“After two decades of regular and intimate contact with the ancient Buddhist manuscripts held at the British Library, Sam van Schaik is uniquely positioned to write this book. The spell books and amulets he presents are gateways into the Buddhism of daily life. These are not the canonical works taught at monastic colleges and promoted around the world; they are the personally held writings of individual Buddhists with particular concerns living in specific locales. In van Schaik’s skilled hands, the category of Buddhist magic sheds light on a fundamental world of Buddhist beliefs and practices that is rarely seen.”

—Jacob Dalton, author of
The Gathering of Intentions: A History of Tibetan Tantra

“An important book about what many don’t know about Buddhism in the Western world. Buddhist Magic affirms that there is more to Buddhism than what meets the eye. With careful attention and confirming Buddhist scripture, van Schaik successfully brings to light the shamanic realities of Buddhism that underline every transmission. This book is a treasure.”

—Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, author of
The Way of Tenderness: Awakening through Race, Sexuality, and Gender

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

4720 Walnut Street

Boulder, Colorado 80301

www.shambhala.com

© 2020 by Sam van Schaik

Cover art: Detail of Tamra phichai songkhram, British Library

Cover design: Kate White

Interior design: Claudine Mansour Design

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: van Schaik, Sam, author.

Title: Buddhist magic: divination, healing, and enchantment through the ages / Sam van Schaik.

Description: First edition. | Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019045976 | ISBN 9781611808254 (trade paperback)

eISBN 9780834842816

Subjects: LCSH: Magic—Religious aspects—Buddhism.

Classification: LCC BQ4570.M3 V36 2020 | DDC 294.3/43—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045976

a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

To Anne

PREFACE

The first thing a student of magic learns is that there are books about magic and books of magic.

And the second thing he learns is that a perfectly respectable example of the former may be had for two or three guineas at a good bookseller, and that the value of the latter is beyond rubies.

—JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL

Taking my cue from Suzanna Clarke’s novel about professional magicians, I want to point out that this is a book about magic and definitely not a book of magic. Or to be more precise, it’s a book about a book of magic. That book is a Tibetan book of spells, written over a thousand years ago. I first came across it while cataloguing the Tibetan tantric manuscripts with Jacob Dalton, in a project that ran from 2003 to 2005, and owed much to Burkhard Quessel and Susan Whitfield at the British Library, as well as Cathy Cantwell, Robert Mayer, and Ulrich Pagel. In 2009, I wrote a couple of posts on my blog (https://earlytibet.com) exploring this manuscript, which started some interesting discussions and helpful responses, in particular from Dan Martin and Péter-Dániel Szántó.

The next time I returned to this Tibetan book of spells was under the aegis of a new research project, Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State, funded by the European Research Council in 2014. One of the themes of this project, which I developed alongside Michael Willis at the British Museum and Nathan Hill at the School of Oriental and African Studies, was the way that Buddhist monks brought aspects of Indic culture along the silk routes toward East Asia. In the course of the project I began to see how the Tibetan book of spells could offer a way in to an aspect of Buddhist history that has been neglected: the role of magical practices in the spread of Buddhism beyond India. Among the many researchers who contributed to the project, I worked most closely with Gergely Hidas, whose writings—along with many conversations at the Fitzrovia Tavern—about pragmatic rituals in Buddhism have deeply informed this book.

Another forum for discussing the rituals in the book of spells was the series of workshops organized by Agnieszka Helman-Ważny at the University of Hamburg on Bonpo manuscript cultures. I’d like to thank her as well as Daniel Berounsky, Marc Desjardins, and Bryan Cuevas for sharing their work on Tibetan magical literature. Jens Braarvig and Birgit Kellner also invited me to talk on the books of spells at events in Oslo and Vienna that resulted in lots of useful feedback. At the latter, Jonathan Samuels and Toni Huber gave some very good advice on approaches to using the word magic. Ulrike Roesler invited me to give a lecture at Oxford, which provided an opportunity to think in more detail about the interaction between Buddhist magic and Buddhist ethics.

During the course of writing this book, I worked at the British Library alongside researchers on the Beyond Boundaries project, Gethin Rees and Matt Kimberley, and had many productive discussions about Buddhist archaeology and medicine with them. Curatorial colleagues at the library were generous with their knowledge of relevant literature, especially Mélodie Doumy, who pointed out interesting sources and issues in the Chinese Dunhuang manuscripts, and Eyob Derillo, who shared his work on magic in Ethiopian manuscripts

As with everything I have written about Buddhism, I owe a debt of gratitude to Lama Jampa Thaye for sharing his profound understanding of the tradition. In this case, I also must thank him specifically for our discussions about the use of and attitudes toward magical rituals in contemporary Tibetan Buddhism. Finally, I want to thank Shambhala Publications, and Nikko Odiseos in particular, for accepting this slightly unusual work for publication, and Matt Zepelin for his spot-on editorial comments and reflections on the place of magic in contemporary Buddhism, which have truly improved the book.

As a final note, I would like to emphasize that the spells in this book are offered for information only. There is no longer a living lineage of transmission and instruction for these particular spells, which in the Buddhist context means that they are no longer “alive” as a practice. And in the absence of such a lineage of instruction, my own translation will always be provisional. It is perfectly adequate to help us understand the tradition of Buddhist magic, but entirely unsuited to instruction in the practice of magic. So I would not recommend that anybody actually try these spells, and if they did, I would not expect them to work as they were originally intended. This is, after all, a book about magic.

INTRODUCTION

In the hills of northeastern Tibet, a Buddhist monk stands in the midst of a hailstorm, swinging a sling above his head, and looses its missile into the clouds while reciting a fierce mantra. The pellets he fires from the sling are made from the soil of a ruined castle wall, the tooth of a mad dog, and the ash of a burned musk deer. Far away in a Theravada monastery near Bangkok, a monk tattoos a symetrical design with spiraling letters flanked by dragons onto the arm of a soldier. This sacred Buddhist symbol will confer power and protection upon its owner. And in a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, row upon row of small pouches called omamori are offered for sale. A woman picks up one made specifically to ensure a successful childbirth, which she will wear throughout her pregnancy.

These practices, and many others like them, are seen throughout the Buddhist world today. They are nothing new: the practices and sacred texts on which they are based go back centuries into the Buddhist past. I have been aware of this side of Buddhism from my own experiences living in Asia, but it was only when I started working with the ancient Buddhist manuscripts from the Silk Road site of Dunhuang that I began to realize that such practices had been part of Buddhism for a long, long time. This book is an exploration of this lesser-known side of our Buddhist heritage, an exploration of how Buddhists have used what I will be calling “magic” to address the everyday needs of monks, nuns, and laypeople. While these practices are found across and beyond Asia, they address the same concerns: protecting travelers, pregnant women, children, and the sick; knowing when to begin a journey or start a business venture; bringing on the rains or sending away hailstorms; making somebody fall in love or breaking two lovers apart; silencing a critic or even killing a threatening enemy; and acquiring the tempting powers of magical persuasion, invisibility, and flight.

There are books of magic in most Buddhist cultures, including Theravadin ones, but they have rarely been studied. If we are to understand the way Buddhism has worked in the past, the way it still works now in many societies, and the way it can work in the future, we need to look at these aspects of Buddhist practice that scholarship has tended to overlook. For centuries, Buddhist monks and nuns have offered services including healing, divination, rainmaking, love magic, and more to local clients. This is how Buddhist monastics developed and maintained relationships with their local communities, and this is why magic and healing have played a key role in Buddhism’s flourishing.

THE TROUBLE WITH MAGIC

Using this word magic allows us to focus on a particular kind of activity that went on, and still goes on, in Buddhist societies. These practices are well known to Buddhist monks and laypeople in Asian countries and are described in detail in manuscripts, yet they are far less apparent in the scholastic and doctrinal texts that have been the focus of much Buddhist scholarship. This holds true even in the tantric literature, which, despite its sometimes transgressive imagery, remains focused on the ultimate Buddhist state of enlightenment. Thinking in terms of magic allows us to bring into view a group of practices that have little to say about Buddhist concepts of virtue, merit, and enlightenment, practices that are entirely intended for the everyday concerns of the present life.

Despite the importance of magical practices in Buddhism, they are still one of the least studied aspects of the religion. I suspect that one of the main reasons for this is the idealized image of Buddhism as a rational religion, essentially free from superstition and ritual. Though this ideal is belied by any experience of the practices of modern Buddhist communities in Asia, such practices are often just taken as evidence that Buddhism degenerated from its early ideals, the pure Buddhism taught by Gotama and practiced by his disciples. Yet as early as the evidence can take us back, spells and other magical practices are there. Figures of ogres adorn early Buddhist monasteries, and the Pali canon includes accounts of Buddhist monks dealing directly with such beings. The canonical texts include spells for protection from nonhuman beings—and sometimes also for summoning them. Though the Pali canon is from relatively late sources, the earliest manuscripts containing Buddhist texts, found in Afghanistan, also contain magical practices.¹

Magical powers also feature heavily in early Buddhist literature. As Bryan Cuevas points out, the achievement of magical powers was not only accepted but was a crucial characteristic of the Buddha and other advanced practitioners:

In some of the earliest Buddhist sūtras from the Pāli canon, we find standardized lists of the various magical powers possessed by the Buddha and certain other practitioners advanced in meditation…. The first category, the wonder-working powers, encompasses the widest array of paranormal abilities, including the powers of physical transformation and multiplication of the body, as well as the ability to appear and disappear at will, to pass unhindered through walls, mountains, and other solid objects and surfaces, to walk on water, to fly cross-legged through the air, to manipulate the elements (earth, water, fire and air), to touch the sun and moon, and to travel to the heavenly realms.²

The idea that the spiritual path included cultivating powers like these was also accepted by Mahayana Buddhist monks and the practitioners of tantric Buddhism, where the powers gained through the practice of magical scriptures can be divided into three types. The highest powers are the attainment of the status of a magic user (vidyādhara), supernormal cognitive powers, and perfect knowledge of treatises. The middle powers are invisibility, youthfulness, and speed-walking. The lower powers are controlling, killing, and exorcising. As these last three powers in the list show, discussion of tantric texts is distinguished by an open acknowledgment of the practice of aggressive magic.³ These magical powers were not the ultimate aim of the Buddhist path, but they were part of it, whether they arose as an effect of meditation or were cultivated in their own right.

The exclusion of magical practices and powers from most discussions of Buddhism in the modern era can be seen as part of the appropriation of Buddhism by Europeans and Americans, and also as a result of modernization movements in Asia and within Asian Buddhism.⁴ We see this same pattern of idealizing a religious tradition, focusing on the rational to the exclusion of ritual, in other traditions as well. For example, the study of Jewish magic has only recently developed after more than a century of scholarship had largely ignored its existence. The author of Early Jewish Magic, Gideon Bohak, has discussed how a cache of ancient Jewish manuscripts found at the the Cairo Genizah—the storeroom of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo—was studied in terms of its literary and documentary value, while the thousands of magical texts in the collection were treated as if they did not exist. Musing on this, Bohak writes:

In the study of Judaism, the assumption that magic has nothing rational about it had one obvious implication—magic is an intrinsically un-Jewish activity. If some Jews dabbled in it, they must have been of the lower classes, the uneducated masses, those Jews whose unseemly practices the enlightened religious establishment was grudgingly forced to endure.⁵

There has been a similar dynamic in the study of Buddhism. Scholars have had their own prejudices and preferences for the rational philosophical text and the documentary source. Many Buddhists too have been keen to present their own religion to modern outsiders as rational and free from superstition. Where magical practices cannot be avoided, they have often been dismissed as corruptions of the original, pure Buddhism or as accommodations to the superstitious needs of the uneducated Buddhist masses. Even those who have observed magical practices performed by Buddhist monks at firsthand have often assumed that these were local traditions that had been absorbed by Buddhism, rather than an integral part of Buddhist practice.

Another barrier to understanding how fundamental magic is to mainstream Buddhist practice is academic specialization. Buddhist studies, relying heavily on transmitted texts, usually from the canon, have not engaged deeply with manuscripts except where these help with understanding the transmission of canonical literature. The observation of the actual practices of Buddhists “on the ground” has been left largely to anthropologists, who rarely engage deeply with the history and texts of Buddhism.⁶ So there has been very little study of Buddhist magic users or their books; however, this is changing. In a recent book on Buddhist magical practice in Thailand, Justin McDaniel makes the case for incorporating magical practices embedded in vernacular Thai Buddhism into the mainstream study of the religion, observing that “in the twentieth century, with the rise of distinct academic fields such as religious studies and Buddhist studies, scholars in these fields have almost universally ignored the study of vernacular Thai literature.”⁷

McDaniel also points out that the rough-and-ready manuscripts that often contain magical texts have been neglected in favor of more expensive, elite manuscripts, though both were produced and used by Buddhist monks.⁸ In this book I have taken a Buddhist manuscript, one of the earliest surviving Buddhist books of spells, as my key reference point for discussing Buddhist magic. I am not trying to use this shift in focus to ritual and magic to minimize Buddhism’s rational, philosophical, and ethical nature. It is a rational, philosophical, and ethical religion—and much more besides. In traditional Buddhist cultures, our current categorical distinction between reason and superstition did not exist. Buddhists could and did practice philosophy and meditation at the same time as using magical talismans.

For readers who already have some familiarity with the types of practices examined in this book, I want to point out that “Buddhist magic” as I use it here is not meant to replace more specific categories of practice such as divination, healing, or dealing with the world of spirits and demons. It denotes all of these, gathered together as a package that can be physically present in a book of spells or in the person of the magic user who provides any of these services for those who need them. I’m suggesting that thinking in terms of “magic” instead of these more specialized topics is actually truer to the world of Buddhist practice. While scholarly articles usually focus on a genre like divination, in practice divination is just one part of the wide range of expertise offered by those who deal in worldly rituals, whether they are Buddhist monks or lay specialists.

WHAT IS MAGIC ANYWAY?

The word magic, if we are aware of what we are doing with it, can help us to focus on a specific group of Buddhist texts, artifacts, and practices. But it is important to proceed with caution when we use this word, because it comes loaded with a history of connotations that may distort the very thing we are trying to understand. In the modern study of magic as an academic subject, one of the most influential works is The Golden Bough, published in 1890 by the Scottish anthropologist and folklorist James G. Frazer.⁹

In his attempt to describe all mythological and religious systems, Frazer identified magic as the first primitive stage in mankind’s attempt to understand and control the world. According to Frazer, magic evolved into religion, a more sophisticated system that relied on supernatural beings. Religion in turn was superseded by science. Frazer proposed that magic is based on the mistaken belief “that things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy,” so that power can be extended over great distances by use of a figurine representing a person or through the magician possessing one of that person’s belongings.¹⁰ We can apply this principle of sympathy to some Buddhist rituals, but certainly not to all of them, so I would not want to use it as the definition of Buddhist magic.

Frazer’s approach to magic was that of a nineteenth-century Englishman: puzzled, patronizing, and trying to fit everything into his own grand theory. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein criticized him for exactly that:

Frazer’s account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory: it makes these views look like errors.

Was Augustine in error then, when he called upon God on every page of the Confessions?

But—one might say—if he was not in error, surely the Buddhist holy man was—or anyone else—whose religion gives expression to completely different views. But none of them was in error, except when he set forth a theory.¹¹

What this means, and I agree, is that magical practices are not based on any explicit theory, and the need to develop a theory to explain them is a peculiarly modern Western impulse. There are philosophical theories in Buddhism, but Buddhist magical practices do not invoke or rely on them, and since Buddhist magic is not based on theories (such as Frazer’s theory of sympathy), it can’t be some mistaken version of religion or science. It is worth remembering as well that Buddhist philosophy has its own movements against theory, and Wittgenstein’s comments are reminiscent of Nāgārjuna’s classic statement, “If I had a theory, then that error would apply to me; but as I have no theory, I am free from error.”¹²

The distinction between magic and religion was also adopted by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who saw religion as a shared set of beliefs held by a social group, while magicians were lone agents, whose important relationships were with their clients. Thus he famously concluded, “There is no church of magic.”¹³ Again, this very general statement does not really apply to Buddhism, where we find practices such as weather control, amulet-making, and divination practiced by monks and nuns as well as laypeople. So, rather than reviving the idea that magic stands in opposition to religion, we can see it as having a specific role in the wider context of Buddhist practice.

In general, I think it’s best to avoid grand theories of magic, whether they are attempting to describe the psychology of magical acts, as Frazer does, or their social setting, as Durkheim does. These theories have a tendency to conflate or homogenize what are actually diverse and distinct practices. We would do better to look at what makes magic a useful concept in the context of Buddhist societies. We also need to make sure we are not simply imposing an entirely foreign concept upon the material we are studying; our understanding of what we want to call “magic” should come from the sources we are using—in this case, manuscripts.

A BUDDHIST BOOK OF SPELLS

The key manuscript for this book is a Tibetan Buddhist book of spells from the Silk Road site of Dunhuang. The book was written and used in the tenth century, before being consigned to a cave containing thousands of other manuscripts and paintings. This cave, originally built as a shrine to an eminent Buddhist monk, was almost completely full by the time it was walled up at the beginning of the eleventh century. It remained hidden until its rediscovery at the beginning of the twentieth century, after which its contents were dispersed to museums and libraries around the world.

This manuscript from more than a thousand years ago is the inspiration for this book, and in the fifth chapter I have provided a complete translation of it along with my commentary.

The contents of the Tibetan book of spells provide an insight into the scope and history of Buddhist magic:

Spells to cure psychotic episodes and seizures; ailments of the urinary tract and womb; and diseases caused by dragons, such as arthritis, tumors, and leprosy

Various spells as a practice of the deity Bhṛkutī, including curing illnesses caused by demons, controlling the flow of springs and rivers, finding treasure, and manipulating the emotional reactions of others (love and hate magic)

Spells as a practice of the deity Garuda, the most important being the mirror divination ritual called prasena

Spells as a practice of the deity Avalokiteśvara, which are mainly medical practices and prescriptions from the Dharani of the Blue-Necked One, including several for ailments of the eye, and miscellaneous spells for summoning spirits, escaping from bonds, and reconciling a husband and wife

A single ritual for making rain based on the Great Cloud Sutra, with several further steps to be taken if the ritual is unsuccessful

Spells for clairvoyance, fortune-telling, and invisibility

Spells for curing disease in animals, loosely based on the Dharani of Parṇaśabarī

Spells for conceiving a child and protecting a pregnancy, based on the Sutra of the Great Destroyer of the Universe

Closing spells and prayers—including spells for the ritual specialist to aid in study and travel and protection from infection—and a final prayer to Mañjuśrī

The various spells found under these headings are usually brief, with clear instructions. For example, this is an invisibility spell from the sixth section of the manuscript:

Defeather the head of a crow and fill it with seeds, then grow them in dark soil. Then standing in front of it, pour in the milk of a dun cow and rainwater. Once the fruits have ripened, cut the flowers and fruits, and tie them carefully. Mash them with the milk of a dun cow and anoint your eyes. You will become invisible.

Strange as spells like this may seem, they have their roots in Buddhist literature found across Asia. Some of these are the tantras, but the sutras and other nontantric scriptures provide rich sources of spells as well. Mantras, mandalas, and ritual objects like protective threads were all part of Buddhist ritual practice before the tantras became popular. For example, a spell to help a woman to conceive a child involves setting up a mandala and leading her to the center of it:

Clean her body and dress her in new clothes, ornament her with jewelery, and take her into the center of the mandala. Place mustard seeds on top of her head, and stay until midnight reciting aspirational prayers and confession. Recite the mantra of the Great Destroyer of the Universe, holding a five-colored thread and tying a knot for each recitation of the mantra, then untying it again. Once you have knotted and untied the thread 108 times, write the mantra and the name of the mudra of Kinnara, great captain of the ogres, on paper and attach it to her.

The basic elements of Buddhist spells such as this one may be familiar to many from Vajrayana, or tantric Buddhism. This is not a coincidence; the literature of spells predated the Vajrayana, and the creators of Vajrayana rituals took aspects of these magical practices—the mantras, mandalas, and ritual implements—and integrated them into a system of salvation. In the tantras, the deity, their mandala, the recitation of their mantra, and the use of hand gestures and special implements are all part of a path toward awakening. It is the power in these methods, and the recognition of the practitioner’s identity with the deity through visualization and recitation, that makes the Vajrayana the swift path to enlightenment.

Yet the Buddhist tantras also contain rituals for protection, wealth, and love, not to mention destruction. This mixed nature of the tantras, encompassing the most worldly goals as well as the highest aspirations, is partly rhetorical, bringing enlightenment down to earth. But it is also the result of how the tantras developed historically, drawing on the powerful magical practices of earlier Buddhist sutras and dharanis. Mantras, for example, began as spells taught by the Buddha for protection from snakebite and other threats to monks and nuns. Later, mantras became linked to specific deities, representing the power of each deity in sound. Later still, the use of mantras was taught as a method for enlightenment itself, rather than just for magical effect.¹⁴ Therefore one of the benefits of understanding Buddhist magic is a better understanding of the nature of the Buddhist tantras.

MANUSCRIPTS, PEOPLE, AND PRACTICES

I have come to see the Tibetan book of spells from Dunhuang as a way to understand the history of Buddhism from the bottom up. Rather than trying to understand Buddhist texts and doctrines through the scriptures and a few key events (usually the actions of rulers and their armies), manuscripts like this book of spells offer insights into the everyday, local events of Buddhist monks and laypeople. The elite level of society surely had an effect on these day-to-day activities, but it did not determine or radically change the concerns of pregnant women, farmers, and traveling merchants. This is succinctly pointed out in George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, when a would-be queen tells her knight that the people are praying for her return to the throne:

“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,” Ser Jorah told her. “It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.” He gave a shrug. “They never are.”¹⁵

The Buddhist rituals I am calling “magic” concern childbirth, crop yields, illness, and drought, and they are aimed directly at the concerns of ordinary people. Often administered by monks and nuns, they also provide a key part of the interface between monastics and the laity. Since these relationships are not apparent in most Buddhist texts, in order to perceive them, we need to use all the information we can get our hands on—not just from the study of individual manuscripts, but also from the evidence of archaeological sites and anthropological observations, and the close study of individual manuscripts.

But isn’t this very specific? What can observations about specific manuscripts, ancient sites, or Buddhist communities say about a concept as broad as Buddhist magic? This question, this tension between specific and general, local and translocal has been discussed in the past as the tension between the micro and macro levels of analysis. Historians have usually considered it insufficient to focus on documents concerned with a single person or event, an approach sometimes called microhistory. For many historians, this looks too much like antiquarianism, a dubious fascination with the past for its own sake.¹⁶ But the value of looking closely at the local has been well expressed by one of the key figures in the movement, Carlo Ginzburg, who wrote that “any social structure is the result of interaction and of numerous individual strategies, a fabric that can only be reconstituted from close observation.” The difficulty arises, he admits, when the microhistorian is challenged to apply these local insights to the broader, macrohistorical picture:

The results obtained in a microscopic sphere cannot be automatically transferred to a macroscopic sphere (and vice versa). This heterogeneity, the implications of which we are just beginning to perceive, constitutes both the greatest difficulty and the greatest potential benefit of microhistory.¹⁷

At the time Ginzburg and his colleagues were writing, solutions to the apparent divide between the micro and the macro were already being discussed in the field of sociology. Randall Collins proposed a solution in his work on “interaction ritual chains,” that is, local rituals that have a chaining effect through being reproduced across social networks. He argued that the macro level is just the view from a distance of multiple micro-level events that are repeated and therefore provide consistency over space and time:

It is at the micro level that the dynamics of any theory must be located. The structures never do anything; it is only persons in real situations who act. It is on the micro level that we must show energizing processes, both those that cause structural change and those that are responsible for maintaining and reproducing the structures from one occasion to another (that is to say, the “glue” that holds structures together).¹⁸

Collins’s point is that the concepts of social structure are based on, and nothing without, local and individual people and actions.¹⁹

This brings us back to the question of how the study of individual manuscripts can reveal something about wider historical questions. Collins’s interaction ritual chains can help us to conceptualize how Buddhist manuscripts were involved in the dissemination and alteration of the religion as it moved across Asia. If we can start to follow the interactions between people and their things across space and time, we start to see how manuscripts and other artifacts can help us to move beyond generalizations about Buddhist history and practice.²⁰

In this book, when I move from specific manuscripts to the wider world of canonical texts, or between rituals written down a thousand years ago and those practiced only recently, it is in an attempt to create connections between the general and the specific, to contribute to an interdependence between micro and macro. The ritual practices of Buddhist monks at Gandhara, Gilgit, and Dunhuang were all local and all different, yet they established patterns of practice and became part of wider Buddhist networks. If it is not yet possible to fully explain these connections, I would argue that it is only because we still cannot see much of the network. By pointing out correspondences across space and time, we can at least start to imagine what that network might look like.

The kinds of Buddhist practice found in the Tibetan book of spells and other Buddhist compendiums are an example of how the local, micro level of interaction has created and maintained networks that may not be immediately evident in the official scriptural collections, biographies, and histories. Buddhist monks, nuns, and other ritual specialists used worldly pragmatic rituals to offer services, including medicine, divination, rainmaking, love magic, and more to local clients, in this way embedding themselves in local economies.

These practices are still flourishing across the Buddhist world, in Theravada Buddhist societies as much as in Mahayana and Vajrayana ones. If we are to understand the way Buddhism has worked in the past, the way it still works now in many places, and the way it can work in the future, we need to pay attention to all our sources and be willing to see the wider picture, the aspects of Buddhist practice that most scholarship has overlooked or actively avoided. Magic has played a key role in Buddhism’s flourishing; understanding this, we may be able to get a better idea about its role in Buddhism’s future.

CHAPTER 1

Magic across Cultures

Using the word magic in a Buddhist context is controversial. The word is evocative but troublesome—most of us have an idea of what it means, but it is notoriously difficult to define. There is no word that exactly corresponds to magic in Asian Buddhist cultures, so why talk about “Buddhist magic” at all?¹ For a start, magic is a lively and productive concept in the study of rituals found in various cultures around the world. We see this in the way the word magic is used in studies of manuscripts from all kinds of traditions, which are often noncanonical sources that were not necessarily meant to be preserved, and usually survive only by luck. Based on these manuscripts, the study of Mesopotamian magic, Hellenistic magic, Jewish magic, and the European magical practices of the Middle Ages are very much alive and well. So why not Buddhist magic too?

Buddhist magical practices do not fit neatly into existing theories of magic. As we saw in the previous chapter, whenever we try to apply a grand definition such as James Frazer’s theory of sympathetic magic or Émile Durkheim’s distinction between magic and organized religion, the Buddhist practices we are looking at slip away. Yet there is definitely a subset of Buddhist practice that fits very well with what people mean when they talk about magic. So I suggest we take a “family resemblence” approach to understanding the word magic: rather than looking for a single unifying feature of all the practices that have been called magical, we can look for a set of overlapping features that they share.

The idea of family resemblence as a method of forming loose definitions through overlapping features comes from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein’s argument is that any definition of a word that attempts to identify an essential meaning shared by all its uses inevitably fails. The need to identify an essential meaning in any concept goes back to Plato and has been a potent force in the history of Western philosophy, and its influence is felt in nineteenth-century theories of magic.²

Arguing against all essential meanings, Wittgenstein suggested a different approach, taking games as his example:

Consider the proceedings that we call “games.” I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic Games, and so on. What is common to them all?—Don’t say: “There must be something in common, or they would not be called ‘games’ ”—but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!³

We can apply the same principle to the word magic, looking at some of the more famous sources from other cultures and times that have been studied under the general heading of magic to see whether there is anything they share. This will help us to understand how the concept of magic has been and is still applied in different contexts and to get a clearer view of what we mean when we talk about magic in the Buddhist context.⁴

So this chapter is a tour through some of the traditions of the world that have been studied under the name of magic. We start with the Atharvaveda, one of the main sources for magical and medical practice in the Indic world, then move on to Chinese magical rituals found in ancient wooden documents. From there we proceed to Mesopotamian practices recorded on clay tablets found in the old city of Nineveh, Greco-Egyptian spells from papyri found in Alexandria, Jewish magic in manuscripts found in a medieval repository, and some of the best-studied European grimoires, or books of spells. This is not a complete review of magic across the globe; the point of looking at these traditions is that they have been and still are classified as magic. Does this mean there is a family resemblence between them? Let’s see.

INDIC MAGIC: THE ATHARVAVEDA

The earliest collection of magical spells in Indic literature is the Atharvaveda, the fourth and last of the Vedas. The Atharvaveda comprises a large collection of texts that have been added to over many centuries. The core verses (saṃhita) are a series of brief rituals for various purposes that influenced many later Indic traditions, including Buddhism. These core verses are thought to date back to the second millennium B.C.E. and to have been collected together by the end of the second or beginning of the first millennium B.C.E. However, all the extant manuscript copies of the Atharvaveda are much later than this, most having been written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.⁵

Though the Atharvaveda does contain hymns to Indo-Aryan deities that are similar to those in the Rig Veda, most of the core verses are brief chants and mantras aimed at specific worldly ends. Maurice Bloomfield, who translated these parts of the text in the late nineteenth century, organized them according to traditional Indic categories in this way:⁶

Charms to cure diseases and possession by demons of disease (bhaiṣajya). This category contains the largest number of spells, including charms against fever, headache and coughing, diarrhea and constipation, hereditary diseases, leprosy, and skin diseases. This category also contains spells against worms, snakebite, and poison; spells to promote hair growth and virility in general; spells to drive away ghouls; and several panaceas.

Prayers for long life and health (āyusya). There are fewer spells in this category. Most are general long-life chants, though there is also a recipe for a salve and descriptions of both a pearl in its shell as an amulet and an amulet made of gold.

Imprecations against demons, sorcerers, and enemies (abhikārika and kṛtyāpratiharaṇa). This category includes several different spells generally aimed at repelling sorcerors and averting their spells, as well as instructions on making amulets against sorcery. A few spells target ghouls, but most seem to be concerned with human sorcerors. There are also spells to counter more mundane enemies and their designs.

Charms pertaining to women (strīkarma). Here there are many spells concerned with courtship, marriage, and childbearing. There are spells to obtain a husband or wife, spells to arouse passion in a man or woman or to secure their lasting love, and spells against rivals in love. There are spells to be recited by a bride and groom, spells to ensure the conception of a child and to ensure that the child is male, and spells to prevent miscarriage.

Charms pertaining to royalty (rājakarma). These spells address the desires of rulers. As well as chants for consecration, there are spells for a king’s success, superiority, and/or restoration to power, and a variety of spells to ensure success in battle. Though the subject of these spells might seem much more exalted than the ordinary folk addressed by many of the other spells, it is worth remembering that a rāja (“king”) in ancient India would often be a relatively minor local ruler.

Charms to secure harmony, influence in the assembly, and the like (sāmmanasya and others). Here are several general spells for securing harmony, allaying discord, and appeasing anger. There is a spell against an opponent in debate, another to ensure success in an assembly, and yet another to cause a person to submit to one’s will.

Charms to secure prosperity in house, field, cattle, business, gambling, and kindred matters. In this category, Bloomfield gathered spells for a variety of ends, including for the successful construction of a house; the sowing of seed; protection of a crop from bad weather; the harvest; the protection and ensurance of the prosperity of cattle; success in trade and gambling; protection against robbers, snakes, and other dangers; and the finding of lost property.

Charms in expiation of sin and defilement. Here there are a few chants for the expiation of sins, which might seem more an aspect of general religious ritual than the specific worldly aims of magical spells. However, this category is equally composed of more specific spells against evil omens in the form of birds, including those that come in the form of pigeons or owls.

Prayers and imprecations in the interest of Brahmins. This category comprises spells against those who oppress Brahmins; a prayer to be chanted by a Brahmin upon receiving a gift; and various chants relating to the importance of giving shelter, cows, and food to Brahmins. Though many of the spells in the Atharvaveda may not originally have been the province of the Brahmins, the spells in this category suggest that the master of the Atharvan spells must also be a Brahmin.

To provide a feeling for these spells, here is one intended to remove the anger that someone else has toward oneself:

As the bowstring from the bow, thus do I take off thy anger from thy heart, so that, having become of the same mind, we shall associate like friends. Like friends we shall associate—I take off thy anger. Under a stone that is heavy do we cast thy anger. I step upon thy anger with my heel and my fore-foot, so that, bereft of will, thou shalt not speak, shalt come up to my wish.⁷

Chants like this one in the Atharvaveda often suggest ritual actions without clearly stating what is to be done. The specific instructions may have been handed down orally, and some are found in the Vedic commentaries, the Brahmanas. These rituals may not have originally been specific to the Brahmins, and there are clues in the texts themselves. A significant number of spells in the Atharvaveda concern the traditional needs of women in love, sex, pregnancy, birth, and child care. While in some of them the woman is addressed in the third person, in many her voice is the voice of the spell caster. For example, in a spell for the bride to chant to the bridegroom, she says, “I envelope thee in my garment that was produced by Manu (the first man), that thou shalt be mine alone, shalt not even discourse of other women!”⁸

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the Atharvaveda is the result of worldly rituals being brought under the sway of the male priestly caste of Brahmins. As Bloomfield argued:

The Atharvan hymns as well as the Gṛhya-rites present themselves in a form thoroughly Rishified and Brahmanized; even the mantras and rites of the most primitive ethnological flavor have been caught in the drag-net of the priestly class and made part of the universal Vedic religion.⁹

The Gṛhya rites mentioned here are household rituals, which were considered part of the domestic, female sphere, before they were brought into the orthodoxy of Brahmin ritual.¹⁰ By the first millennium B.C.E., there were experts in the Atharvaveda, known as Atharvavedins, providing a vast range of ritual practices across Indian society, from rulers to villagers.¹¹ With the rising influence of the Brahmins at the beginning of the first millennium C.E., the Atharvaveda became the province of the Brahmins, so that Atharvavedins were usually Brahmins as well.¹² Nevertheless, the Atharvaveda was also studied in Buddhist monasteries and seems to have been used as a sourcebook for medical practice by Buddhist monks in India.¹³

CHINESE MAGIC: THE SHUIHUDI BAMBOO SLIPS

Among the most important sources for understanding early Chinese beliefs and practices are the bamboo slips excavated from an ancient tomb in Shuihudi, in central China, dating back to 217 B.C.E. These slim strips of bamboo were tied together with thread and rolled up, a form of the book that later developed into the scroll after the invention of papermaking. The rolls include many legal documents and books of law, as well as almanacs concerned with other matters of everyday life, including war, business, agriculture, marriage, childbirth, sickness, and death. While the legal documents have received a great deal of scholarly interest, the almanacs have often been passed over as examples of “primitive religion.”¹⁴

Much of the content of the almanacs concerns calculations based on astrology, numerology, and other methods to identify good and bad days to perform particular activities. Sometimes instructions are given on averting problems with simple ritual procedures. One section, called jie and translated as “Spellbinding” by Donald Harper, gives instructions for dealing with problems caused by spirits and demons. The phrase “spirits and demons” (guishen) covers a wide range of beings, often deceased people who have not truly passed away. Sometimes the terms are explained as spirits being the incorporeal presence of the deceased, while demons are bodies of the deceased that have not been properly put to rest.¹⁵

The problems addressed in the Spellbinding bamboo slips vary from unwelcome visitations by these beings to everyday problems that may or may not be caused by them. For example, sometimes the demons are very insistent:

When a demon continually drums on a person’s door at night, singing or wailing to be admitted by the person—this is the Malevolent Demon. Shoot it with straw arrows. Then it will not come.¹⁶

At other times, the influence of spirits or demons is only implicit:

When a person is anxious without cause. Make a peach-wood figurine and rub it. On a gui (the tenth Celestial Stem) day at sunset, throw it into the road and quickly say, “So-and-so will avoid anxiety.”¹⁷

Serious problems, such as the death of an infant, are also addressed; in the following case, the unquiet spirit of a drowned child has to be dealt with:

When a person continually loses a newborn infant—this is the Child Who Perished in Water who has taken it. Make an ash house to imprison it. Hang a scrub-brush outside. Then it will be captured. Slash it with the scrub-brush. Then it will die. If boiled and eaten, it will not be harmful.¹⁸

These simple methods of exorcism addressing domestic problems are written in such a way that they can be practiced by ordinary householders rather than ritual specialists. As Harper writes:

The exorcistic methods described in Spellbinding were intended to be employed by anyone…. Before the discovery of Spellbinding we did not know that this kind of magic was part of common practice, and that it was not limited to the shamanic specialists or the officiants of state-sponsored rituals or cults. The very nature of Spellbinding as a text that teaches people to identify demonic phenomena and deal with them expeditiously broadens our perspective on magico-religious traditions before Buddhism and religious Daoism.¹⁹

The preceding examples show the main characteristics of these exorcistic spells: the use of arrows to repel demons, spirit traps to confine and kill them (thrown into the road after use), and some brief verbal recitations. Another important strand of early Chinese magical practice was the use of writing, with characters—and more elaborate designs based on characters—being inscribed on wooden stakes as talismans. Instructions for making talismans feature in the bamboo slips from Shuihudi and other early sources.²⁰

Such practices predate the introduction of Buddhism to China and the formalization of Daoism as a religious system, which happened in part as a reaction to the success of Buddhism. Both Buddhism and Daoism incorporated these early magical practices into their texts, with the use of character-based talismans in particular becoming a feature of Chinese Buddhism. Many books of divination, talismans, and spells for dealing with the world of spirits were found in the library cave at Dunhuang, which was mainly formed from the collections of local Buddhist monks and monasteries.²¹

MESOPOTAMIAN MAGIC: THE LIBRARY OF ASHBURNIPAL

Mesopotamia, situated in the Tigris-Euphrates river basin, is famous for being the place of origin of many aspects of human culture and technology. So it is not surprising that some of the earliest magical texts are from this region. Many individual magical rites survive in the Akkadian language, impressed on clay tablets in cuneiform script. There are also catalogs of magical texts that show how these rituals were grouped together in a corpus.

