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Tantric treasures: three collections of mystical verse from buddhist India

Roger R. Jackson

Jackson, Roger R.;

Tantric treasures: three collections of mystical verse from buddhist India

Oxford University Press, USA, 2004, 184 pages

ISBN 0195166418 9780195166415

topics: |  poetry | buddhism | 11th-c | india | bengali | bilingual


Translations are simple, and work quite well.

Excerpts

Saraha 1

vamhaNio hi ma jAnanta hi bheu
evai paDhiau e ccauveu

	Bah! Brahmins—
	they don’t know what’s what:
	in vain they incant
	their four Vedas.  p. 53

Saraha 2

maTTI [pANiI kusa lai paDantaM
dharahiM vaisI] aggi huNiantaM
kajje virahia huavaha homeM
akkhi uhAvia kuDueM dhumeM

	They incant, holding earth
	and water and kus´a grass,
	and sit at home
	making offerings to fire.

	Their oblations
	are pointless—
	the acrid smoke
	just stings their eyes.  p. 53

Saraha 25

jahi maNia pavaNia Nia san˜carai ravi sasi NiAha pavesa
tahi vaDha citta visAma karu saraheM kahia uesa

	Where thought and breath
	no longer roam,
	and sun and moon don’t shine—

	there, fool, repose
	your mind!
	This is the teaching Saraha declares. p.66

From Introduction

dohAkoShas

translations of three surviving apabhraMSa-language collections of rhyming
couplets, dohAkoSha, literally “treasuries of dohA” attributed to three
Buddhist tantric masters who probably lived in [Bengal/Bihar] sometime
around 1000 c.e.: Saraha, kAnha, and Tilopa. These men, and other
extraordinary men and women like them, are known collectively as
mahAsiddhas (great adepts, or great perfected ones, “siddhas” for short).1
Through the songs they composed, the instructions they left, and the
stories that have been told about them they have deeply influenced the
shape of religious and literary culture in a number of Asian countries,
especially India, Nepal, and Tibet.

In India, even after the virtual disappearance of Buddhism in the thirteenth
century, their criticism of the status quo and their celebration of a
mystical ecstasy attainable through the human body and the grace of a guru
helped to set the tone for a variety of later religious movements, including
the sant tradition of KabIr and NAnak, certain strains of bhakti
devotionalism, and aspects of Sufi Islamic mysticism; while in literature
they helped to hasten the eclipse of Sanskrit and the rise of various north
Indian vernacular languages, whose poetic traditions still carry echoes of
their rhymes, rhythm, and imagery. In Nepal, they served as models, and
sometimes as deities, for the Buddhist vajrAcaryas (“tantra experts”) among
the Newars of the Kathmandu valley, who to this day perform rituals and sing
songs that tradition traces to them. In Tibet (and culturally related areas
such as Mongolia, Ladakh, Sikkim, and Bhutan), they were seen as charismatic,
powerful, wise, and compassionate exemplars of the tantric Buddhist approach
to life and as the crucial sources for many important lineages of spiritual
practice; at the same time, their songs became models for genres of oral and
written poetry that have been immensely popular and influential, whether
produced by great hermit yogins like Milarepa (Mi la ras pa, 1040–1123) or
powerful clerics like the First Panchen Lama, Lozang Chokyi Gyeltsen (Blo
bzang chos kyi rgyal myshan, 1567–1662).

history

[Little is known of the historic siddhas.]  The most widely disseminated
tradition, reflected in a twelfth-century hagiographic collection by the
Indian scholar Abhayadattas´rI, tells of eightyfour great siddhas, most of
them adepts of the esoteric and controversial YoginI tantras, an
interrelated set of sexually and soteriologically charged texts that
flourished among north Indian Buddhists starting around the eighth century,
and would become especially important in the “later” (post-1000) orders of
Tibetan Buddhism: the Kagyu (bKa’ brgyud), Sakya (Sa skya), and Gelug (dGe
lugs).2 Saraha, kANha, and Tilopa all are counted among the eighty-four, as are
such equally famous figures as S´avaripa, virUpa, and nAropa, and a nAgArjuna
who may or may not be the same as the great mAdhyamika philosopher.

