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Uḍḍiyāna, the North West, and Treasure: another piece in the
jigsaw?
Posted on July 15, 2020 by Rob Mayer
Scholars have been fascinated for many years by an intriguing and obviously important yet
still little understood series of connections between the tantric traditions of north west
India, including the old holy land of Uḍḍiyāna, and the tantric Buddhism of Tibet. Such
connections appear particularly salient within the rNying ma traditions, not least because
their great founder, Padmasambhava, was said to have come from Uḍḍiyāna. His great
contemporary, Vimalamitra, for the rNying ma second in significance only to
Padmasambhava himself, is also usually associated with Kashmir. Similarly, dGa’ rab rdo
rje, the originator of the rDzogs chen system, is also said to have been born in Uḍḍiyāna,
and to have received the rDzogs chen teachings there. In what follows, I am mainly
interested in identifying possible rNying ma debts and connections to the tantric traditions
associated with the North West and Uḍḍiyāna.
Many Indian traditions have considered Uḍḍiyāna a sacred and magical place imbued with
great spiritual power, so that even its purported geographical location has sometimes
become movable over the centuries. Following some such Indian and Tibetan precedents,
a number of Tibetan lamas nowadays like to locate Uḍḍiyāna in Odisha. However, since
Tucci, most academic scholars agree ancient Uḍḍiyāna was centred on the modern-day
Swat valley of Pakistan. More recently, Alexis Sanderson (2007) carefully revisited the
issue of the location of Uḍḍiyāna, and his findings reconfirm Tucci’s. Sanderson takes note
of the various far-flung locations that have been identified with Uḍḍiyāna at different
times and by different sources (Eastern India, the far South of India, etc.), but comes to
the conclusion, drawn from his careful examination of a variety of old textual citations,
that it was located near Kashmir.[1] In what follows, I follow Tucci and Sanderson, as well
as a great many traditional Indian and Tibetan scholars, in accepting the modern-day Swat
valley of Pakistan as the probable epicentre of a historical Uḍḍiyāna.
No one has yet written a full-length monograph specifically dedicated to the overall
significance and impact of the Indian North West and Uḍḍiyāna on Tibetan Buddhism,
although such a study would probably be very widely welcomed, and could add a great deal
to our understanding. Nevertheless, these regions’ possible religious influences on and
interactions with Tibet are dealt with more peripherally, here and there, in a number of
studies focused mainly on other topics. To mention only a few: Brenda Li wrote an Oxford
doctoral thesis on the biograhy of the much-travelled 13th century bKa’ brgyud lama, U
rgyan pa Rin chen dpal (1230−1309), who made a famous pilgrimage to Uḍḍiyāna (which
for him, was certainly in modern day Pakistan).[2] Jacob Dalton has made a study of the
major tantra of the Anuyoga class, the mDo dgongs pa ‘dus pa, which is traditionally
linked with the north-west region, and Orna Almogi has produced a very useful list of the
numerous rNying ma scriptures whose colophons connect them with the Kashmir region.
[3] Ulrich Timme Kragh has studied narratives about female tantric gurus in Uḍḍiyāna.[4]
There are numerous somewhat confusing traditional references to important tantric
teachers named Indrabhūti, one or more of whom is often identified as a king of Uḍḍiyāna.
[5] In a forthcoming article (already available on academia.edu in pre-publication form), I
discuss the close geographical proximity of Uḍḍiyāna to the Tibetan speaking regions, and
the cultural understanding of indigenous Tibetan religion already evidenced in the earliest
extant documents of the Padmasambhava school.[6]
More significantly for my present purposes, Douglas Duckworth has pointed out
interesting parallels between the general doctrinal trajectories of non-dual Śaivism in
Kashmir, and Tibetan rDzogs chen. He shows how philosophical ideas very close to
Utpaladeva’s Pratyabhijñā were also appearing for the first time in Tibet at around the
same time, and how both traditions arose out of similar doctrinal adaptations of Buddhist
Yogācāra.[7] Similarly, Jean-Luc Achard has even identified parallels between more specific
meditation techniques used by both traditions.[8]
What has not so far been discussed is that there are also interesting similarities between
the scriptural revelation practices of the 9th to 11th century non-dual Śaivism of Kashmir,
Indian Tantric Buddhism (often specifically in relation to Uḍḍiyāna), and gter stons in
nearby Tibet at a similar or very slightly later period. Understanding these parallels might
prove fruitful to researching the historical roots of gter ma, and I hope to research them
more fully with Ben Williams.
