Charnel materials in the Saṃvara tradition

This section explores ritualized charnel asceticism as a consistent feature of the Saṃvara corpus of Buddhist yoginī tantra.^[1] Within this liturgical, iconographic and commentarial tradition, the charnel implements of the kāpālika vow are made characteristic of Saṃvara deity yoga and its maṇḍala and through the popularization and circulation of yoginī tantra across the Buddhist world in the eighth to twelfth centuries, these objects would be cultivated in the performance and illustration of the most specialist ritual methodologies of Vajrayāna as well as the representation of its deities and practitioners.

In the characteristic liturgical model of Saṃvara tantras, by assuming the form of the central deity Heruka and ritually actualizing the maṇḍala, a vow (saṃvara, saṃ + √vṛ, Tbt. sdom pa) is made through the practitioner’s engagement of a network of ḍākinī (ḍākinījāla) which results in supreme bliss (śamvara or śambara, Tbt. bde mchog).^[2] As this section will show, this practice integrates historically kāpālika methods for ascetic observance as well as the ritual engagement of consorts, both of which were refined and re-contextualized in the expansion and adaptation of the tantric corpus by Buddhist communities during the ninth to eleventh centuries. Moreover, by the twelfth century, the methods and iconography of Buddhist yoginī tantra—including its application of charnel materials—had become foremost in the practice and representation of Vajrayāna.^[3] This includes the ninth century Hevajra tantra, which is more comprehensively systematized and emphatically Buddhist than older sources for Saṃvara tantra through it likewise incorporates charnel materials into its methodologies and observances.^[4]

The oldest surviving text from the Saṃvara tradition is the Sarvabuddhasamāyoga-ḍākinījālaśaṃvara (hereafter, Sarvabuddhasamāyoga) which, at the time of the earliest commentaries in this corpus from the late ninth and tenth centuries, was the most widely known Buddhist yoginī tantra.^[5] This text was translated into Chinese by the eighth century and Tibetan by the eighth or ninth where it is preserved, distinct from later yoginī tantras, in the rNying ma body of religious literature that includes other mahāyoga tantras which incorporate historically kāpālika methodologies.^[6] Much of the material in the Sarvabuddhasamāyoga has been demonstrated as derivative or imitative of Śaiva sources, including its title and the name of its central deity, Heruka (here called Vajraheruka).^[7] In the maṇḍala to which practitioners of this tantra are initiated, a four-faced and eight-armed deity is positioned at the center of an array of oath-bound ḍākinī (viz. yoginī), described with a charnel ornament on the head and holding a khaṭvāṅga.^[8]

The Laghusaṃvara (bDe mchog nyung ngu)—root tantra of the Tibetan Cakrasaṃvara (‘Khor lo bde mchog) corpus—and Saṃvarodaya (bDe mchog sdom pa ‘byung ba)—root tantra of the Newar Saṃvara tradition, classified as an explanatory tantra (bshad rgyud) of Cakrasaṃvara in Tibetan systems—likewise are shown to have adapted significant amounts of material from Śaiva sources, including kāpālika deities and practices.^[9] Both of these eighth century texts identify themselves as the discourse of a deity called Heruka (śrīherukābhidhāna) and the maṇḍalas of these two tantras position Heruka in union with his consort Vajravārāhī—endowed with khaṭvāṅga and skull vessel—at the center of an oath-bound circular network of ḍākinī clans (kula). Like the Sarvabuddhasamāyoga, both of these tantras incorporate charnel materials into various ritual preparations and empowerments as well as descriptions of the deity Heruka whose form is accomplished through yoga. These texts were largely formalized by Buddhist authors during the tenth and eleventh centuries.^[10]

In the visual and material culture of Saṃvara tantra, there are a number of ways in which this exchange of Buddhist and brahmanical kāpālika ritual methods can be seen, including the cultivation of a deity-centered, wheel-like composition for Vajrayāna maṇḍalas.^[11] In figs. 2.2 and 2.3—each one of the oldest surviving paintings of a round-shaped maṇḍala—forms of the Saṃvara deity Heruka and his consort Vajravārāhī are at the center of a circular assembly of yoginī, indicating the characteristic ritual dynamic of ḍākinījālaśaṃvara as well as the historically kāpālika arena of gaṇacakra (Tbt. tshogs kyi ‘khor lo, or tshogs).^[12] By the tenth century, the tantric gathering of gaṇacakra—in which yoginī are summoned and engaged through the presentation of impure substances like body fluids, feces or meat which have been rendered into purified nectar (amṛta, Tbt. bdud rtsi) in a skull—came to be treated as integral to the practice of yoginī tantra and the accomplishment of the Saṃvara maṇḍala.^[13] Moreover, this spatial composition resonates with the characteristically round, hypaethral structure of yoginī temples like Hirapur (e.g. fig. 2.18) as well as the historic association of Rudra and/or Śiva as a volatile, charnel ascetic accompanied by a group of mātṛkā.^[14]

While kāpālika methods for refining materials and making offerings in order to obtain siddhi had been used by yogins previous to the construction of the earliest yoginī temples, it was at a time of the reform and innovation of yoginī tantra in the ninth to eleventh centuries—e.g. as the kaula system of internalized yoga—that the yoginīcakra came to be monumentalized. And as tantric gatherings and yoginī practices were given form in visual and material culture, the iconography of charnel grounds (śmāśana) became a valued yet specialized illustrated setting for ritual accomplishment.^[15] In the Laghusaṃvara, the maṇḍala is said to be accomplished as or within a charnel ground, as in the Śaiva Brahmayāmala, a substantial source for its ritual methodologies.^[16] This localization is suggested as well in the visual program at Hirapur, where the exterior (i.e. public) iconography prominently feature indications of a charnel setting and kāpālika methods (see fig. 2.22) though the interior assembly is relatively free of charnel imagery.

