Recovered Connections 2 - Interdependent Emergence of Tibetan Buddhist Schools

• Continued from Recovered Connections 1.

It is surprising to see just how prominent the Zhijé school is within the early Matho fragments. Fewer are identifiable with other schools like Sakya, Kagyu and even Nyingma.  Bon does show up twice, but there isn’t even one bit of a text I’ve noticed that can be assigned directly to a Bon religious source. This may indicate that the pre-Mongol* religious situation, in this part of the Plateau at least, was not like we have been thinking it was.

(*Please don’t misunderstand me, I mean by pre-Mongol the era before the Mongols appeared on the world stage [the Xixia invasion of 1205] and in just a couple of decades took over the better part of Eurasia.)

These other schools can wait until later. First, I’d like to direct attention to the Padampa and Zhijé texts. I estimate for now that there are about 25 such Zhijé fragments among the Matho, and will not try to cover them all just yet (some of them will feature in future blogs no doubt).  Right now I will limit myself to a question about early Zhijé art in Ladakh, more on Padampa’s women disciples,* and early lay religious movements: 

The cane flute in Padampa icons

Have a look at this photo, see how Padampa in a relatively large size (compared to nearby painted figures on the robes) is hovering there between the shins of the Bodhisattva of Wisdom and Science. Above him are the robes populated with images of the Great Siddhas (rather generic and difficult to identify individually, as Rob Linrothe has noted in his study).  He has a meditation belt around his knees and his characteristic white blanket loosely hanging behind him, otherwise unclothed.  Difficult to make out what he has in his right hand, but in his left he is holding a kind of white tube pointed downward.

I could show a lot of Ladakhi examples, for instance in the caves of Saspola, and in other sites in Alchi. Earlier Ladakhi sites all tend to have Padampa holding the white tube.  

Click here

It was Sarah Harding who noticed the connection and sent me the text, a Shangpa Kagyü text that she was working on. Tibeto-logicians should go here to view the text, while I suppose the rest of you will have to go to her new book that I don’t yet have on hand. The resulting blog can be seen just above.

So after those earlier revelations about the Shangpa connection had been sealed and settled, or so I thought, I was shocked and perplexed to find just a few years later this Matho fragment with the word “flute” right there on the first line. In the continuation you can see that the wording and the practice are both parallel with the Shangpa Kagyu text, one associated with Sukhasiddhi that Sarah Harding published very recently. So as it turns out we don’t need to imagine that Shangpa Kagyupas were active in Ladakh. This purely Zhijé text existing in Matho quite early on can explain the iconography without their help.

This hardly effects the other points made in the earlier blog. On the Sumtsek temple in general, I most highly recommend the central part of the following book: Peter van Ham with Amy Heller and Likir Monastery, Alchi, Treasure of the Himalayas: Ladakh's Buddhist Masterpiece, Hirmer (Munich 2018). However, there is hardly anything said there about the Padampa painting in question (most of it on page 53), and it differs profoundly with what I would say. For one thing, I don’t believe it is a later addition motivated by Drigungpa interests. I do believe it reflects a very early (ca. 12th century) iconography of Padampa, even if it may have benefitted from some later touchups. While Padampa was still alive there was no concept of any group of precisely 84 Mahâsiddhas, that only started to emerge as far as Tibet is concerned in the mid decades of the 12th century. Still, there are a lot of reasons why he might be associated with or even included within that group, so his portrait is by no means irrelevant in the place where it is found, it is hardly out of place. Of course, there will have to be more discussions on these points, but the newly emerging literary evidence practically hands us the reason why the painting is where it is on a silver platter.

Yuthokpa, HAR no. 185

Teachings found in the Yuthok Nyingtig may also have something about healing nectar being transferred by means of a flute.  Here in this slide you see two flute-playing goddesses dancing on either side of Yuthokpa the Elder. The cycle of medical teachings would have been emerging just around the first decades of the 13th century. We see opening up yet another avenue for  investigation even if we won’t go any further in that direction right now.

Carla Gianotti’s book on the subject of Padampa’s women disciples.
In Italian, an English version ought to be forthcoming.

Padampa’s women disciples

One of the biggest surprises in the Matho was to find fragments of a version of Kunga’s text on Padampa’s women disciples. Owing to its importance and difficulties this deserves more research and, before too much time goes by, an independent blog or two of its own. I mention it here because it connects to the discussion that lies ahead of us.

Here you can see a sample of the fragment about the women, women who went on to be spiritual leaders after scattering all over the Himalayan plateau in the early 12th century.

Lay religious movements

To begin with what may or may not be a remarkable point, these lay religious movements appear to have left hardly a trace if any in the Matho and other caches.

Over 25 years ago I did my best to find out about what may be the most obscure religious movements in 11th to 12th century Tibetan history, or in all of Tibetan history for that matter. That means I was keen to find something about them in the Four Caches.

The sources we do have are scattered and difficult to piece together. The earliest of the them that supplies a general coverage, and by far their most sympathetic witness, is in the appendix to the Chöjung history by Nyangrel Nyima Özer.  

In this slide I’ve made a kind of composite of various sources, all charted out in detail in the Kailash essay. No particular source has everything, but there is a great deal of overlap. You can find women leaders associated with Padampa among the Four Children, the Six Yogis, and particularly the Four Tirthika Dakinis. It is said the latter were originally teaching something contrary to Buddhism, but were then in some way corrected or converted by Padampa. But these are later and very possibly motivated narratives I hesitate to accept as historical reporting.

The first one listed, Karudzin, is mentioned in a couple of 13th century sources, such as Sakya Pandita and the ca. 1260’s author of the Single Intention (Dgongs-gcig Yig-cha) associated with the Drigung Kagyü.  

The second one, Sangyé Kargyal, was said to be a heretical teacher in the form of a spirit pretending to be a Buddha. Despite his initial success in winning a following, he was brought to ground by the Great Translator Rinchenzangpo. You learn about him in the Great Translator's biography, but he is only rarely mentioned otherwise.

Latö Marpo, or Dampa Marpo, is a particularly interesting figure because of his role in popularizing the recitation of the Mani Mantra. He is mentioned a little more often than the preceding ones.

But let’s stop there, I don’t have time to go into the details or supply anything like full coverage right now.  Just to say that I have long been on the lookout for any kind of written trace of them, and particularly useful would be any type of self-representation. This is because all we have available otherwise are external testimonies of varying levels of hostility often with the misunderstandings and the polemical distortions that are likely to accompany that emotion. So far I haven’t noticed anything obvious about them in the Four Caches, but I suppose this doesn’t have to mean much, particularly if these movements were not producing literature, a real possibility.

One other matter of considerable interest is that the Matho cache includes fragments from some relatively rare Padampa transmissions (see the chart above for the overall picture). Of course most fragments are from the Kunga (བྱང་སེམས་ཀུན་དགའ་) lineage belonging to the Later Transmission. Still, Middle Transmissions texts related to both the Rma and Skam lineages can be identified among them as well.*

(*The author of the root verses of the long Deyu history, the so-called “Khepa Deyu” [as distinguished from the Deyu José] that I spent 12 years of my life translating belonged to a third major lineage of the Middle Transmission, the So.)

