Bagel, Baklava and Bag-leb

 

I suppose this to be the original bagel,
even if in Turkish it’s called simit.

I won’t waste breath apologizing for the frontispiece. Still, I wish I hadn’t put it up there. It’s making me drool... crunchy, salty yet soft inside, and I can’t have one if only because of the gluten. This is, in case you don’t recognize it, a Turkish-style bagel called simit. You probably won’t find them among the items called bagels in your local convenience store. You might have to ask.

You could have already guessed what we’re aiming for when you first glanced at the title of today’s blog, so I’ll keep it short. A bagel is not a baklava, but they could share some etymological roots, it seems to me. Could this also be true of the Tibetan food term bag-leb?

To begin with, as you may know there are several culinary invention myths associated with the Turkish siege of Vienna. Let’s skip over the milk-coffee, the coffee-house, and the croissant — the croissant is supposedly based on the Turkish/Islamic crescent — and go straight to the matters that interest us right now, the bagel and baklava.  It is usual to find a Germanic root meaning 'round' behind bagel, or just to assume the Yiddish origins of the word, an automatic assumption (likely to be accepted without investigation) just because it is so widely regarded as a Jewish food. But legend says it was invented by a Viennese baker to commemorate victory over the Turkish forces, based on the shape of the stirrups of the Polish cavalry. I’m already confused about what counts as real history or not, and in danger of making matters worse, but I believe the bread item itself, or should I say items, were of Turkish origins, the naming based in confusing which of the newly introduced doughy items was which. Tell me if I’m wrong.

Baklava you must know is made of super-thin pastry layers and filled with nuts and honey. It has a clear Turkish name, first borrowed into European languages in the mid-17th century.  But just remember what a huge territory was ruled by the Ottomans then and since and you will know where to find the places where baklava is well known as part of the national cuisine. They have different styles of making them, of course, and tend to pronounce it with an accent on a different syllable. I like to say it with an initial accent. But if the Ottomans donated it to the Austrians at that point, there is still no telling how much history was already behind it. Most think it is quite ancient, guessing it is Roman or even Babylonian, it is difficult to find agreement.

There are even those who argue that the word, if not the sticky sweet itself, goes back to the time when Turkic speakers neighbored Mongolian speakers in the Orkhon River valley of Mongolia, far before the Turkish migrations. I haven’t found any sense of consensus on this.

Then, during the long centuries of emigration and expansion into Asia Minor, the Turkish people absorbed a tremendous number of words from neighboring languages, particularly Arabic and Persian, so much so that Ottoman Turkish got complicated. So it might not be possible to be sure of the word’s ultimate origins. I know I can’t tell you, even if I’m working on expanding my Turkish vocabulary again these days.

So now that we’ve managed to reach so little certainty on those first two words, let’s see what we can do with the third, the common Tibetan word bag-leb for ‘bread’.

Some people think, mistakenly as we will see in a moment, that bag-le-ba is just another spelling (perhaps the more correct spelling?) for Tibetan bag-leb.

A TBRC search of bag-le-ba reveals that in its 6 occurrences it is 5 times used as a regional or country name with its own peculiar script (or is it the script only that has the name?).  In one instance only is it a type of cloth (perhaps a cloth named after the place?). To be safe, I tried searching for bag-le-pa, and the 4 occurrences there point to it being a fabric. And the most likely solution to this, too, is to see it as meaning Pahlava.*

(*There are some country lists contained in Tibetan translations of scriptures where Pahlava appears in the forms Pa-hu-pa and Ba-hu-ba, both of these I think being based on misreadings of a more exact transcription that also occurs: Pa-hla-ba.) 

But, and this seems like a large but, in those cases where a fabric is concerned, it is possible these are all references to cloth made from bark, and this draws us into an Indic/Sanskritic etymology for bag-le-ba that likely has no connection to Pahlava.

Paul Pelliot, in his legendary Notes on Marco Polo, suggests it may be explained by a Prakrit form similar to Bengali bāklā, 'bark.'  The Sanskrit form is valkala. Emeneau wrote a piece on bark clothing, so you can read about that for yourself in case you have trouble believing in it.

In short, we can now forget about bag-le-ba. When you encounter this spelling it never means bread.

So now that we have eliminated this touch of confusion with the Persian realm and its script as well as cloth made of bark, we can settle down to the word bag-leb. Bag-leb is, as we said, the quotidian Tibetan word today for bread. It may be true what Laufer says, I cannot eliminate the possibility that it’s a two-word expression meaning flatbread. Still, I think it could well be another example of what I call a ”Tibetanization,” a borrowing that slowly and unconsciously naturalizes the foreign word by spelling it in a form that lends itself to a Tibetan meaning. And this is especially likely in multisyllabic words in my experience. See our earlier blog about Turkish and Mongolian loans in Tibetan.

Indeed, it is the case that as far as there is such a thing as traditional Central Tibetan bread,* it would to be in the form of approximately three inches in diameter, & maybe 3/4" high, rounds, more along the lines of a thick pancake or flattened roll than a loaf of bread, and usually made with brown wheat flour. In my experience the better ones always were.

(*Not everyone will appreciate the note of skepticism, but I have yet to run into a bona fide pre-20th-century usage of the word bag-leb, and all my searches for early instances have been in vain. You can go to TBRC and try searching for it yourself. But wait,  I spoke too soon. I do seem to find one usage in a medical work preserved for us in the Tanjur written by an Indian physician Raghunātha (Ra-gu-nā-tha/ར་གུ་ནཱ་ཐ་) who visited Tibet sometime after 1656. This is significant! I do wonder if the Indian writer intended an Indian flatbread, roti or chapati or the like, when he used the word. It seems to be difficult to find evidence for these Indian breads in pre-Mughal literature.)

So finally, I ought to be ashamed of myself. After all, I’ve invited you over to visit from a great distance for a much-kneaded discussion over a cup of tea only to offer you an empty, or very nearly empty, plate of answers. So now it’s your turn. Tell me what makes sense to you.

°

Testimonies of some highly reputed scholars of past generations

M.B. Emeneau, “Barkcloth in India—Sanskrit Valkala,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 82, no. 2 (April 1962), pp. 167-170. I believe this is the single best discussion on this important topic, in case you’re as curious as I think you should be. Surely you are thinking, Is it comfortable? Can it breathe?

Berthold Laufer, “Loan-Words in Tibetan,” T'oung Pao, vol. 17, no. 1 (1916), pp. 403-552, at p. 532, footnote 1:  

The Tibetan word pa-le (“bread”), however, which Dalgado (l.c. p. 120) derived from Bell’s Manual of Colloquial Tibetan and with an interrogation-mark placed among the derivatives from Portuguese pão does not belong to the Romance languages. It is written bag-leb, both elements being genuine Tibetan words, bag meaning “flour, pap, porridge” and leb, “flat.”

Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, vol. 1, p. 465:

...it shows once more that the translators of the Mahāvyutpatti from Tibetan into Chinese often adopted arbitrary interpretations : hua-mien, ,,cotton”, is given as a translation of Skr. vakkali, Tib. bag-le-ba. But the would-be Skr. vakkali can be nothing else than a Prākrit form of Skr. valkala, ,,bark garment” (cf. Pali vakkala and vakkali), and Tib. bag-le-ba seems to be an adjectival form of bag-le, itself based on a Prākrit form similar to Beng. bāklā, ,,bark” (on which cf. J. Bloch, La formation de la langue marathe, 404; but bag-le-ba may have been contaminated by Bag-le-pa or Bag-le-ba, ,,of Balkh”).  

