Tibetan Graduate Studies Seminar

Olga Serbaeva describes how the Jayadrathayāmala envisaged magically discovered nidhi (treasure) as an integral part of its soteriological program. Tantric texts dedicate special chapters to the search for nidhi (treasures). The vision of hidden treasures is considered to be a siddhi (supernatural ability) that occurs after many thousand rounds of mantra repetition, and other rituals. Generally, nidhi is considered material treasures, i.e. gold, precious stones, and any other objects related to becoming wealthy. In JY, there is a strong link between nidhi and Kubera, and a particular form of Kālī, called Nidhīśvarī or Kuberajananī, from JY.4.54, once propitiated, bestows the treasures to the sādhakas. Another aspect, closer to the visionary nature of the experiences leading to finding treasures, shall allow us to bring in the JY materials on the altered states of consciousness, where the visionary switch happens in particular conditions after particular auditive and physical forerunning signs. We shall discover how nidhi fits among other consciousness-altering practices such as āveśa/svasthāveśa, khorika, prasena. The prescriptive JY shall be compared to the flowery Kathāsāritsāgara, a text recompiled by Somadeva in the late 11th century Kashmir, reusing some contemporary tantric references and materials.

Lauren Morris examines archaeologically discovered hoards: how does one tell if their concealment was pragmatic, or ritual? And can one always even make such distinctions? Of its many referents in archaeology, ‘treasure’ can also describe rediscovered deposits of valuables, which are widespread in the global archaeological record, and can illuminate various social, ritual, economic, and historical phenomena. Realising this capacity, however, implies interpreting the nature of these deposits – something highly theorised in some domains of archaeology (e.g., Bronze Age Europe; numismatics), and barely of interest in others. Pivoting around the case of the ‘hoard’ of valuable objects discovered at Begram in Afghanistan – deposited between the late 3rd/early 4th century CE and always interpreted as concealed for safekeeping but unluckily never recovered – I present an eclectic review of how such ‘treasure’ has been negotiated in various archaeological traditions. This includes classificatory schemes attempting to distinguish ritual (e.g., votive, funerary, without intending recovery) vs. utilitarian (e.g., temporary safekeeping) deposits, and criticisms of the validity and utility of these categories. I conclude by considering which ‘universal’ insights may emerge from these debates, and the open question of their compatibility with textually documented historical conceptions and traditions of treasure.

John Guy looks at the embracing presence of gods of place in early Buddhist art. This talk begins with the premise that subcontinental ancient India was marked by the embracing presence of gods of place. The pervasiveness of local deities, as later codified in such texts as the Mahāmāyūri and the governing deities of the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra, point to their localized nature and named identities. The former lists them according to the place each presides as the tutelary deity, the latter by iconographic features. As we move into the first millennium, the constellation of pan-Indian deities coalesces around a defined pantheon, reducing the religious spaces occupied by these nature deities, and seemingly marginalizing those that survive. A question that has long vexed art historians of early historic South Asia is the relationship of image to text. The antiquity of texts describing - and presumed to be prescribing – the way images of deities are represented, broadly speaking, appear to postdate surviving imagery. In presenting a corpus of the earliest extant imagery from subcontinental India, we will examine the place of yakṣas, nāgās and nidhis in this shifting devotional landscape and their afterlife in a polytheistic system.

Veronica Strang explores the role of serpentine water beings as guardians of treasures. Drawing examples from a major comparative study of water deities in diverse cultural and historical contexts (Strang 2023), this paper explores how and why these serpentine beings have a historically recurrent role as the guardians of cultural treasures. Appearing ubiquitously in early human histories, water deities are supernatural personifications of the powers of water and its generative capacities. They surface in cosmic origin stories as world creators; they act as hydro-theological generators of human life and consciousness; they bring hydrological cycles of life surging through ecosystems, and they are authoritative sources (and sometimes enforcers) of social and material order. Water beings are therefore literally essential figures in all processes of production and reproduction and in the generation of wealth and health. This paper suggests that this central generative role leads to a consistent relationship with materials and objects similarly valorised as representing wealth and generative capacity, and therefore defined as treasure. There is an intrinsic logic in having elemental wealth-creating beings extend their powers to control and protect material culture encapsulating the same meanings. Indeed, such objects are often used to venerate these water deities themselves. Thus the shared role of water beings as wealth generators across diverse cultural and historical contexts is echoed in a similarly recurrent role as serpentine treasure guardians.

