Viṣṇu in his three abodes – some observations about three-storey and triple-shrined Viṣṇu temples in South India (original) (raw)
Related papers
This panel focuses on topics that contribute towards a more differentiated understanding of the various Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva devotional communities and their interface in early medieval South-Asia (ca. 5th-12th centuries CE). One of the main objectives of these papers is to understand the emergence and process of the literary production of the Vaiṣṇavas and Śaivas and to identify religious groups and their motivations behind these texts. In particular, our focus is on relevant sections of the Mahābhārata, the collection of texts designed to provide social norms and systems of practices for their respective communities of devotees, such as the Viṣṇudharma or Śivadharmaśāstra, as well as texts of contemporaneous initiatory traditions, such as those of the early Pañcarātras. This panel thus hosts two kinds of papers: firstly, those on specific topics within each system, which can be used as a basis for comparison; secondly, papers that directly address the comparative aspects, including those dealing with textual relations, cases of reuse, and direct textual influence. By identifying points of convergence and divergence between these religious groups, the papers aim to bring into focus the boundaries and interface, or even levels of syncretism, regarding Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva communities in this dynamic period which saw the rise of devotional movements.
Deyadharma -- A Gift of the Dharma: The Life and Works of Vanaratna (1384-1468)
Dissertation, 2021
The fifteenth-century Buddhist monk and paṇḍita Vanaratna lived a remarkable life that unfolded across the length and breadth of South Asia and crossed the Himalayan range. As a teacher, author, and pilgrim, Vanaratna traveled through and lived among many of the diverse Buddhist communities of his time and witnessed a tumultuous yet vibrant period in the regions' history. Vanaratna's life is particularly compelling for the fact that he counts among the last of the Buddhist paṇḍitas of Indic descent to leave an impression in the historical record. Active in eastern India, Sri Lanka, southern and northern India, Nepal, and Tibet, Vanaratna's life is accessible to us through a rich and extensive body of Sanskrit and Tibetan literature, as well as art-historical and material sources. This study is not the first to give Vanaratna the attention he merits, but it does aim to be the first to take into consideration this large body of material available on his life that has previously been underutilized or not considered at all. The primary witnesses for Vanaratna's life examined closely here include the Tibetan biographies (rnam thar) of Vanaratna composed by his immediate disciples, the Tibetan biographies of his students and colleagues, his extant works preserved in Sanskrit and Tibetan translation, and art-historical materials that record his life and deeds. These materials will be coordinated with the broader historical record in order to remedy both the dearth of comprehensive studies of Vanaratna's life and the scarcity of primary sources on the political and religious history of fifteenth-century South Asia, Nepal, and Tibet. i Contents Acknowledgements ii-iii Sigla and Abbreviations iv-v Sigla and Abbreviations BA Roerich, George. Blue Annals CKK brTson 'grus seng ge. 'Chi med grub pa'i 'khrul 'khor bzhugs bstod DṄ gZhon nu dpal. Deb ther ngon po GKV Guṇakāraṇḍavyūha MCB Anonymous. Myang yul stod smad bar gsum gyi ngo mtshar gtam gyi legs bshad mkhas pa'i 'jug ngogs shes bya ba bzhugs so. NTŚC Kun dga' grol mchog. Paṇ ḍi ta chen po śā kya mchog ldan gyi rnam par thar pa zhib mo rnam par 'byed pa. NTSG ca. circa em. emended f. folio ms. manuscript om. omitted r. recto v. verso vi 9 The Paṇḍita chen po śā kya mchog ldan gyi rnam par thar pa zhib mo rnam par 'byed pa (NTŚC) composed by Kun dga' grol mchog (1507-1565). 10 The bLa chen chos dpal bzang po'i rnam thar (NTCZ), composed by Vanaratna's long-time collaborator 'Jam dpal ye shes. 11 The Ye shes mkha' 'gro bsod nams 'dren gyi sku skyes gsum pa rje btsun ma chos kyi sgron ma'i rnam thar has been studied and translated in Diemberger 2007. 12 The Byams pa gling pa'i rnam par thar pa ngo mtshar phreng ba (NTSN), composed by Byang chub rnam rgyal dge legs (d.u.). 