An interpretation of Hirapur as a monumental precedent for circular yoginī maṇḍala is supported by the reputation of Bhubaneśvar as an active Śaiva religious center after the seventh century, including its identification as a pīṭha, a pilgrimage destination and gathering site for ritual specialists.^[17] Moreover, the Brahmayāmala describes two places in Orissa, including Bhubaneśvar—called Ekāmra and also identified as one of the text’s eight pīṭha —within its systemized ritual landscape of eight charnel grounds, or aṣṭaśmāśana (Tbt. dur khrod chen po brgyad), located in eight cardinal directions across south Asia and within which its maṇḍala should be accomplished or visualized.^[18]

This visual and liturgical landscape of aṣṭaśmāśana was cultivated in Buddhist yoginī tantra as a context for its methods of ritualized charnel asceticism. In the Saṃvarodaya, each of these locations is distinguished with a local protector (dikpāla), characteristic tree and a serpent, and the text provides a general description of the charnel grounds as a setting filled with threatening clouds, animals, corpses, siddha yogins, vidyādhara and yoginī.^[19] The ninth-tenth century Śmaśānavidhi—an exegetical text in the Saṃvara tradition attributed to the kaula teacher Lūyīpāda —elaborates on the Saṃvarodaya description of the aṣṭaśmāśana by including consorts for the protectors, a description of the demon that lives in each location’s characteristic tree—whose head corresponds to that of the protectors’ mount—and a stūpa.^[20] In the twelfth century Sādhanamālā, these charnel grounds are described uniquely in association with a maṇḍala of Vajravārāhī, a deity who is otherwise the primary consort of Heruka in the Saṃvara tradition.^[21]

Figure 2.32: Detail of Saptākṣara maṇḍala from fig. 2.3 with the worldly protector Nairṛta in the southwest direction, surrounded by charnel ascetic yogins and ritual specialists in a śmaśāna named Ghorāndhakāra.

In figs. 2.2 and 2.3, each maṇḍala and its assembled network of ḍākinī is located within a version of the aṣṭaśmāśana which reflects the systematic re-contextualization and elaboration of the liturgical and iconographic precedent set at Hirapur, with its charnel exterior, and in the Brahmayāmala as well. As with Yama and Mahākāla in Buddhist yoga tantras (see previous section), this includes the adaptation of non-Buddhist figures and deities as local protectors: In fig. 2.32, Nairṛta—a brahmanical figure who is identified in the Saṃvarodaya tantra as king of the rakṣa—occupies the southwest śmaśāna of Ghorāndhakāra, naked and blue-black, holding a sword and severed head, and seated on an animate corpse as he is described in the Śmaśānavidhi, though without a consort.^[22] The body on which he is seated recalls historical images of the kāpālika deity Cāmuṇḍā seated on a corpse (fig. 2.12), as well as the male deity at the center of the Hirapur yoginī maṇḍala (fig. 2.19).^[23] Like the deities at the center of this painting (fig. 2.5), Nairṛta wears a five-skull crown while the yogins facing him have a single skull each in their hair (see more on these ornaments below).

In the same painted detail of the charnel domain of Nairṛta in fig. 2.32, a solitary yogin sits under an archway of skulls with an inverted gaze and crossed hands.^[24] This illustration corresponds to a sādhana called karaṅkatoraṇa in which the yogin realizes an archway of skulls in a charnel setting and from inside which embodies the deity Cakreśa—lord of the yoginīcakra, viz. Heruka, the principle deity of Saṃvara—a practice described in a twelfth century text derived from the kaula teachings of the tenth century Śmaśānavidhi.^[25] This—like many of the illustrated activities of the yogins in these two early maṇḍala (figs. 2.2 and 2.3)—suggests a more dynamic, ritualized form of charnel ascetic practice than the historically Buddhist method of aśubhabhāvanā (see fig. 2.23), for example, in which the corpse or its image was treated as an object of contemplation. At the same time, kaula sources primarily describe ritualized charnel asceticism as an internalized method of deity yoga.^[26]

Within these maṇḍala and the aṣṭaśmāśana, the sādhana of the skull arch is a refined and specific illustration of the ways in which Buddhist yoginī tantra integrated, adapted and expanded on historical sources for charnel practice. At the same time, the more broadly applied liturgical and iconographic innovations of yoga tantra facilitated a changing concept of the body in Vajrayāna as an instrument for Buddhist practice, where the death of the body became a further opportunity for Buddhist pedagogy through skillful means (upāya) and demonstrations of impermanence, and as a condition for liberation or extinction (parinirvāṇa).^[27] Moreover, like aśubhabhāvanā, or the contemplation of decaying corpses, the charnel methodologies which were definitive to the Saṃvara corpus and its sources relied in some part on the instrumentation of the death of the body as a source of impurity, transgression or volatility.