The clay tablets containing these Akkadian magical texts are mostly from an ancient collection, the library of Ashburnipal, who was king of Assyria in the seventh century B.C.E. The site, the ancient city of Nineveh, near the modern city of Mosul in Iraq, was excavated in the 1850s, and more than thirty thousand tablets and fragments were brought from there to the British Museum. This and other smaller collections of cuneiform texts have been the key resource for the reconstruction of ancient Mesopotamian religion, culture, science, and technology. As a result, we know more about Mesopotamian society than any other ancient civilization.²²

A significant proportion of the tablets contain texts categorized as divinatory, magical, and medical. The earlier Akkadian texts of this kind, dating from the second millennium B.C.E., include spells to be chanted against disease; spells to overpower and exorcise demons; spells to remove a mote from the eyes; spells against gas, constipation, and joint pain; spells against the bites of dogs, snakes, and scorpions; and spells against diseases in animals. There are spells for pregnancy, birth, and newborn infants, as well as numerous love charms to be recited by both men and women.

To give one example of the way these incantations are worded, the following spell to overpower a demon is from a tablet found in the royal palace at Mari in Syria:

Let me speak, may my speech be stronger than your speech.

As wild beasts are stronger than cattle,

So may my command be stronger than your command.

As heaven is stronger than earth,

So may my command be stronger than your command.

You have tied your nose to your anus.

So there! Have I not slapped you in the face?²³

This kind of ritual practice came to be the special duty of experts called āšipu, usually translated as “exorcists.” A list of rituals with which they were meant to be familiar was widely copied and shows how these magical texts were learned as a corpus. The list begins with rituals for the foundation of temples and statues, and rites to protect the king. It then moves on to spells against demons, witchcraft, and curses, before proceeding on to more general magico-medical spells:

The list continues with measures against evil-portending dreams, rituals against impotency, and texts pertaining to pregnancy, childbirth, and infants (ll. 14–15). The next section (ll. 16–18) lists rituals and incantations against diseases affecting specific body parts, against nose-bleeds, vomiting, and diarrhea, followed by incantations against snake bite, scorpion sting, and the sāmānu (“redness”) disease (l. 19). Measures for the protection of a man’s house, especially against epidemics, are followed by rituals to ensure the acceptance of offerings (l. 20). After ceremonies pertaining to settlements, houses, fields, gardens, and canals come rituals against storm damage and field pests (ll. 21–22).²⁴

This list is important because when we compare magical texts across cultures, the way the rituals are grouped together is as significant as the content of the rituals themselves. These Mesopotamian rituals, recorded in the seventh century B.C.E. but going back several centuries earlier in some cases, involve recitations invoking deities or addressing demons, as well as describing ritual actions and substances. Clearly, most of these spells are protective in nature, but aggressive magic was also practiced in Mesopotamia to gain power over others in love, law, and trade.

As well as these recitations in Akkadian, foreign languages were used for spell incantations, sometimes garbled so as to obscure their meaning.²⁵ Along with the power of these exotic incantations, other actions accompanied the spell: (1) offerings for specific deities arranged on and around a portable altar, a censer, and a libation vessel; (2) purification rites such as washing and donning a clean garment; (3) rites that symbolized the transfer of impurity and evil onto materials that could be eliminated or substitutes that could be permanently removed; and (4) preventive measures, such as amulets, apotropaic figurines, fumigations, and medicine pouches.²⁶

It is impossible to clearly separate the categories of magic and medicine in these ancient texts. The line between the two is blurred, especially when illnesses are personified as supernatural beings. Rituals against animal bites and stings often demonize those animals, and the distinction between them and demons, which also live in the wilderness, is not clear-cut.²⁷ As Markham Geller has said, this is another case where our modern categories are misleading when applied to the ancient world:

Our use of the terms “magic” and “medicine” is somewhat misleading, since ancient Babylonian scholars used no such terminology. Healing therapy consisted of a combination of therapeutic recipes and incantations, since recipes were often accompanied by incantations.²⁸

As we will see in the next chapter, these words describe the case in Buddhism equally well.

The official practitioners of magic and medicine in Mesopotamia were drawn from the priesthoods of various temples. They held a relatively high position in society, acting at times as advisers to kings. Yet they would also have attended to people at lower social levels, and there were probably many unofficial practitioners of magic of whom no record remains. The practice of divination was carried out by another kind of expert not drawn from the priesthood; most of those known from the cuneiform tablets were working directly for the court, the local government, or the army.²⁹

Though these posts were generally held by men, several spells–especially those concerning sex, pregnancy, and childbirth—appear to be written for women to recite. Many concern childbirth, including the following lines to be recited by the midwife to the baby:

Run hither to me like a gazelle,

Slip out to me like a little snake!

I, Asalluhi, am the midwife,

I will receive you!³⁰

THE GREEK MAGICAL PAPYRI

The Greek magical papyri are important sources for understanding how magic has come to be defined. The rituals they describe are probably the best studied examples of magic, and furthermore, they are the kind of rituals that early Christians had in mind when they railed against the practice of magic. The term “Greek magical papyri” is slightly misleading, as this collection of papyrus manuscripts was actually found in Egypt and is written in a combination of Greek and Egyptian demotic.

The Greek magical papyri were collected by the nineteenth-century diplomat Jean d’Anastasi, who was based in Alexandria. D’Anastasi sent his finds to Europe, where they were sold to the British Museum in London, the Bibliothèque nationale and the Louvre in Paris, the State Museum in Berlin, and the Rijksmuseum in Leiden. The papyri came from Thebes and might have originally been found in a tomb or temple library. Most of them date from the third to the fifth century C.E.³¹

There are more than eighty Greek magical papyri, ranging from huge compendiums of spells to fragments of single spells. They contain a wide range of spells, featuring subjects that will now be familiar from earlier Babylonian and Indian sources. As an example, these are the spells found in the middle of one of the longest compendiums, PGM III, now held in Paris:

Charm to restrain anger

Charm to get friends

Astrological text

Charm of Solomon that produces a trance

Charm that produces direct vision

Hidden stele (prayer)

Stele (spell for deliverance)

Rite for driving out demons

Aphrodite’s name (love spell)

Bear charms

Love spells of attraction

Consecration for all purposes

Sword of Dardanos (love spell)

Fetching charm

King Pitys’s spell of attraction

A restraining seal

Pitys the Thessalian’s spell for questioning corpses

Divine assistance from three Homeric verses

Document to the waning moon

Business spells

Love spell of attraction

Slander spell to Selene

This is a fairly representative sample, though some of the papyri contain medical spells and recipes as well. Many of the spells in the manuscripts employ gods and demons from Greek mythology, and the wrathful goddesses Hekate, Selene, and Persephone are especially popular here. A spell for a protective charm involves chanting the following vivid description of the goddess:

Three-headed, you’re Persephone,

Megaira, Allekto, many-formed, who arm your hands

With dreaded, murky lamps, who shake your locks

Of fearful serpents on your brow, who sound

The roar of bulls out from your mouths, whose womb

Is decked out with the scales of creeping things,

With pois’nous rows of serpents down the back,

Bound down your backs with horrifying chains.³²

The ritual that goes along with this chant is a good example of the kind of magic we find in the Greek magical papyri:

Take a lodestone and on it have carved a three-faced Hekate. And let the middle face be that of a maiden wearing horns, and the left face that of a dog, and the one on the right that of a goat. After the carving is done, clean with natron and water, and dip in the blood of one who has died a violent death. Then make a food offering to it and say the same spell at the time of the ritual.³³

The language of these rituals is mainly Greek, with some of the instructions written in Egyptian demotic. They were probably written and practiced by Egyptians comfortable in both languages.³⁴ There is another register in the rituals, syllables that are less important for their meaning than for the power they represent in the ritual itself. These strings of syllables are very like the mantras and dharanis of Mahayana Buddhism. These mantra-like syllables, called voces magicae in modern scholarship, contain words drawn from the sacred languages of Greek and Hebrew, as well as strings of alliterative sounds with no obvious etymology. See, for example, this prayer of exorcism to the demon known as the Headless One:

I call upon you, awesome and invisible god with an empty spirit, AROGOGOROBRAŌ SOCHOU MODORIŌ PHALARCHAŌ. Holy Headless One, deliver him, NN, from the daimon which restrains him, ROUBRIAŌ BAABNABAŌTH ASS ADŌNAI APHNIAŌ ITIIŌLĒTH ABRASAX AĒŌŌY; mighty Headless One, deliver him, NN, from the daimon which restrains him. MABARRAIŌ IOĒL KOTHA ATHORĒBALŌ ABRAŌTH, deliver him, NN AŌTH ABRAŌTH BASYM ISAK SABAŌTH IAŌ.³⁵

In this spell, NN stands for the name of the person who is the subject of the exorcism. Who would have recited this spell? With little or no archaeological background for the Greek magical papyri, it is difficult to reconstruct their original context, and he question of who performed the spells and for whom can only be answered with speculation. Betz suggests that some of the magic users may have been from temples of Egyptian and Greek deities, as Egyptian magic users were resident members of temple priesthoods. He also suggests that some of the texts indicate a different kind of magic user known from ancient Greek sources, a wandering ritualist who was happy to draw from any religious practice that was useful, without necessarily understanding the ancient languages contained in these rituals.³⁶

JEWISH MAGIC: FRAGMENTS FROM THE CAIRO GENIZAH

The texts and objects of Jewish magical ritual are an emerging and important area of the study of Judaism. The most important source material for this work comes from the cache of manuscripts discovered in the Cairo Genizah. Much of this vast collection of more than three hundred thousand manuscripts was brought to Cambridge University at the end of the nineteenth century by Rabbi Solomon Schecter and is now held at the university library. Though collections of magical rituals probably make up the largest single category of texts in the Genizah collection, they were ignored in early studies of the manuscripts, and researchers have only recently begun to investigate them properly.

In his work on Jewish magic, Gideon Bohak has shown that most of these magical texts are part of compendiums of spells prepared by individual ritualists for their own use:

These formularies, some of which occupy only a few pages, while others are dozens of pages long, contain endless series of magical recipes, each recipe generally preceded by a rubric which explains its aim (“For love,” “To kill [someone],” etc.), and usually with no indication of its (real or imagined) origins. Sometimes the recipes are arranged topically, with recipes for similar aims clustered together; in other cases the order of the recipes appears entirely arbitrary, the result of the gradual accumulation, by a single practitioner or over a few generations, of magical recipes from every conceivable source.³⁷

The catalog of the Genizah texts in the Cambridge University Library allows us a quick overview of the contents of these texts, though many are not broken down to the level of individual spells. One manuscript, for example, is described as containing “recipes for love, dream requests, to catch thieves, cure sleeplessness, make a woman love her husband, and to make one man fear another.” Another contains “Magical recipes for health, for sleep, to make peace between a man and his wife, to abort a dead fetus, to expel a stuck placenta, to cure impotence, and to silence an enemy.” A third has spells “to quell a storm at sea, to heal scorpion-bites, for a headache, to send a fever upon your enemy, and for charm and grace (including before a governor).”³⁸ In many cases, the catalogers have simply described the texts as “magical; medical,” showing again how difficult it is to differentiate between these two categories.

The magical compendiums found in the Cairo Genizah mostly date from the tenth to the thirteenth century C.E., but they are thought to contain spells dating back much earlier. Evidence of earlier magical practices among the Jews is found in the works of the philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who divided magic into true and false varieties. For Philo, true magic is the work of the magi, who use it to reveal the truth about nature; false magic, on the other hand, is something more like what we see in the Genizah manuscripts:

There is a counterfeit of this, most properly called an evil art, pursued by mendicant priests and altar parasites and by the basest of the women and slave population, who make it their profession to deal in purifications and disenchantments and promise with some sort of philters and incantations to turn men’s love into deadly enmity and their hatred into profound affection.³⁹

Philo’s description of false magic is interesting in that he includes among its practitioners the lower classes of his society: women and slaves. Since we rarely see any representation of these people in historical sources, it is difficult to prove that they used magic, but in that magical rituals apply to the everyday and domestic realm, it is likely that they did.

Recently, the study of the material culture of Jewish magic has revealed the variety of amulets, rings, pendants, gems, and seals that were used in magical rituals. One very popular practice in the Middle East was the creation of incantation bowls, clay bowls with incantations written on the inside, placed upside down to function as traps for demons. There are also a few examples of human skulls being used in a similar ritual. Scholars have made some interesting connections between Jewish magical amulets and instructions from the Genizah manuscripts on making these amulets. For example, a Jewish spell that instructs the user to “write on a piece of cloth from the garment of whoever you wish” can be linked with a love amulet made of cloth found in the Genizah collection.⁴⁰

As with the Greek magical papyri, it is difficult to say who was using the Genizah magical manuscripts and who their clients might have been. But there were certainly magic users operating in the multicultural Mediterranean world and using the spells recorded in the Genizah texts. Magical texts were widely available and used at the popular and elite levels of society. The Genizah scholar Steven Wasserstrom has pointed out the many similarities between the Jewish magic of the Genizah texts and contemporaneous Muslim magic. He quotes a description in an Arabic text of a Muslim magic user who worked in the marketplace, using a Hebrew formula to exorcise a Jewish spirit, words from the Greek bible to exorcise a Christian spirit, and an invocation to fire and light for a Zoroastrian spirit.⁴¹

EUROPEAN BOOKS OF MAGIC

Books of spells from the tenth century onward, usually written in Latin, survive in museum and library collections across Europe. These books, also known as grimoires, contain spells for the same variety of purposes that we have seen in earlier collections, spanning medicine, divination, love magic and curses, and dealings with supernatural beings. In varying degrees, they combine practices from Greek, Jewish, and Muslim magic with elements of Christian liturgy as magical incantations.

Two books from Anglo-Saxon England show how difficult it is to distinguish magic and medicine in this literature. From the tenth century, Bald’s Leechbook, a collection of cures assembled by a doctor (known as a “leech”) by the name of Bald, is mainly made up of recipes for medicines, but in some cases the user must recite the Christian mass or other prayers over the mixtures, and other ritual acts such as spitting three times occur as well.

A century later we have another medical compendium, the Lacnunga, in which Greco-Roman magical medicine is combined with elements of Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, and Norse myth and ritual. Here too most of the content is medical. The recipes are often made effective by reciting incantations, usually in Latin, though also in apparently meaningless magical syllables such as Acre arcre arnem nona aernem beodor aernem nidren acrun cunad ele harassan fidine.⁴²

In this Anglo-Saxon world, diseases of people and animals are sometimes caused by elves. Unlike the demons that derived from the Judeo-Christian world, elves were beautiful anthropomorphic beings that could bring help or harm. In terms of the latter, they could cause illness and altered mental states in those who transgressed certain social norms. Later the elves were incorporated into Christian figures of demons in ways that parallel how Buddhist magic incorporated local concepts and practices.⁴³

Moving forward into the fifteenth century, there are grimoires that are almost wholly concerned with magic, with little or no medical practice. An unnamed grimoire from the Bavarian State Library in Munich, studied by Richard Kieckhefer, is concerned with conjuring and adjuring demons for various purposes. The book contains spells to induce love or madness in another person, to gain favor at court, to separate friends, to create the illusion of a castle, to obtain a magical horse, to become invisible, to reveal secrets, and to see into the future.

There is a divination practice in the Munich handbook in which a young boy views images in a reflective surface. As we will see later, this is one of the most widely diffused divination practices, which is also found in Buddhist cultures in Asia. In the spells of the Munich handbook, which are sometimes given the name necromancy, magic circles are used to summon demons, and objects including wax figures, rings, and swords also play a part in the rituals. Recitations draw from Christian liturgy as well as the magical names of God, a practice taken from Jewish and Muslim magic. Examples of books of magic like this are rare in Europe, probably because the majority were consigned to the flames by the Inquisitors.⁴⁴

The question of who practiced these various kinds of magic has been addressed by Kieckhefer, who rejects the stereotype of the professional magician:

Instead of finding a single, readily identifiable class of magicians we find various types of people involved in diverse magical activities: monks, parish priests, physicians, surgeon-barbers, midwives, folk healers and diviners with no formal training, and even ordinary women and men who, without claiming special knowledge or competence, used whatever magic they happened to know. The monks and priests who practiced magic were able to write much earlier and more widely than laypeople, and left more records of their magic, but this does not mean that they engaged in these activities more often.⁴⁵

It is important to remember that those who had the means to write down their magic were not the only ones who practiced it, though they may have had access to better resources than neighboring lay practitioners. This is equally true in Buddhist contexts as well, where the monks who had the means to write down their magic may have been able to command more authority, but they were unlikely ever to have been the only ones practicing magic.

MAGIC: A WORKING DEFINITION

As I said at the beginning of this chapter, the point of reviewing these various traditions is not to show that there is something essential called “magic” that can be identified across cultures. Instead, I hope it is now clear that the word has been used to highlight a certain kind of practice in a wider cultural context. Now that we have looked at some of the best known examples of texts that have been, and still are, called magic, it may be possible to come to a working definition of how the word is used. All of the practices from these traditions share some basic features. They are focused on worldly ends, including healing, protection, divination, manipulation of emotions, and sometimes killing. The effects of these techniques are either immediate or come into effect in a defined, short-term period. The techniques themselves are usually brief, with clear instructions that do not need much interpretation, and are gathered together in books of spells.

Other aspects of these practices that come together in the family resemblance of what people call magic include:

Summoning or exorcising various classes of minor supernatural beings

Reciting or writing down sounds from a sacred vocabulary

Using specific gestures and other physical movements

Creating implements, ointments, and potions

Another similarity across these traditions is that the magical practices often appear only in manuscripts, personal books that have survived by care or by chance. Access to these manuscripts has allowed us to see how magical rituals were actually collected, read, and performed. As Betz points out regarding the Greek magical papyri:

We also know that such literature is extremely important for the understanding of what people are really thinking and doing in a particular time, geographical area, or cultural context. Magical beliefs and practices can hardly be overestimated in their importance for the daily life of the people.⁴⁶

Magical manuscripts are usually compendiums, collecting a variety of spells. This can help us to understand the lives of the practitioners of magic and their clients, giving us a picture of the range of needs, desires, and irritations that impelled people to seek solutions in magical rituals. It is striking how often, across different regions and cultures, the same package is found: healing alongside divination, manipulation of the weather, extrasensory perception, illusions such as invisibility, and enchantment. Much of this can be explained by the durability of these needs in human societies across time and space, as well as similarities in our human way of thinking—personifying illness and misfortune, for example. There is the occasional case, though, of a ritual appearing in much the same form in places far removed from each other, such as a mirror-scrying practice that takes similar form in China and England, and here there is also the possibility that the practice traveled across vast distances.⁴⁷

Now, based on this enquiry into how the word magic is used to describe various traditions, I will offer a threefold definition of Buddhist magic:

First, I will use the term in a Buddhist context to point to rituals entirely performed for “this-worldly” ends, in which the ultimate aim of Buddhism is only very indirectly linked to the practice. When buddhas and bodhisattvas appear in these practices, their role as savior or exemplar of enlightenment is not at the forefront; their purpose is to guarantee the effects of the spell. The accumulation and transfer of merit is also of little importance in Buddhist spells. It is true that meritorious Buddhist activities such as recitation of scriptures and offerings at shrines are also considered effective for healing the sick and achieving other worldly aims, but this is different from the application of specific rituals by specialists, based on a book of spells. I am reserving the word magic for the latter.

Second, the rituals I am calling magic in Buddhism are characterized by a swift and clear relationship between ritual and result. In these rituals the result follows quickly after the accomplishment of the spell. This is a feature that the client would expect, as in many cases the spells address pressing concerns, including illness, the need for urgent answers, or the resolution of a difficult social situation. Thus the expectation is that the result of the spell will be evident. Many Buddhist magic texts state what the observable result will be and exactly how long the client might have to wait for it to occur. Thus, for the purpose of this book, I am not dealing with magical powers that arise as a side effect of meditation, as these are usually to manifest only after a long period of practice.

The third way I want to define what we mean by magic comes from the structure of Buddhist books of spells. These are collections of practices aimed at specific worldly ends, including (but not limited to) healing and protecting; divining; enchanting and cursing; summoning supernatural creatures; finding treasure, clairvoyance, and clairaudience; and turning oneself invisible. Each spell is usually quite brief, and the instructions are clear even to a nonspecialist. These books of spells are usually manuscripts compiled by practitioners, though some Buddhist scriptures, such as the All-Accomplishing Hero Tantra are also compendiums of spells.⁴⁸ In other Buddhist scriptures a single powerful spell is presented on its own, followed by an explanation of the various uses of the spell. This is what we see in early Buddhist ritual texts such as the Great Amulet, Queen of Spells. Yet even here, when we are looking at actual manuscripts, we usually find several of these single spells scriptures copied together.⁴⁹

With this working definition of magic in hand, the next two chapters will look at how magic has been deeply embedded in both scripture and practice from early in Buddhism’s history.

CHAPTER 2

Magic, Medicine, and the Spread of Buddhism

Worldly ritual practices go back as far as we have evidence of early Buddhism. It is true that we do not know if they go all the way back to the Buddha and the early generations of monks who followed him, but we have precious little real evidence for anything about Buddhism at that time. We do know that the use of mantras, magical circles, amulets, and ritual implements like arrows and daggers were all part of early Buddhist magical practices long before they became features of tantric Buddhism.

The main theme in early Buddhist ritual texts is protection, in particular, protection from supernatural beings such as ghosts and ogres. This genre of ritual is known in the Theravada as paritta and in Sanskrit sources as rakṣa, both words meaning “protection.” One of the earliest and most popular of the Buddhist worldly ritual texts, the Sutra from Atanata, provides a method for monks to ward off attacks from dangerous ogres by invoking the aid of more powerful ogres. In this sutra the protective recitation is provided by Vaiśravaṇa, a mythical king with an entourage of benevolent ogres.

The Sutra from Atanata is in the Pali canon and remains an important part of Theravada practice. Sanskrit manuscripts from Central Asia show that it was practiced in other early Buddhist sects, which suggests that these practices predated the early schisms that gave rise to different sects.¹ Some ritual texts translated into Pali were not included in the canon, but this does not mean they were not popular. For example, the Crown Victor Dharani, a text for magical protection that is well known in Buddhist Mahayana cultures, is also widely circulated in Theravada cultures in its Pali translation.²

As far back as we can go in the Buddhist manuscript record, we find sources for magical literature. A worldly ritual text has been identified among the earliest surviving Buddhist manuscripts, the birch-bark scrolls from ancient Gandhara, another compelling piece of evidence for the importance of these practices to early Buddhist monks and nuns. In this text, the king of the dragons provides the Buddha’s disciples with a mantra that will protect them from threats, including snakes, wild animals, and ogres.³

From the second century B.C.E. onward, when Buddhists began building significant monuments at sites such as Bodhgaya, Bharhut, and Sanchi, figures of ogres and other supernatural beings were carved into gateways, railings, and other architectural features. Peter Skilling has argued that these sites functioned as circles of protection: “The railings with their gateways functioned as an outer protective maṇḍala around the stūpa.”⁴ Monks visiting a site like Bodhgaya, the place of the Buddha’s enlightenment, would circumambulate, make offerings, and recite sutras offering ritual protection.

As Skilling points out, the paritta texts “were actually used—that is, memorised and recited for specific purposes—by both monks and lay followers from a very early date.”⁵ This is in contrast to most of the canonical literature which was known and studied by only a few elite monastics. In present-day Theravada, the paritta are put together into popular compendiums, as we find with magical texts in most traditions. Among the laity at least, these collections are better known than any other examples of Pali Buddhist literature.⁶

CRITICISM OF MAGIC IN THE BRAHMA NET SUTRA

Another fascinating source for the magical practices of some Buddhist monks is the Brahma Net Sutra, the first sutra in the Pali canon’s Digha nikaya collection. This sutra contains long lists of “wrong means of livelihood,” which include numerous practices of divination, medicine, and protective and aggressive magic.⁷ Here is one example:

The knowledge of charms to lay demons in a cemetery; the knowledge of charms to cure one possessed by ghosts; the knowledge of charms to be pronounced by one living in an earthen house; the snake craft (for curing snake bites and charming snakes); the poison craft (for neutralizing or making poison); the scorpion craft and rat craft (for curing scorpion stings and rat bites, respectively); the bird craft and crow craft (for understanding the cries of birds and crows); foretelling the number of years that a man has to live; the knowledge of charms to give protection from arrows; reciting charms to understand the language of animals.⁸

This is another:

Reciting charms to make people lucky or unlucky; rejuvenating the fetuses of abortive women; reciting spells to bind a man’s tongue, to paralyze his jaws, to make him lose control over his hands, to make him lose control over his jaw, or to bring on deafness; obtaining oracular answers to questions by means of a mirror, a girl, or a god; worshipping the sun; worshipping Mahābrahmā; bringing forth flames from the mouth; invoking the goddess of luck.⁹

And finally:

Promising gifts to deities in return for favors; fulfilling such promises; demonology; reciting spells after entering an earthen house; inducing virility and impotence; preparing and consecrating sites for a house; giving ceremonial mouthwashes and ceremonial bathing; offering sacrificial fires; administering emetics, purgatives, expectorants and phlegmagogues; administering medicine through the ear and through the nose; administering ointments and counter-ointments; practising fine surgery on the eyes and ears; practising general surgery on the body; practising as a children’s doctor; the application of medicinal roots; the binding on of medicinal herbs.¹⁰

Some of these practices appear to be Brahmin, but most of them belong to no particular tradition, the kind of practice that might have been found in any Indian village.¹¹ While these lists state that the practices are not right livelihood, the presence of them in the sutra suggests that they were common enough among Buddhist monastics to warrant enumeration in detail here. As Amy Langenberg has written regarding Buddhist monks’ involvement in fertility rituals, “apology and distancing are two discursive strategies for openly acknowledging opposing interests while subtly dictating the terms of their acknowledgement.”¹²

This subtle play of prohibition and acknowledgment is present in the Brahma Net Sutra, where the Buddha reveals that only a superficial, worldly person would define what it means to be a buddha in these terms:

These, bhikkhus, are those trifling and insignificant matters, those minor details of mere moral virtue, that a worldling would refer to when speaking in praise of the Tathāgata.¹³

The rest of the text goes on to say that what really defines a buddha is not abstaining from these practices, but being free from philosophical speculation and attachment to views that fall into the categories of eternalism and nihilism. This is not to say that the Brahma Net Sutra gives tacit approval to these practices, but the context of its criticism is a subtle movement from moral judgment to the transcendence of ordinary morality. In any case, the implication in the sutra that these practices were carried out by Buddhist monastics is confirmed when we look at the early manuscript evidence.¹⁴

A SCROLL FROM GANDHARA

The Pali canon of the Theravada school is rightly treated as a key source for understanding early Buddhism. Yet it is not always appreciated that the manuscript sources on which it is based are actually quite late. The canon that is used today is based on the best manuscripts that could be found when it was compiled in the late nineteenth century. These manuscripts usually originated no earlier than the eighteenth century, with the earliest being from the fifteenth. This is not to suggest that the texts in the Pali canon are recent creations, but when we realize most of the earliest copies of most of the texts were written two thousand or more years after the Buddha, we can see why they are not a clear window onto the earliest period of Buddhism. As Oskar von Hinüber puts it, the Theravada canon is the result of “a lengthy and complicated development.”¹⁵

Much earlier Buddhist manuscripts do survive from the other side of the Indic world, from the areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan that were once the kingdom of Gandhara, and across the Pamir Mountains into the Taklamakan Desert. The ancient kingdom of Gandhara was based in the Peshawar Valley in what is now northwestern Pakistan, growing to include the fertile Swat Valley and the prosperous city of Taxila. There were Buddhists in Gandhara from very early in the history of Buddhism, but it was in the time of the Kushan empire—in the first to the third century C.E.—that Buddhists received significant financial support and built major monasteries and stupas.

The Gandhara region was ruled by the Kushan dynasty, which expanded its domains to a significant part of northern India during the first to the third century C.E. The Buddhist traditions from northern India celebrate the Kushan king Kaniṣka, who ruled during the second century C.E., for his construction of monasteries and stupas, and for convening a major council for the Sarvāstivāda sect. It was this council that decided to translate the scriptures into Sanskrit. Whether these traditions are based on historical events is uncertain, but there is no doubt that Buddhist monastic institutions flourished in Gandhara and beyond during the Kushan empire.

Several collections of birch-bark scrolls found in Pakistan and Afghanistan have appeared in recent decades, and scholarship on these has shown that most date from the first century B.C.E. through to the third century C.E.; they are the earliest Buddhist manuscripts as well as the oldest manuscripts from South Asia. The texts on these scrolls are almost all written in the Gandhari language and in a script called Kharoṣṭhī, both of which disappeared from use in the Buddhist world soon afterward. More than seventy scrolls have been found so far; the first find is now in the British Library, while others have entered various public and private collections.¹⁶

We know little about the provenance of most of the collections, but we do know that the British Library scrolls came inside clay pots that had probably been deliberately buried. Richard Salomon, who first studied these scrolls, suggests that they may have been discarded as sacred books that were damaged and no longer useful. He also brings up another possibility: that the scrolls were buried as a ritual act. He points to the practice in contemporary Tibet, “where learned lamas are said to be buried with their books.” He also points out that books of the dharma can function as relics, equivalent to the body of the Buddha himself.¹⁷

As previously mentioned, one of the Gandhari scrolls contains a magical protection text called Sutra of Manasva, King of the Dragons. This text dates from the first or second century C.E. and teaches a “king of spells” (vidyārāja), which consists of reciting a mantra. Most of the words in the mantra are the names of powerful poisons; by reciting them, the poisons—and by extension, other threats—are neutralized. The sutra assures the reader that whoever recites the spell does not have to fear humans, wild animals, ogres, snakes, or general dangers, including fire, water, and poison. The mantra in the Sutra of Manasva is a mixture of words and meaning-free syllables, such as hili cili, khili cili, that have a purely magical function.¹⁸

To put this in context, most of the Gandhari scrolls contain scriptures and commentaries, and while most are from mainstream (non-Mahayana) Buddhism, there are Mahayana sutras too. As Richard Salomon points out:

Thus they do not give the impression that the Mahāyāna was then functioning as an independent institution. Rather, it would seem that Mahāyāna texts were being studied along with Mainstream texts in Gandhāran monasteries, and were not yet perceived to be in conflict with them or marginalized by them.¹⁹

Thus the Gandhari manuscripts present a different, messier picture when compared with the Pali canon. All canonical collections present an idealized portrait of a tradition as it wants to be seen, while manuscript caches tend to have come out of other circumstances. These scrolls are a unique example what was actually going on in specific Buddhist communities at a relatively early stage in the history of Buddhism—though, of course, still several centuries after the death of the Buddha.

MANUSCRIPTS AND RITUALS ON THE SILK ROUTE

Across the mountain passes that led from Gandhara to the oasis cities of the Taklamakan Desert, remains of once-flourishing Buddhist cultures still survive. Since the late nineteenth century, expeditions into this region, popularly known as “the Silk Road,” have discovered major caches of Buddhist manuscripts. The earliest manuscripts of these come from the era of the Kushan empire, the first to the third century C.E. These manuscripts are written on birch bark or palm leaf, the writing materials of ancient India, where paper was not generally used until much later. They are mostly written in the Sanskrit language and Brahmi script and are the very earliest examples of Sanskrit literature that have survived in book form.

The kind of Buddhist texts that have been identified among these early manuscripts is rather surprising: they consist of the philosophy of the abhidharma and poetic works on Buddhist subjects. Few manuscripts remain of any of the fundamental scriptural texts of either sutras or vinaya. This absence brings up an important issue: were scriptures brought to Central Asia as books in the hands of monks or as texts in their memories? Memorization of scriptures has been a fundamental part of Buddhist education right through to the present day. Early Buddhist scriptures were transmitted in oral form for centuries before being written down. Specialist monks called reciters (bhāṇaka) memorized and recited the scriptures, and all monks would have known some of the scriptures by heart.

Even after scholars began to write down the Buddhist scriptures, it often remained easier to find a monk who had memorized a text than a written copy of that text. Groups of missionary monks traveling the Silk Road may have included reciters, who could travel with hundreds of texts in memory. When this was an option, the course of traveling with a library’s worth of books would hardly have recommended itself.²⁰

So why were Buddhist poems so popular among the first Buddhists of the Silk Road? These works are dominated by the poets Aśvaghoṣa and Mātṛceta, who probably lived during the first century C.E., not long before the manuscripts themselves were written. Both authors wrote in the highly poetic Indian literary style. Aśvaghoṣa’s work is among the earliest surviving Sanskrit literature (kāvya), while Mātṛceta’s works are the earliest surviving devotional hymns to the Buddha (stotra). So unlike the sutras, these were quite new texts that had become popular very quickly, but they were perhaps not part of the professional reciters’ catalog.