Robert Mayer's analysis of Guru Chowang's enduring connection between territorial deity cosmologies and the preservation of hidden teachings in Tibetan Buddhism Academic scholars are accustomed to understanding gter as sacred texts often associated with Padmasambhava, within a cult deriving historically from ancient imperial burials. Yet the great 13th-century Padmasambhava devotee Guru Chowang primarily understood gter, by definition, within a mundane framework, barely mentioning Padmasambhava at first, and with not a word about ancient tombs. Even more striking about Chowang’s understandings of gter are their widespread and continuing persistence, as suggested by recent ethnographies of Tibet’s territorial deity cosmologies. For rather than place ancient tombs at the centre of his analysis, Chowang looked to popular terrestrial deity cosmologies to provide a vehicle for Padmasambhava’s hidden teachings. This graft of Indian Buddhist notions of transcendent, spiritual, transmission onto mundane Tibetan territorial deity cosmologies still thrives to this day. Indeed, Tibetan scholars understood Indian Buddhism previously to have made a similar use of India’s nāga and yakṣa territorial deity cosmologies for the concealment and rediscovery of Buddhist teachings.

Robert Mayer's analysis of Guru Chowang's enduring connection between territorial deity cosmologies and the preservation of hidden teachings in Tibetan Buddhism Academic scholars are accustomed to understanding gter as sacred texts often associated with Padmasambhava, within a cult deriving historically from ancient imperial burials. Yet the great 13th-century Padmasambhava devotee Guru Chowang primarily understood gter, by definition, within a mundane framework, barely mentioning Padmasambhava at first, and with not a word about ancient tombs. Even more striking about Chowang’s understandings of gter are their widespread and continuing persistence, as suggested by recent ethnographies of Tibet’s territorial deity cosmologies. For rather than place ancient tombs at the centre of his analysis, Chowang looked to popular terrestrial deity cosmologies to provide a vehicle for Padmasambhava’s hidden teachings. This graft of Indian Buddhist notions of transcendent, spiritual, transmission onto mundane Tibetan territorial deity cosmologies still thrives to this day. Indeed, Tibetan scholars understood Indian Buddhism previously to have made a similar use of India’s nāga and yakṣa territorial deity cosmologies for the concealment and rediscovery of Buddhist teachings.

Kristin Scheible uncovers the hidden role of nāgas in defining Buddhist treasures and explores their surprising significance in safeguarding sacred relics through early texts Much of the literature on nāgas in Indian Buddhist monasticism has focused on their rain-making and monastery-protecting duties. However, early Buddhist texts are full of narratives about nāgas serving the Buddha, dharma, and saṅgha by guarding in their subterranean palaces a variety of specifically Buddhist treasures. For example, nāgas played exactly this role in an important Pāli Buddhist text from Nāgārjuna’s roughly contemporaneous and neighbouring Sri Lanka, the Dīpavaṃsa. The fifth century Mahāvaṃsa enhances the depiction of nāgas as hoarders and valuers of treasures. Scheible argues that nāgas were not background characters in the Pāli Buddhist imaginaire around Nāgārjuna’s time; by stealing, hoarding, and venerating various types of sacred relics of the Buddha in their nāgaloka they in fact define what a treasure is.

