Ritual Indigenization

Ritual Indigenization as a Debated Issue in Tibetan Buddhism

(11th to Early 13th Centuries)[1]

Dan Martin, Jerusalem

Version:  December 18, 2008

A paper given at the conference entitled "Nativism in Buddhist Environments," held at Haus der Japanischen Kultur & Ekô-ji (Düsseldorf, September 12-14, 2008).  This has now been published:  "Ritual Indigenization as a Debated Issue in Tibetan Buddhism (11th to Early 13th Centuries)," contained in: Henk Blezer and Mark Teeuwen, tentatively entitled Challenging Paradigms: Buddhism and Nativism, Framing Identity Discourse in Buddhist Environments, Brill (Leiden 2013), pp. 159-194.  I recommend making reference to the published version rather than this pre-published draft.

As a young person I remember being very much impressed, and even a little frightened, after reading a marvelously illustrated children's book about a legendary or folkloric Japanese creature called the Kappa.  I did what I believe people everywhere are doing in cases of recovered childhood memories.  I googled it.  That is how I can tell you that it was certainly Betty Jean Lifton's book, Kap the Kappa, illustrated by Eiichi Matsui, and first published in 1960.

What I continuously retained in memory for several decades is an image of the monkey-like sea creature, with a turtle shell on its back, walking on two feet and looking slightly menacing.  The Kappa could live quite finely out of its native element only so long as it could avoid spilling the water from the bowl built into the top of its head.  In case this happened, as it very well might since it was polite and had the tendency to bow back when bowed to, it would weaken and eventually die. 

I would like to take the Kappa as a symbol of adaptation.  In doing so, I might be accused of adapting the story to my own purposes, but I can live with that.  Anyway, I would like to point to another aspect of the Kappa image  —  It not only carries with it some small but crucial sample of its native element, it is forced by circumstances to adapt itself to its new world.  It has to cover itself in the local clothing, disguising its identity as a stranger, an alien entity.  I think the Kappa[2] could be good to think with in the sense that it prepares us to think in both directions, as we must, when we talk of such matters as cultural adaptation, indigenization[3] and nativism.

I propose to look into some of the water in the head-bowl that Tibetans took with them in their historical and continuing transition toward being the best of all possible Buddhists.  I want to spend an inordinate amount of time on what may seem like a very small cultural item.  My interest in it began early on in my dissertation work about two decades ago.  It led through several phases of research failures, false starts and, I add in a spirit of optimism, some semi-successes.  I changed my mind and changed it back again.  The thing itself, while apparently of little consequence, I want to argue to be indicative or emblematic of larger-scale processes that I hope to consider in broader terms before too long.[4]

Perhaps it would follow academic logic to begin with the word dranggyé.[5]  Still, since there is little variance in describing it, I think for simplicity it is better to start with a description.  The dranggyé is by all accounts a ritual food offering for deities (or spirits) of one kind or another.  Although size does appear to vary in practice and according to locale, it tends to be a large but shallow mound of packed-down barley flour decorated with flecks, dabs or florets of butter.  In Ladakh in particular it seems to have gotten extremely large, so large that sometimes dried goat carcasses were leaned up against it, a feature as far as I know not known in other areas of Tibetan Buddhist culture.  In recent times in Ladakh there have been efforts to limit their size out of concern for waste of food resources.  Since in Ladakh and western Tibet, at least, these seem to be its main usages, we might gain the impression that the dranggyé is meant to be used in marriage and New Year (or harvest festival) contexts,[6] festivities that are domestic and largely local in nature, celebrations of present and future abundance performed without the assistance of Buddhist monks, and very possibly without the assistance of any type of ritual specialist from outside the immediate family.  This might all be so, but it has been used in a number of other ritual contexts as well. 

The dissertation work that instigated my interest in the dranggyé was devoted to the life of Shenchen Luga (996-1035 CE), a treasure revealer belonging to the Bön religion.  One day in the middle of winter in 1017 he excavated two small boxes containing texts that would prove to be of very great significance for his followers.  The story is told in his own voice:

I went to take the treasure manuscripts and in a moment they were gone to who knows where. I went to the treasure hole and said, "Now how is it they were here and now that I come to take them they are gone?"

In the evening a black woman and a black man came and said, "Do not take away these things of ours. When you extract them, set up as their 'substitutes' a white sheep with vermillion eyes and a white yak with red forehead spot and belly wool. Set up a dranggyé with small vermillion spots together with a small food offering. Display them in front of the hole and then take them." When they said that, I did not want to take them.[7]

The black woman and black man mentioned here are not further identified in early sources, although it is sure that, as always in accounts of treasure excavations, they are deities of the locality who act as guardians of the treasures.  In this account the treasure guardians actually made the texts disappear before he was able to withdraw them from their hiding place.  In later sources the female protector of Shenchen's treasures is identified as Yeshé Welmo (Ye-shes-dbal-mo),[8] while the male does not seem to be identified at all.  There is much more to discuss here, but I just want to emphasize that in this autobiographical narrative of an event at the beginning of the 11th century preserved in a late 15th century Bön history, the dranggyé is a food offering.  It is a food offering placed on the altar for the ritual propitiation of local deities acting as treasure protectors.[9]

But now, let us think a little about the etymology of the word dranggyé.  To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, all language is poetry in its fossilized form.  True, it may often be the case that the original metaphors behind speech forms have been forgotten, having little to do with their present meanings.  That could be the reason many people see etymology as a useless academic exercise and a waste of time, although I see it as revealing a realm of possible meanings and associations that possess potential explanatory power, so I'll go ahead with it.

It is perhaps well known that, while not entirely impossible, etymologies in languages that appear to be monosyllabic like Chinese and Tibetan are more difficult than they are in other languages.  Speaking only of Tibetan, it is clear to myself at least that it is actually a predominantly bisyllabic language.  In any case, the particular word we want to discuss is both bisyllabic and a compound made up of two distinct words.

Since the second syllable is much easier, let us start there.  Gye (rgyas) means 'grown, expanded, vast' although in specific contexts it may also refer to the opening of eyes, or the blooming of flowers.  The first syllable drang ('brang) is a little more problematic partly because it is spelled in different ways.  The presence of the initial letter in this case is anyway optional.[10]  First we will look at drang when it acts as a verbal.  When so used, it includes notions of approaching or pursuing something, and even of attack or assault (Sanskrit samanujñā, āskandana).  The most common verbal usage by far is in the longer phrase jesu drangwa  (rjes-su 'brang-ba), 'following after' (and less literally, 'believing in [something]'), although this is one of those Tibetan phrases that was directly calqued from a Sanskrit word, in this case anusaraṇa.  Searching for the word in all the large Tibetan-Sanskrit lexicons we find only the verbal usages and not a single instance of a nominal usage (except in the compounds to be mentioned shortly).  It is of interest to note that the complete word dranggyé is also not to be found in those same lexicons.  This might be very significant for our arguments if we could claim that their compilers used a lot of ritual literature, but the fact is they did not.

To simplify matters, I'll just say that we may feel doubtful about the verbal meanings for basic syntactical reasons.  As the first syllable of dranggyé, drang is more likely to be a noun, since the second syllable appears to be acting as its qualifier.[11]  So let us look briefly at the substantive usage that must be more relevant to us.  There are circumstances in which drang clearly means a residence or domicile, especially obvious in two compound words that nowadays at least refer to buildings.  One is labrang (bla-brang), the residence of a reincarnate Lama that forms part of a monastery.  The other is podrang (pho-brang), a word for a fortified building or palace.  We could analyze this word as meaning a 'residence for men,'[12] although one scholar[13] at least has argued that podrang originally meant in imperial times a mobile institution of state rather than an immobile building, although the earlier meaning was eventually lost.  In the case of chondrang (cho-'brang), which is used to mean the mother's household ancestry or the domicile of the mother's brother, it is not so clear whether the idea of a physical structure is ever intended.  I do know of one case (in the Abhisamayālaṃkāra) where chondrang is used to translate the Indic notion of gotra.[14]  But this is likely to be a simple case of inaccurate translation and, if so, may be neglected with confidence.  When drang is used alone it is often defined as meaning the nomad's black animal-hair tent.  So far, to sum up, this would suggest that we could translate dranggyé as "expanded domicile," "expanded matriline," or "expanded nomad tent."