Other religious schools

I’ll close by saying not nearly enough about other schools represented in the Matho.  Firstly the Kagyü: Specifically Kagyü texts are decidedly less well represented than the Zhijé.  That fact already gives some cause for reflection, but these were days before the flood of Kagyü contemplatives in the Kailash area that began to form a steady stream late in the life of Jigten Gönpo (འབྲི་གུང་ཆོས་རྗེ་འཇིག་རྟེན་མགོན་པོ་རིན་ཆེན་དཔལ་, 1143-1217 CE). It is by now well known among Ladakh historians that the Drigungpa school held prominence in Ladakh before it was virtually eclipsed by the Drukpa, as it is today.

The split between the Drigung and Taglung lineages, both of them Kagyü lineages, would not have taken place if it hadn’t been for a dispute about where donated books were supposed to be kept (“The Book Moving Incident of 1209”). Again, we would invoke the same passage at the end of the history by Nyangrel we mentioned before. Of course it is quite strange to our contemporary minds to see both the Zhijé teachings of Padampa and the Kagyu school as a whole placed together with other popular laypeople-based religious movements. 

When the Nyangral appendix was written in around 1200, at most one or two decades later, the public consciousness of Kagyu subsect identities was at its beginning. When Nyangrel discusses the Kagyü, for most part he just lists a wide variety of students and students-of-students of Milarepa. The only distinction he observes is in recognizing the existence of a “Tshal Circle” and a “Tshur Circle.” That means, of course, what we would call the Tselpa Kagyü, a lineage instituted by Zhang Yudrakpa Tsondrüdragpa, and the Karma Kagyü (with its main monastery at Mtshur-phu) instituted by The First Black Hat incarnate.  I believe that by the term circle he is referring to two mother monasteries while intending to include smaller affiliated retreat caves, temples and monasteries. 

Up to this point none of the eight subschools of the Kagyü that split off from Pagmodrupa were known, meaning to say there was no public awareness of any Drukpa, Drigung, or Taglung Kagyü existing in that time, not yet.  And this is borne out by the contents of the Matho and the other caches. We do find a text associated with Pagmodrupa, and a mention of his name in a small birchbark fragment you will see in a moment, still no inkling of any identifiable subsect of the Kagyü.

The Pagmodrupa-related text is the one illustrated at the end of the published Khyunglung facsimiles, a single folio with atrociously abnormal spelling, but at least it has colophon information. Because of this colophon we are tempted to move the date of the Khyunglung chorten closure to a century later than the others, sometime up to as late as 1300. It will repay closer study, as if that needed saying. I do find it remarkable that, in all the Four Caches, this would be the only Cutting/Gcod-related text.*

(*But then it’s peculiar, when I searched in “Mon-ban and List” I found that teaching entitled Ku-su-lu’i Tshogs-gsog has a lineage through Atisha that does not include Pagmodrupa. I must search also in The Record of Teachings Heard of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama.)

Pagmodrupa (note the spelling Phag-mo-grub-pa!) makes his appearance in the birchbark fragment you see just above.  This doesn’t mean much for our dating of the manuscripts. Of more significance is the absence of the names of any of his disciples in the all Four Caches, with the one exception of the Khyunglung colophon we just mentioned. The odd thing is that this Khyunglung colophon title does after all belong to a known title of a work of Pagmodrupa, one found in his Collected Works (as was normal in those days, his was a Kambum, not a Sungbum), and that work is not about the elephant-hook-equipped Mahākāla as the published version says. This is incorrect. It’s about the practice of Cutting usually believed to have been originated with Machig Labdrön.* But really, this is the one and only text, in all of the caches, on the subject of Cutting practice, and it dates later than all the rest. That could mean something eventually, once it is found to lend its weight to a larger discussion. Our most significant point at the moment is that a prominent Kagyüpa gets to be the author of that one-and-only Cutting text, and he was not a member of any discrete Cutting school.**

(*I do think regarding her as originator makes sense so as long as we don’t allow ourselves to get too doctrinaire about it. Nothing is really ever the work of a single genius working alone, regardless of what some hopeless romantics like to imagine. **More discussion is appended below.)

Now what about the school purportedly founded by the Noble Lord Atisha of Bengal?  The Kadam school can be understood to have its beginning during Atisha’s visit to Tibet of 1042, but came to be known by this name only some decades later. Let’s just say there are four texts that are clearly and unambiguously enclosed within the Kadam realm. At the same time there  any number of scriptural and Indic commentarial texts that were supposed to be studied by Kadampas.* We could say almost the same about the Sakya school, that there are many scriptures and commentaries that Sakyapas may have used, but how many texts could I find that are directly related to the Sakya or to Sakya figures? Not one.**

(*It seems the name of Kadam only became widely known as the name of a distinct school in around 1075, while public knowledge is quite well demonstrated later on, in dialogues that took place during the two decades Padampa spent in Tingri. **Leaving the Four Caches aside for the moment, this silence might yet contribute to a future assessment on the pre-1200 level of prominence, even while their post-1200 prominence is not in the least in question. While there are clear signs that Sakya figures in the 12th century, in particular Dragpa Gyaltsen, were aware of the Kagyü school, the reverse doesn’t seem to be the case, and we ought to look into this. Well, on second thought, what I just said is contradicted by Pagmodrupa, who studied Lamdré with an early Sakya master before meeting Gampopa...)

I should go on and on to speak about the Nyingma content in the Four Caches, but these have featured already in some earlier blogs, so I’ll send you back to them* if you want to hear more and we’ll say farewell for now.

(*The All Making King’s Earliest Fragment.  

The Only Terma in the Matho Termas.)

Well, sorry to hold you at the door just as you were ready to leave, but I suppose I ought to come to some kind of conclusion. I believe we are still far from understanding the era of Tibetan history that preceded the Mongol conquest of Eurasia. That holds true for its religious history, as well as other areas of research. That this time was crucial for the emergence of most of the sectarian affiliations known to us today goes without saying. But there were also movements afoot in those times, of various kinds, that have faded or disappeared from our history books. And these movements and supposed “foundings” were interlinked in ways that slowly come into view. 

That we now have these Four Caches of manuscripts with a quite well established cutoff date of 1200 opens a lot of new avenues of research that could bring much needed light. I realize that some will want to call the result “revisionist” history, so I would like to remind them in advance that history has always been revising itself. It is the history of that revisionism that we most need. Keener knowledge of it could enable us to see with greater clarity, to see through it and achieve greater surety about events and processes that took place in their own time and in their own terms, not ours. We would make ourselves dictators if we pretended to set the past in stone as a monument to our own self-serving concepts.

- - -

For a limited time only, you might be able to find a video of most of the talk here (the opening words were not recorded). The oral and written versions are definitely not identical:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fQpmJcKfUgP1RpRAcp6aqVfXzkOUg4CX/view

• Appendix on the Problematic Pagmodrupa Text in the Khyunglung Cache

Mgon po gru gug skor gyi yig rnying thor bu is the title given at p. 211 of the published book in the upper right hand margin (gru gug should have been spelled gri gug). Here we find a single folio, but it appears as if it could be a complete text, or at least the final folio of one.

