Mandala Architecture, the Top of the Wall

 

Diagram of the mandala portal and wall, with labels
courtesy of Yael Bentor

I suppose I ought to go into a long-winded preamble before getting to the point. But first of all let me state the point, or the first point, I want to make. Nearly all of the Tibetan terms for the parts of the mandala have proven difficult for translators. After all, so many of them are technical terms of architecture. We as translators may not be architectural historians, but we could do better.

Architects, the people ancient Greeks called Mechanikos (Μεκανίκος) and Bharata’s Sūtradhāra (Tibetan translation: Mdo-’dzin-pa, ‘Thread Holders’), were a very select group, an exclusive guild that largely kept their secrets to themselves. Traditional architecture, all architecture in fact, has as its prime goal protecting its inhabitants from uncomfortable and potentially harmful environmental elements, but also, as part of that aim, protecting itself from the same. Defense against potential damage by fire, earth, wind and moisture as well as by external attacks of other kinds needs to be built into the design. Although we shouldn’t ever do it, let’s forget decoration and beauty for now.

Architecture? The mandala is, after all, in its overall structure, a building or rather a fortified domicile for divine forms of Buddha (lha-yi pho-brang). Seeing this may prove shocking to the systems of the Jungian and transpersonal psychologists who see in it archetypal imagery or human transformational potential. Others see it as representing order in the universe, as a cosmogram, or just a scientific diagram. Some would regard it as a memory palace, an object to gaze at in meditation practice, a kind of centering device, wholistic mind-body medicine, and so on. I personally hold that each view is correct in its own way to some degree. I could even, at times, consider going for a sociopolitical reading of mandalas as long as it doesn’t end up being too reductive. The mandala is capable of sustaining an array of ideas about it, and so should we.

Whatever our views may be, we ought to consider what it is and how it proves itself of use in Tibetan (and Japanese Shingon) Buddhist cultures where it has an overwhelming presence in ritual, as a liturgical object employed in rituals of initiation. We should stop speaking about it with imperial confidence and instead make a bold and well informed attempt to hear what those cultures are saying for a change. That said, I will go against my own good advice, neglect all these large issues in order to narrow in on a few rather small philological points imbricated with art and architecture. We’ll leave wholism far behind and zero in on a few specifics.

Philologists are notoriously picky, slow and laborious. Some place a pleasant spin on this with catchy phrases like “the art of slow reading.” Philology’s bookish narrowness and insignificant aims are obvious to everyone except the philologist. I won’t harp on this today, just send you to the library for a fresh new essay by Peter Machinist that shows very nicely that philology’s aims haven’t always been so ascetically or narrowly defined, and can indeed be made to bring into its circle of evidence works of art and architecture (and of course natural sciences) when it makes sense.

For a few weeks now I have been slowly savoring a book by Fabio Barry. I had been looking forward to reading it for a very long time. Entitled Painting in Stone, it is a remarkably learned and informative history of the architectural use of colored stones, marble in particular, in the classical world as well as medieval and, to a lesser degree, modern Europe. It has beautiful photos — this alone is enough to recommend it to anyone — but the text isn’t always the easiest to read. Take the following example. At page 73 he discusses an architectural detail called guttae with illustration on page 75:

Guttae are normally interpreted as skeuomorphs of the hardwood trunnels that were driven through the mutules (triglyph soffits) to clamp the rafters onto the beams of the putative timber prototypes of the Greek temple... the conical shape of the gutta served as a water-repellant, a ‘drip detail’ that stopped the capillary infiltration of rainwater. In Latin “gutta” does, in fact, mean “droplet” ...

Their Greek name isn’t known with certainty, but they make their material appearance on Greek temples that are described in Latin by using this name guttae that means something like ‘drippers’. Viliouras does give a Greek word ςταλαγμoí, that looks like nothing so much as our English stalagmites / stalactites, with an etymology that also indicates dripping. I’d love to hear more expert ideas about this than I can offer, but this does lead me to look back at Barry’s discussion in his Chapter Three of caves and nymphaei, and classical beliefs about the ways water and stone interact and even trade places with each other. The water feeds the stone, and thanks to this nourishment, the stones grow. Minerals can liquefy and liquids can calcify, this is true.

The evident task of the drippers is to micromanage the moisture that falls from above, help wick it away from the walls, and make it drip down where it can be easily drained away. I see an analogue in the human eyebrows and eyelashes that perform the useful task of keeping the sweat of our brows from flowing over our eyes. Without the help of the guttae the building could, over time, suffer structural damage due to seeping. I see practical purposes defining the drippers’ shapes and placement.

Why did the passage in Barry’s book impress me so much? It’s because there is indeed an element of Tibetan mandalas described as a “dripper” named shar-bu. The word looks like a diminutive of shar meaning east, and shar-ba meaning dawning, appearing, arising. Shar-bu could easily appear pronounced and/or spelled as shar-ru, but none of this takes us anywhere near any convincingly meaningful etymology.*

(*Such changes as this happen with diminutives in general, for instance thor-bu can appear as tho[r]-ru, chol-bu as cho[l]-lu and we do find an instance of shar-ru in a ca. 1300 CE inscription in the essay of Tropper listed below. Sha-ru can mean ‘stag antler’, but no, that really goes too far toward the end of the limb, so let’s not go there. Although I haven’t found any source to collaborate it apart from my own guesswork, shar might conceivably be a form of gsher-ba, with the meaning ‘to moisten, make damp.’)

There •is• a Sanskrit word of corresponding meaning used in the Sanskrit works that were translated: sūcikā. Most usually that Sanskrit means ‘needle’, although it can be applied to other things with sharp points, elephant tusks and the like. As the Tibetan doesn’t yield the same literal meaning as the Sanskrit, it cannot be explained away as a calque, leaving us free to account for the Tibetan word in other ways.

The two-dimensional Tibetan mandalas often show it as three or more horizontal lines that get shorter as you go down, so that it looks kind of like an inverted pyramid or ziggurat, in 3-dimensional mandalas they may look similarly like inverted stepped pyramids. Then again, in some painted mandalas they could be said to look like inverted milk bottles. In the following not all that typical example, they have long skinny necks.

Sample showing the three ranks of the upper wall

Here the shar-bu are sandwiched in between the level of the “full and half festoons” (drwa-ba drwa-phyed) below and the “arrow covers” (mda’-yab) above.* I am now convinced the correct architectural term for these last mentioned is merlon. A merlon is what distinguishes a battlement from a mere parapet.** Surely what we are seeing in this particular mandala (sampled from Leidy’s book, p. 94) visually mimics a battlement of a medieval Indian fort, as you can see in the next illustration.

(*The syllable yab that forms part of the word should probably be taken as short for yab-sa, a general word for any covered or sheltered area. It occurs also in the term bsil-yab (or bsil-g.yab), for a shelter from cold wind, although confusingly it may also mean a fan. **In my present understanding a parapet is the railing around an open-air walkway meant to indicate a danger of falling. If this railing includes merlons, it is no longer a parapet, but a battlement. To be clear, as this is very often misunderstood, crenellation more correctly refers to the gaps between the merlons, the gaps being the crenels. Merlons are the standing structures meant to shield the defenders from arrows flying up at them from below. Merlons may take quite a range of shapes, see below in the reading list under Bounni, Deloche, Khan and Micale. They very often include, at their centers, a slot for firing arrows back at the enemy.)

Agra Fort merlons, from a photo by Umesh Baghel

Another nondescript example from a recent painting, notice the lotus-petal-like shape of the merlons, although we ought to emphasize that they are absolutely not the lotus petals you are thinking they are:

Does Tibet actually have on its fortified buildings crenellated battlements of any kind? No. Not really, not as far as I can see.*

(*The stepped tops of walls such as those that ascend the hill of the Potala, walls that continue up steep inclines, often have what we would most correctly call the crowstep, or corbiestep. But as these do not actually function as battlements and look differently, they aren’t very relevant to our discussion. If I remember right, the Feiglstorfer book has some discussion about this issue.)