A second and I think important area of meaning of drang ('brang) has to do with the chest.  I must emphasize right away, not just the chests of women (this mistake was committed by at least one translator to be mentioned below), and not just the chests of humans, but of horses, snakes[15] and perhaps other animals as well.  I would like to draw attention to two specific usages of this 'chest' meaning from pre-Mongol sources. 

There is one interesting usage of the drang word for 'chest' by early Kagyü and Zhijé sources, a usage that seems to have disappeared in later literature.  Here is a sample from the Tingri Hundreds, the most celebrated work by Padampa Sanggyé, regarded as founder of the Zhijé school in the late 11th century: 

Devote yourself to the Three Jewels with mind, heart and chest.

Blessings will arise in force, my Tingrians.[16]

I think that — very much like the English expression "Heart, body and soul" — this is a way of saying 'with all your mental and physical powers.'  The word I translated as 'mind' appears in a parallel verse with the homonym that means 'lungs' (glo[-ba]) and in fact we know that in Tibetan Imperial times the word for 'lungs' is often used in senses that inform us that for early Tibetans the lungs formed the physiological seat for certain kinds of thoughts and feelings.[17]  Even today, when Tibetans speak of their 'mind,' they point to the middle of their chests, to their hearts, and not to their heads, as is anyway true of many peoples of the world.[18]

There are some more interesting usages that are more difficult to explicate.  One of these instances is found in the name of a divine entity of cosmogonic significance in the opening chapter of the Innermost Treasury of Existence.  A scientific text corresponding in many ways with the Abhidharma texts of various Buddhist schools, it was first excavated by the treasure revealer Shenchen Luga in the year 1017 CE.  The Innermost Treasury is the only significantly long bilingual text in both Tibetan and Zhangzhung languages.  The first triad of male offspring of the Pure One and the Water Lady Queen are, in my own idiosyncratic translation, in order of their birth:  White Chest, the Lord of Becoming; White Staff, the Lord of Allotment [or Appointment]; and White Enduring Presence, the Lord of Lots.  Here I believe the 'chest' is associated with the world of dynamic existence, of evolution (if we may use that word here), and of birth, growth and generation.  There is much more to say, but I fear it will lead us too far afield.  The Innermost Treasury is itself an interesting example of how the Bön religion adapted particular elements of Indian Buddhist sciences to a more primal and local cosmogony, and not in an easy and seamless synthesis, either.  It certainly was not done in the manner traditional anti-Bön polemics would have us believe, as a simple copying of an Indian Buddhist Abhidharma text with terminological changes made where necessary.  What is remarkable here is just that a male figure with a critical role in cosmogony has the word 'brang, or 'chest,' in his name.[19]

So, with this let us leave etymology behind.  I am aware I have not exactly eliminated all the alternatives.  I believe the effort to trace meanings has at least opened an area of significance that just might have something to do with the history of the Expanded Chest, although it is difficult to claim complete certainty.  Anyway, from now on we will call it the Expanded Chest. 

In the coming discussion on ritual usages of the Expanded Chest we ought to do our best to stay within the limits of what I call the Pre-Mongol Period, by which I mean the 11th, 12th and early decades of the 13th centuries.  Still, I will start out with one source that is much later.  It is a general work on consecration rituals written by the immediate reincarnation of the founder and an abbot of the important Nyingma educational center Dorjedrak Monastery.  The title of this 1694 CE work is The Heart of the Jewel that Clarifies the Ocean of Meanings of Tantra, a Disquisition on Consecration Rituals.[20]  I start with it in order to emphasize that our tiny field of Expanded Chest studies has a Tibetan history.  The Dorjedrak abbot mentions one source about the Expanded Chest that I probably would have overlooked otherwise.  This could be one of the more important of the points to be made in this paper, which is that we're not breaking with tradition or breaking into new territory when we speak about 'ritual indigenization' in early Tibet, since it was an issue that concerned them, too.  But enough of that for now.  Here is the quote from the Dorjedrak abbot.  He belongs to the Nyingma school, which is regarded as the old school, founded in Imperial Times (not then known by that name), particularly inspired by the Indian master Padmasambhava who came to Tibet in the late 8th century.  When he says "New Schools" he means the Kadam, Kagyü, Zhijé, and Sakya schools that started growing in the 11th century.  He says,

On the side of the New Schools, [there are those who] have this doubt, saying [things like] "This Expanded Chest seems like a Bön tradition."  In [Sakya Pandita's work] Distinguishing [the Three Vows] he says, "and the Expanded Chest that was not taught [by the Buddha]."  Also, it was not spoken about in the tantra[s].  But nevertheless it is mentioned clearly in an Indian text, the consecration ritual [treatise] of Elder Brother (Jowo [Je Atiśa]) where he says, "substances for auspiciousness including the Expanded Chest."[21]

I have never encountered any other written statement like the first one given here telling us that the Expanded Chest might be a Bön tradition, although we have seen that Shenchen Luga, a Bönpo, did make use of it.  Since the abbot names no particular source, perhaps he took this from general knowledge or oral commentaries by his teachers.  The second and third statements are rather easily traced since he does give the sources, although with abbreviated titles.  The Distinguishing the Three Vows was written by Sakya Pandita (1182-1251 CE) in or around the year 1232.  It has been translated into English in what is overall a very fine translation.  The Expanded Chest appears in a verse that forms part of a general discussion of mistaken practices within the field of ritual offerings.  Here is the existing English translation by the late Jared Rhoton:

Some do not practice

the giving of food oblations and hand-squeezed dough

as the Enlightened One instructed,

but are seen to fashion other sacrificial cakes

in the shape of breasts and triangles,

which he did not teach.[22]

Of course, by now we know that the word dranggyé should not be translated as 'breasts.'  'Triangles' means another type of torma used in food offerings with triangular shape.[23]  We need to be clear about the character of Sakya Pandita in order to understand his more general positions.  He truly earned the Indian title Pandita because of his mastery of Sanskrit grammar, including a technical understanding of Sanskrit grammatical systems.  Because of this and his knowledge of Indian Buddhist logic, kāvya poetics and other traditional sciences, he might well be considered one of the best Indologists ever produced by Tibet.  So it could be surprising to hear that he never visited India or even Nepal.  Still, as a youth in his 20's he lived in a very Indian world thanks to the arrival of the Kashmiri pundit Śākyaśrībhadra (1122-1220?) in 1204.  Śākyaśrī came together with nine learned panditas from various parts of north India and Nepal, each one of them a teacher in his own right.  Three of the ten Indians figured at different times as Sakya Pandita's language teachers.  Given this educational background, it may be no surprise that he would become one of the leading exponents of Buddhism with purely Indian characteristics, free of natively Tibetan contributions.  This, along with pointing out Tibetan misinterpretations, mistranslations, and similar confusions, forms an especially strong theme in his work on the three vows.  For him, the dranggyé is just one of many examples of unacceptable Tibetan 'interpolations' into what ought to be a perfectly Indian Buddhist context. 

Given his attitude, we ought to point out that Sakya Pandita's own uncle Sönam Tsemo (Bsod-nams-rtse-mo, 1142-1182 CE), who died the same year Sakya Pandita was born, advocated the use of the Expanded Chest in a work of his on jinsek (sbyin bsregs) fire ritual (homa, or in Japan, goma).[24]  That's very interesting.  But what if we were to find two pieces of evidence well over a century before Sakya Pandita's writing by which it would appear that two different Indians, both of them residents of Tibet, made use of the Expanded Chest?  Then what if we add to these an occurrence in what looks like a canonical tantric text devoted to the elephant and attributed to Nāgārjuna?   What would all this mean?  Surely (you must be thinking) these overtly Indic sources threaten to destroy any idea we might have of its indigenous origins.  Let us look first at the source mentioned by the abbot of Dorjedrak, the consecration ritual by Atiśa that is contained in the Tanjur. 

Perhaps our first response when faced with a source that goes against our ideas is to find rationales for doubting its authenticity.  Among text-focused scholars this is scientifically predictable behavior.  So let me just say that I see no good reason for doubting that Atiśa's work[25] is really by him.  Of course he was an Indian, so it would have to be, therefore, an Indian text.  Its colophon says it was translated by Atiśa together with his Tibetan disciple Gya Tsöndrü Senggé (Rgya Brtson-'grus-seng-ge) at Vikramaśīla Monastery.  To follow this it must have existed in India in an Indian language before it was translated.  Atiśa arrived in Tibet in 1042 and remained there until his death twelve years later in 1054, the year of the Crab Supernova, although this is not to suggest a necessary connection between the death of Atiśa and the death of the star.  But Atiśa was most definitely a 'star' in the sense that he was an extremely popular teacher who traveled about western and central Tibet speaking to huge crowds of people.  I have no doubt that, although he was an old man, he did learn some Tibetan language, and even became somewhat acculturated.  He may have been the first Indian to know the taste of tea.  Well, of course, we would have to say that surely Indians who had earlier visited China must have tasted it.  In any case, Atiśa commented that such a remarkable beverage was unknown in India.[26]  But at the same time I believe he remained all his life dependent on his translators.  Atiśa's consecration work is frequently cited in the later Tibetan works on the subject,[27] and apparently always with approval and without any doubts about its authenticity.