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A recent Phd from Ben Williams has been devoted to the topic of revelation in the
traditions of Abhinavagupta.[9] The revelations of earlier Śaiva traditions were typically
attributed to the fabled interactions at mythical locations of intangible supernatural beings
such as ṛṣis and devas. But a defining feature of the non-dual Śaiva traditions that
developed in Kashmir became their focus on the projection of scriptural revelation out of
the fantastical domains of myth, into the plain view of recordable history and tangible
geography. As Williams has described, this process can already be seen in the description
of the lineage of Pratyabhijñāśāstra, in an appendix to a work composed by Somānanda
(c. 900-950). Although already in evidence earlier and elsewhere, notably in Kaula
traditions, the description of revelation by named enlightened siddhas, sometimes at
specified places and even at specified times, achieves a kind of crescendo in 10th and 11th
century non-dual Śaiva texts from Kashmir, not least with the understanding of revelation
taught and modeled by Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 975-1025).[10] According to Williams, in 10th
and 11th century Kashmir, the power to transmit tantric teachings that carried the
authority of revelation came to be seen as an integral aspect or demonstration of the guru’s
spiritual status or realisation. It is interesting that much the same soon began to become
apparent among the Tibetan Bon and rNying ma pa, not very far away from Kashmir.
To contextualise, it might help to give some even earlier Śaiva examples (see Williams p.
147). The Krama scriptural source, the Yonigahvaratantra, claims to have been revealed
by an actual historical person, the siddha Jñānanetra, alias Śivānanda (circa 850-900),
perhaps only one generation after Padmasambhava?).[11] Jñānanetra received his
revelation at a tangible geographical location, the Karavīra cremation-ground in Uḍḍiyāna,
one of the favourite sites for Krama revelations and rNying ma narratives of
Padmasambhava alike. Also within Krama, and even earlier, the named individual
Śrīnātha is said to have been the first human to receive the Kramasadbhāva and the
Devīpañcaśatikā, once again, in Uḍḍiyāna. Similar narratives apply to Niṣkriyānanda,
Matsyendranātha, and Vasugupta. Revelations of this kind, situated within what we might
call recordable history and the geographical landscape, rather than veiled behind myth,
was a hallmark emphasis of non-dual Śaiva traditions that flourished in Kashmir, and, as
Williams describes in his PhD, central to its theology of the historically existent
enlightened siddha as source of revelation. In relation to all this, we must mention the
colophons to the Vajrabhairavatantra in the Kangyur mentioned by Bulcsu Siklos (p.113114), supported by considerable commentarial elaborations, describing the important
Vajrabhairavatantra being revealed for the first time in the human realm to the 8th
century Indian siddha Lalitavajra, at Uḍḍiyāna. In similar vein, Toricelli (2018) has at
various points mentioned similar traditions portraying Tilopa as the first human to
receive the transmission of important tantric scriptures, again in Uḍḍiyāna.
If Williams’ analysis proves accurate, developments in Tibet only a few decades later bear
interesting comparison: the early 11th century Bon gter ston and contemporary of
Abhinavagupta, gShen chen klu dga’ (996-1035), was surely not the first to reveal
scriptures in Tibet, since, as is already very well known, there were a significant number of
Tibetan-revealed and redacted but strictly anonymous rNying ma scriptures that preceded
him. But he was surely among the first to bring the process of scriptural revelation out into
the open field of recordable history, at a real geographical place. It is precisely because his
revelation was among the first in Tibet not to be anonymous, that he is rightly described as
among Tibet’s earliest gter ston.
Equally striking are parallels in the mode of revelation. Although some of gShen chen’s
revelations resembled sa gter,[12] another seemed to bear closer comparison with the Kaula
model. gShen chen’s 10th century colophons describe how his Gab pa dgu skor revelation
descended on his mind as a result of his realisation or siddhi (dngos grub) (Martin 2001:
50-2). This is reminiscent of contemporaneous Kashmirian revelation, where, as Williams
has documented, the reception of new scripture was an integral outcome of realisation, or
siddhi. Thus the speech of the realised Śaiva siddha could be construed as the utterance of
new scripture. The 10th century commentator Rājānaka Rāma (c. 950-1000) praises as
follows the speech of Vasugupta, who revealed the Śivasūtra:[13]
“I praise the speech of the guru ..Vasugupta to whom the flow of nectar in the form of
the essence of vibration, the secret doctrine of all esoteric [knowledge], was directly
transmitted…”(Williams p. 183)
Compare a praise to Padmasambhava from the 10th century Dunhuang text IOLTib J 321,
describing him uttering scriptural tantra as an outcome of achieving siddhi:
“(When) .. pure awareness (is produced) by any noble being whatever, whatever
sound is articulated by (his) speech, all without exception is called, “tantra”. In the
supreme incomparable place of Akaniṣṭha, the Protector Great Being, turning the
vajra wheel, speaks through disseminating the tongue’s sense faculty[14]…. I prostrate
to he who has attained the supreme siddhi, of great wonder, Padma rGyal po [The
Lotus King] (who) is not worldly; (he who) unravels from the expanse the tathāgata’s
great secret pith instructions.”[15]
A marginal note is added:
“this demonstrates [that it, ie this text] is not created by Padmasambhava
idiosyncratically”.[16]
These similarities merit further investigation, not least because of other doctrinal parallels
between the two traditions, their sometimes shared veneration of Uḍḍiyāna as a tantric
holy site and source of scripture, the linkage of Padmasambhava with both Uḍḍiyāna and
the Tibetan gter ma tradition, and the contiguous and overlapping borders between the
Tibetan and Kashmiri cultural zones. However, it seems to me that the institution of gter
ston as revealer of scripture in Tibet eventually became even more pronounced, developed,
and pervasive, than its Śaiva counterpart.