NOTE of mine: just a comment on those last words, I think Pelliot introduced an unnecessary confusion with Balkh. Balkh is represented in Tibetan sources in the forms Bag-la and Sbal-kha. Heed the metathesis, it happens, especially when liquids are involved.

Stig Wikander, “A Central Asian Loanword in Arthaśāstra,” contained in: J.C. Heesterman et al., eds., Pratidânam: Indian, Iranian & Indo-European Studies Presented to Franciscus Bernardus Jacobus Kuiper on his Sixtieth Birthday, Mouton (The Hague 1968), pp. 270-274. I haven’t made reference to this, and in fact added it here only in July of 2023. I’m not sure of its conclusion, and need to think about it some more. Still in the passage he discusses deer, sable and other skins that might be kept in a royal treasury, and all are qualified as bāhlaveya, or having to do with bāhlava, which S.W. takes to mean ‘from Balkh.’ I’m tempted to think it means cloth made of skin or bark, just that I can’t guarantee it. An Indologist could be helpful here.

On the web

For a discussion on the bagel, look here. Search for yourself and find a lot more. I regret that I didn’t read this book before posting my nonsense: The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread, by Maria Belinska. You can see some of it at Googlebooks if you look for it.

For a recipe with clear directions for making bag-leb (བག་ལེབ་), go to this page at Yolangdu website. You should at the very least go there for its photograph of what ordinary Central Tibetan bread looks like. Yolangdu is a commercial site in the sense that they offer travel services as well as a cookbook that can be purchased. I am not advertising their paid services — you are right now reading a non-commercial blog — just linking this particular page with its recipe generously offered to the world without any price attached.

For a trip around the world showing the many forms that bread can take, I think this page is the greatest: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/gallery/worlds-best-breads-travel-photos/?gallery=38. It has photos of every type mentioned in this blog, including Tibetan baleb and Turkish simit.

Some books about Tibetan food

Rinjing Dorje (Rig-’dzin-rdo-rje), Food in Tibetan Life, with illustrations by the author, Prospect Books (London 1985). 

Not just useful for its recipes, this has impressive cultural information on such matters as table manners, joking and swearing. So I recommend reading it even if you don’t like food. My older brother once borrowed the book, and swore that he did his best to follow its directions for making Tibetan beer and nearly died when he tried it, perhaps because he took seriously the suggestion that eagle shit and aconite might be used in the yeast starter. But my dear brother, rest his soul, always had a flair for the dramatic, knew how to embroider his travel stories to ensure maximum impact. I never had that useful ability myself.

Bod-kyi Nyer-mkho'i Zas-rigs Tshig-mdzod (“Tibetan Traditional Food and Drink Dictionary”), Kokonor People's Printing Press (Xining 2000). 

Perhaps you can view it here (www.tbrc.org/#!rid=W20183). The brief introduction and postscript can be read in English. Each entry gives definitions in Tibetan, Chinese and English, although it is often the case that the Tibetan definitions are much longer and more detailed.  Notice that the late famous Namkhai Norbu was involved in the making of this reference work, but his name is given as Mr. Na Ka Nuo Bu, “the famous Tibetan scholar of Italian Oriental University.” The entry for bag-leb defines it as a name for flat go-re, which is interesting, even if the English translates with the technically incorrect “Baked bread.” Looking at the entry for go-re, it says it is the general word for any kind of bread, and then continues with three pages of entries for different types. I think the basic meaning of go-re is simply round, with extended meaning of completeness, while in the kitchen context the best translation might be bun.

Bod Zas Bdud-rtsi’i Bum-pa (‘The Vase of Ambrosia that is Tibetan Food’), Tibet People’s Printing Press (Lhasa 1993). 

Perhaps you can view it here (https://www.tbrc.org/#!rid=W4CZ309050). I wouldn’t much recommend this recipe book for most people. There is hardly anything in it for me since I’ve reverted to the vegetarianism of my younger years and have discovered a need to stay gluten free. Well, there is one very simple recipe for honey bread (sbrang thud) that is sounding good, although I think I’ll make it with teff. You know, I once enjoyed fresh croissants from the French Bakery in Lhasa, proving true that line of a song, “It’s a whole world after all!”

And a final note for myself (July 29, 2021)

I ought to think more about one occurrence of a region called Bag-le. This is in the discussion of earthquakes found in the omens text by Garga (Derge Tanjur, Toh. no. 4321).  It is mentioned just before Persia, and seems to be described as located in Tokharia (the western one no doubt, not the eastern). It’s part of a longer list of countries, and looks like this with country names turned red:  tho gar gyi yul bag le dang  /    bar sig [~par sig] gi yul dang  /... That means that Bag-le probably means Balkh (Skt. Bāhlika), so I should go back and apologize to Pelliot for doubting him.

The Realm of Dharmas, Chapter Three: Metaphors of Bodhicitta

 

CHAPTER THREE

METAPHORS OF BODHICITTA

[Having shown the nature of Bodhicitta, now the nature where all dharmas are gathered into the Great Completion in Bodhicitta’s continuity is explained.]

Absolutely  everything  is  gathered,  subsumed  in  Bodhicitta.

Because no dharma whatsoever is excluded from    Bodhicitta.

all dharmas are of the nature of                                      Bodhicitta.

˚

[These three things are to be known for Bodhicitta— its simile, the significance of its simile, and its signs.  First, the simile—]

The SIMILE of Bodhicitta is “It is like the sky.”

In Citta there is no root cause and nothing that produced it and

so it is unpredictable, beyond communicating, beyond the sphere of thought.

“Sky Realm” is just an illustrative metaphor

which is not to say, “The metaphor itself is it!”

How then would the thought and expression lead to the metaphor’s meaning?

It is to be understood as an illustration of Bodhicitta’s pure nature.

˚

The SIGNIFICATION of the sky-equal self-awareness

   that Bodhicitta is

is   that it is no thing for thought,

       beyond illustration and communication.  It

is   self-luminous,          unmoving—spacious receptive centre

       of Sheer Luminosity.     It

is        Dharmabody—spacious centre of Bodhi Heart.

˚

[Now an uncompromisingly presented statement on the nature of Awareness-Bodhicitta which is sky-like pure, not belittled and devoid of partial definitions.]

Its SIGNS:  From its special powers dawns everything there is.

When they dawn, there is no ground for dawning, no agent of dawning.

Even just the word ‘dawning’, if you think about it,

is sky-like.

When you comprehend the non-preferential Great Levelness

in one fell swoop, precisely

that is the receptive centre of the spread-out-to-the-limit

beyond subject/object dichotomies.

[The manner of dawning in the Awareness continuity is unimpeded like the reflection of the sky in clear waters.  It dawns as various things, but even as they seem to dawn, in truth there is no ground or agent for dawning.  So they dissolve in the Void, pass over the pass into the nonpreferential Dharmabody.  By the statement, “nonpreferential Great Levelness,” the Mind Proper may be understood as sky-like.]