Calling these texts “poems” is a bit misleading, as they were probably used more for group recitation than for personal reading. Mātṛceta’s works were written in a form that became popular in the Indian bhakti movements focusing on deities such as Vishnu. We can see them in the context of the contemporaneous development of Buddhist sculpture, in which Buddha Śākyamuni was represented as a human figure for the first time, along with other buddhas and bodhisattvas.²¹

The repetitive, chantlike nature of Mātṛceta’s devotional verses suggests that Sanskrit could be appreciated as a language of ritual and devotion even when its meaning was not understood. For example, a verse from the consecration chapter of his Varṇārhavarṇa goes like this:

namo ’rhate namas te ’stu namas te ’stu namo’rhate |

namo namo namas te ’stu namas te ’stu namo ’rha te ||

The repetitive, almost mantra-like quality of the lines is apparent here. The basic meaning here is just an homage to the arhats, but the Sanskrit syllables could be grouped in different ways to give other meanings.²² Thus in this verse and many other places in these poetic works, clarity of meaning is subsumed by the quality of sound. This way of using Sanskrit syllables, where the quality of sound comes before meaning, continues in Buddhist magical texts.

It is around the fourth century that we start to see new Sanskrit manuscripts produced in the monasteries of the Silk Road oasis cities, and these give us a fuller picture of monastic practices. Most of these manuscripts are from Buddhist sites near the cities where the Taklamakan Desert meets the Tianshan Mountains. Many of the most important finds of early manuscripts are from the cave temples of Kizil, near the city of Kucha. The manuscripts from the fourth to the sixth century C.E. cover a wide range of Buddhist scripture, including the sutra, vinaya, and abhidharma. A certain proportion of magical protection texts are among the sutras, including the Sutra from Atanata, some copies of which include a mantra not found in the Pali version. Some manuscripts have just the mantra on its own and might have been used as amulets.²³

As is often the case, the noncanonical ritual and magical texts among these manuscripts have not been fully cataloged. There are several unidentified protection texts and many unidentified mantras. Furthermore, the way these manuscripts were collected and cataloged has made it difficult to reconstruct how they were actually used. Many of the shorter individual texts would have been part of manuscript compendiums, but it is impossible to know how these texts were grouped together.²⁴ A crucial exception to this is the Bower Manuscript, one of the most famous Silk Road texts, the discovery of which was a major impetus for the European expeditions to Asia in the early twentieth century. It is the earliest surviving Buddhist magical/medical compendium.

MEDICINE AND DIVINATION IN THE BOWER MANUSCRIPT

The Bower Manuscript is named for Lieutenant Hamilton Bower, who purchased it from locals when he was passing through the town of Kucha in 1890, working as an intelligence officer for the British army. The men who sold the manuscript to Bower told him that they had found it inside a stupa built on top of the cliffs at Kumtura, a few miles from Kucha itself. Though Bower was led to the spot by the treasure hunter who had found the manuscript, we cannot be certain whether this was where it had survived for over a thousand years.

The manuscript was sent to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta, where it was studied by the Indologist Rudolf Hoernle. Recognizing the great antiquity and importance of the manuscript, Hoernle made enquiries about other material circulating among missionaries and local officials. He managed to obtain two more manuscripts that belonged with the Bower Manuscript and had been sold separately. For the next two decades, Hoernle worked on the manuscript, producing volumes of transcriptions and translations.

He concluded that the Bower Manuscript is actually seven different manuscripts, which together make up fifty-one loose-leaf folios bound together with string. He believed that all the manuscripts were probably from the end of the fourth century C.E., though some have argued that their origin could be later. The Bower Manuscript is written in the Gupta Brahmi script used in India from the fourth to the sixth century, and Hoernle believed that four scribes were responsible for the different parts of the manuscript. The owner, and presumably the one who gathered the different parts together, was a monk called Yaśomitra. Hoernle suggested that the stupa in which the manuscript was found may have been built for this Yaśomitra.²⁵

The first three parts of the manuscript are medical treatises. Part I begins with a narrative that describes the properties of garlic, followed by a variety of formulas and recipes for potions for lengthening life (rasāyana), eye drops, remedies for baldness, and recipes for coughs. Part II begins by paying homage to the Buddha but is otherwise not specifically Buddhist. It contains recipes for powders, linctuses, pills, and medicated ghees and oils. In many cases, mantras are recited in the preparation of these recipes. This part of the manuscript continues with formulas for specific ailments, including fever and inflammation, but also aphrodisiacs and hair dyes. There are also chapters specifically on diseases in children and disorders in pregnant and nursing women. Finally, part III contains further recipes linked to the cures outlined in part II.²⁶

The next two parts (IV and V) of the Bower Manuscript address divination, using the method of rolling dice. This method seems to have been popular among Buddhist monastics of the time, as it appears in other manuscript fragments from the area.²⁷ In neither part is the text itself particularly Buddhist, paying homage to Shiva, Vishnu, and other Indian deities and spirits. The various results of the divination show that the practice is meant for lay patrons, with many of them involving marriage, business, and other concerns of householders. Hoernle identified part V as a partial copy of an Indian manual for dice divination by an obscure figure identified only as Garga.²⁸

The last two parts of the text contain the popular Buddhist magical text, the Great Peacock Feather. The Great Peacock Feather begins with Ānanda asking the Buddha to help a fellow monk who has just been bitten by a deadly black snake. The Buddha gives Ānanda a spell, first describing its many applications, which go far beyond snakebite. They include being possessed by gods, dragons, ogres, and many other kinds of threatening beings. The spell also offers protection against various kinds of black magic and is recommended for treating fevers, headaches, skin diseases, and pain in various parts of the body. Thus the spell is far more than a remedy for snakebite; it is presented as a cure for almost anything, hence the name “Queen of Spells.”²⁹

The Great Peacock Feather also appears in other manuscript fragments from the Silk Road.³⁰ The great value of the Bower Manuscript is that we can see how this text was compiled alongside others to be put to use by practitioners. While the other texts in the Bower compendium are not specifically Buddhist, there is no reason to think that they would not all have been used by Buddhist monks. In other Buddhist manuscript collections, like the library cave cache from Dunhuang, we find non-Buddhist texts for medical and divinatory purposes alongside more traditional Buddhist texts. The Bower Manuscript, with its combination of medicine, divination, and magical protection is also comparable to other magical compendiums seen in the Greek magical papyri and Genizah manuscripts. The combination of texts collected by Yaśomitra, the owner of the manuscript, suggests that he used this manuscript to attend to the needs of fellow monks and perhaps laypeople in the Kucha region.³¹

THE ROLE OF SANSKRIT ALONG THE SILK ROUTE

The Sanskrit language is deeply embedded in Buddhist magical literature as the power expressed through spells in sound or writing. But why Sanskrit in particular? The role of Sanskrit in South Asia, and the reasons for its success, have been widely debated; the most influential theory is Sheldon Pollock’s idea of a “Sanskrit cosmopolis,” a shared culture in which a Sanskrit freed from its origins in Vedic ritual became the language of political and literary power.

Pollock’s cosmopolis is defined by one particular function of the language: the aesthetic expression of political ideologies. His case for the importance of Sanskrit at the royal courts is convincing, and though aspects of his argument have been criticized by some other Indologists, the central thesis, of an aesthetic and political realm of Sanskrit discourse, has been generally accepted. According to Pollock there is little or no evidence for other uses of Sanskrit, whether as a medium of everyday communication, a trade language or lingua franca. Ritual and magical uses of Sanskrit have no place in this model either. Instead, the Sanskrit language “was directed above all toward articulating a form of political consciousness and culture, politics not as transaction of material power—the power of recording deeds, contracts, tax records, and the like—but as celebration of aesthetic power.”³²

By this definition, the Sanskrit cosmopolis is limited to South and Southeast Asia. Central and East Asia, on the other hand, have no place in the cosmopolis and are not discussed in any detail in Pollock’s work. But this is a narrow criterion for the influence of a language upon another culture. I want to suggest a different model, drawn from the world of Sanskrit grammar itself.³³

The archaeological site at Miran is situated on the Silk Road between the great Asian deserts of Taklamakan and Gobi. It was once much more livable, made green by irrigation, and home to villagers and Buddhist monks. This was the largest Buddhist community in the ancient kingdom of Kroraina, which flourished between the second and fourth centuries. Surprisingly, while other Buddhist sites in the Central Asian deserts have yielded thousands of Sanskrit manuscripts, the only manuscript to come from Miran is a single page from a palm-leaf manuscript that had been left as a votive deposit beneath one of the buddha statues.

This manuscript page was made from the leaf of the talipot palm, which grows in South India. It contains a discussion of the grammatical concept of adhikaraṇa, one of the relationships between words in a sentence, usually associated with the locative case (in, at, on, and so on in English). There are three types of locative: pervasion (vyāpaka), contact (aupaśleṣika), and domain (vaiṣayika). In the fragment, each of these three types is illustrated with an example. The concept of pervasion is illustrated with the example of the oil that pervades a sesame seed. The example illustrating contact is missing due to damage to manuscript, but the usual examples are “he sits on the mat” and “he cooks in the pot.” Finally, domain is illustrated with two examples: cattle roaming along the banks of the Ganges and a fish in water.³⁴

So this manuscript fragment is not just in Sanskrit, but about Sanskrit—a reflection on what the language can do and a prescription about how it should be used. The survival of this particular fragment, a single page from what would have been a weighty volume, is the product of chance. There is often no discernible reason why one book survives to the present day and others are lost, and there is certainly no law that the most significant works of the past should be the ones to survive. But the single folio that did survive in Miran, the only manuscript evidence of what was a thriving Buddhist community in the fourth century, happens to be this grammatical discussion of the locative case, a discussion that almost invites us to speculate on the meaning of the presence of this fragment in this particular place.

Is the presence of Sanskrit Buddhist texts along the Silk Road a case of pervasion, physical contact, or domain? To say that Sanskrit pervaded this culture and other Buddhist cultures outside of India would be overstating the case—asserting total pervasion would not allow us to understand the different ways in which Sanskrit was used at different levels of society. On the other hand, to say that this grammatical fragment and other Sanskrit manuscripts like it were physically present on the Silk Road is true but trivial.

So we come to the third form of the locative, to be present in a domain. The traditional examples of cattle freely roaming the banks of the Ganges and a fish swimming in water suggest that to be present in a domain is to be able to move through an environment. Unlike pervasion or simple contact, it suggests an adaption of the inhabitant to its domain, with the inhabitant also having an impact within that domain. Outside of India, Sanskrit survived primarily in mantras and in the study of Sanskrit grammar. The use of mantras was definitely more widespread and pervasive across different social classes and different types of religious practitioners, but Sanskrit grammar was studied by the Buddhist elite.³⁵

Both mantras and grammar represent different ways in which Sanskrit was present in domains beyond its Indic homelands, and the connection between grammar and mantra may be closer than it seems at first glance. Traditional Sanskrit grammars are generative, meaning that the language is described by applying algorithms and codes to a set of basic root syllables; they are not just a teaching tool for the Sanskrit language but, in theory, contain the whole of the possible permutations of the language. In this way the creative power of Sanskrit grammar is, in Buddhist cultures, part of the power of magical rituals themselves.³⁶

MAGICAL AND MEDICAL PRACTICE IN GILGIT

The village of Naupur in Pakistan is the site of one of the most stunning discoveries of early Buddhist manuscripts. In the early 1930s, a cache of manuscripts was found in an ancient ruin by local villagers, and the site was soon under excavation. It turned out that the manuscripts were written in Sanskrit, mostly on birch bark, and dated from the sixth and seventh centuries C.E. The ruin was originally thought to be a stupa, but recent research has shown it was probably a small monastic residence, home to three or four monks. Though the small village of Naupur was probably not much bigger at the time, it occupied a key position in the Hunza River valley in Gilgit-Baltistan, one of the main travel routes from India to Central Asia and China.

Since the Gilgit manuscripts all come from a single monastic residence, they have the potential to tell us a great deal about the lives of Buddhist monks living in small communities. They can also tell us something about the relationship between these monks and their local community. Recent studies of the Gilgit manuscripts have concluded that most were copied for ritual purposes. In some cases, this was the simple act of copying a sacred text and appending a list of names of donors, both living and dead. These people, whose names were read out regularly, shared in the merit accrued by the writing and reciting of the text.³⁷

The practice of transferring merit from one person to another is found in Buddhist inscriptions across Asia and seems to have occurred in almost every sect. It is a ritual act by which a meritorious activity is shared with others. In Mahayana Buddhism, it was expanded to the altruistic aspiration to dedicate all merit attained through any religious activity to all sentient beings in existence. In time, this dedication became the ritualized conclusion to almost every Mahayana practice and thus a key part of what it meant to be a Mahayana practitioner.³⁸

On a more mundane level, we can see how the idea of transferring merit helped to create a relationship between Buddhist monastics and their local lay communities in places like Gilgit. This arrangement is what the scholar Jacques Gernet called “the donation circuit.” This phrase, in the original French, le circuit des dons, alludes to the traditional begging rounds of Buddhist monks and, at the same time, to the economic networks established between Buddhist monastics and their lay supporters.³⁹ Gernet approached the activities of Buddhist monks on the same level as other kinds of economic activity, concluding that “the services they provided to the laity (ritual, medical, divinatory, etc.) were on the same level as those provided by the artisans and the merchants.”⁴⁰

The Gilgit manuscripts provide a window to the workings of this economic network, at least insofar as it included the production of manuscripts. The ritual act of transferring merit included material evidence of that act—the inscription of the names of donors and their families. The inscription of the names (and probably the recitation of the text) could also serve a worldly purpose, when those names were written into a text containing a protective spell. Among the Gilgit manuscripts are many spells, mostly for protection, and these contain the personal names of people seeking that protection, including local rulers. In such cases, it is likely that the monks were offering a service in return for a donation.⁴¹

One of the spells copied out several times for different donors is from The Great Amulet, Queen of Spells. Along with the spell itself (which the text calls both a mantra and a dharani), the text explains the various benefits of the spell, including protection from malign spirits and demons, black magic, poison, thunderbolts, and armies. Indeed, the Buddha states that the spell “destroys all enemies.” As the title suggests, the spell is to be copied out as an amulet, which should be worn on the arm. In two of the Gilgit manuscripts of this text, the personal names are written in a different hand from the main text, showing that the monks prepared manuscripts with spells ahead of time for potential donors.⁴²

The various uses of the Great Amulet spell are described in the text itself. They apply not only to monks and nuns, but to laypeople as well. At one point, the use of the amulet by pregnant women is recommended:

The woman who wears this Great Amulet all the time

Will have all accomplishments and she will be pregnant with a son every time.

Foetuses grow easily, and the expectant woman delivers the baby comfortably.⁴³

The overlap of magic and medicine, specifically medical aid for the lay community, is obvious here. There are also more purely medical manuscripts in the Gilgit collection, which led Oskar von Hinüber to describe the Gilgit monastic residence as “a place for ritual and healing.”⁴⁴ The manuscripts including the names of local donors indicate a flourishing relationship between local Buddhist monastics and their lay community.

The Gilgit manuscripts also contain abhidharma and grammatical literature, with annotations suggesting that the monks were studying religious topics and language. There is, of course, no reason why the monks could not have both studied Buddhist philosophy and ethics, and also to have provided magico-medical services; and as we have seen, it would be a mistake to separate the study of Sanskrit grammar from the practice of magic. In any case, the Gilgit manuscripts do offer us a glimpse of a small Buddhist monastic group and its relationships with lay supporters. These monks were offering services that included magical protection through copying and reciting spells as well as medical aid.⁴⁵

THE MAGICAL PRACTICES OF MISSIONARY MONKS IN CHINA

Traveling along the Silk Road, Buddhism was brought from India to China in the early centuries C.E. And, as with the transmission of Buddhism along the Silk Road, the power of magic and healing played a key role in the introduction of Buddhism to China as well. The Chinese Biographies of Eminent Monks is a rich source of descriptions of Buddhist monks performing magical and medical rituals. Compiled by Huijiao (497–554) from earlier sources, this work contains biographies of 275 monks from the first to the fifth century C.E. These are not biographies in our modern sense but idealized portraits of Buddhist masters based on the tropes of Chinese biographical writing. Nevertheless, even in their version of what monks were supposed to be and how they were meant to act, they offer insights into the reception of Buddhism in China in the early centuries of the first millennium.⁴⁶

The use of magical and medical rituals plays a part in many of the biographies, not only in those collected in the section on “wonder workers.” In many cases, these practices are comparable to the rituals seen in Sanskrit Buddhist literature that circulated in the same period. One of the best known of the monks who specialized in magic is Fotudeng (d. 349), a monk from Kucha who was educated in Kashmir and made his career in China. Fotudeng served as a kind of court chaplain to two successive warlords in northern China, Shi Le and Shi Hu. Both were aggressive conquerors who established one of the largest Chinese kingdoms of the period, the Later Zhao. Shi Hu in particular seems to have personally engaged in violence, so much so that Eric Zürcher described him as “a psychopath whose reign was one of unprecedented terror.”⁴⁷

According to the Biographies of Eminent Monks, Fotudeng threw his lot in with these brutal kings, gaining their confidence through his use of magic. In his study of Fotudeng, Arthur F. Wright identified four ways in which the monk demonstrated the power of Buddhism to these rulers: (1) through his prowess as a rainmaker, (2) by aiding their military ventures through magic, (3) by using medical magic to cure the diseases that ravaged the kingdom, and (4) by using his intelligence and magical powers to negotiate difficult political issues.⁴⁸

The practice of rainmaking occurs in many Buddhist scriptures and compilations of worldly rituals, often using the powers of dragons. According to the Biographies of Eminent Monks, Fotudeng used exactly this kind of ritual:

He sat down on a corded bench, burned Parthian incense, chanted an invocation of several hundred words. When he had done like this for three days, water seeped out a few drops at a time. There was a small dragon, about five or six inches long which came out with the water…. In a little while the water came in abundance, and the dry moats were all filled.⁴⁹

Here, “dragons” (lu) are the Chinese mythical creatures that were identified by Buddhists with the Indian nāgas. At another point in the biography, Fotudeng summoned two white dragons to bring rain for the whole kingdom. In the arena of war, Fotudeng’s contribution was not through direct violence but his use of divination to predict the results of his patrons’ strategies. He first came to the attention of Shi Le when he helped Shi Le’s general win battles, after which the general told the ruler, “Your natural extraordinary military prowess is being aided by supernatural influences.”⁵⁰ The divination method preferred by Fotudeng, mentioned several times, was a kind of scrying:

When he took sesame oil, mixed it with rouge, and smeared it on his palm events more than 1000 li distant were perfectly revealed in his palm as if he were face to face with them.⁵¹

Fotudeng used the same method to gain insights into the activities of others in order to give his patrons political advantage. His medical achievements are also mentioned, but little is said about how these were practiced, except for one case when he recited a spell over a wooden stick.⁵²

The central role of magic in Fotudeng’s career is by no means exceptional in the Biographies of Eminent Monks. Many other monks, including those famous for other achievements, such as translation, are said to have owed their success in achieving patronage to their skill in magical practice. For example, the Indian monk and translator Dharmakṣema (385–433) is said to have used a spell to bring forth water in order to bring glory on the king and thus gain the king’s trust:

Dharmakṣema was highly skilled in the art of spells, whatever he applied this art to was always substantiated. In the Western Regions, people called him the Great Spell Master. Once he accompanied the king into the mountains. The king was thirsty but there was no water. Thereupon Dharmakṣema secretly uttered a spell and a rock issued forth water. He then praised the king: “The great king’s benevolence produced a miracle, causing this barren rock give forth a spring!” The neighbouring countries heard about this and all admired the king’s virtue. At the time rains fell in a timely manner and the people sang songs of joy. The king loved his magic arts and became even more fond of him.⁵³

If we cautiously avoid taking these biographies as historically accurate descriptions of the monks’ activities, we can at least make two interesting conclusions. The first is that the kinds of spells we see in Indian Buddhist scriptures were well known to the Chinese monks who were composing these biographies from at least the fifth century onward. The second is that the knowledge of a variety of spells was considered a desirable quality in eminent Buddhist monks, even when they were primarily valued for other contributions, such as translating the scriptures into Chinese.

MAGIC AND MEDICINE IN BUDDHIST MONASTERIES

There is good reason to think that the Buddhist magical and medical practices along the Silk Road and in China that we have been looking at originally came from India. Their origins probably go back to practices absorbed into Buddhist monastic communities in India at a very early stage. In his study of the history of medical practice in India, Kenneth Zysk assigns a major role to Buddhist monks from the outset. According to Zysk’s reading of mainly textual sources, the early Buddhist monastic communities quickly became “the principal vehicle for the preservation, advancement, and transmission of Indian medical lore.”⁵⁴ Zysk summarizes the historical development of Buddhist medicine thus:

In the beginning, medicine was part of an ascetically based religious movement, a portion of which became known as Buddhism. Medicine evolved along with the sangha and Buddhist monastery in India, became codified as part of the Buddhist scriptures, gave rise to the monk-healers and provided the basis for subsequent development of Buddhist monastic hospices and infirmaries, and finally became part of the standard curriculum in the Buddhist monastic “universities.” When Buddhism began to spread to other parts of Asia, medical institutions and practices of the monastery went along as integral parts of the religious system.⁵⁵

This perspective puts the practice of medicine at the center of Buddhist monastic establishments and their spread beyond India. As Zysk points out, monks and nuns who were medical practitioners may have treated only other members of the Buddhist sangha at first, but over time, monasteries became centers for medical practice used by monastics and laypeople alike.⁵⁶ And the medical practices described by Zysk cannot be separated from magic. Zysk distinguishes between the “magico-religious” medicine of the Atharvaveda tradition and the “empirico-rational” medicine of Ayurvedic medicine, but he considers Buddhist medicine to combine both strands.⁵⁷

This is similar to most magical traditions, in which it is difficult to truly separate medicine and magic. This distinction has also troubled anthropologists; for example, in his influential work Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, E. E. Evans-Pritchard attempted to understand the role of magical ritual in the medicines produced by Zande healers. Yet his classification of medical prescriptions as “ritual” and “empirical” was difficult to apply consistently. In his thoughtful response to this work, Stanley Tambiah argued that this problem of classification was unnecessary because even the medical recipes that appeared to be “empirical” actually used ingredients that were based on magical thinking. Therefore (according to Tambiah), magical rituals in societies like the Azande should not be assessed according to our concepts of the empirical and the rational.⁵⁸

While Tambiah was attempting to protect non-Western societies from the perception that their rituals are just misguided attempts at empirical science, there is a danger in his approach. It would be equally, perhaps even more, damaging to our understanding of another tradition if we refused to see an empirical, or “rational,” medical practice when we come across one. There is no question that the medical traditions that developed in India and informed Buddhism did in fact involve the empirical method of testing reagents and their effects.

In the end, just as we cannot easily distinguish magic from medicine, we should not worry too much about the distinction between magical and empirical medicine in Buddhist practice. The practice of medicine in Buddhist monasteries in India included charms for exorcism alongside the use of medicine stones, needles, and moxibustion.⁵⁹ There is archaeological evidence for these practices as well. In her studies of the Buddhist complex of Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, Julia Shaw has shown how sculptures of dragons and ogres point to the involvement of Buddhist monastics in local ritual practices. She has argued that this archaeological evidence shows how Buddhist monks and nuns became embedded in local communities and extended Buddhism’s reach across India. She has also suggested that the “monumental bias” of much Buddhist archaeology has ignored this crucial aspect of Buddhist monastic activity and has obscured the ways in which the monks established themselves in new areas.⁶⁰

Similarly, Gethin Rees has studied the excavations at Jetavana monastery in northern India near the border with Nepal. Figurines found in part of the monastery, some of which hold babies in their arms, have been identified as the goddess Naigameśa, who is associated with the protection of pregnant women and young children. These figurines suggest that the magico-medical rituals practiced in Buddhist monasteries could have included the care of pregnant women and their newborn infants.⁶¹ Similarly, at other early Buddhist sites such as Gandhara, Buddhist sculptures of the goddess of pregnancy and children, Hārītī, strongly suggest that rituals for pregnancy and childbirth were performed by Buddhists at these sites.⁶²

The monastic rules in the vinaya confirm that Buddhist monks and nuns were allowed to carry out rituals associated with births and deaths, as well as other “life-cycle” rituals, for the laity. Furthermore, they were obliged to provide these services to Buddhist lay devotees (upāsaka and upāsikā) when requested.⁶³ The fact that Buddhist monastics regularly performed this kind of service for local communities is significant to our understanding of the creation, expansion, and dynamics of Buddhist social networks outside India. Writing about Chinese Buddhism, Jacques Gernet said that “the beginnings of Buddhism in China were characterised by a proliferation of small sanctuaries and the extreme dispersion of the monastic community.”⁶⁴ The manuscripts from the cave at Dunhuang show a social scene in the ninth and tenth centuries where monks and nuns were deeply involved in the activities of their lay communities.

Even in the larger towns and cities, where Buddhist monks and nuns were establishing themselves through the first millennium C.E., small sanctuaries and extreme dispersion seem to have been the norm. The residence at Gilgit fits in with this picture, and here we can see how the network of donations established in small outposts like this relied on the magical and medical services offered by the monks to the local community. What we find in the vinaya, along with archaeological evidence, indicates that these services were also provided by large Buddhist monasteries. This social and economic situation helps to explain the integration of magical spells into Buddhist scriptures from a very early stage. And, as we shall see in the next chapter, magical texts continued to be part of the development of Buddhist scripture in the evolution of Mahayana and Vajrayana practices during the first millennium C.E.

CHAPTER 3

Sources of Magic in Buddhist Scripture

As far as we can tell, the Greater Vehicle, or Mahayana, began to take shape among the Buddha’s followers in India in the second century B.C.E. Emerging as a reaction to developments in mainstream Buddhism, the Mahayana promoted the ideal of the bodhisattva who works for the liberation of all sentient beings. In the perfection of wisdom literature, the Mahayana also put forward a radical position on the emptiness of all entities, both drawing on and reacting against the teachings of the abhidharma. Written versions of the Mahayana sutras began around the same time as those of other Buddhist texts, as literacy spread in India and scholars began to put oral transmissions down in writing. The sutras were composed in local languages, and only later, from the third century C.E. onward, were translated into Sanskrit.¹

Spells are found, or at least mentioned in passing, in many Mahayana sutras. In this context, they are often called dharanis. One of the best known examples is the dharani chapter of the Lotus Sutra, one of the earliest of the Mahayana sutras. The key message of this sutra is that anybody can attain the state of buddhahood, and everyone should make this their aim. The sutra’s dharani chapter has little to say about this. Instead, it follows a format that had already been established by the spell literature of mainstream Buddhism, in which the Buddha teaches a spell, or calls on one of his followers to teach it and then enumerates its benefits.

The first dharani in the Lotus Sutra is recited by the bodhisattva Bhaiṣajyarāja (“medicine king”), who explains its purpose as simply the protection of those who expound the dharma. Three more protective spells are then recited by the bodhisattva Pradānaśūra and the gods Vaiśravaṇa and Dhṛtarāṣṭra. The last spell in the chapter is different. It is offered by ten female ghouls (rākṣasī) together with Hārītī, the goddess of childbearing. The spell is brief and, more than the previous ones, composed of meaningless repeated syllables:

Iti me iti me iti me iti me iti me nime nime nime nime nime ruhe ruhe ruhe ruhe stuhe stuhe stuhe stuhe stuhe.

This spell is said to confer protection from all kinds of human beings, demonic and spiritual entities, and various kinds of fever. In the Lotus Sutra, the power of this spell is confirmed by the Buddha himself in the strongest terms:

If anyone does not accept my dhāranī,

And troubles one who expounds the Dharma,

His head will be split into seven pieces

Just like a branch of the arjaka tree.²

While this statement might seem surprising coming from the mouth of the Buddha in one of the most popular Mahayana sutras, the destruction of enemies is a theme that runs throughout Buddhist magical literature. For instance, one of the spells in the early magical scripture the Great Amulet contains the following exhortation to various gods and spirits: “Kill, kill all enemies. Burn, burn all the wicked among Pretas, Piśācas, Ḍākinīs, humans and non-humans. Roast, roast the heart, crush the life of all wicked Grahas.”³ We will return to the question of how this kind of aggressive spell fits with the ethical framework of Buddhism. For now, it’s important to recognize that such spells are found throughout Buddhist literature, even before the arrival of the Mahayana.

RITUALS IN THE SUTRAS

Some Mahayana sutras provide not just spells but instructions on the rituals that go along with the spells. The Sutra of Golden Light has a chapter dedicated to teachings of the river goddess Sarasvatī. Here the goddess explains how to perform a ritual for bathing the image of the Buddha, a ritual still popular today across Buddhist traditions and especially associated with the celebrations marking the Buddha’s birth. The ritual begins with the preparation of a powder made from thirty different botanicals, which is consecrated by reciting a spell over it a hundred times before being mixed into water.⁴

Then the ritual space is laid out as follows:

Having made a magic circle with cow-dung, one should strew loose flowers and one should place honey in a gold vessel and in a silver vessel. One should put there four men clad in armour and place four beautifully adorned maidens bearing pots. One must continually scatter incense of Indian bdellium, play the five kinds of instruments and thoroughly adorn the goddess with umbrellas, flags, and banners. At intervals, one must place mirrors, arrows and spears. Then one must make one’s boundary-line…uttering this spell so: arake, nayane, hile, mile, gile, khikhile. Hail!⁵

This description of a magic circle is similar to many other Buddhist rituals. The space is set out by arrows or spears stuck into the ground, with threads tied between them or lines laid out with powdered cow dung. Deities represented by sculptures, paintings, or objects like vases are placed at key points around the boundary, with a sculpture, painting, or other object representing the central deity in the middle. This is a mandala, named as such in the Sutra of Golden Light. It is typical of the early appearance of mandalas in Buddhist texts, where they are indeed magic circles laid out on the ground rather than the visualized realm of the meditation deity, as they later become in the Vajrayana.⁶

In some versions of the Sutra of Golden Light, Sarasvatī enumerates a familiar list of incidents that this ritual averts, including unfavorable astrological events, quarrels and strife, and harm from various kinds of demons. Also attending to the needs of ordinary people, the next chapter contains a ritual of the agricultural goddess Śrīdevi to watch over the home and increase the harvest, mainly accomplished through the recitation of a spell. The sutra appeals to the realm of political power, with a long chapter spoken by the gods known as the four great kings, offering prosperity in the kingdom and the thwarting of neighboring powers. The ritual here is a royal procession to a monastery—or at least a site where the dharma is being preached:

At that moment, the king of men must clothe himself wholly in white, light-coloured, new, brilliant garments, must adorn himself well with various ornaments, must obtain white umbrellas, must depart from that place with great royal power, with great display of royalty and taking various auspicious items. He must go to meet that monk who is preaching the law.⁷

This picture of a king paying homage to Buddhist monks might sound like wishful thinking on the part of the monks, but such practices were reported by Chinese pilgrims traveling through the Buddhist cities of the Silk Road.⁸ Similar royal ritual acts are also described in the area of Sri Lanka in the Pali chronicle Mahāvamsa.⁹ Here, we are moving away from the realm of magical texts and practices, but not entirely. In the Sutra of Golden Light, the royal ritual is not dissimilar to the magical rituals of the goddesses Sarasvatī and Śri; it promises various results in terms of prosperity and protection from enemies, and these services are offered by the patron deities of the ritual, the four great kings.

Services to kings and their kingdoms are an extension of the magical texts that offer protection and prosperity to individuals; despite the difference in scale, the rituals are often very similar. For example, the Sutra of the Great Destroyer of the Universe, which is contemporaneous to or perhaps earlier than the Sutra of Golden Light, teaches a ritual for the protection of the state. This involves setting up a magic circle, reciting a spell, and writing the spell on strips of cloth that are tied to a thread and strung up on stupas, large trees, and poles, like the prayer flags still seen today in Himalayan regions.¹⁰

Another important Buddhist ritual practice is weather control. Rain rituals were one of the mainstays of Buddhist monasticism, from its early history in India.¹¹ Some of the earliest ritual scriptures in Buddhism are dedicated to rainmaking. The most widespread and influential of these is the Great Cloud Sutra. Appearing in India in the fourth or fifth century, this ritual text was translated into Chinese in the mid-sixth century and became deeply embedded in local rainmaking practices in China, where it is still popular today.¹²

In the Great Cloud Sutra, the Buddha is asked by the king of the dragons to provide a way to bring rain. The Buddha replies that the best practice to end suffering and ensure happiness is the “single dharma” of kindness. However, he also offers a dharani, to which is appended a ritual manual on how to put this spell into practice. The ritual involves setting up a blue canopy and constructing a mandala beneath it, ornamented with flowers and other offerings, with vases of water and images of four dragon kings at the four entrances. Then the ritual master sits facing east and recites the spell for a day and a night. In extreme drought, the ritual should be continued for a full week.¹³

The Great Cloud Sutra became the key text for the Chinese imperial state ritual during the reign of Empress Wu (683–690), partly because it could be interpreted as prophesying the rule of a Buddhist empress. At the same time, and for centuries afterward, this sutra was at the center of the regular rainmaking rituals at the court of Japan. By convincing the aristocracy that their rituals were effective in coercing local dragon kings, Buddhist monks in East Asia were able to gain themselves a place in court ritual.¹⁴ Thus both the Great Cloud Sutra and the Sutra of Golden Light show how magical practices could also become the foundation for state rituals.

Even the more philosophical sutras of the Mahayana that do not contain detailed ritual instructions can offer protection and other worldly benefits when the sutra is copied and either recited or simply kept as an item of power. These benefits are different from any benefits arising from actually studying and understanding the content of the sutra. Thus it is entirely legitimate, according to texts such as the Perfection of Wisdom sutras, to use the text of the sutra itself as a magical incantation and to consider its material form an embodiment of potent magical power.¹⁵

THE DHARANI SUTRAS

Alongside the famous sutras of Mahayana Buddhism such as the Perfection of Wisdom and the Lotus Sutra, a vast literature developed around dharanis. Though they are rarely considered equally important, they were probably the most copied, recited, and well circulated Buddhist texts. These dharani sutras sometimes look much like the magical texts we have already discussed, providing a spell for protection or long life, while other dharani scriptures took the model further by providing a multitude of rituals for different purposes. Despite the size, number, and popularity of these dharani scriptures, they have not received a great deal of attention in modern scholarship until recently.¹⁶

One of the most popular of the dharani sutras is Amoghapāśa’s King of Ritual Manuals. This vast text, which covers more than seven hundred pages in its Tibetan translation, contains hundreds of spells and medical recipes, all under the aegis of Amoghapāśa, a form of the bodhisattva of compassion Avalokiteśvara. A much shorter version, simply called the Amoghapāśa Dharani, was also very popular and widely circulated in parallel with the longer text.

In this scripture the teaching is given by Avalokiteśvara, who begins by explaining the power and positive effects of the spell he is going to teach, which include the cure of all kinds of diseases and ailments from sore lips to boils and leprosy to attacks by demons. When the spell is recited during a day of fasting, further effects include being handsome and slim, long-lived, wealthy and popular, and protected from enemies of all kinds. In the sutra these benefits are offered to laypeople as much as to monks and nuns. There is also a nod to salvation, though only in passing. Eight effects of the spell on the process of dying are enumerated; they include seeing Avalokiteśvara in the form of a monk, feeling happy and faithful, not soiling oneself, not dying with the mouth turned down, and finally being reborn in a buddha realm—a pure land emanated by a buddha as a stage toward enlightenment, though enlightenment itself is not mentioned here.

There is only one incantation for all these purposes, which is composed of a mixture of invocations of Avalokiteśvara and syllables such as ha ha, hi hi, hu hu. In the scripture, Avalokiteśvara goes on to teach specific minor rituals that make use of this spell. For protecting an area from demons, the spell is to be recited over thread, which is to be tied to four acacia wands stuck in the ground at the points of a compass. The spell can be recited over a mixture of honey and pepper to be used for insect bites and other skin conditions, or it can be recited over scented water to relieve sore eyes. It can be recited over a mixture of herbs made into a talisman and worn for prosperity and the bestowing of children. On a larger scale, the spell can be recited over a jar filled with water, which is sprinkled appropriately to protect an army, a country, a kingdom, or a palace.

