Mongolo-Tibetica

Pragensia ’14

Ethnolinguistics, Sociolinguistics,
Religion and Culture
Volume 7, No. 2
Special Issue
Indigenous Elements in Tibetan Religions

Publication of Charles University in Prague

Faculty of Arts, Institute of South and Central Asia
Seminar of Mongolian and Tibetan Studies
Prague 2014

ISSN 1803–5647
This journal is published as a part of the Programme for the Development of Fields of Study at
Charles University, Oriental Studies, sub-programme “The process of transformation
in the language and cultural differentness of the countries of South and Central Asia”,
a project of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague.
The publication of this Special Issue was supported
by the Embassy of the Mongolian Republic in Prague and by the TRITON Publishing House.

Mongolo-Tibetica Pragensia ’14

Linguistics, Ethnolinguistics, Religion and Culture
Volume 7, No. 2 (2014)
Special Issue
Indigenous Elements in Tibetan Religions
Edited by Daniel Berounský

© Editors
Editors-in-chief: Jaroslav Vacek and Alena Oberfalzerová
Editorial Board:
Daniel Berounský (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)
Agata Bareja-Starzyńska (University of Warsaw, Poland)
Katia Buffetrille (École pratique des Hautes-Études, Paris, France)
J. Lubsangdorji (Charles University Prague, Czech Republic)
Marie-Dominique Even (Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques, Paris, France)
Marek Mejor (University of Warsaw, Poland)
Tsevel Shagdarsurung (National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia)
Domiin Tömörtogoo (National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia)
English correction: Dr. Mark Corner (HUB University, Brussels)
Institute of South and Central Asia, Seminar of Mongolian and Tibetan Studies
Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague
Celetná 20, 116 42 Praha 1, Czech Republic
http://mongolistika.ff.cuni.cz/?page=home
Publisher: Stanislav Juhaňák – TRITON
http://www.triton-books.cz
Vykáňská 5, 100 00 Praha 10
IČ 18433499
Praha (Prague) 2014
Cover Renata Brtnická
Typeset Studio Marvil
Printed by Sprint
Publication periodicity: twice a year
Registration number of MK ČR E 18436
ISSN 1803-5647
 CONTENTS

Preface
–
Charles Ramble
Real and imaginary Tibetan chimeras and their special powers
–
Robert Mayer
Indigenous elements in Tibetan tantric religion
–
Daniel Berounský
Tibetan myths on “good fortune” (phya) and “well-being” (g.yang)
–
Dan Martin
The Gold Drink rite. Indigenous, but not simply indigenous
–
Roberto Vitali
“Indigenous” vis-à-vis “foreign”: in the genesis of Tibet’s ancestral culture
–
Indigenous elements in Tibetan tantric religion

Robert Mayer, University of Oxford

Summary: This paper is an attempt at an overview of the still only partially understood topic
of indigenous elements within Tibetan tantric religion, with particular focus on the underly-
ing historical and cultural dynamics. Drawing on the research Cathy Cantwell and I have done
together in recent years, and above all greatly indebted to the discoveries of many other schol-
ars, it was inspired by the need to communicate the topic to non-specialist academic colleagues,
on the one hand avoiding excessive technical obscurantism, but on the other hand utilising up
to date research.

Tibetan culture is the world’s most intensely tantric. All Tibetan religious tra-
ditions prize tantrism as their highest and most advanced form of religion,
and there is no significant Tibetan religious tradition that is not primarily
oriented towards tantrism.
Few other cultures can compare. In India for example, only some reli-
gions can properly be described as tantric, while in China, Korea and Japan,
tantrism has historically been quite restricted, in part as a result of state pol-
icy. Many among the Theravāda cultures of Sri Lanka and South East Asia
to this day maintain a largely hostile discourse regarding tantrism, despite
the historical presence of tantric elements within those societies in the past,
and even some probable residues in the present.
In its origins, tantrism was an Indian cultural product with complex and
multifarious historical roots. Tantrism was of course not a specific religion
in itself, but can rather be seen as a style of religiosity, or a religious tendency,
emergent in medieval India. It is probably true to say that tantrism had its
most substantial manifestations in the Śaiva religions of India, from where
its ritual and iconographical influences spread through many other tradi-
tions, notably Vaiṣṇavism, Buddhism, and Jainism. However, influences were
undoubtedly mutual. For example, some of the most important types of Bud-
dhist tantrism, the Mahāyoga, Yoginī, and Yoganiruttara tantras, absorbed
a great many Śaiva ritual methods and iconographical features (Sanderson
2009, pp. 124–240). Yet it is equally true that one of the most prestigious
of Śaiva tantric philosophies, the Kashmiri Pratyabhijñā system taught by
Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta, was quite explicitly dependent on Buddhist
36 Mongolo-Tibetica Pragensia ’14/1

philosophy, notably the Buddhist school of logicians founded by Dharmakīrti

(Ratié 2010, pp. 437–478). In recent years, increasing numbers of scholars
have arrived at the conclusion that the mutual borrowings between Śaivism
and Buddhism were, in several respects, conscious, deliberate, and explicit.
Buddhist tantrism became arguably the most productive tantric tradi-
tion in India next to Śaivism. It eventually came to be known as Vajrayāna,
the Indestructible Vehicle, and was usually seen as a further extension of
Mahāyāna Buddhism, one that employed special skilful methods to enable
the much more rapid achievement of enlightenment. This was the kind of
Buddhism that became so influential in Tibet.
Indian society was often densely populated, and included many urban cen-
tres. It was highly cosmopolitan, and thoroughly plural. In terms of religion,
Indian society has been characterised as ‘polytropic’. The term was popular-
ised by the anthropologist Michael Carrithers (Carrithers 2000), to describe
the propensity amongst South Asian populations for individuals, families,
and communities, to offer varying degrees of reverence to all or most of the
differing religious traditions manifest within their environment, including
those ostensibly quite other than their own. For example, persons born to
Jain castes and families would quite naturally also offer varying degrees of
reverence to local Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva deities or gurus as well as their own
Jaina deities and gurus, if they encountered them in the course of their lives.
And vice versa too, Hindus might offer reverence to Jain deities and gurus. In
many cases, it can actually become difficult to classify ordinary South Asian
people as belonging to any one particular religion, along the western exclu-
sivist model. Polytropic tendencies were also reflected at the more formal
level, with deities, temples, sacred places, and even passages of religious text,
becoming shared by religious traditions to varying degrees.
A particular feature of much Indian religion, perhaps facilitated by pol-
ytropism, was its capacity for assimilating local religious forms to more uni-
versal canonical forms. For example, local deities specific to a particular
region or village could become assimilated to the more universally accepted
canonical deities found in Sanskrit scriptures. Local sacred places could like-
wise become identified with categories from classical Sanskrit texts. Thus
a local deity might, for example, become identified as a specialised form of
Śiva or Kālī, and its holy places developed as Śiva or Kālī sacred sites.
Indian tantrism, including the Buddhist Vajrayāna, was extremely prolific
for several centuries in its output of sacred scriptural texts. On the whole
we do not yet know in very much detail just how these anonymous scrip-
tures attributed to the Buddhas actually appeared, nor exactly who produced
 Indigenous elements in Tibetan tantric religion 37

