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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 The Raven and the Serpent: "The Great All- Pervading R#hula" Daemonic Buddhism in India and Tibet Cameron Bailey Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THE RAVEN AND THE SERPENT: “THE GREAT ALL-PERVADING RHULA” AND DMONIC BUDDHISM IN INDIA AND TIBET By CAMERON BAILEY A Thesis submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Religion Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2012 Cameron Bailey defended this thesis on April 2, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: Bryan Cuevas Professor Directing Thesis Jimmy Yu Committee Member Kathleen Erndl Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii For my parents iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank, first and foremost, my adviser Dr. Bryan Cuevas who has guided me through the process of writing this thesis, and introduced me to most of the sources used in it. My growth as a scholar is almost entirely due to his influence. I would also like to thank Dr. Jimmy Yu, Dr. Kathleen Erndl, and Dr. Joseph Hellweg. If there is anything worthwhile in this work, it is undoubtedly due to their instruction. I also wish to thank my former undergraduate advisor at Indiana University, Dr. Richard Nance, who inspired me to become a scholar of Buddhism. My sincere thanks to my friends Daniel Tuzzeo, Mercedes Krimme, Patrick Ley, Meredith Jagger, Lori Chung, Nkoyo Edoho-Eket, Brent Gordon, and Kristen Muldowney, and whose friendship and moral support over the years has been invaluable. Also thanks to Chris Bell for providing the picture of the Rhula mural in Lhasa. Also, my warmest thugs rje che to all the students and teachers from the Summer Language Institute’s 2011 Tibetan program at the University of Virginia, who inspired me to work as hard as they, not just in Tibetan language but also in academia (and life) in general. In particular, I want to thank the Ven. Könchok Tharchin, as well as Lucia Galli at the University of Oxford and Lilly Atlihan, for their special friendship and for providing sources which I used in this study. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents for their unwavering support and love, without which I would never have been able to accomplish what I have. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vi Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii 1. CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................1 2. CHAPTER TWO: RHU AND THE DMONS OF INDIA ................................................6 2.1 THE GRASPERS.........................................................................................................12 2.2 HINDU MYTHS OF RHU .......................................................................................17 2.3 RHU IN HINDU ASTROLOGY ..............................................................................23 2.4 INTERLUDE: WHAT OF BUDDHISM? ..................................................................27 2.5 HAUNTING THE BUDDHA......................................................................................30 2.6 BUDDHIST MYTHS OF RHU ................................................................................35 3. CHAPTER THREE: THE TANTRIC TRANSFORMATION ............................................42 3.1 THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE DMON .....................................................................47 3.2 RHU IN THE TANTRAS .........................................................................................60 3.3 THE WHEEL OF TIME ..............................................................................................64 4. CHAPTER FOUR: RHU IN TIBET ..................................................................................70 4.1 ARMY REPELLING ...................................................................................................93 4.2 THE GREAT PERFECTION ....................................................................................109 5. CHAPTER FIVE: THE OCEAN OF OATHBOUND PROTECTORS .............................115 5.1 RHULA IN THE OCEAN OF PROTECTORS……………………………………118 6. CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION………………………………………………….…….136 APPENDIX……………………………………………………………………………………..140 FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………………….165 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………172 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH…………………………………………………………………...189 v LIST OF FIGURES 1. Rhu, sun and moon in hand. Made of stone (schist). Thirteenth century, Orissa, India. The British Museum (1951,0720.2AN170839). © Trustees of the British Museum. ........................165 2. Za protection wheel from the Summary of the Guru’s Intention, revealed by Sangyé Lingpa. Fourteenth century .......................................................................................................................166 3. Rhula with za and sinmo retinue. Tibet, 1800 – 1899. Nyingma Lineage. Ground Mineral Pigment on Cotton. Courtesy of Jeff Watt and the Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation (item no. 169)…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 167 4. Rhula mural at Tengyeling (Bstan-rgyas-gling) Monastery in Lhasa. Photo courtesy of Christopher Bell (2007)………………………………………………………………………...168 5. Rhula on dragon mount, with za and sinmo retinue. Tibet, 1700 – 1799. Nyingma Lineage. Ground Mineral Pigment on Cotton. Courtesy of Jeff Watt and the Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation (item no. 65081)........................................................................................................169 vi ABSTRACT My thesis is a profile of the Tibetan Buddhist protector deity Rhula (Tib: Khyab 'jug chen po), particularly the ritual/magic and mythic complex that surrounds the cult of this deity. However, I will be using Rhula as a case study to make a larger theoretical point. Namely, I will argue that the cult of Rhula, as it developed in Tibet, was part of a broader Buddhist campaign to demonize the landscape of Tibet for missionizing and political purposes, in what we might call the mandalization of Tibet. While this took place in Tibet approximately from the twelfth century through the seventeenth, I will further argue that Buddhism, since its inception and as it developed in India, rested firmly on the foundation of a cosmology teeming with spirits (or daimons, to use a Greek umbrella term for a host of different kinds of beings). That is to say, conceptions of daimons like Rhula have historically been intimately connected with Buddhist doctrine and philosophy. As such, I will critique both the borrowing model and (to a lesser extent) the substratum model which both suggest that daimon cults are somehow an amalgamation or epiphenomenon in Buddhism. I am particularly interested in using Rhula as a case study because he represents a peculiar case of Tibetan elaboration upon an Indian antecedent. Rhula, or Rhu in Indian conceptions, has been a more or less abstract cosmological force that is synonymous with malignancy. While all the other planets (Skt. graha, Tib. gza’) are deemed to be gods, Rhula alone is an asura (demon or titan), in fact the only asura to have tasted the elixir of immortality. Thus he is regarded as a particularly fierce enemy of the gods. By the early second millennium in Tibet, Rhula has become a high-level Buddhist dharma protector (specifically of the Dzokchen (Rdzogs chen) tradition of Nyingma (Rnying ma) philosophy) and an emanation of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī (or often, Vajrapṇi). He has historically been heavily associated with destructive rites or war magic, and weather-making magic. There are a number of specific questions concerning this particular deity that I intend to answer in my thesis, in particular: How do the mythology and astrological functions of Rhula in Tibet relate to Indian antecedents? Why might Buddhists have transformed a relatively minor figure in Hindu mythology in such a significant way? Who were some of the Tibetan figures involved in valorizing this deity? What larger social and political climate in Tibet might have vii contributed to this transformation? How might Rhula‘s mythology relate to Buddhist philosophy, specifically Dzokchen thought? viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION The present work is a study of the deity Rhu(la), a well-known figure of Indian myth and cosmology who, in later traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, is developed into a major dharmapāla (“defender of the Buddhist teachings”). In what follows, I will examine how and why it was that this originally non-Buddhist character, best known for his mythic cosmological role in causing solar and lunar eclipses, in a little over a thousand years after his first appearance in a datable written account (specifically the famous Mahābhārata epic of Hindu literature) becomes associated with the highest reaches of Tibetan philosophy. All of this will be contextualized as part of a broader argument that deities like Rhula, prevalent in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism specifically and across the Buddhist world generally, are in fact indispensable elements within