Let us look at the longer passage that has the Expanded Chest, the passage that contains the same line quoted by the abbot of Dorjedrak.

After [those initiation rites] perform the enthronement offerings.  To each and every icon

offer the eight [auspicious] substances and the seven different [insignia of royalty].

Perform the request, with great majesty, for auspiciousness.

Offer the Expanded Chest and other auspicious substances.

If [the offerings] are many you will receive worldly virtues.

Read and recite (gyer-ba) many times

the twelve deeds of a Buddha, the Three Precious, and

the [names of the] five types of Tathāgatas, [thereby] performing the 'face warming.'[28]

Here the Expanded Chest is employed in a particular rite that occurs near the end of the main part of the complex consecration ritual.  This passage uses somewhat unexpected terminology,[29] besides the 'face warming' word it also uses the word gyerwa (gyer-ba) for 'chanting' that is only rarely to be found except in reference to Bön religion.  In fact, we sometimes find gyerwa used as an explanation for what the word Bön means.[30]  I'd love to go into a discussion of the charu (bya-ru), which means 'bird horns,' that appears here as a part of the stûpa in the line, "The bird horns are [symbolic of] method and wisdom."[31] But this would be too much of a distraction.  Generally speaking, most non-Bönpos do not even know what bird horns are, which makes it all the more a mystery how they would show up in a text by Atiśa.[32] 

So we may say that, apparently, Sakya Pandita was wrong.  The Expanded Chest has to be an Indian cultural object since it is found in a translation of an Indic text.  But just one moment, that may be precisely the point.  It is found in a Tibetan translation of an Indic text.  The Indic text itself is quite unlikely to turn up in any archive or archaeological excavation, and meanwhile all we can say is that Gya (Rgya), the native of western Tibet, used it as a way of translating something he found in the Sanskrit.  He was familiar with the Tibetan object, and believed it was sufficiently close to the Indian object.  Indications would seem to be that he was the kind of translator who did not mind making culturally appropriate translations, wanting the text to be understood by persons without the extensive knowledge of the Indian world that he himself must have possessed.  This idea requires more thought, and meanwhile one ought to take into consideration the many other translations of his that have survived. 

Atiśa and Padampa Sanggyé had their Indianness in common, although Atiśa was a Bengali and Padampa most likely lived his childhood years in a coastal area of Andhra, near the place where the Krishna River empties into the Indian Ocean.  Atiśa spent the last 12 years of his life in Tibet.  Padampa not only spent the last 20 years of his life in Tibet, but he had already spent two lengthy periods in Tibet beforehand in his younger years, plenty of time to cultivate a rich knowledge of Tibetan language and culture, and he demonstrates this knowledge over and over again.[33]  Not quite the celebrity Atiśa was, he nevertheless was famed as a spiritual teacher of the Great Sealing (Mahāmudrā) attracting people from all over the Tibetan plateau who came to Tingri and formed a close community.  His death date is usually given as 1117, although I am now favoring the year 1105.

The passage that follows was quite difficult to translate and some small parts of it even now resist interpretation.  Still, the first part, telling how Padampa prepared the altar for a tsan (btsan) ritual is clear enough, and this is the relevant part here.  It does use some strange terminology that forces us to turn to accounts of modern cults of protective deities, in particular two books by John Bellezza and René von Nebesky-Wojkowitz.  In general it is a fault in methodology to use the present to make sense of the past.  In this case we have little choice.  Still, I think that there is very little difference between the ritual done by Padampa and rituals done today in remote parts of western Tibet by nomadic or village mediums, such as those studied by Bellezza.  Some of the ritual items such as the three-jointed willow staff are still associated with the tsen deities. 

The unclear passages may make it difficult to understand Padampa's motives in performing the ritual, even while it is clearly and fundamentally out of synch with his usual interests.  That is to say, he employs worldly things, like this this-worldly ritual, going far out of his way to make a point about meditative experiences (nyams-myong) and the ultimate experience of non-duality he calls realization (rtogs-pa).  He was out of sympathy with the usual aims of social life, business, governance, devotional religion, religious practices motivated by desire for merit.  And he expected the same from his students, calling on them to renounce ordinary worldly concerns.

This natively Tibetan ritual, performed by a Tibet-acculturated Indian, is undertaken with invocations to local Tibetan deities of mountains called the tsen (btsan).[52]  Tsen deities ought to be visualized as body-armored horseback riders moving swiftly across the Tibetan plateau carrying banners and weapons. Only two of Padampa's tsen deities are very well known, another was possible to identify, while the rest of them are entirely obscure.  The term kulha (sku-lha)[53] is also used for one or more of them, which is interesting, since this term is used in Old Tibetan times to mean the personal deity attached to the Emperor, responsible for keeping his health.  Although perhaps best left untranslated, the two syllables mean 'body' (in an honorific form) and 'deity.'  It refers to the godling that protected the body of the Emperor, and formed a ritual focus for the imperial cult.  Without its help the welfare of the empire would be threatened.  The priests responsible for this were the Kushen (Sku-gshen), known from both Bön and Chö (Chos) histories, and at least one Dunhuang document (Pelliot 1042), on imperial funerary rites, where the term occurs 22 times.

Most Tibetanists will be very surprised to see the Tibetan national epic hero Gesar (Ge-sar) qualified as a Kushen, and placed first in a list of tsen spirits.  But I believe the 12th century is very likely to be the time when the Tibetan epic began to coalesce on the basis of a number of earlier elements.  For the Tamang shamans in Nepal today known as Bombo, Gesar does indeed stand at the very top of the hierarchy of tsen spirits and serves as their 'king' (rgyal-po).  However interesting it may be to trace how the name of Caesar ended up in Tibet, this is another subject for another essay.[54]

It would be interesting to discuss at length the role the tsen spirits, in particular a set of seven given various names such as Yawa Kya Chig (Ya-ba Kya Cig), might play in the origin narratives of Bön in Tibet, since it was in pursuit of the seven horses they stole from him that Lord Shenrab first visited the Tibetan plateau and founded Bön Mountain (Bon-ri) as a holy place and Silver Fort (Rngul-mkhar)[55] according to the Abbreviated Scripture.  But this is just the area of study that Henk Blezer and Kalsang Norbu Gurung of Leiden have been working on for several years now, so I will leave it for them to come up with conclusions.[56]  Before my conclusion, I do want to mention just two more instances of dranggyé.

The first is a very special one.[57]  Of course it is entirely Buddhist in its general framework, but it involves making an image of an elephant and inviting an actual divine elephant from the Land of the Thirty-three Gods to descend and dissolve into the statue.  This elephant is not anywhere specifically identified with Ganesh (or Gaṇapati), however much we might expect it to be because of the other texts surrounding it.[58]  This elephant is not the famous divine character of Indian myth.  It is the elephant among the Seven Precious Things that pertain to a 'Wheel Turning' King.[59]  The context of use of the dranggyé here is not particularly interesting.  It comes near the end, in association with the request for auspiciousness (maṅgala), only confirming what we have come to expect from other contexts.  What is even more interesting and surprising it makes use of the quite rare word muyé (dmu-yad) twice.[60]  This very word appears in the autobiographical account of Shenchen Luga, and caused me a degree of grief during my dissertation research.