But the items in the 2nd rank do not always, or even all that often, look like inverted bottles. As said above, very often they are made up of three simple horizontal lines, each one shorter than the one above it, lending the impression of an inverted pyramidal structure, kind of like this:

———

——

—

There is yet another visually related (possibly in some sense identical) type with a pattern exactly like the stepped crenellations we are likely to see only in Mesopotamia (with a few neighboring instances). Here are our three wall elements from a random ceiling mandala in Bhutan. A lot more examples could be supplied:

Following is a photo of the famous Ishtar Gate from Babylon. Its rubble was salvaged, shipped off, reconstructed, and put on display at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. It is truly a wonder to see, as I can say with the relatively secure certainty of direct perception.

Even if the pattern and the colors are strikingly similar, we have to say that where Babylon has blue merlons rising skyward, Tibetan mandala makers are seeing white drippers pointed earthward. It is a foreground-background switching illusion in more than one way.

While I do not feel confident enough to press down on the point very hard at this time, a Mesopotamian connection is plausible. In Mesopotamia, with only one serious downpour a year to deal with, they do not often feel the need to protect their buildings from rain damage (okay, floods, but that’s an entirely different story). That would explain why the use of those architectural drippers doesn’t seem to be known there. So it is at least worthy of noting another possible connection. I have to thank Mesopotamianist Uri Gabbay for correspondence on this issue. For today it will have to suffice to say that there is a Sumerian verb sur meaning ‘to press, drip.’ And there is an Akkadian verb ṣarāru meaning ‘to flow, drip.’ A derived adjective ṣarru means, ‘flowing, leaking.’ I do think the possible word-connection bears enough promise to merit further consideration. These words do resemble Tibetan shar-bu, a word that (as already mentioned) is sometimes spelled shar-ru, including the earliest epigraphical instance I know of. Put together with that undeniable visual correspondence with the dark blue and white crenellation pattern in the Tibetan mandala walls does raise the possibility of one day giving substance to a historical connection that may grow out of this seed.

The merlons protect from opponents, while stalactite-like dripper protects the wall from damage by the element of water, so it might be that there is some deeper significance or symbolism to be seen in what would, in ordinary architecture, serve a practical function. As part of the mandala palace’s wall, there can be no doubt that it communicates the inviolability of the sacred space with all the beauty, compassion and peace it embraces. Because in the end it isn’t so much about the protection that the wall provides as it is about what we think requires its protection.

Do with it as you will. And if you can find it in your heart to be so kind, help us out with the puzzles. There could be conclusions for these more-and-less insignificant questions in our future so long as there will be a future. I see grounds for ominous optimism.

§   §   §

Written Matter and Illustrative Art

Note: I have been extremely selective in my listing of mandala publications, ignoring the earliest and perhaps best known ones as well as the coloring books while emphasizing those that have something to say about the architecture. With thanks to the several persons in both Tibetan and Mesopotamian Studies, who conversed or corresponded with me on this subject during recent times (they won’t be named unless they want me to). 

Anastasia Amrheim, Clare Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Knott, eds., A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University (New York 2019).

Fabio Barry, Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment, Yale University Press (New Haven 2020).

Blo-bzang-klu-sgrub, Librarian of the Upper Tantra College, et al., Gsang-chen Rgyud-sde Rgya-mtsho'i Dkyil-'khor 'Bri Bzhengs-la Nye-bar Mkho-ba'i Dkyil-'khor-gyi Mtshan-ma'i Bris-dpe Dr-med Chu-shel Me-long, Rgyud-stod Dpe-mdzod-khang (Dharamsala 2016). This book is mainly a pattern book for drawing different parts of the mandala. At p. 16, we see as part of a quote from a work of Tsongkhapa the following: 

ཤར་བུ་དང་མདའ་ཡབ་ཀྱི་གཞི་ནག་པོ་ལ་ཤར་བུ་དཀར་པོ་མདའ་ཡབ་པདྨ་འདབ་མ་ཕྱེད་པའི་དབྱིབས་ཅན་དཀར་པོ། རྟ་བབས་ཀྱི་ཀ་བ་དང་གླང་རྒྱབ་ཀྱི་ནང་རྣམས་ཕྱོགས་མདོག ...

The drippers and merlons are against a black ground, the drippers being white. The merlons, with the shapes of half lotus petals, are white as well. The gateway pillars and the insides of the ‘bull back’* are the colors of the directions [in which the gateway is located].

(*The ‘bull back’ is the name of one of the levels in the dome area of the gateway.)

Adnan Bounni, “Couronnement des sanctuaires du Proche-Orient hellénistique et romain : origine et développement du merlon,” Topoi, vol. 9, no. 2 (1999), pp. 507-525. Available at the Persée website. This discusses quite a large number of examples of types of merlons, with useful visual material.

Martin Brauen, The Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism, translated from the original German edition of 1992 by Martin Willson, Serindia Publications (London 1997). The particular details that most interest us at the moment are both covered by the label “end of the roof” in the chart on p. 72.

Barry Bryant, in cooperation with Namgyal Monastery, The Wheel of Time Sand Mandala: Visual Scripture of Tibetan Buddhism, Harper San Francisco (New York 1992).

Here there are labeled diagrams (on pp. 203, 207 & 212) marking the wall elements of “parapet of half-lotus petals,” and “downspouts.” There is also a brief interpretation of their purpose and meaning on p. 205. Here it is very clear, as we see in other mandala systems as well, that the white side of the stepped merlon design is taken to be the shar-bu or the ‘drippers.’ This is still more obvious in the three-dimensional mandalas illustrated in Bentor.

Christoph Cüppers, Leonard van der Kuijp, Ulrich Pagel, eds., with introduction by Dobis Tsering Gyal, Handbook of Tibetan Iconometry: A Guide to the Arts of the 17th Century, Brill (Leiden 2012), p. 345. Here shar-bu appears as part of a letter-mandala description. There is no discussion of its meaning.

Jean Deloche, “Études sur les fortifications de l'Inde I. Les fortifications de l'Inde ancienne,” Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient, vol. 79, no. 1 (1992), pp. 89-131. I find particularly remarkable the Sanskrit literary sources tell us of merlons shaped like “tambours et de têtes de singe” — drums and monkey heads.

Hubert Feiglstorfer, Material Aspects of Building and Craft Traditions: A Himalayan Case Study, Austrian Academy of Sciences Press (Vienna 2022). The book is much recommended even if not so much is relevant to our particular subject. The chart on p. 62, showing how rooves in Ladakh are protected from leakage and wall seepage, is particularly germane and fascinating.

Anja Fügert & Helen Gries, “The Men Who Wrought the Baked Brick, Those Were Babylonians: A Brief History of Molded and Glazed Bricks,” contained in: Amrheim, A Wonder to Behold, pp. 40-53.  According to this, the Babylonians favored a deep blue color for their glazed bricks made with cobalt oxide. However, inscriptional evidence from the time of Nebuchadnezzar II (reigned 604-562 BCE) tells us that the crenations on walls of the adjacent Northern Palace (as well as the nearby temple on top of the ziggurat) were colored with the darker blue of lapis-lazuli. Here on p. 49 is a reconstruction of the entrance to the Sin Temple in the palace-temple complex of Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin, showing walls with stepped merlons decorated with lapis-lazuli-glazed brickwork. On the same page we read:

“From Nebuchadnezzar II’s inscriptions, we know that the crenellations of the Northern Palace (Hauptburg) as well as the temple on top of the ziggurat, were also clad in lapis lazuli-blue glazed bricks.”

Giovanni Garbini, “The Stepped Pinnacle in Ancient Near East,” East and West, vol. 9, nos. 1-2 (March 1958), pp. 85-91.

Cyril M. Harris, Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Architecture, Dover (New York 1977). 

The entry for gutta is on p. 270: “One of a series of pendant ornaments, generally in the form of the frustum of a cone, but sometimes cylindrical, usually found on the underside of the mutules and regulae of Doric entablatures.” There are relevant illustrations on the same page as well as on pp. 172-173.

Edward Henning, “Maṇḍala Literalism.” Leaving Tibetan-language literature aside for the moment, this is surely the most advanced discussion on the mandala and its architectural details to be found on the internet or anywhere else for that matter. It has many illustrations. I quote the most relevant section:

“From the underside of the flat roofing hangs a fascia (shar bu, bakuli) which can take several forms. The most common (but not the only form, as is sometimes suggested) is of white water pipes. These are in the shape of upturned little bottles which would channel water from the flat roof that would collect when rain falls. Finally, on top of the flat roof is the parapet (mda' yab, kramaśīrṣa), which can also take more than one form. The most traditional is of battlement-style merlons (btag so/stag so ?), either flush with the edge of the flat roof or set back a little. In the Gelug tradition, the merlons are commonly in the form of half-lotus petals, flush with the edge of the roof.”