Just as the kāpālika vow had been integrated into the Śaiva mantramārga as a specialization of the Bhairava corpus and vidyāpīṭha as a means for empowerment through identification with the deity, in Buddhist tantra the use of skull, khaṭvāṅga and bone ornaments became a prominent feature of yoginī (and mahāyoga) tantras as part of their doctrinal and rhetorical “calculus of impurity and pollution” which utilized sexual yoga, killing or sacrifice, the consumption of impure substances, and other direct violations of monastic vows and norms.^[28] These ritual methods were moreover cultivated as actualizations of the nondual (advaya, Tbt. gnyis med) by connecting the practitioner and deity through yoga and—most prominently and explicitly in yoginī tantra—by utilizing the historically and socially transgressive associations of the kāpālika vow in order to undermine dualistic thinking and become empowered in the form of these teachings’ central deity, Heruka.

Where Bhairava is the primary identity of male deity forms in the Śaiva mantramārga corpus, Heruka is thus central to Buddhist yoginī tantra: Both the Laghusaṃvara and Saṃvarodaya tantras identify themselves as the discourse of Heruka, whose consort is the yoginī Vajravārāhī and whose iconography and methods of establishing the oath-bound network of ḍākinī (i.e. saṃvara) incorporate the use of skull and khaṭvāṅga, as well as wearing a set of five ornaments referred to as the pañcamudrā.^[29] In the earliest source for Saṃvara tantra, the Sarvabuddha-samāyoga, the central male deity is identified as Vajraheruka and has a skull ornament on his head and khaṭvāṅga.^[30] Furthermore, a connection of the practitioner and deity by means of charnel implements is emphasized in methods for yoga tantra in the Saṃvara tradition as well as the iconography of Heruka in its textual sources, wherein the accomplished practitioner is described as one possessing the yoga of the two-armed heruka (dvibhujaherukayogavān).^[31]

Moreover, two-armed forms of Heruka may be the oldest surviving Buddhist iconographic programs to consistently feature charnel implements. A series of images likely dated to the eleventh century and found at the pilgrimage center and monastic community of Ratnagiri in Orissa—an active Buddhist site since the fifth century, and not fifty kilometers from the yoginī temple of Hirapur and Śaiva communities of Bhubaneśvar—show Heruka with two arms and one face, holding a skull and khaṭvāṅga on the left side and a vajra raised in the right hand, dancing in ardhaparyaṅka with the left foot grounded on a corpse (figures 2.33-2.34). On the larger free-standing relief (fig. 2.33), this figure has a crown of five skulls which can be seen above a third eye in the forehead, with ornaments on the chest, ears, neck, waist and arms.

Another eleventh century example of a two-armed Heruka from Nālandā in Bihar (fig. 2.35), though damaged, shows the deity dancing on a corpse whose left hand is raised in abhayamudrā, and accompanied by an assembly of six yogini/ḍākinī also on corpses and holding charnel implements.^[32]

Iconographically, this figure suggests a knowledge and value for ritualized charnel asceticism at Ratnagiri, a site which exhibits a diversification in visual culture through two periods of construction in the eighth and eleventh centuries that increasingly featured deities associated with tantric methods.^[33] During this period of inter-communal exchange, material as well as ritual knowledge was shared between Buddhist and Śaiva sites in their expansion and monumentalization in Orissa, with similar techniques and motifs seen at Ratnagiri as well as nearby sites in Bhubaneśvar.^[34] Moreover, in Tibetan histories, the name Ratnagiri is associated with the formation of the Buddhist tantric corpus, and other historical evidence supports an active role for Buddhist communities in eastern India and Bengal in the formation of yoginī tantra.^[35] Though they represent a small minority of the surviving Buddhist monuments of the region, these images of the two-armed Heruka nevertheless reflect the growing prominence of yoginī tantra after the tenth century and evidence for its support and interest within Buddhist monastic institutions.^[36]

Figure 2.33: Free-standing relief of a two-armed Heruka dancing on a human body with skull and khaṭvāṅga (damaged) on the left side, and a vajra in the raised right hand, wearing charnel ornaments including a five skull crown, Ratnagiri, 11th century. Image from Linrothe 1999.

Figure 2.34: One of the two-armed Heruka on a select number of votive stūpa at Ratnagiri, 11th century. Images from Linrothe 1999.

Figure 2.35: Damaged two-armed Heruka with an assembly of six yoginīs, each holding skull and khaṭvāṅga on the left and dancing on a corpse, currently in the Nālandā Museum, c. 11th century. Image from Linrothe 1999.