them. However, what we can already be certain of is that Indian Vajrayāna

was highly productive of new scriptures for several centuries.
By contrast with India, Tibet was not densely populated, and had virtu-
ally no urban centres. It was neither so cosmopolitan, plural, nor religiously
so varied, as India. Religious polytropy was not such a prominent feature
in Tibet, and it could even be suggested that some countervailing tenden-
cies were apparent. These included the closed exclusivity of indigenous local
deity cults, the eventual emergence of a widespread shunning of Chinese
Buddhism, and the universal requirement that Madhyamaka philosophy
alone be regarded as the highest doctrine. Of course Tibet was no cultural
monolith, and many regions had their own local and historical variations.
And even if some areas closer to Nepal, India and China might differ in reli-
gious attitudes to polytropy, perhaps reflecting those neighbouring cultures
to varying degrees, nevertheless, on aggregate, we still think it is true to say
that in Tibet, maintaining strict purity of lineage was a more predominant
and evident cultural theme in regard to religion.
When Buddhist tantrism first entered Tibet from India, it initially brought
with it some of its Indian cultural patterns. For the first few hundred years,
especially from the 8th to the 11th centuries, very much in the spirit of Indian
Vajrayāna, Tibetan Buddhists strove to localise and indigenise their new
religion, to produce a tantric Buddhism that was specifically assimilated to
Tibetan culture and geography. Indigenous deities were redefined as Bud-
dhist protective deities, existing sacred sites co-opted for Buddhist usage,
and Indian tantric ritual was subtly tweaked to better suit Tibetan cultural
preferences (Cantwell and Mayer 2013).
While a quantity of Sanskrit tantric scriptures and commentaries were
indeed translated into Tibetan in this early period, an even greater number
of new ones were exuberantly compiled within Tibet. Although largely com-
posed of recombinations of existing Indian textual and ritual modules, these
were now newly put together within Tibet in a manner that better addressed
Tibetan cultural expectations. This was achieved by accentuating different
ritual emphases, and sometimes also by including a few indigenous ritual
categories. To give an example, one of the most striking forms of indigenisa-
tion was the adoption of distinctively Tibetan styles of integrating narrative
with ritual. Of course, ritual all over the world is accompanied by narrative,
but in Tibet, a highly distinctive style of doing so had evolved, with its own
technical language and conventions. Elements of this, still keeping its tech-
nical language, were now integrated into Buddhist tantrism (Cantwell and
Mayer 2008a).
38 Mongolo-Tibetica Pragensia ’14/1

Such tantric scriptures, produced in Tibet with local adaptation but largely
along the Indian model, are nowadays known as the rNying ma Tantras, or
the Ancient Tantras. We do not yet know the degrees to which they were
redacted by Indians working in a Tibetan environment, or by Tibetans work-
ing alone. The contributions of both Indians and Tibetans were necessary to
produce such a literature, since it draws so massively and in such a detailed
and complex manner on Indian tantric sources, yet can also localise them
to Tibetan cultural conditions. Textual evidence can be found amongst the
archaeologically recovered mainly 10th century Dunhuang texts. To give one
example, PT44 mentions an important redaction of the Vajrakīlaya tantras by
the Indian siddha Padmasambhava, when he integrates for the first time four
indigenously Himalayan bSe goddesses into the Indian Buddhist Vajrakīlaya
maṇḍala, to serve there as protectors. These Himalayan bSe goddesses then
continue to appear within canonical rNying ma tantras, for example, they
are referred to in Chapters 13, 15 and 19 of the important and influential Phur
pa bcu gnyis (Mayer 1996, pp.128–132). According to PT44, Padmasambhava
enacted their integration into the divine maṇḍala partly within a Himalayan
geographical context while attended by his Tibetan and Nepali disciples. Of
course, PT44 is primarily a ritual narrative, so its strictly historical value is
unclear (Cantwell and Mayer 2008b, pp. 41–67). What is more clear is that
in very general terms, the modes of adaptation to local conditions that the
rNying ma tantras reveal, broadly resemble the modes of local adaptations
found more widely within South Asian ritual literatures.
The political and social conditions under which the rNying ma tantras
began to proliferate more widely were anything but normal. The great Tibet-
an Empire, a highly centralised regime that had dominated the Silk Road
and defeated its neighbours for so long, collapsed irrevocably in the mid-
ninth century, never to rise again. During the Empire, tantric teachings had
been restricted and controlled by state policy, as in China. But with the
collapse of the Empire and the ensuing anarchy and civil disorder, tantric
teachings began to proliferate. It was from this period that numerous rNy-
ing ma tantras first come into our view. However we have little direct evi-
dence of who propagated them, or how, because in this anarchic time, the
historical record was substantially reduced, so that fewer surviving historical
sources of the usual kind remain available for us to examine. It is interest-
ing to observe that the Pāla Empire in North East India suffered a period of
political instability at a similar time, likewise resulting in a lessening of state
control over Buddhist affairs. As in Tibet, this Pāla period of instability also
witnessed the first emergence of what were destined to become a seminal
 Indigenous elements in Tibetan tantric religion 39

tranche of Indian tantric Buddhist scriptures, including, for example, the

Hevajra, the Herukābhidhāna (the main text for the Cakrasaṃvara system),
and the Catuṣpīṭha.
It is important to note that for those who first compiled the rNying ma
tantras, we think mainly between the 9th and 11th centuries, their Tibetan
localisation seems far more likely to have been considered an asset, than
a liability. We see this in early authors such as Rong zom (Wangchug 2002)
and above all from the testimony of the early texts themselves. Using popu-
lar narratives still ubiquitous throughout the rNying ma liturgical tradition,
Dunhuang texts like PT44 and PT307 describe the triumphant conversion
and induction of named local indigenous deities into the Buddhist pantheon.
As described above, these local deities soon featured within canonical rNy-
ing ma tantras and their associated rituals, often accompanied, in the style of
indigenous Tibetan ritual, by the narratives (smrang, rabs) of their conver-
sion and induction into Buddhism (Mayer 1996, pp.128–132, Cantwell and
Mayer 2008a, 2013). Together with other incorporations of indigenous ele-
ments, such as the presence of the indigenously Tibetan 'go ba'i lha within
Chapter 9 of the Buddhist canonical Phur pa bcu gnyis (Mayer 1996, p. 132),
or the increasingly widespread attachment of wings to the rNying ma forms
of the Buddhist heruka,1 this represented the successful grafting of the tree of
tantric Buddhism onto the rootstock of Tibetan culture, and probably makes
most sense if understood as the successful outcome of an often conscious
and deliberate indigenising program. Moreover the continuous, ongoing
production of ever new scriptures by the creative recombination (with a few
additions) of existing ritual and textual modules into new permutations, was
already the example set by the Indian tantric masters, who had themselves
done exactly this for centuries. Nor did the Buddhist texts declare defini-
tively that Indian soil was the only legitimate geographical ground of Dharma.