M. Ashraf Khan and Qurat-ul-Ain, “Art and Architecture of Pharwala Fort, Islamabad,” FWU Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 11, no. 1 (Summer 2017), pp. 1-17. 

This is my main reference on the common shapes of the merlons in Mughal India: 1. bud-like, 2. lobe-shape, 3. upside down tear drop shape, and 4. flame like shape. But he adds that the typical form of merlons during India’s medieval period was “semicircular in shape, pointed at the top.” For earlier artistic representations of battlements with merlons, see Deloche.

Khedrup Jé (མཁས་གྲུབ་རྗེ་), Ocean of Attainments: The Creation Stage of the Guhyasamāja Tantra (རྒྱུད་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀྱི་རྒྱལ་པོ་དཔལ་གསང་བ་འདུས་པའི་བསྐྱེད་་རིམ་དངོས་གྲུབ་རྒྱ་མཚོ་), translated by Yael Bentor and Penpa Dorjee, Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, Wisdom (New York 2024). Definitely have a look at the three-dimensional mandalas illustrated in color, plates 5-6, and the labelled chart on p. 105 (our frontispiece is a somewhat different, pre-published version).

R[ichard J.] Kohn, “The Ritual Preparation of a Tibetan Sand Maṇḍala,” contained in: A.W. Macdonald, ed., Maṇḍala and Landscape, D.K Printworld (New Delhi 1997), pp. 364-405. Notice the labelled diagrams on p. 390. Quotes from p. 389:

“The pha gu ‘diamond band’, dra phyed ‘garlands’, and shar bu ‘water pots’ are details of the wall treatment... The term ‘garlands’, which is sometimes etymologically translated as ’half-nets’, refers to necklaces of jewels hung about the upper part of the wall and the dark band against which they are set off. Many of these features are common in Tibetan religious architecture. The diamond band and garland, for example, can be seen on monastery walls throughout Tibet and Nepal.

“The shar bu is a series of pots that hang below the eaves of the maṇḍala. Although easily identified as pots in many three-dimensional maṇḍala, they appear as an inverted pyramid of horizontal lines in painted examples. The pots are used for air-conditioning and the lines presumably represent dripping water.”

Denise Patry Leidy and Robert A.F. Thurman, Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment, Asia Society Galleries (New York 1997). There are a number of good examples here, including the one on pp. 94-95, dated late 14th to early 15th centuries and kept in the MET. Page 126 has a clear representation of the guttae in the shape of inverted white stepped merlons against a dark blue background.

Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot, Benjamin Arubas & Manfred Oeming, “Palace and Village, Paradise and Oblivion: Unraveling the Riddles of Ramat Rahel,” Near Eastern Archaeology, vol. 74, no. 1 (March 2011), pp. 1-49. 

Turn to page 19 for the photo of a stepped stone pyramid crenellation (described on p. 21). Located close to Jerusalem, this would date to the 2nd building phase sometime between late-7th to end of 4th centuries BCE, when the region was occupied first by the Babylonians and then the Persians.

Christian Luczanits, “On the Earliest Mandalas in a Buddhist Context,” contained in: Darrol Bryant and Susan Bryant, eds., Mahayana Buddhism: History and Culture, Tibet House (New Delhi 2008), pp. 111-138. We need better early examples to work with if we hope to write a history of the mandala’s architectural elements. This essay helps. For another early example, painted on wood, see under Samosyuk, below.

Peter Machinist, “Philology: Past, Present, and Prospects (Presidential Address),” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 144, no. 4 (October 2024), pp. 711-739.

My notes: Delivering a jocular take on commonly held views — we could say that philology means first and above all grammar and secondly lexicography. Third and lastly? Even more grammar. During the Mediterranean classical era, in its original meaning, philology was broadly understood to mean the pursuit of knowledge, period. It has often gone through contractions and expansions in its meanings over the centuries. The idea of slow and/or close reading of texts is often regarded as the defining essence of the scholarly discipline, the critical text edition being its ultimate realization. This essayist argues for the inclusion of oral literature as well as “nonwritten material objects like works of art and architecture, particularly as these interweave with and illuminate written texts.”

Dan Martin, “Earth and Wind, Water and Fire: Book Binding and Preservation in Pre-Mongol Bon Ritual Manuals for Consecrations,” contained in: Agnieszka Helman-Ważny and Charles Ramble, Bon and Naxi Manuscripts, Studies in Manuscript Culture series no. 28, De Gruyter (Berlin 2023), pp. 87-106. An “open access” publication.

The traditional Tibetan book binding methods are also ‘housings’ for books with a kind of architecture that evolved in order to better protect the inscribed content from loss due to environmental elements.

Maria Gabriella Micale, “Framing the Space: On the Use of Crenellation from Architecture to the Definition of Pictorial Spaces,” contained in: Marta D'Andrea et al., Pearls of the Past: Studies on Near Eastern Art and Archaeology in Honour of Frances Pinnock, Marru series no. 8, Zaphon (Münster 2019), pp. 601-631.

Michael Pfrommer, Metalwork from the Hellenized East: Catalogue of the Collections, J.Paul Getty Museum (Malibu 1993). 

Several silver pieces from the Hellenistic Period Middle East have continuous bands of stepped merlons as part of their decoration (they can be difficult to see unless you look closely). In general the specifically Mesopotamian stepped merlon is not at all common in the rest of Eurasia, even if examples may be found, if rarely, for example on the battlements of a few Irish towers dating from post 1400 CE (these merlons, although similar, have a sloping feature that distinguishes them from the Babylonian).

David Reigle, “The Kālacakra Tantra on the Sādhana and Maṇḍala: A Review Article,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 22, no. 2 (April 2012), pp. 439-463. On pp. 443-445 are some pertinent discussions on architectural elements of the mandala.

Rong-tha Blo-bzang-dam-chos-rgya-mtsho, The Creation of Mandalas: Tibetan Texts Detailing the Techniques for Laying Out and Executing Tantric Buddhist Psychocosmograms, illustrations by Don-'grub-rdo-rje, Dondrub Dorjee (Delhi 1999). The title Dkyil-’khor Tshig-rtsa appears on the outer cover as well as on an inside title page.

K.F. Samosyuk, Buddhist Painting from Khara-Khoto XII-XIVth Centuries: Between China and Tibet [in Russian], State Hermitage Publishers (St. Petersburg 2006). On pp. 290-291 find illustrated two remarkably well preserved early (12th-13th century) mandalas painted on wooden boards. The 2nd rank drippers are not visible in either one, although the festoons and merlons are quite clear.

Tanaka Kimiaki, An Illustrated History of the Mandala, from Its Genesis to the Kālacakratantra, Wisdom (Somerville 2018). 

My notes: The Sanskrit for the mandala’s arrow covers is kramaśīrṣa, ‘head of the steps’ (?). The Sanskrit corresponding to shar-bu is vakulī (or bakulī), ‘she who has fragrant flowers of the bakula tree (?).’ The bakula, identified with Mimusops elengi, blooms only when wine or nectar is sprinkled from the mouths of maidens, or so it is said. I suppose there is some sense to be made in this, I’m just not sure how. Perhaps it has to do with the shapes of its flowers?

Mimusops elengi

——, “The Measurement of the Maṇḍala According to Nāgabodhi’s Guhyasamāja-maṇḍalopāyikā-viṃśati-vidhi [in Japanese],” Mikkyo Zuzo, vol. 23 (2004), pp. 26-39. Even if you don’t read Japanese, this is worth searching out because of the labeled charts and Sanskrit equivalents according to one very influential source.

Tathāgatavajra (De-bzhin-gshegs-pa'i-rdo-rje - དེ་བཞིན་གཤེགས་པའི་རྡོ་རྗེ་),་Sambaram Maṇḍala Vidhi (Dpal Bde-mchog-gi Dkyil-’khor-gyi Cho-ga - དཔལ་བདེ་མཆོག་གི་དཀྱིལ་འཁོར་གྱི་ཆོ་ག). Tôhoku no. 1511. Dergé Tanjur, vol. ZHA, folios 308v.3-334r.3. Translated by Vibhūticandra. 