˚

[The significance of that is subsumed in the Dharma Proper without centre or circumference.]

Uncompromisingly presented illustrations are made by way of simile,

significance and signs

all the way up to self-engendered Full Knowledge and Dharma Proper.

In these sky-like Three Great Rays personified,

absolutely everything is included.  Their nature is undifferentiated

and unbreached.

In the Realm womb of the great vast level beam,

everything is totally levelled, with no sooner/later,

no good/bad.

This is the meaning behind Vajra Being and Total Good.

[The All Making King says,

In order to actually realize its meaning…

the simile is to consider it as sky-like;

the significance is the unproduced Dharma Proper;

and the signs are Mind Proper unimpeded.]

˚

[That Awareness is taught to be like the essence of the sun.]

Bodhicitta is like the essence of the sun.    For,

in its own continuity is Sheer Luminosity, totally uncompounded.

No dharmas cloud it.

It is naturally-arrived-at by passing right through.

No dharmas diffuse it.

It is the undistracted Dharma Proper continuity.

˚

[An expansion on the preceding verse.]

The Three Bodies are beyond inclusion and exclusion:

from the Void—the Dharmabody,

from the shining—the Perfect Assets Body,

and the ray-bearing Emanation Body.

When their naturally-arrived-at qualities are totally taken on,

they are unclouded by the darknesses of faults and injuries.  They are

one—no sooner/later, no past/present/future, no transforming/transporting;

one—embracing all Buddhas and sentient beings.  This

one    is called, “self-engendered Bodhicitta.”

[Dharmabody is the void part of Mind Proper.

Perfect Assets Body is the shining part.

Emanation Body is the dawning part.

But even while saying these things, substantially

you get no recognizable dharmas at all…and the underlying meaning of those statements is that past, present & future are naturally-arrived-at without transforming or transporting.  Because, in the manner of an essence   it embraces all sangsara/nirvana,  the Sugata Essence vastly embraces all animate beings.]

˚

[From the same continuity, appearances and becoming are shown to dawn.]

Bodhicitta’s special powers are whatever dawns,

all the various appearances of birth and motion,

material and vital, appearances and becoming,

realization and lack of realization.

[The nature of Awareness is like a mirror, and the special powers in its continuity are like mirrored images.  This is how it is the basis for the dawning of everything.]

˚

[Apart from their mere dawning, they have no nature.]

While all these appear, there are no several natures.

Like mirage water, dreams and echoes;

like phantoms, reflections, Gandharva cities

and faulty vision, they have no existence whatsoever.

There is no basis for their appearances.  They are

mere temporary perceptions

in between which the Dharmabody  may be realized.

[Just as dreams do not come when you have not gone to sleep or after you wake up, but rather in the depths of sleep, even so, the erroneous appearances of sangsara occur neither in the time of the first Dharma Proper nor when the goal of nirvana is achieved in the end.]

˚

[Showing that those appearances are unmoved from Dharma Proper.]

Out of the nature of naturally-arrived-at Bodhicitta

unimpeded play, the sangsara-nirvana magical display, comes.

When all those projections are comprehended in one fell

swoop in the Realm,

you may be sure that they have never ever moved from the primordial

continuity.

˚

[Because everything is completed in the Realm, it is taught to be Dzogchen, the Great Completion.]

Here all is the Bodhicitta continuity.

One complete, all is complete.     The unmade significance is

complete.

The nature naturally completed,

the self-engendered Full Knowledge,     is

complete.

˚

[In the substance of Awareness which is not-at-all-arrived-at, everything dawns.  Therefore, they dawn without impediment out of the continuity of the unproduced.]

Bodhicitta, whether visible or invisible,

isn’t in external/internal or sangsara/nirvana dharmas.

But yet, out of its special powers, by the nature of motion,

appearances/becoming and sangsara/nirvana

dawn as the play of the myriad things.

˚

[Since the substance of Awareness is not-at-all-arrived-at, it is beyond appearances and void.  For what is essentially not a subject for discussion, the occurrence of deceptive appearances arising in its continuity has not been experienced.]

From their mere dawning alone,

forms of void nature appear.

From the birthless they appear to be born.

From the very time of their appearing to be born, there was nothing

birthed.

From the unended things may appear to be ended.

But there is no ending.

Forms of void illusion appear.

From their abiding alone

no dharmas of abiding exist.

There is no basis for making them abide, only

a comingless, goingless continuity.

However things appear, they are not thereby arrived-at.

So it is enough to say just, “They have no nature.”

˚

[The meaning is summed up in the simple fact that no matter how things appear, they have no nature thereby.]

Those appearances may dawn themselves from the special powers,

but “interdependent origination” is an exact term for expressing their

nature.

From the very time they appear to dawn from the special powers,

there are no possibilities for preferences, no side taking as to whether

they do or do not dawn.

So ‘special powers’ itself is a mere term of no substance.

Everything has always never

never moved the least bit away from

the untransformed and untransported

continuity that Bodhicitta is.

 — Return to Chapter One

Proceed to Chapter Four

Puzzle Solved! Another Padampa Metaphor for Counterintuitive Klesha Therapeutics Identified

The White Cliffs of Dover

Photo by Piotr Kuczynski, 2005. Creative Commons.

 

“[There is something that] thoroughly dries out when placed in water.”   

—Padampa.

Sometimes when all your efforts fail, with time and patience the answer can come knocking on your door, dropping by unexpectedly without calling first. If you doubt this could happen, read on...

 

I could easily count the number of times a bit of chemical knowledge has actually helped me in life and in Tibetology on fewer fingers than I have on one hand. If I’m exaggerating, it isn’t by much. Once I was excited to discover that some kinds of adhesives used to glue labels on bottles, bottles that you would like to reuse, can be removed with ease if you rub them with oil. For this knowledge, and of course for a lot more, I am indebted to the love of my life, who once did a master’s thesis in Chemistry before turning to more worthy pursuits in the humanities.  

Another time I was surprised to find out that a verse in a very famous work by Sakya Pandita, in order to achieve the most basic understand of it, requires knowledge of one remarkable chemical reaction marked by a dramaticly unexpected change of color. I talked about that earlier (reference below). 

This time let’s talk about a different example, drawn from a similar genre of Tibetan and Indian Buddhist literature. Somehow the two (or 3) chemistry experiments have a surprising connector running between them that we might someday understand better, if you decide to go into it more deeply. A rougher understanding may suffice for now.

This may beg for a little background. Padampa himself and the Zhijé Collection were frequent subjects of these Tibeto-logic blogs, so I assume you know of them. There is a particular one among the minor dialogues (zhu-lan) of the ZC that never received any attention during the first 36 years after its publication.* Like the others it is supposed to serve as a record of Kunga’s dialogues with Padampa in Tingri in the earliest decades of the 12th century. If it doesn’t truly have the form of a dialogue as many of the others do, it may be due to the reorganization of Kunga’s notes according to subject, done by Kunga’s student Patsab. 

(*We might say that not even in Tibetan sources is it ever mentioned to the best of my ways of knowing, if it were not for one commentarial passage of ca. 1200 by Tenné in the ZC, its content paraphrased in Martin's essay, p. 205).