1) As far as I am aware, if winged Buddhist herukas were attested in India, they are yet to be
reported by modern Indological scholarship. This could imply either that they did not exist
in India at all, or that they were a minority tradition there. The fact that they became so
ubiquitous in the rNying ma form of heruka that emerged in Tibet, might reflect a skilful
Buddhist accommodation to local ritual preferences, since wings (along with most things
avian) were very prominently featured within indigenous Tibetan ritual symbolism. Cathy
Cantwell and I currently have a paper on this topic in press, examining it more specifically
in terms of the indigenous binary categories of the Winged and the Fanged. The closest we
have so far come to a possible Indian occurrence of a winged Buddhist heruka is a form of
Cakrasamvara merged with Garuḍa as practiced in some Jo nang pa and dGe lugs circles;
yet here the wings are not inherent to the heruka as in the rNying ma tradition, but only
present because of heruka’s merging with Garuḍa.
40 Mongolo-Tibetica Pragensia ’14/1

But by the end of the 12th century, the intellectual climate in Tibet changed
significantly. From the late 10th century onwards, there had already been
a two hundred year period of new translations of late Indian tantric scrip-
tures previously unknown in Tibet (most notably, the above mentioned
texts produced during the 9th century Pāla eclipse such as the Hevajra and
Herukābhidhāna), and the establishment of new lineages promoting them.
These new lineages liked to assert their novel styles, and their pure Indian
origins, as selling points.
Then, with the accelerating decline of Buddhism in India at the end of the
12th century, the traumatic destruction of its great centres like Bodhgaya, and
the flight of learned Indian Buddhist refugees to Tibet, new attitudes began
to harden. The Tibetan quest for inspired indigenisation was increasingly dis-
placed by a growing concern to preserve the now fast-disappearing Indian
tradition exactly as it had been.
Thirdly, new criteria for scriptural orthodoxy began to predominate, cri-
teria unheard of in India, but standard and officially enforced by the state in
China; and with them began the anathematisation of any scriptural produc-
tions on Tibetan soil, whether past, present or future. For China in the guise
of the Yuan or Mongol dynasty at that time took power in Tibet through its
Tibetan allies, the learned lamas of Sa skya, who were already active promot-
ers of the new Indian tantras, and at whose monastery several learned Indian
refugees had gathered. The new criteria for scriptural orthodoxy required
exclusively Indian origins, with no indigenous Tibetan admixtures or redac-
tions whatsoever, not even the slightest. In many ways, these new criteria
resonated with traditional Tibetan concerns for purity of lineage. Yet ironi-
cally, although enforced in the name of a purer Indian lineage, they were not
actually very Indian in spirit, because India had always accepted polytropy,
inter-religious intertextuality, and the ongoing production of new scriptures.
Since nearly all their most beloved and important tantras were redacted in
Tibet, and therefore now vulnerable to being denounced as forgeries, the rNy-
ing ma tradition found itself under pressure. Any degree of visible Tibetan
input to their scriptures became a potential embarrassment that could be
exploited by opponents. And we can still see from two well-known rNying ma
pa tantras which we shall here use as examples, how some of their indigenous
elements have attracted redactorial anxiety over the centuries. Chapter 19 of
the Phur pa bcu gnyis has a very long and important mantroddhāra (sngags
btu ba) which, like other similar rNying ma examples, shows certain signs of
Tibetan composition (Mayer 1996, pp. 132–147), a fact which was seized upon
by anti-rNying ma polemicists (Sog-bzlog-pa 1975, p. 302). A mantroddhāra
 Indigenous elements in Tibetan tantric religion 41

is a standard Indic convention in which mantras are reduced to a simple code

mainly consisting of the ascription of a fixed number to each series (varga)
of the Sanskrit alphabet. To illustrate, the series ka kha ga gha ṅa is called
‘the first’, the series ca cha ja jha ña is called ‘the second’, and so on. Thus the
letter ka is indicated by the statement ‘the first of the first’, while the letter
ña is indicated by the statement ‘the fifth of the second’. This system works
excellently, as intended, to preserve intact the exact spelling and pronuncia-
tion of the mantras from the vagaries of scribal transmission over long peri-
ods of time. But in the Phur pa bcu gnyis, the mantroddhāra, when decoded,
does not yield Sanskrit as it should. Rather, it yields the corrupted phonetics
typical of the very early renderings of Sanskrit into Tibetan, before a ration-
alised transliteration had been established: a sure sign that this mantroddhāra
was composed in Tibet, using an old Tibetan manuscript as its basis (Mayer
1996, pp. 132–147). In response to the long standing polemical critique, many
centuries later, the 18th century sDe dge re-edition of the rNying ma canon
still felt the need to add a marginal note to the chapter, which implies, a little
defensively, that although the mantroddhāra looks like it could still benefit
from further investigation, it should be left as given (sngags btu 'di la dpyad
bya mang yang sor bzhag byas) (Mayer 1996, p. 146).
In the year 1094, another rNying ma tantric scripture, the Kīlaya Nirvāṇa
Tantra, had the dubious honour of being placed by the polemicist Pho brang
Shi ba'i ‘od at the very top of his list of heretical tantras to be be shunned (Kar-
may 1980, pp. 14–15 and 1998, pp. 135–6). The surviving text of that name has
a passage in its Chapter 19 which is by now so scrambled in transmission that
it has so far remained incomprehensible to the most learned lamas of any tra-
dition. Yet it nevertheless might be mistaken as belonging to the indigenous
Bon religion of Tibet rather than to Buddhism, because it appears to describe
the rites and activities of the gze ma (Cantwell & Mayer 2007, pp. 27–28 and
196–203). The gze ma as a type of wrathful goddess are ubiquitous in the Bon
tradition, found in numerous sources, yet quite unknown in Buddhism, and
as far as we are currently aware, occur in no Buddhist scripture other than
here. If the redactors of the Kīlaya Nirvāṇa Tantra had assumed that the gze
ma were amongst the indigenous deities tamed by and incorporated into
Buddhism, the redactors of other Buddhist tantras had not necessarily agreed
with them. We surmise the chapter might have subsequently become garbled
as a result of editorial or scribal hypercorrections, attempting to interpret or
reinterpret the word gze ma in various different ways.
By the end of this period, right across the gamut of rNying ma tantric
scriptures, colophons had appeared in considerable numbers, accompanied
42 Mongolo-Tibetica Pragensia ’14/1