Furthermore, images of the two-armed Heruka at Ratnagiri demonstrate the re-contextualization of iconographic features exchanged with non-Buddhist communities. The deity’s charnel implements and appearance reflect a refined, empowered version of kāpālika practitioners from the Śaiva and Pāśupata sites of Bhubaneśvar, for example at the tenth century temple of Someśvara (see figs. 2.13-2.16) as well as images of the skull-bearing ascetic Bhikṣāṭanamūrti (fig. 2.7). However, the pose and implements of these two-armed Herukas also resemble specific figures in the iconographic program at the nearby tenth century yoginī temple at Hirapur, especially its exterior set of nine yoginī, each with a knife raised in the right hand and holding skull in the left, with a tantric staff over the left shoulder and dancing over severed heads and animals indicating their charnel setting (fig. 2.22).

Figures 2.36 and 2.37: Two-armed charnel ascetic figures wearing a garland of skulls and holding a severed head, from either side of the narrow vestibule at the entrance to the Hirapur yoginī temple, 10th century. Images from Donaldson 2002.

A speculative connection between deity yoga and the charnel ascetic practices characteristic to Heruka in yoginī tantra is suggested as well by the two skeletal figures in the narrow vestibule at the entry to Hirapur (figures 2.36 and 2.37). Though damaged, it can be seen that they are moving in opposite directions—entering and exiting the temple—and wearing a garland of skulls, with flaming hair and a raised right arm, and at least one of them carries a severed head in the left hand. Under each of these, smaller naked male forms hold up cups (or skulls?) surrounded by animals and trees, suggesting an ascetic setting. While the appearance of these figures recalls a two-armed version of the emaciated charnel deity mātṛkā Cāmuṇḍā (figs. 2.12 and 2.13), the position of this iconography in the vestibule might rather represent, like the deity Heruka and kāpālika practitioners at Someśvara (figs. 2.14-2.16), the accomplished form of a yogin or practitioner who is initiated to the methods of ritualized charnel asceticism indicated in the visual programs and design of this site.

It is noteworthy that the iconography of Heruka at Ratnagiri does not resemble the images of Śiva as the multi-faceted Bhairava (see, for example, figs. 2.11, 2.17, 2.19) which proliferated after the tenth century with increasingly complex and integrative forms with many arms, heads and implements, and who was less explicitly charnel than śākta deities like Cāmuṇḍā.^[37] However, like Bhairava, the figure of Heruka can be understood as a general, expanding iconographic category which, by the twelfth century, came to describe the majority of Vajrayāna deities, collectively identified as forms of the buddha Akṣobhya and characterized by a wrathful appearance that very often includes a skull, charnel ornaments and khaṭvāṅga.^[38] In the Hevajra corpus for example, the deity Heruka has two, four, or six arms, each form accompanied by eight yoginī in a charnel ground; alternatively, at the center of this tantra’s maṇḍala the deity Hevajra in union with Nairātmyā has sixteen arms.^[39]

Some of the earliest preserved evidence in a Buddhist context for the integration of charnel implements into these multi-faceted representations of tantric deities can be found in images of the twelve-armed deity Saṃvara which also survive from the eleventh century, and from within the same approximate geo-cultural region of activity, including examples from Ratnagiri as well as farther east in Bengal (figures 2.38-2.40). Like the two-armed Heruka, Saṃvara is wearing charnel ornaments and holds amongst many implements a khaṭvāṅga and skull on the left side as well as the severed head of Brahma which further reinforces this figure’s associations with Śaiva and brahmanical narratives for the kāpālika vow.

In figs. 2.38 and 2.39, the integration of charnel and yoginī practices characteristic to Saṃvara tantra is further emphasized with a scenario in the bottom register that features Buddhist yogins —holding a vajra, center left—seated on corpses under a lone tree with another body between them at center. Above this, Saṃvara is accompanied by an assembly of four four-armed yoginī in low relief—three along the bottom and one at top center—standing, like the deity, in alīḍha and similar to the assembly of yoginī with the two-armed Heruka, in ardhaparyaṅka, in fig. 2.35.^[40] This twelve-armed form of Saṃvara is described by Abhayākaragupta at the center of a maṇḍala in the twelfth century Niṣpannayogāvalī, while in the earlier Śmaśānavidhi this same deity, located within the eight charnel grounds, is identified as Vajraḍāka.^[41]

Figures 2.38 and 2.39: Twelve-armed Saṃvara with single skull ornament in the hair, holding khaṭvāṅga and skull with assembly of four yoginī, c. 11th century, from Bengal and currently at the Indian Museum, Kolkata. Images from Linrothe 1999. The lower register (above) shows two yogin engaged in practices of ritualized charnel asceticism.

While the charnel associations are fairly explicit, these early images of Saṃvara do not show the deity in union with Vajravārāhī as described by written sources or seen in the twelfth century maṇḍala in fig. 2.4. This iconography does, however, translate the ways in which the Saṃvara yoginī tantra corpus—like mahāyoga sources covered above—acknowledges an exchange of charnel methodologies with Śaiva kāpālika practitioners: In the earliest tantra of the Saṃvara corpus, the Sarvabuddhasamāyoga, the central figure Vajraheruka adopts Bhairava’s kāpālika methods in order to be empowered to rectify non-Buddhist teachings.^[42] In figs. 2.40 and 2.41—as well as the maṇḍala in fig. 2.4—the central deity as a form of Heruka stands on the figures of Bhairava and his consort (i.e. Kalārātri) as described in the Saṃvarodaya.^[43] Likewise, in the Laghusaṃvara, Heruka is described as the terror of Mahābhairava, whose form he takes by wearing charnel ornaments and taking the khaṭvāṅga.^[44] Here, the iconography of Saṃvara illustrates the specific characteristics and advantages of Buddhist methodologies for ritualized charnel asceticism.