This minor dialogue was devoted to an immensely intriguing subject: a counterintuitive method employed by Padampa, incidentally making use of an equally intriguing Tibetan term gya-log that can be defined, understood and translated only with difficulty, as it occurs in medical and Dzogchen contexts (with the spelling ja-log) as well.  At the time the article came out, only one version of the text had been made available in published form. However, just a few weeks ago an alternative manuscript version (unpublished!) showed up in BDRC, so now we can at least check and verify the readings in a way that could not be done before (the edited text is appended below).

So let’s go back to those mysterious words of Padampa we opened with:

“[There is something that] thoroughly dries out when placed in water.”

 

Without stalling for dramatic effect, right away I can tell you, and even try to demonstrate my claim, that Padampa is talking about lime, and by lime I mean the mineral, not the fruit. This occurred to me for the first time ever only a few days ago, when my eyes fell on an article by Jürgen Hanneder in the Indo-Iranian Journal (listed below). I am myself 100% sure of it, but since I assume you are not convinced I would first ask you to watch a free online video. It will make you a believer in a minute and a half. Before we are done I expect we will all gain a new respect for the meaning of sub-lime-ation.

Just go here and watch the video entitled 

“Quicklime and Water Reaction.” 

If the link doesn’t work for you do a video search using these or similar words.

The website will immediately suggest more videos about lime, and you might want to watch some of those, too.

Trying to bring this blog to an quick end, I will just give my translations of two verses that may or may not directly foreground Padampa’s mysterious line about counterintuitive methods he calls gya-log. For the first of them, from a work put together by Ravigupta, I’d like to ask you to read Hanneder’s excellent essay. I have no arguments with it worth mentioning, and I much recommend its arguments and translations. If only to avoid the remote possibility of copyright infringement, I give my own very differently sounding translation, emphasizing its Buddhist technical terms as understood in Tibetan Buddhist sources. As a Tibeto-centric eccentric I am unlikely to know better.

 

It is just like the quicklime that becomes slaked lime,

when you sprinkle it with water it bursts into pieces.

So it is when the water of contemplative absorption is sprinkled on

the afflictive emotional states (kleshas) in their latent forms,

incinerated in the fire of transcendent insight.

I’m not very attached to my hasty paraphrase/translation of what has to be regarded as a rather technical (on both Buddhist and industrial sides of the equation) verse, and invite corrections. I was no doubt too much influenced by the Tibetan. I attempt to achieve greater clarity in separating out the object of comparison (my lines 1-2) from the thing to be compared (my lines 3-5). I take the entire verse to be an example of what Indian poetics (kāvya) knows as sahokti (ལྷནཅིག་བརྗོད་པ་) something like two coordinated paralleled passages (A, B and C individually bear comparison with X, Y and Z; i.e., A=X, B=Y, and C=Z). I turned the original order on its head. The quicklime is made by fire to begin with (this part of the process seems to be as missing in the verse as it is presupposed), and fire reappears at the end of the process after mixing with water, although here it is the explosiveness and not the heat that is emphasized in the first place. I take the rdo-bsregs, literally burnt [lime-]stone, to mean the quicklime (calcium oxide), while rdo-thal (Skt. sudhā) means slaked lime (calcium hydroxide), if I’m not entirely confused, if I’ve only succeeded in fomenting confusion in the world, as if that would be a worthy accomplishment in a world so full of it.

Where was I? Not to pretend to do any thinking for you, here is the other verse I promised to supply, one by Āryadeva, although it was supplied already long ago (Martin’s essay, p. 208, with refs. to other translations):

When mustard is mixed with mineral powders

a different color is produced.

In a similar way the wise know the Dharma Realm

through the workings of wisdom and means.

Actually, instead of mustard the translation ought to read curcumin, and in place of mineral powders, slaked lime (or a dilution of the same known as lime water. And do notice that another verse here makes reference to the alchemical aim of aurifaction).

To explain this verse, go to the link by clicking on this title:

Why does turmeric water turn red after adding slaked lime ?

Hint: If the link doesn't work try doing your own video search using some kind of wording like “calcium hydroxide” (or slaked lime) combined with “curcumin” (or turmeric). That should work. If you prefer to read about it, go to Karthikeyan’s article, listed below.

Despite some differences, this chemistry experiment more closely resembles the one in Sakya Pandita’s verse. So arguably we can now point out three distinct chemical processes or experiments used in Buddhist spirituality as symbols or metaphors, call them whichever you like. This ought to carry meaning for Buddhism and science interchanges that are taking place today, you think? What I suppose I mean is, we ought to find out more about how material transformational processes of various kinds — physics, chemistry, you name it — may or may not track with internal psycho-spiritual transformations. The results of such studies ought to be enlightening. 

On the other hand, Padampa in the same text promises, on the premise that internal fixes of the meditative kinds result in “objective” change out there in the world (and vice versa, too; external applications may provoke inner changes):

རིག་པ་དུམ་བུར་མཐུད་ན། ཐ་མལ་སྣང་བ་འགྱུར།

 

which is to say, 

 

“If you piece together the puzzle of awareness,

ordinary everyday appearances are transformed.”

 

§  §  §

Publication Alerts

Dorn Carran, John Hughes, Alick Leslie, & Craig Kennedy, “A Short History of the Use of Lime as a Building Material beyond Europe and North America,” International Journal of Architectural Heritage, vol. 6, no. 2 (2011), pp. 117-146. This is cited in Hanneder's essay, but notice it is available online without payment as a PDF, all you have to do is Schmoogle it.

Michael Hahn, Ravigupta's Āryākoṣa: A Contribution to the Early History of Indian Niti Literature, ed. by Lata Mahesh Deokar & Johannes Schneider, Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi 2019). I haven’t actually seen this yet, although I’ve seen the set of articles that were published during the author’s lifetime and this posthumously published work was based on them.

Jürgen Hanneder, “Lime Burning as a Religious Metaphor in Buddhist India,” Indo-Iranian Journal, vol. 64 (2021), pp. 1-9.  This may be available online through a subscribing institution.

T. Karthikeyan, “Why Does Turmeric Water Mixed with Quicklime Turn Red?” The Hindu (September 9, 2010):

“Quicklime is chemically a strong alkali (base). Hence, exposure of turmeric powder or turmeric water to quick lime neutralizes any of the two phenolic protons and triggers the conversion of the original benzenoid structure with yellow appearance into a quinonoid structure with red colour. Red colour has higher wavelength than yellow. That is why turmeric water, when mixed with quicklime, turns red.”

D. Martin, “Crazy Wisdom in Moderation: Padampa Sangyé”s Use of Counterintuitive Methods in Dealing with Negative Mental States,” contained in: Y. Bentor and M. Shahar, eds, Chinese and Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism, Brill (Leiden 2017), pp. 193-214. Maybe available online.

Negi dictionary — J.S. Negi, Tibetan Sanskrit Dictionary (Bod skad dang legs sbyar gyi tshig mdzod chen mo), Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies (Sarnath 1993-2005), in 16 volumes.

ZCK — Zhi-byed-kyi Chos-skor. TBRC no. W3CN25705, posted in 2021.