The scripture also teaches a more elaborate magical rite that confers the powers of invisibility and flight. For this ritual, a painter must first paint a color image of Avalokiteśvara on cotton cloth. A mandala must be drawn on the ground with cow dung (a common sacred material for this purpose). Eight jars of scented water are placed in front of the image and incense burned while the spell is recited eight thousand times. The person performing the ritual must have observed rules of purity, including consuming only “white” foods (milk, yogurt, and butter); bathing three times a day; and wearing clean clothes. Finally, the practitioner recites the spell over powdered realgar or malachite and anoints his or her eyes to achieve the powers of invisibility and flying through the air.¹⁷

Many dharani scriptures have a female deity at their center; sometimes this goddess is a personification of the spell itself. The spell we looked at earlier known as the Great Amulet was not originally personified, but later became a goddess of increasingly complex forms, first with two arms, then by ten, eight, and twelve.¹⁸ Many dharani spells, however, seem to have been associated with deities from the start; one such goddess is Sitātapatrā (“white parasol”), who features in a hugely popular dharani scripture that bears her name, which comes from the royal parasol that shelters the Buddha. As Miranda Shaw has pointed out, the parasol goddess is more a genre of goddess than a specific deity, a type that appears in stories of the Buddha’s previous lives.¹⁹ In the Crown Parasol Dharani she is identified with the well-known goddess Tārā and becomes an object of devotion:

Noble Tārā, warrior goddess,

With your vajra chain of immortality,

Vajra youth, sorceress,

Master of Vajrapānī’s spells,

With your golden rosary of mantras,

Your jewel and flower ornaments,

Renowned as the manifestation of the vajra parasol,

Your vajra golden eyes opened wide,

Elegant vajra goddess,

With lotus eyes like moonlight,

Please protect me and all living beings,

With all the spells collected here.²⁰

In this poetic evocation that precedes the actual spells, the practice of devotion to a deity is now explicitly combined with the practice of magic. In earlier Buddhist magical literature, it is the spell guaranteed by the Buddha that holds the power, but here the spell is now an expression of the power of a deity, Tārā. This development moves the dharani literature in the direction of tantric Buddhism, in which the main purpose of the mantra is to express the essence of the deity in sound.

The Crown Parasol Dharani provides several spells. The first offers general protection from the usual range of spirits and demons, illnesses, and threats to life and well-being. Another spell is specifically aimed at causing the king of the dragons to make it rain. A short spell is provided for writing out and wearing around the neck as an amulet for personal protection. This spell can also be copied out, hoisted on a pole, and placed at the gate of a village, city, or monastery to ensure that enemies do not appear there; even if they do appear, the text assures us, they will be pacified.²¹

DHARANIS ON THE GROUND: AMULETS AND COMPENDIUMS

Buddhist spells were officially presented in sutras and other scriptural texts, but in practice they were written down as amulets or gathered together in books of spells, where rituals for a variety of purposes could be found in one place. Spells must have been compiled into manuscript collections at an early stage, but the best sources for confirming this, the Sanskrit manuscripts from the Silk Road, are unfortunately fragmentary, with only a few examples of complete books remaining.²² So the earliest known spell collection is a Chinese translation, The Dharani Miscellany, from the sixth century.²³

After these collections were translated into Tibetan, they were categorized as tantric, despite the fact that few of them come from tantras themselves.

There are also legendary collections of spell texts that may or never have actually existed, the most famous being the magic users’ collection (vidyādhara piṭaka), the name of which places it alongside the three main collections (piṭaka) of Buddhist scripture. The magic users’ collection is said to contain a hundred thousand verses, but it was probably more a notional source of all spells than an actual collection, as even in the seventh century the Chinese monk Yijing wrote that “today, searching for it, much has been lost.”²⁴

Copies of dharanis have been found across Asia, at ancient Buddhist sites as far afield as Indonesia and the Gobi Desert, showing the vast geographic extent of the magical practices based on these spells. As we have seen in the dharani literature, making a spell into an amulet by writing it down and wearing it was one of the most important ways of realizing the protective power of the spell. Sculptures of bodhisattvas from Gandhara going back to the first century C.E. are shown wearing threads with small boxes attached, probably representing amulets as worn by Buddhists of that period.²⁵

Traveling east from Gandhara along the Silk Road, one finds some of the oldest surviving dharani manuscripts. Written on single sheets of birch bark or paper, they were produced following the instructions found in the dharani texts, as amulets to be worn on the person or displayed in a high place. At first all dharanis were written by hand, but from around the sixth century onward, still along the Silk Road, they were increasingly printed or stamped using woodblocks. In fact, dharani amulets may be the earliest examples of the use of print technology to reproduce the written word anywhere in the world.²⁶

Handwritten and printed dharani amulets were usually written in the Brahmi script of India, even when that script was no longer used for other purposes. The power of the written spell was thought to reside in the visual forms of the letters themselves. Later, dharanis were written in Chinese, with small characters added to represent the sounds of Sanskrit more clearly, and in Tibetan script, which was based on Brahmi and could more closely represent the original Indic sounds.²⁷

Despite the adaptation of Sanskrit sounds to new scripts, many Buddhists continued to consider the Brahmi script the more powerful vehicle for dharanis and mantras. The Japanese monk Kukai (774–835) based his preference for the use of this script on the theory that it is a naturally formed language. Kukai argued that even if the script was also used by non-Buddhists, this did not affect its natural purity:

Sanskrit script is formed from the originally pure, untainted principle. Its use by heretics does not affect this inherent quality. After all, a piece of rubbish floating on the sea does not alter the purity of the water. By contrast, although Chinese script is used by both non-Buddhists and Buddhists, its essentially delusive quality, which can only produce further delusions, remains unchanged. Therefore with regard to these two scripts, there is a clear distinction between the true and the false.²⁸

The special nature of both Sanskrit and the script in which it was written meant that they were preserved even where Sanskrit was no longer understood as a language. The magical power of the spoken and written syllables was considered sufficient to accomplish the aims of the dharanis and mantras, without the need for comprehension. Even before they were transmitted to non-Indic cultures, the move away from meaning had already been made in dharanis, with the inclusion of seemingly meaningless syllables like hi li hi li mi li li. The communicative role of Sanskrit was deliberately pushed into the background and the power of the syllables themselves brought to the fore. This was also true of the physical manifestation of the dharanis on amulets, where the point was not reading and understanding them, but inscribing them and then wearing the result on the body or displaying it on a flagpole.²⁹

Today, one of the most popular compilations of spells is the Five Protections, a collection of five spell scriptures: Great Amulet, Great Peacock Feather, Great Destroyer of the Universe, Great Mantra Specialist, and Great Cool Grove. This collection was already widespread by the beginning of the ninth century when it was translated into Tibetan, and a Sanskrit copy from Nepal dates back to the same time.³⁰ Much larger collections of Sanskrit spell texts, known by the title Dharani Compendium, have survived in Nepal as well.³¹

WORLDLY RITUALS IN THE TANTRAS

Though it might be a little simplistic, we could describe the development of tantric Buddhism as the application of the ritual methods found in the magical texts to the ultimate aim of Buddhism—awakening. Thus incantations, magic circles, anointment, and other techniques originally used for rituals to bring health and wealth or avert disease and disaster were placed front and center in the path to enlightenment itself.³² The use of these same techniques in the tantras led to some idiosyncrasies in the later categorization of tantras in India and Tibet. Magical texts that had never previously been called tantras and had little in common with later tantric literature were placed in the same broad category of tantra.

This category was subdivided in various ways. The fourfold system that became standard in Tibet comprised kriyā, carya, yoga, and supreme yoga. Most magical texts were placed in the lowest subdivision of tantra, called kriyā, which literally means “action” but more specifically refers to ritual performance. Despite its rank at the bottom of the tantric hierarchy, the kriyā class contains by far the largest number of texts. This is becaue it became the place to put the magical texts we have been looking at, alongside those tantras that compiled magical practices.

In fact most of the texts in the kriyā class are not tantras at all but have names ending in sūtra, dhāraṇī, or vidyārajñi (“queen of spells”). Faced with the quandary of where to put these texts in the canon, Tibetan compilers opted for the lowest level of the tantra class, despite the fact that so few of the texts were called tantras. In fact, their origin is not in the Vajrayana, but as the magical ritual texts of early Buddhism. In his Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, David Snellgrove wrote, “Those ritual works known later as Action and Performance Tantras were originally the main ritual texts which formed part of Mahayana religious practice at a time when later tantras were unknown.”³³

The fact that the texts that were put into the kriyā category of tantra actually serve a different purpose from the later, higher classes of tantra is obscured by the Indian and Tibetan classification systems. In these systems, kriyā texts become merely an inferior form of tantra; for example, the Vajra Tent Tantra explains the categories of tantra this way:

For inferior types, there are the kriyā tantras;

Non-kriyā is superior to that yoga.

For superior sentient beings there is the supreme yoga;

Unsurpassed yoga is superior to that.

Writing on this, the eleventh-century Tibetan scholar Sonam Tsemo commented that “people with inferior faculties and little intelligence enjoy external activities like bathing; the kriyā tantras teaching external activities were expounded for their sake.”³⁴ But it seems this distinction was a doctrinal one and did not reflect the actual use of tantras. The majority of kriyā rituals were not used as a set of inferior methods for the path to liberation but instead for practical, worldly purposes. We should also not think that the texts classified as kriyā were an early, ossified form of ritual that was superseded by the later tantras. Precisely because of the variety and usefulness of their worldly rituals, they have continued to be in demand in Nepal and Tibet through to the present day.

Among the texts classified as kriyā we can see a development toward something more recognizable as tantric Buddhism. In the early spell texts such as the Great Amulet, the Buddha explains spells and rituals that do not rely on other buddhas or bodhisattvas. In other early spell texts that seem to have come from a Mahayana setting, such as the Amoghapāśa’s King of Ritual Manuals and Mañjuśrī’s Original Ritual Manual, a bodhisattva is the focus and power behind the rituals. In some kriyā texts, visualization of a deity and mandala is also present. In other scriptures, we can see how spells were collected under the name of a deity, despite having no obvious connection to that deity. An example of this is the All-Accomplishing Hero Tantra, in which the all-accomplishing hero Siddhaikavīra, is barely present in the tantra.³⁵ Working with various Chinese translations of the same text at different points in time, Koichi Shinohara has shown how collections of spells evolved into a more organized scriptural form and rituals developed with the addition of tantric techniques:

A shorter set of instructions on spells and mudrās developed into a formally framed sūtra that begins by describing the setting of the Buddha’s teaching and presents elaborate image and maṇḍala rituals, often incorporating visualisation practice.³⁶

There are texts comprising mainly magical rituals in the higher classifications of Tibetan tantra as well. The best known of these is probably the Vajrabhairava Tantra, classified as a supreme yoga tantra, which is nonetheless primarily a compendium of aggressive magic, including rituals for influencing and controlling people; for causing friends or lovers to argue and separate; for robbing someone of the ability to speak; and for causing paralysis, insanity, or death. In the tantra these rituals are classified in terms of pacifying, increasing, separating, controlling, summoning, suppressing, expelling, and killing. They make use of impure substances, including dog meat and human flesh, and symbolic substances such as crow’s nests.³⁷

Many other tantras classified in the higher categories of yoga and supreme yoga offer a mix of both worldly and transworldly aims. The Secret Gathering Tantra, for example, teaches rituals for purposes such as destroying enemies, seducing women, becoming invisible, curing sickness and poisoning, and so on.³⁸ The mixed higher and lower purposes of the tantras were dealt with in the commentarial literature by distinguishing between “ordinary” and “supreme” accomplishments (siddhi). Practices of specific deities were classified according to whether they focused on the ordinary accomplishments or the supreme one.³⁹

BUDDHIST BOOKS OF SPELLS

Books of spells collected from various sources appear in various cultural contexts, as we saw in chapter 1. In Buddhism, some of these collections, such as the All-Accomplishing Hero Tantra, gained the status of scripture and survived because they were transmitted and translated into other languages. There must have been a wide variety of books of spells produced in India that have disappeared, along with most early palm-leaf manuscripts. Among the manuscripts that have survived in Nepal are collections of spells on rainmaking and other themes, though these have hardly been investigated yet.⁴⁰ In Tibet, the situation is better, with many more old manuscripts having survived and been inscribed into modern printed editions after the Tibetan diaspora in the 1950s and 60s.

The earliest extant Tibetan Buddhist book of spells, which is also one of the earliest surviving Buddhist books of spells, is the Dunhuang manuscript that I will discuss in the next chapter. The Tibetan tradition preserves other books of spells that are not much later than this. One of the earliest, most extensive, and varied of these is a collection called Bari’s Spellbook. Here, “spellbook” is a translation of the Tibetan word be’u ’bum, an obscure term used for books that contain collections of medical and magical practices. Bari’s Spellbook is named after its author, Bari Rinchen Dragpa (1040–1111), also known as Bari Lotsawa, a title given to translators.

Bari Lotsawa undertook two journeys from Tibet to Nepal and India to study and translate Buddhist rituals with local teachers. His best-known work is Bari’s Hundred, a collection of just under a hundred tantric meditation texts, many of which focus on “ordinary accomplishments,” including healing, wealth generation, and love magic. The “supreme accomplishment” of enlightenment is also addressed by many of these practices, so the collection is on the borderline of our loose definition of a book of spells. However, Bari’s other main collection, Bari’s Spellbook, falls squarely into the category of magical literature.⁴¹

Bari’s Spellbook is actually a collection of collections, perhaps a posthumous compilation of all the spell books compiled by Bari in his lifetime. The titles of the individual collections include Profound Advice for Doctors, Portable Instructions, and Some Profound Instructions.⁴² The first of these collections, Profound Advice for Doctors, is thirty-eight folios long and begins with a discussion of materia medica and where to find ingredients in Tibet that will work as replacements for those mentioned in Indian and Nepalese medical recipes. For example, there is a long discussion on where to find a rare leaf known as “the all-accomplishing hero.” It can be found in the Mon region (the area of modern Nepal and Bhutan), where it grows in pine-forested hills, especially on rocky cliffsides. It can also be found in Tibet, where it grows on dry, thorny plains and has thinner leaves. ⁴³

About halfway through the Profound Advice for Doctors, the rituals move away from healing and toward a variety of magical practices such as sending somebody a bad dream; bringing down a hailstorm; and bringing rain, including a “black rain ritual” that is presumably intended for aggressive purposes. The collection ends with rituals for travelers, including a ritual for protection while on the road, and Padmasambhava’s ritual for destroying a migo (the wild creature also known as a yeti).⁴⁴

The same mix of medical and protective rituals, weather control, and aggressive magic is found in the Portable Instructions, its title suggesting that it was compiled for traveling ritual specialists. This collection begins with instructions on capturing or binding enemies using a magic diagram (yantra bandhana). The yantra is a magical drawing, usually a symmetrical diagram, used for a variety of magical purposes in India since the Vedic era. Yantras have been used in Buddhism from an early period and are found in most Buddhist cultures, including Thailand and Burma.⁴⁵ When introduced into Tibet, the word yantra was translated as “magic circle” (’khrul ’khor). The use of yantras continues in Tibetan Buddhism today, and their popularity in Indian Hindu traditions seems to be unabated. As well as describing yantras and their use, Portable Instructions contains examples of some yantra diagrams.⁴⁶

Sometimes in Portable Instructions, Bari provides the names of the people who gave him the ritual. They are almost always Indian or Nepalese figures, with names like Gautamasvāmī, the jogi Śaraṇanātha, the great paṇḍita Śīvaratna, the translator Mañjuśrījñāna, and Buddharakṣita.⁴⁷ The names of some of these contributors suggest that they may not all have been Buddhists or may have come to Buddhism from another tradition, such as Shaivism. Bari probably studied with some of them on his travels, and may have met others in Tibet. He tells us that a ritual for repelling hostile non-Buddhists was given to Marpa Lotsawa (1012–1097), an older and equally prominent teacher in the eleventh century. Marpa received the ritual from Vairocanavajra, an Indian from Orissa who traveled to Tibet and from there on to China. Vairocanavajra is best known in Tibet for translating a major collection of the songs of realization of Indian tantric masters. In China he is said to have made a success of himself through teaching life-extending practices.⁴⁸

The contents of Portable Instructions are aimed at the needs of traveling ritual specialists. We have a spell for “swift feet” using the flesh of a horse’s eye and four crushed birds, spells for traveling dangerous routes and avoiding robbers, a spell to be cast before entering a king’s residence, and spells for dominating and overpowering people.⁴⁹ The origin of these spells in Indic Buddhist culture is signaled by the use of Sanskrit words such as rāja for “king.” Spells for services to others are here as well, including medical treatments and rainmaking rituals.

The most extensive collection of spells in Bari’s Spellbook is simply called Some Profound Instructions. Several of the spells in this collection are credited to Padmasambhava, the magic user from the Swat Valley who visited Tibet in the eighth century and was later credited with the successful introduction of Buddhism to Tibet. One ritual that recalls his activities at the Tibetan court is said to be “intended by Master Padmasambhava for powerful kings in future degenerate times.” Another is said to have been given by Padmasambhava to the Tibetan emperor Tri Song Detsen.⁵⁰

The first spell in this compendium is attributed to the same Vairocanavajra who is credited with an aggressive ritual in the previous collection. This one is no less aggressive, promising to “bring disease and death upon your enemy’s house.” The materials for the spell are a dog’s brain, a fox’s heart and a wolf’s heart, and the fruit of the lapsi tree (Choerospondias axillaris). There are a few other aggressive spells in this compendium, including a “black heretic ritual” to deal with enemies that a yogin may encounter, which begins with homage to Shiva and Ganesha.⁵¹

At one point in the compendium, there are several spells for issues pertaining to sex and reproduction. These include spells for male performance, including stopping the emission of semen, and conversely, a spell for a man who is unable to perform. There is a brief recipe for getting rid of an unwanted pregnancy, a mixture which, when taken, is said to cause the fetus to come out of the womb. A mantra is provided in case the woman experiences breast pain after the event. It is surprising to see this procedure in a Buddhist context, and this is acknowledged in the text itself, which states, “This is a severe misdeed; keep it secret.”⁵²

In any case, the major part of this collection comprises medical and protective spells. A group of the medical rituals in this compendium are attributed to Dampa Sangye (d. 1117), a famous Indian traveling teacher who visited Tibet and China. Dampa Sangye introduced two influential methods of liberation to Tibet, pacification and cutting attachment, but the rituals attributed to him here are for much more immediate concerns, beginning with swollen testicles and urinary disorders.⁵³ While these medical and protective spells may be in the majority, it is the presence of aggressive magic that draws the attention, because these rituals explicitly contradict the primary Buddhist moral injunction against killing.

BUDDHIST MAGIC AND VIOLENCE

The variety of spells found in the multiple collections gathered in Bari’s Spellbook is a fair representation of the good, the bad, and the ugly in Tibetan grimoires. The Buddhist ethic of liberation for all is invoked at various points in the collection, and on the worldly level, the multiple medical and protective spells offer at least a temporary surcease of suffering. Yet there is no avoiding the fact that spells for the killing of enemies are also found here, and there is no hint that these enemies are metaphorical or spiritual.

The figure of Padmasambhava is emblematic of this tension. Padmasambhava is said to have been a Buddhist specialist in magic from the region of Oddiyana, usually identified as the Swat Valley in modern Pakistan. The Chinese travelers Songyun and Xuanzang, passing through the region in the sixth and seventh centuries, respectively, noted the frequent use of spells by the local people.⁵⁴ According to traditional Tibetan accounts, Padmasambhava’s knowledge of rituals to subdue demons was instrumental in allowing Buddhism to finally take root in Tibet. But he is also associated with the teachings of Atiyoga, the Great Perfection, which is considered the most direct path to liberation.

In one prayer in Bari’s Spellbook, Padmasambhava is addressed as “Padmasambhava who is like me”:

Padmasambhava who is like me

Understands the conduct of these evil final times:

The conduct of secret mantra properly practised.⁵⁵

This description of Padmasambhava is seen elsewhere in Tibet, where it sometimes references Padmasambhava’s enlightened nature and the presence of that nature in the tantric practitioner.⁵⁶ In Bari’s Spellbook, however, “who is like me” seems to reference the other aspect of Padmasambhava—his magical knowledge and powers. Here, Padmasambhava is the highest level of magic user, an enlightened teacher who also understands that “these evil final times” require magical methods that are sometimes violent. These two aspects of his teaching are present in one of the earliest surviving manuscripts that mentions him, Pelliot tibétain 44 from Dunhuang. Here, Padmasambhava is said to have performed every level of tantric practice, from kriyā (magical spells) to ati (the attainment of the Great Perfection).⁵⁷

This accommodation of enlightened activity with aggressive magic is embodied in later masters as well, as we see in the biographies of Marpa and Ra Lotsawa (b. 1016). The violent rituals attributed to these revered teachers apparently contradict the fundamental tenet of Buddhist ethics—to abstain from killing—so in the traditional biographies, the performance of such rituals is presented as an act of compassion. People targeted by the ritual are not only a threat to the enlightened activities of the teacher but so deluded that only “liberation” from this life can save them from bringing further suffering upon themselves.⁵⁸ We also find this justification of defeating enemies who pose a profound threat to the practice of Buddhism itself in the use of aggressive magic against enemies of the state. The Tangut kingdom, the Mongol empire, and the Tibetan state all made use of Buddhist magic users to perform rituals to defeat their enemies.⁵⁹

While the Tibetan sources offer ample evidence for the use of aggressive magic by Buddhists, it is important to understand that this was not an innovation of Tibetan Buddhism. As we have seen, there are accounts of Buddhist monks practicing magic for warlords in China during the early centuries of Chinese Buddhism. These are not reliable historical sources, but they do indicate the range of activities that were practiced by, and to some extent expected in, successful Buddhist monks. As we saw in the previous chapter, Fotudeng (d. 349), a monk who traveled to China from Kucha, offered magical assistance to several warlords in return for their patronage. The advice that he is said to have given to one of these warlords justifies the use of violence against enemies of the state:

Worship of the Buddha on the part of the emperors and kings lies in their being reverent in their persons and obedient in their hearts and in glorifying the Three Treasures. It lies in not making cruel oppressions and not killing the innocent. As to the rogues and irresponsibles whom the civilizing influence does not reform, when they are guilty of a crime, they must be put to death, and if they are guilty of an evil deed, they must be punished.⁶⁰

These words also justify the assistance given to these violent rulers by Buddhist monks. It may be tempting to see monks like Fotudeng as opportunists, taking the name of the Buddha in vain. Yet we saw in the last chapter that Buddhist scriptures that were already well established by the time of Fotudeng often express the power of their spells in violent language. For example, the invocation in the Great Amulet, in which the magic user is instructed to summon a variety of gods and spirits and chant, “Kill, kill all enemies. Burn, burn all the wicked among Pretas, Piśācas, Ḍākinīs, humans and non-humans. Roast, roast the heart, crush the life of all wicked Grahas.”⁶¹ If you read this too quickly, you could miss it, but humans appear here among the mythological beings that are the target of the spell.

BUDDHIST MAGIC AND BUDDHIST ETHICS

The ethical quandary raised by the presence of violent magic within Buddhism has been addressed many times. The most influential scriptural source is the Sutra of Skillful Means, which tells the story of a previous life of the Buddha in which he was a ship’s captain. In the story, the captain is in the middle of a sea voyage when he is informed in a dream that there is a thief on his ship who is planning to kill the other passengers. The captain considers how to resolve the problem, rejecting the option of telling the other passengers in case they decide to kill the thief and thus suffer the karmic consequences of killing. On the other hand, not acting at all will result in the death of the thief’s victims. So the captain decides to kill the thief himself and does so in the spirit of great compassion—which is also the captain’s name.⁶²

This story bears some resemblance to the “thought experiments” of modern Western philosophy. Yet it is different in that it does not suggest that the reader identify with the ship’s captain. The captain is placed in a position of near omniscience, knowing exactly the karmic situation of everyone on the ship and the effect that their actions will have on their futures. This is exactly the kind of omniscience that, on a larger scale, is attributed to a buddha. This is the wisdom that is said to be allied with compassion in buddhas and bodhisattvas, with the clear-sightedness of wisdom and the selflessness of compassion working as one in their enlightened activities. Thus the story establishes a consequentialist approach to ethics, undermining any belief in the essential truth of the ethical precepts of Buddhism. At the same time, it reserves the breaking of these precepts for those with full knowledge of all consequences, that is, only buddhas and bodhisattvas.

The movement between moral principles, the transgression of those principles, and the confession and absolution of transgression is integral to Buddhist practice. At an early stage in monastic Buddhism, a communal confession ritual, the poṣada, was practiced every two weeks in every monastery. This ritual remained at the center of monastic Buddhism in Tibet, China, and wherever Buddhist monastic regulations were practiced. In addition, confession rituals for laypeople, including kings, are found in places like the Sutra of Golden Light, where they appear to offer absolution from the king’s transgression of the Buddhist vow against killing. In tantric Buddhism, the confession and purification ritual of meditating on the deity Vajrasattva is one of the key preliminaries to many tantric empowerment and meditation practices.⁶³

Thus the presence of violent magic in Buddhist scriptures and biographies remains an unresolved tension. To understand it for ourselves, we must move out of the realm of doctrine and theory and acknowledge that Buddhist monks were often operating in environments where their position was insecure. While the ideal of monastic seclusion placed them outside the threats and needs of lay life, their reliance on lay sponsorship placed them directly in the sights of laypeople looking for solutions to their problems. A wide variety of spells allowed monks to negotiate these needs.⁶⁴

In a situation where a simple journey could easily result in monks being robbed and killed, the prohibition on their carrying weapons left them exposed. We can see scriptures like the Great Amulet playing a psychological role, giving a sense of being protected to those who had placed themselves in a position of near defenselessness. Again, if survival meant using a ritual that threatened destruction, this could be justified from a certain point of view. One effect of studying Buddhist magic, whether through texts or in contemporary practices, is to see that Buddhism exists in the world and that moral principles are cherished but have sometimes been put aside in times of need.

CHAPTER 4

Magic Users and Materia Magica

In the previous chapters we took a tour through some of the many sources of Buddhist magical practice. From this point on, we will look more closely at a Tibetan book of spells that may be the earliest surviving compendium of Buddhist magic. The book in question was found among the vast cache of manuscripts sealed in a cave shrine at the beginning of the eleventh century. The shrine was part of a major Buddhist cave temple complex near the town of Dunhuang, in western China. The sealed cave was discovered by a Chinese monk in 1900 and subsequently visited by explorers from several colonial powers, who examined the manuscript cache and sent selections from it back to their own countries.

One of the largest selections from the cave was gathered by the explorer Aurel Stein and sent to London, where it now resides in the collections of the British Museum and British Library. The manuscripts include scrolls, loose-leaf books called pothi, and stitched booklets, and they are written in a variety of languages, including Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Khotanese. Most of them contain Buddhist texts, though some include letters, contracts, and other administrative material.

Many theories have been suggested to explain why the cache was gathered and sealed in this cave shrine. Some have argued that it was a kind of waste dump for Buddhist manuscripts that were no longer useful but could not, for religious reasons, be simply thrown away or burned. Another suggestion is that the cache was part of a monastic library that was sealed away for fear of non-Buddhist invaders. Elsewhere I have argued that we should take into account the original function of the cave as a shrine for an important deceased Buddhist monk. Since some of the manuscripts are associated with this monk, it may be that later manuscript deposits were also the collections of monks and nuns who passed away in the time between the original construction of the cave in the middle of the ninth century and its closure at the beginning of the eleventh.¹

In that case, the manuscripts found in the cave, which were arranged in bundles, may have been the personal collections of various Buddhist monks and nuns (and perhaps some laypeople). As to why the cave was sealed, most explanations have involved the threat of imminent invasion. Scholars have speculated that the monks of Dunhuang may have been fearful of the destruction of their libraries from either Tangut or Turkic invasions. In my opinion, the threat of invasion is a possible but perhaps overly dramatic explanation. There is no need for us to tie a local event, such as the closure of a cave shrine, to the few dated military events of which we are aware. Why not instead look for local explanations? Since the cave was almost full when it was reopened, it may be that it had simply outlived its purpose. After it was sealed, the wall was painted over with a fresco, so the driving force behind sealing the manuscript cave may just have been that a patron was paying for redecoration.

This is the context in which our early Buddhist book of spells came to light. It is one of several thousand Tibetan manuscripts from the cave, yet in some ways quite different from all the others. The manuscript, which has the shelfmark IOL Tib J 401, is a codex formed of long, thin pages stitched along the middle with thread. The book seems to have been made at least in part from recycled materials. There is a Chinese text written in Tibetan script on the inner leaves at the back and front, and the pages in the middle have string holes that suggest the original format was the loose-leaf pecha style.² No other codex manuscripts from Dunhuang are in this format, most pages being closer to square-shaped.³

The book is covered in small Tibetan cursive writing, which is legible though not very neat. Occasionally the writer has added a few notes to clarify obscure words or practices. Variations in the handwriting suggest that the scribe may have added texts over a period of time rather than writing the book all at once. The writing style helps us to date the manuscript a little more precisely, as it is not one of the styles used during the time that Dunhuang was occupied by the Tibetan empire, between the late eighth and mid-ninth centuries. The evident wear and tear, as well as some repairs that were made to the book, indicate that it was used quite extensively before it was placed in the Dunhuang cave, so a best guess would be that it was used in late ninth to mid-tenth century.

While the manuscripts in the Dunhuang cave came from as far afield as central China, southern Tibet, and even India, the book of spells was probably a local product. Microscopic analysis of the paper has shown that it was made from rag paper, a product of recycled textiles. This kind of paper was used in the area around Dunhuang and farther west along the Silk Road, where other sources of pulp were scarce. Thus we have in this book a product of the Buddhist culture of the eastern Silk Road around the early tenth century, though as we will see later, many of the practices contained within it come from much earlier.⁴

MAGIC USERS

On the cover of the book of spells, there is a title written in large letters: “This is the ritual collection of Bikkru Pradnya Praba.”⁵ These words were probably written by the owner of the manuscript to let everyone know that it was his own ritual collection. This inscription, alongside the practical spells that the manuscript contains and the marks of use that are evident on it, strongly suggest that it was well used. The owner seems to identify himself as a monk by the title bikkru, which looks like a form of the Sanskrit bhikṣu, closer to the Prakrit and Pali form bhikku This title was not commonly used by Tibetan monks in Dunhuang or in other early Tibetan sources. Perhaps it had gained a special meaning for a practitioner of magical rituals? Intriguingly, Charles Ramble writes of a ritual specialist who lived in the village of Tangkya in highland Nepal in the twentieth century going by the title Bichuwa. Ramble mentions the similarity of this title to bhikṣu, as well as the Nepali word for a ritualist, bijuwā.⁶ As for Pradya Praba, this looks like a version of the Sanskrit prajñāprabhā, meaning “Brilliance of Insight,” a good Buddhist name, if not a common one.⁷

The very same words, “This is the ritual collection of Bikkru Pradya Praba,” are also written in another Dunhuang manuscript, Pelliot tibétain 41. Here the words are not on the cover but in the middle of the manuscript, in a gap left between two texts. This manuscript appears to be in a different handwriting style to that of the Dunhuang spellbook, and whether Pradya Praba wrote either of them or was only their owner is open to question. Because Pelliot tibétain 41 is incomplete, it is difficult to identify the texts it contains, but the first text clearly has instructions for the ritual preparation of medicine, so there is an overlap with Pradya Praba’s book of spells.

This is the precious little that we know about the owner of the book of spells; yet it is still more than we know about almost any other Buddhist magic user from this early period. In the spells themselves, the person responsible for performing the ritual is usually referred to as the vidyādhara (rig ’dzin). This term has a long history in India and is not specifically Buddhist. It literally means (to use Monier-Williams’s definition) “possessed of science or spells,” and in India it could refer to either human magic users or supernatural beings who could fly through the air and perform other magical acts. Other names appearing in the manuscript for the magic user are “mantra expert vidyādhara” (sngags mkhan rig ’dzin) and “great sorcerer” (mthu bo che). The term “mantra expert” here seems to be adjectival to vidyādhara, pointing to a knowledge of mantras rather than a specific role. “Great sorcerer,” however, sounds more like a specific role that can be adopted by the vidyādhara when summoning and controlling spirit beings.

The Buddhist magic user is also called a vidyādhara in many Buddhist magical scriptures, including the vast repository of spells Amoghapāśa’s King of Ritual Manuals. Who, then, was a vidyādhara? A monk, a village lay healer, or a traveling ritual specialist? The magical literature rarely offers any clue to this question. The supernatural vidyādhara as a narrative character goes back as far as the Rāmāyana, and it is thought that these figures were based on real practitioners of magical rituals, who were known from an early period. For instance, a verse from one of the Jātaka stories mentions them:

Vidyādharas study ferociously, so that they can move invisibly by means of medicines. Yet they cannot travel while invisible to the King of Death; so it occurs to me that I will travel with the Dharma.⁸

These vidyādharas may have acted independently of any particular religious tradition, as Buddhists or Jains or followers of Vishnu or Shiva. Or they may have identified themselves with one or more of these religious traditions as the need arose. This is as much, or as little, as the early historical sources allow us to say. But as Ronald Davidson has pointed out, the situation seems to have remained fairly similar in India through to the present day:

At no time for which we have evidence in India do we see magicians or sorcerers as relinquishing the field, nor are they ever under the domination of any single sectarian lineage. Indeed, in the modern period, they cross religions as well as traditions, with some coming from Islamic disenfranchised social groups, employing the opportunities available. Thus, we must take into account that these figures were invested with spells that were claimed to allow them supernormal powers, raise the dead, heal the sick, cast spells of benefit and destruction and counter other sorcerer’s spells for their own patrons.⁹

As Buddhism died out in India by the fifteenth century, no Buddhist tradition of magic users has survived there. It is a different story, however, in countries where Buddhism has survived, and Buddhist magic users not only survive but flourish in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Nepal, Tibet, and Japan—indeed, in all Asian Buddhist cultures. Though obviously all of these cultures have changed over time, paying some attention to the way magic and magic users operate within them is useful for understanding how the situation might have worked in the past.

BUDDHIST WIZARDS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

As we saw in the introduction to this book, prejudices against magic and magic users has meant that their role in Buddhism has been overlooked in much of the academic writing on Buddhism and often ignored by modern exponents of the religion who are anxious not to be perceived as superstitious. Yet the evidence is consistent that the practices we see in Buddhist magical scriptures and books of spells, along with the figure of the vidyādhara, are found in the majority of Buddhist Asian countries.

