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gCod and its ritual objects were in part popularized through the ways in which Buddhist religious institutions were socially and historically conditioned during their foundational period. This includes a proliferation of charnel methodologies鈥攚hat one scholar has called 鈥渇unerary Buddhism鈥濃�攄uring the tenth to fourteenth century (re-)construction of monastic and political institutions in the Tibetan cultural region.^[1] The political decentralization of Tibet after the ninth century was also shared with neighboring regions, contributing to a circulation of ritual knowledge which focused on empowerment and subjugation.^[2] Moreover, sources from Dunhuang suggest that Tibetan religious life in the tenth to twelfth centuries was oriented towards rituals which could be applied to practical goals such as the control of weather and the natural or human environment, and the protection of public health, contributing to the popularity of teachings and narratives associated with 尘补丑腻测辞驳补 tantric specialists like Guru Rinpoche.^[3]

The proliferation of these ritual methodologies before the twelfth century meant that by the time the monastic institutions of Tibet were establishing themselves based on continuities with Indian Buddhist traditions, there were other bodies of religious knowledge in place within the region, indicating the origins of a categorical distinction between what Giuseppe Tucci has described as mi chos, or popular religion, and lha chos, superior religion.^[4] As an independent lineage originating in Tibet with social application as mi chos, gcod has been misrepresented by some historians as 鈥渟hamanic鈥� or a pre-Buddhist form of Bon.^[5] However, its public function is acknowledged in the teaching鈥檚 sources, for example, in the second chapter of the Phung po gzan skyur rnam bshad which describes the gcod of 惭补丑腻尘耻诲谤腻 received from Pha dam pa and composed by Ma gcig as a practice which protects against 404 types of disease.^[6]

At the same time, the growth of gcod as a liturgical tradition follows the establishment of dismemberment and exposure burial as a preferential method for corpse disposal in the decentralized political and cultural landscape of Tibet after the ninth century.^[7] Dan Martin has observed that not only are Tibetan exposure burial sites conducive to gcod as a ritual setting for practice, the 蝉腻诲丑补苍补 of lus sbyin is in many ways similar to the process of bya gtor 鈥攐r scattering to the birds鈥攚herein a body is disaggregated and distributed to invited non-human intermediaries.^[8] In this way the gcod 蝉腻诲丑补苍补 can also be understood as an innovation in the historically Buddhist exercise of 补艣耻产丑补产丑腻惫补苍腻 and the contemplation of the body or a corpse as impermanent, as well as other methodologies derived from charnel ascetic and 艣谤补尘补峁嘺 traditions (see chapter 2).

As noted above, the practice of lus sbyin was interpreted and expanded by many Buddhist authors as a form of tshogs or tantric feast, the practice of which was central to yogin墨 tantra and its sources.^[9] At the same time, as a donative gesture, gcod 鈥攍颈办别 bya gtor 鈥攔esonates with a number of Buddhist cultural and historical narratives which illustrate the soteriological relationship between self and body found, for example, in 箩腻迟补办补, stories of the Buddha鈥檚 previous births from the 笔腻濒颈 and Sanskrit canon in which an accomplished practitioner who is knowledgable of Buddhist values and doctrines鈥�e.g. interdependent origination, attachment to material forms or self as an obstacle to liberation鈥攇ives their own body to sustain another creature.^[10] Though it had a popular application which resonated with twelfth century ritual specialists and yogins, gcod was also conditioned by its relationship to these historically Buddhist narratives and values.

The charnel instruments of gcod can also be interpreted within the many types of musical and liturgical performance which have been documented in Tibetan religious life, where the use of human remains as a substrate seems uniquely tied to the later spread of Buddhist tantra after the tenth century.^[11] The ritual use of music is an active topic of discourse during this formative period for religious institutions, though of the many percussion and wind instruments incorporated into monastic liturgical performance, those used in gcod 鈥攖丑别 rkang gling, 岣峚尘补谤耻 and bell鈥攁re best suited to individual practice.^[12] The rkang gling has a limited melodic range appropriate to the short blasts of the gcod 蝉腻诲丑补苍补, and the bell and 岣峚尘补谤耻 are played by ringing (khrol ba), making these musical instruments relatively useful for self-accompaniment.^[13] While the 岣峚尘补谤耻 is historically associated with Buddhist tantra as well as 艢补颈惫补 iconography, the charnel ascetic ritual methodologies of gcod would encourage its specialization as the thod rnga or skull drum.^[14]

Working primarily within bKa鈥� brgyud historiography and iconographic sources, this chapter has proposed an early record for rkang gling and the 蝉腻诲丑补苍补 of lus sbyin in Tibetan material religion and visual culture. This narrative is based on available evidence for the teachings of Ma gcig and the Indian yogin Pha dam pa as well as their expansion and diversification after the twelfth century. While gcod and its ritual methods were first and most actively cultivated by lineages established by Ma gcig and her descendants, it was through the integration of these practices into the monastic and institutional representations of Buddhist tantra that the rkang gling became a widely recognized element of Tibetan material religion.