At p. 212 line 9 (or 213 line 19) the following title:  Ku-su-lu'i Tshogs-gsog. I found among the works of Phag-mo-gru-pa a text with exactly this title:  Ku-su-lu'i Tshogs, or, Ku-su-lu'i Tshogs-gsog (just search BDRC for it).  The texts need comparing closely, as I see parallels in the last parts.

Colophon: phung po gzan du sgyur ba’i mchod pa phag mo grub pas spa’ ldan lum / gnyan sgom ras pa la [/] des ya’ chung gseng ge rgyal tshom la bla ma bdag la... I’d say the author is tracing the teachings that came from Phag-mo-gru-pa up through his own teacher named Seng-ge-rgyal-mtshan (?). What looks like Dpal-ldan Lum might actually be Dpal-ldan Ldum, and therefore this person: Chos-rje Ldum, a disciple of Phag-mo-gru-pa. See Blue Annals, p. 563.  Probably equals Chos-rje Bum known elsewhere. I couldn’t find any Gnyan-sgom-ras-pa, although one named Gnyan-ras-pa or Gnyan-ras Dge-’dun-bum was teacher of The Third Black Hat Karmapa incarnate (1284-1339), so this would bring us up to around 1300! In any case such a date would make sense for the activities of a spiritual grandchild of Phag-mo-gru-pa.

§   §   §

Email from John Bellezza (May 3, 2024):

Dear Dan, I don't want to be a bug-bear but when you compare the Gathang Bumpa mss. with the Toling ms., which I just downloaded, there are significant differences in the scripts used. On paleographic grounds, I think this comparative exercise justifies dating the GB mss. to before the 11th century. One must do the legwork still, but grammatical and orthographic analysis are likely to bear this out too.

Ph Kh

My answer (May 4, 2024):

Dear J, Yes, I know those captchas are often impossible even for young people with sharp eyes, but I have to allow them, otherwise we’d be swamped with enhancement and disfunction ads. I don't myself doubt the Gathang could very well go back to the late 10th century as physical manuscripts, I just don't know. The one thing I am relatively certain about is that all of the Four Caches were closed at about the same time in around 1200 (the Khyunglung perhaps a century later, but anyway). By Toling I take it you mean the history book, since the cache as a whole is not yet out there for downloading. Or is it?  If you think about the Matho, there are quite a lot of them that based on their content could be dated at earliest to mid-11th or mid-12th centuries. That would go for all the Zhijé fragments that had to have been inscribed during the long 12th century, definitely not before the 12th.  The history book from Toling, too, by its content, has to be mid- or late-12th-century (detailed discussion in D. Pritzker's dissertation).  All that is fine by me, since the 12th century is the very time I'm interested in knowing more about.

Yours, D.

Tertön Gyatsa Woodblock Print

click to enlarge

Recognize anyone here? The photo is low resolution, for this I apologize. I saved it years ago from a website that doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Despite this lack of clarity, it is possible to perceive beneath the throne lion just beneath the large central figure, and on your right, a rectangular cartouche bearing his name. I think I can  make out “Mchog-gyur-bde-chen-gling-pa,” one of the many forms used as names of Chogyur Lingpa (མཆོག་གྱུར་གླིང་པ་), birth in 1829, death in 1870. He was probably the most prolific all-time treasure revealer in Tibetan history, and a great inspiration for what we have, with some degree of justice, often called the Rimé Movement. In one of the several portrait paintings locatable at HAR website that feature him as chief figure, there is one that corresponds quite nicely and precisely enough with this one, and that should be enough to confirm our intuitions are correct and we’ve made the right identification. This thangka painting is doubly blessed for having prints of both hands of the master done in vermillion ink on its reverse side.

Go here to see the full painting
in all its details

But then who are all those other smaller figures surrounding him in the woodblock print?  I think that’s easily answered. With the exception of the two figures directly above the central figure’s head, all the others ought to form one group. I haven’t tried counting them, but I could wager they would add up around one hundred, or one hundred and eight. I argue it must be the collectivity known as Tertön Hundred (གཏེར་སྟོན་བརྒྱ་རྩ་). Furthermore, it must be the same precise group of tertöns found in a collective biography of the same by Jamgön Kongtrul Rinpoche (འཇམ་མགོན་ཀོང་སྤྲུལ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་), himself a disciple of Chogyur Lingpa. But it would be great to be able to see a better photo so that all the individually labeled figures could be exactly identified. My eyesight isn’t up to the task.

That there exists such a remarkable collective icon of the Tertöns would be a thing worthy of knowing. These woodblock prints often served as patterns for thangkas, although I haven’t seen a painted example yet. It ought to be compared to the rather old mural paintings in an upper room in the main temple of Mindroling Monastery I once had the fortune to see with my own eyes even if the room was a little too dark. I’d love to see them again. If you know of published illustrations, please type a comment in the comment box. Or if you have anything else to say, we’d love to hear it.

Sources:

To the best of my knowledge the woodblock print was once posted at a website that might have belonged to Derge Monastery (སྡེ་དགེ་དགོན་པ་) itself. I will try to find out more. 

A web search did lead me to one thangka depicting over a hundred tertöns. Try going to this "tinyurl."

For fundamental information on Chogyur Lingpa, see the biographical entry “Chokgyur Dechen Lingpa” at rigpawiki.org, which includes a very nice painting, as well as the entry “Chokgyur Lingpa” by Alexander Gardner that is part of Treasury of Lives website. Andreas Doctor, The Tibetan Treasure Literature: A Study of the Revelations of the Visionary Master Mchog gyur bde chen gling pa (1829-1870), doctoral dissertation, University of Calgary (2003). This became a book with the title Tibetan Treasure Literature: Revelation, Tradition, and Accomplishment in Visionary Buddhism, Shambhala Publications (Boulder 2005). We can also recommend Urgyen Topgyal, The Life and Teachings of Chokgyur Lingpa, Rangjung Yeshe Publications (Kathmandu 1988). And finally, go to Lotsawa House for this page full of links to works either by Chogyur Lingpa or in some other way connected with his name, most of them made freely available in English.

Here is all the literature I know about with English translations from Jamgön Kongtrul’s Tertön Hundred biographies: A full translation by Yeshe Gyamtsho was published under the title The Hundred Tertöns, KTD Publications (Woodstock 2011). Some parts have been translated in Eva M. Dargyay, The Rise of Esoteric Buddhism in Tibet, Motilal Banarsidass (Delhi 1979). See also the bits translated in Ramon Prats, “Some Preliminary Considerations Arising from a Biographical Study of the Early Gter-ston,” contained in: Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi, eds., Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson, Aris and Phillips, Ltd. (Warminster 1980), pp. 256-260. Also, this: Ramon Prats, Contributo allo studio biografico dei primi gter ston (Naples 1982). We’ve explored some of the prehistory of Kongtrul’s Tertön Hundred in a three-year-old blog, “Locating a Tertön Prayer in Terma History.” Something there may prove of use if you want to delve into the history of terma studies.

If, on the other hand, you need a fast and relatively easy introduction to Tertöns and Termas, see this short essay by Karma Phuntso entitled “Terma and Tertön: Revealed Teachings and Their Revealers.”

§  §  §

PS (March 13, 2023):

I did a little creative web searching and at long last landed on the relaunched (since 2019) version of the Derge Printery website: http://www.degeparkhang.org.