Figure 2.40: Twelve-armed Saṃvara from Ratnagiri, c. 11th century, now at the Patna Museum. The deity has a row of skulls across his crown and a skull and staff or khaṭvāṅga on the left; this is one of two known surviving Saṃvara images from this site. Image from Linrothe 1999.

As Buddhist yoginī tantra came to characterize the majority of Vajrayāna practices and iconographies after the eight century, its authors made significant contributions to the cultivation and expansion of kāpālika practices and their visual cultural integration.^[45] The ninth century Hevajra tantra, for example, describes itself as a means of accomplishing Heruka as a yogin seated on a corpse that represents the mundane world, albeit through an internalized and comprehensively Buddhist ritual methodology for yoga and yoginī tantra.^[46] By the thirteenth century, a description from the Hevajra corpus of the tantric yogin as a charnel ascetic with skull vessel, the five charnel ornaments and khaṭvāṅga would form the basis for Grags pa rgyal mtshan’s articulation of implements for the observance of yoga in the form of Heruka and reinforce what would become an important source for the Tibetan tradition of brtul zhugs spyod pa.^[47]

Figure 2.41: Heruka as Saṃvara trampling on Śiva-Bhairava and Kalārātri, Kashmir, c. 10th century, now at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.85.2.4).

In conclusion, this section has examined evidence for a Buddhist liturgical and iconographic formalization of ritualized charnel asceticism—including the use of skull, khaṭvāṅga and charnel ornaments, and their representation as implements of Heruka—through the formalization and illustration of Saṃvara tantra and this tradition’s demonstrable integration of historically kāpālika implements into Vajrayāna methods of deity yoga and its iconographies.

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

As Sanderson has iterated, based on the classificatory system of the bKa’ ‘gyur the three primary Tibetan yoginī traditions are Kālācakra, Saṃvara (and Vajravārāhī), and Hevajra (with Nairatmya); others are Buddhakapāla, Mahāmāyā, Yogāmbara, Candamahārosana and Vajrāmṛta, idem., “Vajrayāna: Origin and function”, 97n1. Similarly, the thirteenth century scholar mKhas grub rje lists Kālācakra, Saṃvara and Hevajra as mother tantras—ma rgyud or yoginītantra, also known as ḍākinītantra and prajñātantra—with Saṃvara foremost among them and distinguished by its ritual methodologies, ibid., 267.

[2]:

See Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra, 35-37.

[3]:

In the twelfth century Sādhanamāla, the majority of Vajrayāna deities are described as wrathful (krodha) forms of the buddha Akṣobhya and empowered by the skull, khaṭvāṅga and/or charnel ornaments, c.f. Bhattacharya, op.cit., 60ff. Also in Abhayākaragupta’s Niṣpannayogāvalī the majority of maṇḍala are centered on a wrathful deity form, c.f. de Mallmann, op.cit., 41ff. Heather Stoddard moreover notes that of 118 maṇḍala described in Tibetan canonical sources, 77 are yoginī or mahāyoga tantras; idem., “Dynamic structures in Buddhist maṇḍalas: Apradakṣina and mystic heat in the Mother Tantra section of the Anuttarayoga Tantras,” Artibus Asiae 58, no. 3/4 (1999): 178-179.

[4]:

As a Saṃvara tantra, Hevajra is nevertheless identified within the tantra as srīhevajraḍākinījāla-śaṃvara, see Shinichi Tsuda, “The Samvarodaya tantra: Selected chapters”, (PhD diss., Australian National University, 1970), 58. Hatley moreover observes that the characteristically transgressive material religion of yoginī tantra was minimized in the Kālacakra, which was compiled still later in the eleventh century, idem., “Goddesses in text and stone,” 219n36. Samuel elsewhere notes that just as traditions of Śaiva and kaula tantra were reformed during the tenth and eleventh centuries, so was Vajrayāna, op.cit., 325. See below on charnel implements in the Hevajra tantra and its description of Heruka deity yoga.

[5]:

Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra, 176n19. See also the chronology for the Saṃvara tradition presented by David B. Gray, “Introduction,” in The Cakrasamvara Tantra: The Discourse of Śrī Heruka (Śrīherukābhidhāna), Editions of the Sanskrit and Tibetan Texts, ed. David B. Gray, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 4ff.

[6]:

Sanderson, “The Śaiva age,” 145ff. This author credits the Sarvabuddhasamāyoga with the origins of “Śaiva-Buddhist intertextuality” and notes that this text was translated into Chinese by Amoghavajra (705-774) and classified—like the Guhyasamāja which describes both sgrol ba and tshogs —as māyājāla by the rNying ma. Sanderson also writes that Āryadeva (c. late ninth-eleventh centuries) classified the Sarvabuddhasamāyoga as mahāyoga, again like the Guhyasamāja.