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

David Germano, 鈥淭he funerary transformation of the Great Perfection (rDzogs chen),鈥� Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 1 (2005): 1-54.

[2]:

Carmen Meinert, 鈥淚ntroduction鈥� in Transfer of Buddhism Across Central Asian Networks (7th to 13th centuries), ed. Carmen Meinert (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 3. See also chapter 2 on the tantric subjugation practices of phur pa and sgrol ba, both increasingly circulated in the region after the eighth century.

[3]:

See chapter 2 and Dalton, 鈥淭he early development of the Padmasambhava legend鈥�, 769.

[4]:

Giuseppe Tucci, The Religions of Tibet (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 90-92. See also Geoffrey Samuel鈥檚 exploration of the historical and social relationship between practical and clerical religion in idem., Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washington DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press). Note however that in Samuel鈥檚 later work he no longer uses 鈥渟hamanic鈥� to describe popular ritual traditions, idem., The Origins of Yoga and Tantra, 139.

[5]:

Gyatso, for example, writes of gcod鈥檚 鈥渄ebt to shamanism鈥�, 鈥淭he development of the gcod tradition鈥�, 340. For a general critique of the historiography of shamanic traditions鈥攁 category which includes a wide variety of specialized and locally conditioned ritual methodologies鈥攕ee Cecelia F. Klein, et. al., 鈥淭he role of shamanism in Mesoamerican art,鈥� Current Anthropology 43, no. 3, (2002), 383-419. C.f. also Zeff Bjerken, 鈥淓xorcising the Illusion of Bon 鈥楽hamans鈥�: A critical genealogy of shamanism in Tibetan religions,鈥� R茅vue d鈥檈tudes tibetaines no. 6 (2004): 4-59 and Per Kvaerne, 鈥淎spects of the origin of the Buddhist tradition in Tibet,鈥� Numen 19, no. 1 (1972): 22-40. On the longevity of the historical relationship between Bon and chos, see Cantwell and Mayer, 鈥淭he Bon Ka ba nag po and the Rnying ma phur pa tradition,鈥� 47ff and Martin, Mandala Cosmogony, 5.

[6]:

Translated in Harding, op.cit., 86.

[7]:

Zoroastrians in Sogdia and Silk Road sites under Tibetan imperial control were practicing bya gtor by the eighth century, c.f. Frantz Grenet, Les pratiques fun茅raires de l鈥橝sie centrale s茅dentaire: De la conqu锚te grecque 脿 l鈥檌slamisation (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1984) and Stoddard, 鈥淓at it up or throw it to the dogs?,鈥� 14. See also chapter 4, section 1 on the historical relationship between exposure burial and Tibetan material religion.

[8]:

Martin, 鈥淥n the cultural ecology of sky burial鈥�, 365.

[9]:

鈥楯am mgon kong sprul, for example, provides a collection of tshogs and ritual dismemberments for the practitioner鈥檚 body in his lus sbyin commentary, idem., 鈥淭he garden of all joy鈥�, 35-80.

[10]:

See Reiko Ohnuma, 鈥淭he gift of the body and the gift of dharma,鈥� History of Religions 37, no 4. (1998): 323-359. The author examines a body of early Buddhist literature she labels 诲别丑补诲腻苍补, stories where the body is offered as a material gift through self-sacrifice and/or self-mutilation.

[11]:

Ter (Terry Jay) Ellingson, 鈥淢andala of sound: Concepts and sound structures in Tibetan ritual music鈥�, (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1979), 222.

[12]:

Ellingson, ibid., 642.

[13]:

Mireille Helffer, Mchod-rol: Les instruments de la musique tib茅taine (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1994),192. Helffer groups these iconographically diverse ritual objects and musical instruments under their 鈥渞esonating function鈥� (Fr. fonction sonore). See also Jeffrey Cupchik, 鈥淏uddhism as performing art: Visualizing music in the Tibetan sacred ritual music liturgies鈥� Yale Journal of Music & Religion 1, no. 1 (2015): 31-62.

[14]:

Helffer, ibid., 235. Thod rnga can be used for gcod but are not exclusive to this tradition; see also chapter 4, section 5.