saraha

Saraha, the “arrow-maker” disciple of a female tantric practitioner (and
also known as the Great Brahmin, or RAhulabhadra the Younger), is perhaps
the greatest single individual in the history of Indian tantric Buddhism, famed
as its most eloquent poet; as the fountainhead for lineages of practice related
to the yoginI tantras and to meditation on the “great seal” of reality, mahA-
mudrA; and as a guru to the immortal nAgArjuna. Yet we cannot locate him
with any precision at all in time or place, probably confound him at times with
a disciple called Saraha the Younger, and cannot be certain that two of his most
notable poetic works, the “King” and “Queen” Treasuries, were written by
him or by a Nepalese master of the eleventh century. Though the Treasury
translated here is one of the most famous documents of late Indian Buddhism,
it exists in multiple, only partly overlapping forms in both apabhraMs´a and
Tibetan. The “standard” apabhraMs´a version, discovered in a Nepalese royal
library in 1907 and published in 1916 by HaraprasAd S´ Astri, then worked and
reworked by Muhammad Shahidullah and Prabodh Chandra Bagchi, never has
been found as an independent manuscript but rather has been extracted from
a later (eleventh-century?) commentary, in Sanskrit, the DohAkoSa-Pan˜jikA of
Advayavajra—who may be the same as the great Indian tantric theorist Maitripa.
In 1929, Bagchi found in Nepal a fragment of still another apabhraMs´a
version that coincides with other editions not at all. Yet another version of the
apabhraMs´a of Saraha’s text was discovered by Rahula SaMkr8tyAyana at Sakya
monastery in Tibet in 1934 and published in 1957; it only replicates about half
the verses in the “standard” edition. Furthermore, the Tibetan translation
contains both common and unique verses, adding further evidence, as if it
were needed, of the complexity and fragmentation of the textual tradition
surrounding Saraha’s signal work.

kANha : dark master

kANha (also known as kr^SNAcArya, the “dark master”) is reputed to be an
important figure in the transmission lineages of CakrasaMvara, a deity whose
practice is the focus of a major YoginI tantra cycle; the author of a brilliant
commentary on another yoginI tantra, the Hevajra; a disciple of the great siddha
Viru¯pa; and the skull-bearing (kApAlika) composer of a series of controversial
performance songs that speak frankly, though also in profoundly symbolic
terms, of his relationship with a low-caste woman (dombI). Yet he, too, is very
difficult to locate precisely in time or place, is easily confused with others who
bear the common names of kANha or kr^SNa, and may or may not be the author
of both the Treasury translated here and the performance songs that have earned
“kANha” so much notoriety. kANha’s Treasury, like Saraha’s, is not attested by
an independent apabhraMs´a manuscript but rather has been extracted from a
later Sanskrit commentary, an anonymous work known as the DohAkoSa-MekhalA-TIkA.

tilopa : sesame pounder

Tilopa, the “sesame-pounder” (also known as Tillipa, Telopa, or Tailopa),
is believed to have received four great tantric teaching streams. Some of the
teachings stemmed originally from Saraha, and some of them were transmitted
to Tilopa by actual or visionary female figures. He is said to have distilled those
into twelve profound instructions that were transmitted, amid great trials, to
his disciple NAropa, who in turn taught his own “six topics” (Tib. chos drug)
to the Tibetan translator Marpa (1012–1097).9 From Marpa the teachings passed
to Milarepa (1040–1123), thence to Gampopa (Sgam po pa, 1079–1153), from
whom nearly all later Kagyu lineages descend. Thus Tilopa is regarded by the
Kagyu traditions of Tibet as the direct human source of many of their important
practice lineages, including those connected with the tantras they considered
the most advanced and effective of all, the Unsurpassed Yoga tantras (Tib. bla
med rnal ’byor rgyud, Skt. yoganiruttara or yogAnuttara tantras) and with the radical
meditative techniques of the great seal (Tib. phya rgya chen po, Skt. mahAmudrA).
Yet Tilopa, too, is a mysterious character who, just as we think we may
approach, melts, like so many other siddhas, into the thicket of historical and
textual ambiguity, where doubts remain about his dating, his authorship, and
even his historicity. His Treasury, too, is unattested as an independent apabhraM
s´a text and also has been extracted from a later Sanskrit commentary, the
anonymous DohAkoSa-Pan˜jikA-SArArtha-Pan˜jikA.10

Contents

introduction 3
saraha’s treasury of couplets 53
kANha’s treasury of couplets 117
tilopa’s treasury of couplets 129
notes 143
bibliography 149
index 157

--- opening poem (quote):
We are not, were not, ever
	wrong. Desire
is the honest work of the body,
	its engine, its wind.
It too must have its sails—wings
	in this tiny mouth, valves
in the human heart, meanings like sailboats
	setting out

over the mind. Passion is work
	that retrieves us,
lost stitches. It makes a pattern of us,
	it fastens us
to sturdier stuff
	no doubt.
		—Jorie Graham, “I Watched a Snake”



amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at-symbol] gmail.com) 2011 May 02