[7]:

See ibid.,156 where Sanderson asserts that the name of this Buddhist tantra—Sarvabuddha-samāyoga-ḍākinījālaśaṃvara —is a calque of two texts from the Śaiva vidyāpīṭha, the Sarvavīrasamāyoga and the Yoginījālaśaṃvara. See also Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra, 40n122 and below on the origins of Heruka.

[8]:

ibid., 147n338.

[9]:

Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra, 20. In the Newar Vajrayāna tradition, Saṃvarodaya is more prominent, while Laghusaṃvara was favored as the root tantra by monastic institutions of northeast India from which the majority of Tibetan practices were drawn. See also Tsuda, “The Samvarodaya tantra”, 29ff. For a breakdown of shared material between these Buddhist Saṃvara tantras and sources from the Śaiva vidyāpīṭha, see Sanderson, “History through textual criticism”, 42-44.

[10]:

Gray notes that this work initiated with the tantric scholar Jayabhadra (c. late 9th-10th century) at Vikramaśīla, idem., The Cakrasamvara Tantra: Editions, 19; see also ibid., 6-8n14 on dating these sources and ibid., 28 on the translation of Laghusaṃvara into Tibetan during the tenth to twelfth centuries.

[11]:

Luczanits has found that surviving maṇḍalas dated before the eleventh and twelfth centuries are rare or non-existent, with few examples at Dunhuang and none from India or Tibet, see idem., “On the earliest mandala”, 121. See also Stoddard, “Dynamic structures in Buddhist maṇḍalas”, passim on the characteristic circular and left-handed structures and spatial relationships of Tibetan yoginī tantra.

[12]:

Sanderson states that what he describes as the gaṇamaṇḍala —a ritual assembly with central male figure within a gathering of yoginī, also called yoginīgaṇa or yoginīcakra —is a “distinctive feature” of the Śaiva vidyāpīṭha, particularly śākta practices and from which it is introduced into the Buddhist Sarvabuddhasamāyoga and Laghusaṃvara tantras, idem., “The Śaiva age,” 154.

[13]:

See Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra, 160n17; Jayabhadra describes the Saṃvara maṇḍala as the Laghusaṃvara’s triple-wheel (tricakra) assembly while the tenth century commentator Bhavabaṭṭa further interprets the same ritual setting as gaṇacakra. Wedemeyer suggests that gaṇacakra can be interpreted as a ritual event wherein kāpālika observances and methods were practiced as an alternative to an extended period of charnel ascetic vrata which is characteristic of yoginī tantra, idem., Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism, 192. This same practice has been integrated into the liturgical calendar of many contemporary Tibetan communities as a monthly ḍākinī or mkha’ ‘gro tshogs, where alcohol or fruit juice is offered as bdud rtsi in a skull;observed in Kathmandu, West Bengal and Sikkim, May-August 2018, see also chapter 4, section 2. On tshogs in sources for Buddhist mahāyoga tantra (e.g. the Guhya corpus) see notes 90-93 above as well as Cantwell and Mayer, Early Tibetan Documents on Phur pa, 137.

[14]:

Shaman Hatley has elsewhere discussed the architecture of Hirapur in relation to sources from the Śaiva vidyāpīṭha, particularly the Brahmayāmala, and finds that the round, open-roofed plan of yoginī temples is conducive to ritual gatherings (yoginīcakra) described in these texts wherein the ḍākinī arrive through the siddhi of flight, idem., “Goddesses in text and stone,” 214. Dehejia likewise observes that yoginī monuments are uniquely round, while other temple architecture from the same period across south Asia is often rectilinear, op.cit., 58. See note 51, above for a description from the seventh century Brahmayāmala of the practitioner using kāpālika implements to become rudro matṛgaṇaiḥ sārdhaṃ.

[15]:

Wedemeyer has elsewhere tabulated the variety of isolated, liminal sites recommended in the sources of Buddhist tantra formalized during this period and which include mountains, caves, places with one tree, and at the confluence of rivers. The charnel ground is a suggested setting in the Guhyasamāja, Laghusaṃvara, and Saṃvarodaya tantras, as well as later yoginī tantras like Hevajra and Kālālcakra, idem., op.cit., 139.

[16]:

Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra, 164n3. Gray speculates that “it is not necessary to locate the maṇḍala in a charnel ground” but rather, as the tenth century Jayabhadra suggests, to visualize and accomplish the maṇḍala as such a space. See also Hatley, “The Brahmayāmalatantra”, 194. In ibid., 175 Hatley discusses correspondences between this text and the Laghusaṃvara.

[17]:

Donaldson, Tantra and Śākta Art of Orissa, 81. Though an active Śaiva center from the seventh century, the tenth century in this region is marked by the introduction of kaula teachings and the construction of many monuments with śākta and kāpālika iconography, c.f. ibid., 655 and figs. 2.13-2.16 from Someśvara.

[18]:

Hatley, “The Brahmayāmala tantra,” 232-234. In this text the aṣṭaśmāśana are Vārāṇasī, Virajā (also in Orissa, at Jajpur), Kollagiri, Prabhāsa, Ujjainī, Bhūteśvara, Ekāmra (viz. Bhubaneśvar) and Koṭivarṣa.