Zhijé Collection (ZC) —   Kun-dga', et al., The Tradition of Pha Dampa Sangyas:  A Treasured Collection of His Teachings Transmitted by T[h]ug[s]-sras Kun-dga', Kunsang Tobgey (Thimphu, Bhutan 1979), in 5 volumes, with English preface by Barbara N. Aziz.

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On the other chemistry experiment found in a Sakya Pandita verse (verse 15 or 17 depending on the edition), see an earlier blog with the title “Tantra's Ineluctible Logic,” posted November 8, 2013.

You can find an even earlier discussion of the same Sakya Pandita verse in “Monkey Paw, Salty River,” posted August 1, 2009, but do pay attention to the comments section.  

The original verse (there really aren’t textual variants worth mentioning) reads like this:

བློ་གྲོས་ལྡན་པ་གཉིས་བགྲོས་ན།།

བློ་གྲོས་ལེགས་པ་གཞན་འབྱུང་སྲིད།།

ཡུང་བ་དང་ནི་ཚ་ལ་ལས།།

ཁ་དོག་གཞན་ཞིག་སྐྱེ་བར་འགྱུར།།

On removing stubborn adhesives with ease, see this:

How to Remove Sticker Residues.

Afterwords

There are two refs. listed under "rdo-thal" in the Negi dictionary, but both use it in the meaning of ‘plaster’.  I have a funny story to tell about plaster from the Gunla month ‘birthday of all the caityas’ celebration in Nepal. We were with our best Newar friend, a real scholar of Buddhism named S.R.S., when a European, another real scholar guaranteed to know a lot about caityas came along. He was there with his Newar assistant. I thought to introduce the two of them, knowing they had interests in common. But that idea was forever abandoned when the European shouted to his assistant, “Stop them! Beat them!” There was really only one person he could have meant, a rather old ethnically Tibetan man was hopping from one stone caitya to the next, anointing each of them with a dollop of whitewash. I assure you, no beating took place, and the old man disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. The European turned to us apologetically, telling us that the Newars take such good care of their stone caityas, but then Tibetans come along and make them dirty. My search for slaked lime (read further on below) turned up one interesting passage that justifies the whitewashing of caityas as an act of reverence, in fact, as a way of keeping them clean. (Tibeto-logicians can check for themselves the Vinaya passage I’ve paste in later, located with the help of a BDRC search, of course.) You can see the whitewash all around the great Stūpa of Swayambhunath in our frontispiece. For such giant stūpas wealthy donors from time to time put up the necessary funding to have this whitewashing done. But if you’ve visited the Newar Bahals in Kathmandu you would also know that some of the smaller sized stone caityas have become like white ghosts, irregularly rounded blobs of white stuff so unrecognizable that some mistake them for Shiva lingams. Since many of these caityas have Buddha Images in niches on their sides, often a lot of trouble is taken to keep them, and only them, from being covered over by the plaster. But I have seen cases where you would need a flashlight, or most of your forearm inserted into the hole, to know anything was there at all. 

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And another interesting use of plaster for purposes of spirituality is the practice of voluntary solitary confinement. In this form of retreat, the door is supposed to be plastered shut, and only opened when the set period of time for mantra repetition and visualizations of divine forms of Buddha  is completed, often a period of 3 or even 9 years. This has a distinctly different meaning than the English expression ‘getting plastered’ has today.

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Which reminds me, if you are in an experimental mood, you might try a search of Kanjur and Tanjur texts for “rdo-thal.” When I did this using the Vienna site it revealed about 16 results in the Kanjur, one of them from the Vinaya* passage just mentioned, with lime plaster being used on stūpas as an adornment (Newars apparently still practice this, not just Tibetans). 

(*The Vinaya text is this one:  Vinayottaragrantha ('Dul ba gzhung bla ma).  Tôh. no. 7, vol. NA, folios 1v.1-92r.7; vol. PA, folios 1v.1-313r.5.)

In general, the Kanjur materials seem to know rdo-thal primarily as a substance to be smeared on something as part of the building process, whether on walls, artificial ponds, or stūpas. The Blessed One himself had advice about construction materials used in making stūpas.

Turning to the Tanjur, matters get more complicated as there are 70 results.  So if you are ready to deal with all of that information have an enjoyable time with it.

Note: For what I call the Vienna site (rKTs), check our sidebar under the section entitled "Scriptural Searches." I send you there because it links alternative search sites, and not just the one from Vienna.

rKTs n°: - D3995

རྟེན་ཅིང་འབྲེལ་བར་འབྱུང་བ་དང་པོའི་རྣམ་པར་དབྱེ་བ་བཤད་པ

mdo 'grel (mdo), chi 1b-61a (vol. 115), page. 25B

དེའི་དབང་གིས་ཀྱང་བྱ་བ་དག་ལ་འཇུག་གོ། །དེ་མེད་པར་ཡང་རིས་མཐུན་པ་བཞིན་དུ་མངོན་པར་འགྲུབ་པ་མ་ཡིན་གྱི། གཟུགས་མེད་པར་ཡང་གཟུགས་མེད་པ་དག་ཏུ་མི་མངོན་པར་འགྲུབ་པར་འགྱུར་རོ། །མིང་གི་རྒྱུན་ལ་བརྟེན་ནས་རིས་མཐུན་པ་གཞན་དག་ཏུ་སྔོན་མ་བྱུང་བའི་གཟུགས་ཀྱི་རྒྱུན་ལེན་་པར་བྱེད་ཀྱི། གཟུགས་ཀྱི་རྒྱུན་ནི་སྔོན་མ་བྱུང་བའི་མིང་གི་རྒྱུན་ལེན་པར་བྱེད་པ་མ་ཡིན་ནོ། །གང་ཡང་འབྱུང་བ་རྒྱུར་བྱས་པའི་གཟུགས་སྐྱེས་པ་དག་ཇི་ལྟར་རྣམ་པར་ཤེས་པའི་རྐྱེན་གྱིས་ཡིན་ཞེ་ན། གལ་ཏེ་འབྱུང་བ་དང་འབྱུང་བ་ལ་བརྟེན་པའི་གཟུགས་རྣམས་ལས་ཀྱིས་ཡོངས་སུ་བསྒོས་པའི་་རྣམ་པར་ཤེས་པ་ལ་བརྟེན་ནས་སྐྱེ་ན། འདིར་འགལ་བ་ཅི་ཡོད། འབྱུང་བ་དང་ཐ་དད་པ་མེད་པར་དེ་སྐྱེ་བ་ན་འབྱུང་བ་ལས་གྱུར་པ་ཞེས་བྱ་སྟེ། དེ་འཛིན་པ་དང ། འཕྲོག་པ་དང ། ཡོངས་སུ་གྱུར་ན་དེ་འཛིན་པ་ལ་སོགས་པ་ཡོད་པའི་ཕྱིར་རོ། །རྣམ་པར་ཤེས་པའི་རྐྱེན་གྱིས་མིང་ནི་རེ་ཞིག་རིགས་གྲང་ན། མཚན་ཉིད་མི་མཐུན་པ་དག་རྣམ་པར་ཤེས་པ་ལས་ཇི་ལྟར་སྐྱེ་ཞེ་ན། འདི་ནི་བརྒལ་དུ་མེད་པ་ལ་རྒོལ་བ་ཡིན་ཏེ། འཇིག་རྟེན་དང་བསྟན་བཅོས་ལས་ཀྱང་མཚན་ཉིད་མི་མཐུན་པའི་རྒྱུ་ལས་ཀྱང་འབྲས་བུ་འབྱུང་བ་དེ་དག་གྲུབ་པ་ཡིན་ནོ། །རེ་ཞིག་འཇིག་རྟེན་ན་དབང་པོ་དང་དོན་གཉིས་ལས་བདེ་བ་དང ། སྡུག་་བསྔལ་སྐྱེ་བ་དང ། བརྡབས་པ་ལས་སྒྲ་དང ། རཝ་ལས་འདམ་བུ་དང ། མེ་དང་ཤིང་ལས་དུ་བ་དང ། རྡོ་ཐལ་དང་ཆུ་ལས་མེ་དང ། ཀླུའི་སེམས་ཀྱི་མཐུས་ཆུ་དང་དེ་ལ་སོགས་པའོ། །