It does in fact have the Chokgyur Lingpa woodblock, but even more impressively, it has a 2nd one of the Tertön Hundred with a different central figure, none other than the author of the most famous collection of Tertön biographies, Jamgön Kongtrul. For both, go first to this page, then download them one at a time.

The White Old Man Sūtra - Part Two

To start at the beginning, click here.

So here is my fast attempt to elaborate on the meanings of every last detail in this surprisingly complex picture. First of all, look on the Old Man’s right hand and see how he holds a pitcher or ewer in the act of pouring out a ritual libation into a small stemmed goblet that rests on top of a larger bowl in its turn placed on an altar table. The larger bowl is there to catch the overflow from the goblet. The overflow itself conveys a notion of copious overabundance.

Another, more lightly printed, example 

of a verso of the 100 srang banknote

Some may imagine it to be a ‘secular’ scene of an old man pouring himself a drink, but no, nothing could be further from the truth. The elaborate ritual setup indicates a normative practice of Tibetan Buddhism — some people, be they male or female, monastic or lay, perform it every morning. This relatively simple ritual, usually called Water Casting (ཆུ་གཏོར་, ཆབ་གཏོར་, or མཆོད་གཏོར་), involves the pouring of the liquid accompanied by prayers for the pretas, or “hungry ghosts.” Not only was it performed by the earliest Kadampas, but by Bonpos even before them. This practice is supposed to be done out of compassion for those unfortunate beings known as pretas, unable to eat or drink on their own, since it all turns to fire in their mouths. Not incidentally, the practice develops Buddhist merit* and compassion in the person who performs it. One significant further point: Even if the word yidag / ཡི་དྭགས་ generally used for preta is employed here, the objects of compassion are widened to include other large classes of spirit beings, even including the spirits of the dead.

(*I hope to devote some writing to Buddhist ideas about merit another time, but at the moment, do remember that it is one of the two legs that permit advancement on the Path to Enlightenment in Great Vehicle Buddhism. As one of the Two Accummulations, it cannot just be tossed aside in favor of intellectualism or meditation as our 21st-century neo-Buddhists so often try to do.)

Now move directly above the altar and what you will see is a bat flying in the sky, swooping toward a fruiting tree. It is known that some kinds of bats feed off of fruits. I regard that fact as irrelevant to our reading of the tableau. Their close proximity in the picture is accidental. My reason for thinking so: It’s well known that the bat as a positive cultural symbol is owed to a pun in Chinese. The Chinese word for ‘bat,’ “蝠” (fú) sounds exactly the same as the word for ‘good fortune,’ and ‘wealth’ “福” (fú), and you can see an obvious similarity in the characters as well.* This pun explains why you can see artistic representations of bats all over the place in Chinese households, not just in temples.

(*Look here for an amusing analysis of the parts that make up the character.)

You also see here a cloth article that looks like a scarf draped over the tree limb. I had to think long and hard about this one. Of course it may or may not be a Tibetan khata. Although difficult to be certain, it actually seems to be a Mongolian contribution to the iconography. Still, it does remind us of Arhat portraits (based in the Vinaya Sūtra, and meant to illustrate it, I believe) in which a part of the clothing is just being left on a nearby limb to dry. Like the tableaus I describe here, these Arhat scenes are often painted on the walls of the monastery on the outside... Hmmm, this sounds like the beginning of a theory that would explain the placement of those tableaus... 

But then again, it may be in some way associated with the scarf in the iconography of ’O-de-gung-rgyal (and similar long-life deities with varied names) explained by Toni Huber in his book Source of Life (vol. 1, p. 84). Let me quote it at some length:

“The white silk pennant or scarf they hold encodes a dual symbolism that expresses the transfer of life powers between cosmic realms. One of its aspects is g.yang,* and such scarves are sometimes referred to as g.yang dar, while the other aspect of the white scarf is a symbol of the messenger, of something pure and important passing between agents. For these reasons the white scarf is closely associated with the messenger bat...”

(*My note: On g.yang as a culture-specific concept, look here.) 

Given the great distances and cultural differences involved, it is rather impressive that the conceptual pairing of scarf and bat that we see in our tableau would show up in remote areas of eastern Bhutan in contexts that are regarded as inestimably archaic and local.

Some people see pomegranates or persimmons, but I believe this is a  peach tree. These are the peaches of immortality, well known from very early Chinese ideas about the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu) who used to preside over peach feasts with the immortals of her court in a place often identified with the Kunlun Mountains. While these relatively low mountains form the natural northern border of the Tibetan Plateau, they don’t seem to be known to Tibetan literature. Even so, in Chinese myth and literature (and now film) they have assumed a towering importance. I suppose the immortals were already as immortal as they could ever hope to be, yet the peaches were said to confer longevity if not immortality.

Now we continue circumambulating in the Bon direction, with the left hand oriented toward the central figure. Passing over a cloud-and-mountain-with-waterfall landscape we next encounter a pair of dancing cranes. Pairs of cranes remain lifelong lovers, but they are also amazingly long-lived. Chinese sources have sometimes attributed to them lifespans as long as a thousand years. I like to imagine, as one who has seen for himself how inspiringly and effortlessly they soar in slow spirals upward into the sky, taking advantage of thermal updrafts, that something about that is in there, too. They make migration look too easy.

Next in our leftward turn is what would seem to be an arrangement of offerings related to the libation ritual directly above it. This may well be the case, but close inspection tells me the basin is filled with peaches with their leaves still attached. Do you see something else?

I think the deer couple appears clearly enough for everyone to recognize, but what is that thing off to the side? One of the deer seems to be turning its head toward it. It looks like a plant, but a plant with some kind of bulbous growth in the center. This would be a lingzhi fungus. Sometimes, even if not here, the lingzhi is depicted as if it were growing out of the deer’s head. In Chinese lore, these deer are sort of like the pigs that are used to sniff out truffles in France. The mushroom hunters would never be able to find the lingzhi without the help of the deer, since to every other creature they are invisible.

You can see a few more lingzhi fungi here, but what I want to point out right now is the rocky cavern with the stream of water descending from it. I did have trouble putting my finger on this exactly, but I was imagining it reflects Chinese landscape ideas. Artistically speaking it seems obvious. What we see here bears meanings situated between, or is perhaps shared by, fengshui geomancy and ideals of Chinese landscape painting. When I looked into it further, I thought the landscape feature might be the one known as “shan shui” (dragon/mountain + descending stream). Still, a cave with a water source inside of it has a special name in Chinese that is, as a matter of convention, translated as “grotto.”  

Now look a little to your left. You can see a row of blossoms leading diagonally to  a more distant grotto that I think, with good reason, would indicate the Peach Blossom Grotto, a kind of bucolic Shangri-la of the Daoists. We do have the close proximity of the peaches and the grottos, so we may be justified in putting two and three together like this. There is a long and rich history of the Peach Blossom Grotto in China and a number of Sinological essays are devoted to it. It is a place very difficult if not impossible to find, but going there would mean encountering the immortals.