[19]:

Tsuda, op.cit., 273-4. These are identified as (E) Caṇḍogra (N) Gahvara (W) Vajravāla (S) Karaṅkin (NE) Aṭṭaṭṭahāsa (SE) Lakṣmīvana (SW) Ghorāndhakāra (NW) Kilakilārava. The respective protectors are Indra, Kubera, Varuṇa, Yama, Iśāna, Agni, Nairṛta and Vāyu.

[20]:

For a comparative presentation of sources for aṣṭaśmāśana iconography in the yoginī tantra corpus, see English, op.cit., 449n312. This visual program is absent from the Hevajra tantra and the Laghusaṃvara tantra, despite the latter text’s emphasis on the charnel ground as a ritual setting.

[21]:

de Mallmann, op.cit., 349. The sādhana is number 223, though many of the names for these sites given here differ from those in the Saṃvarodaya and Śmaśānavidhi. Unlike Saṃvara tantra, the Vajravārāhī maṇḍala is centered on a female deity, similar to non-Buddhist śākta traditions which also used kāpālika methods and materials. For the history of Vajravārāhi as a yoginī and Buddhist deity with precedents in the mātṛkā tradition, see English, op.cit., 47-49. This iconography would be further developed in a series of thirteenth century Tibetan paintings, see chapter 3.

[22]:

Like the other dikpāla included as protectors in the aṣṭaśmāśana, Nairṛta has been integrated from earlier brahmanical and Vedic sources, appearing similarly elsewhere in Vajrayāna iconography, see de Mallmann, op.cit., 272-3. See also English, Vajrayoginī, 140-143 on historical sources for this iconography and the identification of these guardians in the yoginī tantra corpus.

[23]:

Wessels-Mevissen, op.cit., for a history and iconographic review of this figure among representations of the eight cardinal dikpāla after the seventh century, where Nairṛta typically occupies the southwest. Though the vehicle of this deity is characteristically a human figure in surviving historic representations, it is only at the tenth century Śaiva monument of Kāmeśvara in Bhubaneśvar where Nairṛta is also holding a severed head and sword, though standing on the human corpse, op.cit., 75 and fig. 244.

[24]:

Similar skull archways with solitary yogins are found in the other twelfth century maṇḍala in fig. 2.2 but I do not have access to sufficiently high resolution images of this painting to include a detail here.

[25]:

English, Vajrayoginī, 374-376. English translates “skeleton archway” but from these twelfth century images, karaṅka seems to have been understood as skull. This twelfth century collection of yoginī sādhana is called the Guhyasamayasādhanamālā and examined thoroughly in ibid.

[26]:

This internalization is also suggested in the Laghusaṃvara tantra, which superimposes cosmological, liturgical and physiological topologies for the body of the practitioner and the maṇḍala as arenas for ritual action, c.f. Gray, The Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, 56-60. See also David B. Gray, “Mandala of the self: Embodiment, practice, and identity construction in the Cakrasaṃvara tradition,” Journal of Religion History 30, no. 3 (2006), 294-310.

[27]:

See Gray, ibid. as well as idem., “Skull imagery and skull magic in the yoginī tantras,” Pacific World 3, no. 8 (2006), 21-39. David L. Snellgrove has remarked that the “overt cult of the body” dominated later Vajrayāna, though it was not entirely new to Buddhist practice, idem., Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and their Tibetan Successors (London: Serindia Publications, 1987), 288.

[28]:

Wedemeyer, op.cit. 130; see this source for an extended study of antinomian rhetoric and observances in the historical sources for Buddhist tantra.

[29]:

See Sanderson, “The Śaiva age,” 179ff on textual sources for the Buddhist adaptation of implements of the kāpālika vrata and/or caryā (vow/observance, practice). See also below and chapter 4, section 3 on charnel ornaments as a set of five mudrā.

[30]:

Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra, 42. Gray also finds that the commentarial tradition of the Sarvabuddhasamāyoga equates Vajraheruka with the bodhisattva Vajradhara (ibid., 40n126).

[31]:

Sanderson notes this two-armed form of Heruka is characteristic of Buddhist Saṃvara deity yoga in ibid. 150n343. In the Samvarodaya, the practitioner is described as dvibhujaherukayogavān, in ch. 13; c.f. Tsuda, op.cit., 261. In the Laghusaṃvara chapters 2 and 27, the yogin is described as ātmānaṃ śrīherukaṃ kṛtvā on having taken a khaṭvāṅga and wearing a skull ornament in his hair; c.f. Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra, 164-5. Heruka is moreover described predominantly a two-armed deity in the Laghusaṃvara, e.g. ch.2.

[32]:

See Linrothe, Ruthless Compassion, 250ff for an overview of early Heruka imagery and the distribution of surviving eleventh century examples from eastern India and Bengal. My thanks to Dr. Linrothe for advising me on the dating and interpretation of these sites and their iconographies.