'What could be more Indian than a sādhana text devoted to the cult of the elephant in order to get rich and have a big family?' is a question that might come to mind.  There were no live elephants on the high Tibetan plateau until the 13th Dalai Lama's zoo acquired one in the first decade of the 20th century.  Well, when we look more closely at the text we see that besides mentioning the filing of the five kinds of precious substances just as we find in the Golden Drink rite, there is mention of the "fur of both the male and the female yak" to be placed along with quite a few other empowering substances inside the elephant statue.   The fur of the hybrid animal Tibetans know as the dzo (mdzo), along with the fur of the mule, we are told, should not be used for this purpose.  Finally, reaching the end of the text we discover in the colophon the identity of the author.  It was written by none other than Nāgārjuna, the 1st century CE founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy...[61]

And finally, rushing ahead to the conclusion, I'll just mention that the dranggyé is mentioned in at least one of the Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang.  I will just say about this text, mostly devoted to dice divination, that the dranggyé appears in the ritual section at the beginning, in the deity invocation, where it is one of the food offerings to the divine beings.[62]  There is nothing surprising in this.  Even during the time I was writing this essay, yet another interesting occurrence of dranggyé was located, by Kalsang Norbu Gurung (Leiden), in a likely 12th-century manuscript of a ritual that has to do with the Bön religion.[63]

Now a few words about terminology on the way to a conclusion:  There are a number of reasons religious MIXINGS of various sorts might happen.  Nativist reaction to the introduction of a foreign or universalist religion such as Buddhism is certainly one of the situations in which mixings do take place.  But even here I believe we have to be careful to distinguish between mixings that happen because of simple unconscious continuity and mixings that result from conscious intent.  Or, to state this in what may be a simpler way, we have to think in terms of conscious human agency as well as its absence.  Some sort of religion 'contact zone' may be presumed in every case.  But the more specific arenas of contact differ.  The contact could be physical or perceptual, through writings, public or private teachings and conversations, and even perhaps especially within the thoughts of individuals.  We do not have to follow old style religious studies terminology, struggling to rehabilitate that tired catch-all "syncretism." Neither do I personally want to employ the rhetoric of contamination, interpolation, naturalization and appropriation.[64]  We do not need to necessarily follow those kinds of anthropologists who often practically treat adaptation or assimilation of foreign matter as a natural, even biological process that carries on with its business just the same on the socio-cultural level —   Always entirely in the service of survival.  Assuming that it is all about survival might cause us to overlook, or deny the power of, other possible motivations.

And I think besides mixings, which means internalizing external elements, REFRAMINGS of older religious complexes, at various levels of complexity, are very significant reactions within religion contact zones.  True, reframings are just one type of mixing, but I believe it is anyway important enough to stand on its own.  Reframing may mean little more than finding a (more than likely subordinate) place for those items from other religious cultures in the scheme of things, which is what we usually mean by 'accommodation.'  But reframing can go both ways.  Things might be reframed in an effort to make them more acceptable to the other religious culture.  During recent decades we have seen how Tibetan ritual practices like the cham ('cham) dances by monks are being reframed as 'healing dances.'[65]  The forms of Buddhas in visualization practices are no longer referred to in many English-language oral presentations as 'deities' but have now become 'angels.'  This places the practices themselves within a different level altogether, in effect reframing them.  Of course we can argue that the shift to 'healing' and 'angels' reflects ecumenical or just more general cultural trends, not necessarily even religious ones.  The reframing in these particular cases has a softening effect, making things more palatable, less likely to offend or provoke negative reactions from the surrounding culture.  Like humans in many types of circumstances, this is done out of a desire for acceptance and fear of rejection by the people around them.

And as contradictory as this may sound, I think that if we are to understand mixings and reframings as part of a larger historical-cultural process, we simply must include REJECTIONS as part of that process. [66]  This may mean an overall rejection involving strong polemical reaction against the other religion as a whole.  It may also mean rejection of particular elements of the other religion.  Of course if rejection were total and totally effective, this would bring an end to any process of exchange that had been taking place.

But let us back away from large-order generalization, which anyway is not intended to supply anything like a full description of the process, just to mark a couple of points along a spectrum.  We will keep using those three terms:  mixings, reframings and rejections.  I momentarily prefer these over other possible terms because I think they are relatively free of moral and emotional associations that so often come into play, provoking our own culture-based responses of acceptance and rejection.  The conditions in pre-Mongol period Tibet are not replicable.  There are far too many variables for anyone to control.  That is one thing.  For another, although I usually see myself as specializing in 11th-12th century Tibet without any special sectarian or disciplinary focus, I do not know very much about it yet.  I have not learned enough.  Oh, and a third thing, scholarship is part of the process, not just natively Tibetan scholarship along more or less traditional lines, but contemporary cosmopolitan Tibetology as well.  If you will allow me a slightly more judgmental way of putting it, scholarship is part of the problem, even especially when it does its job of trying to solve the problems it poses to itself.  As an example of this we would have to include the question, 'Did the Expanded Chest have its origin in India or Tibet?'

Sakya Pandita was by no means the first or the only person to insist on Indian authenticity, but he was particularly strong in his position on the importance of correct and pure Buddhism free of extraneous admixtures, fabrications or defects of any kind.  He insisted that even different Vehicles within Buddhism had to be kept true to themselves without mixing one with the other.  For him, this mixture would be a very serious sin.[67]  In polemical works before his time, the main concern had been with establishing which scriptures and commentaries were authentically Indian in their origins.  Sakya Pandita expanded that concern to include questions of rituals, relics, miracles, terminology and the like.  Very literally speaking, miracles should not happen in Tibet unless they had prior authorization from Indian Buddhist texts.  Hence while Sakya Pandita as an Indologist is one of our primary witnesses for the idea that mixing was going on, he is also our prime example of a scholar holding theoretical positions that entailed the rejection of mixings.  And I would add, he forms a very sympathetic figure for modern religious studies academics with their insistence on philological exactitude reflected in their opposition to (= their strong tendency to condemn or ignore) syncretism.

For contrast we should look for a moment to a person like Lama Zhang, who preceded Sakya Pandita by a generation or two.  He was not a ritual perfectionist.  In fact he believed, based on some personal experiences of his, that rituals could be effective even if done without knowledge of their procedures.  And he did not especially value Indian-ness as a measure of authenticity.  We have him saying such things as, "For those who are converted through Indian texts, we have Indian texts.  For those who are converted through Tibetan texts, we have Tibetan texts.  Do not say, 'Tibetan teachings are impure.'"[68]  It is clear to me at least that Lama Zhang would have welcomed Tibetan elements in rituals, but only for pragmatic reasons, only if they were likely to contribute to the results.

I might add, basing myself on Lama Zhang's formulation, that for local deities of Tibet, we have Tibetan food offerings, in particular offerings of the Tibetan staple food barley.  For local deities of India, we would have offerings of local Indian foods, and perhaps needless to say, barley was not put on offer there.[69]

If we look back at all the examples, it is clear that, with likely exception of the unidentified persons mentioned by the abbot of Dorjedrak who had labeled the Expanded Chest as "Bönpo," Sakya Pandita the Indologist is the only one who explicitly rejected it.  Its appearance in an Indian text by Atiśa might be explained as a culturally determined vocabulary choice by the Tibetan translator, or an artifact of the translation process.  Its use in a particular ritual by the Indian Padampa can be explained as yet another sign among many of Padampa's personal mastery of Tibetan cultural forms.  Each of these usages has to be understood on its own terms before making them participate in generalizations.

So my general conclusion is that the dranggyé is very likely to be an indigenous ritual item, one that was and is used primarily as a food offering for local deities in domestic and life-cycle types of rituals.  That means marriages and housewarmings in contemporary Ladakh and western Tibet, and some of the other examples we have seen.  But there is a further example of it being found acceptable for use in funeral rituals in a text by the reputed founder of the Drigung Kagyü school that must predate Sakya Pandita's comments by a few decades.[70]  When we do find it in various Buddhist rituals, including those of impeccably Indian origins, it is within specific ritual sequences that have to do either with the local protectors or with auspiciousness. 

We should not indulge in fantasies that the dranggyé had a mind of its own.  That would be a prime example of the pathetic fallacy.  We should not praise the dranggyé for putting up a heroic resistance to the invading religion.  We should not condemn it for giving in, for allowing itself to fall into the service of a new master.  I also think it would be a mistake to assert that it entered into Buddhist rituals because someone made a sectarian-motivated decision on the matter.  Or at least we ought to admit that this is an assumption, since there is no evidence of it happening, at least not before Sakya Pandita's Indological rejectionism.  My view is that the Expanded Chest was such a wide-spread ritual offering, known to every household, that it would have been only natural for it to fall or glide into ritual contexts where its presence would be particularly appropriate.  It might therefore be a mistake to regard the presence of indigenous elements in Buddhist rituals to be part of any 'nativistic reaction' just as much as it might be a mistake to regard them as objects that Buddhists wanted to deliberately 'appropriate' for Buddhist purposes.

