The early development of the Padmasambhava legend in Tibet: a study of IOL Tib J 644 and Pelliot tibetain 307.

• Author: Dalton, Jacob

This article offers some new evidence on Padmasambhava, the Indian master who, according to legend, was instrumental in establishing Buddhism in Tibet. In the course of my research on tantra in the Tibetan manuscripts discovered near Dunhuang, I have found two passages relating to the early development of the legends surrounding this famous Buddhist master, neither of which have been studied to date. (1) The two passages are presented below in translation, and discussed in light of the other available early evidence.

The results of this study reveal a mutability in the early biographies of Padmasambhava. The master's role in the Tibetan imagination grew and evolved in dramatic ways during the ninth to eleventh centuries, so that by the time of his first complete biography, the twelfth-century Zangs gling ma by Nyang ral nyi ma'i 'od zer (1124-1192), Padmasambhava had become the single most important figure in Tibetan narratives of their early conversion to Buddhism. The new evidence presented here contributes to our understanding of how these Tibetan conversion narratives grew over the early years. The present inquiry is therefore less concerned with Padmasambhava as a historical person than with his legend and the thematic lines along which it developed. (2) An evaluation of the early evidence helps to clarify both how Tibetans perceived themselves and how they understood their first encounters with the Buddhist religion.

This new evidence indicates that the Padmasambhava legend initially flourished during the so-called "dark period" of Tibetan history. This period stretched from 842 C.E. when the Tibetan empire collapsed, to roughly 978 C.E. when a royal court and Buddhist monastic institutions began to reappear, bringing with them a new orthodoxy. According to traditional Tibetan historical sources, this period of one and a half centuries witnessed a horrific degradation of Buddhism, as monasteries were persecuted and the teachings corrupted. Recent scholarship has begun to question this traditional version of events. (3) Certainly, the Tibetans who emerged from the dark period were far more Buddhist, however such affiliation is measured, than the Tibetans who had entered it. It seems that despite the closing of the monasteries Buddhism continued to flourish at the local level. The forms Buddhism took during these years may well have been "corrupt" in the view of later Tibetans, but these same corruptions were fundamental to the formation of the Tibetan Buddhist identity. Freed from the watchful eye of the imperial court and the monastic orthodoxy, Tibetans of the dark period were able to make Buddhism their own. The themes, the imagery, and the strategies Tibetans developed during the inchoate years of the dark age formed the cultural foundations upon which Tibetan Buddhism was built. Only by excavating these foundations and shedding some light on the dark period can we gain a clearer appreciation of the Tibetan assimilation of Buddhism.

The manuscripts discovered at Dunhuang provide a glimpse of the events of this era. It is increasingly clear that most of the Dunhuang materials date from the dark period, well after the collapse of the Tibetan empire, (4) and what the Dunhuang collections reveal about the Tibetan assimilation of Buddhism is the central role that tantric Buddhism played in this process. (5) Earlier, during the empire, the exoteric traditions enjoyed far greater support, thanks particularly to the patronage of the royal court, while the translation of tantric texts was carefully controlled, if not prohibited. With the collapse of the empire, these controls were lifted, and Tibetans plunged eagerly into the world of Buddhist tantra.

One of the constant motifs of Tibetan religion over the centuries has been the animated, and often malevolent, landscape, and the need to mollify, pacify, or subjugate it. The materials I will examine here suggest that, rather than being something projected back into Tibetan history by later histories and chronicles, this motif is a key element in some of the earliest Tibetan Buddhist legends. The Tibetans seem to have been attracted to tantra in part for its effectiveness in controlling spirits and demons. The Tibetan universe is infused with spirits--spirits that live in the rocks, the trees, and the mountains, spirits that live in one's body, that wander the landscape, that live underground and in the sky, spirits that cause illness or natural disasters. The spirit world of Tibet is an unruly domain. Spirits demand recognition and respect, yet they are forever changing names, can be associated with multiple locations, appear in different groups, escape classification, and manifest themselves in accordance with shifting iconographies. Conversely, tantric ritual is often guided by metaphors of power and control, with the practitioner seated as a virtual sovereign at the center of the mandala palace, ruling over the realm by threat of violence. Buddhism provided both ritual methods of control and overarching narrative schemes for explaining the spirits' roles in Tibetan life. Through tantra the spirits could be mapped onto the Tibetan landscape and correlated with the more orderly Buddhist system of deities.