There are two informative passages here. The first tells us what the order of the wall elements in the powder mandala needs to be, starting at the lower ranks and moving upward: 1. Jewels. 2. Festoons. 3. Half festoons. 4. Jewel-like drippers (rin-chen shar-bu). 5. Merlons (mda'-yab). The other passage tells us the background colors: The dance frieze (snam-bu, literally 'blanket') is red. The jewel frieze has various jewels with red background (literally, 'basis'). The festoons and half festoons are on a black background. The jewel-like drippers and white merlons are against blue background. The hooves and ba-ran can be any color that is pretty. The passages  may be compared with what a modern author, Blo-bzang-klu-sgrub (q.v.), says.

Location: fol. 319a5 —

ལོགས་ཀྱི་ཀ་བ་ནི་རྟ་བབས་རྣམས་ཁོ་ནའིའོ། །རྡུལ་ཚོན་གྱི་རྩིག་པ་ལ་ནི་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་དང་། དྲ་བ་དང་། དྲ་བ་ཕྱེད་པ་དང་། རིན་ཆེན་ཤར་བུ་དང་། མདའ་ཡབ་རྣམས་རིམ་གྱིས་སྟེང་ནས་སྟེང་དུ་གནས་པའོ། །

logs kyi ka ba ni rta babs rnams kho na'i'o/ /rdul tshon gyi rtsig pa la ni rin po che dang / dra ba dang / dra ba phyed pa dang / rin chen shar bu dang / mda' yab rnams rim gyis steng nas steng du gnas pa'o/ /

This following indicates that the two elements that most concern us are both white against a blue background.

Location: fol. 322a4 —

གར་གྱི་སྣམ་བུ་ནི་དམར་པོའོ། །རིན་ཆེན་སྣམ་བུ་ནི་ས་གཞི་དམར་པོ་ལ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་སྣ་ཚོགས་པའོ། །ས་གཞི་ནག་པོ་ལ་དྲ་བ་དང་དྲ་བ་ཕྱེད་པའོ། །ས་གཞི་སྔོན་པོ་ལ་རིན་ཆེན་ཤར་བུ་དང་མདའ་ཡབ་དཀར་པོའོ། །རྨིག་པ་དང་བ་རན་ནི་ཇི་ལྟར་མཛེས་པའོ། །

gar gyi snam bu ni dmar po'o/ /rin chen snam bu ni sa gzhi dmar po la rin po che sna tshogs pa'o/ /sa gzhi nag po la dra ba dang dra ba phyed pa'o/ /sa gzhi sngon po la rin chen shar bu dang mda' yab dkar po'o/ /rmig pa dang ba ran ni ji ltar mdzes pa'o/ /

Kurt Tropper, “The Historical Inscription in the Gsum brtsegs Temple at Wanla, Ladakh,” contained in: Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Kurt Tropper & Christian Jahoda, eds., Text, Image and Song in Transdisciplinary Dialogue, Brill (Leiden 2007), pp. 105-150, at p. 137 is quite a long discussion of the word. This Wanla inscription, using the spelling shar-ru, dates from the vicinity of 1300 CE.

Dimitris Viliouras, Architecture & God: Typological Overview of the Ancient Greek Architecture and Its Sources [extract from an as yet unpublished book], posted at academia.edu.

My notes: According to this fantastically detailed and technical source on the Parthenon of Athens, the Greek equivalent for guttae is given as ςταλαγμoí, or stalagmites (we might argue they have to be stalactites, but both terms have the notion of ‘dripping’ behind them). The projecting horizontal slabs they are suspended from are called the mutule in Latin. The Parthenon is basically built according to the Doric order, although it does include some Ionic elements, and as this source says, the Doric represents the masculine and the sky, while the Ionic represents the feminine and the earth. Although this author shows no awareness that mandalas exist, he includes architectural diagrams of the proportional relations underlying its floor plan that do indeed look quite mandala-like.

Vitruvius Pollio, The Ten Books on Architecture, ed. by Morris Hicky Morgan. Website version here. Scroll down a bit to the lower search box on your right and insert the word “guttae.” I have a handy Dover Publications paperback version (New York 1960) of the same, and prefer it over the website even if it is not so easily searchable.

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More resources

For more on Mesopotamian connections, see this blog of fifteen years ago.

We’ve brought up the subject of the mandala before, particularly in two blogs about how it (both the word and the ritual object), starting about a millennium ago, made its appearance in Islamic and Jewish magical texts and practices, and from there entered Europe and much more recently the Americas where, whether for good or ill, occultists continued to experience its powerful effects.

For words in the languages of Mesopotamia, most available and easy to use is the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary.

On Ishtar Gate, watch the Khan Academy’s brief “Smart History” presentation on YouTube.

For a Latin dictionary definition of gutta, look here.

For a useful listing of entries on shar-bu, look here. Of the twelve definitions given, a few are correct, some simply repetitive, others misleading, even confusing the shar-bu with the “full and half festoons” (drwa-ba drwa-phyed).

ཤར་བུ་ ——— I searched TLB with every which spelling and found nothing, even though it ought to be in some of the texts included there.  RKTS has quite a few examples, just that it doesn’t make it easy to determine the Sanskrit. I recommend looking in Negi and searching THL and of course BUDA.

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Although I suppose it isn’t particularly relevant, we might go ahead and say that at Nabataean Petra (now in Jordan) and sites of equivalent age in northern parts of the Arabian Peninsula, especially in Hegra, we can see something resembling the stepped merlon, yet not only is it inverted, it is hollowed into the rock rather than rising out in relief, and it has many more steps — one single “merlon,” if we may call it that, covers the entire width of the entranceway. 

Still, crenellation patterns of the true Mesopotamian type may also be found at Petra (and Hegra, too), as you see here below. These clones of merlons obviously cannot serve their original function, but then how could battlements be of use on a tomb?

So, in short, the only true stepped merlon crenellations we are able to find in Tibet are to be seen in second-rank position near the top of the wall in some mandalas, where they are bound to be identified as drippers, not merlons. I think their absence in Tibet otherwise, and their apparent rareness (?) or absence in India, may help argue for a Mesopotamian cultural transfer.

Sag-ri and Sag-ti, Two Leather Loans

Shagreen on an 18th-c. Turkish dagger
kept at the MET

Today’s guest blog is by Michael Walter.

Concerning sag ri and sag ti

It may be best to begin this brief analysis with entries from a Syriac dictionary published in 1901, the only source I have found that defines both terms that likely lay behind Tibetan sag ti and sag ri. On pages 224 and 262, respectively, we find:

 “sakhtīyān … pers. turk.; pers. also sak, leather; properly a tanned skin not cut with a knife”,

 and then, 

“ṣŭghrī, ṣŭkhrī … turk. ṣaghrī, m., leather made rough, shagreen.” 

The dictionary is one of vernacular Syriac dialects from Kurdestan and surrounding areas; their language displays a strong Persian influence. This explains why sakhtīyān, a term in Persian and Urdu, meaning literally “hardness, stiffness, rigidity”, is a metaphorical expression for a sort of leather. 

  The question is, exactly what sort of leather? The term sakhtīyān vel sim has been used in both the Persian and Turkish tannery industries for some time, likely centuries. In Persian custom, sakhtiīyān refers to a tough, durable leather made from goatskin, often dyed in a colorful manner, while Turkish tanneries advertise their desired sahtiyan as 

“a thin, fine leather made from goat or lamb hide, processed in a specific way, and dyed in a vibrant color.” [Voskanyan.2023] 

It is generally understood that Turkish sahtiyan derives from the Persian term, and that both are ultimately based on Persian sakht, ‘hard, strong’.