Kristin Scheible uncovers the hidden role of nāgas in defining Buddhist treasures and explores their surprising significance in safeguarding sacred relics through early texts Much of the literature on nāgas in Indian Buddhist monasticism has focused on their rain-making and monastery-protecting duties. However, early Buddhist texts are full of narratives about nāgas serving the Buddha, dharma, and saṅgha by guarding in their subterranean palaces a variety of specifically Buddhist treasures. For example, nāgas played exactly this role in an important Pāli Buddhist text from Nāgārjuna’s roughly contemporaneous and neighbouring Sri Lanka, the Dīpavaṃsa. The fifth century Mahāvaṃsa enhances the depiction of nāgas as hoarders and valuers of treasures. Scheible argues that nāgas were not background characters in the Pāli Buddhist imaginaire around Nāgārjuna’s time; by stealing, hoarding, and venerating various types of sacred relics of the Buddha in their nāgaloka they in fact define what a treasure is.

Team presentation on the project "For a Critical History of the Northern Treasures" (FCHNT) Research into the main rDzogs chen cycle of the Northern Treasures, the dGongs pa zang thal (c. 1366), easily shows that a large part of it is a rewritten version of the mKha' 'gro snying thig. A prophecy in the dGongs pa zang thal even presents it as such. This talk will summarize the results of the FCHNT's research into the gradual revelation of the mKha' 'gro snying thig: after its initial discovery in 1313, it appears to have been rewritten and expanded several times, a problem that is intertwined with that of the only gradual decipherment of the brda yig, which for the mKha' 'gro snying thig does not appear to have been fully completed until 1331, and possibly not even until Klong chen pa finalized the text, perhaps as late as the 1340s. There is also evidence of an ongoing process of "translating" the brda yig for the Northern Treasures literature, which continued until late in the life of Rig 'dzin rGod ldem. This presentation will sketch a research project whose axis would be to consider what Tibetan tradition presents as distinct terma cycles as successive versions of one and the same text, exploring this heuristic hypothesis on a first corpus: the entire Padma snying thig category within the Rin chen gter mdzod. To what extent can the termas of Rin chen gling pa, rDo rje gling pa, Padma gling pa, and others, including bsTan gnyis gling pa's additions to rGod ldem's Lung phag mo zab rgya, be considered variations of one and the same text? Can we establish a typology to divide the rDzogs chen corpus (etc.) into groups of cycles, which would then be successive layers in the ongoing process of rewriting a single corpus over decades and sometimes centuries, in a continuous work involving many individuals? The key idea is that Cantwell's (2020) findings from the liturgical works of the Düdjom Vajrakīlaya traditions might seem to apply to terma literature as a whole, if properly divided into typological categories.

Team presentation on the project "For a Critical History of the Northern Treasures" (FCHNT) Research into the main rDzogs chen cycle of the Northern Treasures, the dGongs pa zang thal (c. 1366), easily shows that a large part of it is a rewritten version of the mKha' 'gro snying thig. A prophecy in the dGongs pa zang thal even presents it as such. This talk will summarize the results of the FCHNT's research into the gradual revelation of the mKha' 'gro snying thig: after its initial discovery in 1313, it appears to have been rewritten and expanded several times, a problem that is intertwined with that of the only gradual decipherment of the brda yig, which for the mKha' 'gro snying thig does not appear to have been fully completed until 1331, and possibly not even until Klong chen pa finalized the text, perhaps as late as the 1340s. There is also evidence of an ongoing process of "translating" the brda yig for the Northern Treasures literature, which continued until late in the life of Rig 'dzin rGod ldem. This presentation will sketch a research project whose axis would be to consider what Tibetan tradition presents as distinct terma cycles as successive versions of one and the same text, exploring this heuristic hypothesis on a first corpus: the entire Padma snying thig category within the Rin chen gter mdzod. To what extent can the termas of Rin chen gling pa, rDo rje gling pa, Padma gling pa, and others, including bsTan gnyis gling pa's additions to rGod ldem's Lung phag mo zab rgya, be considered variations of one and the same text? Can we establish a typology to divide the rDzogs chen corpus (etc.) into groups of cycles, which would then be successive layers in the ongoing process of rewriting a single corpus over decades and sometimes centuries, in a continuous work involving many individuals? The key idea is that Cantwell's (2020) findings from the liturgical works of the Düdjom Vajrakīlaya traditions might seem to apply to terma literature as a whole, if properly divided into typological categories.

