Introduction

This research explores the use of human remains in Tibetan ritual objects and their historical development in the region’s religious life and material culture. The following describes how these objects have been documented in tantric and Buddhist visual culture, how they have been promoted and maintained through Tibetan discourse and performance, and how their present production, social value and diversity of liturgical functions relate to these histories. Moreover, this project aims to build an object-centered narrative, and to examine continuities in Tibetan material religion as a dynamic process of knowledge transfer and ritual skill. This investigation incorporates multiple disciplinary perspectives, including technical art history, iconographic analysis, cultural anthropology and material cultural studies.

‌There are four object types with which this research is primarily concerned: the skull vessel (Sanskrit kapāla, Tibetan thod pa, ka pa la), bone ornaments (Tbt. rus rgyan), thighbone trumpet (Tbt. rkang gling), and double-sided skull drum (Tbt. thod rnga).^[1] The ritual applications for these objects are numerous, often tantric, and their use is contingent on the setting and purpose of the ritual or practice, the ability of the practitioner/performer, and the specific liturgical tradition in which the object is being used. The cultural historical significance of these objects is related to the formation of Buddhist tantra and its establishment in the Himalayas and Tibet where the use of human remains was further refined through religious institutional discourse and innovations in ritual performance.

This research draws from a diversity of sources in order to explore the use of human remains as a standard of material specificity and the intersection of complex, interdependent values including those evident through ritual texts and commentary, visual culture, the construction and condition of surviving objects as well as the current perspectives of active practitioners and observers in the extended Tibetan cultural region, including communities in Bhutan, Sikkim and Ladakh. This dissertation will show that throughout their histories, these instruments have been associated with a specialized form of religious training and their use represents a volatile type of ritual efficacy and cultural technology suited to the expression of tantric and/or nondual teachings.