effective. If an auspicious sign does not appear, it must be due to the great karmic debt that the deceased has incurred. So the officiant recites more mantras or repeats the sacrifice until a sacred sign appears (SDPS: 321.7-322.42).

We can discern certain homologies underlying these mandala-based mortuary rites. On the one hand, a homology is formed between the deceased and his effigy/name card/image, which serves as his symbolic substitute; on the other hand, a homology is established between the stupa, the hearth, and the buddha's palatial residence, all of which are modeled on the mandala. The key moment in these rites occurs when the symbolic substitute is placed in the center of the stupa/hearth/palace, and the officiant consecrates it, thereby merging the buddha's and the sinner's identities. Their identities merge again during the visualization exercise of the ritual officiant and during the officiant's repeated recitation of the sinner's name in alternation with the spell of the buddha. Once properly placed in the mandala, the sinner's moral state is modified: the sinner gains entry to the heavenly realm of the gods.

Here we see a series of rites that enable a sinner to be purified and replaced into the realm of the gods. After the SDPS describes a locative


map in its introductory narrative, where every being is situated according to his karmic condition, we are told in what follows that an individual's karma is not fixed, that his destiny is never determined. For the text promises rites that can transform his karmic trajectory. These rites require a mediator, a Tantric specialist, who can magically manipulate appearances and the destiny of others because of his own identification with the Buddha, whom he visualizes himself as being during the course of the rites. The ritual specialist becomes the Buddha's incarnate presence, the agent of consecration in the purification of the deceased person's sins. Ultimately, the transformative force of these rites is only available to one who has access to a properly trained ritual specialist. Only those elite practitioners who have the knowledge and power gained from Tantric consecration can perform these rites for the benefit of the “worst of sinners.'' The uninitiated would no doubt be disappointed or lost when trying to make sense of the text alone and practice these rituals independently.

I have lingered over the descriptions of the SDPS death rites because this work serves as the locus classicus for subsequent Tibetan Buddhist mortuary rites. The mortuary rites based on the SDPS seem to be some of the oldest Buddhist practices. Many Tibetan funerary traditions follow the basic structure outlined in the SDPS, and they often use the spells and invocations that first appear in this Tantra (Imaeda 1979: 71-76; Skorupski: xxix). The death practices prescribed in the SDPS would have come into conflict with the indigenous Tibetan funerary cult of the deceased kings, which constituted a form of royal ancestor worship.

One of the earliest works of Tibetan historiography, The Testament of D ba: The Royal Narrative Concerning the Bringing of Buddha's Doctrine to Tibet (Dba bzhed), mentions the importance of the SDPS in the conversion of the court to Buddhism. This narrative concludes with the death of king Tri Songdetsen, whereupon a debate arises among the ministers over whether Bon or Buddhist funeral rites should be performed for him. One minister defends the continuation of Bon funerary traditions on the grounds that Tibet's imperial authority was supported by the cult of divine kingship maintained by Bon priests. A pro-Buddhist minister refutes this claim by pointing out that all of the regional rulers who followed Bon funeral practices were incorporated into the expanding Tibetan empire. This minister implies that Buddhism provides more tools for imperial expansion than does Bon, for it offers a more effective form of magical power and more divine protectors (Wangdu and Diemberger: 101-103). The minister concludes that Buddhist funerals are superior to ancient Bon practices. His argument proves persuasive, as the king's funeral was performed according to Buddhist custom. The text then


concludes that thereafter in Tibet “the funerals were celebrated following the Ngan song sbyong rgyud, and on the basis of the mandala of Buddha Vairocana.”2 The text mentioned here is an abbreviated title for the SDPS. This passage supports what we know about the changes in the funeral rites during the late imperial period. In the ninth century and thereafter Buddhist ritual specialists acquired the special prerogative of performing funerals for all levels of society. As elsewhere in Asia, Buddhist monks and ritual specialists gained a monopoly in Tibet over the practices and institutions that dealt with death, and the SDPS would have played a role in undermining the native Tibetan cult of divine kings.3