rKTs n°: - D3996
རྟེན་ཅིང་འབྲེལ་བར་འབྱུང་བ་དང་པོ་དང་རྣམ་པར་དབྱེ་བ་བསྟན་པའི་རྒྱ་ཆེར་བཤད་པ
mdo 'grel (mdo), chi 61b-234a (vol. 115), page. 140B
འདི་ལ་ཡང་རིགས་ཐ་དད་པ་ཡོད་པ་ཡིན་ཏེ། མེ་ནི་དྲོ་བའི་བདག་ཉིད་ཀྱི་མེ་ཡིན་ནོ། །ཤིང་ནི་དུ་བ་མ་ཡིན་གྱི་དུ་བའི་རིགས་ཡིན་ནོ། རྡོ་ཐལ་དང་ཆུ་ལས་མེ་དང་ཞེས་བྱ་བ་ཅི་ཞེ་ན། སྐྱེ་ཞེས་བྱ་བའི་སྐབས་དང་སྦྱར་རོ། །འདི་ལ་ཡང་འབྱུང་བའི་རིགས་ཐ་དད་པའི་ཕྱིར་མཚན་ཉིད་མི་་མཐུན་པ་ཉིད་གྲུབ་པ་ཡིན་ཏེ། །རྡོ་ཐལ་དང་ཆུ་གཉིས་འབྱུང་བ་གཞན་ཡིན་པའི་ཕྱིར་རོ། །ཀླུའི་སེམས་ཀྱི་མཐུས་ཆུ་དང་ཞེས་བྱ་བ་ཅི་ཞེ་ན་སྐྱེ་ཞེས་བྱ་བའི་སྐབས་དང་སྦྱར་ཏེ། །ཆུ་ནི་ཀླུ་ལ་སློང་ངོ་ཞེས་བྱ་བར་གྲུབ་པ་ཡིན་ནོ། །

rKTs n°: - D4069

རྣམ་པར་བཤད་པ་རིགས་པའི་བཤད་པ

mdo 'grel (sems tsam), si 139b-301a (vol. 137), page. 287B

ཞེས་བྱ་བ་རྒྱ་ཆེར་བསྟན་པ་ཡིན་ནོ། །གདུལ་བ་བག་མེད་པ་རྣམས་ནི་སྐྱོ་བར་བྱེད་པས་གདུང་བར་བྱེད་པ་ཡིན་ནོ། །རྡོ་ཐལ་གྱི་རྡོ་མེས་བསྲེགས་པ་ནི་ཇི་ལྟར་རྡོ་ཐལ་གྱི་རྡོ་མེས་བསྲེགས་པ་ཆོས་འཇིག་པར་བྱེད་པ་དེ་བཞིན་དུ། ཉོན་མོངས་པའི་བག་ལ་ཉལ་གྱི་རྡོ་ཞེས་བྱ་བ་ལོག་པའི་ལས་ཀྱི་མཐའ་་དང་རྒྱ་ཆེར་འབྱུང་བ་ཡིན་ནོ། །དེ་བཞིན་དུ་མེལ་ཚེ་བ་སོ་སོར་མི་རྟོག་པ་དང ། རོལ་མོ་མཁན་ཞེས་བྱ་བ་རྒྱ་ཆེར་འབྱུང་བ་ཡིན་ནོ། །འཆོས་པ་ནི་ཚར་གཅོད་པ་ཞེས་བྱ་བའི་ཐ་ཚིག་གོ། །

rKTs n°: - D1180

ཀྱེའི་རྡོ་རྗེ་བསྡུས་པའི་དོན་གྱི་རྒྱ་ཆེར་འགྲེལ་པ

rgyud 'grel, ka 1b1-126a7 (vol. 2), page. 30A

དེ་ལྟར་འཇིག་རྟེན་པའི་ཀུན་རྫོབ་ཀྱིས་རྟེན་ཅིང་འབྲེལ་བར་འབྱུང་བའི་ཚུལ་གྱིས་འདི་ཐོབ་ནས་འདི་འབྱུང་སྟེ།ཡུང་བ་དང་རྡོ་ཐལ་གྱི་སྦྱོར་བ་ལས་དམར་བ་ཉིད་བཞིན་དུ་ལས་ཐམས་ཅད་བསྒྲུབ་པ་ལ་རིག་པར་བྱའོ།།རྣལ་འབྱོར་པ་རྣམས་ཀྱིས་སངས་རྒྱས་སོ་ཞེས་པའི་ང་རྒྱལ་གྱིས་ནི་མ་ཡིན་ནོ་ཞེས་པ་ལས་སྒྲུབ་པའི་ངེས་པའོ་ཞེས་པ་ཀྱེའི་རྡོ་རྗེའི་འགྲེལ་པ་དྲུག་སྟོང་པར་སྔགས་ཀྱི་རིགས་ཀྱི་ལེའུ་ལས་རབ་འབྱམ་སྒྲུབ་པའི་ཡོངས་སུ་བཅད་པ་སྟེ་དྲུག་པའོ།། །། 

A few interestingly relevant vocabulary items to watch out for

སྐྱང་ནུལ་—SKYANG NUL  plaster.  Blaṅ 298.3. zhal ba. Btsan-lha.  gyang sogs la zhal ba byugs pa lta bu.  Utpal 30.4.  Skt. lepa.  Mvy. 6671 (where there are a number of Tibetan equivalents for lepa).  phyags brdar dang bskyang nul legs par byas te.  Zhi-byed Coll. I 115.4.  zhal zhal.  Dbus-pa no. 561.  Lcang-skya.  See rkyang nul, etc.  See rnyeng.

འདག་པ་འབྱར་བ་—'DAG PA 'BYAR BA  to apply plaster, to go into a solitary retreat. Also, 'dag 'byar.  immured.  It literally means that 'plaster' ('dag[ pa]) has been 'applied' to the apertures of the chamber in order to hold a sealed retreat.

ཞལ་ཞལ་—ZHAL ZHAL  zhal ba.  Btsan-lha.  kun la snyoms pa'i zhal zhal bya.  'Jig-rten-mgon-po, Bka'-'bum (2001) I 35.1. Frequent in canonical texts for 'plaster' (presumably of the kind that makes use of slaked lime). The bi-syllabic form zha-la also occurs.

•

Appendix - Text of the Gya log gnad kyi skor.