Whenever Tibetanists hear statements about how pristinely rational Indian Buddhism entered Tibet only to be (at this point please insert a long, drawn-out sigh) 'corrupted by the primitive animism[71] of Bön,' we make a silent prayer that we will never again have occasion to hear such grossly polemical over-simplifications.  It is just so difficult and complicated to identify natively Tibetan elements in rituals of Bön, just as it is to locate them within the various strands of Tibetan Buddhism.  We could see in the case of the Expanded Chest that, even after years of collecting the evidence scattered here and there, it can be difficult to be impressively certain of any conclusion at all.  Still, I in any case believe it to be both domestic and local, a Tibetan cultural production.  Even those who have most carefully followed the tortuous trails we've been made to follow may not be persuaded that my conclusion is justified by the evidence.  It may depend in part on my way of reading my way around the evidence.

Now, if the tsen are primitive animistic spirits, then so, too (although I am just noting parallels, not equating the two), are the yakṣas in India.[72]  Like the tsen, the yakṣas were identified with particular localities (as you can see in Indian Buddhist texts like the Mahāmāyūrī).[73]  Together with the nāgas, they too could be associated, in India, with hidden treasures.[74]  So, as far as 'primitive animism' — whatever is intended by that expression — is concerned, Indian Buddhism had quite analogous domains of rich religious meaning of her own.  We could argue that the international Buddha Dharma made allowances for local practices as she moved from India to the rest of the world.  And, just perhaps, the reason they could tolerate some of these local practices was because Indian Buddhists were already engaging in such practices back in their home localities in India, and these practices, too, had been tolerated.

And finally, I want to say that we, the students of Tibet in particular, need to make sufficient space in our minds and thoughts to accommodate Padampa, the Tibetanizing Indian; Sakya Pandita, the Indianizing Tibetan; and indeed Lama Zhang, the Tibetanizing Tibetan. We ourselves, even as Tibetologists in our most academic of roles, often display the tendency to choose between playing the Tibet-nativist or the Indianist.  At times, with seemingly little thought on the matter, we even award to one side moral superiority over the other.  We do not need to be partisans in order to represent in our studies these competing tendencies and tensions at work in Tibetan history.  Would requiring ourselves to be non-partisan and broaden our minds be demanding too much?  I don't think so.  Not really.

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Zhang Yisun, Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo, Mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Beijing 1993), originally in three volumes, but reprinted in two.

Zhijé Collection — The Tradition of Pha Dampa Sangyas: A Treasured Collection of His Teachings Transmitted by T[h]ug[s]-sras Kun-dga', "reproduced from a unique collection of manuscripts preserved with 'Khrul-zhig Rinpoche of Tsa-rong Monastery in Dingri, edited with an English introduction to the tradition by B. Nimri Aziz," Kunsang Tobgey (Thimphu 1979), in 5 volumes.

[1] This essay is dedicated first of all to the late Taktser Rinpoche Thubten Jigme Norbu (Stag-'tsher Rin-po-che Thub-bstan-'jigs-med-nor-bu), who died in Bloomington, Indiana on September 5, 2008.  Dedicated, too, to the two other persons apart from myself who completed their doctoral degrees in Tibetan Studies in Indiana University in 1991 — Yael Bentor and Todd Gibson.  That I have benefited from some parts of their dissertation research on consecration and on tsen (btsan) spirits ought to be evident here.  Thanks also to both Dorjee Wangchuk of Hamburg and Kalsang Norbu Gurung of Leiden, for revealing, thought-provoking discussions on the etymology of 'brang-rgyas and for some suggestions on difficult points in the translations.

[2] For academic studies on the Kappa, see for example Foster (1998) and literature cited there. 

[3] At present it appears that the most common use of the term 'indigenization' is as a way of indicating what happens once the (European or North American Christian) missionaries have gone home, or once the locally born priests and preachers have taken over responsibility for the churches.  There may be faults with using the term, although I continue to use it in want of a better one.  One fault of it is that its use might imply too much conscious intent, as if there were some carefully planned program by the Department of Indigenization to set the rules and parameters.  In my usage, it is more like an ungovernable process, something that very probably happened first, getting noticed and reflected upon after the fact.  There has been a great deal of literature on the appropriateness of various words for cultural exchanges, like 'syncretism,' 'hybridity,' 'bricolage,' 'creolization,' 'synthesis,' and the like.  Among recent writings I would especially recommend an article by Charles Stewart (1999), which has an impressive bibliography of previous discussions.

[4] For an essay dealing with the history of a Tibetan ritual item, in many ways similar to what I am attempting here, see the essay by Anna-Marie Blondeau (1990). 

[5] Although the spelling 'brang-rgyas is the most common, I have also noticed the spellings brang-rgyas and sbrang-rgyas.  In what is today considered by many the standard dictionary, the Zhang Yisun (1993) dictionary, the spelling is 'brang-rgyas.  It is defined as 'a mound-shaped (or half-moon shaped) Torma made to resemble the region of the heart of a human' (bzo-lta mi'i snying-kha lta-bu'i gtor-ma zlum-po).  Just to clarify, snying-kha doesn't mean the heart.  It means the skin surface in the area of the heart.  Snying-kha is defined in Dag yig gsar bsgrigs (1979: 280): snying yod sa'i brang ngos-kyi ming, 'word for the surface of the chest where the heart resides.'

[6] For its use in western Tibet, see Khenrap in Tibet Journal, vol. 25, no. 4 (2000), at p. 60.  According to Khenrap's account, one was made in each house for the first day of the New Year holiday, and it also had a special song called Sbrang-rgyas-kyi Glu [note the spelling variant]. The song in praise of the dranggyé is listed among the wedding songs used in the same area of western Tibet in Lobsang Shastri (1994: 757, song no. 16).  For use in Ladakhi weddings, see Brauen (1983: 111), and Gutschow (2004: 154), where we may read. "The marriage is consummated when the bride and groom both partake of a symbolic offering cake ('brang-rgyas) which symbolizes their new world and life together."  This suggests that the dranggyé may share some of its history with the wedding cake ceremony that forms a part of very many modern weddings.  There is also something in Aggarwal (2001: 558), about the idea that the dranggyé ought to be reduced in size:  "Already, the reformists had called for a reduction in the size of the dranggyé, the meal-mountain carved from barley-dough that stood at the center of the ritual ground during marriage and birth banquets and on the fourth day of the New Year."  There is another brief discussion of 'brang-rgyas in Kohn (2001: 310, note 9).  According to information received from Kalsang Norbu Gurung (Leiden), the dranggyé is still in use in some Bön rituals today, including rituals belonging to the category of Gsur Bsngo and Glud.  He also kindly lent me a brief Bön ritual text extracted from an unidentified larger volume that clearly makes use of this food offering.  The definition of 'brang-rgyas found in Pasar, et al. (2008: 175), says, zhal zas sam gtor ma'i rigs shig / dper na 'brang rgyas u kyu dang khra bo — "a type of ritual offering cake, ex. the 'Brang rgyas 'u kyu and the khra bo."  Here 'u-kyu apparently means with a 'twisted head,' while khra-bo means 'multicolored.'  Another reference to a Bön ritual usage of the Expanded Heart, performed as part of the story that forms a paradigmatic origin myth for the Walchu (dbal-chu) ritual, is found in Norbu (1995: 211).

[7] Quoted with slight modifications from Martin (2001: 63-64).

[8] For the source along with a description of Ye-shes-dbal-mo, see Martin (2001: 98-99).

[9] Virtually the same scenario played out when another treasure revealer named Gze-ston Spu-gu Rgyal-mtshan found his treasure texts.  He also made use of the dranggyé.  See Karmay (1972: 149).

[10] Besides the usual 'brang and the common brang, I have also noted the spelling sbrang.  As it occurs in such words as sbrang-ma, 'bee,' and sbrang-rtsi, 'honey,' sbrang might be in some way explicable as an active or transitive (in Tibetan, tha-dad-pa) form of the same verb.  The verb 'brang-ba is unusual in that the initial 'a (a true letter nevertheless represented by the apostrophé in Wylie transcription) most often marks verbs as intransitive (tha-mi-dad-pa), and intransitive verbs generally drop the initial 'a-chung in their past forms.  Being an exception, 'brang-ba is, despite its spelling, transitive and ought to preserve the initial 'a-chung in all tenses.

[11] I suppose this statement ought to be qualified, since there are possibilities of it being a compound of two verbal forms or of two qualifiers.