  This sort of variation of product does not seem to arise, as far as the term is used today, with ṣaghrī vel sim, which is understood consistently to refer to the leather product shagreen. However, the origin of ṣaghrī is unclear, as it is not attested in truly ancient documents from the Middle East. (We do not know when shagreen began to be produced, but it asserted to have been used in a 2000-year old tomb in Egypt.) If we view the history of the term ṣaghrī, we also find a broad semantic range in its use. For example, in Clauson’s Dictionary of Pre-13th Century Turkic, p. 815, sağrı is defined as “originally ‘raw hide’; thence ‘leather from the hindquarters of a horse’, and thence ‘the hindquarters of a horse’. Clauson then cites later attestations from several Turkic languages and finds further variations in the use of sağrı related to hostlery

  Such changes in meaning of a term to fit different applications is an example of semantic extension. In this process, the meaning of a word varies according to the context of its use. The variety of uses of leather, and its animal sources, have resulted in numerous specialized applications of the term, such as those cited above from Clauson. In Clauson we also find (p. 806) an example of sakht used as a pars pro toto substitute for ‘leather’: “sa:xt (sāxt) lw fr. Persian sāxt ‘stirrup leather, horse armour, saddle and bridle ornaments’.” (The variety of identifications here is an indication of a loanword replacement for an earlier variety of terms.)

  Another interesting example of the substitution of sa/ākh for ‘leather’ is found in Gharib’s dictionary of Sogdian (p. 350): 

“s’γr = sāγ/xr? saddle”. (The symbol γ represents either g or x in Sogdian.) 

Because saddles were made of leather, or leather and wood, this is another example of a pars pro toto usage.) In this example, there is also attested in Sogdian sources an endogenous term for ‘saddle’, i.e., pyrδn (asserted to be < *paridāna), which has a cognate in another Iranian language; cf. Gharib, p. 336 and Bailey, “Ariana”, p. 9. The borrowed term likely carries either a nuanced meaning, or is a term of local or dialectical preference, in Sogdian.

  The following examples are more speculative, but rest on the understanding that leather is obtained from a number of animals. In Iran and India today, goat’s hide is considered to provide the highest-quality leather. Peoples living in the Steppe continue to depend more upon the hides of cattle, horses and, in shrubby areas, deer. It may be possible to see in the following further examples of semantic extension, these involving replacement of the identification of the animals involved.

  There is attested in Mongolia sigir-a, “shank; leg (of animals); hoof”. It has a variant sigere-e, which may simply be an orthographic error, but if it isn’t, it indicates that this word is not an endogenous Mongolian term. See Lessing, p. 702. We also find in Clauson, on the page preceding the citation of sağrı, the term sığır, “large bovine”. 

  In the above examples, in both Old Uyghur and Mongolian, terms more directly derived from ṣaghrī remain in use: Old Uyghur preserves the meaning sagrı as Pferdeleder (Wilkens, Handwörterbuch, p. 573) as does Mongolian saġari (Lessing, p. 657). (Mongols today create shagreen and have a term for this process, but the term is nothing like /saghri/.) We can see that, in the East and Steppe regions, ṣaghrī has transited from whatever its original referent may have been to that of horse leather, while variants less similar in pronunciation may have variant meanings. 

  Sağrı, sigir-a, sigere, and sığır do not seem to derive from a common root or stem. However, we can see all four above words, possessing a generally similar morphology, are closely connected with the culture of large, hoofed animals such as horses or cattle.

  Because of the variety of spellings involved, these are likely terms from language with the attested form ṣaghrī which eventually arrived in Turkic and Mongolian. An analysis of the movements of such terms is hampered because we do not currently possess attestations of ‘leather’ (or ‘boot’) in Sogdian or Khotanese; cf. Begmatov 2019. To omit a categorical term, while providing numerous specialized derivatives, may be part of a pattern of obscure purpose; cf. Emmerick & Rona-Tas, p. 237.

So, what about the age of sag ri and sag ti?

It is reasonable, though not demonstrable, that the term sag ri was passed to the Tibetans at a time earlier than their contact with Uyghurs. It is certainly intended as a transcription of ṣaghrī, both morphologically and semantically—with regard to leather—but we cannot say that it referred to shagreen until recently. I have not seen any truly ancient Tibetan object described that has shagreen as a component, and sag ri has not to this point been attested in an Old Tibetan passage, according to the present studies.

  With regard to sag ti: Its provenance seems not as straightforward as that of sag ri, unless we take it simply as a shortened form of sakhtīyān, abbreviated to provide a euphonic pair of related terms, which may have facilitated either oral communication or brief notation on wood slips, such as used to describe the contents of a package or bag. This euphony is enabled by Tibetan phonetics, which allows only one final gutteral, transcribed -g, so that both -kh and -gh are rendered identically.  

  As to the antiquity of their use in Tibetan, we are at least able to confirm, through a very old attestation of sag ti on said wood slips, that it was employed at a very early period. In one source, it is an element in the construction and design of a robe. Please consult Amy Heller’s contribution to the upcoming Festschrift for Takeuchi Tsuguhito. In this work, Ms Heller analyzes a difficult text on an ancient wooden slip in a context strongly supporting its use in clothing construction or decoration. On another slip, a pair of black leather boots (sag ti’i nag po yu riṅs) is contained in an inventory (Wang.1991.128). There are two further mentions of sag ti in T. Takeuchi’s Old Tibetan Manuscripts from East Turkestan in the Stein Collection of the British Library. These sources, although few, do demonstrate that sag ti was borrowed early on.

Sources

Bailey, H.W. “Ariana.” 1955.

Begmatov “Commodity terms in the languages of Central Eurasia : new interpretations from Mugh document A-1.” 2019.

Clauson, G. Etymological Dictionary of Pre-13th Century Turkish. 1972.

Emmerick, R. & A. Rona-Tas “The Turkish-Khotanese wordlist revisited.” 1992.

Gharib, B. Sogdian Dictionary : Sogdian-Persian-English. 1995.

Lessing, F. Mongolian-English Dictionary. 1960/1973.

MacLean, J.A. Dictionary of the Dialects of Vernacular Syriac. 1901.

Voskanyan.2023—

https://www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayetaleppo/ayntab/economy/trades.html

Wang Yao.1991— “Qinghai Tubo jian du kao shi.”

Wilkens, J. Handwörterbuch des Altuigurischen. 2021.

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A Note by Dan

A Tibetan-Tibetan dictionary entry on sag-ri:

སག་རི།  [1] དྲེལ་གྱི་དཔྱི་མགོའི་པགས་པ་མཉེས་ནས་རི་མོ་འབུར་དུ་དོད་ཡོད་པའི་ཀོ་བ་ཞིག  [2] ལུས་ཀྱི་དྲེག་པ་མཁྲེགས་པོ་འཁོར་བར་བརྗོད། དཔེར་ན། རྐང་པ་དང་ལག་པ་འཇིང་པ་སོགས་གང་སར་སག་རི་བརྒྱབ་འདུག

The first meaning, the one relevant here, could be translated, “a type of leather made of skin from the haunches of the mule that when cured has raised patterns.” The second meaning appears to be derived from the first, describing a state of grime solidified around the hands, feet, or neck, etc. This is sure to be a secondary usage based on the first.

The source is བོད་ཡིག་ཚིག་གཏེར་རྒྱ་མཚོ་ (Bod yig tshig gter rgya mtsho), compiled by a committee and edited by ཐུབ་བསྟན་ཕུན་ཚོགས་ (Thub-bstan-phun-tshogs, b. 1955), Si-khron Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Chengdu 2012), in 3 vols., page nos. continuous, in 4013 pages, at p. 3464.  It has no entry for སག་ཏི་ (sag-ti). If you are interested to know more about this dictionary, see “Lexical Euphoria.”

Thank You for the Light, A Turkic Loanword

 

Lcags-mag

The ink is hardly dry on the last blog and the holiday season is bearing down on us. Still, I’d like to add on one more before giving these loanwords a rest. This example does suit my already-described method of identifying words that were likely borrowed from Tibet’s northerly and western neighbors. The second syllable in this case is mag, a word with a possible resonance within the Tibetan language, but no meaning that could go together with a first-syllable lcags. That first syllable looks like nothing so much as the ordinary Tibetan word for iron.*  

(*It would be a tedious exercise to go too much into it at this juncture. Still, the first possibility that presents itself is that mag could, theoretically, be a shortened version of mag-pa, meaning a matrilocal groom, or to put it another way, a son-in-law who is invited to join his bride’s household and, eventually, enjoy inheritance rights. If you can see how 'matrilocal groom of iron' makes sense all power to you. We’ll soon see that it is spelled rmag in some early manuscript testimonies, but this also takes us nowhere.)