Now for the main figure of the White Old Man itself: First observe the smaller human seated on a mat of grass to his left side. Sometimes this is called an “acolyte figure,” as if it were a child assistant in a Catholic mass, procession or the like. I see no reason to speak Catholic here, so I would suggest the youth depicted here represents 'youth,' or or maybe even rejuvenation. The youth seems to hold something up in one hand, but I am unable to make out what it is. Alternatively or at the same time, he may serve as an attendant, an errand boy.

The Old Man’s very corpulence is a sign of opulence. His right hand holds the ritual ewer, in his left a rosary. The ewer we have mentioned already, but the rosary is evidently a māla used as support for mantra recitations, a constant occupation of many Tibetan elders. He has a beard, no doubt very white. 

There is one interesting thing, among others, that is not visible here. We might think he needs to have a staff inside the crook of his left elbow. The staff might end, as the texts describe and prescribe in a knob or handle in the shape of a dragon. But not here, which is remarkable since it would seem to be one of the few constants according to the Sūtra and texts associated with it. More on these texts presently.

Now let’s leave the money behind for a few minutes and have a quick glance at the literary sources, especially as these have bearing on the iconography.

Here above, you see the opening lines of the White Old Man Sūtra, in Sanj Altan’s translation from the Oirat version. Pay special attention to the iconographical information in lines 10-12. This text is sometimes called by that just-given title, but also The Sūtra of the Power to Keep within Bounds the Earth and Water.  The titles you see below.

Both of the texts you see here are from the collection of the Mongolian National Library (Ulan Bator). Both are scans done by agreement with the BDRC. I think we can safely say that these Tibetan texts are local Mongolian products, and that versions of it might not even exist on the Tibetan plateau (we need to demonstrate local Tibetan interest rather than assume it, since Mongolian monks did compose and scribe Tibetan texts for their own use). One interesting thing is that the title is given first in Chinese, which would suggest that the original text was in that language. Still, I do not know of any Chinese version of it existing today (I may very well require correction on this point), and believe that this apocryphal scripture was made in Mongolia, very likely by a monk who knew Tibetan language as they very often did, in order to accommodate the local cult of the White Old Man within a Buddhist context.

An outstandingly talented artist, Robert Beer supplies two versions of the Old Man in his book, yet it is only the one labeled as "Tibetan style" that is based on an earlier painting done by a Tibetan, while it appears that the "Chinese style" he created by combining various elements he thought to be Chinese, many of them indeed associated with immortals and with the Old Man of Chinese lore called Shouxing (Shou Hsing). It’s interesting that he is depicted with an antlered deer, this being his usual mount, a dragon-headed staff,* and a gourd. Why is the gourd there at the top of the staff? That question leads us into amazing territory nicely surveyed by R.A. Stein in his book, a book I much recommend. The gourd was used by Chinese herbalists to contain the herbs they collected in the mountains. It also served for Daoists as a container for a miniature world that immortals could physically enter into by miniaturizing themselves. It is basically equivalent to the grotto, both gourd and grotto being a normally unseen interior world, perhaps in miniature; both are populated by hermits or refugees from the busy world, and they have skies of their own, no matter how difficult that may be to think about...  Oh, and the staff ought to be craggy and a little crooked, resembling a gnarly pine tree limb, if it is to be associated with Chinese immortals. Not the smooth cane we see here. In sum, I would have composed the picture of the "Chinese style" a little differently than Beer did.

(*The dragon head on the staff might seem to indicate Chinese origins, but I believe it to be a Mongolian contribution to the iconography of the White Old Man. Of course it requires further consideration. I am not especially clear what Beer meant by "Chinese style." He might be talking about actually artistic practice in China, but on the other hand he might intend a conscious artistic choice made by a Tibetan artist to produce a Chinese-inspired painting... )

I’m not going to go into the very relevant question of when the Mongolian White Old Man entered into Tibetan monastic dances called Cham (འཆམ་). The common wisdom is that the 13th Dalai Lama introduced it, inspired by a performance he witnessed during his time in Mongolia in the early 20th century. (I haven’t been able to trace a Tibetan-language source on this yet.)  It’s interesting to see how Cham dances done in different Himalayan communities identify the same figure as either the Chinese Hoshang, or as the White Old Man.  I can’t sort that out right now, but it is fascinating and merits reflection. In Tibetan Cham he tends to have a comic role, in that he attempts to perform simple lay Buddhist practices like khata offerings and prostrations and fails miserably. Or should we say hilariously?

I did my best for the time being to locate earlier testimonies for the White Old Man in Tibetan history, and by far the most interesting thing I could come up with is an 18th century verse by a well-known author of eastern Tibet.

The Six of Long Life,

by Zhuchen Tsultrim Rinchen (1697-1774)

On the author, see the biographical sketch by Benjamin Nourse at Treasury of Lives.

 

སྔོན་དུས་མ་ཧཱ་ཙི་ནའི་ཡུལ་གྲུ་ན།།

བསྐལ་པ་ཆགས་པའི་ཐོག་མར་བྱུང་བའི་བྲག།

མཐོ་མཛེས་དྲུང་གི་དབེན་གནས་ཉམས་དགའ་རུ།།

འཆི་མེད་མགོན་པོ་གྲུབ་པའི་དྲང་སྲོང་བྱུང་།།

In an era long gone by, in the region of Mahācīna,

was a rock that emerged at the dawn of the eon's formation.

Close by its lofty splendor, in a pleasant retreat place,

appeared an accomplished sage, a master of immortality.

དེ་མཐུས་བྲག་རི་དེ་ཡི་འགྲམ་པ་ནས།།

རྒ་ཤི་མེད་པའི་བཅུད་ལེན་ཚེ་ཡི་ཆུ།།

རྟག་པར་བབ་ཅིང་མྱ་ངན་མེད་པའི་ཤིང་།།

མེ་ཏོག་འབྲས་བུས་ལྕི་བ་ཞིག་ཀྱང་སྐྱེས།།

Through his magical powers at the side of that rocky mountain appeared 

a spring of life with alchemical powers to do away with old age and death.

It flowed down unceasingly and there as well was an Ashoka [non-suffering] tree

heavily weighted down with flowers and fruits.

དྲང་སྲོང་དེ་ཡི་བྱམས་པའི་ར་བ་ན།།

ཟང་ཟིང་མི་འཇིགས་སྦྱིན་པའི་གཡབ་མོ་ཡིས།།

འཁོར་དུ་བོས་པའི་འདབ་ཆགས་སྤུ་སྡུག་དང་།།

རི་དགས་རུ་རུ་གནས་པའང་ཚེ་རིང་གྱུར།།

Fast within the corral of that sage's affection 

were the soft downed birds, their birdsongs all around, 

and dwelling with them the Ruru deer. 

With a wave of his hand he grants them fearlessness and food. 

དེ་དག་རྒ་ཤི་སྤངས་པའི་བདེ་བ་ལ།། 

རེག་པ་གང་ཕྱིར་ཚེ་རིང་རྣམ་དྲུག་ཅེས།།

གྲགས་པའི་འཕྲིན་ཡིག་ཕྱོགས་ཀྱི་དགའ་མ་ཡི།།

མཁུར་ཚོས་རྣམ་པར་མཛེས་པའི་རྒྱན་དུ་བྱིན།།

Together these are known as the Six of Long Life who serve 

for attaining to the comfort of being done with old age and death.

