Asian Territorial Deity Cosmologies as Vehicles for the Transmission of Buddhadharma

Abstract

Academic scholars are accustomed to understanding gter as sacred texts often associated with Padmasambhava, within a cult deriving historically from ancient imperial burials. Yet the great 13th-century Padmasambhava devotee Guru Chowang primarily understood gter, by definition, within a mundane framework, barely mentioning Padmasambhava at first, and with not a word about ancient tombs. Even more striking about Chowang’s understandings of gter are their widespread and continuing persistence, as suggested by recent ethnographies of Tibet’s territorial deity cosmologies. For rather than place ancient tombs at the centre of his analysis, Chowang looked to popular terrestrial deity cosmologies to provide a vehicle for Padmasambhava’s hidden teachings. This graft of Indian Buddhist notions of transcendent, spiritual, transmission onto mundane Tibetan territorial deity cosmologies still thrives to this day. Indeed, Tibetan scholars understood Indian Buddhism previously to have made a similar use of India’s nāga and yakṣa territorial deity cosmologies for the concealment and rediscovery of Buddhist teachings.

About the speaker

Rob Mayer's (AMES, University of Oxford) initial research focused on early rNying ma tantras and proto-rNying ma Dunhuang texts. More recently, his research focus has been on the historical origins of gter ma and related issues of Buddhist scriptural production. He is convenor of the Treasure Seminar.

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