by apologetic historiographical narratives, that tried belatedly to identify the

numerous rNying ma tantras as unadulterated straight translations from
Sanskrit originals with no Tibetan redaction. But this was perceived by rival
scholars as an attempt at distracting attention away from the real truth of
their actual redaction or compilation in Tibet.
One of the problems in this apologetic and defensive approach is that it
entails the denial of what might well have been one of the major achievements
in Tibetan history. Later Tibetans came to believe that there was a single
towering achievement in the rNying ma period: the famous state-sponsored
program that oversaw the translation of hundreds of Indian Buddhist monas-
tic, doctrinal, philosophical, and exoteric sūtra scriptures into Tibetan, and
the concomitant founding of many learned Buddhist institutions. Yet they
came to distrust the other great rNying ma achievement that followed in
subsequent decades, which was the successful localisation of esoteric Indian
tantrism to Tibetan conditions, which facilitated the consequent conver-
sion of the greater part of the Tibetan population to tantric Buddhism. The
scores of anonymous rNying ma tantric scriptures, the many authored com-
mentaries, and the ritual systems emerging from them, that made it possible,
proved culturally so well adjusted, ritually so effective, and intellectually so
coherent, that through their agency, an often sophisticated understanding
of Buddhism seems to have been able to pervade through much of Tibetan
society in a surprisingly short time.
In this adaptation, a tendency to systematise soteriological approaches
became apparent, accompanied by a parallel tendency to soteriologise prag-
matic magic. As is already apparent in the Dunhuang texts, overarching dox-
ographical structures such as the Nine Vehicles (theg pa dgu), or universal
ritual structures expressive of a doctrinal normalisation, such as the Three
Concentrations (Tib. gting 'dzin gsum, Sans. trisamādhi), and perhaps also
the Three Characteristics of the Continuum of the Path of Mahāyoga (mt-
shan nyid gsum), seem to have been applied across a range of otherwise di-
verse deity systems, introducing a degree of doctrinal uniformity across the
ritual profusion. Rather ingeniously, complex Buddhist doctrine was at the
same time enabled to penetrate agricultural village and pastoral encampment
alike through an encoding of advanced Buddhist doctrines within pragmatic
tantric ritual. Most fundamentally, the very capacity effectively to perform
pragmatic magic and prognostication became defined as the natural out-
come of the successful accomplishment of a Buddhist yi dam deity, which
was at the same time the central soteriological method of tantric Buddhism,
conferring wisdom and compassion. Thus pragmatic ritual magic per se was
 Indigenous elements in Tibetan tantric religion 43

constructed as the skilful means to benefit others through the powers con-
ferred by Buddhist realisation.
Doctrinal penetration also occured within numerous particular, individ-
ual pragmatic rituals. For example, more than half of all the chapters of the
Dunhuang commentary on the Thabs zhags tantra (from Chapter Eighteen
all the way through to Chapter Forty), were dedicated specifically to the
encoding of mainstream abstract Buddhist doctrines within a wide range
of quotidian pragmatic rituals, so that the rehearsal of those doctrines was
rendered inseperable from and integral to the performance of such rituals
(Cantwell and Mayer 2012, pp. 78–82). A similar concern closely to integrate
abstract Buddhist doctrine within pragmatic ritual is shown in the Phur bu
myang 'das, a concern which is expressed in that text repeatedly and explic-
itly (Cantwell and Mayer 2007, pp. 22–31).
Such a concern explicitly to incorporate mainstream Buddhist view into
pragmatic ritual magic perhaps occurs to a rather greater degree within these
early rNying ma tantras than is generally found in the later Yoganiruttara tan-
tras propogated in the Phyi dar. A parallel factor is that some influential early
rNying ma Mahāyoga tantras, including the Thabs zhags and the Phur pa bcu
gnyis, retained slightly closer continuities with the earlier, more moderate
strata of Yogatantra than did the more radically antinomian Yoganiruttara
tantras produced almost contemporaneously in India during the Pāla decline.
In this way, these sometimes Tibet-redacted rNying ma tantras remained
more obviously congruent with orthodox Buddhist doctrine, and thus less
in need of complex exegesis, than their contemporaneous Indic counter-
parts. By contrast, some of the Yoganiruttara tantras, for example the famous
Herukābhidhāna, could through much of their content at face value appear
barely Buddhist at all (Sanderson 2009), and paid less explicit, systematic
attention to integrating pragmatic ritual with Buddhist doctrine.
The rNying ma style of seamlessly integrating advanced doctrinal mean-
ings with quotidian pragmatic ritual, served also to reduce the degree of
dumbing down of Buddhism entailed in its propagation amongst its main
target audience, the hereditary tantric laity (Tib. sngags pa, Sans. mantrin).
For example, as we find in the Dunhuang Thabs zhags manuscript and oth-
er early sources, the Mahāyāna doctrine of the Three Bodies of the Buddha
(trikāya) was introduced as the sole point of departure for every Mahāyoga
ritual, via the ubiquitous Three Concentrations. Advanced ideas such as Emp-
tiness, the dharmadhātu, and Non-dual Wisdom, could likewise be woven
into the very fabric of every kind of pragmatic magic. At the same time, as
we will describe below, the target audience of hereditary tantric laity were
44 Mongolo-Tibetica Pragensia ’14/1