[12] It is not entirely to be excluded that the pho element, rather than its more obvious meaning as 'male,' might stem from one form or another of the verbs 'bo-ba or 'pho-ba, although for present purposes the argument would not seem to make very much difference.

[13] Denwood (1990).

[14] Generally, however, gotra is translated by Tibetan rig (rigs), and rig means the patriline, not the matriline; in India women had to give up the gotra of their fathers at marriage and take the gotra of their husbands.

[15] Brang-'gro is a poetic word for 'snake' with the literal meaning 'chest goer.'   It is mostly encountered in formal poetry done in Indic kāvya style, and so is very likely to be a calque translation from Sanskrit uraga, with the same meanings.  Observe that snakes are not mammals and lack mammary glands.  I take this as a strong evidence for the argument against translating 'brang by the English word 'breast.'

[16] blo snying brang gsum dkon mchog gsum la gtod // byin rlabs shugs la 'byung ngo ding ri ba //

[17] Students of the Old Tibetan texts from Dunhuang have often commented on this.  The classic article, at the moment not available to me, is Uray (1959).

[18] But see Sugunasiri (1995).  Viewing the heart as the center of thinking activity in fact centers the mind within the body as a whole.  Locating thought in the head or brain tends to separate it from the body, leaving it connected through the relatively narrow isthmus of the neck.

[19] See Martin (2000) as well as Martin (2003).  Kalsang Norbu Gurung also pointed out to me the use of the syllable 'brang in the word g.yu-'brang (g.yu being a word for 'turquoise') but the definition of this word is itself quite obscure.  It has sometimes been defined as an 'elixir' (bdud-rtsi).  For example, see Btsan-lha (1997: 866).  For the charge of 'translation' in the sense of terminological substitutions, see the 13th-century text translated in Martin (2001: 194-7).  For a study of how the The Forty-Two Sections of Buddhist Sūtras, one of the very first Buddhist scriptures translated into Chinese in the 1st century CE, was later changed into a Daoist text, see Bumbacher (2006).  This scripture was never included in any of the Tibetan Kanjur collections, and it appears that the Tibetan translation we have today was done relatively recently, during the Qianlong era in the last half of the 18th century, on the basis of the Chinese.  It seems to be widely accepted that this scripture was compiled in China.

[20] Rdor-brag Rig-'dzin (1973: 49). Dorjedrak (Rdo-rje-brag) might be sometimes be called by its longer name of Tubten Dorjedrak (Thub-bstan Rdo-rje-brag).  Located near the north bank of the Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) River, it was founded in 1632.  It is regarded as one of the most important Nyingma monasteries in Central Tibet.

[21] gsar ma phyogs la 'brang rgyas 'di bon lugs lta bu yin par dwogs te / rab dbyer / ma gsungs pa yi 'brang rgyas dang / zhes gsungs mod kyang / rgyud las kyang gsungs mod [~med] kyi / khyad par jo bo'i rab gnas rgya gzhung du / 'brang rgyas la sogs bkra shis rdzas / zhes gsal bar gsungs.

[22] Sakya Pandita (2002: 125, with Tibetan text on p. 306, column two; the third verse, which is verse no. 219 in Rhoton's numeration).  The Tibetan text reads:

'ga' zhig sangs rgyas gsungs pa yi //

lha bshos chang bu mi byed par //

ma gsungs pa yi 'brang rgyas dang //

gru gsum la sogs byed pa mthong //

[23] The triangular torma is often used in rituals of the Nyingma School, particularly in rituals or segments of rituals devoted to the protector deities.  Triangular tormas are made for the female protectors.  See Kohn (2001: 128).  Elsewhere Kohn (2001: 310, note 9) cites a work by Sarat Chandra Das in which he says that 'brang-rgyas is a word for a woman's breast that is then also used for a round torma, although I have not yet been able to locate the original context.  Kohn quotes the main officiant of the ritual, Trulshik Rinpoche ('Khrul-zhig Rin-po-che Ngag-dbang-chos-kyi-blo-gros, b. 1923), as rejecting any such association between the 'brang-rgyas and a woman's breasts.

[24] Found in Bsod-nams-rtse-mo (1968: 112, column 3): "Then if you have the food called caru, or even if you do not have it, eliminate the impediment spirits in the Expanded Chest and the like, and do the verses of auspiciousness with their chant-melodies, make the first-fruits offering to the deities and with their leftovers..."  (de nas tsa ru'i bza' ba yod dam / de med na yang 'brang rgyas la sogs pa la bgegs bsal la / bkra shis kyi tshigs bcad dbyangs dang bcas pa byas la / phud lha la phul la / de'i lhag ma la ...).  The caru is a type of prasād eaten during the course of the ritual already in Vedic rites. It is a thickened rich food made with milk and butter as main ingredients (see Bentor 1996: 286).  The context is his work associated with a Hevajra sādhana text called the Suparigraha, 'Encompassing the Good,' written by Durjayacandra ('Invincible Moon'). He may have flourished in the 10th century, since the Great Translator Rin-chen-bzang-po (958-1055 CE) met a master by that name at Vikramaśīla.  This monastery was located on some hill overlooking the Ganges in present-day Bihar.  Its exact location is still a matter for claims, speculations and controversy.  Cyrus Stearns (2001: 212), argues that the Sanskrit form Durgacandra is preferable to Durjayacandra.

[25] Atiśa, Kāya-vāk-citta-supratiṣṭhā.  It seems that the Tibetan translator of this text, Rgya Brtson-'grus-seng-ge, a native to western Tibet, died in Nepal in 1040, so the translation was necessarily made before Atiśa's entry into Tibet.  And he worked together with Atiśa on quite a number of translations, including translations of works by other Indian authors.  For the Tibetan account of Rgya Brtson-'grus-seng-ge's death, see Eimer (1979: II 183), where Atiśa exclaims, in his grief, "My going to Tibet has no purpose.  Now you might as well cut out my tongue for all the help I am going to be to Tibetans."

[26] See Dung-dkar Rin-po-che (2002: 870).  Atiśa's tea tasting took place over 600 years before the first tea tasting in England.

[27] See Bentor (1996: 16).

[28] rjes la mnga' gsol rten kun la // rdzas brgyad sna bdun dbul ba dang // bkra shis byin cher gsol ba ni // 'brang rgyas la sogs bkra shis rdzas // mang la 'jug rten dge ba dang // mdzad pa bcu gnyis dkon mchog gsum // rigs lnga la sogs mang po ni // bklag dang gyer bas zhal bsro bya (p. 515).  The word zhal-bsro, here translated as 'face warming,' is an older and less common word for the consecration ritual.  This term occurs, for example, in a Dunhuang cave inscription (in the past form, zhal-bsros), as found in Imaeda (2007: 94, note 4).  We find it in Dunhuang texts, as for example in IOL Tib J 751.  Zhal-bsro is a common word for consecration in the consecration texts found by Shenchen Luga (on these texts see Changngoba, et al. 2003: 137-141).  But the word is also found in the Vinaya Sūtra, in a translation that ought to belong to the Imperial Period. I heard an explanation by Sangye Tenzin Jongdong, abbot of Bonpo Monastic Centre, Dolanji, some years ago.  It was he who suggested to me that 'heart warming' would be a more appropriate way to express the idea in English. For a lexical source, see Btsan-lha (1997: 767). For instances of its usage, see the Sba Gsal-snang (1982: 39, 56-7, 59 and 79). For further references, including explanations of the auspicious substances mentioned by Atiśa, see Bentor (1996: 296 ff. & 321 at note 517).

[29] I made note of some of these vocabulary items in a footnote in Martin (2001: 88 and note 18).

[30] This association between Bön priests and gyer[-ba] chanting is also found in a Dunhuang document, Pelliot tib. 1042, which is concerned with royal funerary rituals.  Another example of their juxtaposition, with reference to the post-imperial times, is in the Mkhas pa'i dga' ston (Dpa'-bo 1986: 424): dgra bcom gtsug phud can gyi chos lugs dang // sngags la sgrub gzhung bon du gyer pa byung // dka' bas bsgrubs pa'i dam chos bsnubs pa las // rje 'bangs kun la dkon mchog dbu yogs byung.  A much longer discussion would seem to be required, since Bön glossaries often accept gyer to be a Zhang-zhung word that corresponds to Tibetan bon.  R.A. Stein (1971: 238 ff.) insists on the contrary, that it is a Tibetan-language word.  In actual usage in the Zhang-zhung text of the Mdzod-phug (including the very title of the text) however, the Zhang-zhung gyer corresponds to Tibetan gshen, and not to bon.  The later Bön glossaries are equivocal, sometimes equating gyer with gshen, and sometimes with bon, in either case regarding it as Zhang-zhung.