Gya log gnad kyi skor.  Marked as belonging to the Covering Leaves section.  

A note of explanation: This complete transcription has been corrected against the original cursive manuscript of ZCK as well as against ZC (ZC has two unique lines missing in ZCK). If there are square-bracketed single letters within a syllable, that means you can accept or reject it according to what makes better sense to you. If a full syllable or more appears in square brackets and is marked with "~" ('alternative'), that means one of the two versions of the text has this different reading, which again may be accepted or rejected according to what makes better sense to you. There are no special philological aims in this type of text edition apart from helping the reader understand it better; I do not care to establish which is earlier or better (ZC is no doubt earlier, as the manuscript behind the publication was inscribed in ca. 1245. While pending further investigation my best guess is that the ZCK is 14th century). For present purposes it doesn’t matter which reading belongs to which text. The punctuation has been regularized, with a shad punctuation coming after every conditional clause as I believe this will assist the reader. The “xxx” stands in place of a missing or illegible syllable.

bla ma dam pa rnams la phyag 'tshal lo // 

gya log gnad kyi gd[am]s pa la / 

nad gzhi lus zungs su bsgyur ba la / bskam thag chu nang du gcad pa / 

gsal lo khas [~gsol ba mas] kyi[s] btab na / byin brlabs yas kyi[s] 'jug / 

rang don sngon la byas nas [~pas] / gzhan don rjes la 'byung / 

ma yengs nyams su blang na / yengs med rgyud la 'char / 

rig pa phyi ru brgyang na / gnyis 'dzin nang du 'jig / 

sel rgyu la ma zhugs na / 'bras bu rjes la mi bslu / 

nyon mongs nang du bsal na[s] / sdug bsngal phyi ru skam[s] / 

snang ba sgyu ma[r] go na / bya[r] m[y]ed rgyud las skye / 

rig pa phyi ru gcun [~chun] na / 'du ba nang du sel / 

rang xxx [~bsags] phyi ru bkye [~skye] na / gzhan bsag nang du [b]sdud [~'du] / 

gdam[s] ngag rang la yod na / dam chos gzhan gyi[s] 'char  [~'chad] / 

smra brjod nang du bskung [~skyungs] na / phyi ru skyon dang bral / 

rten 'brel lus la [b]sgrigs na / nyams myong sems la skye / 

phyi ru bden m[y]ed go na / nang du 'dzin byed 'jig / 

rig pa dum bur mthud na / tha mal snang ba 'gyur / 

zhen pa phyi nas log na / rig pa nang nas 'char / 

[following line in ZC only:]

spyod pa btsan dod byas na / nyams myong thog babs 'char /

spros pa phyi ru bcad na / gzung 'dzin nang du grol / 

'du 'dzi phyi ru bsk[y]ung[s] na / dge sbyor nang du 'phel / 

'dod pa yid la zhig na / bde ba rgyud la skye / 

lta rtog[s] phyi ru byas na / go ba nang du [~nas] 'char / 

rig pa rten dang bral na / tshogs drug rang sar grol / 

nyon mongs nang du bcoms na / phyi ru dgra dang bral / 

go cha sems la gon na / brtson 'grus lus la skye / 

rig pa nang du dangs na / rten 'brel phyi ru 'char / 

[the following line in ZC only:]

nyon mongs nang du bcom na phyi ru dgra dang bral /

'khor ba'i mtshang phyi ru go na / zhen pa nang du ldog [~bzlog] / 

byar med rgyud la [b]rten na / snang ba sgyu ma 'char / 

mngon zhen nang du zhig na / dgos m[y]ed phyi ru 'char / 

gnas pa'i 'phro la gshig [~bzhig] na / rjes thob nyam[s] myong[s] bzang / 

dam bca' [~bcwa] phyi ru bsring na / dgos grub nang du [~na] nye / 

rtog pa dum [1v] bur bcad na / dngos grub rims kyi skye / 

nyams myong nang na yod na / gsal rtag[s] phyi ru 'char / 

rigs pa dum bur mthud [~'thud] na / phyi ru snang ba 'jig / 

chos brgyad nang du [b]snyoms na / gnyis bsdus phyi ru 'jig / 

nang du rnam rtog 'gag[s] na / smra ru [~smrar rgyu] phyir mi snyed [~rnyed] / 

nang du 'dzin pa zhig na / bden m[y]ed phyi nas 'char / 

nang du rang bzhin m[y]ed par go na / spang blang[s] phyir mi skye'o //

gya log gnad kyi gdams pa / [b]skam xxx [~thag] chu nang du bcad pa'i

man ngag [~gdam[s] ngag go] /  ithi //

Postscript - June 24, 2021

I just today noticed a new journal of Tibetan Studies field coming out of Columbia University in New York City.  Just go to the sidebar under “Journal Portals” and locate the words “Waxing Moon.” Tap on those words and go there to see what you can find.

Postscript - January 15, 2023

I found two amazing discussions about Roman cement. It was so magical cracks and breaks in it could heal themselves quite quickly, which explains why, for instance, the dome of the Pantheon in Rome could remain standing today. By contrast, modern concrete, when it starts to crack, sucks up more and more liquid leading to more and more degradation.Vitruvius, the Roman architectural writer of the first century BCE, had this to say about it in the context of making the floor for a triclinium, a dining and drinking hall found in homes of the well-to-do for entertaining guests:

“The floor of the triclinium is excavated to the depth of about two feet; and after the bottom is well rammed, a pavement of rubbish or potsherds is spread over it, with a declivity towards the holes of the drain. A composition of pounded coals, lime, sand, and ashes, is mixed up and spread there-over, half a foot in thickness, perfectly smooth and level. The surface being then rubbed with stone, it has the appearance of a black pavement. Thus, at their banquets, the liquor that is spilt, and the expectoration which falls on it, immediately dry up; and the persons who wait on the guests, though barefooted, do not suffer from cold on this sort of pavement.” [added emphasis is my own]

See Markus Vitruvius Pollio: De Architectura, Book VII, chapter 4, paragraph 5 at the end of ch. 4, translation and Latin version in: 

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Vitruvius/7*.html (access: 2023-01-15).

• That I could find this quote at all was thanks to a technical yet fascinating book on Himalayan building materials: Hubert Feiglstorfer, Mineral Building Traditions in the Himalayas: The Mineralogical Impact on the Use of Clay as Building Material, De Gruyter, (Berlin 2019), footnote 45 on p. 163.

And, if you can get past the paywall, you might learn about an experimental scientific way of accounting for the durability of Roman cement, a secret that is not just in the lime, but in the volcanic ash.

Ariel David, “Researchers Reveal Why Ancient Roman Monuments Still Stand After Millennia,” Haaretz (January 6, 2023).  “What did the Romans ever do for us? They created a concrete that self-repairs, which today could reduce the massive emissions caused by modern cement production, study finds.”

Or, if that one is unattainable, try this: 

Melanie Lidman, “Still Standing: Researchers Crack the Secret of Ancient Rome's Self-Healing Concrete,” posted on January 12, 2023.

What does this all have to do with counterintuitive therapeutics? You tell me.