This talk explores the intricate cosmology of territorial deities in Tibet and related concepts of land, prosperity, and fecundity, as well as sociality and socio-political organisation This talk explores the intricate cosmology of territorial deities in Tibet and related concepts of land, prosperity, and fecundity, as well as sociality and socio-political organisation. Tibet hosts a vast number of territorial deities. The most powerful ones occupy the highest glacier-capped mountains. These divine lords guard their lands, and people, and others within. They also guard different kinds of concealed ‘treasures’ (ter, terma) – precious substances hidden within the land, such as metals (typically gold), minerals, stones, medicines, water sources, divine objects (weapons and others), special landscapes, as well as Buddhist statues, texts, and other articles. Such ‘treasures’ are conceptualised as crucial in maintaining the prosperity of the land and the very existence of its inhabitants. The land and its ‘treasures’ belonging to territorial deities hold the crucial forces of life and wellbeing (such as yang, cha, la, chü, trashi, tsé, ngödrup, pel, lungta) that people need to protect and acquire to live, produce offspring, and tackle disease. These underlying principles of Tibeto-Himalayan environmental cosmology have parallels in other cultures.

This talk explores the intricate cosmology of territorial deities in Tibet and related concepts of land, prosperity, and fecundity, as well as sociality and socio-political organisation This talk explores the intricate cosmology of territorial deities in Tibet and related concepts of land, prosperity, and fecundity, as well as sociality and socio-political organisation. Tibet hosts a vast number of territorial deities. The most powerful ones occupy the highest glacier-capped mountains. These divine lords guard their lands, and people, and others within. They also guard different kinds of concealed ‘treasures’ (ter, terma) – precious substances hidden within the land, such as metals (typically gold), minerals, stones, medicines, water sources, divine objects (weapons and others), special landscapes, as well as Buddhist statues, texts, and other articles. Such ‘treasures’ are conceptualised as crucial in maintaining the prosperity of the land and the very existence of its inhabitants. The land and its ‘treasures’ belonging to territorial deities hold the crucial forces of life and wellbeing (such as yang, cha, la, chü, trashi, tsé, ngödrup, pel, lungta) that people need to protect and acquire to live, produce offspring, and tackle disease. These underlying principles of Tibeto-Himalayan environmental cosmology have parallels in other cultures.

Erik Jampa Andersson's presentation delves into the intricate world of Tibetan eco-daemonology and advocates for a deeper understanding of Traditional Ecological Knowledge In this presentation, Erik Jampa Andersson will introduce his research on the enchanting and oft-misunderstood world of Tibetan eco-daemonology – exploring the complex ways that evolving ‘nature spirit’ paradigms have informed Tibetan historical perceptions of health, the environment, and more-than-human sociality in a volatile and multicultural world. Erik will shed new light on a diverse selection of materials, including the rGyud bZhi (‘Four Tantras’) medical corpus, ritual manuals from the gCod (‘Severance’) tradition, and the gNyan ‘Bum (Nyen Collection) of the Bön canon, demonstrating a centuries-long continuum of nuanced and multivocal negotiations between Buddhist philosophy and indigenous animistic knowledge. Further attention will be paid to the environmental context of evolutions in ritual technologies and ecological paradigms, supported by both historical and paleoclimatic data. This research challenges longstanding ‘psychological’ approaches to spirit ontologies in Tibet, largely rooted in appeals to ‘rational’ anthropocentric empiricism, instead highlighting the ways in which they have helped Tibetan peoples negotiate the complexities of being human in a more-than-human world. Reflecting upon the challenges imposed by the so-called ‘Anthropocene,’ this timely presentation seeks to inspire more thoughtful and critical scholarship on Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in Tibet and the Himalayas, and earnest consideration of its relevance to the present ecological crisis.