The SDPS was certainly the object of study by Rinchen zangpo (958- 1055), a Tantric scholar who played a crucial role in the dissemination of Buddhism during the eleventh century. In the earliest extant biography of Rinchen zangpo, he is said to have consecrated many SDPS mandalas on the occasion of his mother's death.4 Moreover, this scholar is reported to have performed the funerary rites of the SDPS for the king of western Tibet, Yeshe Ó (Ye shes'od), his royal sponsor. This tells us that the SDPS came to play an important role in the life and deaths of two key figures responsible for the “rebirth" of Buddhism in Tibet. But there is an irony too in Rinchen zangpo's performance of the SDPS funerary rite for the benefit of his royal benefactor. Although Yeshe Ó was an impassioned sponsor of Mahayana Buddhism, he was not supportive of Tantra in general. His hostility toward Tantra is evident in his decree of a royal ordinance (bka shog). There he excoriated the mispractice of Tantra by “village masters," whose sins included their denial of karma and their claim that the effects of actions may be deflected. Yeshe Ó warned that those who follow such heretical practices will suffer a rebirth in one of

2 See W angdu and Diemberger: 105 and Dba bzhed (26a2-31b6) for the full account of the debate between the pro-Bon and pro-Buddhist ministers. This appendix is filled with archaic Tibetan terms and titles that reflect Tibetan dynastic sources, making it very old in its content and diction. Per Sorenson affirms that “there is little doubt that it m ust be dated to the 9th century.” See Sorenson’s preface to the Dba bzhed in W angdu and Diemberger: xv.

3 There are manuscripts from Dunhuang (e.g., Pelliot Tibetaine 239, 972) that present Buddhist mortuary rituals for helping those reborn in unfortunate circumstances. These ritual instructions also critique ancient Tibetan practices (identified as the “black funeral rites” of Bon), even as they incorporate archaic elements of Tibetan origin. See Stein: 160-175 and Karmay 1983.

4 See the biography of Rin chen bzang po by Dpal ye shes that appears in Snellgrove and Skorupski: 92. Rin chen bzang po is credited with translating the Sarvadurgatiparisodhanamandalasâchanopâyikâ and the Sarvadurgatiparisodhanapretahomavidhi, both of which are commentaries on the SDPS Tantra.


the three evil realms.5 Perhaps Rinchen zangpo performed the mortuary rites to ensure that Yeshe O would avoid an evil rebirth for proscribing legitimate Tantric texts—like the SDPS— during his lifetime.

RITUALS THAT SERVE SOVEREIGNS AND RECTIFY REGICIDE

That this Tantra is concerned with rectifying the lives of sinful kings becomes apparent in the second chapter of the SDPS. At the beginning of this chapter we return via a narrative flashback to the events that had impelled Vimalamaniprabha into the lowest hell realm. While the first chapter featured Buddha Sakyamuni, who had explained what had happened to the god, here it is the Buddha Vajrapani who explains why the young god had to endure such suffering. Curiously, this narrative only appears in the eighth-century edition of the SDPS Tantra.6

Vajrapani explains that Vimalamaniprabha’s fall into hell was the ripening of karmic seeds sown in his previous life, when he had been born a prince. Burning with desire to become king, the prince assassinated his own father and mother and assumed the throne all to himself. One day while hunting in a forest, the young king came upon a lone hermit. The king asked the hermit how he could endure such hardship. The hermit replied that his self-imposed suffering was hardly anything in comparison to the burden he had undertaken as a bodhisattva. The hermit continued that even that suffering was insignificant in comparison to the painful experiences one must endure in hell, after one sins from desire for worldly power. The hermit’s speech struck fear in the king’s heart, and he immediately asked to take refuge in the Three Jewels. Upon hearing the sage’s teachings, the king repented for killing his parents; but then he died suddenly, like a lamp snuffed out by the wind. As the karmic effect of his last good deed of repentance, the king was reborn in heaven as Vimalamaniprabha. There he experienced joy, only to have it all disappear when he abruptly fell into hell for the sin of regicide against his

5 See Karmay 1980: 150-162. Yeshe Ó notes that earlier kings of Tibet had “prohibited the false religion [the Anuttarayoga Tantras] in accordance with the W ord of the Buddha,” and yet he adds that “heretical Tantras pretending to be Buddhist, are also spread in Tibet [today],” and he identifies how they have brought harm to the kingdom. Although he does not m ention the SDPS explicitly, he criticizes mortuary practices similar to what is found in the SDPS, including the homa rituals and the use of a corpse to attain m undane powers.