typically influential or even dominant members of their communities, fre-

quently drawn from the power elites of grand aristocratic families, nomad
chiefs, village headmen, and perhaps also priestly lineages, and such people
typically commanded a higher degree of access to learning than most Tibet-
ans. Indian tantrism does not seem to have had this calculated quality of fos-
tering a high degree of tantric learning amidst a lay elite in quite the same
way. These were remarkable rNying ma period Tibetan innovations, and as
far as we are aware, no other Asian society achieved anything quite like it.
Perhaps the brilliance of this achievement is why the criticism of the rNy-
ing ma pa was only seldom deadly. Not even their worst enemies amongst
the later neo-orthodoxy tried to completely deny that the rNying ma adap-
tation had supplied the historical bedrock of the entirety of later Tibetan
Buddhist culture; and even their fiercest critics, including the Sa skya school,
despite all their anti-indigenous rhetoric, continued to use a quantity of rNy-
ing ma tantra on a regular basis. Likewise, most of Tibetan Buddhism relied
for many centuries (half of it still does!) on rNying ma institutional innova-
tions in areas such as hereditary modes of religious authority. Nevertheless,
it is regrettable that Tibetan lamas to this day continue to feel embarrass-
ment about scriptural texts that might have any degree of Tibetan creative
input, however valuable. More often than not, they either seek to downplay
the Tibetan component of such texts, or they deprecate them as apocryphal.
Associated with Tibetan Buddhism, and especially with the rNying ma
school, are a number of advanced arts and sciences and other ancillary prac-
tices that are not directly soteriological, but which are believed to be capable
of improving conditions for the practice of Buddhism, if correctly applied.
Several of these seem to originate in the later Imperial period, perhaps even
before the large scale triumph of Buddhism, and they show a distinctively
international and syncretic nature (F. Meyer, in Parfionovitch, Dorje & Meyer
1992, p. 3). These include Tibetan medicine, ‘Chinese astrology’ (or nag rtsi),
and a range of practices for the enhancement of good fortune and vitality,
for example, those known as ‘wind horse’ or rlung rta. These systems can
be very complex, and in some cases, notably medicine and astrology, their
practitioners might require an advanced level of education. What is striking
about them is that they often include a highly syncretic mix of international
cultural elements. The medical tradition integrates Western, Indian, Chinese
and indigenous medical elements, all of which becomes conceptually encom-
passed by the cult and doctrines of the Mahāyāna Buddhist Bhaiṣajyaguru,
the blue Buddha of Healing (F. Meyer, in Parfionovitch, Dorje & Meyer 1992,
p. 3). In Tibet, tantric rites were developed for this Buddha, associated with
 Indigenous elements in Tibetan tantric religion 45

the practice of medicine, and an important set of paracanonical medical tan-

tras eventually appeared. In addition, a set of tantric practices were devel-
oped specifically for physicians. These, and much of the medical tradition,
are often particularly associated with the rNying ma school.
Similarly, in the ‘Wind Horse’ and suchlike practices one finds Indian Bud-
dhas and Bodhisattvas juxtaposed with Chinese trigrams alongside indige-
nous Tibetan categories such as the sgra bla deities (Berounsky 2004, bDud
'joms Rin po che 1979–85, Shen-Yu Lin 2005). Overlapping with the 'Wind
Horse' are other practices for good fortune, vitality and prosperity, and espe-
cially in the rNying ma, some categories from these areas of indigenous
Tibetan thinking became integrated into the Indian-derived longevity rites
connected with Amitāyus, the Buddha of Limitless Life.
The Chinese Astrology or Nag rtsi primarily mixes Chinese with Tibetan
ideas, and although it is described as ‘Chinese astrology’, the system is in fact
quite unknown in China (Schuh 2013).
The syncretism shown in each of these complex systems is in contrast with
the emphasis on purity of lineage found elsewhere in Tibetan religion. There
have been relatively few examples of avowed syncretism in Tibetan religion.
On the contrary, the famous Ris med or non sectarian movement in 19th cen-
tury East Tibet was vehemently anti-syncretic and anti-eclectic, advocat-
ing mutual understanding and cooperation, but placing emphatic value on
the preservation of purity of each separate lineage (Ringu 2007). A possible
exception to the rule might be the New Bon or Bon gsar movement of the
18th century, which could be seen as a less covert syncretism between Bud-
dhism and Bon.
No review of indigenous elements within Tibetan Tantric religion can be
complete without a discussion of the Bon religion. If the rNying ma rep-
resented Indian Buddhism adapted to Tibetan conditions, the Bon repre-
sented indigenous Tibetan religion adapted to Buddhist conditions. Yet our
understanding of Bon is by no means clear. Since it came to resemble Bud-
dhism so very closely, some scholars deny it was ever an independent reli-
gion at all, and see it more as an artificial construction ex nihilo that followed
the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet, rather than as a survival from pre-
Buddhist times with genuine continuities from the past. As ever, the truth
is quite complex, and can best be understood by a consideration of the his-
torical dynamics involved.
So let us start with a few words about indigenous Tibetan ritual. We don’t
have many surviving texts representing the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet,
and we have reason to suspect that some of its tradition was oral rather than
46 Mongolo-Tibetica Pragensia ’14/1

written. Our main textual sources are ancient manuscripts from Dunhuang
in north west China, and those more recently found in the Gathang Bumpa
in Lhobrag in South Tibet. Despite their comparative paucity, these few sur-
viving texts are nevertheless sufficient to indicate that pre-Buddhist Tibet
had a highly complex and reasonably consistent ritual tradition. Even if not
monastically organised like Buddhism, it seems to have formed a coherent
enough universe of practice and belief, rather like Brahmanic religion in
India, or Ancient Greek religion. As we already mentioned, a notable feature
of indigenous Tibetan ritual was its very particular signature style of inte-
grating narrative and ritual.
We can also learn something from archaeology. Much of the Tibetan
Empire’s considerable surplus wealth seems to have been lavished on an
extravagant funerary cult. Recent excavations reveal its vast scale, magnifi-
cent splendour, and conceptual sophistication. Guntram Hazod (2007, 2009,
2010, 2013) has so far charted around 380 burial fields in Central Tibet. Each
of these fields can hold up to 800 individual tumuli in various shapes. In the
royal burial fields at ’Phyong rgyas in Central Tibet, the tumuli are around
130 metres long, and elsewhere in Central Tibet, aristocratic tumuli are up
to 70 metres long. Tao Tong’s PhD from Tubingen (Tao Tong 2008) similarly
estimated that there are over 10,000 more yet to be surveyed along the course
of Central Tibet’s Yarlung River system alone. Some tumuli can be so big that
they are mistaken for naturally occurring hills. Chinese archeologists have
now excavated some dozens of the many hundreds around Dulan and Ulan
in far North Eastern Tibet. Even bigger than the royal tombs at ’Phyong rgyas,
the largest are 160 metres long and 35 metres high, within massive enclosing
walls of 350 metres by 280 metres. All had complex internal structures and
most had auxiliary out-buildings. Two of the smallest tumuli retained a resi-
due of their grave goods, which reveal a level of artistic and material culture
every bit the equal of later, Buddhist Tibet, even at its very finest. Although
from a comparatively minor tomb, Dulan’s beautifully painted coffin panels
show dignitaries from foreign lands, rituals, tents, music making, Sogdian-
style dancing, hunting scenes, Chinese-style astrological symbols, abstract
art forms, and so on. Written inventories of the originally multifarious grave
goods are preserved on silken sheets (Heller 2013a, 2013b). The conception
of these burials is extremely complex, and according to surviving textual
sources, their execution and upkeep demanded a major logistical exercise
spanning decades.
Like their counterparts in Central Asia and China, these grand Tibetan
burial cults were also quite definitely sacrificial. The bones of hundreds of
 Indigenous elements in Tibetan tantric religion 47