I had long ago noticed this word listed in Berthold Laufer’s “Tibetan Loan-Words.” I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for it. We know Laufer is here basing himself on entries in Jäschke’s dictionary (or in some cases Das’s dictionary, often itself based on Jäschke’s).* I had the feeling it wouldn’t carry a lot of weight if it just popped up once in a local market somewhere west of Western Tibet in the 19th century never to be used again. In truth I’m more inclined to deal with words of widespread and enduring currency that date from earlier times. 

(*It may be difficult to locate in Jäschke’s long entry, but look at p. 148, column 2, the 8th line from the bottom [in its most widely available version], where you can see the Turkish spelled out in Arabic script with the notice [“W.”] that it is a word belonging to Western Tibet.)

Even if I were unable to establish, as I will do in a moment, early usage for this word, we could still find it useful for its help in defending and refining a systematic method for detecting foreign words in Classical Tibetan. I would never claim the method is foolproof. An impressive degree of effectiveness is all I aim for. Now let’s look at some of that early evidence for this word lcags-mag, but first, a passage where it does not appear.

In answer to a question by a woman among his disciples at Tingri, Padampa (d. 1105?) uses a flint as an object lesson. He actually uses the word me-lcags, which would seem on the face of it to mean “fire [starting] iron,” but as I will try to show later on, its older and more original meaning must have been fire striker, and therefore the steel that strikes the flint. Still, in the minds of many, me-lcags seems to cover the entire set of fire-starting items including the pouch it comes in. The same is if anything more true of the word that will be our chief concern.

མ་ཇོ་ཆོས་གསལ་ན་རེ་ ། དམ་པ་ལགས་ ། ཆོས་ཐམས་ཅད་སྟོང་པ་ཉིད་ཡིན་སྐད་ན་  སྟོང་པ་ཉིད་ལ་འཁྲུལ་རྒྱུ་དང་ ། ་སྟོང་པ་ཉིད་གྲོལ་རྱུ་འོང་པ་ཙུག་ལགས་ཟེར་བས་ ། 

དམ་པའི་ཞལ་ནས་ ། དེ་འདུན་ཀྱིད་ཁྱོད་ཀྱི་མེ་ལྕགས་ཤོག་དང་གསུང་ནས་ ། དེ་ལ་མེ་བཏོན་ཅུང་ཟད་བསོས་ཏེ་ཤིར་བཅུག་ནས་ ། ལྟས་ངན་མེ་འདི་རྐྱེན་ལས་བྱུང་ནས་རྐྱེན་གྱིས་ཤི་ ། འདིའི་རྒྱུ་མཚན་ལ་རྗེས་གཅད་དུ་མ་བཏུབ་པ་ངོ་མཚར་ཆེ་ ། ་མེ་ལྕགས་གྲང་མོ་འདི་མེ་ཚན་མོའི་རྒྱུ་ཡིན་ཁོངས་མ་བཅུག་ ། ང་ཅག་གི་རྒྱ་གར་ན་འདི་འདྲ་བ་མྱེད་གསུངས་པས་ ། 

མོས་བརྡའ་དེའི་དོན་གོ་ནས་འཁྲུལ་པ་ཞིག་གོ་།།    །།

Majo Chösel asked, “If it is true, as they say, that all dharmas are Voidness, how is it that in Voidness causes of delusion and causes of liberation come about?” 

Padampa said, “Gendun Kyi, come bring your flint.” He lit a fire with the flint and tended it a bit, but it started to die out. “This poor ill-omened fire,” said Padampa, “It arose through conditions and it dies through conditions. It’s so amazing we cannot follow up on the reasons for this happening. We can’t comprehend how this cold flint could be cause for a warm fire. In our India we don’t have such things (as flints).” 

The woman understood the intentions behind Padampa’s symbolic mode of expression and her delusions dissolved. (Zhijé Collection, vol. 2, pp. 293-294.)

As I said, our word of interest isn’t actually used there, but Padampa could say the flint was unknown in India, and that may mean something. Also it is a beautiful example of how he made use of flints in his spiritual teachings. 

I do know of two usages of lcags-rmag (notice that silent ‘r’) in the Zhijé Collection. Both occur in works belonging to a relatively late level of the ZC, from the time of Tenné or roughly the last half of 12th century. These works do of course include commentaries on the words of Padampa, but also preserve the teachings Tenné received from his teacher Patsab:

Zhijé Collection, vol. 4, p. 109
(click to enlarge)

Number six: The aspiration prayer with interdependent conditions complete. It has been said, ‘You get fire from the lcags-rmag when the full set of causes and conditions are present.’ That means when the root cause, the dried bracken (ngur-mo), has ngar (flammability?); when the contributing cause, the hard stone (mkhregs-rdo, the flint), has corners; and when neither moisture nor mildew (btsa’) have entered in. In a similar manner, when all fifteen dharmas are present, all that you propose in the aspiration prayer comes to fruition.* 

(*The text continues listing all 15 of them. The OCR of the newly edited version of the text mistakenly corrects btsa' to rtswa, or grass, and speaks of five dharmas here rather than the correct fifteen. The meaning of btsa' here is not certain — it could also mean rust or spark — but I'm fairly certain it is the originally intended spelling.)

The second example occurs in the same volume, at p. 269, although it doesn’t help us so much right now. What it does do is verify that the spelling used in this old manuscript source is indeed lcag[s]-rmag. In context it’s telling us that meditative awareness is applied to more and more expansive objects, contrasting the infant prince with the ruling king, the lunar crescent just after the new moon with the full moon, and the fire of the lcags-rmag with a forest fire.

Evening sky

And there is a third example of early usage, this time from a 13th-century work by a follower of Cutting teachings. The following passage comes from the 12-vol. new edition of Zhijé & Cutting teachings, vol. 9, p. no. unknown, but anyway found inside Jamyang Gönpo’s work entitled Bdud Gcod Zab-mo Don-gyi Nying-khu-las/ Zab-don-gyi Spyi-khrid Chen-mo. It seems this text has not been translated, although a related text, the root text of the same, has indeed been published in English (see Sarah Harding’s book in the reading list).

དཔེར་ན་མེ་ཤེལ་ལམ། དུར་ལང་ངམ། ལྕགས་མག་མེ་དང་ལྡན་པ་མེ་ནང་དུ་བཅུག་ན་ཕྱིས་མེ་མི་འབྱུང་བ་བཞིན་ནོ།། 

dper na me shel lam / dur lang ngam / lcags mag me dang ldan pa me nang du bcug na phyis me mi 'byung ba bzhin no // 

It is as if, for example, you were to take a fire glass, or an amber,* or a lcags-mag, objects that possess fire, and place them into the fire. Later on no fire would come from them.  

(*I read sbur-long [also spelled spur-len], with meaning of amber in place of dur-lang. Amber holds a prominent place in the history of electricity, with its static variety being what sparks and moves the straw. See Laufer's essay listed below. It is said that heating the steel striker up to the point where it glows will seriously diminish its ability to make sparks.)

Among the ethnographic illustrations at the end of the
Zhang Yisun dictionary is this pouch labeled 'ba'-khug. 
It looks very much like a tinder pouch
but lacks the steel rim emerging from the bottom.
That’s why I believe it must be a coin purse or sewing kit.

Quite apart from these Zhijé works, we have at least two examples of the use of lcags-mag in Tanjur works, plus another commentarial work on one of the Tanjur works.  One of them, Maitreya’s Bhavasaṅkrāntiṭīkā, a very brief commentary on a work of Nāgārjuna, mentions rtsub-shing and lcags-mag as possible instruments of fire making. It interestingly mentions the rubbing stick (rtsub-shing) in the same breath with the lcags-mag. Its translator was Dawa Zhonnu, although knowing this doesn’t seem to be much help as he is not a well-known figure with a date.

The second Tanjur example is in Dharmottara’s commentary on the Pramāṇaviniścaya. It has a few difficult points, so I’ll just give you the Tibetan text to read for yourself (see below under Dharmottara) and leave it at that, although in general it agrees with Padampa’s symbolic usage. 