6 SDPS: 332.24-335.7. W hy this story that explains the karmic reasons for the god’s fall into hell was omitted in the later version of the SDPS remains mysterious to me. W hat is noteworthy is that it serves as the narrative setting for the second chapter, and it is integral to framing the chapter’s discourse about kingship.


father. But thanks to Indra who had performed the rites on his behalf, Vimalamaniprabha was restored to heaven.

In the style of a Jataka’s conclusion, Vajrapani then reveals to his audience the real identities of the figures in the story: the forest hermit was of course none other than Sakyamuni, while the assassinated king had been Indra himself. All of the gods who heard this story were thrilled to learn about the righteous reasons for the trials and tribulations of Vimalamaniprabha. They then formally asked Vajrapani to teach them how to benefit those with short lives and limited fortunes. For the remainder of the chapter Vajrapani proceeds to describe a series of mandalas and the mundane boons that one gains upon being initiated into them. In effect, Vajrapani teaches how one can transform these powerful gods into servants and become a king on earth through the mediation of a buddha or cakravartin. Let us pause briefly to consider the possible historical impact of this chapter's discourse on kingship and regicide in Tibet.

The story of Vimalamaniprabha's previous life, and particularly his act of regicide against his own father, may well have reminded Tibetan readers of their own kings during the imperial period. Regicide appears to have been a common practice against the kings living then. In his magisterial study of Tibetan kingship Erik Haarh claims that regicide was an established institution in the lives of the last eleven kings of this dynasty (Haarh: 328). Haarh argues that regicide was necessitated by the method of succession used during this period, when the king was succeeded as soon as his son reached maturity, usually at the age of thirteen (or when he was old enough to “master a horse," as Tibetan texts put it). These kings were regarded as the continually reborn essence of Tibet's divine ancestor, who was reincarnated in each prince at the age of thirteen. The royal ancestor spirit remained incarnated in him until his son reached the age of maturity and ascended the throne as the next link in the ancestral incarnation. From the logic of quick succession Haarh derives the theory that the early kings usurped each other by murder, and they reigned for the period during which they were at the peak of their masculine divine potency, only to be killed themselves when their sons reached maturity. If this theory of the Tibetan kings' method of succession is accurate and regicide was practiced, then it would have proved a major challenge to the first Buddhist missionaries in Tibet. These missionaries certainly sought to undermine the indigenous cult of divine kingship and to convert the Tibetan kings to Buddhism in order to receive their patronage. The message related by the forest sage (Sakyamuni) to the king (Vimalamaniprabha) in the second chapter would have appealed to Tibetan kings. For those kings who were persuaded of their fate in hell


unless they patronized Buddhist monks to perform their funerary rites, the SDPS would have been especially germane.7

The sovereignty symbolism that pervades the first chapter is found in the second chapter too. The most prominent feature of the many mándalas that are elaborated there is the promise of worldly success for those who are properly initiated; and worldly success is most often measured in terms of a monarch’s ability to protect and extend his sovereignty. Of course, the SDPS is hardly unique among Tantras in its preoccupation with kingship or with the cakravartin ideal that posits a parallel between territorial dominion and buddhahood. One finds these themes in many Buddhist tantras, such as the Mañjusrimülakalpa, an early Sanskrit Tantra translated into Tibetan. One might object, then, that the sovereignty symbolism in the SDPS is standard tantric fare. Or one might view the claims to sovereignty in the SDPS as yet another example of the grandiose hyperbole so characteristic of Tantras. But we should not dismiss its magic as merely a “symbolic” literary feature or as an effect of the fantastic imagination cultivated in Tantric texts. For to do so ignores the fact that many Tibetans would regard the magical effects of these mandalas as real. Indeed, “literal” readings of Tantric texts were not uncommon in early Tibet. This we know from those Tibetan writers who lament the lit- eralists’ naive misunderstanding and mispractice of Tantra during the early dissemination of Buddhism, much as king Yeshe O did.