This announcement letter is offered as an ornament to beautify

the cheeks of the gladdening women of the compass directions.*

(*Note: Zhuchen liked to use the image of “the cheeks of the gladdening women” in other contexts, and I believe these are all alluding to the messenger poems, an Indic literary genre, its most famous example being Kālidāsa's Cloud Messenger. I should add in order to forestall predictable reactions, that the ‘Indianization’ of particular elements in the poem — the tree identified as Ashoka tree, the deer as a ruru deer, for examples — reflects the strong impulse within Tibet's own traditions of kāvya poetry to Indianize whenever possible for artistic/aesthetic reasons. This is •not• an example of Buddhist ‘appropriation’ along the lines you might be thinking.)

As I said already, his iconographic white color bears no connection to skin color or race. It’s the color of his hair if he has any and beard, and/or his clothing. This iconographic whiteness is something he holds in common with the primary ancestral divinity (with varied names and guises including one we mentioned already) associated with the rites of bringing down life that Toni Huber explored so thoroughly in his recent two-volume book. His tunic, scarf, horse, deer, bird etc. are all said to be white (pp. 83-84). Of course there are a lot of observations about details such as these that might be pointed out (the bat for another surprising instance). 

Mongolists mostly have faith in the idea that today’s White Old Man is an adapted form of an ancient, natively Mongol shamanic complex. Still, Chinese origins for much of his iconography is relatively clear, while one academic, Brian Baumann, deserves attention for his arguments in favor of Indic priority in the form of the sage Agastya, often identified with the bright but seldom seen southern star Canopus. And for those who can’t imagine that Tibet could possibly be a place of origins, I’d ask them to read Toni Huber’s book I mentioned before.

If made to decide what the main point of it all ought to be, I think it is this: The inter-national, inter-cultural dimensions of the cult of longevity as we find instanced in so many parts of eastern Eurasia has had very complex interconnections reaching far back into the haze of prehistory. So far back I’m convinced we will never be able to single out a single culture as the one that best exemplifies it, or that would preserve it in its most pristine forms. As usual, I think reflections about possibilities can be more productive than closing off discussion with a conclusion. Now that it’s so close to lunchtime, might I suggest as starter the sautéed mushrooms? The lingzhi if you can find them.

Reading list

Fred Adelman, “The American Kalmyks,” Expedition, vol. 3, no. 4 (1961), pp. 26-33, with photographs by Carleton S. Coon. There is also a digital version of it.

Sanj Altan, “An Oirad-Kalmyk Version of the ‘White Old Man’ Sūtra found among the Archives of the Late Lama Sanji Rabga Möngke Bakši,” Mongolian Studies, vol. 29 (2007), pp. 13-26. This includes a translation of an Oirat Mongolian text, preserved within the Kalmuck community in Philadelphia, of the apocryphal sūtra listed below as Tibetan text no. 4.

Barbara Mary Annan, “Persistence and Renewal of Worship of the White Old Man in Western Mongolia: An Independent Folklore Research Project in Collaboration with Dr. Balchig Katuu.” The great value of this 16-page essay (including photos) is that it recounts a number of stories told from life about the persistence of Old White Man related beliefs among modern Mongolians, particularly those in the western regions. Available at academia.edu.

Anonymous, “Buddhists Build Their Own Church,” Life, no. 33 (November 10, 1952), pp. 97-98.

Robert Antony, “The Peach Tree” (posted on August 30, 2022).

Although I don’t know on what basis, it is sometimes said that peach trees were first domesticated, which is to say grown in orchards, on the slopes of the Kunlun Mountains, and if this is so it may serve as a kind of vindication of the Chinese myths. What is more certain is that the domestication of the peach took place in the general area of China (which specific spot it is difficult to determine).

Richard M. Barnhart, Peach Blossom Spring: Gardens and Flowers in Chinese Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York 1983). A gorgeously illustrated exhibition catalog on pre-18th-century paintings of garden scenes, with well written and evocative essays as well.

Brian Baumann, “The Legend of Mother Tārā the Green,” contained in: Vesna A. Wallace, ed., Sources of Mongolian Buddhism, Oxford University Press (Oxford 2020), pp. 361-382.  On p. 363:

“The White Ṛṣi in question is obviously a foreign deity in the Mongolian tradition that originated in Hindu Brāhmaṇism. There ‘White Ṛṣi’ is an epithet for the deity Agastya, personification of the star Canopus. It so happens that the White Old Man the White Ṛṣi turns into is a personification of the exact same star only in Chinese Daoist tradition. The text therefore appears to allude to the assimilation of Chinese Canopus allegory from heterodox Daoism into the Mongolian Buddhist pantheon, an act which appears to have taken place sometime in the mid eighteenth century. Shamanism is a synthetic ontology invented by Western scholars and ascribed to the Mongols irrespective of historical reality. The Legend of Green Tārā has nothing to do with it whatsoever.”

Brian Baumann, “The White Old Man.”  Paper given in Berkeley (2017).  Video on YouTube.

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Brian Baumann, “The White Old Man: Géluk-Mongolian Canopus Allegory and the Existence of God,” Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 62, no. 1 (2019), pp. 35-68.

Robert Beer, “Narrative Illustrations,” Chapter 4 in: The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs, Serindia (London 1999), pp. 94-100.  

What he calls narrative illustrations I call tableaus. The modern British artist supplies a Chinese style grouping called Shou-Lao, or the Six Symbols of Longevity (plate 58), as well as a Tibetan-style group he calls by the same name (plate 59). In both case he identifies the fruits as peaches. He says the Tibetan-style version is patterned after a drawing by the modern Tibetan Tsering Wangchub (Wangchug?) of Tashijong. It seems that the Chinese version is the British artist’s own creation, combining various elements perceived as being Chinese.

Wolfgang Bertsch, A Study of Tibetan Paper Money with a Critical Bibliography, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (Dharamsala 1997). 

This publication is a serious analytical study, the best I know about, and it doesn’t give indications of values given to banknotes by collectors. I understand that the 50-srang notes are actually much more valuable to them than the 100, counterintuitive as that may seem. Both have the Long-Life Man design on their versos.

Raoul Birnbaum, “Secret Halls of the Mountain Lords: The Caves of Wu-t'ai shan,” Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, vol. 5 (1989-1990), pp. 15-140. 

 

Àgnes Birtalan, “Ritual Texts Dedicated to the White Old Man with Examples from the Classical Mongolian and Oirat (Clear Script) Textual Corpora,” contained in: Vesna A. Wallace, ed., Sources of Mongolian Buddhism, Oxford University Press (Oxford 2020), pp. 270-293. The same author wrote an essay, “Cagān Öwgön – The White Old Man in the Leder Collections The Textual and Iconographic Tradition of the Cult of the White Old Man among the Mongols,” although I haven’t gotten access to it.

Stephen R. Bokenkamp, “The Peach Flower Font and the Grotto Passage,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 106, no. 1 (1986), pp. 65-77.

Suzanne E. Cahill, Transcendence & Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of the West in Medieval China, Stanford University Press (Stanford 1993). I think everyone agrees this is the best source available in English about the Queen Mother of the West and her residences.