In Burma the magic user, or vidyādhara, is still an important figure. The word is weizzādhour in Burmese, and these practitioners are usually known by the abbreviated name weizzā or weiksa. The weiksa are lay Buddhists who engage in the full range of magical practice, including cures and protection, divination, the exorcism of demons, and solicitation of aid from beneficent spirits. The gods and spirits (nat) accepted by traditional Burmese Buddhism provide the weiksa with much of their power, just as various supernatural beings do in the Indic Buddhist magical scriptures. This kind of magical practice is also known in Burma as “Gandhari spells” (gandhārī vijjā), a term for magical practices from the Pali canon.¹⁰

In modern times, the practice of the weiksa overlaps with a millennial cult of Maitreya, something that also goes back a very long way in Buddhist history. The magical practices of the weiksa include controlling the process of their rebirth or lengthening their own lives so they are present for the coming of the future buddha. There is also a belief that a weiksa should defer the final nirvana so that he can remain to help others with his magical practices. While the weiksa tradition itself claims to go back a long way in Burmese history, some modern scholars believe that it only appeared in the eighteenth century “as a symbolic reaction to the shock of colonization.”¹¹

It seems unlikely that there were no weiksa in Burma before the colonial period, given the importance of the figure of the vidyādhara in early Buddhist magical literature, some of which, as we saw in chapter 2, was translated into Pali and became popular in Southeast Asia. Most of the rituals practiced by the weiksa and the powers to which they aspire can be identified in this literature. It is more likely that some aspects of the contemporary weiksa, such as the millennial beliefs, came to the fore in the colonial period. Burma also has a tradition of practitioners known as jawgi, a word that seems to come from the Indian jogi, a vernacular form of the more familiar yogi and sana, practitioners of Buddhist magical medicine.¹²

The Burmese weiksa show that magic and magic users are present in Theravada Buddhist societies, in spite of the presentation by some of Theravada as the purest form of Buddhism. Nor can these practices be convincingly explained away as later accretions or non-Buddhist “folk” religion, since they draw on magical practices and terminology present in the Buddhist scriptures. As Justin McDaniel has written about Buddhist magical practice in contemporary Thailand:

Magical, commemorative, curative, protective, prognosticative, aesthetic, and preservative practices of current Thai Buddhists cannot be explained away. These practices are neither the products of an anarchic society nor the expressions of the futile aspirations of those ignorant of more refined canonical values.¹³

One of the most popular and respected Thai Buddhist monks, Somdet To (1788–1872), was also a renowned magic user. As the preceptor to two Thai kings, he engaged in rituals to protect the state and its army, and he produced amulets and magic circles (yantra) for the personal use of his patrons. Only one remaining manuscript is attributed to his own hand, and it is a compendium of recipes, protective drawings, and incantations to help people in battle.¹⁴

Somdet To’s legacy continues in the magical power ascribed to images and statues depicting him and amulets said to have been made by him. He also wrote a magical text, Buddha’s Armour, which is now the most recited text in Thailand. At the beginning of the text, after homage to the Buddha, it simply states:

If one wishes for a son or a daughter, one will have a son or a daughter. If one wishes for wealth, one will acquire wealth.

As an eminent, almost legendary magic user, Somdet To provided a focus for the ritual and material culture after his death. However, he was not unique and seems to have learned most of his magical repertoire from his teacher. Many ordinary monks in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries are also involved in lay ritual practices.¹⁵ Buddhist monks often participate in propitiation of local spirits for healing, protection, and the like in lay residences and the “spirit houses” (san phra phum) that are found all over the region. On festival days, monasteries sell amulets and healing remedies, and some offer the service of tattooing yantra diagrams (sak yan) on the bodies of laypeople. This is nothing new in the Buddhist societies of Southeast Asia.¹⁶

Resources for Buddhist magic users are widely available, with books of spells in the Thai language now published as mass-market paperbacks. One of these, called “The Treatise on Occult Sciences, Complete Edition by Master Yannachot” is described thus by Erick White:

The treatise includes an introduction and a chapter explaining the Buddhist and Thai history of saiyasat (magic; occult science). It next presents a typology of eight types of spells (for healing illness, joining together, dispelling and releasing, protecting, displaying miracles, creating dangers for others, protecting oneself from dangerous spirits, and charming others), an explanation of white versus black magic, and a brief description of the morally proper discipline and ritual apprenticeship necessary to study saiyasat sucessfully. What follows are chapters on a heterogeneous mix of topics, primarily organized around types of spells (katha). There are chapters on Vedic spells, healing spells, spells for subduing dangerous obstacles (primarily malicious spirits), and spells for domesticating malicious spirits into servile familiars.¹⁷

The kinds of spells found in this Thai handbook are much the same as those we looked at earlier in Tibetan books of spells. This, along with the fact that the magic user, or vidyādhara, plays a role in distant and very different Buddhist societies, suggests that Buddhist magic, as much as Buddhist ethics and meditation, has been central to the transmission of Buddhism right across Asia.

MONKS AND MANTRINS IN THE HIMALAYAS

In Tibet, there are many different kinds of magic users, from individual ritual specialists, sometimes misleadingly called “shamans,” to high-ranking monks embedded in major monasteries. Tibetan histories contain examples of magical rituals performed by monks for rulers to repel or destroy their enemies. These monks include Sangye Repa, who performed rituals to defeat the army of Genghis Khan for the ruler of the Tangut kingdom in the thirteenth century, and Sogdogpa, who did the same to turn back the enemies of the Fifth Dalai Lama in the seventeenth century.¹⁸

While the traditional histories and biographies give the impression that there were only a few prominent specialists for this kind of magical ritual in Tibet, this is misleading. A variety of magic users operated in local communities, responding to much more ordinary needs, and still do. In cases of illness or misfortune, a specialist is paid to use divination to reveal the cause, which might be karmic retribution for previous misdeeds, spirits and demons, or a curse. If karma or merit is the issue, generally meritorious activities such as making offerings may be sufficient, but if the diagnosis indicates malevolent beings or a curse, then a magical ritual will be required.¹⁹

The magic users responsible for rituals like these came from both monastic and lay communities. Daniel Berounsky has shown how magical practices were popular in the Gelugpa school, based on a verse in praise of its founder, Tsongkhapa. This school has often been presented as representing the serious monastic and philosophical aspect of Tibetan Buddhism, so it is interesting to note the prevalence of magic even here. The verse praising Tsongkhapa, known as the Migtsema, features in a series of rituals for various purposes:

Causing rain to fall

Protecting from frost

Protecting from weapons by edible paper

Protecting from weapons by amulet

Protecting from pollution

Enhancing the life force

Overcoming obstacles by edible paper

Catching robbers

Enhancing crops and protecting them from disease

Bringing food

Protecting from obstacles during travel²⁰

As an example of how the sacred verse fits into these rituals, here is Berounsky’s translation of the beginning of the ninth ritual:

Recite Migtsema similarly as in the previous instances. Prepare old soil from the place; deepen by the urine of thousands of monks, and old sand. Mix the urine of a full monk, the urine of an eight-year-old boy, and the urine of an eight-year-old girl with the sand. Prepare as much sand as you can. Make as many ritual daggers as you can from wood which has not been stepped over by dog or woman. Inscribe the text of Migtsema on the individual daggers. Place parts of the harvest into the skin of a goat that died naturally.²¹

In these rituals it looks very much like the Migtsema has been adapted to existing magical practices to bring them within the fold of the Gelugpa monastic tradition. As Berounsky points out, this complex of magical practices was firmly within monastic orthodoxy, and it seems to have been especially popular with monks who were involved with the missionary activities of the Gelugpa school in northeastern Tibet and Mongolia from the seventeenth century onward. In this case, we see magic taking the same role it once had in the transmission of Buddhism along the Silk Road.

Tibet also has a strong tradition of lay Buddhist practitioners, and this is especially true in the practice of magical rituals. The services of bringing rain and preventing hail have always been required in the Tibetan cultural area, and where these are not provided by major monasteries, they have been provided by individual specialists. These specialists are known as ngagpas, practitioners of mantra (the word is originally a translation of the Sanskrit mantrin). They are usually from either the Buddhist or Bonpo traditions, and while the latter was until recently considered a non-Buddhist tradition, in practice both types of specialist performed very similar rituals.

A recent study of a village in northeast Tibet shows that the specialist responsible for protection from hail rotated between local ngagpas until the eighteenth century, when a specialist from the Sakya school was brought to the village. His descendants inherited the role for several generations. This family lineage claimed descent from Sakya Pandita, a famous scholar from the Sakya school, who has become here an emblem of magical power in the same way that Tsongkhapa did for the Gelug school. The upkeep and expenses of the individual responsible for hail prevention were paid for through a village hail protection tax.²²

The magic users responsible for protecting villages from hail are thought to have special personal power gained through their practice of meditation. This allows them to enter magical battle with the spirits responsible for bringing hail. The magic users own special ritual items and use them in rituals to trap and suppress the spirits. The ritual implements include “hail pills” and a sling for shooting these toward the clouds. Together with the local monastery, the magic users also organize the key sowing and harvest rituals in which copies of the Buddhist canon are taken out of the monastery and carried around the circumference of the fields by all the villagers.²³

Other magic specialists are not tied to particular communities but work freelance; this is especially true after the Tibetan diaspora in the mid-twentieth century. In their book The Rainmaker, Marsha Woolf and Karen Blanc tell the story of the Yeshe Dorje (1926–1993), a ngagpa who served for a time as the principle rainmaker for the Dalai Lama’s government in exile in India. Yeshe Dorje combined the role of a magical specialist with that of a teacher of Vajrayana Buddhism, specializing in the practice of cutting attachment (gcod).²⁴

In fact, the roles of magical specialist and tantric practitioner cannot really be separated in Tibetan Buddhism, as the perception of possessing personal magical power is closely linked to the dedicated practice of tantric meditation.²⁵ However, this shouldn’t lead us to conflate the two or to see magic in Buddhism as inextricably linked with the Vajrayana. The work of Buddhist magic users in Theravada countries shows that this is not the case: a Theravada monk, such as Somdet To, who creates and empowers amulets must also show mastery of Buddhist meditation and learning and be seen to keep his monastic vows. In both cultures, these Buddhist practices are seen as a source of magical power as well as the path to ultimate salvation.

—

In the end there is little we can say for sure about the owner of the Dunhuang book of spells, Bikkru Pradya Praba. He may well have been a Buddhist monk, as the title bhikṣu implies, or a freelance ritual specialist who was not aligned to any particular monastery. Judging by the tantric parts of the book of spells, his clients would have expected him to have some personal expertise in Vajrayana meditation. The paper of the book of spells seems to have been made locally, so he was probably a resident of Dunhuang or a nearby region where Tibetan Buddhism was well established. The book of spells is written in Tibetan, so he may have come from a Tibetan background, but that is not certain either, as we know that non-Tibetans used the Tibetan script in Dunhuang and the surrounding region.²⁶ What we do know is that he performed the role of a vidyādhara, a Buddhist expert in spells. This role, as we have seen, is found across Buddhist communities from Southeast Asia to Tibet.

DRAGONS, OGRES, GHOULS, GHOSTS, AND IMPS

We have already seen the variety of nonhuman beings that populate Buddhist magical texts from the earliest examples onward. It is difficult to know what to call this general category of nonhumans that populates Indic literature and the Buddhist cultures that drew from it. The term demon, even more than the word magic, is heavily loaded with negative connotations from Christian sources and from the imaginative reactions to this religious heritage in Western horror literature and film. The more neutral spirit is often used, but the strongly ethereal implications of this word are equally misleading. One thing we know about many of these beings is that they are considered to be physically present, often massively so, even if only rarely seen by human beings. So for some of these physical creatures, who appear in myths interacting with humans and are coerced, repelled, or killed by magic users, we might be better off with the term monster.

In this book I have chosen to translate the names of these creatures, using the names of roughly comparable creatures from the European tradition. So, for example, yakṣas are large, humanoid, physically imposing beings, similar to European ogres, which is the word I use here. The rākṣasas only come out at night, and feed on human flesh, so I refer to them as ghouls.²⁷ They are often part animal, with the most common form having the head of a tiger. Less physically present than these are the bhuṭa, ethereal beings comparable to European ghosts, which is how I have translated the name here.

The serpentine creatures who live in bodies of water and are known as nāgas were associated with subterranean creatures in Tibet called klu and the Chinese dragons called long. Here I have used “dragon” to translate nāga, though it might be a bit misleading if one has the picture of a European dragon in mind. In India, the nāgas have snake’s bodies and human heads, often more than one, while in China, they have the same long, serpentine body but usually only one head. They can vary in size from little bigger than a snake to the large creatures we usually associate with the word dragon. Another creature, called sri appears in the book of spells from Dunhuang, and I am not sure whether there is an Indic Buddhist original behind it. The sri are minor maleficent creatures who are often identified as the cause of illness and misfortune. In the book of spells they can also be coerced to act as servants to a magic user. In the translation here, I have called them imps.²⁸

Lists of threatening beings are found in most early Buddhist magical texts. But while the texts often name these creatures, they do not offer definitions of them or the threats each type embodies. The following from the Great Amulet is a typical example:

This dhāraṇī crushes all wrongdoings for the one who has committed misdeeds.

Transgressions are destroyed merely by hearing it.

It provides happiness for every being and frees from all diseases.

It has been told by the Protector of the World out of compassion for every being

To serve as a protection for all living creatures going to bad destinies.

The one protected by this may enter the abode of Asuras

And he may also go to Aḍakavatī and the abode of Rākṣasas in the world.

In a terrible and fierce fight with Bhūtas, Nāgas and Piśācas

He is invincible by all enemies even all the troops of Bhūtas.

All Grahas are destroyed by mentioning or reciting its name

Along with Skandas, Unmādas, Apasmāras, Piśācas and Ḍākinīs.²⁹

In Buddhist magical literature these creatures often have amoral characters, appearing both as threats and the forces that are invoked to provide protection from these threats. For example, Vajrapāṇi is king of the ogres, who himself offers protection from the ogres.³⁰ In the Tibetan book of spells, these beings are usually the cause of illness and misfortune, but can also be summoned and tamed by the magic user to act as servants.³¹

One of the problems with classifying these beings is that some categories overlap, and some are general categories that contain more specific types. Before we work too hard at creating a definitive system, it is worth noting that the sources themselves rarely define the different types of beings in this way. In fact, they often seem to be interchangeable, as Robert DeCaroli has pointed out:

Although some texts attempt to organize these beings by rank or classify them according to their qualities, no two classifications systems are the same, and rarely, if ever, do the narratives conform to these rubrics…. Sutherland notes the frustrating fact that the designation yakṣa is often used interchangeably with the terms rākṣasa, gandharva, asura, and piśāca Similarly, T. W. Rhys Davids and William Stede have stated that in the Pāli literature many yakkhas (Skt. yakṣa) are in fact a form of contented peta (Skt. preta), whereas in the Kathāsaritsāgara we find mention of a yakṣa who becomes a piśāca.³²

Much of the time in the Tibetan book of spells from Dunhuang, the beings involved are defined in the broadest terms as “gods and spirits” (lha ’dre). This general term seems to have come from India as well, translating the general categories of deva and graha.³³ The fluidity with which these names were used in Indic Buddhism, and the nonspecific way they were later applied to other cultural settings such as Tibet, makes clear categorization almost impossible and probably misleading. I suggest a different approach here: the ritual texts themselves indicate that it was the function of these nonhuman beings that was important to the client rather than their name or type. Such functions included causing illness, miscarriage, crop failure, and other misfortunes. In response to these emergencies, the specific class or name of the being responsible may have been less important than the effectiveness of the ritual.

MATERIA MAGICA

As we have seen, any definition of magic in the Buddhist tradition, as well as in most non-Buddhist contexts, must include medical practice as well. In the Tibetan book of spells, some ailments are treated by preparing medicines to be drunk, usually made with herbs mixed in water; other ailments are treated with lotions rubbed on the skin. The ingredients of these medicines suggest the influence of what Kenneth Zysk calls the empirico-rational tradition, which is to say they were used because they had been tried and they worked. On the other hand, some ailments, especially where a malevolent influence is suspected, are treated in other ways—for example, through making effigies of rabbits out of dung in order to trap the malevolent spirit causing the disease. Here I will look at some of the reagents that appear frequently in the Tibetan book of spells.

Gugul, an Incense

The burning of incense features in many rituals in the Tibetan book of spells. Often the incense has no specific stated purpose, simply being part of the atmosphere of the ritual. In the case of the mirror divination ritual, the incense purifies, and in some rituals for the sick, it drives away or destroys the malevolent beings who are causing the illness. For example, one such ritual provides a mantra and then states:

Recite this seven or twenty-one times, and burn the gugul so it fills the air around the sick person. When it fills the air, all obstructive and malevolent powers will be scattered in the ten directions, and their heads will burst.

The incense used here, gugul, is by far the most popular in the book of spells. Gugul (also known as guggulu) is resin from the shrub Commiphora wightii that grows widely from Africa to Asia but is most common in northern India and Pakistan.³⁴ Because of its similarity to myrrh, it is sometimes known as Indian myrrh. Collected by tapping the plants, gugul was traded along the Silk Route. In ancient Greece and Rome, the same resin, known as bdellium, was used in Galenic medicine. In India, it was, and still is, used in Ayurvedic medicine, which has a shared heritage with Buddhist medical practice.³⁵ In Tibetan areas, gugul incense is still used for the same purposes as a thousand years ago; for example, a pack of gugul incense sold by Tara Arts and Handicrafts in Nepal states in Tibetan, “The fragrance of burning gugul is the best for repelling obstructive and harmful powers.”³⁶

Sweet Flag, a Medical Herb

Several familiar herbs and spices appear in the Tibetan book of spells, including cumin, frankincense, garlic, and mustard. The most common is the slightly lesser known sweet flag (Acorus calamus). This plant grows in or near water across much of Asia and was also known in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.³⁷ Its flowers and roots are used in the preparation of medicines for a variety of ailments in traditional Indian and Chinese medicine:

The rhizomes of sweet flag (Acorus calamus) are used for numerous medicinal purposes. The herb is used both internally as well as externally. In rheumatism, rheumatic fever and inflamed joints, the paste applied externally alleviates the pain and swelling. Internally sweet flag is valuable in a vast range of diseases. It is effective for digestive ailments such as flatulence, loss of appetite, abdominal dull pain and worms.³⁸

The ways sweet flag is used in the Tibetan book of spells do include medical uses, but they differ from this description (which seems to be based on Ayurvedic sources). In the book, sweet flag is used to prepare a liquid that is poured into the ear to relieve pain. It is also used as a stimulant “to sharpen your insight.” In a more purely magical sense, it is used in a spell for victory in an argument: a mantra is said over the sweet flag, and the leaves are bound around one’s arm.

In some rituals in the book of spells, “white sweet flag” is specified. This is the East Asian plant called changpu in China and known today in English as Japanese sweet flag. The Indian plant, on the other hand, was known to Tibetans as “black sweet flag.” This is an important point, for it suggests that the authors of these rituals were aware of ingredients from both South and East Asia, and therefore the rituals in the Tibetan spell book are not all drawn from the same tradition, whether Indic or Chinese, and represent a particular Central Asian synthesis.

Star Water

One of the most intriguing ingredients appearing in the Tibetan book of spells is something called “star water” (skar chu). This is used in a ritual to bring a barren spring back to life:

To bring forth water from a dry spring, surround the spring with purified ash; take three handfuls of star water from a well, pouring one each morning through to the third. Each morning recite the mantra 108 times.

Star water can also be drunk:

For one who has fallen ill due to a curse: burn camphor or gugul; boil one bre of star water. When only a phul is left, in the presence of an image of the thousand-armed and thousand-faced one and Avalokiteśvara, say the mantra 108 times and drink it.

In this ritual, the water itself holds the power to cure. In the following one, salt is dissolved in it to ease intestinal ailments:

If someone has a disease of the intestines and is uncomfortable: take half a handful of star water from a spring, and drop in twenty-one lumps of rock salt, while saying the mantra twenty-one times. When he drinks it, he will quickly recover.

What the rituals do not say is how to acquire the star water; this knowledge seems to have been assumed. Yet it is difficult to find any clarification of the matter in Buddhist texts. The Tibetan-English dictionary of Sarat Chandra Das has two definitions:

I. Bathing when the star Agastya (Ri byi) appears in October, when, according to Tibetan astrologers, water becomes pure and wholesome.

II. Generally applied to dew which is said to come from the stars.

Yet neither of these quite fits what we see in the Tibetan book of spells, which does not mention bathing but does mention collecting star water from a well. Another definition of star water, from a seventeenth-century Tibetan text, states that it is “water left out in the stars.”³⁹ A relatively recent definition from the Tibetan dictionary Treasury of Words and Meanings has perhaps the most relevant definition: “Cool water collected at dawn before the stars have faded.” It goes on to say that star water is beneficial in the treatment of fevers, nervous disorders, and boils and swellings. Water collected at dawn also appears in a recent description of the ritual preparations for a new-year festival in Tibet:

As stars appear, a person from every family fetches water in the belief that it will be purified and sanctified by starlight. Such water is called skar chu, “star water.”⁴⁰

The Dharani of the Blue-Necked One, which seems to be the source for the rituals involving star water in the Tibetan book of spells, in its Chinese translation mentions in the same context “flower water from the well.” This flower water, defined by Charles Muller as “that drawn from the well in the last watch of the night, at which time the water is supposed not to produce animal life,” seems to be the Chinese equivalent of the Tibetan star water.⁴¹ Thus the star water that is mentioned in the Tibetan book of spells is water collected at dawn from a well or a spring. Star water does not seem to have any particular astrological connotations but is imbued with purity and power by the fact that it is collected at dawn, under the stars.

Corpse Magic

The use of human body parts in rituals, however unpleasant we might consider it to be, is widespread across the world and can be traced from antiquity to the present day. In Europe, the harvesting and selling of human fat for magical and medical use was a standard way for executioners to supplement their income. This has been less common in Europe since the nineteenth century, but it is still happening in Buddhist countries,⁴² as Justin McDaniel’s work in Thailand has shown:

Corpse oil is the prized substance in these ceremonies. Unlike statues of saints, Buddha images, or bas-reliefs, the importance of a mummified person is less in its aesthetic beauty or calming meditative affect/effect, than in its ability to be harvested for oil, bones, ash, and wax. Nam man phrai is an oily and fatty substance that is obtained by magicians, including monks…. The magician holds a candle or magnifying glass up to the chin, elbows, forehead of the corpse and melts the dried skin. The drippings are collected and are believed to have the power to be transformed through incantations into love potion, protective oil, or even diluted into tattooing ink.⁴³

This gives some context for the appearance of corpses in the Tibetan book of spells, though it hardly makes them less shocking. The first example is in a spell for clairvoyance and clairaudience:

Take the tears of a recently deceased person and place them in the palm of your hand. Then mix this with the dust from shaking out the mat that was in contact with the laid-out corpse. If you anoint your eyes, you will be able to see all gods and spirits as far away as nine miles. If you put it on your ears first, you will hear all sounds.

It is apparently possible for a corpse to shed tears at the moment of death and shortly afterward, which are sometimes known as lacrima mortis.⁴⁴ Here, the reference to the mat on which the corpse is lying also suggests that the ritual is performed soon after death has occurred. We can imagine that the magical power of these tears comes from their liminal nature, occurring at the movement from life and death. The other ritual involving human body parts comes straight after this and is even more shocking:

Pulling out the tongue of a child born of incest, who died before speaking, put it inside a gold, silver, copper, or clay charm-box with an astrological seal. Protect it with whatever mantras and mudras are appropriate. After the first period has passed, dry it in a cave that faces the rising sun and grind it. Then mix it with sesame oil and pound it.

After some further ritual activities, the mixture is to be placed in beer, and if it fizzes, the magic user gains the power to teleport and to summon spirit beings to come and reveal the location of treasure. The magic user can also bring kings, ministers, or anyone else under his power by anointing his forehead with the liquid; he gains knowledge of the fate of any living being by anointing his nose.

The child born of incest is a symbol of transgression. A similar practice, using parts from an unbaptized baby, is recorded in Europe as well. As Richard Kieckhefer has described, in 1428 an Italian woman was taken to court for the following practice:

She taught people to cure illness by taking a bone from an unbaptized baby out to a crossroad, burying it there, and saying various prayers and formulas on that spot over nine days.⁴⁵

In Tibet, the child born from incest is a powerful embodiment of the breaking of a serious taboo. Incest features as a key event in several Tibetan ritual narratives in the Bonpo tradition.⁴⁶ In tantric Buddhist ritual, the use of a skull cup made from the corpse of a child of incest is held to be especially powerful.⁴⁷ The use of the Sanskrit word jihvā for tongue in the Tibetan book of spells suggests an Indic, probably tantric, source in this case. Similar rituals are found in the Vajrabhairava Tantra, for example, and the Tibetan book of spells based on that tantra, the Secret Moon Spellbook written by Nubchen Sangye Yeshe in the tenth century.⁴⁸

The Vajrabhairava Tantra is an adaptation of Shaiva rituals, as indicated by its title: Bhairava is a manifestation of Shiva, transformed by the vajra- prefix into a Buddhist deity.⁴⁹ The influence of Shaiva rituals on Buddhist tantras has been explored in detail in several publications by Alexis Sanderson. His identification of parallel passages in Shaiva and Buddhist texts is compelling, though some have questioned whether the influence necessarily flows in the direction from Shaiva to Buddhist practice.⁵⁰

Nevertheless, the spells in the Vajrabhairava Tantra certainly share many features with Shaiva scriptures.⁵¹ One of these features is the use of substances from a dead body: cremation ashes, corpse oil, and the like. Spells using these substances are usually the most aggressive ones, aimed at paralyzing, petrifying, and killing enemies. The Vajrabhairava Tantra and related Shaiva scriptures probably arose from a social setting where Buddhist and Shaiva yogins were in close proximity to each other and practicing similar, shared techniques.

One difference in the Buddhist texts is the contextualization of violent magic. For example, the Vajrabhairava Tantra suggests that the violent rituals performed by the Buddhist mantrin are compassionate because he is taking the negative karma of those who are the target of the ritual upon himself:

In order to benefit people who harm the three jewels, treat the gurus with contempt, do not keep the pledges, do not hold to the mantra, revile the mantra and the tantra and harm sentient beings, the mantrin takes their evil upon himself with a compassionate and sympathetic mind.

And while the tantra is explicit about violence toward those who oppose the practice of mantra and tantra, it places the onus on the yogin to act with compassion:

If the uncompassionate yogin acts violently towards others, such actions will rebound on him. On account of the harm he does to sentient beings for whatever reason this will happen to the yogin.⁵²

As a final note, I don’t want to give the impression that it is only in the tantras that one finds monks dealing with corpses. The early Buddhist monastic tradition was also well aware of rituals for raising corpses from the dead to turn them into zombies. In one of the texts of the vinaya (monastic regulations), there is a detailed account of how to raise a corpse, arm it with a weapon, and send it off to kill one’s enemy. While the rules are, of course, firmly against this kind of thing, the fact that specific rules were drawn up against raising zombies—and the very detailed description of how it is done in the text—shows that early Buddhist monks were also familiar with corpse magic.⁵³

Effigies

Some of the rituals in the Tibetan book of spells use items that are found in many other traditions of magic: the effigies and inscriptions that have an effect through similarity or metaphor. In these specific cases, the idea of “sympathetic magic,” which has dominated much of the discussion of magical practice since James G. Frazer, may be relevant. In his discussion of Tibetan magical compendiums, Bryan Cuevas invokes the principle of sympathy:

Sympathetic magic is governed by two basic principles, imitation and contagion. Perfect examples of imitative or mimetic magic in Tibetan practice are the forming of the liṅga—molded effigies in the likeness of an enemy or designs drawn on paper into which the practitioner directs the divine or demonic powers that he controls. Contagious magic may be exemplified by wrapping this liṅga in a piece of cloth procured from some garment owned by the object of the ritual or by the intended victim in the belief that some essence of the person wears off on, and abides in his or her clothing.⁵⁴

The most obvious case of sympathetic magic, the effigy of a person that in contemporary parlance is usually called a voodoo doll, appears in the Tibetan spell book once:

If someone is worried about being pursued by a physical enemy with a grudge, use purified earth, barley flour or rice, as available, and make an effigy of that person from it. Using a wrought-iron sword, cut it into 108 pieces, saying the mantra each time, and the name of the person each time. Once you have cut it up and burned it, the enemy’s mind will become benelovent, and after a few days, he or she will be very friendly.

Here, as in many other cultures where magic rituals involves effigies of specific individuals, the figure is cut with a blade. However, perhaps because this ritual occurs in the cycle of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, its aggressive nature is tempered so that no harm is caused, and the outcome is merely to make the enemy friendly toward the magic user or the client. In other similar rituals in the spell book, a simpler procedure is followed, in which the name of the person the spell is aimed at is written on a piece of paper to be crushed underfoot or eaten. In one case, the name of a sick person is written on paper and placed in a trap to trick the spirit that is causing the disease into the trap.

In other cases, the effigies are animals whose function is more symbolic. For example in the Bhṛkutī cycle, an effigy of a dragon is thrown into a lake to dry it up. An effigy of a duck is thrown into a river to make the water flow upstream, and an effigy of a crow is thrown in to make it flow downstream again. As we will see later in this chapter, effigies of cats and frogs also feature. In these cases the effigies do not represent another being, but seem to gain their magical power through the nature of the animal they represent. In some cases a correspondence can be suggested, for example, the dragon with the lake, the duck with the river. In other cases, like the crow, the choice of animal seems to be more about the magical power associated with that creature. The crow features heavily in the magic rituals of the Vajrabhairava Tantra, for example, where it has a special relationship with the wrathful deity Yamantaka.⁵⁵

THE CONCEPTION AND CARE OF CHILDREN

Conception and pregnancy is one aspect of Buddhism that has tended to be neglected or assigned to the realm of “popular” religion. Yet it is an important part of the scriptural, ritual, and medical traditions of Buddhism. The Sutra on Fetal Development discusses the processes of conception and gestation, giving a week-by-week account of fetal development that has influenced Tibetan Buddhist medical practice. However this sutra, like many other Buddhist scriptural texts, presents the whole cycle of conception and pregnancy in a negative light as part of the cycle of saṃsāra.⁵⁶

The male monastic perspective evident in the scriptures, which can so easily become misogynistic, seems to leave little room for the care of pregnant women. Yet we know that this was actually an important activity for Buddhist monks. As we saw in chapter 2, major monasteries such as Jetavana in northern India offered ritual services to pregnant women, and Buddhist magical texts often state that their spells provide protection for these women. In Buddhist sites excavated along the Silk Road, including Khotan and Dunhuang, we find imagery of child-snatching demons, mothers with children, and deities whose function is to protect pregnant women and children.⁵⁷

The ritual for pregnancy in the Tibetan book of spells addresses both women who wish to conceive and pregnant women who are concerned about threats to the unborn child. It specifies that a monk is to perform the initial ceremony, which involves taking the woman into the center of a mandala, where they both stay until midnight praying and reciting the mantra. At the end, an amulet is created and attached to the woman.

The second part of the ritual hands over agency to the woman herself. In the case of a sudden threat to the pregnancy, understood here as an attack by a child-snatching spirit, the woman is to grab a vajra, utter a binding command to the spirit, and then propitiate it with food offerings. She is also to engage in a visualization of children previously lost in pregnancy coming from the heavenly realm of the four great kings; she imagines binding them and making them stay there. After that she imagines goddesses coming to protect the child in her own womb.

The ritual is presided over by the goddess known as the Great Destroyer of the Universe. This fearsome name is explained in the scriptural text named after her, the Great Destroyer of the Universe, wherein the Buddha dispels all of the ghosts throughout the universe by reciting a mantra. The sutra itself probably goes back to the fourth century C.E., and the rituals it describes may be even earlier. Manuscripts in Sanskrit, Khotanese, Tibetan, and Chinese have been found in various Silk Road archaeological sites, attesting to the popularity of the text.⁵⁸

The Great Destroyer of the Universe presents a ritual for a woman who wants to conceive or is already pregnant, which is clearly the basis for the one in the book of spells:

A woman who is childless,

Or pregnant,

Should, on the eighth and fourteenth days,

Observe the trainings, go for refuge in the sublime Dharma,

And worship well a reliquary.

Ritually cleansed and well adorned,

She should scatter mustard seeds on the ground,

And decorate the ground with flowers and fragrances.

She should surround the area With threads of five different colors.

Waiting until midnight,

With mustard seeds placed on the top of her head,

Inspired by Brahmā, she should recite,

“What was manifested by Brahmā.”

The head of whoever transgresses this incantation—

The sūtra manifested by Brahmā,

Which brings benefit to young people

Up to twelve years of age—

Will split into seven pieces,

Like the blossom of a basil shrub.

The ritual ends here with a prayer for the pregnancy and birth to come:

May there be well-being in the womb! May the sense faculties develop perfectly! May there be well-being while inside the womb! May newborns not perish! May there be well-being in the womb! May there be timely birth!⁵⁹

The ritual of the Great Destroyer of the Universe is still used in Tibet and Nepal for pregnancy and childbirth; it may be the most common ritual prescribed by Buddhist monks for pregnant women.⁶⁰

MODERN CORRESPONDENCES

More correspondences can be found between some of the rituals in the Tibetan book of spells and accounts of rituals performed recently in Tibetan cultural areas. For example, the first ritual in the Avalokiteśvara cycle in the book of spells is to ward off the influence of a tiger-headed ghoul. This involves burning the skull of a cat, mixing the ashes with earth, and making this into the shape of a cat. After invoking Avalokiteśvara, the model cat is cut up into 108 pieces while reciting a mantra.⁶¹

As reported by anthropologists working among the Sherpas in Nepal, a form of this cat effigy ritual has continued through to the present day. Sherry Ortner and Robert Paul have both described this ritual as part of larger ceremonies, including funerals and the annual Dumje festival. In these ceremonies, the lay community constructs “a large effigy described variously as a cat, bermang, or a tiger, made of dough with a finely sculpted clay head, and painted with black and white stripes, for which charcoal and flour are used.”⁶²

After the group rituals have been performed, the cat effigy is taken on the main road out of the village, placed on the ground, and cut to pieces by young men using swords. While Paul refers to the effigy as a cat, Ortner calls it a tiger. This may reflect the different interpretations of their informants; however, Paul writes that “according to lamas, also, the cat is more correctly a tiger, the term ‘cat’ being only a vulgar misconstruction.”⁶³ This ambiguity is reflected in the Tibetan book of spells, in which the cat effigy is the means for dispelling the influence of a tiger-headed being.

Another correspondence, also featuring effigies, is found in a ritual for aches and swellings caused by dragons. Here, the magic user makes a model of a frog out of barley flour, makes a cavity in the frog with a bamboo stick, and places an ointment in that cavity. The frog is then applied to the body part that aches. After a visualization and recitation is performed, the barley frog is examined for a prognosis:

Lift up the frog, and if a golden liquid emerges from under it, they will definitely recover. If it is merely moist, then they will recover before too long. If there is only meat with gluey flour, they will be purified by the end of the illness. It is not necessary to do the ritual again. If there is only gluey flour, break it up and do the ritual again.

After this, the frog is placed in front of a spring and incense offerings made to it. A similar ritual was observed by Charles Ramble in a very different period and setting, performed by the lamas of Tshognam in highland Nepal. In this case, the ritual was the summer rainmaking ceremony, performed by the senior lama. The ritual itself, as observed by Ramble, is as follows:

Two hollow wax models of frogs are made. Through a hole in the back, the frogs are filled with various ingredients, including the excrement of a black dog and magical formulae written on slips of paper, and the holes are sealed with a wax lid. One of the frogs is stuffed into the mouth of one of the springs to the east of Te, and the other is burned at a three-way crossroads. The principle of this method is apparently to pollute the subterranean serpent-spirits and the sky gods, and induce them to wash away the contagion by producing water from the earth and the heavens.⁶⁴

Here the ritual is for bringing rain rather than curing aches, but there is a link in the form of the dragons, who are the beings addressed by both the medical ritual in the Tibetan book of spells and the rain ritual in Tshognam. What is striking is not only the use of frog effigies to manipulate the dragons, but that the specific elements of the rituals are so similar: the hollow frog filled with magical ingredients and the placing of the frog by a spring, The lama of Tshognam stated that this particular ritual came from outside the Buddhist tradition, which suggests that there may be no obvious Buddhist textual source for it, and its transmission through the centuries has been via the oral tradition of ritual specialists.