See the section entitled ‘Uḍḍiyāna and Kashmir’, contained in pages 265-269 of his
article ‘The Śaiva Exegesis of Kashmir’, in Mélanges tantriques à la mémoire d’Hélène
Brunner. Tantric Studies in Memory of Hélène Brunner, Collection Indologie 106, EFEO,
Institut français de Pondichéry (IFP), ed. Dominic Goodall and André Padoux, 2007.)
[1]
Brenda W.L. Li , 2011. A Critical Study of the Life of the 13th-Century Tibetan Monk U
rgyan pa Rin chen dpal Based on his Biographies. DPhil thesis, Oxford.
[2]
Jacob Dalton 2016, The Gathering of Intentions: A History of a Tibetan
Tantra, Columbia University Press, 2016, and Orna Almogi, 2016, “Tantric Scriptures in
the rNying ma rgyud ’bum Believed to Have Been Transmitted to Tibet by Kashmiris: A
Preliminary Survey.” In Eli Franco & Isabelle Ratié (eds.), Around Abhinavagupta:
Aspects of the Intellectual History of Kashmir from the Ninth to the Eleventh Century.
Leipziger Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte Süd- und Zentralasiens 6. Berlin: LIT Verlag,
1–31.
[3]
Ulrich Timme Kragh, 2016. “Chronotopic Narratives of Seven Gurus and Eleven Texts:
A Medieval Buddhist Community of Female Tāntrikas in the Swat Valley of Pakistan”, in
Cracow Indological Studies, Vol. XX, No. 2 (2018), pp. 1–26
[4]
See, for example, the several mentions of King Indrabhūti by U rgyan pa Rin chen dpal,
as described in Brenda Li’s DPhil thesis.
[5]
Robert Mayer, 2020. ‘Geographical and Other Borders in the Symbolism of
Padmasambhava’, in About Padmasambhava. Historical Narratives and Later
Transformations of Guru Rinpoche, edited by Geoffrey Samuel and Jamyang Oliphant of
Rossie, Garuda Verlag, Schongau
[6]
Douglas Duckworth, 2017. ‘From Yogācāra to Philosophical Tantra in Kashmir and
Tibet’, in Sophia (2018) 57:611–623.
[7]
Jean-Luc Achard, 1999. L’essence perlée du secret. Recherches philologiques et
historiques sur l’origine de la Grande Perfection dans la tradition rNying ma pa.
Turnhout, Brepols. pp. 248-253
[8]
Benjamin Luke Williams. PhD dissertation, Harvard University, August 2017.
Abhinavagupta’s Portrait of a Guru: Revelation and Religious Authority in Kashmir.
[9]
[10]
Ben Williams, personal communication 3rd December 2018.
For a chronology of Śaiva authors that flourished in Kashmir and beyond, see pages 411
ff in Alexis Sanderson, 2007, “The Śaiva Exegesis of Kashmir.” In Mélanges tantrique à
la mémoire d’Hélène Brunner. Edited by Dominic Goodall & André Padoux, pp. 231–442.
Pondicherry, India: Institut Français d’Indologie/École Française d’Extreme-Orient.
[11]
Three other revelations are more like sa gter, extracted from a gter sgo. Here gShen
chen describes the days on which he opened the treasury doors (gter sgo phye ba lags so),
and the scribal work of his students in comparing his discoveries with other old texts, and
writing them out correctly
[12]
These were defined as scriptural by Kṣemarāja (c. 1000-1050), but Sanderson points to
earlier sources that already defined the Śivasūtras as scriptural. See Williams p. 187.
[13]
Cantwell, C., and R. Mayer, 2012. A Noble Noose of Methods: The Lotus Garland
Synopsis: A Mahāyoga Tantra and Its Commentary. OAW, Vienna. See page 96: / /skyes
bu gang gis rig pa de / /ngag gis ci skad brjod pa’i sgra / /thams cad ma lus tan tra zhes
/ ‘og myin bla myed gnas mchog du / /mgon po bdag nyid chen po yis / /rdo rje ‘khor lo
bskor pa na / /ljags kyi dbang po bkram las gsungs/ /
[14]
/dngos grub mchog brnyes ya mtshan chen po ‘i/ / ‘jig rten ngam gyur pad ma rgyal
po yis/ /de bzhin gshegs pa’i man ngag gsang chen rnams / /klung nas bkrol mdzad de
la phyag ‘tshal lo //
[15]
[16]
pad ma sam ba bhas rang gz[or?] byas pa + + ma yin bar ston
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