Barbara Gerke, Long Lives and Untimely Deaths: Life-Span Concepts and Longevity Practices among Tibetans in the Darjeeling Hills, India, Brill (Leiden 2012).

Walther Heissig, The Religions of Mongolia, tr. by Geoffrey Samuel from the German edition of 1970, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London 1980), pp. 76-81. At p. 76 you can see how Tibetan rgan, ‘elder,’ and sgam, ‘wise clever,’ get crossed somehow:  

“The Mongols worship under the name of Tsaghan Ebügen (White Old Man) a deity of the herds and of fertility, who is also present with the same form of manifestation and the same functions among the Tibetans (sGam po dkar po)* and the Na-khi tribes of South-West China (Muan-llū-ddu-ndzi), and to whom East Asian parallels can be found in the Chinese Hwa-shang, Pu-tai Hoshang and the Japanese Jurojin, and a European parallel in the form of the bearded St. Nicholas. This is an instance of the veneration of the ‘Old Man’ as a personification of the creative principle.”

(*My note: Observe how the Tibetan spelling meaning “White Wise [Man]” is given rather than the spelling that means ‘White Old Man,’ but this confusion of near homonyms appears to be endemic, and may be indicative, which is not to say that old always means wise. In his iconography he is often characterized by a dragon-headed staff that Heissig understands as the shaman’s staff.)

Futaki Hiroshi, “Classification of Texts Related to the White Old Man,” contained in: H. Futaki & B. Oyunbilig, eds., Questiones Mongolorum Disputatae, Association for International Studies of Mongolian Culture (Tokyo 2005), pp. 35-46.  

Toni Huber, “An Obscure Word for ‘Ancestral Deity’ in Some East Bodish and Neighbouring Himalayan Languages & Qiang Ethnographic Records towards a Hypothesis,” contained in: Mark W. Post, et al., eds., Language & Culture in Northeast India & Beyond in Honor of Robbins Burling, Asia-Pacific Linguistics (Canberra 2015), pp. 162-181. 

On a curious name for the clan ancester deity: Gu-se-lang-ling, it appears in various forms including "Gurzhe," and is often spoken of as 'O-de-gung-rgyal. A less emphasized figure is Tshangs-pa or Tshangs-pa Dkar-po as a natively Tibetan figure (and not as a translation of Brahma!?). More on this in his 2020 book, vol. 1, pp. 80-93.

Toni Huber, “From Death to New Life: An 11th-12th Century Cycle of Existence from Southernmost Tibet: Analysis of Rnel dri 'dul ba, Ste'u & Sha slungs Rites, with Notes on Manuscript Provenance,” contained in: G. Hazod & W. Shen, eds., Tibetan Genealogies: Studies in Memoriam of Guge Tsering Gyalpo (1961-2015), China Tibetology Publishing (Beijing 2018), pp. 251-350.  

Toni Huber, Source of Life: Revitalisation Rites and Bon Shamans in Bhutan and the Eastern Himalayas, Austrian Academy of Sciences Press (Vienna 2020), in 2 volumes. While centered on extensive research into local traditions still current in the eastern half of Bhutan and the adjacent Mon-yul Corridor, issues of broad-ranging areal significance are drawn from them. Highly recommended.

Toni Huber, “The Iconography of gShen Priests in the Ethnographic Context of the Extended Eastern Himalayas, and Reflections on the Development of Bon Religion,” contained in: Franz-Karl Ehrhard & Petra Maurer, eds., Nepalica-Tibetica: Festgabe for Christoph Cüppers, International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Andiast 2013), vol. 1, pp. 263-294.  See especially pp. 266-267 for the ‘Great Wise Bat’ (Sgam-chen Pha-wang), a useful summary on the subject that also takes up an entire chapter in Toni’s monograph Source of Life.

Siegbert Hummel, “The White Old Man,” tr. by G. Vogliotti, The Tibet Journal, vol. 22, no. 4 (Winter 1997), pp. 59-70. Originally published in German in Sinologica, vol. 6 (1961), pp. 193-206. This discusses the age of his cult in Tibet as well as the exchange of identities between him and the Hoshang.

Caroline Humphrey, “A Note on the Kalmyk Tsagan Aav, the ‘White Grandfather’: Ritual and Iconography,” might be found posted at Kalmyk Heritage website.

Tenzin Jamtsho, “The Old Man ‘Mitshering’ at Nyima Lung Monastery,” Journal of Bhutanese Studies, vol. 28 (Summer 2013), pp. 90-99. 

This is mainly about the dance figure known to some Bhutanese as the Long-Life Man (Mi Tshe-ring) and to others as Rgyal-po Hwa-shang, suggesting he was both a king and a Chinese monk. In my experience he is always identified as being in some way Chinese, although within the context of the monastic dances he always pays his respects to Guru Rinpoche.

Luther G. Jerstad, Mani-Rimdu: Sherpa Dance-Drama, University of Washington Press (Seattle 1969), pp. 129-135:

Here we have a significant description of the Long-Life Man 0r “Mi-tshe-ring,” with photos of the same in the illustrations between pages 128 and 129.  The figures of the Long-Life Man and the Hoshang are combined together, something that happens with some frequency elsewhere, but here in the land of the Sherpas in Nepal, the comic figure takes precedence. He makes valiant attempts to perform simple acts of worship and offering, but fails hilariously each time. Interestingly enough, it is suggested that he was imported by the 13th Dalai Lama from Peking, with not the least mention of Mongolia.

Richard J. Kohn, Lord of the Dance: The Mani Rimdu Festival in Tibet and Nepal, State University of New York Press (Albany 2001), in particular “Dance Five: The Long-Life Man,” at pp. 199-204.

Among the Sherpas of Solu-Kumbu of Nepal, the Long Life Man performance is made up of lay religious practices badly performed by him and his acolytes including offerings of ritual scarves or khatags, prostrations, and, most significantly for our currency iconography.the water torma offering (chu-gtor).

Stephen Little with Shawn Eichman, Taoism and the Arts of China, The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago 2000).  At pp. 268-271 are some marvelous painted scrolls of the Shouxing and at pp. 276-277 a very nice one of Xiwangmu; her assistant holds up a bowl of peaches with the leaves attached, a thing we see sitting on the ground in our Tibetan banknote.

S. Mahdihassan, “The Patron-Gods of Health and of Longevity: Chinese, Greek and Indian,” Bulletin of the Indian Institute for the History of Medicine, vol. 19, no. 1 (January 1989), pp. 111-127. The pharmacology/alchemy of revitalization and longevity hasn’t been my main theme, but I do think this article can instigate important comparative reflections.

Jim R. McClanahan, “Journey to the West and Islamic Lore,” a webpage posted back in 2017, but updated earlier this year. Especially pertinent for the parts about the speaking peaches and the Waqwaq tree. Thanks to S.V.V. for suggesting the link.

Rene de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Tibetan Religious Dances: Tibetan Text and Annotated Translation of the 'Chams Yig, Paljor Publications (New Delhi 1997), pp. 82-84.  

