Introduction to chapter 4

The preceding chapters of this dissertation have described the longevity and diversity of sources for cultural historical narratives associated with the ritual use of human remains in Tibetan material religion. The remainder of this research will focus on these objects through the documentation and analysis of their materials, techniques, functions and circulation.

Thus far, discussion has been centered on Buddhist mahāyoga and yoginī tantra as well as gcod as major traditions of ritualized charnel asceticism and within which many lineages, teachings, iconographic programs and commentarial traditions have emerged and established themselves throughout the Tibetan cultural matrix in the centuries since their introduction. What follows draws from these various practices to build a generalized interpretation of these objects and their materials. Moreover, this final, five-part chapter places historiographic sources in relation to observations and interviews from fieldwork, visual cultural evidence and the technical examination of accessible objects. Iconographic study will shift from representations of teachers, liturgical traditions and deities which use charnel materials to the ways in which these objects are seen as vessels, regalia or instruments in Tibetan visual culture, with notes on their formal variations in shape, ornamentation, and composition.

This technological work can be understood as complementary to the ritual and material expertise of practitioners and religious scholars which is available in Tibetan and the other languages of Buddhist tantra.^[1] Moreover, the specificities of objects examined here have been determined by a ritual method—often expanded through oral transmission—which may not be evident to a non-practitioner such as the present author, or which may not be consistent to every setting: As such it must be remembered that every example given here can be understood as an exception to another’s rule.