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.
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
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
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
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).
[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, 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 (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, 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
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”