animals were found neatly laid out in rows around the Dulan coffins, many
of them ritually dismembered, very much as described in Tang Chinese
accounts of Tibetan funerals (Bushell 1880, Xu Xingao 1996).
But imported Indian Buddhism reserved its very deepest contempt for
blood sacrifice of any kind, and soon mounted an aggressive polemic against
traditional burials. This culminated in some famous debates that figure prom-
inently in traditional historiography (Wangdu and Diemberger 2000). The
indigenous Bon and gShen priests lost the argument, and consequently, the
followers of their traditions, by then politically vulnerable within a Tibet in
which Buddhism was politically dominant, were forced to repudiate tumu-
lus burial and its associated blood sacrifice.2
The politically enforced banning of the funerary tumulus cult was made
irrevocable by the major economic collapse of the mid-ninth century. It
was a pivotal moment in Tibetan history, a watershed. No longer did people
go to worship at the tombs of their ancestors, and no longer were the vari-
ous classes of traditional priesthoods employed to manage the great tumuli.
This moment marked the beginning of an entirely new religious economy,
in which prolific monastery and temple building were to displace prolific
tumulus building, and in which Buddhist-model monks and lay tantric prac-
titioners (whether Buddhist or Bon) were to displace the various classes of
traditional priesthoods as the predominant form of religious specialist. The
new Indian-inspired monasteries and temples came to be known generically
as dgon pa, a term which encompasses both monastery and temple, and the
Buddhist-model religious practitioners came to be known as lamas, a term
which encompasses both monks and lay tantric practitioners.
It used to be thought that Buddhist monasticism and scholasticism simply
disappeared in the chaotic conditions following the collapse of Empire, but
more modern research suggests this narrative includes a degree of traditional
historiographical hyperbole: we now know that the monastic Dharma col-
leges founded during empire persisted throughout the post-Imperial period,
albeit on a more modest scale (Uebach 1990; Iuchi 2013), and moreover, reli-
gion continued to flourish in the east of Tibet. More prominent in this period
were the lay tantric practitioners, who were often aristocratic and hereditary
through the male line, and whose wealth, leisure and power could afford them

2) If Buddhism enjoyed a high degree of Imperial and elite support through much of the late
Empire, the question still remains, when did Buddhism actually penetrate the wider Tibetan
populations? This is a very complex question indeed, which no one has yet addressed sys-
tematically. My thanks to Guntram Hazod, Roberto Vitali, Sam van Schaik and Ulrike
Roesler for their stimulating (and highly contrasting!) comments on this issue.
48 Mongolo-Tibetica Pragensia ’14/1

privileged access to the learning of the surviving dharma colleges. Known

as sngags pa or mantrin, they were to a considerable extent a Tibetan inno-
vation, for nothing quite like them is known from India. For several centu-
ries, they were to supply a great deal of religious authority in Tibet, so that
even communities of monks came under their control. From the start, their
role was as much political as religious, since evidence suggests that some of
the old martial aristocracy, along with other ambitious families, reinvented
themselves as hereditary holders of tantric Buddhist lineages.
The perceived connection between holding a tantric Buddhist lineage and
wielding political power is culturally understandable. From pre-Buddhist
times, power and prosperity had often been seen as the gift of a type of pow-
erful ancestral male mountain deity (yul lha, gzhi bdag). It was believed that
the source of the political power of local chieftains derived from the special
favour conferred by the local mountain deity upon one of his local human
descendants; while the Emperor himself was related to and favoured by all
the major mountain deities. In the early Buddhist period, there seems to
have been a degree of shift from mountain deity to tantric Buddhist wrath-
ful male deity or heruka as a source of power. Even better than depending on
the mountain deity, or in addition to doing so, powerful people could now
also claim as a source of authority the hereditary ownership of the secret ini-
tiatory rites of a wrathful tantric Buddhist heruka.
In short, the entire religious economy began to change, notably the man-
ner in which the new religious professionals provided services to their laity,
and were supported or served by them in turn. And since the dgon pa with
its lamas had emerged so triumphantly as the most viable religious institu-
tions throughout the region, the Bon po too, if they wanted to continue to
participate fully in society and in religious life, had little option other than
to build their own dgon pas and fill them with their own lamas, both monks
and hereditary sngags pas.
Once the Bon po had for the first time in their history, dgon pas filled with
lamas, an acute need arose for rituals and texts for the newly emergent Bon
po lamas to perform for their laity, since their previous ritual tradition, much
of it probably orally transmitted, was not entirely suited to the new Lamaistic
ritual economy. It was precisely to provide such texts and rituals within the
Bon idiom that the Bon tantras seem to have been written, and they prolifer-
ated in tandem with the expansion of Bon po dgon pas and lamas.
Some scholars have argued that the Bon tantras newly produced at this
time were created ex nihilo entirely by copying Buddhist prototypes, in the
period after the 11th century, and retained no continuities whatsoever with
 Indigenous elements in Tibetan tantric religion 49

the pre-Buddhist religion. Yet Bon literature is vast, and very little of it has
been studied in depth, so that such conclusions remain inadequately tested.
If we are to come to firm conclusions, we must first study many more Bon
texts with very great care. For exactly these reasons, we recently subjected an
important and lengthy early (probably 11th or 12th century) Bon tantra called
the Black Pillar (Ka ba nag po man ngag rtsa ba'i rgyud) to a detailed exami-
nation, to see what it was made of.
Analysing the Black Pillar from the perspective of literary composition, we
came to the conclusion that its manner of combining indigenous Tibetan
with Indian Buddhist elements, suggested that pre-existing indigenous rit-
ual structures had been disassembled into their component elements, and
then these same indigenous component elements reassembled into entirely
new structures that accorded with Buddhist tantric templates. Or, to use an
architectural analogy, it seemed as though various indigenous buildings had
been carefully disassembled, and their individual units of construction, such
as pillars, doors, timbers, and stones, now reconstructed into a new edifice
called the Black Pillar, that was closely modeled on tantric Buddhist archi-
tectural principles.
It is an interesting fact that if indexed by weight of numbers, a rather high
proportion of the numerous deities in the Black Pillar are in fact indigenous
to varying degrees. The Black Pillar describes exceptionally long lists of reti-
nue deities around its main deity, more than most comparable tantras, and
it is noteworthy that they are generally described as already enlightened,
with no mention being made of any need to tame or convert them before
they can take their places in the enlightened maṇḍala. Some of these retinue
deities are independently witnessed in other very early textual sources that
pre-date the pervasive dominance of Buddhism in Tibet, such as Tibetan
Imperial Army administrative woodslips from Miran in Central Asia, which
suggests their indigenous nature. Judging by the absence of similar deities
in Indian texts, many of the other Black Pillar retinue deities also seem pre-
dominantly indigenous, both by name and by nature. Here we find categories
which can occur also in the gNag rabs text from Gathang (dGa’ thang bum
pa) (which also shows only limited Buddhist influence, Bellezza 2013), such
as the gZe ma goddesses, the many kinds of Klu deities, various classes of
male and female bDud deities, and various classes of bTsan deities. In addi-
tion there are also the Khra sPyang, the Hawks and Wolves that play such
a prominent ritual role, the mTsho sman or Lake Enchantresses, and so on.
The list is actually quite long and complex, and since we will be producing
it in full elsewhere, there is perhaps little point in going through it all here.
50 Mongolo-Tibetica Pragensia ’14/1