An entry from the Redhouse dictionary,
tashi means “stone”

‘What about the Turkish?’ you might be asking.

I know enough of the modern Anatolian variety to catch a word here and there in Turkish movies. So I wouldn’t expect you to believe me entirely, but the noun çakmak is the modern word for the lighter in use by smokers, campers and the like. It would be pronounced something very like chukmuk, and this is also a good way to represent the sound of the Tibetan version lcags-mag. In my crude understanding of the Turkish word, it is a verbal root çak with a kind of nominalizing (or infinitive forming?) suffix -mak added on. So the meaning of the entire word comes out meaning something like striker.

That means this shared word is necessarily a borrowing from a Turkic language int0 Tibetan rather than the other way around. We know this because the Tibetan preserves the word-final syllable -mag that only bears meaning in Turkic. 

There is another use of lcag, properly spelled without the final ‘-s’, in the Tibetan word for horse whip, which is rta-lcag. Reflecting for a moment that a whip is a striking instrument, it appears that the Tibetan word lcag was also borrowed from Turkish.* Of course borrowings can enter into hybrid expressions, but there is no reason to think that is the case with lcag-mag. The whole word and not just part of it is borrowed.

(*All you have to do is leave the ‘s’ off when you put “lcag mag” into the search box at BDRC, and you will come up with several instances of this spelling. Lcag-mag is not a hypothetical, and so does not require an asterisk.)

Another thing that becomes more obvious just by thinking about it is that Tibetans in past centuries, knowing that the fire-striking apparatus they use includes a metal piece for striking the flint, were bound to interpret the syllable, properly spelled lcag, as the word for “iron,” lcags, and go on to spell it that way without much fear of contradiction. Sometimes the truth seems so obvious, and sometimes the obvious fools us.

Of course there are some small issues surrounding all of this that require closer study and investigation. We have paid too little attention to phonological changes, local vocabulary variations, dialectology, Tibeto-Burman linguistic issues, true enough. Our emphasis has been the earliest known sources. So, as far as a conclusion is concerned, what I’ve written above is about as much as I intended to say. Still, in the spirit of the season I thought I would end with a few earnest platitudes and good wishes.

You may think studies of loanwords are a matter for philology of the most piddling sort, all about the words and low on substance and consequence. Basically a waste of time and a tedious one at that. But no, please, loanwords indicate human interactions (I almost said sociality). Their very existence nearly always indicates historical contact of some duration between peoples speaking different languages. This particular loanword is about even more. It indicates a tool, something useful for everyday life, an object shared across ethnic and linguistic boundaries. This tool, or set of tools, receives interesting symbolic meanings, even as a metaphor for interdependent origination, an essential Buddhist idea if there ever was one. And a small word can indicate a larger range of influences, or at least encourage us to look into them more than we have been.

Nowadays in much of the world women keep all their combs, pens, money, cigarette lighters and other assorted items in their purses or backpacks, men in their pockets, briefcases or backpacks. This may seem to go without saying, but it was not always so. Many cultures have made use of what is sometimes known as a chatelaine. That means a chain or belt, likely hanging on their bodies in plain view, with all those useful items suspended from it. Tibetan nomads in particular were likely to have quite a few such items hanging on their waist belts ready for action, rather like modern factory workers’ tool belts. Beautified as they are by finely tooled metalwork inset with corals and turquoise, the Tibetan nomad’s ‘utility belt’ denies us the boundaries we’ve drawn between jewelry and useful items, exemplifying both.

So during this holiday season, whether you are switching on your Christmas tree lights or lighting the Hanukkah or Kwanzaa candles, or the strings of  butterlamps and electric lights all around the temple for Tsongkhapa’s anniversary day, or shooting off firecrackers for Silvester Day, etcetera, stop for a moment. Think of the Tibeto-Turkish chakmak and contemplate the things that join us together as human beings instead of what pulls us apart. Please hold this thought for more than a moment, then let it expand further and further. It’s so important for our future as a species, and not just our single species, but for all living and sentient beings.

§   §   §

Written resources

• Turkish & Mongolian Loanwords, posted on December 10, 2014.

• Two Odd Words that Ought to be Persian, posted on December 12, 2024.

Gerard Clauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish, Clarendon Press (Oxford 1972). See the entry for “çak-” on p. 405 if you require proof the word çakmak was used in Central Asian Turkic languages in early times.  See also p. 591 for an interesting symbolic usage in a Turkish Buddhist text from Turfan. It compares the interdependent workings of the fire-starting kit with the workings of sensory perception.

Dharmottara, Pramāṇaviniścaya-ṭīkā (Tshad-ma Rnam-par Nges-pa’i ’Grel-bshad).  Tôh. no. 4229.  Dergé Tanjur, Tshad-ma section vol. DZE, folios 1v.1-289r.7. Translated by Kashmir Paṇḍita Parahitabhadra (Gzhan-la-phan-pa-bzang-po) and [Rngog] Blo-ldan-shes-rab (1059-1109 CE) at Anupamapura (Grong-khyer Dpe-med), presumably the city by that name in Kashmir.

ས་བོན་གྱི་ཆ་རྣམས་འབྲེལ་པའི་ཕྱོགས་ནས་བཟུང་སྟེ་མེ་ཏོག་ལ་སོགས་པ་རྒྱུ་ཐ་དད་པ་ཡིན་ནོ། །དེ་བཞིན་དུ་མེ་རྡོའི་མེའི་སྐྱེ་གནས་ཀྱི་ཟུར་ལྕགས་མག་གིས་བཅག་པ་ན་ཆག་པའི་འཛེལ་མ་ལས་མེ་འབྱུང་བའི་རང་གི་སྐྱེ་གནས་ལྡོག་པ་ཡིན་ནོ། །མེ་སྐྱེ་བ་ན་བུད་ཤིང་གི་སྙིང་པོའི་ཆ་འགའ་ཞིག་ནི་མེའི་དངོས་པོར་འགྱུར་ལ། ...

sa bon gyi cha rnams 'brel pa'i phyogs nas bzung ste me tog la sogs pa rgyu tha dad pa yin no // de bzhin du me rdo'i me'i skye gnas kyi zur lcags mag gis bcag pa na chag pa'i 'dzel ma las me 'byung ba'i rang gi skye gnas ldog pa yin no // me skye ba na bud shing gi snying po'i cha 'ga' zhig ni me'i dngos por 'gyur la/ ...

Sarah Harding, tr., “Part 3. Heart Essence of Profound Meaning: The Quintessence of All Source Texts and Esoteric Instructions on Severance, the Perfection of Wisdom,” contained in: Chöd: The Sacred Teachings on Severance, compiled by Jamgön Kongtrul, Snow Lion (Boulder 2016). As Harding points out, this work of Jamyang Gönpo (b. 1208) may be one of the earliest commentarial texts on Chöd practice. This is a translation of the root text, and not of the much longer autocommentary where the word lcags-mag is found. The longer work has sometimes been mistakenly published as a work composed by Longchen Rabjampa (1308-1363/4), with a brief colophon identifying him as the author.

Arthur H. Hayward, Colonial Lighting: A New and Revised Edition, Little, Brown & Co. (Boston 1927), pp. 160-161. Here you can read a humorous story of a back-&-forth about chuck-mucks. The book is old enough it is freely downloadable at archive.org.

Henryk Jankowski, A Historical-Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Russian Habitation Names of the Crimea, Brill (Leiden 2006), pp. 390-391. Although it’s about the place name, this is one of the most useful discussions of the word “caqmaq” I’ve found so far.

Kun Chang, “Sino-Tibetan ‘Iron’: *Qhleks,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 92 (1972), pp. 436-446.

Berthold Laufer, “Historical Jottings on Amber in Asia,” American Anthropological Association Memoirs, vol. 1, no. 3 (1907), pp. 211-244, with thanks to Mike Walter for suggesting it:

The Sanskrit term tṛṇagrāhin (‘attracting grass’) proves the same for India, and in Persian and Arabic we have the word kahrubā with a similar meaning... (note 3 on p. 218).