As a figure in monastic masked dances, the Hashang is sometimes highly honored and in other cases ridiculed, depending on the audience and what they perceive him to be. It may be that his role in these dances in Tibetan regions is not very old, but introduced by the 13th Dalai Lama after his visit to Mongolia.  At p. 83:  

“Originally cagan öbö seems to have been a divinity of the pre-Buddhist Mongolian folk religion. He was apparently a clan deity and moreover a benevolent earth spirit protecting the household, the herds, and the pastures and granting rich harvests.”

Jeremy Roberts, Chinese Mythology A to Z [Second Edition], Chelsea House Publishers (New York 2010), p. 114:

“Shouxing (Shou Hsing, Shou-hsing Lao T’ou-tzu) The Chinese god of longevity, connected with a star located in the constellation of Argo. The star is known to many in the West as Canopus, the second-brightest star in the sky.”

Edward H. Schafer, “Empyreal Powers and Chthonian Edens: Two Notes on T’ang Taoist Literature,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 106, no. 4 (October 1986), pp. 667-677.  On the Peach Blossom Grotto and so on.

Karma Lekshe Tsomo, “Prayers of Resistance,” Nova Religio, vol. 20, no. 1 (August 2016), pp. 86-98.  At p. 92:

“On the second and sixteenth days of the lunar calendar, they go to the field to pray to the White Old Man, a practice of nature worship that predates Buddhism in Central Asian cultures. In this ritual, the women worship the master of nature and make prayers for peace, rain, and abundant crops, and to stave off natural disasters. They make a fire using butter and sheep fat, and present their requests for the welfare of both people and animals.”

Franciscus Verellen, “The Beyond Within: Grotto-Heavens (Dongtian) in Taoist Ritual and Cosmology,” Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, vol. 8 (1995), pp. 265-290.

Sissi Wachtel-Galor, John Yuen, John A. Buswell, and Iris F. F. Benzie, “Chapter 9: Ganoderma lucidum (Lingzhi or Reishi), a Medicinal Mushroom.” This is an extract from the 2nd (2011) edition of Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Offering Water Charity to the Pretas: Including the Daily Practice of Water Offering to Dzambhala, FPMT (Portland OR 2006), a booklet in 53 pages. 

+  +  +

Some Tibetan-language Manuscripts on the White Old Man

Rgan-po Dkar-po Bsangs, ‘Incense Offerings for the White Old Man.’  A 3-folio text, author given as Blo-bzang-bstan-'dzin ming-can.  TBRC no. W1NLM61. 

Rgan-po Dkar-po-la Mchod-gtor Bsangs G.yang.  An 11-folio ms.  It seems to bear the title Rgan-po Dkar-po Mdo [see the final line of fol. 11 verso], and it is immediately followed by interesting text we list next. TBRC no. W1NLM2000. 

Sa [dang] Chu'i 'Dul-bar Gnon-par Nus Mdo, ‘Sūtra of Power to Subjugate, to Tame, Earth and Water.’ It supplies titles in Chinese and Mongolian as well as Tibetan, and on its 2nd folio it supplies an iconography of the White Old Man.  It has all the marks of being a scriptural sūtra, although it is surely not of Indian origins, but locally produced, and for that reason of extraordinary interest. TBRC no. W1NLM2000. I found another version of it with a variant title in TBRC no. W1NLM1842: Sa dang Chu’i Bdal-bar Gnon-par Nus-pa’i Mdo, which I am tempted to translate, very tentatively, as Sūtra on the Power to Prevent Earth and Water from Exceeding their Bounds (there is a lot of variance in the Mongolian language titles and in the ways they have been Englished in the literature).  

Rgan-pa [D]kar-po [G]sol-mchod [note the subscribed Dkris, perhaps abbreviation for Bkra-shis]. A 7-folio ms. The colophon says it was written by Tho-go-rtse Tho-tho [clarified in a note as meaning Tho-go-co Khu-thug-tho] at the urging of the layperson (U-pa-shi) Sangs-rgyas-shes-rab.  TBRC no. W1NLM1590.  

Rgan-po Dkar-po’i Gsol-mchod. The folios are unnumbered, but you can see near the end that its composition is attributed to Padma-’byung-gnas, or Padmasambhava. Contained in TBRC no. W1NLM3102.  

Rgan-po Dkar-po’i Gsol-mchod Byas-tshul [=Bya-tshul]. A 9-folio ms.  Its colophon simply attributes it to Padma-’byung-gnas, or Padmasambhava. Contained in TBRC no. W1NLM2308.

 

To this list we ought to add

Srid-pa’i Pha-wang Lha-’bod Lha-’bod Lha Mi Bar-gyi Phrin Gyer, “A Divine Invocation for the Bat of Existence (Life/Evolution): A Chant Message between the Divine and Human,” contained in the scanned volume with the cover title Bsang-brngan Yid-bzhin-nor-bu sogs, pp. 159-174.  TBRC no. W4CZ332272.  I do find a Pha-wang Lha-’bod, “A Divine Invocation for the Bat,” text listed in a Bon scriptural canon catalog, actually twice, once accompanied by a text called Pha-wang-gi Zhu-ba, “The Questions of the Bat.” Inspired by Toni Huber’s monumental book, I thought I would write up a tiny web-log about these texts, but now I’m thinking someone just like you might be interested in working on them.

§  §  §

I’ve merely touched on the subject here, so I recommend a look back at “Star Water,” an earlier Tibeto-logic blog posted on September 15, 2017, where the Sage Agastya and connections to the Canopus star may become brighter than they are at the moment. Canopus is even entangled with Tibetan swimming festivals, as you’ll see. For more in-depth on the Agastya connection, see Baumann’s 2019 & 2020; Roberts’ 2010.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has an interesting page with beautiful artworks devoted to Chinese longevity symbols.

This blog and the one that came before it represents a blog-ified version of a paper with powerpoint given recently at a small conference entitled “Tibet & the Oirats — Oirat Cultural Legacy and the Earliest History of Tibetan and Mongolian Studies,” held on 14–15 November 2022. 

One last thing

Did Tibetans of early times know anything at all about a Peach Blossom Grotto that was supposed to lie at the northernmost edge of their plateau according to Chinese literature? I had my strong doubts, but no definite idea how to answer this question, so I did some creative searching in BDRC’s database. Unfortunately, all I could come up with is a 2006 publication from the PRC that gives to it a Tibetan name: “Thar-ldan Kham-bu ’Byung Tshal.”* I suppose what is interesting about this source is that it makes a direct comparison with Sems-kyi Nyi-zla (‘Mental Sun-Moon’?). I know that may not ring a bell, but that’s the fake back-translation (or rather phonetic transcription!?) into Tibetan of Shangri-la (as it is pronounced in modern Chinese) that was then used to justify choosing where Shangri-la as tourist destination would from then on be found. For that exceedingly weird story, see that 2016 Tibeto-logic blog entitled “Signs of Shangri-la.” Are we even surprised that Wikipedia-wallahs were totally suckered into the rabbit hole? They may never find their way out, and meanwhile human history may never recover from the altered time line unless... Look here.

(*I thought to unpack this translation: Clearly Kham-bu is the Tibetan word for “peach,” and 'Byung indicates “origin,” so “peach origin.” But Tshal means “Grove.” Did the translator choose a Tibetan word meaning “grove” for the Chinese term we translate into English as “grotto”? A grove is not a grotto... Oh, and Thar-ldan means “Having Freedom,” right?)