[31] In the same work by Atiśa, at p. 514.  An article on bya-ru, and the Bya-ru-can kings who wore them, has now appeared, written by Roberto Vitali (2008).

[32] I know of only a few other non-Bönpo instances — in an early history of the Nyingma school and in a biography of Rgod-tshang-pa Mgon-po-rdo-rje (1189‑1258 CE) for examples — and may perhaps go into this in more detail in a more appropriate place.  I wrote a brief chapter on the subject in my doctoral dissertation that has not been published.

[33] In recent years I have delivered two lectures dealing directly with the nature and degree of Padampa's Tibetan enculturation.  One is entitled, "Ethnicity as an Issue for the Circle of Padampa Sanggyé at Tingri Langkor," a paper delivered in 2001 (Martin unpublished).  The other is "Padampa's Animal Metaphors and the Question of Indian-ness (Theirs and His)" (Martin 2008).

[34] Her name is sometimes spelled 'Bre-sgom, sometimes 'Bro-sgom.  She appears several times in the Zhijé Collection (II 186, IV 115, V 145-151).  In general, she is said to have suffered a great deal from 'disturbances' (or 'impediments' or 'obstacles,' bar-chad).  In one story, she recited a mantra aloud in a public place, and this breach of the vows of secrecy was blamed for an epidemic that killed at least one member of the community.  So it would seem she was one of the most difficult cases among Padampa's students, just as the story implies.

[35] Lha-nas.  See Bellezza (2005: 209).

[36] In the broadest sense, it is plain to see that here on the left side of the altar were placed objects representing prosperity, nourishment and health.   On the right side, were placed objects of movement and power.  In the case of the magic mirror, perhaps divination is the original motive.  Mirror divination is part of the general treatment on Tibetan divination systems in Lama Chime Radha Rinpoche (1981).  These mirrors are worn like breastplates by Tibetan mediums.  They often have a 'seed syllable' inscribed at the center that forms the basis for the generation of the deities.  For more discussion, see Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1993: 411).  And for a more general discussion of the use of the mirror in Tibetan rituals, see Yael Bentor (1995).  Even the Kālacakra Tantra knows of divinations using mirrors, so Indic origins of the practice are by no means necessarily excluded.  See Giacomella Orofino (1994).

[37] Thang-dkar-gyi dang-ru.  On the significance of the lammergeier, see Bellezza (2005: index under thang-dkar).  The dang-ru of an owl is mentioned in a different ritual context in the Zhijé Collection (V 142).

[38] I take this to be a reference to the usual type of arrow used in rituals like this one, the mda'-dar, or 'cloth [decorated] arrow.'  Nowadays at least, it usually has five differently colored ribbons attached to it.

[39] On the three-jointed willow wand, see Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1993: 329), where a cane-stick with three whorls (sba lcag chog gsum) is an attribute of the 'enemy gods' (dgra-lha).  But see especially Bellezza (2005: 116, 117 at note 108), for an account by a modern medium that includes a description of Gnyan-chen Thang-lha — one of the mountain deities invoked by Padampa about 900 years earlier — in which he holds a three-jointed sba-lcag (here interpreted to mean the cane horsewhip).  The bamboo used in making the ceremonial arrow (mda'-dar) may be said to have "three flawless joints" (see Khenrap 2000: 71).  Since the equivalence occurs in the Mahāvyutpatti (no. 4217), it is usual to equate sba (or sba-shing) with Sanskrit vetra, which is often understood to be the Calamus rotang, source of rattan cane.  However even in the Sanskrit there are problems with this identification, and it could very well mean the willow according to Helen M. Johnson (1944).  The willow is more likely to be growing in Tibetan highlands.  On the magic mirror, see Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1993: 31).

[40] On spos-dkar, see Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1993: 430).  Since I have no clear-cut or even credible explanation for what sen cloth might be, I will just say that Sendel is a Middle English word for linen.  For the linen turban used by priests, see Ezekiel 44:18.  The send in Sendel is explained as a deformation of Sindh, a word for India, although it is well known that flax was grown for making linen in very ancient times in Egypt.

[41] G.yab dar.  This means the cloth attached to the phur-pa or other ritual object.  It could also be understood as a polishing cloth.  See Yablonsky (1997: 1095).

[42] The word 'spirit' is inserted here only to help make the English make better sense.  Indeed, it is difficult to decide whether to call entities such as the tsen 'spirits' or 'gods,' since they are one or the other or both.

[43] This name recurs in the same volume of the Zhijé Collection (V 378 line 7), prefaced by the term Sku-lha. It is the 'heart' (snying) mountain associated with the just-mentioned mountain Gnyan-chen Thang-lha and its deity of the same name.  It is called Snying-ri, 'Heart Mountain,' in fact, because it represents the heart of Gnyan-chen Thang-lha.  See Bellezza (1997: 28).

[44] This could refer to one or another of the members of the 'Bro clan who served as Zhang (maternal uncle) ministers to the Tibetan imperial court.  See Dotson (2004).  Of course it may not be entirely coincidental that this 'Bro clan is the same one to which this 'Bro-sgom evidently belonged.  Perhaps most likely our Zhang 'Bro-rje ought to be identified with Kho-ma 'Bro-rje, who plays a cosmogonic role in an account of the origin of kingship (Karmay 1994: 416).

[45] This ought to be compared to the different list of nine primary Tibetan mountain gods studied by Samten Karmay (1996), to which we should also add a partial listing of the nine in a 12th-century work by 'Bri-gung Chos-rje (1969-1971: vol. 4, p. 420).  After saying how Buddhists should not take refuge in Hindu gods, 'Bri-gung Chos-rje adds that neither should they take refuge in Tibetan mountain deities who are [supposedly] creators of existence, either.  He says, "sa bla ba srid pa chags pa'i lha dgu / thang la ya zhur / yar la sham po / 'od de gung rgyal."  Only three of the nine mountain deities are named here.  For more on this set of mountain deities, see Xie (2001).

[46]  I suppose this could also be translated "It is fine for now, but have a look at the results of the divination (mo)."  Or, more simply, "But now have a good (careful) look!"

[47] For concise explanations of gser-skyems, see Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1993: 401) as well as Kretschmar & Kretschmar (2006).  In a traditional way of preparing the Golden Drink offering, a metal rod made of five metals is filed with a file allowing some of the shavings to fall into the drink.  This goes toward explaining why Padampa needed to prepare for the ritual by placing a whetstone in his sash, although a file would have made more sense, perhaps.

[48] Shed spirits are parasitic in the sense that they feed off the energy of the bla, making it weak, which they are able to do especially after death.  Exorcising the shed is an important part of many funerary rites.  The Hebrew word for 'ghost' (as in ghost of the dead) as well as 'evil spirit' is shed.  It is believed that this Hebrew word was borrowed from an Akkadian word used for benevolent protective spirits, shedu, often depicted as winged bulls.  Of course, just because words are identical in form and similar in meaning is no proof they must be borrowings or cognates.  Still, I find the close correspondence worthy of note.

[49] The mention of blacksmiths may imply connections more generally with their magical powers and dangers associated with their craft, or more specifically with the deity Mgar-ba-nag-po.  On them, see Hummel (1997) and Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1993: 154-9).  Mgar-ba-nag-po means 'Black Blacksmith.'  He is supposed to be portrayed with tools of his trade — bellows, hammer and a piece of iron — but there is no mention of tongs.

[50] For the passage I've omitted at this point, Kalsang Norbu Gurung suggested the translation "Yekhyen just kept looking."

[51] This text is transcribed from the Zhijé Collection (V 215-216).  The larger work of which it forms a part would have been written by Rten-ne, one of the main lineage holders among Padampa's followers in the Zhijé tradition, sometime in the decades before or after the year 1200.

[52] For a description of the tsen, see especially Todd Gibson's entire dissertation (1991: iconographic discussion starts at p. 209), Blondeau (2008, especially pp. 227-30), and Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1993: 175).  For an account of a modern cult of a tsen spirit in Bhutan, which until recent years included an annual bull sacrifice, see Tandin Dorji (2008).  Also, see the general discussion about various types of spirits at the end of Tucci (1999: 717-30).