Combining Sources of Holiness and Blessing

Swayambhunath, Nepal, taken in 2011
The Buddha Image shrines niched into its sides were being renovated

 

Combining the Cult of the Image with the Cult of the Chorten

I was reading Anne Marie Yasin’s essay “Sight Lines of Sanctity at Late Antique Martyria,” with its theme of how in fairly early centuries of Christian church architecture they were unsure how or how much to combine [1] the site associated with the act of the holy person, called the Martyrium (these were frequently octagonal structures, a subject for another time), with [2] the site of sacred rites, the altar.  The essay begins with an example in Milan in 386 CE, when Bishop Ambrose dug up the bodies of two local saints from their graves outside the city and relocated them inside the walls of the basilica he had just built. One solution was to place the Martyrium and altar in eyeshot of each other, so that anyone who came especially for one purpose could simply turn around to appreciate the other. Other solutions, and the ones that eventually took over, were either [1] to place the altar directly on top of the holy memorial, or [2] to place relics of the holy dead into the altar itself, perhaps in a special chamber beneath the table of the eucharistic mystery. Thereby the two foci of sanctity, the eucharist and relic, were entirely united, although we might wonder if perhaps the relic was in some sense subordinated to the sacrament. It was placed at a lower level, after all. But we might just as well say that the presence of the relic empowers or enhances the sacredness of the rite.

I was wondering if some such situation of indeterminacy might hold if we shift to another religious domain and look at the interesting combination of temple (devoted to image cult, primarily) with stûpa that we find most clearly in the famous temple-chorten of Gyantse and in the Jonang monument. In Gyantse and Jonang there are actually doors in the different levels of the chorten that may be entered, filled with images in 2 and 3 dimensions.  In the comparison, we may observe that the chorten would correspond to the reliquary or monument marking the holy site, and thereby resembling the Martyria. It may be obvious that the altar of early Christians doesn’t correspond with the Buddhist image in this equation, but that’s okay, because we’re thinking about how two domains of holiness might or might not be partially or entirely combined, and result in differing solutions. The special phenomenon in which the Chorten serves as temple — by displaying or housing within it painted or sculpted images — has taken various forms throughout the breadth of the Himalaya chain, with one remarkable example being the Great Chorten at Alchi, Ladakh, mentioned in another blog.

It’s as if different religions have their individual non-disclosure agreements (or covenants) when it comes to the holiness manifested by their high aspiration deities and saintly heros. These agreements had practical consequences for the ways religious activities, particularly lay devotional observances, would then be carried out. 

Of course, there are so many Caityas large and small in Nepal Valley that have images in open niches on their sides. But where do we find such combinations in India? I’m asking because I hadn’t thought about it before, so I don’t have much to say.* 

(*Since I once saw it in person, I can say there are some very well preserved images in niches on the sides of the Shariputra Stupa at Nalanda that must be quite old. I’m not sure the Bodhgaya temple formally qualifies as a stupa [it takes the shape of a Shikhara temple], but if it does then of course it has many images in a band of niches around its four-sided base. I’m momentarily thinking that the eyes on the square harmikas of the largest Caityas in Nepal are another expression of the Image/Stupa combination, and in fact most of these Nepalese structures do have image shrines around their bases where offerings are made just as if they were inside a temple.)

This made me wonder if Newars and Tibetans, either individually or in tandem, may have contributed their own solutions to the holiness combination issues presented by Buddhists during their long history.

Come to reflect on it — what I mean is, going on to muse about it instead of closing with the closure we expect of a conclusion — the Stupa and the Martyrium do have, each one within itself, a dual purpose. The Martyria proper may have been meant to commemorate the sites of holy beings’ actions of every kind, but that included the places of their birth and death and burial, and even (as you might suspect from the name) tombs for the “witnesses,” the martyrs (the original holy persons of Christianity).* The Stupa may have originally been a tomb structure adapted by the Buddha and the Buddhists for Buddhist funerary/reliquary purposes, but at the same time recall that the most popular set of eight is correlated with the sites of the main acts of the Buddha (including His death).** So it isn’t all that farfetched to suggest, as I once did, that pieces of biography can serve as relics.*** They could even be called relics of biography, why not? There does seem to be a degree of logic in the ways holy objects and actions are collected and located, and then go on to be recollected by those who venerate them.

(*The very first Christian shrine-like structure to be called a Martyrium — by Eusebius (265-339 CE) although he used a variant spelling — was the edicule built over the tomb (or site of the resurrection) of Jesus, originally built under Constantine with an octagonal shape. Octagons ought to feature in a blog of their own. Martyrium originally meant [a place of] testimony or witness. That’s why we have to loosen our contemporary assumption that it must always have to do with persons who died for their faith.) 

(**The Buddhist Stupa, unlike the Martyrium at least on the face of things, serves as a set of memory-sites for key doctrinal concepts; each structural element might be keyed to one of the 37 Wings of Awakening for example.)  

(***See the blog on the Antwerp relics.)

Dpal-'khor Chos-sde Monastery, Gyantse, 

Photograph taken in November 2005 by Mark Evans

A very short reading list

Yael Bentor, "On the Indian Origin of the Tibetan Practice of Depositing Relics and Dhâranîs in Stûpas and Images,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 115, no. 2 (1995), pp. 248-261.

Catherine M. Chin, “The Bishop’s Two Bodies: Ambrose and the Basilicas of Milan,” Church History, vol. 79, no. 3 (September 2010), pp. 531-555.

Juhyung Rhi, “Images, Relics and Jewels: The Assimilation of Images in the Buddhist Relic Cult of Gandhâra: Or Vice Versa,” Artibus Asiae, vol. 65, no. 2 (2005), pp. 169-211. The insertion of Dharma Relics or Dhâranîs into stone sculptures is demonstrated. The insertion of relics into Stûpas is not in question, they always served as reliquaries, but the insertion of bodily or contact relics into Images is still in question as far as Classical India is concerned; see Y. Bentor’s article listed above.

Jeremy Russell, The Eight Places of Buddhist Pilgrimage, Mahayana Publications (New Delhi 1981).

Tadeusz Skorupski, “Two Eulogies of the Eight Great Caityas,” contained in:  Idem., The Buddhist Forum: Volume VI, The Institute of Buddhist Studies (Tring 2001), pp. 37-55. Translation of Aṣṭamahāsthānacaityastotra (Gnas Chen-po Brgyad-kyi Mchod-rten-la Bstod-pa), Tôh. no. 1134. Dergé Tanjur, vol. KA, folio 82r.3 82v.3, this Tibetan translation done by Tilaka and Pa-tshab Nyi-ma-grags. The relics of the Blessed One were divided between eight places. These eight went on to form the basic map of holy places still visited by Buddhist pilgrims in India and Nepal today.

Ann Marie Yasin, “Sight Lines of Sanctity at Late Antique Martyria,” contained in: Bonna D. Wescoat and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds., Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge 2012), pp. 248-280.

Websites

https://thewonderhouse.co.uk/category/projects/hotung-gallery.  Notice in particular how what is surely one of the oldest existing Buddha Images is found enshrined on the outermost layer of a reliquary known as the Bimaran Casket, that had in its turn been entirely enclosed within a Stûpa. This reliquary was never meant to be seen, although today it is prominently displayed in the British Museum.

Perhaps you’ll find of interest this video about a very large Stûpa/Temple only now approaching completion in Bendigo, Australia.