For the remainder of the chapter Vajrapani describes a long series of mandalas beginning with his own, followed by the mandalas belonging to the Four Great Kings of the cardinal directions. It is claimed that by drawing the mandala of the Four Great Kings and performing the consecration, “not being a king [the initiated] becomes a king, being a king [the initiated] becomes a great one” (SDPS: 340.19-20). The Four Kings then pay an oath of obeisance to their lord Vajradhára, who sits at the center of their mandala:

As for us, the Four Great Kings, we will always protect that king together with his retinue and servants, his whole kingdom and cities. We will destroy hostile kingdoms and those who are wicked to him. We will remove the fear of death, diseases, famine, plagues and calamities. (SDPS: 340.25-32)

I could multiply examples of the sovereignty symbolism found in this chapter, but I will mimic the move often made by Tibetan writers and

7 There are a num ber of Dunhuang Tibetan documents that serve to proselytize the Buddhist cosmological-ethical framework of karma and samsara. See Kapstein: 34, 44-46.


express my fear of prolixity (tshig mang has dogs pa). There is one final example of royalty rhetoric used to characterize the SDPS text as a whole that deserves our attention. It reads somewhat like a commercial message from a sponsor. After Vajrapani has finished his long discourse on the various mandalas, the gods in the audience praise his teaching as the kalpa-raja, the “royal work” or “royal composition.”

One who writes this Kalpa-raja or has it written for the benefit, good, happiness of living beings reborn in evil places, we gods . . . will protect that son or daughter of (our) lineage like our own subjects. . . . We will extend the sovereignty of that king or his son or his minister who expounds the mantras in accordance with their invocations. We will promote his sovereignty, protect his country, provinces, people and subjects, his crops and the rest. We will provide wealth and grain in abundance; grant women, men, sons and daughters; bestow property, sustenance, provisions, and peace.. . . We will recognize the rank of that great being by servitude or with filial submission. (SDPS: 356.9-23)

Here we see in a passage typical of the Mahayana cult of the book that the text itself is described as an exemplar of royal work. Those who write or copy it, or those who have it copied, will become like powerful kings, to whom the various gods pledge willing submission as their servants.

There is something fitting, if not self-serving, about the glorification of the SDPS text as “royal work” when we consider how this text was itself translated and reproduced into Tibetan. As mentioned earlier, the text was first translated in the late eighth century by the Indian pandit Santigarbha and by the Tibetan Jayaraksita. Both of these translator monks participated in the consecration of Samye monastery under the reign of Tri Songdetsen, the king who first declared Buddhism the official religion of Tibet in 791.8 Moreover, the SDPS text itself is listed in the Denkar palace catalogue (Dkar chag ldan dkar ma), a catalogue of sanctioned translations assembled during Tri Songdetsen’s reign. That the SDPS was officially sanctioned by its placement in this catalogue means that a royal committee would have appointed the translators. The translation of the SDPS was revised before 836 by another well-known Tibetan

8 See Skorupski’s introduction (SDPS: xxiv). Skorupski dates the translation of the SDPS toward the end of the eighth century and notes that it was revised “sometime before 863” [sic]; this latter date must be a mistake, since the revisor Rinchenchok (Rin chen mchog) died shortly after his patron Ralpajen (Ral pa can) in 836. Snellgrove also mistakenly attributes the translation to Rin chen mchog, with the assistance of Santigarbha and Jayaraksita, which is contradicted by the actual colophon: rgyagar gyi m khanpo santigarbha dang/bod kyi lo tsa ba bande jayaraksitas bsgyur cingzus/ acarya rin chen mchog gis skadgsar bead kyis bcos nasgtan laphab bo/. See Snellgrove: 454, also nl29.


monk-translator, Ma Rinchenchok. This monk was one of the first seven monks to be ordained at Samye, and he was appointed by king Ralpajen (r. 815-835) to revise and systematize the translation of Buddhist texts into Tibetan. The translation and revision of the SDPS thus occurred under the patronage of Tibet's two most ardent Buddhist kings, Tri Songdetsen and Ralpajen. The text's royalty rhetoric could only have helped it achieve in Tibet what it claimed itself to be in Sanskrit, namely, a “royal work or composition.''