[33]:

Natasha Reichle, “Imagery, ritual and ideology: Examining the mahāvihāra at Ratnagiri,” in Esoteric Buddhism in Medieval Maritime Asia: Networks of masters, texts, icons, ed. A. Acri (Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, 2017). Reichle notes that the details of ritual culture at Ratnagiri as a monastic settlement and/or pilgrimage site based on its tantric iconographies are largely speculative. Debala Mitra, on the other hand, observes a proliferation of female deities associated with mantra practices in the monuments of Ratnagiri after the ninth century, idem., Ratnagiri (1958-61), (Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1983), 28.

[34]:

Robert Brown, “The four stone façades of Monastery 1 at Ratnagiri,” Artibus Asiae 40, no. 1 (1978), 7. Brown connects specific motifs from the latter period of construction at Ratnagiri to Śaiva sites at Bhubaneśvar, including Vaital Deul, which has kāpālika and mātṛkā imagery.

[35]:

‘Gos lo tsā ba associates this site with the composition of the Kalācakra tantra, op.cit., 755. Nancy Hock, on the other hand, uses Tibetan sources and iconographic study to suggest that Ratnagiri was connected to the practice of Guhyasamāja tantra, idem., “Buddhist ideology and the sculpture of Ratnagiri, seventh through thirteenth centuries,” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1987), 133-4. Furthermore, Gray has argued that, based on botanical evidence, the Laghusaṃvara was likely written in an eastern region of south Asia and at least five of its earliest commentators from the tenth and eleventh centuries were based in Bihar and Bengal, idem., The Cakrasamvara Tantra, 21.

[36]:

Donaldson, The Iconography of Buddhist Sculpture of Orissa, 57-58 and idem.,Tantra and Śākta Art of Orissa, 655. Donaldson notes that while Śaiva and yoginī or śākta sites in Orissa expanded during the tenth century, drawing donors and pilgrims, nearby Buddhist institutions were largely diminished in population and resources with the notable exception of Ratnagiri.

[37]:

Donaldson, Tantra and Śākta Art of Orissa, 440; see also Hatley, “Goddesses in Text and Stone,” 211.

[38]:

Bhattacharya notes that Heruka is one of most popular deities in the Sādhanamālā, generally associated with yoginī tantra and with three of five of the deity’s sādhana describing a two-armed form. No. 258 corresponds to the image of Heruka at Ratnagiri with skull, khaṭvāṅga and bone ornaments—including sacred thread and five-skull crown—and no consort, op.cit., 61-63. See also de Mallmann, op.cit., 182-183 on the many forms of Heruka at the center of maṇḍalas in the Sādhanamālā and Niṣpannayogāvalī, including Hevajra.

[39]:

These forms of Heruka are described in Hevajra, pt. 1, ch. 3, c.f. Snellgrove, The Hevajra tantra, 57. The deities Hevajra and Nairātmyā and their maṇḍala are described in pt. 2, ch. 5 of the tantra; ibid., 110. In the Niṣpannayogāvalī, all four of these forms can be at the center of a Hevajra maṇḍala; c.f. de Mallmann, op.cit., 46-47.

[40]:

C.f. John Newman, “Vajrayāna deities in an illustrated Indian manuscript of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 13, no. 2 (1990): 117-132 for a discussion of stance in distinguishing between Heruka, Saṃvara and Hevajra in a late twelfth-thirteenth century manuscript from Bengal.

[41]:

de Mallmann, op.cit., 187-189. The maṇḍala is no. 12 in the Niṣpannayogāvalī; this twelve armed form is absent from the Sādhanamālā where Saṃvara is described in sādhana no. 277 as a two-armed form of Heruka as Vajraḍāka in union with Vajravārāhī, Bhattacharya, op.cit., 64. Heruka is also identified as Vajraḍāka in the Samvarodaya tantra, ch. 8; c.f. Tsuda, op.cit., 248.

[42]:

Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra, 43.

[43]:

Tsuda, “The Samvarodaya tantra”, 263 (chapter 13).

[44]:

Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra, 9n23 and 167 (chapter 2.). Elsewhere in the Saṃvara corpus, Mahābhairava is interpreted—like Mahākāla—as both a subjugated Śaiva deity and a model for deity yoga, c.f. Gray, ibid., 7 and 371n11.

[45]:

Lorenzen observes that, after the seventh century, Vajrayāna authors discuss kāpālika methods more often and more explicitly than non-Buddhist sources, op.cit., 4.

[46]:

This is in Hevajra pt. 1, ch. 3, c.f.,Snellgrove, The Hevajra Tantra, 57. This text is positioned within the Saṃvara tradition with the title Śrīhevajraḍākinījālāsaṃvara (Tbt. Kye’i rdo rje mkha’ ‘gro ma dra ba’i sdom pa) and through its integration—largely through internal yoga—of yoginī (kaula) forms and practices.

[47]:

See notes 13 and 14, above and Grags pa rgyal mtshan, “He ru ka’i chas ‘drug”, 266ff. The Tibetan scholar cites the Hevajra corpus and Abhayākaragupta as his sources, as well as the Saṃputa tantra, which also describes charnel ascetic observances as yoga tantra and on which Abhayākaragupta wrote a commentary, c.f. Sanderson, “The Śaiva age,” 157.