Erik Jampa Andersson's presentation delves into the intricate world of Tibetan eco-daemonology and advocates for a deeper understanding of Traditional Ecological Knowledge In this presentation, Erik Jampa Andersson will introduce his research on the enchanting and oft-misunderstood world of Tibetan eco-daemonology – exploring the complex ways that evolving ‘nature spirit’ paradigms have informed Tibetan historical perceptions of health, the environment, and more-than-human sociality in a volatile and multicultural world. Erik will shed new light on a diverse selection of materials, including the rGyud bZhi (‘Four Tantras’) medical corpus, ritual manuals from the gCod (‘Severance’) tradition, and the gNyan ‘Bum (Nyen Collection) of the Bön canon, demonstrating a centuries-long continuum of nuanced and multivocal negotiations between Buddhist philosophy and indigenous animistic knowledge. Further attention will be paid to the environmental context of evolutions in ritual technologies and ecological paradigms, supported by both historical and paleoclimatic data. This research challenges longstanding ‘psychological’ approaches to spirit ontologies in Tibet, largely rooted in appeals to ‘rational’ anthropocentric empiricism, instead highlighting the ways in which they have helped Tibetan peoples negotiate the complexities of being human in a more-than-human world. Reflecting upon the challenges imposed by the so-called ‘Anthropocene,’ this timely presentation seeks to inspire more thoughtful and critical scholarship on Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in Tibet and the Himalayas, and earnest consideration of its relevance to the present ecological crisis.

In this talk, Dr. Dagmar Schwerk presents the work-in-progress of her current research project, an investigation into identity- and nation-building in eighteenth-century Bhutan In this talk, Dr. Dagmar Schwerk presents the work-in-progress of her current research project, an investigation into identity- and nation-building in eighteenth-century Bhutan. Focusing on the identity and agency of Bhutanese Buddhist masters as important intermediaries in Bhutan’s entangled and turbulent history with Tibet, her research is centred around the joint Bhutanese-Tibetan travels of the Ninth rJe-mKhan-po of the Bhutanese ’Brug-pa bKa’-brgyud school, Shākya Rin-chen (1710–59) to Tibet under the supervision of the Second Dre’u-lhas-sprul-sku Grub-dbang Kun-dga’-mi-’gyur-rdo-rje (1721–69). Dr. Schwerk’s interdisciplinary research design combines historical-philological methods by analyzing a thus far untranslated corpus of diverse Bhutanese and Tibetan primary sources, such as legal codes and historiographical works; life-writings; and doctrinal works, with a theoretical framework from religious studies focusing on identity and social differentiation between the societal spheres of religion, politics, and law. As a result, this approach enables us to understand and describe the decisive fourfold and multidimensional relationship between religious-doctrinal identity, socio-cultural identity, identity policies, and nation-building in Bhutan at that time. Dr. Schwerk will introduce examples and relevant aspects of her methodologies and textual sources. More broadly speaking, her research aims to demonstrate how the eighteenth century represents a critical juncture in Bhutanese religious and political history that enables a novel understanding of Bhutan today, particularly of its Buddhism-induced, sustainable development model of Gross National Happiness (GNH). Moreover, to elicit a fruitful discussion and to also invite questions of a comparative and/or theoretical character with scholars and students from various backgrounds present at the TGSS, Dr. Schwerk will place her case study of Bhutan as a unique example of a non-Western development path in the broader context of Tibetan and Himalayan history and research.