The usual name for it, spos shel (pronounced pö-shel or pö-she; in Lepcha, po-she), means literally “performed crystal”...  Another, a literary, designation is sbur len, or sbur long, which appears simply as a literal translation from the Sanskrit tṛṇagrāhin (“attracting straw”).  (p. 231)

———, “Loan-Words in Tibetan,” contained in: Hartmut Walravens, ed., Sino-Tibetan Studies: Selected Papers on the Art, Folklore History, Linguistics and Prehistory of Sciences in China and Tibet, Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi 1987), vol. 2, pp. 483-643. I use an old photocopy of the original publication in the journal T'oung Pao, vol. 17 (1916), pp. 403-552 (for the Turkish loans, see pp. 474-483). The Turkish-donated Tibetan terms he discusses I’ll list here (for variant spellings, go to the source publication):  

yam-bu, chu-ba, bol-gar, lcags-mag, lcags-phra, top, tu-pag, pi-chag, u-lag, ar-gon.

 

click to enlarge

Maitreya, Bhavasaṅkrāntiṭīkā (Srid pa ’Pho-ba’i Ṭī-ka).  Tôh. no. 3841.  Dergé Tanjur, Dbu-ma vol. TSA, folios 151v.7-158r.7.  Translated by Paṇḍi-ta Zla-ba-gzhon-nu, or to make an educated guess at the Sanskrit, Paṇḍita Candrakumāra. This commentary on a work by Nāgārjuna contains the relevant passage at fol. 152 recto.  

དེ་ལྟར་མ་ཡིན་པ་འབྱུང་བས་ན་འབྱུང་མི་སྲིད། མེའི་ནང་དུ་ས་བོན་བཏབ་ན་སྐྱེ་མི་སྲིད། དངོས་པོ་མེད་པ་དེ་ལ་ནི། །སྐྱེ་བ་བླངས་པ་སྲིད་པ་བསྟན་པ་ནི། ཇི་ལྟར་ཆུ་དངས་པས་གང་བའི་མཚོ་ལ་ཟིམ་དང་པདྨ་སྐྱེས་པ་བཞིན་ནོ། །གཙུབ་ཤིང་དང་ལྕགས་མག་ལས་མེ་འབྱུང་བ་བཞིན་ནོ།

de ltar ma yin pa 'byung bas na 'byung mi srid / me'i nang du sa bon btab na skye mi srid / dngos po med pa de la ni // skye ba blangs pa srid pa bstan pa ni / ji ltar chu dngas pas gang ba'i mtsho la zim dang padma skyes pa bzhin no // gtsub shing dang lcags mag las me 'byung ba bzhin no //

Pratapaditya Pal et al., Tibet: Tradition & Change, The Albuquerque Museum (Albuquerque 1997), p. 188, has a photo of the single most-marvelous example of a “flint purse” I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Precious Deposits: Historical Relics of Tibet, Morning Glory Publishers (Beijing 2000), vol. 5, pp. 141-5.  Some remarkable examples are illustrated here, called by the odd but oddly suitable name “fire sickles.” Note also the similar-looking sewing kit on p. 145.

John Myrdhin Reynolds, The Oral Tradition from Zhang-zhung, Vajra Publications (Kathmandu 2005). On p. 89 is an interesting reference to the use of flint and steel for starting fires in a Bon biography of a master of the Zhangzhung Oral Transmission. I ought to trace the words used in the Tibetan source text, but haven’t yet.

William Woodville Rockhill, Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet Based on the Collections in the United States National Museum, an extract from Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for the Year 1893, Government Printing Office (Washington 1895), pp. 665-747.  Plate 9 illustrates what he called “tinder and flint pouches,” and “strike-a-lights.”  The text on pp. 695 reads like this:

Another article, frequently most elaborately ornamented and worn by all Tibetans and hanging from the same chatelaine to which the needlecase is attached, is a tinder* and flint pouch on the lower edge of which is a steel. These are called mé-chag (written mé lchags) and are in common use all over Tibet, China, and Mongolia. The Chinese style of tinder pouch shown in Dr. Hooker's work (Himalayan Journals. II, p. 219) as existing in Sikkim, has been found by other travelers in Bhutan and even among the Abors and Mishmis. The Tibetan mé-chag is of two styles, the Dergé and Pomäd forms. The first is always decorated with silver bosses, coral, and turquoise beads, and is of either red cloth or leather (pl. 9, fig. 2). The Pomäd kind, as shown in the specimen in the Museum collection, is a beautiful piece of work in open gold and silver, in which are set 3 large beads, 2 of coral, and 1 of turquoise. The pouch is of red cloth, and is 5 1/2 inches long and 2 1/2 inches broad. An embroidered cloth case fits over it to protect it from the weather (pl. 9. fit. 4). In pl. 8, fig. 3, and another specimen not here illustrated are mé-chag of Mongol manufacture, and were probably made in eastern Mongolia among the Halhas, although the former is Tibetan in its style of decoration.”**  

(*Note: I’ve omitted Rockhill’s interesting footnote on tinder.  **Rockhill understood me-lcags to refer to the entire fire-starting kit, although modern Tibetan tends to call this me-cha. I believe moderns understand me-cha to be a reduced form of me-yi cha-lag, hence meaning fire items or fire tools, although it is also possible to read me-cha as meaning fire piece. Understanding me-lcags presents problems of its own, since its proper spelling is rather likely to be me-lcag, with meaning of fire striker, rather than me-lcags meaning fire iron. The use of syllable-final -s has been a problem with Tibetan spellers throughout history, even though it can completely change the meaning sometimes, like in rig and rigs, or rtog and rtogs. I won’t go further into that. What would be the point here?)

George Roerich et al., trs., Blue Annals, p. 922, for what would seem to be yet another example of Padampa’s symbolic usage of the tinder bag.  I checked the Tibetan and found that the word pouch (khug-ma) is indeed used, and nearby is the word me-cha (not me-lcag[s]), which in this context I believe could refer to the flint alone and not the tinder bag as a whole (but see the Tshul-khrims-blo-gros book). This wonderfully complex and obscure passage deserves closer study.

Tshul-khrims-blo-gros, ed., Bod-kyi Srol-rgyun Tha-snyad ris-’grel Ming-mdzod, Si-khron Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Chengdu 2016). Composed by a committee in Chengdu, this is in effect a visual dictionary of the material culture of traditional Tibetan nomads and farmers (including domestic animals), with 1,212 illustrations.

Its illustration (p. 167) of what it calls me-cha — that means the entire assemblage of fire-starting items including the pouch — comes with labels identifying 13 parts, but concentrating on the decorative aspects. The steel striker is called me-lcags. An interesting item attached to it yet hanging separately is called me-rgyug / me-’then. I’d like to know more about its use. It may be a tiny pouch with an accelerant of some kind. The items that are presumably inside the pouch are neither shown nor identified.

Wikipedia, “Chuckmuck.”  

If you don’t mind the language, the German Wiki has a shorter but more nicely done entry entitled “me-lcags.”

•

• Acknowledgement: Mike Walter helped me out a lot with this as well as the previous blog on Persian loanwords, and much of the discussion here took shape under his emailed instigations, suggestions on what to read, which dictionary entry to look at, and so on. I’d like to dedicate this blog to Sangyela who years ago asked me if I knew of any Turkish words in Tibetan.

• PS: I recognize that this paper neglects to argue historical situations that would help to explain the borrowing of words and objects from the Turkic realm north and northeast of Tibet. Some contact situations have already been demonstrated or indicated by others, a subject for another time.

•

From an email message of Charles Ramble (January 7, 2025), posted here with permission:

I much appreciated your piece on lcags mag! I knew the term only from Nepali, and had no idea either that it had a Turkish origin or that it had found its way into Tibetan. In Nepali, it denotes one of the two little knife-like things that are included in the sheath of the khukri: one is the karda, which I think is used as a sort of penknife, and the other is the cakmak, which is a small file used for sharpening the main blade. Keep up the good work!

•

Try to see this brief video for a khukri sharpening demonstration.

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Add-on, January 31, 2025

H.A. Jaeschke, Mor[avian] Missionary, Romanized Tibetan and English Dictionary, Kyelang in British Lahoul (1866). For curiosity’s sake, I supply the entry from the original form of Jaeschke’s dictionary where the word is clearly marked as being of Turk[ic] origins, proving once more that we are only reporting (very)  

old news.  First download the PDF, then go to the page marked 7.