MAGIC ACROSS CULTURES: MIRROR-SCRYING

The major divination ritual in the Tibetan book of spells is a mirror-scrying practice called prasena. This practice uses a mirror to invoke a vision for the purpose of divination, but rather than the ritualist looking at the mirror, a child does this and is questioned afterward about what he or she has seen there. This is the way the practice is described in the book of spells:

Wash yourself and gaze toward the eastern entrance; make offerings of the five types to the mirror. Then fumigate with gugul. Reciting the eleven-syllable mantra, wash the pure child, and bless him with the six-syllable mantra. Direct him toward the eastern opening and place the mirror there. Answers to the questions you have thought about or asked aloud will appear with great clarity within the mirror.

The text goes on to give variations on this relatively simple ritual, mainly repeating the ritual using a different surface: the ritualist’s thumbnail coated with a lacquer, a skull cup filled with moist barley flour, and a sword. What the child sees in the mirror or other surfaces is said to be anything in the three times—that is, from the past, present, or future. The prasena method of mirror divination became one of the most popular methods in Tibet, though it was also considered the most esoteric. Its uses ranged from everyday divination to the discovery of the rebirth of the Dalai Lamas. It was also used in the Tibetan medical tradition as a means of medical diagnosis.⁶⁵

The text in the Dunhuang spellbook contains the earliest surviving instructions on prasena in Tibetan. It comes from a Buddhist sutra called The Questions of Subahu, which dates from the seventh century and was translated into Chinese in 726 C.E. In this text the mirror-scrying ritual is described with most of the same elements, including the mandala, mantras, ritual cleansing of the ritualist and child, and the range of objects other than a mirror that can be used for scrying. The main difference from the version in the Tibetan book of spells is that in the latter the deity Garuda is invoked to bring on the visions, whereas in the Questions of Subahu it is more generally demons or dragons.⁶⁶

The name of the ritual, prasena, seems to originate in India with Prakrit, but there are clues that similar scrying rituals may have been known and practiced in early Buddhist communities, though not in the context of the tantras and not known by the name prasena.⁶⁷ As we saw in chapter 2, the Brahma Net Sutra, present in the Pali canon, has a long list of practices that are disapproved of, which include divination by means of mirrors and divination by means of a girl. It is striking that these two are listed together; perhaps they were meant to describe a single practice. There are other Indian sources from later on, and in the tenth-century India, the tantric scholar Abhinavagupta mocked the practice, while also describing it quite clearly:

The virgin sees a bewildering tumult of people,

in a sword, in a thumb, in water,

but the thief is not caught,

this is the delusion of sorcery.⁶⁸

Perhaps the most striking fact about the prasena ritual is that parallels are found outside of Asia. In a study of references to such rituals in Persia, Martin Schwarz carried out the first cross-cultural study of mirror-scrying rituals (though not dealing with Asia), defining them with three basic criteria:

The person desiring a clairvoyant vision obtains it through children acting as mediums under his direction and interrogation;

the mediums are seated or otherwise installed for receiving the clairvoyant vision, and

the vision is brought on through a special formula delivered by the supervising adult.⁶⁹

The richest source for these rituals is the Greek magical papyri:

These prescriptions, occurring among others in which similar instructions are given for unmediated visions, indicate that the person desiring the divination uses as medium a boy (whose sexual innocence is often stressed). The boy is installed (made to sit, or squat, or lie on his stomach, or stand, usually on a new brick or bricks). In order to “make the boy fall into a trance and see the gods,” the director administers a formula…In all instances the contexts explicitly state that the purpose of the formula is to induce a vision. During the vision, the boy is interrogated as to what he sees.⁷⁰

Other texts from Greek and Roman authors describe, in more general terms, divination carried out by having a boy look into a reflective surface. In the Byzantine tradition, we have descriptions of divination performed by having an innocent child look into a vessel or mirror while seated beside a presiding magician who recites formulas. Later in Western Europe, the same practice is described by John of Salisbury (c. 1115–1180):

He was studying Latin from a priest, using the Psalms as the texts for study. As it happened, however, his teacher was an adept in the divinatory art of crystal-gazing, and abused his trust by making John and a somewhat older pupil participate in these activities. The idea was to anoint the boys’ fingernails with some sacred chrism so that images would appear reflected in the nails and would impart information. Alternatively, a polished basin might be used as the reflecting surface. After certain “preliminary magical rites” and the requisite anointing, the priest uttered names “which by the horror they inspired, seemed to me, child though I was, to belong to demons.” The other pupil declared that he saw “certain misty figures,” but John himself saw nothing of the sort and was thus ruled unqualified for this art.⁷¹

In tracing the origins of this practice, Kieckhefer has written about a Jewish practice in which a young boy is made to gaze at his thumbnail, which is anointed with oil, while a ritualist recites formulas and summons spirits. Kieckhefer sees the possible origins of this practice in Babylonian ritual tables dating back to 2000 B.C.E.⁷² Though neither Kieckhefer or Schwartz discusses the Asian forms of this divination practice, they all contain the same basic elements, and it is perhaps this origin in the early ritual traditions of Mesopotamia that explains the widespread diffusion of similar practices both westward across Europe and eastward across Asia. While we must treat such similarities across widely different contexts with caution, the divination ritual of the mirror and child mediums does seem to be a case of a magical ritual traveling and being adapted by very different cultures across the world.⁷³

CHAPTER 5

A Tibetan Book of Spells

In this chapter I have translated the complete Tibetan book of spells from Dunhuang. The translation follows the order of the texts in the manuscript itself, which I have divided into nine sections:

Healing mind and body

The Bhṛkutī cycle

The Garuda cycle

The Avalokiteśvara cycle

Controlling the weather

Clairvoyance, fortune-telling, and invisibility

Curing disease in animals

Pregnancy rituals

Final spells and prayer

At the beginning of each section, I summarize the contents and any sources I have been able to identify. These sources are mainly Buddhist scriptures, including the Great Cloud Sutra, the Great Destroyer of the Universe, the Dharani of the Blue-Necked One, and the Bhṛkutī Tantra. The book of spells is no scholarly treatise, and none of these texts is directly referenced, apart from where a banner inscribed with the Great Cloud Sutra plays a role in a rainmaking ritual. Rather, the book gives the impression that these texts were gathered together for purely practical reasons. The impression is very similar to Gideon Bohak’s description of the magical compendiums from the Cairo Genizah, which “contain endless series of magical recipes, each recipe generally preceded by a rubric which explains its aim…and usually with no indication of its (real or imagined) origins.”¹

As we saw in the last chapter, someone identifying himself as Bikkru Pradnya Praba wrote his name across the front of the book, claiming it as his own, which it probably was. The presentation of the texts in the book of spells is clear enough but far from neat, and the state of the manuscript suggests that it was well used. Occasional notes added to the main text help when the ritual omits information on which mantras to recite or which deities to invoke. These notes also suggest alternative materials and clarify potentially disastrous ambiguities in the text. For example, in a ritual to render somebody unable to speak, the text says to write the person’s name on a piece of paper and “put it in the mouth”; the interlinear note gives an important clarification: “your own mouth.”

1. HEALING MIND AND BODY

The book of spells begins with a group of three rituals for curing insanity and illness. They were all written upside down with respect to the rest of the spells, so it is possible that they were actually added last. This set of rituals begins with one for someone with “severe insanity,” to be performed when he or she is afflicted with an episode or fit. The ritual may have been used for a variety of issues, from epileptic fits to psychotic episodes.²

The treatment itself is based on a fire offering, a ritual going back to the Vedas and adopted in many other Buddhist rituals. Metal filings of gold, copper, and iron are thrown into the fire, which creates dramatic and colorful sparks. The patient is restrained by four people and stabbed with the phurbu, a ritual dagger (kīla in Sanskrit) at each of the four extremities and the head. While a metal ritual dagger was probably used, this “stabbing” is almost certainly not intended to wound; it is mainly a symbolic act. Two much briefer rituals for insanity occur later in the next section of the book of spells, and both are described as “stabbing” at the ailment, even though they do not explicitly mention the use of the phurbu, being mainly based on burning incense.

Perhaps the earliest recorded Indic cure for insanity is a prayer in the Atharvaveda; although it does not resemble the ritual here, the prayer is addressed to Agni, the Vedic deity closely associated with the ritual fire.³ There are several different treatments in later medical treatises. I have not seen any that resemble this ritual, but some cures are comparable, if not more violent, and can be characterized as “shock treatments.”⁴

The phurbu is still used by some Tibetan and Mongolian healers for people afflicted with seizures. Larry Peters has described a ritual carried out by the practitioner Abhi Lhamo, in which she uses a fire altar and stabs the feet of the patient with a phurbu. Unlike in the book of spells, she interprets this practice as an exorcism of a hostile spirit. Moreover, Abhi Lhamo not only strikes the patient’s extremities with the phurbu but sucks on the end of it to remove impurities, a common practice among Tibetan and Mongolian shamanic healers. Despite these differences, it is striking that both rituals are applied to a patient undergoing a seizure, and both feature the use of a fire altar and the stabbing of the extremities with the phurbu.⁵

In tantric Buddhism the ritual dagger is closely associated with, and personified by, the deity Vajrakīlaya. The deity is not evoked here by name, despite the central use of the implement itself, though the magic user is instructed to visualize himself or herself as the Wrathful Vajra, which in later literature can refer to Vajrakīlaya. The mantra suggests that other wrathful deities, Vajrarakṣa and Vajrayakṣa, preside over this ritual.⁶

The second ritual in this set is for “a man with urinary retention or a woman with an inverted uterus.” The cause of these internal ailments is not stated, but the ritual overcomes them by evoking billions of wrathful beings which the magic user visualizes coming from a single one of his or her body hairs. As Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer have pointed out, this image is also found in Vajrakīlaya rituals in Tibet.⁷ The main material component of the ritual is a red thread, which is knotted and bound round the waist of the magic user, and then untied and knotted again. The other end is held by the patient while the magic user unties the knots, winds in the thread, and then adds it to a torma (a ritual offering). At the end of the ritual, the torma is flung onto a main road.

The use of thread, ritually knotted and unknotted, is common in Buddhist magical ritual. The ritual here appears to incorporate exorcism, with the casting of the thread and torma onto a road, and there are many similar rituals still practiced in the Tibetan cultural regions in which thread-cross tormas are left at a main road or crossroads.⁸ In a wider comparative perspective, magical practices using thread are also found in many other traditions around the world. For example, the Greek magical papyri contain several rituals in which a thread is knotted and tied to another object of power before being deposited somewhere.⁹

The third and final ritual in this group is intended for patients whose ailments are to be blamed on dragons, which include arthritis, tumors, and leprosy. Possession by dragons was a common fear in India, and in Tibet certain diseases, especially leprosy, are still attributed to their influence.¹⁰ The disease is cured with the use of an effigy shaped like a frog that is hollowed out and filled with a mixture of ointments (as we saw in chapter 4, a similar effigy was observed in a modern rain ritual in Nepal). A visualization describes Hayagrīva appearing as the deity Varuna with an entourage of frogs coming to tame the dragons and clear away the disease. This is a common role for Varuna, a Vedic deity associated with lakes and oceans and often considered the lord of the dragons.¹¹ In the Tibetan Buddhist context, Hayagrīva is propitiated in rituals for curing skin diseases and leprosy up to the present day.

Translation

When someone with severe insanity has an episode, here is the method of the ritual to be performed. Mix together the usual filings, comprising iron filings, gold filings, and copper filings. Four people must grasp the insane person by each of the four extremities. Now make the fire big and scatter in the filings. Afterward, casting the remainder into the fire, recite the heart-mantra: ōm badzra karma ’dzā, badzra yag sha ’dzā, badzra rag sha ’dzā, badzra ’dza ’dza, badzra raksha ’dzā, badzri sa tu dzā. Also, spa ra na spro.

Throw in the filings nine times. Wait through three watches of the night, and at the end, stab the afflicted person with five phurbu, pressing on their four limbs and head. Bind him or her with five-colored thread, hold him or her down by standing on the upper arms, and strike the upper body with your sleeves. Visualize yourself as Vajrakhroda, while reciting the heart-mantra: Om vajra yaksha mane padme hum, karma padme hum, vajra cakra phat. Then step down from the person.

In cases where someone is unexpectedly afflicted, perform the following ritual. Burn gugul and visualize a wrathful deity that is your own yidam. Recite the heart-mantra: ōm badzra kha ta kro da ha na hūm ’dza phaṭ. If you do this three times, it will be sufficient.

It is improper to perform the striking with a young child or a pregnant woman. It is also improper to strike those with a chronic illness. However, if you have to do it for someone like this, perform a protective ritual for their abode, bed, and family members before doing the mantras and striking.

—

Here is the ritual for a man with urinary retention or a woman with an inverted uterus. Tie and untie knots in red thread. Recite the heart mantra: ōm ki li ki li, badzra hūṃ phaṭ hri ha ra, byid dzra hūm. Bind it around your waist. Having untied and knotted it again, have the sick person hold it at one end, and hold it yourself at the other end. Reciting badzra hri ha hūm phaṭ, draw it in, untying the knots and winding the thread. Let go of it, and affix it to a torma. Then fling the thread onto a main road.

While casting out the torma, visualize that from a single one of your fine body hairs, a billion wrathful ones emerge. The obstructive forces in the body of the patient and all hindrances are overcome and purified. Visualize and imagine that along with the torma and the thread, all diseases emerge and are cast out.

—

Here is the method for the ritual for people who are possessed by a powerful dragon or have been attacked by one,¹² and have arthritis, tumors, crippling injuries,¹³ or leprosy. Make a paste from ground barley flour and form it into the shape of a frog. In a cavity made with the top with an arrow shaft, put in ointments of various colors, and seal it up. Place it over the area of pain on the patient, while meditating on your own tutelary deity.

Visualize that Hayagrīva appears from the west as Varuna and his entourage. Led by black emanations, he sits on a throne. Holding a water lasso, he tames dragons and diseases. Then thanks to the frog emanations, all sicknesses are drawn forth and destroyed. Recite, ōm ba ru na ’dza, ba ga bhan a tra, sa man hi, ho ba bha ye svā hā, hri ha hūm.

Lift up the frog, and if a golden liquid emerges from it, the patient will definitely recover. If it is merely moist, then the patient will recover before too long. If there is only meat with gluey flour, the patient will be purified by the end of the illness; it is not necessary to do the ritual again. If there is only gluey flour, separate it and do the ritual again.

Having taken the frog off, place it in front of a spring and make offerings to it with incense.

2. THE BHṚKUTĪ CYCLE

This section of the book of spells is a single cycle of rituals focused on the deity Bhṛkutī. This female deity, also known as the Wrathful Blaze or the Vajra Blaze, features in early Buddhist ritual literature and ritual texts found in dharani collections from Nepal.¹⁴ There are references in Tibetan to a tantra dedicated to her, but I have not been able to locate such a text.¹⁵ Bhṛkutī is sometimes shown in art as an attendent of Avalokiteśvara, along with Tārā, and at other times has been considered a form of Tārā herself.¹⁶ While she is not described in the book of spells, the content here suggests her wrathful form, with four arms holding a renunciant’s staff, a vase, and a rosary.

This group of rituals is the only one in the book of spells that explicitly requires prior training before any of the rituals can be performed: Bhṛkutī’s mantra must be recited a hundred thousand times. The text begins with instructions on how to make the mandala of Bhṛkuti, with a drawing of the deity, and summoning the deity herself to the mandala. This is the setting for the spells that follow. Given that they all have very specific applications, it is unlikely that this cycle of spells would have been practiced as a whole; rather, the mandala would have been set up for a spell to address a specific need.

The opening rituals concern controlling demons, whether warding them off or summoning them to act as servants to the magic user. Subsequent rituals extend this power to pacifying an enemy who intends to do harm, “such as poisoning by snakebite,” and summoning and taming wild animals. The rest of the rituals cover a wide variety of uses, including attracting wealth and finding treasure.¹⁷ The spells here for curing illness rely on purely ritual acts with no medical preparations involved, in contrast to those that appear later in the cycle devoted to Avalokiteśvāra. Other spells are for bringing forth water from a spring, drying up a lake, and reversing the flow of a river, the latter reminiscent of the definition of magic in Apuleius’s Golden Ass, “that the swift rivers might be forced to run against their courses.”¹⁸

This Bhṛkutī cycle of rituals also contains the most obviously violent spell in the whole book, which begins, “If a malevolent person appears, and you want that person to be struck by lightning or a meteor.” This is followed by a series of spells that are less violent but still somewhat agressive, concerned with manipulating and controlling the feelings of others. These include rituals to reconcile two people who are angry with each other and, conversely, to break up two friends or lovers. The ritual practice for some of these comprises the magic user writing the names of the people involved on paper slips and trampling them under his or her feet.¹⁹

Translation

To perform the mantra of Bhṛkutī, make a four-cornered mandala, with each side one cubit in length.²⁰ Consecrate with ground flowers. Place a single vajra in the middle.²¹ Make a drawing of the deity. You should recite the mantra, as found in the original ritual collection, as many times as possible.²² Then lift the vajra one cubit above the ground, transforming yourself from an ordinary person into a noble one. Then, as a vidyadhara, you should recite prayers of aspiration and repentance. When you praise her with hymns, the Wrathful Vajra herself will appear.²³ The physical representation and your visualization should be the same. If you want a prophecy from her, you will get one.

When you use the following mantra, all gods, ogres, and malevolent demons will be tamed, and not a single evil spirit²⁴ will remain. They will not be able to manifest, all will be pure and unpolluted, and everything will be better. According to the tantra, if you want to perform this ritual cycle, it is not appropriate to do so until you have counted the full hundred thousand mantras. You must only do it after you have counted the full number. This is the mantra: ōm bur kur ti.

If you want to summon and control any kind of demon, perform the mudra and say the mantra seven times. All evil demons residing in this world and any other forces²⁵ will come as your servants.²⁶ Pour water into a copper vessel till it is full. Run your finger around the circumference to clear away dust, while reciting the mantra 108 times. Demons will come to you and act as your servants.

To summon and control an ogre, take hold of a rod of peach and a rod of willow. Cut each of them up into a “head,” an upper part, and a lower part. Then boil off half of the water; with the remaining half, cast away the impurities, then put in three ounces each of white frankincense, cloves, and black cumin, and boil. Take the leftovers from the five offerings and pour into a chipped pot. Take the pieces of peach and willow rods and break each third into three, then stir and do 108 recitations.²⁷ Then the ogre will be forced to appear and will come under your control as a servant.

To pacify the harmful intentions of a malevolent person, such as poisoning you by snakebite, go to that person’s house, or wherever he or she lives, and surround it completely with the mantra in small writing. Then recite it 108 times.²⁸ Do this until daybreak and no harm will come to you.

To summon and tame dangerous wild animals, go to where they live and make 1,108 burnt offerings of gugul. The wild animals will assemble and come to your residence, where they will be like domestic animals.²⁹

To bring forth water from a dry spring, surround the spring with purified ash. Then take three handfuls of star water from a well, pouring one each morning through to third. Each morning recite the mantra 108 times, and a great rush of water will come forth.³⁰

If you want to sharpen your insight, recite the mantra 1,108 times. Your insight will become limitless, and you will be able to find anything you want.

To receive all kinds of wealth, perform an appropriate recitation, and visualize various kinds of wealth. You will find them.³¹

To find the location of a precious treasure at the peak of a mountain, place an incense burner on a piece of clean cotton cloth and burn gugul. Take a wrought-iron knife³² and show it to the four directions, then draw a sa in the ground in each of the four corners and set the boundary. Recite the mantra 1,108 times and scatter offering cakes seven times in each of the four directions.³³ If you do this, the treasure gates will open by themselves, and the treasure guardians will come and offer you whatever precious things you desire.

To cure an illness, first it is important to do the appropriate mudras to cure that illness. Make the summoning gesture with the index finger and middle finger of the left hand. On your other palm, trace round and round while pressing down. Raise each of your other fingers. Say the mantra³⁴ 108 times. Then do the mudra seven times while touching the patient’s hand, and he or she will be cured.

To cure a severe illness when death is imminent, first do the mudra that blocks the five pathways.³⁵ With both hands, bend the ring fingers into the palms, and raise the remaining fingers. Say the mantra 108 times.³⁶ If you already performed the earlier ritual, death will not occur and the patient will recover quickly.

To catch an illness-causing spirit in a small trap, write the family name of the sick person on a piece of paper, then place it under the person’s bed and conceal it with dirt. Say the mantra.³⁷ The spirit will manifest and will permanently remain in the impure dirt.³⁸

If you want to stop a curse or an evil sigil, write the name of the sick person on a piece of paper, say the mantra, and the person will be cured.³⁹

To dry up a lake, beat an effigy of a dragon made from gold, silver, or iron while saying the mantra 1,008 times, then throw it in the lake. The lake will dry up.

If you want to reverse a river, making it flow upstream, make an effigy of a duck and throw it into the river, saying the mantra 108 times; the river will flow upstream. If you want it to flow downstream again, on a cairn made of clean⁴⁰ stones, make an effigy of a raven. If you throw this into the river, it will flow downstream again.

If you want to strike down a case of insanity, mix white frankincense with stellera and leopard plant.⁴¹ Recite the mantra 108 times and set the boundary in a fierce manner. The patient will recover quickly.

If a malevolent person appears, and you want him or her to be struck by lightning or a meteor,⁴² make the following mudra: draw the middle finger, ring finger, and little finger of your left hand in to your palm and raise your forefinger; cross your thumb and forefinger across the middle joint. Recite the mantra, then use the mudra to indicate where it will strike. Destruction will come quickly.

In order not to be bitten by a dog, say the mantra seven times over a little meat and drink, and offer it to the dog. The dog’s anger will be pacified, and for the rest of the day, it will not bite you.

To bring a shatru under your power,⁴³ write the person’s family name on a piece of paper, and tread on it with your feet. Recite the mantra 108 times, while trampling on it till it can no longer be seen. After a day, the shatru will be unable to have any malevolent thoughts and will act kindly toward you.

To break up two priya,⁴⁴ tread on both people’s family names with your feet.⁴⁵ If they do not separate, say the mantra two hundred times and visualize the two of them breaking up. The day after you do this, they will break up and will no longer be lovers.

To reconcile two people who are unfriendly, do the same as in the previous ritual,⁴⁶ visualizing the two being reconciled. They will want to reconcile their bhyavahara.⁴⁷

If you want to render another person unable to speak, write his or her name on a piece of paper. After saying the mantra, put it in the mouth.⁴⁸ The person will not be able to talk.⁴⁹

To strike down a case of madness, use this very fierce method: burn gugul and stellera⁵⁰ and entreat the protectors of the four directions⁵¹ to destroy it; scatter the offering cake.

If you want somebody to be friendly with another person, make a mandala of one cubit. In the middle, write the syllable bhrung, and visualize that Vairocana is there. To the left and right of that syllable, write the names of the two people and visualize them sitting there. Visualize that Vairocana puts his arms around the two people, and their minds become harmonious. The mantra for this is ba ko la ka ksha te. If you recite it 108 times, they will become friendly.

To bring people together, in the center, as above, write the syllable ya, and visualize that Yama is there. At the left and right, write the syllable he. In front of each, write the family names of the two people. Visualize that the he syllables argue, and the two people argue, but Yama does not let the fight break out. The mantra is ōm badrza ’dhig hūṃ phaṭ.⁵²

3. THE GARUDA CYCLE

The section of the spell book devoted to the bird deity Garuda contains a detailed divination ritual based on scrying (gazing into a reflective surface), a brief remedy against poison, and a rainmaking ritual. Ritual practices focusing on Garuda are found in both Buddhist and Shaiva sources, and they have their roots in earlier developments in Buddhist magico-medical rituals, as Michael Slouber has shown in a recent study:

The gāruḍam tradition of Tantric snakebite medicine has roots in the Vedic Age and early classical India…. By the fourth century AD, spell books of Buddhist goddesses such as Mahāmāyūrī circulated widely and had mantras that were proto-Tantric in character.⁵³

This development was followed, by around the sixth century, by the emergence of Buddhist ritual texts devoted to Garuda. One of the best known of these is found in the Mañjuśrī’s Original Ritual Manual.⁵⁴ Another, which has only recently been studied, is a dharani text for rainmaking featuring Garuda as the central deity; the ritual manual is called the Vajra Beak Vow.⁵⁵ In the Tibetan book of spells, we find both poison remedies and rainmaking, but the main practice is the mirror divination known as prasena. As we saw in the previous chapter, the prasena mirror divination has been practiced in India, Tibet, and central and East Asia. Very similar divination practices were (and still are) popular in Europe and northern Africa.⁵⁶ The basic technique involves the ritual specialist making a child gaze into a mirror or another reflective object, often a sword or a thumbnail anointed with oil, and then questioning the child as to what he or she saw.

The prasena ritual in the book of spells seems to have been compiled from more than one source; this is evident from the instruction to set up a mandala, which appears three times. Still, the nature of the ritual is fairly clear: First the setting is established, with the mandala and the mirror being set up, and the usual offerings and prayers carried out. During these preliminaries, Garuda is invited into the mirror. This is similar to the way mirrors are used in Tibetan consecration ceremonies, in which the “wisdom being” of the deity is invited into the mirror.⁵⁷

The practice of scrying itself requires the child to be placed in a position facing east and being instructed to gaze at the mirror. Other reflective objects are mentioned in addition to the mirror: a sword, a skull cup filled with moist barley flour, a thumbnail rubbed with lacquer, or a plank of pale wood. After the child has gazed at the object, he or she is questioned. This marks the end of the ritual, apart from a protective practice in which the ritual specialist visualizes mantra syllables on his or her own body and that of the child.

The second part of the Garuda cycle in the book of spells is a brief treatment for poison. As we have seen, curing poison is considered one of the specialities of Garuda, due to his power over snakes. In this case, the cure is not for snakebite but “stationary poison.” According to traditional Indic classifications of poison, stationary poisons are derived from plants.⁵⁸ In the book of spells, the ritual is for someone who has drunk poison or for whom there is some fear that he or she may have drunk poison—in other words, a case of malicious poisoning. The ritual itself is a simple purificatory visualization. Unlike the majority of rituals in the book of spells, this is performed purely through visualization, with no mention of a material element.

The third part of the ritual is for controlling rain. To bring rain, the visualization involves the syllable na, symbolizing the dragons (the na standing for nāga), being crushed by two hung syllables on either side. To dispel rain, the visualization involves a red hung syllable blazing with fire and setting fire to the clouds. A dragon is summoned, caught, and dismissed. Finally, wooden slips are prepared and inscribed with hung and na and placed “as appropriate”; presumably these inscribed slips are placed as the syllables appear in the visualization described in the previous ritual.⁵⁹

Translation

This is the ritual manual of the Sky Soarer.

This is the visualization: On a lake there is a white lotus, which is closed. Then the petals open and Garuda is there, his two legs standing firm on the lotus. He is golden in color, and his two legs are fat and powerful. He has gold earrings and bracelets and a red girdle. His two legs are black. His face is very striking in appearance, like the light of a fire.

When meditating in this way for peaceful rituals, visualize a moon at his heart; for wrathful rituals, a sun.

This is the mudra for protection: Cross your fingers inward; bring together the tips of your middle fingers and raise them; put the tips of your forefingers on the joints of your middle fingers; place your thumbs on under your forefingers and bring the tips together. Raise your hands from your left and right thighs to your waist, to your shoulders, then pull them apart above your head, saying the heart syllable bru eleven times.

Ornament the mandala as best you can. Banish obstructive forces, perform the invitation, and set the boundary. Offer the five kinds of offering and so on. Confess your transgressions, make aspirational prayers, ask for blessings, and again perform the invitation into the vase. After this, perform the invitation into the mirror or other object, do the summoning, and perform the prasena gazing as follows.

Homage to Garuda, King of the Birds.

When the sky is pure without clouds or rain, and you want to see the esoteric prasena, this is the method of meditation. Wash yourself and set up the mandala. Pour perfumed water into a pure clay pot, make an image of the deity, and visualize that it is resting on a white lotus on a lake.⁶⁰

Say the mantra over the white foods and unburnt incense. Rub the ointment on your thumb, while reciting the eleven-syllable mantra. Then anoint the child.

Next, polish the mirror, sword, or thumbnail. Wash yourself, and gaze toward the eastern entrance; make offerings of the five types to the mirror. Then fumigate with gugul.

Reciting the eleven-syllable mantra, wash the pure child, and bless him with the six-syllable mantra. Direct the child toward the eastern opening and place the mirror there. Answers to the questions you have thought about or asked aloud will appear with great clarity within the mirror.

The six-syllable mantra is khkho khkho rta na hum phat. The eleven-syllable mantra is om hi ba khrom na ma khkho khkho rta na hūṃ phaṭ.⁶¹

Set up the four-cornered mandala in a pure place, make offerings, and recite the mantra seven times to the excellent mirror. After this, place the mirror in front of you, show it to the pure child who is at the eastern opening, and make him gaze at it. There, everything happening in the three times will be seen.⁶²

Recite the mantra to the excellent sword seven times. Make the offerings. Place it in front of you and instruct the child to gaze at it. The vision you require will appear there.

It is also appropriate to use moist barley flour. Without crushing it, say the mantra seven times, while mixing it in a skull cup.⁶³ Perform the offering and recitation in front of it. Place the child for gazing; the visions will appear.

The above can also be done on the surface of the thumb. Rub it with two complementary ingredients.⁶⁴ Instruct the child to gaze at it and recite the mantra.⁶⁵

You can also take a good piece of pale wood, three cubits long, and reciting the two mantras given above as many times as appropriate, set it down and anoint it. Having placed it to your left,⁶⁶ recite the mantras and instruct the pure child to gaze at it. When the deity has entered, you should stand it up. Do the five rituals for gazing. While doing this, recite the mantra and visualize the syllables at the six places of yourself and the child for protection. For this, you can use the eleven-syllable mantra.

At the extremities, visualize the syllables kaṃ sha sva in a vertical line. The upper merge into the lowest, and there are svoṃ, svem, sviṃ, svaṃ, svuṃ, svaṃ sva, and svoṃ. Visualize svoṃ on the middle finger, svem on the thumb, sviṃ on the index finger, svu on the ring finger, svaṃ on the little finger, and sva on both palms. Also visualize svoṃ at the heart, sveṃ at the feet, sviṃ on the penis, svuṃ on the navel, svaṃ on the mouth, and sva at the crown of the head. Recite sva sva from time to time until you have done this 108 times.⁶⁷

This concludes the viewing in the oracular mirror.

—

A teaching on the method for the five types of stationary poison.

If someone drinks poison or you have cause to fear that the person may have drunk poison earlier, visualize the six seed syllables on that person’s body, and at the heart, the eleven-syllable mantra.⁶⁸ Visualize that a special white nectar comes from the major and minor extremities. The harm will be destroyed, and the poison will not take effect.

—

If you want to bring down rain, visualize that a blue khang letter transforms into a spherical water mandala. In the center of it is a white lotus with eight petals. On that is a white letter na. To the left and right of that, red hung letters are inscribed. On the petals of the lotus, the dragons themselves, or the letters na are inscribed, with hung placed on their left and right. The two hungs become vajras and crush the body of the king of the dragons. From his body, water emerges and fills the ten directions. Visualize this, reciting the mantra or just hung. If this does not cause rainfall, recite the mantra hung na ga hung and visualize that the two hungs become vajras, while the the na ga becomes a dragon; then the two vajras come together and crush the dragon. If you recite this, rain will certainly fall.

If you want to stop a great rain, first settle in the Great Seal.⁶⁹ Visualize that a red i syllable comes from between your eyes. Then visualize that the i syllable transforms into a moon disc, with a red hung on top of it. Visualize that it is blazing with hung hung flames, which cause a great fire that burns up the three realms. After that, if your eyes see clouds, visualize that all the clouds are on fire. Make offerings with the five kinds of offering, and recite the mantra. Saying hung, summon the dragon, then catch it and bind it with a vajra lasso. After that, let it go, expelling it with your left forefinger. Scatter the torma of the three times. Write hung and na with a pen on small wooden slips and place them as appropriate.

Honoring Vajra Hūṃkāra, rest in concentration. The deity’s body is as before; from his three eyes comes blazing light. Visualize that it reaches all sentient beings and dragons and generates great compassion. To ward off hailstones, incidents of illness, fierce harmful spirits, and other destructive entities, do the mudras and recite the mantra of the Vajra Club.⁷⁰ Visualize that a thorny club with an angry head and frowning wrathful eyes strikes the dragons and demons and repels them.

4. THE AVALOKITEŚVARA CYCLE

There are many Buddhist texts devoted to various forms of Avalokiteśvara that offer medical benefits for the recitation of his mantras and dharanis or actually contain medical treatments. Eye medicine often features in these texts, and in China and Tibet, cataract surgery became closely associated with Avalokiteśvara, even outside of Buddhist contexts.⁷¹ Most dharani texts provide one or two spells and then list the many benefits of reciting the spell, wearing it, or displaying it on a banner. Some of the Avalokiteśvara dharani texts do more than this, with treatments and rituals for specific diseases. The cycle of Avalokiteśvara rituals in this book of spells falls into that category, and it is introduced as “a ritual cycle that combines medicine and mantra.”⁷² Most of the content is drawn from one of the most popular Avalokiteśvara dharani texts, the Dharani of the Blue-Necked One.

This dharani exists in many different versions. It was often included in dharani compendiums in India and Nepal and was translated into Chinese several times. A shorter version of the text became one of the key texts for recitation in Chan monasteries and is still recited by Japanese Zen monks. Manuscripts from Dunhuang show that the dharani spell in the original Sanskrit and written in the Brahmi script was considered especially powerful. For example, there is one manuscript with the spell in Sogdian and Brahmi script, and another with it in Chinese transliteration and Siddham script.⁷³

The longer version of the Dharani of the Blue-Necked One was translated into Chinese in Khotan in the middle of the seventh century by a monk called Bhagavaddharma. This Chinese version was then translated into Tibetan in Dunhuang by the translator Chodrup in the mid-eighth century. This version was preserved in the Tibetan canon, along with another anonymous translation. Chodrup’s Tibetan translation is clearly related to the rituals in this part of the Tibetan book of spells, yet the rituals in the book of spells also differ in many details. Here, for example, is the first ritual in Chodrup’s translation:

If somebody has been possessed by a cat demon, take the burned skull of a cat and mix it with pure earth. Make the mud into the shape of a cat, and place it in front of a statue of the Thousand Eyed One. With a clean knife made from wrought iron, cut it into 108 pieces while saying the mantra 108 times. If with each recitation of the mantra you also name the demon, the patient will be permanently cured.⁷⁴

This version is a direct translation of Bhagavaddharma’s Chinese text, which introduces some oddities in a Tibetan context. The nature of the “cat demon” (byi la’i gdon) is not clear; it is just a literal translation of the Chinese (māoér). In the book of spells, however, the ritual is said to be for someone under the influence of a ghost (’byung po) or tiger-headed ghoul (stag srin), beings with clear roles in Indo-Tibetan demonology.⁷⁵

There are similar differences between other rituals in the dharani and corresponding ones in the book of spells. In general, the book of spells contains more remedies for specific medical problems than are found in the Dharani of the Blue-Necked One. But there are also substantial overlapping rituals, including nonmedical ones, such as the ritual for escaping from confinement using bird droppings. This, and the fact that the book of spells groups these rituals together under the aegis of Avalokiteśvara, strongly indicates that they are closely related. It is a useful illustration of how Buddhist practice traditions are linked with the scriptures but not dependent on them. Compendiums like the book of spells are designed for specific purposes, and the usefulness and efficacy of their practices, not fidelity to scriptural models, is of paramount importance.