13 The dPal ldan bla ma dam pa'i rnam par thar pa dngos grub kyi rbya mtsho, composed by one Rin chen bzang po (d.u.) is presently held by the China Nationalities Library in Beijing (van der Kuijp 1994b: 604, n. 21). In his biography of Śākya mchog ldan, Kun dga' grol mchog indicates that his account of the meeting between Kun dga' blo gros and Vanaratna was based on an unnamed rnam thar of Kun dga' blo gros, which may be a reference to this work (NTŚC 56v.6). 14 This number represents the texts recorded separately in the Tibetan bsTan 'gyur. The actual number of distinct compositions would vary depending on how they are tallied. Two texts (Ōta. 3106 and 4666) are different translations of the same work, which is itself an extract of a longer compostion (Tōh. 1489). Three works (Tōh. 1768-70) appear to have originally been a single work that was later separated. xii preserved in the Tibetan bsTan 'gyur; 15 among these fourteen are tantric ritual texts or explanatory treatises, and five are hymns to Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna deities. We find roughly the same ratio among Vanaratna's collaborative translations of canonical works; of the twenty-eight texts Vanaratna translated with his Tibetan colleagues, twenty-four are Vajrayāna ritual manuals and instructions texts, while four are hymns. When we group this collection thematically, clear patterns emerge. The largest single body of literature in Vanaratna's collected works is dedicated to the practice of Cakrasaṃvara, and specifically to a thirteen-deity arrangement of its maṇḍala. At the heart of Vanaratna's interpretation of this system is his Trayodaśātmakaśrīcakrasaṃvaramaṇḍalavidhi (Tōh. 1489), a ritual manual that lifts heavily from Abhayākaragupta's Vajrāvalī. The treatise is primarily concerned with the preparation of the maṇḍala used in an elaborate initiatory rite, which is also explained in the text. The section on the fourth initiation was extracted from this text, seemingly for Vanaratna's own teaching purposes, 16 and exits independently in two separate translations, the Caturabhiṣekaprakaraṇa (Ōta. 3106) and the Caturabhiṣekavyavasthāna (Ōta. 4666). Vanaratna also composed a lengthy and technical commentary on Krṣṇācārya's Vasantatilakā, the Rahasyadīpakā (Tōh. 1449), detailing the subtle body yogas associated with the Cakrasaṃvara cycle. 17 Texts among the canonical translations that are closely related to this cycle are the Śrisaṃvaropadeśa (Ōta. 4654) and the Śrīsaṃvaratrayodaśātmakārcanavidhi (Ōta. 4655), both composed by Ghaṇṭāpāda. Vanaratna composed three works dedicated to Vajrayoginī, with a specific emphasis on her form as Vajravārāhī: the Vajravilāsinīvajravārāhīsādhana (Tōh. 1602), the Kramadvayavajravārāhīstotra (Tōh. 1603), and the Vajraghoṇasādhana (Tōh. 1605). To this list we can also add his Ugratārādevīsādhana (Tōh 1726), dedicated to a ferocious form of Vajrayoginī of particular importance in the Kathmandu Valley. Thus, eight of his nineteen extant compositions, over a third of his collection, are dedicated to the Cakrasaṃvara cycle and Vajrayoginī. As will be shown in the narrative that follows, Vanaratna taught on many of these texts and their practices in Tibet. A second cluster of texts, three in total, concern practices associated with the cult of Yogāmbara prominent among the Buddhists of the Kathmandu Valley. These three texts-the Anujñāvidhi (Tōh. 1768), Dhūmāṅgārīsādhana (Tōh. 1769), and the Balividhi (Tōh. 1770)feature the wrathful the protectress Dhūmāṅgārī and are explicitly intended to supplement that primary practices of Yogāmbara. These three works were classified separately in the Tibetan canon but were likely composed together as a set of interrelated rites. Not as well represented in Vanaratna's corpus but equally relevant to the Buddhist community of Nepal is the Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa cycle, which is reflected in Vanaratna's Acalābhisamayasuratābhidhāna (Tōh. 1783), 18 a full-length sādhana divided into four stages that cover all the aspects of utpatti-and utpannakrama practices for the deity Acala, and secondarily for other deities within the Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa maṇḍala. Like the cult of Yogāmbara, the Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa system was and is specifically popular among the Newar community, achieving much greater significance there than 15 Most of Vanaratna's compositions are found in the sDe dge bsTan' 'gyur and have corresponding Tōhoku catalog numbers. A significant number, however, are only found in the Peking Kangxi and related recensions of the bsTan 'gyur and are recorded only in the Ōtani catalog. Many of these are bSod nams rgya mtsho's revisions of earlier translations. 