There are also numerous indigenous elements over and above the retinue
deities: references to birds and feathers, eggs, landscape features, and so on
and so forth.
Yet any calculation of how indigenous these deities actually are is greatly
complicated by the propensity of Bon deities increasingly to begin to resem-
ble Indian deities in appearance, as the Bon religion became increasingly
Lamaised. Nevertheless, throughout this Lamaising process, Bon deities
might still retain an older indigenous name, and varying degrees of orig-
inal mythic identity. We think we might see this happening, for example,
with the important category of gZe ma goddesses, who although appearing
in non-Indic and indigenously Tibetan iconographical forms in the earlier
texts from Gathang (circa 900–1100 CE), come to resemble a set of tantric
Buddhist goddesses in the slightly later Black Pillar.
It should be noted that the Black Pillar placed these numerous groupings
of probably indigenous retinue deities around a major central deity who
was unmistakably a direct calque on a tantric Buddhist heruka deity, called
Vajrakīla. Nevertheless, the indigenous retinue deities are still portrayed as
primordially enlightened in precisely the Buddhist sense, like the main deity
himself, which we find interesting.
In fact, many of the most important items in the Black Pillar are quite
closely modelled on originally Indian tantric antecedents. These include its
literary structure and conventions, the main central deities, many standard
tantric ritual categories, and the central soteriological program. Its chapters
describes various Indian-style maṇḍalas, and a central deity who now closely
resembles Vajrakīla from the Buddhist Guhyasamāja cycle. While the Bon
version of this deity still retains a name evocative of indigenous symbolism,
mKha’ 'gying, ‘Hovering in the Sky’, his female consort is called sTong khyab
ma, ‘Pervasive Emptiness’, a very Buddhist sounding name indeed. The main
interlocutor of the tantra is Thugs rje byams ma, who resembles the Indian
Goddess Tārā. Above all, the Black Pillar teaches the very same enlighten-
ment and the very same ethics as do the rNying ma tantras, and it reflects the
same ontology of the Three Buddha Bodies of dharmakāya, sambhogakāya,
and nirmāṇakāya. It structures its visualisation meditations around the Three
Concentrations (gting nge 'dzin gsum) shared with rNying ma Buddhism, and
its central rite of forcible liberation (sgrol ba) is also modelled on Indian or
rNying ma precedents, as are many subsidiary rituals.
It remains to be seen what will be found after more Bon tantras have been
scrutinised. For now, all we can say with certainty is that at least one semi-
nal Bon tantra contains both indigenous and imported Buddhist features.
 Indigenous elements in Tibetan tantric religion 51

Finally, we should mention briefly the other schools of Tibetan Buddhism,

such as the Sa skya pa, the bKa’ brgyud pa, the dGe lugs pa, the Jo nang pa,
and so on. Unlike the rNying ma, it was much rarer for them to rely on major
scriptural tantras that were not of completely Indic origins, straightforward
translations from Sanskrit into Tibetan. The main exception would be when
they were self-consciously using rNying ma pa ritual, which all of them did
to varying degrees. So if we are to talk of indigenous Tibetan tantras, in the
sense of scriptural tantras for major meditational deities written or compiled
in Tibet, then we are largely talking about the rNying ma and Bon traditions,
with comparatively fewer other exceptions.
Nevertheless, all of Tibetan Buddhism, not only the rNying ma and Bon,
introduced major developments and new ways of doing tantrism that had
been unknown in India. This might include adopting indigenous ritual ele-
ments in various ways. A notable example was the Tibetan cult of protector
deities, who made up a vast and hugely varied pantheon that included numer-
ous indigenous and local deities adopted as Buddhist protectors. Some were
heavily assimilated to Indian tantric categories, and for some their indige-
nous nature might even have been partly invented traditions, developed to
fill a conceptual niche, but many others do seem to have been more closely
based on actual indigenous religious traditions.
Over and above that, all of Tibetan Buddhism introduced numerous devel-
opments and new ways of doing tantrism that had been unknown in India. The
production of lengthy guru yoga sādhana texts or the widespread establishment
of concatenated lines of reincarnated lamas are just two prominent examples
amongst many available. But Buddhist developments of that kind that incor-
porate few if any indigenous ritual categories are not the subject of this paper.

References

Bellezza, John, 2013, Death and Beyond in Ancient Tibet. The Austrian Academy of Sciences
Press, Vienna.
Berounsky, Daniel, 2004, Wind-horse galloping: On a Tibetan symbol connected with nature.
In: Pandanus 04, Charles University, Prague, pp. 185–203.
Bushell, S. W., 1880, The Early History of Tibet. From Chinese Sources. In: Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society 12, pp. 435–541.
Cantwell, Cathy, and Mayer, Robert, 2007, The Kīlaya Nirvāṇa Tantra and the Vajra Wrath
Tantra: two texts from the Ancient Tantra Collection. The Austrian Academy of Sciences
Press, Vienna.
Cantwell, Cathy, and Mayer, Robert, 2008a, Enduring myths: smrang, rabs and ritual in the
Dunhuang texts on Padmasambhava. In: Pommaret, Françoise and Jean-Luc Achard, eds.,
52 Mongolo-Tibetica Pragensia ’14/1

