The Cult of Tara

N N Bhattacharya

H P Shastri observes that many of the rituals of the goddess Tārā which were known as Cīnācāra were of Chinese origin. Sylvian Levi also holds, on the authority of the Tārā Tantra that the worship of Tārā and the vāmācāra practices involving the use of Five makāras came from China. Sir John Woodroffe takes a similar view.

As early as 1874 Rasik Mohan Chatterjee brought out a series of Hindu Tantric texts from Bengal Mss and published them in the Bengali script.

Among the works he brought out were Brahmānanda’s Tārārahasya, Rudrayāmala and the Mahācīnācārakrama, all of which refer to the vāmācāra practices connected with the worship of Tārā as being brought by the sage Vasiṣṭha who was instructed by Buddha himself.

The Meru Tantra also mentions that the vāmācāra rituals were of Chinese origin.

The Tārā Tantra opens with the following question of Tārā or Mahānīlasarasvatī: ‘Thou didst speak of two Kula Bhairavas, Buddha and Vasiṣṭha.

Tell me by what mantra they became Siddhas?’ The same Tantra defines a Bhairava as follows:

‘He who purifies these five Makāras and after offering the same partakes thereof is a Bhairava.

Buddha then is said to be a Kula Bhairava’.

A K Maitra, the editor of the Tārā Tantra gives quotations from both the Rudrayāmala and the Brahmayāmala which narrate the story of Vasiṣṭha obtaining the vāmācāra practices from China.

According to the Rudrayāmala, the sage Vasiṣṭha practiced for six thousand years severe austerities in a lonely spot, but the goddess did not appear before him.

Thereupon he went to his father Brahmā and wanted a different mantra from him. Brahmā advised him to carry on austerities.

Vasiṣṭha did it once again, but this time when the goddess did not appear he became angry and having sipped water uttered a terrible curse.

Thereupon the goddess appeared to him and pointed out that he had not taken the right mode of sādhanā.

She advised him to go to MahAcīna, the country of the Bauddhas.

Vasiṣṭha then went to Mahacīna where Buddha as established. Buddha delivered a lecture on the practices of the Kaulas and explained to him their mysteries and utility, and aquatinted him with the secret rites and practices connected therewith.

Vasiṣṭha was fully convinced and followed the way of Buddha and eventually attained final liberation by an unrestrained use of the five makāras.

Again, in the Brahmayāmala, the same story is repeated but with a slight modification.

Here it is told that Vasiṣṭha was practicing austerities on the Blue Mountain (Nīlācala), the site of the celebrated goddess Kāmākhyā of Kāmarūpa, and then he was asked by the Devī to go to Mahācīna and get himself initiated into Chīnācāra.

Vasiṣṭha went there to see a land inhabited by great sādhakas and thousands of beautiful and youthful women, full of mirth by the inspiration of wine and engaged in sexploiting gestures.

He was surprised to see Buddha with eyes drooping from wine. He asked himself: 'What is Viṣṇu doing in this Buddha form? This way (ācāra) is opposed to Veda (vedavādaviruddha). I do not approve of it'.

At once he heard a voice telling him not to think in that way.

He sought refuge in Buddha who explained to him the mysteries of the Tāriṇī cult which involved the five makāras, known as cīnācāra .

Buddha explained the principal features of this cult, namely its freedom from the rules of ordinary worship, from bathing, purification, japa etc.

There were no rules as to auspicious and inauspicious time, or as to what should be done by day and by night, what is pure and impure, and so on.

The goddess should be worshiped even though the place and worshiper be unclean.

Women should be considered as her manifestation and be worshiped for they are objects of veneration.

The peculiar features of these stories to be noted are these - Vasiṣṭha is described as basically a follower of the Vedic way. He is surprised to see cīnācāra rites and disapproves of them at first sight.

He speaks of them as outside Veda and even opposed to Veda.

It is also to be marked that Vasiṣṭha had done penances and performed the Tārā rituals in Nīlācala, which is, even today, the seat of the goddess Kāmākhyā, the Hinduised form of the goddess Ka-me-khā of the matrilineal Khasi tribes worshiped in the form of a yoni or the female organ.

There is still a place called Vasiṣṭhāśrama near Gauhati where the shrine of Kāmākhyā is situated.