The evidence presented below suggests that the legends surrounding the Indian tantric master Padmasambhava should be understood as part of this tantric conversion of Tibet. The theme of demon subjugation is crucial to Tibetan culture, and Padmasambhava is the demon tamer par excellence. He is also often depicted as the principal figure responsible for bringing Buddhism to Tibet. Today the geography of Tibet is covered with countless sacred sites where the tantric saint is said to have subjugated local Tibetan pre-Buddhist spirits and converted them to Buddhism. The new evidence offered here reveals much about how these two themes, of Padmasambhava and Tibetan tantra, developed in concert.

1. ITJ644: (6) PADMASAMBHAVA AT THE ASURA CAVE

   The first piece of evidence appears in a short manuscript held in the Stein collection. Though catalogued by Louis de la Vallee Poussin in 1918, ITJ644 has been overlooked by scholars, apparently because of the unremarkable entry it received: "A treatise on the Phalas (compare Abhidharma-kosa, VI, Madhyamaka-vrtti, XXIV)." (7) The remainder of the entry is limited to the manuscript's opening and closing lines, neither of which provide any indication of the work's actual significance. There are in fact two items in the manuscript, which are closely related. The first item is a presentation of a nine vehicles (theg pa dgu) doxographical system, the second a discussion of the different vidyadhara levels, which are also grouped by vehicle. (8)

   The relevant passage appears in the second item, in the context of the three vidyadhara levels associated with the vehicle of Kriya tantra. Here vidyadhara 'knowledge bearer' refers to one who has mastered the teachings of the Buddhist tantras. A vidyadhara's "knowledge" is specifically one of magic spells, and throughout Indian literature these beings are endowed with abilities to fly, to travel to other realms, and to perform spells. (9) According to our text, there are three vidyadhara levels that can be attained through the practice of the Kriya tantras: the vidyadhara of accomplishments (grub pa'i rigs 'dzin), the vidyadhara who dwells on the levels (sa la gnas pa'i rigs 'dzin), and the spontaneously accomplishing vidyadhara (lhun kyis grub pa'i rigs 'dzin). The description of the second of these, the vidyadhara who dwells on the levels, reads as follows:

   Then Vajrapani arrived and granted the siddhis. Then he went to the Asura Cave, and upon beholding the visage of an emanation of Vajrapani present there, he struck the rock with his foot. It seemed as if he had stuck it into dough. From that footprint the sacrament (samaya) descended, and from within that there came a spring with eight streams. One flowed to the south face of Mt. Meru, so that the spring was called Asvakarna. Seven of them fell inside of the Asura Cave. In this [spring] he cleansed himself and gained accomplishment. Thus he became one who is called a vidyadhara who dwells on the levels. (10) Unfortunately the protagonist of this short story remains unnamed, but several links between this story and the later depictions of Padmasambhava. First, Padmasambhava is commonly associated with an Asura Cave at Yang le shod, located near modern-day Pharping on the edge of Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. (11) Today this is one of the most important Padmasambhava religious sites and is recognized by most Newar and Tibetan Buddhists as the place where Padmasambhava perfected the ritual systems for the deity Vajrakilaya.

   This modern belief is generally consistent with the principal Dunhuang source on Padmasambhava that has already been studied. PT44 is a work devoted to the ritual traditions of Vajrakilaya. (12) It relates how Acarya Sambhava, as he is called, practiced meditation, battled demons, and performed miracles at the Asura Cave at Yang la shod:

   After arriving at Yang[-la]-shod in Nepal, he performed the practices belonging [to all the classes of yoga] from the general Kriya up through Atiyoga. He proclaimed each and every transmission of the Kila, for the purposes of all the vehicles, from the Hundred Thousand [Verse] Tantra of Vajrakila, as [is affirmed] in all the secret tantras. In that way, having definitively established the transmissions concerning attainment, and having again...