After plodding through such detailed descriptions of these multiple mandalas, one may dare to ask, why are there so many? What ideological purpose is served by their ability to replicate and multiply? The mandala's symmetrical shape is significant in that it is based on systematic hierarchical relations that emerge from its cardinal orientation. Within the mandala there are different seats or offices whose value is determined by this cardinal orientation and their distance from the center. Which particular deity occupies what seat or office is less important than the seat or office itself and its hierarchical relation to other offices— the deities and buddhas are interchangeable. Like the locative map described by Smith, the mandala is an abstract topography that can be imposed upon various kinds of social space, enabling it to be cut out of one place and stamped, cookie-cutter style, onto another space. The mandala is therefore both a prescriptive model and a mold. Often non-Buddhist images and deities are forced into this mold. One of the mandala's missionary purposes is to encompass local deities and subordinate them to the buddha. This feature is obvious in the second chapter of the SDPS, where most of the deities described are minor Indian deities made to serve a Buddhist purpose by becoming servants to the central buddha. The Four Great Kings, the Eight Great Planets, or the Nine Bhairavas— all were once “foreign” to the Buddhist pantheon, but here they are all peripheral protectors. To illustrate how mandalas move and modify foreign spaces, I shall now review some well-known narratives about Tibet's conversion to Buddhism.

MANDALAS ON THE MOVE IN THE MISSION CIVILISATRICE: MOLDS OR MODULAR?

The theme of domesticating the non-Buddhist “outsider” (phyi pa) into a Buddhist “insider” (nang pa) plays a major role in Tibetan narratives of conversion. These dramatic narratives express in potent language how Tibet and its native chthonic spirits were dominated, subdued, and converted into Dharma protectors. All these actions served the higher goal of “civilizing” the indigenous forces to Buddhism. The Tibetan term


used to describe this process of transformation is 'dul ba, a verb with a broad semantic field, extending from “to tame, to subdue, to conquer; to cultivate, waste land; to civilize, a nation; to educate, to discipline, to punish.” This term sums up many of the central themes that relate to the Buddhist quest for cultural and religious hegemony, a project described in the rhetoric of “cultivation” and “domestication” (Samuel: 217-222).

In considering the role of the mandala in Tibetan conversion dramas, it is crucial to understand how territory was expropriated from indigenous powers. These narratives feature siddhas who transform the wild Tibetan landscape into something recognizably Buddhist, bound by principles of rational order and centered on the power of a Buddhist ruler. The mandala serves this purpose admirably, being a symmetrical structure that could be imposed onto the native landscape, reducing it from an unbounded mass to an ordered array of neatly contained residences, fit for buddhas and kings. The taming of the landscape into a bounded grid served to reorder the native Tibetan sense of line and space. The earliest Buddhist monuments were constructed with the mandala structure as their blueprint. The mandala became a site for sacred places wrested away from native powers and replaced by a Buddhist hierarch presiding at the center, whereas indigenous deities were relegated to the periphery, as guardians of this rectangular grid of civilization. Here the mandala serves to integrate Buddhist and non- Buddhist traditions.

Before Buddhist missionaries could sow the seeds of karma in the Land of Snows, the Tibetan landscape, so saturated by obstructive local spirits and demons, had first to be cleared by clerics and then fenced in with mandalas. What the subjugation narratives effect is a displacement of popular local spirits for the purpose of creating a Buddhist utopian space.9 Tibet’s native soil is regarded as animate and even hostile, and it must be “tamed” and “conquered” by kings and thaumaturges, who construct “supports” for the Dharma (mchod rten, i.e., stupas). When a m andala is placed over an indigenous power place what results might be called a “palimpsestuous landscape.” Buddhist missionaries seemed bent on creating these palimpsests, which do not blot out native figures in the landscape in the name of emptiness, but they lay an alternative mandala texturation over the power places. It is the very flexibility of the mandala

9 There are numerous subjugation narratives that are well known in Tibet, but the three most frequently m entioned are the subjugation of the Srinmo Demoness, the subjugation of Mahesvara (or Rudra/Bhairava), and the subjugation of ‘Jigs byed by Heruka. See Gyatso; Huber: 41-42; Davidson: 150-152.


that enables it to adapt so easily to different arenas. The cookie-cutter mold image suggested above seems too rigid to describe the mandala’s modular ability (Strong: 309-312).