[53] The different spellings sku-lha and sku-bla would not seem to be a matter for great concern.  See W. South Coblin (1991: 320). See also Stein (1983:  164, 200-1) and Btsan-lha (1997: 33).  There are especially valuable discussions by Todd Gibson (1991: 35, note 21; 150 ff.).  The 2nd edict of Khri-srong-lde-btsan, explicitly points out the incompatibility between the 'old religion of Tibet,' (bod-kyi chos rnying-pa) with its propitiation of the sku-lha, and the rituals of Buddhism.  See the translation of this passage in Gibson (1991: 149-51), with its citations earlier translations, and also, more recently, Kapstein (2000: 53).

[54] On the meaning of Gesar and tsen spirits for the Tamang Bombo, see Holmberg (1983 & 2006) and Peters (1982: especially p. 27), where one may see the position of "Ghesar Gyalpo" graphically represented as enthroned and radiant above and beyond the nine heavens (but this is, explicitly, a chart made by the ethnographer as a heuristic device to explain to us the cosmology of the Tamang Bombo; it is not a traditional representation).  See Peters (1998: 91) for an account of an initiatory vision by the Bombo Bhirendra in which he climbs a golden staircase with nine steps and beholds Ghesar Gyalpo at the top seated on a white throne.  Even though the modern Tamangs and Padampa are widely separated in time, they are actually not very far apart in space.

[55] I see no reason to take the rngul ('sweat') reading seriously.  It means 'silver' regardless of the spelling.

[56] For a study of the more recent developments in Tibetan ideas about the location of Khyung-lung Rngul-mkhar, we have Blezer (2007).  For the older developments we will have to look forward to the forthcoming books.

[57] Tibetan title: Glang po rin po che la nor blang ba'i man ngag.  This was translated into English by Wilkinson (1991).  I have made use of the version that appears as text no.  2976 in the Golden Manuscript Tanjur, sponsored by the Tibetan ruler Pho-lha-nas (1689‑1747 CE, regent from 1728‑1747) in the 1730's.  It is available to me thanks solely to the Tibetan Buddhism Research Center (New York City) and the kindness of E. Gene Smith. In order to access this digital text, go to the website of the Tibetan Buddhism Research Center (http://www.tbrc.org) and locate resource no. W23702.  This particular title was not located in the Derge Tanjur, although it is in the Peking Tanjur (text no. 4971).

[58] Besides the canonical set in the Golden Manuscript Tanjur, there have been a few paracanonical collections of Tibetan Ganeśa texts.  One might note also the Ganeśa texts in Chinese studied and translated in Duquenne (1988), with thanks to Jonathan Silk, Leiden, for bringing this publication to my attention.

[59] 1. Precious Wheel.  2. Precious Jewel.  3. Precious Queen.  4. Precious Householder.  5. Precious Elephant.  6. Precious Best Horse.  7. Precious Army General ('khor lo rin po che / nor bu rin po che / btsun mo rin po che / khyim bdag rin po che / glang po rin po che / rta mchog rin po che / dmag dpon rin po che'o) —  Dkon-mchog-'jigs-med-dbang-po (1992: 87).  For an article entirely devoted to the subject, see Govinda (1969).  The horse and the elephant at least may have something to do with the 'divine election' of Indian kings, on which see Edgerton (1913).

[60] For the passage in the autobiography of Shenchen Luga, see Martin (1991: 59).  Stein (2003: 579, note 58) has an interesting discussion and supplies the page reference to the occurrence in the Mdzod phug commentary.  There are three occurrences of the word in Dunhuang documents according to Dagkar (2002: 430).  See also Snellgrove (1980: 210, 305), where the English translation 'zest' is recommended.

[61] This text, since it violates the 'standard yak test,' would automatically be thrown into the category of Tibetan-made apocryphal text by many scholars, both modern and traditional.  I have made arguments against the general applicability of this yak test in an unpublished paper about the animal metaphors used by Padampa (Martin 2008).  The simplest argument against it is just the easily demonstrated fact that the yak was an animal well known to Indian literature.

[62] IOL Tib J 739.  I used the published version of the Old Tibetan Documents Online (Imaeda et al. 2007: 315-34), as well as the digital version available on the OTDO website.  F.W. Thomas studied this text long ago (1957: 141-150), although he did not translate the first part, finding it too difficult.  It is true that some of the vocabulary is simply obscure, and translation efforts are somewhat complicated by the Old Tibetan poetic style.  The deities to whom offerings, including the 'brang-rgyas, are made, are called sman (a word that ordinarily means 'herb' or 'medicine,' although it is also known as the name of a type of spirit).  Here the food offerings also include quadrangular offering cakes (bshos[-bu]) in place of the triangular ones mentioned by Sakya Pandita.  The food offerings are made together with drink offerings (skyems), just as we might expect.  Thomas took note of the fact that this text also mentions Khyung-lung Rngul-mkhar, the Silver Fort of Garuda Valley ("khyung lung ni rngul mkhar"), a place that assumed great importance in Bön religious history.  Here are the relevant lines (Thomas 1957: 144):  sman bshos ni gru bzhi dang / 'brang rgyas ni zhal kar dang / gzhib mar ni 'ol kon dang / skyems kyi ni bcud drangs shas [~nas?] / sman gi ni zhal du gsol.  The obscure word 'ol-kon appears in the Gzi-brjid (Snellgrove 1980: 30, 308), a Bön text, where it is also, as in the Dunhuang text, clearly a food offering of the same general type as the Expanded Chest.

[63] Glang-ru (2008, p. 10, line 10): gur nag po phub la / / dpral gyi gdong sngur du /  'brang rgyas phyed dkar phyed gnag dang / chang phud ma nyams pa dang...  Here the Expanded Chest is included among food offerings.  As usual, these are followed immediately by drink offerings.  It is also supposed to be half white and half dark.  (The word gnag, which occurs in the very title of the text, has other meanings besides 'dark', including 'close relative[s]' and 'livestock.')

[64] The words 'assimilation' and 'adaptation' are in any case too useful to dispense with, and they don't carry much if any emotional weight.

[65] See Schrempf (1997).

[66] I freely confess to being inspired by the Tibetan term spang-blang.  Like other antonym compounds in Tibetan, it may be understood as an abstract noun meaning something like 'the whole realm of possibilities located on a continuum ranging from total rejection to total acceptance.'

[67] Sakya Pandita (2002: 158, verse 478).

[68] See Martin (2001:  202) for the Tibetan text.  Of course the word 'dul-ba here translated as 'converting' could equally be translated as 'taming' or 'civilizing' or 'subduing.'  And, like the Sanskrit vinaya it translates, it might just mean 'educating.'  And in a special usage of the term, it is used for the forceful transformation of resistant local spirits into protectors of Buddha Dharma.

[69] DeCaroli (2004: 24), lists typical offerings made to yakṣa spirits.  While we do find paddy and husked rice among these offerings, there is not one single grain of barley.  It is perhaps worthy of mention, too, that Tibetan exiles in India nowadays very commonly substitute rice in ritual situations in which they would certainly have used barley in Tibet.  This is true, for example, in the case of the grains thrown up into the air in consecration rituals, themselves being a ritual substitution for flowers (Bentor 1996: 114 and note 118).  These kinds of ritual substitutions might be considered on more or less the same level as those that took place in Materia medica as Indian medicine became established in Tibet.  Often there is no choice but to use the available local product.

[70] 'Bri-gung Chos-rje (1969-71: III 66-7).  Of course this rather difficult 12th-century passage deserves close study as part of a history of Tibetan funeral rites.

[71] As Gibson (1991: 15) points out, the word was coined in 1871 by E.B. Tylor.  Its use has since remained surprisingly popular, given how little meaningful information the word conveys.

[72] Read Robert DeCaroli's book (2004), making particular note of the statements on p. 144:  "In most cases, however, rather than import spirit-deities into new areas, the Buddhist usually sought out gods, ghosts, or spirits that were indigenous to the lands into which they were expanding and then assimilated them into the Buddhist fold.  The same method of expansion employed inside India was used outside, as well..."  Of course we could test the degree of conscious intent and planning implied in this statement, and I believe we should do so as far as it is possible, but in general I think this statement is very much on the mark.

[73] See Bagchi (1947) and Lévi (1915).

[74] See especially Mayer (1997). And see also for example, Norman (1983).  The pan-Indian cult of 'treasure' (nidhi) and more specifically the Indian Mahāyāna cult of the same is, I believe, necessary background for understanding the Tibetan 'treasure' (gter-ma) cult.  This is not to deny that there may be uniquely Tibetan aspects in it as well.