So there is some geographical assignment to the Vasiṣṭha legend, according to the Tantric tradition which cannot be brushed aside, and the tradition can thus be localized. It is also noteworthy that the flower of Devī here is Japā, the scarlet hibiscus or Chinese rose.

In the Vasiṣṭha legend referred to above the cult of Tārā is a basic factor.

The name of this goddess has an apparent similarity with that of Astarte or Ishtar or Ashtaroth, the celebrated Mother Goddesses of Western Asia.

In the Indian tradition, the name signifies protection and this tradition is reflected in the connection of her as the savior. In the Buddhist tradition, she saves or protects her devotees from eight great fears (aṣṭamahābhaya).

Her early history is not very clearly known but on the basis of Subandhu’s Vāsavadattā, it may be held that by the 6th century A.D., her cult became very popular in India.

She made her way into the Buddhist religion and came to be conceived as the śakti or female counterpart or repository of energy of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara.

Her cult passed from India to Tibet where she came to be known as Sgrol-ma or Dol-ma in the Tibetan translation of her name. Like Avalokiteśvara, she was also conceived under numerous forms.

The Tārā cult, with the goddess in her various forms, also went to china as the consort of Avalokiteśvara.

But in China, Avalokiteśvara was already on the way to transformation from a god to goddess through the influence of the pre-Buddhist (Taoist and Confucian) Mother Goddess Si Wang-Mu, the representative of Yin or female principle.

This happened in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D, when Tārā became absolutely merged with Avalokiteśvara, who became transformed into the goddess Kuan-yin in China.

This double form of Tārā became very popular in China and brought about her connection with most of the existing beliefs and rituals, specially those belonging to Taoism.

The Taoist rituals which thus came into the fold of the Tārā cult in China as well as Yinism or exaltation of the female principle in Taoism, which developed in that system as a corollary of the aforesaid Chinese Buddhist cult of female principle, were also able to exert counter-influence upon the development of the Indian vāmācāra rites of both the Buddhist and non-Buddhist Tantras.

P C Bagchi, on the basis of a sādhanā found in the Sādhanamālā, has tried to establish the identity of Mahācīnatārā with Ekajaṭā whose cult is said to have been recovered by Siddha Nāgārjuna from Tibet. The sādhanā of the goddess Ekajaṭā was discovered by him in the country of Bhoṭa.

The description of Ekajaṭā is found in six different sādhanās and closely agrees with that of Mahācīnakramatārā. Corresponding to these goddesses, we find in the Hindu pantheon Tārā, Ugratārā, Ekajaṭā and Mahānīlasarasvatī.

The dhyānas of these goddesses as found in the Hindu Tantras literally correspond to those found in the Buddhist sādhanās.

According to the Sammohana Tantra, Nīlasarasvatī or Ugratārā was born in a kale called Cola on the western side of the Meru which was included in the cīna deśa.

Bagchi suggests that Cola is probably to be connected with the common word for lake Kul or Col, which is found with the names of so many lakes to the west and north of T’ien-shan, that is to say the pure Mongolian zone.

A number of countries beyond India are enumerated and described in the Sammohana Tantra as centers of Tantric culture.

These are Bāhlika (Balkh), Kirāta (hill tribes of the Himlayan region), Bhoṭa (Tibet), Chīna (China), Mahācīna (Mongolia?), Maida (Media), Pārśvakika (Persia), Airāka (Iraq), Kāmboja (Cambodia), Hūna (Chinese tribe who invaded Himalayan region), Yavana (Greek), Gāndhāra (Afghanistan) and Nepāla.

It is not impossible that some Tantric schools associated themselves with these countries either through tradition or through the community of some mystic beliefs, of which the history is not clearly known.

The same Tantra holds that China alone possessed a hundred primary and seven subsidiary Tantras:

śataṃ tantrāṇi cīne tu upatantrāni sapta ca |

It should also be noted that of the early śakti pīṭhas - Kāmarūpa, Purṇagiri, Oḍḍiyāna and Jālandhara, three were situated on the high roads leading to countries outside India.

Oḍḍiyāna was situated on the high road that connected the upper valley of the Indus with Balkh, Samarkhand etc., on the one hand and the Pamirs, Khotan, Kashgarh etc on the other by the Gilgit valley.

Jālandhara was situated on another highway that connected Tibet with India through the Shipki pass and Kāmarūpa had to a great extent been the center of activities of foreigners since very ancient times.

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