Padmasambhava is the most famous conqueror of non-Buddhist forces in Tibet, and he plays a central role in Buddhist conversion narratives. In his quest to convert local power places into utopian Buddhist spaces, he seems to repress (but not erase) the memory of those places and substitute new Buddhist myths for them. His subjugation of indigenous gods and demons is best known in connection with the consecration of the first monastery of Samye. There is a Tibetan ritual dance ( ’cham) still performed today by monks dressed in costumes representing the protectors of religion that reenacts Padmasambhava’s primal dance of demonic submission. The dance also marks out the great mandala upon which Samye monastery was built. W hat interests us here is how the mandala becomes enacted in dynamic movement.

First, the earth has to be inspected for signs of suitability, and a request is made to the non-human owners of the land (sa bdag) for permission to use the ground as a mandala site. Next, any hindering spirits are ruthlessly removed, captured with hooks, bound by chains, and finally nailed with ritual daggers. This is what has been called “a m andala in action” or a “dynamic mandala” (Schrempf: 106). As a dynamic form of space creation it reinforces a point made by Smith that a religious environment is created out of human action, out of the labor of homo faber, not by the hierophany of homo religiosus. The dancer’s movement creates time and space, and the mandala that is outlined is a means of taking control over a place. This is an active means of transformation, during which demons are stamped into the ground. We are reminded of the role that Trailokyavijaya plays in the rites for the deceased described in the first chapter of the SDPS. The mandala-based dance becomes a form of magical manipulation, transforming the Tibetan landscape into a pure place. It would be mistaken to regard the mandala merely as a static locative map when so much of its appeal depends on its dynamic potential.

The dynamism or modular quality of the mandala can be spatial, when it serves as a site for converting “outsiders” to “insiders.” But its modularity can also be temporal, when the mandala overcomes barriers of the past and present and enables participants to project themselves into the future and realize Buddhahood. I will conclude with one final feature of the mandala, less violent and more utopian than those just described. To arrive at this particular feature, we will leave Tibet behind and return to where we began. Let us come full circle, like the Tibetan


pilgrim performing his circumambulation, and revisit the Invisible Cities of Calvino.

At the very conclusion of Polo's tour of so many fantastic cities, we find Kublai Khan considering an atlas that he owns. It is an atlas in which are gathered the maps of all invisible cities, an all-inclusive emblem of places, patterns, and worlds, reminiscent of the SDPS text itself. The atlas is magical in its detail and, finally, in its prophetic ability, describing cities not yet found: utopias and anti-utopias, archetypal cities. For the atlas has these qualities: it reveals the form of cities that do not yet have a form or a name. It also contains the maps of cities that menace in nightmares and maledictions: Babylon, Brave New World (and no doubt Avici too).

The Great Khan asks his guide, Marco Polo, to tell him how to reach one of the utopias. Polo replies that the journey to such a place is “discontinuous in space and time, now scattered, now more condensed,” but he adds nonetheless “you must not believe the search for it can stop.” Leafing through the atlas pages of the anti-utopias, the Khan grows depressed—he fears that the infernal cities may be pulling us downward, in ever-narrowing circles. Now comes the climax of this subtle but powerful book. Polo replies:

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space. (Calvino: 165)

Among other things, this is what the mandalas of the Purification of All Evil Rebirths offer. Mandalas play a central role in the imaginative world construction of esoteric Buddhism. Like the carpet in Eudoxia, or the atlas owned by the Khan in Invisible Cities, the mandalas of the SDPS promised Tibetan Buddhist converts control over their own destiny, even as they require the faithful to fear new infernos and pursue new utopias in the Buddhist geography of the afterlife. For those Tibetans concerned about their life in the present, mandalas create an idealized space in the midst of a chaotic and impermanent world. Whatever is placed within them—whether religious offerings to stimulate all the senses, sanctified bodies, an ever-expanding pantheon, or even an entire city or kingdom— can be made pure and endure.


Calvino, Italo 1974

Davidson, Ronald 2002

Eliade, Mircea 1959

Grapard, Allan 1982

Gyatso, Janet 1989

Haarh, Erik 1969

Huber, Toni 1999

Imaeda, Yoshiro 1979

1981

Kapstein, Matthew 2000

Karmay, Samten 1980

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Documents

Zeff Bjerken - On Mandalas, Monarchs, And Mortuary Magic - Siting the Sarvadurgatiparisodhana Tantra in Tibet