This talk presents an outline of the Yungdrung Bön ’Treasure’ tradition The Tibetan Bön religion, often called Yungdrung (‘Eternal’) Bön by its adherents, arose in Central Tibet at the same time as the ‘Latter Propagation’ (phyi dar) of Buddhism, i.e. in the 10th-11th century CE. In fact, it shares many traits with the Latter Propagation, and may be viewed as part of a broader socio-religious movement in Tibet at the time. An important element, shared by both these religions, is the appearance of ’Treasures’, texts (and to some extent objects) considered by their respective adherents to have been hidden in former centuries at a time when the religion was persecuted or when the people of Tibet were not considered sufficiently spiritually mature to receive the texts. The Treasures are believed to have been brought to light by ’Treasure discoverers’ (gter ston), particularly gifted or divinely chosen individuals who passed them on to their circle of disciples or patrons. This talk will present an outline of the Yungdrung Bön ’Treasure’ tradition, a tradition which is still alive, thus spanning more than a thousand years. From origins which are different compared to those of Buddhist ’Treasures’, it has developed and diversified over the centuries, ultimately becoming the most significant source of Yungdrung Bön canonical scriptures.

This talk presents an outline of the Yungdrung Bön ’Treasure’ tradition The Tibetan Bön religion, often called Yungdrung (‘Eternal’) Bön by its adherents, arose in Central Tibet at the same time as the ‘Latter Propagation’ (phyi dar) of Buddhism, i.e. in the 10th-11th century CE. In fact, it shares many traits with the Latter Propagation, and may be viewed as part of a broader socio-religious movement in Tibet at the time. An important element, shared by both these religions, is the appearance of ’Treasures’, texts (and to some extent objects) considered by their respective adherents to have been hidden in former centuries at a time when the religion was persecuted or when the people of Tibet were not considered sufficiently spiritually mature to receive the texts. The Treasures are believed to have been brought to light by ’Treasure discoverers’ (gter ston), particularly gifted or divinely chosen individuals who passed them on to their circle of disciples or patrons. This talk will present an outline of the Yungdrung Bön ’Treasure’ tradition, a tradition which is still alive, thus spanning more than a thousand years. From origins which are different compared to those of Buddhist ’Treasures’, it has developed and diversified over the centuries, ultimately becoming the most significant source of Yungdrung Bön canonical scriptures.

This presentation examines Śākta transformations of conceptions of revelation and the transmission of esoteric knowledge in Mantramārga Śaivism This presentation examines Śākta transformations of conceptions of revelation and the transmission of esoteric knowledge in Mantramārga Śaivism. In particular, the presentation focuses on representations of Yoginīs, both divine and human, as sources of power or hidden knowledge, as guardians of esoteric teachings, and as agents of revelation.

This presentation examines Śākta transformations of conceptions of revelation and the transmission of esoteric knowledge in Mantramārga Śaivism This presentation examines Śākta transformations of conceptions of revelation and the transmission of esoteric knowledge in Mantramārga Śaivism. In particular, the presentation focuses on representations of Yoginīs, both divine and human, as sources of power or hidden knowledge, as guardians of esoteric teachings, and as agents of revelation.

In this talk, Jacob Fisher presents his research on a history of the Buddhist discussions surrounding perceptual relativism, in India and Tibet Indian and Tibetan epistemologists have spent millennia grappling with the central philosophical questions of relativism and intersubjectivity. This talk will present my ongoing DPhil research that attempts to map a philosophical history of the discussion, by focussing on a specific Buddhist example that problematises perceptual relativism. This classic Buddhist example is the perception across world spheres of a river, which depending on the realm one belongs to, will be perceived as either blood for hungry ghosts, water for humans, or nectar for the gods. This classic example of at least three contradictory perceptions emphasises the paradox of relativism and elicits novel philosophical and epistemological solutions to this real-world problem. The story begins in India with a brief map of the chronological and philosophical developments of the example, beginning with a Pāli discourse and followed by Vinaya, Abhidharma, and Mahāyāna sources. Next, the discussion shall survey the major Tibetan exegetes of Madhyamaka philosophy over the last millennia, specifically those who use the example. Finally, we will zoom inwards to focus on a specific debate on a highly controversial interpretation of the example by Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), in which he simultaneously bolsters the importance of conventional epistemic instruments (tshad ma, pramāṇa) while at the same time undermining them through ascribing an illusory nature to all existence.