Translation

If you want to invite Avalokiteśvara for the ritual that combines medicine and mantra, burn gugul and recite twenty-one times the mantra of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, or the Thousand-Armed One, or the mantra of Amoghapāśa, and the bodhisattva will definitely come.

For one who is under the influence of a ghost, or under the influence of the tiger-headed ghoul, burn the skull of a cat, then mix in clean earth and make the form of a cat. In the presence of an image of the Thousand-Armed and Thousand-Faced One, take a sword made from wrought iron and, saying the mantra, chop up the figure of the cat into 108 pieces. By saying the heart mantra, om hri ha hung phat svaha, illnesses caused by these malevolent beings will be cured swiftly.

For one who is afflicted by demons due to a curse, burn camphor or gugul. Boil one bre of star water. When only a phul is left, in the presence of an image of the Thousand-Armed and Thousand-Faced One or Avalokiteśvara, say the mantra 108 times and give it to the patient to drink. If you do this, he or she will be cured.⁷⁶

If someone is worried about being pursued by a physical enemy with a grudge, use purified earth, barley flour or rice, as available, and make an effigy of that person from it. Using a wrought-iron sword, cut it into 108 pieces, saying the mantra each time, and the name of the person each time. Once you have cut it up and burned it, the enemy’s mind will become benelovent, and after a few days, he or she will be very friendly.

If someone is afraid of the dark at night, take a white string and make a fine thread; tie a knot in it twenty-one times, saying a mantra for each knot. Once every knot has been tied, tie the thread around the person’s neck; if you do this, he or she will no longer be afraid.

If misfortune is constantly visited upon the home of a householder, use a branch or stem of the Nepalese cherry tree, and cut it into 1,008 segments just an inch long; place⁷⁷ them in butter, yogurt, or honey; and burn them. If you do this, all misfortune will be pacified.

If crops or fruit are being eaten by insects, take purified ashes or sand, and throw it while saying the mantra 108 times. Scatter it in the four corners of the field or enclosure, and every kind of insect will disperse. After that, if you recite the mantra over some water and sprinkle it around, all insects⁷⁸ will be repelled.

If a woman has severe childbirth complictions and is in great pain, make a paste of sesame seeds while saying the mantra twenty-one times. If she drinks it, the child will come without complications. If the placenta does not come, do the same again and it will come quickly.⁷⁹

In the case of a twitching eye, a flesh wound inside the eye, or cataracts, grind the leaves of the garlic plant and press out the juice. Say the mantra twenty-one times. Put in indigo, and leave it to soak for a day. If you say the mantra again twenty-one times and pour mixture into the eye, the affliction will heal swiftly.

If the eyeball is damaged, cut, or veiled with red blood so that vision has become unclear, use myrobalan, beleric myrobalan, and emblic myrobalan.⁸⁰ Finely grind each one separately, and perform the purification ritual. Mix them with white honey or human milk. Then in the presence of a statue of the deity, say the mantra 1,008 times and apply to the eye. For seven days the patient should not wander off and should be kept in a dark room. Afterward, the eyes will be as clear as they ever were before.

When making eye medicine, don’t grind it with women or children around and not within sight of dogs or pigs. Recite the mantra of Medicine Buddha Baidurya, and combine this with reciting the name of the buddha. For the milk, milk from the mother of a girl is not suitable.

If the eye has been struck by a bee’s sting, make a paste from the fresh excrement of a donkey,⁸¹ saying the mantra twenty-one times. In the evening, when the patient is going to sleep, it is put in the eye, and it will quickly heal.

If someone is struck by a snake, scorpion, or other poisonous creature, bind the affected area thoroughly. If you say the mantra and wipe the surface of the wound, it will heal quickly. If the person has been struck severely and is confused, falling unconcious, and on the point of death, take a peach-sized amount of the resin of a pine tree and boil it in a bre of pure water. Offer half the water and recite the mantra over the remainder, then have the patient drink it. He or she will heal quickly.

When boiling and mixing the medicine, it is not appropriate for a woman to do the boiling and mixing.

If someone is struck by a camel-headed ghoul, to get the ghoul into a snare say the mantra twenty-one times and make pills out of gugul. Make seven rabbits of different sizes using nothing but excrement. Then say the mantra twenty-one times. When there are none left, the patient will recover swiftly.

When someone is struck by shivering sickness, it is not appropriate to consume “tiger meat,” beer, or onions. Mix together realgar, white mustard seeds, and rock salt while saying the mantra twenty-one times. Burn it under the bed of the sick person. The demon causing the infection will be cracked open and will certainly flee. Over the skin of a leopard or dhole, say the mantra twenty-one times. If the patient wears it, he or she will recover swiftly.

When someone is struck with a serious⁸² skin disease that leaves marks like iron, crush a red cherry tree leaf and grind it into a paste while reciting the mantra twenty-one times. If you apply it to the surface of the skin, the source of the disease will come out, and the patient will recover swiftly.

If someone has a disease of the intestines and is uncomfortable, take a phul of star water from a spring, and drop in twenty-one lumps of rock salt while saying the mantra twenty-one times. When the patient drinks it, he or she will recover quickly.

If there are worms moving about in the intestine, take half a handful of the urine of a white horse. While saying the mantra twenty-one times, have the patient drink it. If it is a very severe case, he or she should drink a full handful. When this is done, the worms will emerge at the lower end, and the patient will recover swiftly.⁸³

When someone’s body has been burned by fire and the heat is unbearable, take the warm dung of a black bull and, saying the mantra twenty-one times, rub it on the surface of the skin. When this is done, the patient will recover swiftly.

When wind has entered the body from one direction, the ear is deaf and blocked, and the canal has become painful, as if it has contracted, mix sesame butter with thistle root, saying the mantra twenty-one times. When you anoint it at the site of the pain, the patient will recover swiftly.

When the pain is in the head, grind in water whatever packets or capsules⁸⁴ you have at hand. Say the mantra twenty-one times while the patient drinks it. Afterward, if the patient’s pillow becomes red, then he or she will recover.

If the pain is currently in the eyes, grind sandlewood in sulphur, saying the mantra twenty-one times. When you rub it on the eyes, they will heal.

When the pain is in the ears, take some sweet flag and, saying the mantra twenty-one times, soak it in water. When you put it in the ears, they will recover.

In the case of a swollen belly,⁸⁵ say the mantra twenty-one times over saltwater. When the patient drinks the water, he or she will recover.

If someone is struck by fever, take a goat’s horn that has been blackened by burning and mix it into water, saying the mantra twenty-one times. When the patient drinks it, he or she will recover.

In a case of gout, mix white mustard seeds with water, saying the mantra twenty-one times. Use it to cleanse the body, and drink it⁸⁶ for the internals as well.

Regarding the mantra for the above, recite the mantra of the Eleven-Armed and Eleven-Faced One, or Amoghapāśa. The heart mantra of Amoghapāśa is om ste’i log kya, a mo ka pa sha ya, a prad ti ha ta, hri ha hum phat svā ha. For a shorter recitation, if you can recite ōm hri ha hūm phat svā ha, it is equivalent to the complete mantra.

The above comprises a single ritual cycle.

—

The mantra for scattering white mustard seeds is om ba dzra la ma ha pa la kro da, ug ga shu la, ’dzo ti ne re na tha hum, ma ha pa la hum hum phat phat svā ha. While reciting this and doing the scattering, visualize that this causes many fierce,⁸⁷ wrathful deities to come from every direction and carry out virtuous activities. Visualize every mustard seed becoming a wrathful one and further limitless wrathful ones coming from every direction. Burn gugul and say the mantra ōm na mo bhig khrim, bin da ma la, dzva la dzva la, pra dzva la, pra dzva la, ki li ki li, ha na ha na, hum hum phat phat svā ha. Recite this seven or twenty-one times, and burn the gugul so it fills the air around the sick person. When it fills the air, all demons and obstructive forces will be scattered in the ten directions, and their heads will burst. Afterward, visualize that, thanks to this demon-taming mantra, they transform into fierce, wrathful deities. Recite the mantra for brandishing the vajra: i dan tad sa rba bu dha shthi, ’gri na han pa myi badzra so si da ye.

—

Here are some other methods. If you wish to be victorious in an argument or a fight, recite the mantra of Amoghapāśa, or the One with a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Eyes, 108 times over white sweet flag. If you bind your upper arm with it, you will be victorious.

If you want the limitless insight of a vidyādhara, take a garlic plant and cut the stalk, including the leaves, into thumb-sized pieces. Anoint the room from the ceiling to the floor with yak butter, white honey, and yogurt from wild cattle. Then for seven days and nights, each day do the full burnt offering three times with 1,008 recitations. Your insight will become limitless.

If you want to be a great sorceror who summons and tames gods, dragons, and demons, make some offering sticks from branches of the soapberry tree. Anoint everything from ceiling to floor with yak butter, white honey, and yogurt from wild cattle. Perform twenty-one burnt offerings in front of the Thousand-Armed and Thousand-Faced One. Take animal bile and ten spoons of yogurt, and mix into flat beer. Say the mantra 1,008 times, and drip this onto your body in individual dots. Gods and dragons, humans and nonhumans, all will come under your power.

If you want to be freed from bonds, take the excrement of a white dove and, saying the mantra 108 times, apply to your hands; just by seizing the bonds with your hands, you will be able to free yourself.

In order to reconcile husband and wife⁸⁸ when there is discord, take two tail feathers of a goose and, saying the mantra 1,008 times, attach them to the couple’s bodies. Then just seeing him will make her happy, and she will come to respect him.

Further, if someone is struck by a snake, take the smelly stuff from the navel of the person who was struck and, saying the mantra twenty-one times, apply it to the surface of the wound. The person will recover swiftly.

The mantra for these is the same as above.

5. CONTROLLING THE WEATHER

As we saw in chapter 3, weather control has been one of the mainstays of Buddhist monastic practice from early in the history of Indian Buddhism. This is reflected in the popularity of the Great Cloud Sutra and the extension of its rainmaking ritual across Asia. The ritual in the sutra involves setting up a blue canopy and constructing a mandala beneath it, ornamented with flowers and other offerings, and with vases of water and images of four dragon kings at the four entrances.⁸⁹

The brief rain ritual in the Tibetan book of spells is clearly based on the one in the Great Cloud Sutra. The basic ritual environment, including the use of the color blue and the layout of the mandala with the images of the dragon kings, is the same. The ritual master is also instructed to read the Great Cloud Sutra aloud. However, the Tibetan text also adds elements not in the original sutra, including the use of visualization and mantras. The instructions give details on what to do if the initial ritual fails, and these additional methods become increasingly wrathful in nature. One involves beating the images of the dragons while reciting the kīlaya mantra, associated with the wrathful deity Vajrakīlaya.⁹⁰

Translation

This is the ritual for bringing rainfall. By a clear lake or pool, put up a clean pavilion or tent. Inside and to one side, build a mandala eight cubits wide. It is best to have the dragons of the four directions already painted on cotton or paper to place at the four directions. If not, then without mixing up south, north, east, and west, draw a white dragon with five heads at the east, draw a blue dragon with nine heads at the south, draw a red dragon with seven heads at the west, and draw a green dragon with eight heads at the north.⁹¹

Then purify the tent with the five precious things, five seeds, and five medicines.⁹²

Take the top portion of the food offerings for the dragons of the four directions and scatter it. Do the same for the protectors of the four directions.⁹³

Plant four arrows in the four corners. Tie the mantra na ga dzdza to the notch of each arrow. Then perform puja with the five kinds of offering.

The vidyādhara mantra expert’s robe, cotton banner, and crown are all to be blue.⁹⁴ Having completed the great cleansing ritual, look toward the scripture of the Great Cloud on the cotton banner and read it continuously, while at the same time offering torma as follows.⁹⁵

Recite na ma sa man ta bu ta nan, ōm sa rba ta tha ga ta, a ba lo ki te sam ba ra sam ba ra hūng, and with this mantra, scatter the offering cakes for the general offering. Summoning the dragons with the mantra na ga dzdza, visualize their presence and offer the puja. Using flowers and up to a bre of milk, perform the purification of poisons, and scatter it at the head of a stream or pond. At the same time, continue to recite and maintain this visualization: imagine that a mountainous cloud, filling the sky, comes from the mouth of the great dragon, and rain continously pours down from it. Recite this mantra: hūng na ga hūng.

Then, if rain does not fall in three to seven days, take a dark blue vase to the middle of the mandala and scatter water in the ten directions. Recite the mantra sa rba na ga a a. This causes a hum to press down on the dragon’s head.

If rain still does not fall, use a rod made of willow or cherry, or whatever is possible, and beat the dragons while saying the kīlaya mantra 108 times.

If that does not suffice, dig a semicircular fire pit, and in the middle of the pit, write hum na ga hum. At the two corners of the pit, write phat phat. Light the fire using thorny wood, and burn salt, black mustard, and flowers. Imagine that all of the dragon realms are consumed in a great blaze and rendered barren, and strike the dragons with your sleeves or hat, while reciting the syllables hūṃ na ga hūṃ.

If that does not suffice either, burn all the effigies of the dragons. If that does not suffice, then it is impossible.

6. CLAIRVOYANCE, FORTUNE-TELLING, AND INVISIBILITY

This section contains five spells for personal powers and accomplishments, including flying, becoming invisible, practicing clairvoyance, summoning demons, and influencing humans. The first two spells are easily the most disturbing, involving the use of tears from a corpse and the tongue of a dead infant. Unlike most Buddhist tantric imagery, it is difficult to consider these spells to be merely using the corpse as a symbol. The instructions are quite precise and practical. Whether the owner of the Tibetan book of spells containing these instructions would ever have carried them out is another matter. Other spells were available, including the third one in this section, which provides many of the benefits of the first two and only requires the use of charcoal and red lotus.

These spells, as we saw in the previous chapter, have much in common with those found in certain tantras, especially the Vajrabhairava Tantra; this association is confirmed by the mantra of Yamantaka used in the second spell. The last two spells, both for invisibility, require the use of a frog and a crow, animals that feature in the spells of the Vajrabhairava Tantra.⁹⁶ However, none of the spells exactly match any from the tantra, and they may have another source in the literature associated with Vajrabhairava.

Translation

Here is another. Take the tears of a recently deceased person and place them in the palm of your hand. Then mix this with the dust from shaking out the mat that was in contact with the laid-out corpse. Say the mantras and perform the mudras to protect the body and set the boundary. If you anoint your eyes, you will be able to see all gods and spirits as far away as nine miles.⁹⁷ If you put it on your ears first, you will be able to hear all sounds. If you put it all over your face, you will be capable of perceiving all visible and invisible things.

And another. Pulling out the tongue⁹⁸ of a child born of incest who died before speaking, put it inside a gold, silver, copper, or clay charm box with an astrological seal. Protect it with whatever mantras and mudras are appropriate. After the first period has passed, dry it in a cave that faces the rising sun and grind it. Then mix it with sesame oil and pound it. For a day, recite the heart mantra of Yamantaka: ōm ka la ru pa hūṃ phat, a, ya man ta ki badzra. After reciting this, at dawn place it in Chinese beer or fragrant beer. If it dissolves, then you will be able to circle round the four continents and rise to the top of the three levels of the sky in the time it takes to snap your fingers, and gods and spirits will come and reveal any treasure you want. If you anoint in the middle of your forehead, it will cause a king, a minister, or any other sentient being to become agreeable. Also, just by looking upon any kind of imp, you will become its master. If you anoint your nose, you will be granted insight into the fates of any sentient beings living in the world. In such ways, you will be granted every kind of power you desire.

And another. On the Tuesday after the thirteenth day of the waxing part of the month, take an ember from a fire that has not yet died. Hold one end and wipe it in order to make it into charcoal. Then on the thirtieth day, mix it with red lotus and eat it. Just by doing this, any king, minister, or sentient being will hear your words, and you will obtain clairvoyance over the whole world. If you anoint yourself between the eyes, then all sentient beings will be attracted to you, and all without exception will come to offer you their wealth. Imps will also be attracted to you and will come to you without having to be summoned. You will have the power to make your body visible and invisible at any time. If you anoint your nose, you will be granted insight into the fates of all sentient beings, as well as all gods and spirits.

On the eighth day of the first month of summer, catch a frog that is going east and bind its feet with string. Leave it in a dark place to dry out. Then, in the middle of the day of the full moon, in the appropriate month, in a vessel made of gold, silver, or jewels,⁹⁹ break it up, then remake it again with dung. After that, bind it with string and dry it out. After doing this three times, it should be thoroughly dried and carefully tied up. Apply little dots of it all over your body or anoint your eyes. You will become invisible.

Defeather the head of a crow and fill it with seeds, then grow them in dark soil. Then standing in front of it, pour in the milk of a dun cow and rainwater. Once the fruits have ripened, cut the flowers and fruits and tie them carefully. Mash them with the milk of a dun cow and anoint your eyes. You will become invisible.

7. CURING DISEASE IN ANIMALS

The spells for the care of livestock in this brief section all involve the mantra of the deity Parṇaśabarī, a Buddhist and Hindu goddess whose name means “leaf-clad woman from the Śabara tribe.” The Śabara were, and still are, a forest-dwelling people in north and northeastern India; whether Parṇaśabarī originated with them or not, she became associated with the ideas of dwelling in nature and the care of livestock. She appears in the All-Accomplishing Hero Tantra, which states that her mantra “removes all misfortunes that afflict bipeds and quadrupeds.” In the Newar Buddhism of Nepal, her dharani is one of seven that are recited each day of the week (her day being Thursday).¹⁰⁰

The spells here form a single ritual relying on the goddess’s mantra and mudra. The ritual involves the washing and sprinkling of scented water; the knotting of sacred threads; and the writing of the mantra on birch bark, which is hoisted on a banner. These elements of the ritual go back to the early dharani literature and are also in the Parṇaśabarī section of the All-Accomplishing Hero Tantra, which suggests writing the mantra on birch bark and wearing it as an amulet.¹⁰¹ However, the specific rituals here are not found in the Dharani of Parṇaśabarī.¹⁰²

Translation

Here is the mantra and mudra of Parṇaśabarī: join the palms of both hands; pull the forefingers and ring fingers inside; and raise the thumbs, middle fingers, and little fingers so they touch at the tips. The mantra is na ma sha ba ra nan, ma he shwa ra nan phi sha tsi pa ra na sha ba ri, par na sha ba ri swā ha.

For purifying sickness in livestock, use the following method. For sickness in cattle, tie a thread to the tail, recite the mantra 108 times while knotting it 108 times, then put it aside and wash the animal with scented water. Then wash it again with the best bathing water, and tie the thread to its head. If you do this, the sickness will be cured.

Furthermore, if harm comes to a whole herd of oxen or sheep, apply this across the enclosure: fill a vase with clean water, recite the mantra 108 times, and wash the animals. If you do this, they will be cured.

In the early morning, go to the feeding area of the cattle and make an offering cake with dung and flowers. Take a new, unused vase, and fill it with water. Say the mantra 108 times, then wash. At the entrance to the enclosure, set up a podium.¹⁰³ On that podium, chop up¹⁰⁴ leaves from the plantain tree and make into a paste with ginger.¹⁰⁵ Fill four more vases with water, saying the mantra 108 times.¹⁰⁶ Have four people scatter the water. All of the cattle will be free from sickness. If you do this for seven days, all sickness in the cattle will be pacified.

For diseases of humans and cattle, write the mantra on birch bark, do the puja, and then attach it to the top of a banner. Mark the thread 108 times, and tie it in knots around the bed of the sick person. Visualize that all obstructive forces are tied up into knots from their tails up. Then untie the 108 knots, while visualizing that 108 wordly deities come to give protection. Visualize that the water in the vase turns into a nectar that burns up all sickness.

8. PREGNANCY RITUALS

This section comprises a single ritual for women wishing to conceive a child and pregnant women concerned for the well-being of their unborn child. As we saw in the previous chapter, this section draws upon the Sutra of the Great Destroyer of the Universe. This sutra is one of the Five Protectors, and like the other texts in this collection, the name Great Destroyer of the Universe probably originally referred to the mantra itself before being personified as a Buddhist deity. There is no visualization of the goddess here; rather we have the usual aspects of Buddhist dharani practice, including preparing a mandala on the ground, knotting threads, and creating an amulet.¹⁰⁷

While the first part of this ritual is clearly drawn from the Sutra of the Great Destroyer of the Universe, the second part, to be performed and visualized by the pregnant woman herself, is not. The sutra itself merely mentions that the spell will cause the head of any transgressors to split into seven parts like the seed of an arjaka plant; the ritual here has developed a more detailed practice around this idea. The verses toward the end are parallel but different; though they match those in the sutra in spirit, one difference is that they specify the birth of a boy. The two mantras, which occupy the same positions in the sutra and this ritual, are the same except for minor variations. So it is clear that the ritual here is a development firmly based on the one in the Great Destroyer of the Universe but incorporating elements for the woman to practice at home and some other minor adjustments.

Translation

If a childless woman wants to have a child, first make a mandala, then sprinkle with ground flowers and mustard seeds. Delimit the circumference with five-colored thread. Then, to allow a woman to conceive¹⁰⁸ and give birth to a child, and to protect its life from being snatched away, do as follows. On the eight and fourteenth days, a monk holding the eight vows should perform a puja.

Clean her body and dress her in new clothes, ornament her with jewelery, and take her into the center of the mandala. Place mustard seeds on top of her head and stay until midnight, reciting aspirational prayers and confession. Recite the mantra of the Great Destroyer of the Universe, holding a five-colored thread and tying a knot for each recitation of the mantra, then untying it again. Once you have knotted and untied the thread 108 times, write the mantra and the name of the mudra of Kinnara, great captain of the yakṣas, on paper and attach it to her. After that, instruct her as follows:

If a demon comes for your unborn child, you must quickly grab a five-pointed vajra and command it with the words, “I bind you with the five fetters and offer you the five kinds of puja.” Make a torma with five kinds of food and sprinkle it with milk. Do this over seven days, each day saying these magic words hundreds of times. Visualize that many unborn children who have been snatched from the womb come from the realm of the four great kings. Bind them with five bindings to make them stay. Then imagine that, fulfilling their vows, many goddesses come from the sky to protect your womb and make your child stay there. When you thwart a demon with this method, its head will burst into seven parts like the fruit of the arjaka.¹⁰⁹

The mantra for bestowing the commitments is tad tya tha, ang ’ge nag ’ge, bya se, se nan ti, bi nan ti, su ru gi ri ge re, sha ba ri, ga ru ni, sha ru ni, gha re lo, bu re la, se ne, a la phe, ta la phe, ra ga ne, pra ha ra sha ne swā hā.

Following the performance of the puja, chant the following to ensure the woman has good fortune:

In the womb, a boy is resting at ease.

Bring tributes, oh powerful ones,

And delight the one in the womb,

A healthy child, free of imperfections.

In the womb, a boy is resting at ease;

May he be born at the appropriate time.

By cutting up the colored thread,

And mixing it with white mustard seeds,

May this unborn child live a long life.

Svāhā

Then say the mantra of Great Destroyer of the Universe, while visualizing that the colored thread is the five buddha families, and the mustard seeds are the bodhisattvas, fertility goddesses, Vishnu, Brahma, and all the other deities.

The mantra for doing the recitation is tad tya tha, bho dho bho dho, nu ma ma ne, pu phu li, la sa le, shi ksha shi ksha, sa rba te sa ga le, dhu ra sa be, du ra ga me, shu ra tra ba te, shu ra bha te, bha ge bha ge, ni ba ri ni svā hā.

9. FINAL SPELLS AND PRAYER

This final section of the compendium contains spells that the magic user might need for his or her own study and practice. They include spells for sharpness of mind and eyesight, a spell to make journeys quicker, and spells to protect the magic user from contagion when dealing with the sick. The spell to sharpen one’s insight or mental acuity (prajñā) is one of three in the book of spells. In this case, the popular reagent sweet flag is chewed as a stimulant. One can imagine that minor rituals for this purpose might have been used by monastic scholars as well as ritual specialists. Spells to aid with reading and memorizing are common in other cultures as well, such as the Jewish magical tradition.¹¹⁰

These final spells are followed by a brief prayer to the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, addressed here as “the youth with five locks, lovely to behold.” The person making the prayer is identified as a vidyādhara, an expert in spells, and Mañjuśrī is the deity who ensures the success of the spells. Thus it is possible that for the magic user who put this book of spells together, Mañjuśrī was the primary deity, or yidam. Alternatively, given the spells for sharpening mentral acuity just mentioned, Mañjuśrī may have been considered the most appropriate patron for the magic user in need of this quality. Furthermore, Mañjuśrī is considered to be the source of the wrathful deities Vajrabhairava and Yamantaka, whose practices feature in some of the wrathful rituals in this book of spells.

Translation

To sharpen your insight, burn agarwood and perform a puja. Take a thumb-sized amount of white sweet flag and chew it while saying the mantra 108 times. Your insight will become sharp. The mantra is na mo a rya ba lo ki te shva ra ya, bod de svad tva ya, ma ha svad tva ya, ma ha ka ru ni ka ya, tad tya tha a ran te, pu na ne, pa ban se re a rya pa lo svā hā. ¹¹¹

To sharpen your eyesight, visualize that a sun disc comes from the syllable ma at your right eye, and a moon disc comes from the syllable a at your left eye. Then light radiates from both of them and is reabsorbed, becoming the syllable hri. The hri transforms into Avalokiteśvara. While visualizing this, recite the mantra ōm ma tha ma tha, tsag kshu tsag kshu, hūṃ. Do this as much as you are able, and you will gain sharp sight.

If you want to cut down the length¹¹² of a journey, then while standing in front of a statue, take pure vegetable oil and rub it on your feet, saying the mantra 108 times. You will be able to walk forty miles in a day.¹¹³ The mantra is na mo rad na tra ya ya, sya, ma ha ya ksha se na pa ta ye sya, na mo badzra pa ne sya, tad thya tha, a ra re, pa ra re, gud tu ru, gud tu ru svā hā.

If you need to strike in order to protect yourself when you are with a sick person, perform the mantra and mudra of the indestructible vajra. The mantra is ōm bur kur, ma ha prad na nge, bur tsi bur, byad kyi bo, ma na se, u cu rma kro da, hūṃ hūṃ phaṭ phaṭ svā hā. For the mudra, bend the index finger and middle finger of your left hand toward the palm, raising the ring finger, little finger, and thumb. Recite the mantra 308 times, doing the mudra seven times, and make the sick person do the same. Then make a vajra fist, raise your index finger, and place it on the point where the illness is most painful, pressing down. At the same time, say the mantra. This is the mudra for curing illness.

The mantra for removing obstructive forces is ōm badzra mu shthi hum. For the mudra, make vajra fists and bring them together at your heart, doing this exortation three times. Visualize that all obstructive forces are crushed between vajra rocks and run away.

The mantra for protecting the body is ōṃ badzra u shni sha ra ka ksha hūm. For the mudra, interlace the ring fingers and little fingers of both hands; bring the middle fingers together at the tips and raise them; draw the index fingers in and bring their backs together; and cross the thumbs and press them with the index fingers. Then bring the hands to the previous position and spread. This is for protection of the body.

—

From the supremely precious, jeweled Land of Unsurpassable Bliss,

The realm radiantly colored like stainless gold,

Comes the youth with five locks, lovely to behold;

By making offerings and inviting this supreme spiritual friend,

I pray that he will come, drawn by his compassion for this place,

And ensure the accomplishment of these spells.

I have been blinded by the net of darkness

So many dear ones have not been compassionate toward me

Your discernment, like the fire at the end of an aeon,

Clears away my mind’s ephemeral darkness; oh, please bestow it.

Please direct your attention toward this vidyādhara

And carry out these spells,

While holding me with the burning fire of your compassion.

Please emanate the marks and signs,

And send forth your many magical emanations.

AFTERWORD

I came to the topic of Buddhist magic almost by accident. One among hundreds of Dunhuang manuscripts that I was cataloging at the British Library turned out to be a book of spells. Fascinating as this was, I had to leave it behind to work on other things. Several years later, I came across a description of a ritual performed by a Buddhist in the highlands of Nepal, which looked very like one of those in the Dunhuang manuscript. I was struck by how this ritual had survived, almost unchanged, for a thousand years.

It was this discovery that made me realize that magic might be a thread running through Buddhist practice. As I began to understand the importance of magic in Buddhism, I also began to wonder why so little has been written about it by scholars and practitioners in the West. It occurred to me that no Buddhist books of spells like the manuscript from Dunhuang had been translated into English, and this made it difficult to see the presence of magical practices in Buddhism. When I began to look into the sources for this book of spells—in sutras, dharanis, and tantras—I saw that it could be a “way in” to the whole history of Buddhist magic.

The book of spells from Dunhuang stands right in the middle of the history of Buddhist magic. Its sources reach back nearly a thousand years, connecting with the earliest surviving Buddhist scriptures, the birch-bark scrolls from Gandhara, but it also points forward, connecting with practices observed now in China, Nepal, Tibet, Burma, and Thailand. The strong presence of magical practices in Theravada Buddhist countries was not a complete surprise to me, but I had not realized how such practices were also part of a shared Buddhist tradition going back many centuries.

Why does this matter? As I discussed in the introduction to this book, the story of the West’s appropriation of Buddhism involved a lot of judgment of what real Buddhism was, which often meant criticizing Asian practitioners, especially laypeople. In the view of these Western interpreters, wearing amulets, dealing with spirits, consulting divination experts, and the like were local degenerate practices that had nothing to do with true Buddhism. European scholars focused on the doctrinal texts of the various Buddhist traditions and tended to identify those of the Theravada as being the closest to original Buddhism. The ritual and magical practices that were evident everywhere in Theravada countries were almost completely ignored in the works of these scholars and thus played little part in the West’s growing understanding of Buddhism.

In some ways we have come a lot farther than those earlier attitudes, and in other ways, we have not progressed at all. Thanks to the success of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, there is a much greater acceptance of the role of ritual practice. As the study of ritual has come into vogue in academia in recent decades, the study of Buddhism has also become more receptive to the world of ritual as well as doctrine. Yet we also have new movements repackaging Buddhist meditation techniques for a secular audience, promoting the aim of achieving mental stability but removing almost everything else. While courses in mindfulness have no doubt helped many people, this could also be seen as the final success of that early European project to extract the true essence of Buddhism from the dross that surrounded it.

From the point of view of practitioners of mindfulness, as well as those Buddhists who “just do meditation,” the varied practices of Asian Buddhists can be seen as a lot of cultural baggage that is not really Buddhist. It is this view that I want to challenge by showing that the practices I have been calling magic go far, far back in the history of Buddhism—as far back as we can go, in fact. I do not mean to say that meditation is not important in Buddhism—it is, along with ethical behavior and the understanding of karma and rebirth that informs those ethics. Philosophy is important too, but it has had little impact on the lives of the vast majority of Buddhists over the last two and half millennia.

We might want to say that there is no place for magic in modern Buddhism, but we should also be clear that for the vast majority of practitioners, divination, amulets, and the world of spirits are still very much part of their experience of being Buddhist. There might be an argument for a different kind of Buddhism that does not include dealing with these aspects of life, but that would be something quite new, not a return to a mythical pure, original Buddhism. If we want a different kind of Buddhism, we should also consider the ways in which Buddhist magic has eased suffering, if only temporarily, and built bridges between the high aims of Buddhism and the everyday needs of the people who support it.

Engaging with the role of magical practice in Buddhism is not always easy, especially when dealing with aggressive, even lethal spells, and the use of animal and human parts in ritual concoctions. Encountering these practices can be disturbing, even disillusioning, but I think it is important to see the whole view. Buddhists have been very aware of the ethical issues that come with the possession of knowledge and power. There is the famous story of the ship’s captain who killed a thief to save the lives of his passengers. And in Tibet there is the story of Milarepa, a young man whose use of aggressive magic to avenge his family became a turning point in his life, leading to an existence focused on atonement, renunciation, and compassion.

Seeing the whole picture also means knowing that aggressive spells amount to a small fraction of Buddhist magical literature in general, far less than spells for protection and healing. When we talk about Buddhist magic, we are usually talking about cooling a fever, easing a painful birth, protecting a harvest from hail, or taming a threatening demon. These are the kinds of service that Buddhist magic users have always offered their clients—alleviating pain and calming anxiety. From this point of view, we can see how the needs fulfilled in Asian societies by Buddhist magic are addressed by other kinds of practices now offered in Western Buddhist contexts. Perhaps after all, mindfulness and other therapeutic offshoots of Buddhism are the closest thing to Buddhist magic in contemporary Western societies. But it is worth remembering that Buddhist magic never displaced other teachings of Buddhism in its long history in Asian societies.

For me, the most surprising find in the study of Buddhist magic has been the connections that have emerged between Buddhism and other cultures across the world. In response to the same human needs, Buddhists in Asia have come up with similar solutions to those found in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. In a few cases, they have used the same solutions, rituals that have traveled many thousands of miles. It was fascinating to discover that much the same divination ritual that has been used to identify the Dalai Lamas in Tibet was also being practiced by medieval English priests. Magic is our shared heritage.

KEY TERMS

This section lists Tibetan or Sanskrit equivalents for important words and titles that I have translated into English in this book. The first two sections are all key terms from the Tibetan book of spells and are provided for readers who may be interested in the original Tibetan behind the English words I have used. The reagents that are used in the spells are not always easy to translate into English, and in some cases I have had to use sources much later than the book of spells itself, so it is especially important to refer to the original Tibetan here. The list of the names of supernatural beings summarizes the discussion in chapter 4, where I explained the rationale for using names from European mythology for Indo-Tibetan creatures. The third section contains the names of Buddhist texts translated into English along with Sanskrit original titles. These have been provided to clear up any ambiguity about which text the English titles reference. Since there are often several different versions of Sanskrit titles for each text, I have given the best known, and usually the shortest title for each text. The titles in this section are found throughout the chapters of this book, rather than just in the translation of the book of spells.