Tibetan Studies in Honor of Samten Karmay, Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines, Vol.15, November
2008, Langues et Cultures de l'Aire Tibétaines, CNRS, Paris, pp. 289–312.
Cantwell, Cathy, and Mayer, Robert, 2008b, Early Tibetan Documents on Phur pa from Dun-
huang. The Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, Vienna.
Cantwell, Cathy, and Mayer, Robert, 2008c, The Dunhuang Phur pa Corpus: A Survey. In:
Almogi, Orna, ed., Contributions to Tibetan Buddhist Literature. PIATS 2006: Tibetan Stud-
ies: Proceedings of the Eleventh Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies,
Königswinter 2006. Beiträge zur Zentralasienforschung 14, International Institute for Tibetan
and Buddhist Studies, Halle, pp. 248–276.
Cantwell, Cathy, and Mayer, Robert, 2012, A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland
Synopsis: A Mahāyoga Tantra and its Commentary, The Austrian Academy of Sciences Press,
Vienna.
Cantwell, Cathy and Mayer, Robert, 2013, Representations of Padmasambhava in early post-
Imperial Tibet. In: Christoph Cüppers, Robert Mayer and Michael Walter, eds., Tibet after
Empire Culture, Society and Religion between 850–1000, Lumbini International Research
Institute, Lumbini, pp. 19–50.
Carrithers, M., 2000, On Polytropy: Or the Natural Condition of Spiritual Cosmopolitanism
in India: The Digambar Jain Case. In: Modern Asian Studies, 34 (4), pp. 831–61.
bDud 'joms Rin po che, 'Jigs bral ye shes rdo rje, 1979–1985, rLung rta'i rten mkhar 'dzug
pa'i cho ga dge legs kun 'byung bkra shis gter gyi bum bzang zhes bya ba bzhugs so. In: The col-
lected writings and revelations of H. H. bDud-'joms Rin-po-che 'Jigs bral ye shes rdo rje, Vol-
ume Tsha, Dupjung Lama, Kalimpong, pp. 453–472.
Hazod, Guntram, 2007, The grave on the ‘cool plain.’ On the identification of ‘Tibet’s first
tomb’ in Nga-ra-thang of ’Phyong-po. In: Kellner, B., H. Krasser, H. Lasic, M.T. Much, and
H. Tauscher (eds.), Pramāṇakīrtiḥ. Papers Dedicated to Ernst Steinkellner on the Occasion of
his 70th Birthday. Part 1. Wien, pp. 259–283.
Hazod, Guntram, 2009, Imperial Central Tibet – An annotated cartographical survey of its ter-
ritorial divisions and key political sites. In: Dotson, Brandon, The Old Tibetan Annals. Verlag
der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, pp. 161–231.
Hazod, Guntram, 2010, Geschichte in der Landschaft. Zur Methode der historisch-anthropol-
ogischen Forschung in Tibet. In: Working papers in Social Anthropology, Vol. 12, pp. 1–12
(www.oeaw.ac.at/sozant).
Hazod, Guntram, 2013, The Plundering Of The Tibetan Royal Tombs. An Analysis of the Event
in the Context of the Uprisings in Central Tibet of the 9th/ 10th Century. In: Christoph Cüp-
pers, Robert Mayer and Michael Walter, eds., Tibet after Empire: Culture, Society and Reli-
gion between 850–1000, LIRI, Lumbini, pp. 85–116.
Heller, Amy, 2013a, Preliminary remarks on Painted Coffin Panels from Tibetan tombs. In:
Dotson, Brandon; Iwao, Kazushi and Takeuchi, Tsuguhito eds., Scribes, Texts, and Rituals in
Early Tibet and Dunhuang, Proceedings of the 12th Seminar of the International Association
for Tibetan Studies. Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden, pp. 11–24.
Heller, Amy, 2013b, Observations on Painted Coffin Panels of the Tibetan Empire. In: Chris-
toph Cüppers, Robert Mayer and Michael Walter, eds., Tibet after Empire Culture, Society and
Religion between 850–1000, Lumbini International Research Institute, Lumbini, pp. 117–168.
Iuchi, Maho, 2013, Early bKa’ gdams pa masters and Khams ’Dan ma. In: Christoph Cüppers,
Robert Mayer and Michael Walter, eds., Tibet after Empire: Culture, Society and Religion
between 850–1000, LIRI, Lumbini, pp. 215–228.
Karmay, S. G., 1980, An Open Letter by Pho-brang Zhi-ba-'od to the Buddhists in Tibet. In:
The Tibet Journal, Vol.V, no.3, pp. 3–28.
 Indigenous elements in Tibetan tantric religion 53

Karmay, S. G, 1998, The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in
Tibet. Mandala Book Point, Kathmandu.
Lin Shen-yu, 2005, Tibetan Magic for Daily Life: Mi pham's Texts on gTo-rituals. In: Cahiers
d'Extrême-Asie, Vol. 15, 2005. pp. 107–125.
Mayer, Robert, 1996. A Scripture of the Ancient Tantra Collection: the Phur pa bcu gnyis. Kis-
cadale Publications, Oxford.
Parfionovitch, Y., G. Dorje & F. Meyer, 1992, Tibetan Medical Paintings. Serindia, London.
Ratié, Isabelle. 2010, The Dreamer and the Yogin: On the relationship between Buddhist and
Śaiva Idealisms. In: Bulletin of SOAS, 73, 3 (2010), pp. 437–478.
Ringu Tulku, 2007, The Ri-me Philosophy of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great: A Study of the Bud-
dhist Lineages of Tibet. Shambhala, Boston and London.
Sanderson, A., 2009, “The Śaiva Age — The Rise and Dominance of Śaivism during the Early
Medieval Period”. In: S. Einoo, ed., Genesis and Development of Tantrism. Institute of Ori-
ental Culture, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, pp. 41–349.
Schuh, Dieter, 2013, Zwischen Großreich und Phyi-Dar. In: Christoph Cüppers, Robert Mayer
and Michael Walter, eds., Tibet after Empire: Culture, Society and Religion between 850–1000.
LIRI, Lumbini, pp. 313–342.
Sog-bzlog-pa blo-gros rgyal-mtshan, 1975, Collected Writings of Sog-bzlog-pa Blo-gros-
rgyal-mtshan. Vol. 1. Reproduced from a ms. from the library of Ven. Bdud-'joms Rin-po-
che by Sanje Dorji. New Delhi.
Tao Tong, 2008, The Silk Roads Of The Northern Tibetan Plateau During The Early Middle Ages
(From The Han To Tang Dynasty) As Reconstructed From Archaeological And Written Sources.
PhD Dissertation, The Eberhard-Karls University of Tübingen.
Uebach, Helga, 1990, On Dharma Colleges and their Teachers in the Ninth Century Tibetan
Empire. In: Paolo Daffina, ed., Indo-Sino-Tibetica. Studi in onore di Luciano Petech, Bardi
Editore, Rome, pp. 393–418.
Wangchuk, D., 2002, An Eleventh-Century Defence of the Authenticity of the Guhyagarbha
Tantra. In: D. Germano & H. Eimer, eds., The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism, Brill, Lei-
den, pp. 265–291.
Wangdu, Pasang and Diemberger, Hildegard, 2000, dBa’ bzhed. The Royal Narrative Concern-
ing the Bringing of the Buddha’s Doctrine to Tibet. Verlag der Österreischischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Wien.
Xu Xinguo, 1996, A Silver Casket from a Dulan Sacrificial Horse Trench. In: China Art and
Archeology Digest 1.3, (translated by Bruce Doar), pp. 37–49.
Yoeli-Tlalim, Ronit, 2013, Central Asian Mélange: Early Tibetan Medicine from Dunhunag.
In: Takeuchi, Dotson, and Iwao, eds., Scribes, Texts, and Rituals in Early Tibet and Dunhuang.
Reichert-Verlag, Wiesbaden, pp. 53–60.