16 Vanaratna taught on this text at Byams pa gling monastery in 1455 (SG 47r.3; NTSG a 42v.1-2; NTSN 39v.3-4) 17 A Sanskrit edition of the Vasantatilaka and Vanaratna's Rahasyadīpakā has been published by Samdhong Rinpoche and Vrajvallabha Dvivedi (1990). 18 A Sanskrit manuscript witness of this work is available as Göttingen Xc14/40b, but the images are significantly distorted. It was first identified by Péter-Dániel Szántó (2010), whom I thank for sharing his draft transcription of the nearly illegible images. xiii in Tibet. And as with the Cakrasaṃvara cycle described above, the practice of Acala from the Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa system and of Dhūmāṅgārī from the Yogāmbara cycle were an essential part of Vanaratna's teaching repertoire. Though none of these texts are mentioned by title in the biographies, Vanaratna repeatedly taught on a practice of Acala "of the highest [tantric class]" (mi g.yo ba bla na med pa), and on at least one occasion taught his Tibetan disciples a sādhana of a two-armed form of Dhūmāṅgārī, corresponding to the form described in Tōh. 1768. The cycles of Cakrasaṃvara, Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa, and Yogāmbara are the focus of twelve of Vanaratna's compositions. Among the remaining texts are two esoteric ritual manuals connected to systems which otherwise barely register in his oeuvre: the Pañcarākṣārcanavidhi, a ritual manual for the famous set of five protectresses-Pratisarā, Mahāsāhasrapramardinī, Mahāmāyūrī, Mahāmantrānusāriṇī, and Mahāśītavatī-that was immensely popular in Nepal; and the Vajrāmṛtābhisamayatritaya (Ōta. 4785) 19 a treatise on three maṇḍalas of the Vajrāmṛta Tantra that are, the text informs us, not found in Abhayākaragupta's Niṣpannayogāvalī. 20 The remaining compositions are hymns to popular Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna deities: the Buddhastavadaśa (Tōh. 1154), Lokeśvararatnamālāstotra (Tōh. 1174), 21 Gaṇeśvarastava (Tōh. 1175), and Vanaratna's hymn to his own guru, the Śabarapādastotraratna (Tōh 1176/Ōta. 5102). The emphases we find in Vanaratna's writings appear to reflect the priorities of the Newar Buddhist community in the Kathmandu Valley, rather than those of his Tibetan disciples. As will be discussed in Part II of this study, textual and art-historical evidence suggests that Vanaratna underwent significant training in the Kathmandu Valley, and that he eventually regarded the valley as his primary residence and spiritual home. His biographies certainly gesture towards this fact, but the clearest evidence for his enduring connection to the Newar Buddhist community of the Kathmandu Valley is to be found in his...
Cracow Indological Studies
Peter C. Bisschop's recent publication is yet another valuable addition to the list of seminal works brought out by the Institut Francais d'Pondichéry and the École française d'Extrême Orient and comprising of critical editions of the hitherto unpublished, often even unknown Sanskrit source texts. On this occasion, Bisschop presents us with an edited text of the māhātmya genre related to the development of the Hindu holy sites in India. Māhātmyas, be they found in the purāṇas or circulating as independent, stand-alone texts, are now viewed as important sources for the later, well-known narratives but also the history of the sacred places, including shrines, many of which have developed into influential temples. The occurrence of this particular type of text is well attested to over centuries, with the māhātmya under study, according to the author, being one of the older. The author bases his work on the manuscript held in the Kaiser Library, Kathmandu (NGMPP C 6/3), which consists of a collection of māhātmyas focused on Vārāṇasī, among them, for example, one from the Skandapurāṇa, and another, as the author informs us, not extant in any other source. By publishing this particular māhātmya, related
Gleanings from the Mahāvastu (II)
ARIRIAB, 2020
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