REAGENTS (ENGLISH–TIBETAN)

agarwood, aloeswood: a ga ru

animal bile: ’gi’i wang

beer: chang

Chinese beer: rgya chang

flat beer: chang phom

fragrant beer: chang zhim po

birch bark: gro ba

black cumin: sa ci ra

camphor: ga pur

cherry: se’u

cloves: li shi

cotton: ras

dung: sbangs

excrement: rtug pa

garlic plant: khe’u khi / ki’u ki

gugul (Indian bdellium): gu gul

indigo: rams

leopard plant (Ligularia virgaurea): ri sho ma

myrobalan (Terminalia arjuna): a ru ra

beleric myrobalan (Terminalia bellirica): ba ru ra

emblic myrobalan (Phyllanthus emblica): skyu ru ra

ordure: dri

paper: shog shog

peach: kham bu

pine tree: thang shing

realgar: ldong ros

red ochre: gtsag

resin: thang chu

rock salt: lan tsha gru bzhi pa

sandalwood: can ’dan

white sandalwood: can dan dkar po

sesame seeds: zar ma

soapberry tree (Sapindus mukorossi): lung tang

stellera (Stellera chamaejasme): re’u lcag ma

sulphur: mu

sweet flag: shu dag

white sweet flag: shu dag dkar po

thistle root (Saussurea costus): ru lta

tiger meat (herb of the genus Oxytropis): stag sha

vegetable oil: bru ma

white frankincense: pog

white mustard seeds: yungs dkar

willow: lcang ma

SUPERNATURAL BEINGS (ENGLISH/SANSKRIT–TIBETAN)

demon: gdon pa

dragon (nāga): klu

ghost (bhūta): ’byung po

ghoul (rākṣasa): srin po

camel-headed ghoul: phung srin

tiger-headed ghoul: stag srin

gods and spirits: lha ’dre

imp: sri

ogre (yakṣa): gnod byin

spirit: ’dre

spirit causing infection: ’dre ’go

BUDDHIST TEXTS (ENGLISH–SANSKRIT)

All-Accomplishing Hero Tantra: Siddhaikavīra tantra

Amoghapāśa Dharani: Amoghapāśa dhāraṇī

Amoghapāśa’s King of Ritual Manuals: Amoghapāśavidyārāja

Brahma Net Sutra: Brahmajāla sūtra

Buddha’s Armour: Jinapañjara

Crown Parasol Dharani: Uṣṇīṣasitātapatrā dhāraṇī

Crown Victor Dharani: Uṣṇīṣavijāya dhāraṇī

Dharani Compendium: Dhāraṇī saṃgrāha

Dharani of the Blue-Necked One: Nīlakaṇṭha dhāraṇī

Dharani of Parṇaśabarī: Parṇaśabarī dhāraṇī

Five Protections: Pañcarakṣā

Great Amulet, Queen of Spells: Mahāpratisarā vidyārājñī

Great Cool Grove: Mahāśītavatī

Great Cloud Sutra: Mahāmegha sūtra

Great Mantra Specialist: Mahāmantrānusāriṇī

Great Peacock Feather, Queen of Spells: Mahāmāyūrī vidyārājñī

Lotus Sutra: Saddharmapuṇḍarīka sūtra

Mañjuśrī’s Original Ritual Manual: Mañjūśrīmūlakalpa

Perfection of Wisdom Sutra: Prajñāpāramitā sūtra

Secret Gathering Tantra: Guhyasamāja tantra

Sutra from Atanata: Āṭānāṭīya sūtra

Sutra on Fetal Development: Garbhāvakrānti sūtra

Sutra of Golden Light: Suvarṇaprabhāsa sūtra

Sutra of the Great Destroyer of the Universe: Mahāsāhasrapramardana sūtra

Sutra of Manasva, King of the Nāgas: Manasvināgarāja sūtra

Sutra of Skillful Means: Upāyakauśalya sūtra

Vajra Beak Vow: Vajratuṇḍa samaya kalparā

Vajra Tent Tantra: Vajrapañjara tantra

Vajrabhairava Tantra: Vajrabhairava tantra

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. On this topic, with particular attention to the archaeological evidence, see Decaroli 2004. On the early magical manuscript, see Strauch 2014.

2. Cuevas 2015, xx.

3. The powers quoted here are one of several categorizations mentioned in Jamgon Kongtrul 2005, 112–13.

4. For a detailed and insightful discussion of the colonial appropriation of Theravada Buddhism, see Crosby 2013, chapter 1.

5. Bohak 2008, 36.

6. A recent exception to this is Silhé 2013. Another important work for assessing Buddhist practice “on the ground” from an economic point of view is Gernet 1995.

7. McDaniel 2011, 118.

8. Ibid.

9. While the first two-volume edition of The Golden Bough was published in 1890, the complete work in twelve volumes was not published until 1915. The versions available nowadays tend to be single-volume, abridged editions.

10. Frazer 1990, 12.

11. Wittgenstein 1993, 119.

12. Vigrahavyāvartanī 26: yadi kācana pratijñā syān me tata eṣa me bhaved doṣaḥ/ nāsti ca mama pratijñā tasmān naivāsti me doṣaḥ/ /.

13. Durkheim 2008, 42.

14. This process is discussed in chapter 2.

15. Martin 2011, 74.

16. See, for example, Naomi Lamoreaux (2006), who argues that the study of individual cases and the complexity to which such study leads must be simplified and placed in broader historical contexts.

17. Ginzburg, Tedeschi and Tedeschi 1993, 33.

18. Collins 1987, 195.

19. The British sociologist Anthony Giddens (1984) developed a theory of what he called “structuration” based on Collins’s insights and emphasizing the fundamental interdependence between the micro and macro level, individual agency and social structure. In this influential view, structure is not fixed but always in a state of change, under the influence of individual acts at the micro level; yet those individual actions are themselves constrained and motivated by structures.

20. I have discussed the model of interaction ritual chains in the transmission of Vajrayana Buddhism in Central Asia in van Schaik 2015b.

CHAPTER 1: MAGIC ACROSS CULTURES

1. Perhaps the closest general term to the class of magical rituals is “worldly” (laukika), as used by some Sanskrit authors to refer to a class of spirits and rituals. However the concept of laukika was not much used by Buddhist writers, who used more specific terms. For example, the word siddhi is used to refer to powers derived from meditation practice, while abhicara indicates aggressive magical practices. In Tibetan Buddhist culture, the world ’phrul can refer to magical illusion but also to more mundane tricks and deceptions. Then there is mthu, which literally means “power” but is used to denote aggressive forms of magical ritual. Bryan Cuevas (2010, 170) also suggests the Tibetan term las sbyor as being close to our concept of sympathetic magic; however, I am not aware of it being used in this way in any early sources. In all these cases, each term indicates phenomena within the corpus of what I am calling magic but not the whole range of practices.

2. The discussion of family resemblances is in Philosophical Investigations sections 66–67 (Wittgenstein 1997). The philosophical context is discussed in detail by G. P. Baker and G. M. S. Hacker (2005, 208–10), who trace the notion of family resemblance between languages to the early study of Sanskrit:

That the affinities between a variety of languages (a family of languages) can be explained in terms of a common descent from Sanskrit was a hypothesis made prominent by Sir William Jones’s lectures, which in turn influenced Friedrich Schlegel; thereafter the metaphor of family was commonly applied to relationships between languages.

After this, family resemblances between languages were also discussed by Nietzsche, but Wittgenstein was the first to use the phrase to talk about a way of understanding concepts within a language (Baker and Hacker 2005, 210–11). In the Buddhist context, Jonathan Silk (2002) has suggesting family resemblance as a way of addressing the difficult question “What is Mahayana Buddhism?”

3. Wittgenstein 1997, §66.

4. A recommended read on this topic is Grimoires by Owen Davies (2009); however, this work does not deal with Asian books of spells and, chronologically, is mostly concerned with the Renaissance onward.

5. The Atharvaveda is known in two recensions, the Śaunakīya and Paippalāda. The former was the basis for late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century editions and translations, while the latter has received more attention in recent decades after the discovery of a reliable manuscript of the text in the mid-twentieth century. An important early critical edition of the Śaunakīya recension was created by William Dwight Whitney (Whitney and Lanman 1905), and an edition of part of the Paippalāda recension was more recently published by Arlo Griffiths (2009). The most accessible, if not entirely accurate, English translation is probably still the partial translation by Maurice Bloomfield (1973, originally published 1897). On the dating of the manuscripts, see Griffith 2003.

6. Bloomfield 1973, vii–xvi.

7. Atharvaveda vi:42, translated in Bloomfield 1973, 136.

8. Atharvaveda vii:37, translation in Bloomfield 1973, 96.

9. Bloomfield 1973, 2.

10. Lubin 2013.

11. On the Artharvavedins and their later eclipse by tantric practitioners, see Sanderson 2007.

12. On this development, see Bronkhorst 2010.

13. The study of the medical practices associated with the Atharvaveda in Buddhist monasteries is described in the accounts of Chinese pilgrims; see Zysk 1998, 47. The medical practices of the Atharvaveda are explicitly recommended in some Sanskrit Buddhist treatises (personal communication with Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, November 2018).

14. Poo 1993, 227.

15. See the discussion in Harper 1996 and Csikszentmihalyi 2006, 116–17.

16. Jie verse 25, translation from Harper 1996, 246.

17. Jie verse 37, translation from Harper 1996, 248.

18. Jie verse 44, ibid.

19. Harper 1996, 243.

20. Csikszentmihalyi 2006, 156–59.

21. The groundbreaking study on divination and the use of talismans in Chinese Buddhism is Strickman 2002. For exploration of the manuals of divination and related practices found among the Chinese Dunhuang manuscripts, see Kalinowsky 2003. For the interface between Buddhism and Daoism in these manuals, see Mollier 2008.

22. Geller 2010, 5–6.

23. Foster 1996, vol. I, 119.

24. Schwemer 2011, 421–22.

25. Schwemer 2011, 425.

26. Schwemer 2011, 427.

27. Schwemer 2011, 428–29.

28. Geller 2010, 9.

29. Farber 1995, 1903–4.

30. Foster 1996, vol. II, 877.

31. One of the papyri (PGM III) was collected by another person, Jean Francois Mimaut. See Betz (1986, xlii) on the original source of the papyri; though Betz states it is highly likely that the manuscripts came from the same source and were probably assembled by a Theban magician or scholar, this seems to be pure speculation.

32. Betz 1986, 91. Translated by E. N. O’Neil from PGM IV.2797–2806.

33. Betz 1986, 92. Translated by E. N. O’Neil from PGM IV.2880–2890.

34. Johnson 1986, lv, lvii.

35. Betz 1986, 103. Translated by D. E. Aune from PGM V.121–134. NN here is a notation to include the name of the person for whom the ritual is being practiced.

36. Betz 1986, xlvi.

37. Bohak 2008, 12–13.

38. These three manuscripts are T-S K1.28, K1.91, and K1.117.

39. Quoted in Bohak 2008, 78–79.

40. On the material culture of Jewish magic, see Rebiger 2018.

41. Wasserstrom 1992, 165.

42. Kieckhefer 2014, 65–66.

43. Hall 2007, 173–75.

44. Kieckhefer 2014, 6–8.

45. Kieckhefer 2014, 56.

46. Betz 1986, xli.

47. The diffusion of the magical practice of mirror-scrying is discussed in chapter 4.

48. See the translation of this tantra in Dharmachakra Translation Committee 2016a.

49. Sometimes, individual spells were copied out on their own, and in these cases the written version of the spell might have been part of the process of casting the spell. This issue has been explored in the context of Jewish magic by Bill Rebiger (2018).

CHAPTER 2: MAGIC, MEDICINE, AND THE SPREAD OF BUDDHISM

1. Skilling 1992, 168. On the Central Asian manuscript versions, see Sander 2007.

2. The Sanskrit name is Uṣṇiṣavijāya, whereas in Pali it is Uṇhissavijaya. See the volume on the Pali text edited by Claudio Cicuzza (2018).

3. Strauch 2014.

4. Skilling 1992, 163.

5. Skilling 1992, 113.

6. Skilling 1992, 116–17.

7. Esther-Maria Guggenmos (2017) discusses this passage, which she calls “the list of magic and mantic practices” across different translations of the Brahmajāla sūtra and another sūtra, the Sāmaññyaphala sūtra, that contains the same list.

8. From Brahmajāla sutta 21, translated by Bhikku Bodhi (2007).

9. From Brahmajāla sutta 26, translated by Bhikku Bodhi (2007).

10. From Brahmajāla sutta 27, translated by Bhikku Bodhi (2007).

11. See Davidson 2017b on Indian practitioners of magical ritual who were not aligned to a particular religious tradition.

12. Langenberg 2013, 340.

13. From Brahmajāla sutta 27, translated by Bhikku Bodhi (2007).

14. Prohibitions against monks and nuns using healing, divination, and other such practices among the lay community are also found in the Vinaya. However, where we have evidence of actual practice, such as in the manuscript collection from Dunhuang, it is clear that these prohibitions had little impact. See Hao Chunwen 2010.

15. Oskar von Hinüber (1996, 4) points out that the earliest Pali text fragments survive in carvings on gold or silver folios. There is also a manuscript fragment from Nepal dating from the eighth or ninth century, but the continuous manuscript tradition is not represented until the late fifteenth century. As von Hinüber (1996, 5) also points out, Pali was not the language used by the Buddha and his disciples, and it is clear that the texts have been recast into their present linguistic shape.

16. Harrison and Hartmann 2014, xv–xvii.

17. Salomon 1999, 77–86.

18. On the Gandhari manuscripts, see Salomon 1999. On the magical text, see Strauch 2014, 75–81. He points out the similarities between this mantra and the Mahāmāyūrī spell. There is also an intriguing reference in the Pali canon to “Gandhārī spells” (Pali gandhārī vijjā), suggesting that Gandhara was known for magical practices: Kevaṭṭa sutta in the Digha nikaya 11.

19. Salomon 2014, 11.

20. The preceding paragraphs are based on the groundbreaking work done on these manuscripts by Lore Sander; see especially Sander 1991 and 2012.

21. On the relevance of Mātṛceta’s works for the bhakti movement, see Hopkins 2002, 136. On the development of the personified images of the Buddha, see DeCaroli 2015.

22. Varṇārhavarṇastotra II.9; translation in Shackleton Bailey 1950, 681.

23. Sander 2007.

24. This is discussed in Harrison and Hartmann 2014, x–xi.

25. Meulenbeld 2000, 4.

26. Meulenbeld 2000, 6–8.

27. See Wille 2014, 206.

28. Hoernle 1897, 214–15.

29. Hoernle 1897, 222–39.

30. Wille 2014, 207.

31. This point has been made by Nathalie Monnet (2017).

32. Pollock, 2009, 14.

33. Johannes Bronkhorst has even more explicitly denied the relevance of Sanskrit outside of South and Southeast Asia. In a criticism of the discussion of Sanskrit by the linguist Nicholas Ostler, Bronkhorst asserts that Sanskrit did not spread to Tibet, China, Korea, or Japan, saying that “there are no Sanskrit inscriptions, nor do we have any reason to believe that any Sanskrit texts were composed there” (Bronkhorst 2010, 45). This is, in fact, untrue; see, for example, Ryūichi Abé (1999, 118–19) on Sanskrit education in Japanese Buddhism, and Peter Verhagen (2001) on Sanskrit grammatical literature in Tibet.

34. For a full report on the Miran fragment, see van Schaik 2015a. Apart from this fragment, a full discussion of the three types of adhikaraṇa is not seen until the Nyāsa of Jinendrabodhi (eighth century); on the latter, see Joshi and Roodbergen 1995, 128.

35. On Sanskrit grammatical manuscripts from Central Asia, see van Schaik 2015. On Sanskrit grammar in Theravada Buddhist cultures, see Crosby 2013, 73–74. On Sanskrit grammatical literature in Tibet, see Verhagen 2001.

36. This is a simplified form of the argument made by Kate Crosby (2013, chapter 3) regarding the use of Pali grammars in Theravada meditation practices and the creation of yantras.

37. von Hinüber 2014, 81.

38. Williams 2009, 203.

39. English translation in Gernet 1995. There, the phrase is translated as “the circuit of giving” (Gernet 1995, 195).

40. Gernet 1995, 196.

41. von Hinüber 2014, 80–81.

42. Hidas 2012, 205–8.

43. Translation in Hidas 2012, 208.

44. von Hinüber 2014, 80n10. He disagrees with Gregory Schopen’s (2009) argument that Gilgit was primarily a book depository (like the Cairo Genizah) rather than a monastic residence. Schopen’s argument is based on statements in the sutras indicating that books copied by Buddhist scribes were then given to lay sponsors and kept in the latter’s homes. But as Schopen himself has argued extensively elsewhere, what is said in the sutras should not be taken at face value as describing the practices of actual Buddhists.

45. Hidas 2012, 34.

46. In John Keischnick’s (1997) study of these biographies, he approaches them as idealized models rather than attempting to use them as historical sources, stating that his work is “a study of the monastic imagination” (Keischnick 1997, 1).

47. Zürcher 2007, 181.

48. Wright 1948, 325.

49. Translation from Wright 1948, 341–42.

50. Wright 1948, 339.

51. Translation from Wright 1948, 337.

52. Wright 1948, 346.

53. Translation by Imre Galambos from juan 2 of the Gaosengzhuan (unpublished).

54. Zysk 1998, 38.

55. Zysk 1998, 48–49

56. Zysk 1998, 44.

57. Zysk 1998, 19–20.

58. Tambiah 1985, 83–86.

59. Zysk 1998, 47. Here Zysk is drawing on the report of Buddhist India composed by Xuanzang, who was in India in the middle of the seventh century.

60. Shaw 2013a and 2013b.

61. Rees and Yoneda 2013.

62. Granoff 2001, 121.

63. Schopen 1992.

64. Gernet 1995, 141. On the Dunhuang social scene, see Hao 2010. The latter argues that only relatively high-ranking monks and nuns participated in religious services to the laity at Dunhuang, but this is a different context to the specific ritual services of divination, healing, weather control, and so on. Here, Hao (2010, 93) is referring to group rituals that most monks and nuns would only participate in a few times each year, while the highest ranking would participate in, at most, nineteen a year.

CHAPTER 3: SOURCES OF MAGIC IN BUDDHIST SCRIPTURE

1. On the dating of early Mahayana sutras, see Karashima 2015, 166. As Jonathan Silk (2002) has argued, it is probably misleading to talk about “the” Mahayana as the early sutras comprised a variety of different groups using different scriptures and engaging in different kinds of practice.

2. Translation from Kubo and Yuyama 2007, 305.

3. Hidas 2012, 245.

4. This ritual in the Suvarṇaprabhāsa sūtra has generally been interpreted as one in which a person bathes behind a statue of the Buddha, but it is more likely to be an example of the much better known ritual of bathing a statue of the Buddha. The line in question is bhagavataḥ pṛṣṭhataḥ snātvā (Skjærvø 2004, 178). Here pṛṣṭhataḥ can mean “behind, the back of” but also “surface.” The Tibetan translation snam logs can mean “behind” but also “all over.” And if we do take the meaning as “behind” or “the back of,” this can also be read as having bathed the back of the bhagavat, i.e., the last part of the statue to be bathed. On the popularity of the practice of bathing an image of the Buddha, and the sutra that describes the practice (T.698 in the Chinese canon), see Boucher 2007, 59–68.

5. Translation from Emmerick 1992, 46.

6. On the development of the mandala in Buddhism, see Wang 2018.

7. Translation from Emmerick 1992, 31.

8. See van Schaik 2014.

9. Fa-Hien 1886, 23.

10. See Hidas 2013.

11. On the archaeological evidence for Buddhist nāga rituals, see Shaw 2013a and 2013b. See also Brian Ruppert’s discussion (2002, 148–49) of Chinese pilgrim accounts of rainmaking rituals in Buddhist monasteries in India.

12. This is evident from the observations of Daniel Overmeyer (2009, 18–31), though he does not make the connection explicit.

13. Bendall 1880.

14. Ruppert 2002.

15. On the Perfection of Wisdom sutras as ritual texts, see Yi Ding 2019.

16. See, for example, Davidson 2017a and Hidas 2007, 2012, and 2013.

17. This description is taken from Meisezahl 1962, based on his edition of the Amoghapāśanāma-dhāraṇī found in the Dunhuang compendium Pelliot tibétain 49. This text forms the first part of the Amoghapāśa-kalparāja (Hidas 2015, 132–33).

18. See Hidas 2007, 190–91, and Hidas 2012, 23–24.

19. Shaw 2015, 278–80.

20. This translation is taken from the Dunhuang Tibetan manuscript IOL Tib J 323, 4r–4v. This is an earlier and somewhat shorter version of the text to those in the Tibetan canon; see Dalton and van Schaik 2006, 53–54.

21. IOL Tib J 323, 10r–10v.

22. Harrison and Hartmann 2014, x–xi.

23. The Chinese title is Tuoluoni zaji (T.1336). See Hidas 2012, 7.

24. Copp 2014, 233. The legend of a lost hundred thousand–verse urtext continued with the tantras proper, such as the Hevajra tantra; see, for example, Sonam Tsemo’s Establishing the Four Categories of Tantra, 37b (English translation in Sonam Tsemo 2012).

25. Hidas 2007, 202n59.

26. On early printing, see van Schaik 2016, 171. On printed dharanis, see Copp 2014. Hidas (2014) also discusses examples of printed dharanis.

27. On the Chinese transcription of Sanskrit, see Harrison and Coblin 2012.

28. Translation from Abé 1999, 395.

29. See Copp 2014.

30. Hidas 2012, 8–9.

31. Hidas 2019a.

32. The appropriation of previous ritual methods by the emerging tantric Buddhism has been discussed by Ronald Davidson, who writes, “In the emergence of alternative religious systems such as tantrism, a number of factors have historically been seen at play. Among these are elements that might be called ‘pre-existing.’ That is, they themselves are not representative of the eventual emergent system, but they provide some of the raw material—ritual, ideological, terminological, functional, or other—for its development. Indology, and in particular the study of Indian ritual, has been less than adroit at discussing such phenomena, especially when it may be designated or classified as ‘magical’ in some sense” (Davidson 2017a, 1).

33. Snellgrove 1987, 233. See also Williams 2011, 205. For an overview of the development of these tantric categories in India and Tibet, see Dalton 2005.

34. Verse and commentary in Sonam Tsemo, Establishing the Four Categories of Tantra, 32b (translation in Sonam Tsemo 2012). See also Dalton 2005, 122n19, for a discussion of early Indian ideas of what constituted kriyā tantras.

35. See Dharmachakra Translation Committee 2016a.

36. Shinohara 2014, 133.

37. See Siklós 1990.

38. All of these rituals are found in chapter 15 of the Guhyasamāja tantra; see Fremantle 1971, 97–110.

39. For the transmission of the thirteen golden dharmas of the Sakya school in Tibet, see Dhongthog 2016, 107–8.

40. See, however, Gergely Hidas’s (2019b) work on the Vajratuṇḍasamayakalparāja.

41. Other significant compendiums in the be’u ’bum genre include the following:

The Black Instructions Spellbook (Man ngag be’u ’bum nag po), attributed to the eleventh-century Nepalese teacher Bharo Chakdum.

The White Spellbook of Drongtse (’Brong rtse be’u ’bum dkar po), mainly medical rituals collected in the fourteenth century by Drongtse Lhatsun Rinchen Gyatso.

Nazawa’s Spellbook (Na bza’ ba’i be’u ’bum), compiled in the fifteenth century by Panchen Nazawa.

Mantra Spellbook of Collected Rituals (Las sna tshogs pa’i sngags kyi be’u bum), compiled in the nineteenth century by Ju Mipham Gyatso.

The latter two collections are organized by theme; see Cuevas 2010 on the arrangement of Mipham’s collection and Lin 2005 on Mipham’s other magical texts. The first few sections of Panchen Nazawa’s collection are as follows: protection on the road (lam bsrung) and turning back water (chu bzlog); rainmaking and prevention; protection of fields from cold winds, frost, vermin, and so on; protection from plague; protection from illness of the eyes, cataracts, other eye ailments, and tooth disease; cessation of bleeding, fever, and other ailments in pregnant women; protection from problems with birth, the umbilical cord, stillbirth, and so on; protection from yogurt going off, milk not flowing, and butter not forming.

42. In Bari’s Spellbook, Profound Advice for Doctors (Gso byed gdams pa zab mo) is on pp. 25–103; Portable Instructions (Gyogs kyi man ngag) is on pp. 103–67; and Some Profound Instructions (Man ngag zab mo ’ga’) is on pp. 291–513.

43. See Bari’s Spellbook, 27–30. “All-accomplishing hero” is a translation of the Tibetan gcig thub dpa’ bo.

44. See Bari’s Spellbook for sending a bad dream (70); bringing on a hailstorm (70–71); rituals for bringing rain (81–92); rituals for travelers (93–94); and Padmasambhava’s ritual for destroying a mi rgod (95–99).

45. See Crosby 2013, 62–63.

46. On the history of yantras in India through to the present, see Bühnemann 2003.

47. See Bari’s Spellbook, 112, 114, 115, 119, and 121.

48. See Schaeffer 2000.

49. See Bari’s Spellbook for swift feet (124); traveling dangerous routes (117); avoiding robbers (124); a spell to be cast before entering a king’s residence (121); and spells for dominating and overpowering people (132–37).

50. Bari’s Spellbook, 325 and 418.

51. Bari’s Spellbook, 292 and 368.

52. Bari’s Spellbook, 457.

53. Bari’s Spellbook, 464–66.

54. Wright 1948, 336.

55. The Tibetan phrase is bdag ’dra padma ’byung gnas. See Ba ri be’u ’bum, 362.

56. Gyatso 1999, 294.

57. Pelliot tibétain 44, 5a; see translation in Kapstein 2000, 158. On this and other early sources for the myth of Padmasambhava, see Dalton 2004.

58. The use of violent rituals by Ra Lotsawa has been discussed by Charles Ramble (2010) and Bryan Cuevas (2015).

59. On aggressive magic performed for the Tangut and Mongol states, see Sperling 2004. On war magic practiced in Tibet against the Mongols, see Dalton 2011, 126–43. For a general overview of the use of aggressive magic for political purposes, see Cuevas 2019.

60. Quoted in Zürcher 2007, 121–22, from Gaozengjuan IX 385.2.13; the translation given here is that of A. F. Wright (1948, 352).

61. Hidas 2012, 245.

62. This account of the story is based on Cuevas 2015, xxv–xxvi.

63. On examples of monastic confession rituals, see Shaw 2014, 42ff. The confession in the Suvarṇaprabhāsa sūtra is in chapter 3; for an English translation, see Emmerick 1992. On confession rituals in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, see Lopez 2007. There are many Vajrasattva practices in Tibetan Buddhism adapted from Indian Buddhist precedents; see, for example, Patrul Rinpoche 2010.

64. The presence of violence within Buddhism has been discussed by a number of scholars; see, for example, Dalton 2011, Sihlé 2013, and the collection of papers on the subject in Jerryson and Juergensmeyer 2010.

CHAPTER 4: MAGIC USERS AND MATERIA MAGICA

1. The key sources for these arguments are Rong 2000, Imaeda 2008, and van Schaik and Galambos 2012.

2. These elements of the manuscript are enumerated in Dalton and van Schaik 2006; the name of the dharani as given on the back is Sangs rgyas phye ba phrag bdun nyan thos kyi dge ’dun dang bcas sangs rgyas phye ba phrag gyi yum zhes bya ba’i gzungs.

3. This format did continue in later Tibetan manuscripts; there is another Tibetan manuscript in the British Library with the same format, as well as a compendium of texts based in the ritual world of the Nyingma school and not concerned with the quotidian aims of the texts in the Dunhuang spellbook. See Helman-Wazny 2014, 63–66.

4. For the results of the paper analysis, see van Schaik and Helman-Wazny 2012, 15–16, 29.

5. IOL Tib J 401, 1r: big kru prad nya pra ba’i no pyi ka. The term no pyi ka is unusual, although its use continues in later Tibetan ritual literature. The word seems to be derived from the Sanskrit sādhanopayika (“method for accomplishment”). While sādhana is commonly used in Vajrayana for deity yoga practices, in this context it is also worth noting older meanings from the Mahābhārata and other early sources given in Monier-Williams’s dictionary. These include “subduing by charms, conjuring up, summoning,” and “subduing a disease, healing, cure.” In his work on the mahāyoga manuscripts from Dunhuang, Kenneth Eastman (1983) suggested that no pyi ka is equivalent to sādhana, noting a Tibeto-Sanskrit glossary in Pelliot tibétain 849, which glosses the term as sgrub thabs. We can also point to certain other Dunhuang manuscripts, including IOL Tib J 553 and 554, which are undoubtedly sādhanas and bear the title no pyi ka. Titles of tantric texts contain many instances of the word sādhanopayika (as well as maṇḍalopayika). However, the source of the Tibetan term no pyi ka is unknown, as it is not attested in Sanskrit sources; in fact, it breaks the Sanskrit word in the wrong place, as sādhanopayika is composed of sādhana + upāyikā, not sādha + nopayika.

6. Ramble 2008, 227–28.

7. The Tibetan version of the name would probably be Sherab Ozer (Shes rab ’od zer), which appears as a personal name later in Tibetan literature, from the eleventh century onwards.

8. Jātaka XV.341; translation, and analysis is from Davidson 2017b, 17.

9. Davidson 2017b, 27.

10. Kevaṭṭa sutta in the Digha nikaya 11. The term is discussed by Niklas Foxeus (2013).

11. Ferguson and Mendelson 1981.

12. The word jogi is also preserved in Tibetan texts, where it is transliterated as dzo ki.

13. McDaniel 2011, 229–30.

14. McDaniel 2011, 23–25.

15. On Somdet To’s teacher, see McDaniel 2011, 70. The magical practices of Thai monks in general are the subject of the groundbreaking anthropological study Monks and Magic by Barend Terwiel (2012), first published in 1975.

16. In reviewing these practices, especially the production and sale of amulets, Justin McDaniel rightly argues that those who express shock at these Buddhist activities are ignorant of the history of Buddhist material culture (McDaniel 2011, 189–93). For example, there is a Burmese Buddhist tattooing manual from the nineteenth century in the British Library collections (Or.15671d).

17. White 2016, 595–96.

18. On Sangye Repa, see Sperling 2004, and on Sogdogpa, see Dalton 2011.

19. See the discussion in Cabezón 2010, 20–21.

20. Berounsky 2015, 101.

21. Berounsky 2015, 102.

22. Rdo rje don grub 2012, 72–77.

23. Rdo rje don grub 2012, 91.

24. Woolf and Blanc 1994.

25. The link between tantric practice and magical power in the figure of the exorcist is discussed at length in Sihlé 2013.

26. On the practice of Tibetan Buddhism in Dunhuang and the surrounding regions by Tibetans and others, see van Schaik and Galambos 2012.

27. The word ghoul is actually relatively recent in the European tradition, having come in as a loan word from the Arabic ghūla.

28. The sri are discussed extensively in Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1956: 216, 300–303).

29. Hidas 2012, 205.

30. This is also stated in the Mahāpratisarā-vidyārājñī; see Hidas 2012, 206.

31. The classic study of the role of spirits, demons, and monsters in Tibet is René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz’s Oracles and Demons of Tibet, first published in 1956.

32. DeCaroli 2004: 10, 12.

33. Frederick M. Smith (2006) discusses many Indic sources on the nature of the deva and different kinds of graha in the Indic tradition.

34. The Asian species is also known as Commiphora mukul.

35. See Miller 1969, 70.

36. gu gul bregs pa’i dri yis bgegs dang gnod pa thams cad klog pa mchog gyur yin.

37. Miller 1969, 93.

38. Imam et al. 2013.

39. For a discussion of skar chu, see Martin 2017 and Smith 2008.

40. Bkra shis bzang po 2012, 98–99.

41. The Chinese text is at T.1060, 1110a23 (jǐnghuá shuǐ); the definition is from Charles Muller’s Digital Dictionary of Buddhism. The Tibetan translation by Chodrup has “pure water from a well” (khron pa’i chu gtsang ma); see D.691, 93-1-108b.

42. On the use of human fat and other parts of corpses in magical and medical rituals in Europe, see chapter 3 of Davies and Matteoni 2017. A Chinese corpse ritual is briefly mentioned in Strickman 2002, 157. For a detailed description of an Indian corpse ritual, see Desző 2010, 394ff.

43. McDaniel 2012.

44. See Lichter and Hunt 1992.

45. Kieckhefer 2014, 59. He also describes (63) the case of a fifteenth-century midwife in Paris, who was jailed for procuring the fat from a stillborn infant to cure a nobleman’s leprosy.

46. Personal communication from Daniel Berounsky, March 2019.

47. Beer 2003, 111.

48. See Cuevas 2015, xiv–xix, on Ra Lotsawa’s involvement with the tantras and practices of Vajrabhairava.

49. The only dedicated study of the Vajrabhairava Tantra is the doctoral dissertation by Bulcsu Siklós (1990).

50. For a detailed presentation of these arguments, see Sanderson 2009.

51. The textual similarities between the Vajrabhairava Tantra and Guhyasūtra have been shown by Aleksandra Wenta (conference presentation, V&A, London, November 2018).

52. Vajrabhairava Tantra, section 2, translated in Siklós 1990, 103–4.

53. The passage on zombies in the Vinaya vibhanga has been translated and discussed by Peter Skilling (2007). Corpse magic also features in pretantric Buddhist scriptures; for example, the Amoghapāśavidyārāja includes a ritual for raising a corpse to help find treasure (Orzech 1994).

54. Cuevas 2010, 169.

55. Siklós 1990, 130n31.

56. Kritzer 2008. See also Garrett 2008 for a study of the development of embryology in Tibetan medicine.

57. For a recent study of these materials, see Lo Muzio 2017.

58. See Hidas 2013, 226–27.

59. The complete ritual is 1.360–74 of the sutra; see the translation in Dharmachakra Translation Committee 2016b.

60. Personal communication with Lama Jampa Thaye, November 2018. I also found the following advice from the website of Lama Yeshe’s students: “When the mother is pregnant she should wear a colored thread with an unbroken mustard seed on it.” A phoneticized mantra is also given here that appears the same as the one in the Mahāsāhasrapramardanī sūtra and the Tibetan book of spells (www.lamayeshe.com/advice/protecting-baby).

61. Correspondence and the difference between early and later Tibetan rituals have been explored by Vincent Bellezza (2014).

62. Paul 1979, 281.

63. Ortner 1978, 93–94; Paul 1979, 281–82.

64. Ramble 2008, 174.

65. On prasena in Tibet, see Chime Radha 1981; on its use in medical practice, see McGrath 2017, 10–41.

66. On the Chinese prasena rituals and their precedents, see Strickman 2002, 206–18, who identifies the Subāhuparipṛcchā as the main scriptural source for the prasena rituals. See also Smith 2006, 435–36. Giacomella Orofino (1992) discusses where the practice is mentioned in the Kālacakra tantra and various commentaries, on which see also Newman 1988, 133. On later instruction of the practice in Shaiva literature, see Vasudeva 2014.

67. There is a Sanskrit term, pratisenā, but this is probably just a Sanskritization of the Prakrit prasena. See Orofino 1992, 614.

68. Vasudeva 2014, 3.

69. Schwartz 2007, 366.

70. Schwartz 2007, 366–67.

71. Kieckhefer 2014, 151.

72. Kieckhefer 1998, 115–16.

73. As far as I am aware, the only exploration of this aspect of magical practice has been by Bryan Cuevas (2011), who has discussed the similarity of the human figures used in Tibetan magical and medical drawings to those from ancient Greek traditions.

CHAPTER 5: A TIBETAN BOOK OF SPELLS

1. Bohak 2005, 13.

2. The Tibetan word I am translating as “insanity” is smyon, and the person with severe insansity is a smyon ba chen po.

3. See Atharvaveda hymn CXI; translation in Bloomfield 1973, 32–33.

4. Wujastyk 2003, 300.

5. Peters 2016, 91–92.

6. See the discussion of this in Cantwell and Mayer 2008, 202.

7. Cantwell and Mayer 2008, 203.

8. See examples in Cabezón 2010, 1, 105, and 141.

9. See, for example, Betz 1986, 44 (PGM IV) and 130 (PGM VII).

10. I am translating the Tibetan klu as “dragons”; in a Buddhist context, the Tibetan word is a translation of the Indic nāga. On the stated effects of possession by nāgas, see Smith 2006, 504. On the association of nāgas with leprosy, see Clifford 1984, 156. I am interpreting phye bo in the Tibetan text as “leprosy,” though it is only defined in the dictionaries as the state of being limbless.

11. Varuna is propiated in charms against “dropsy” (i.e., edema or fluid retention) in the Atharvaveda; see Bloomfield 1973, 11–12. Varuna is also associated with rain rituals in the Atharvaveda; see Griffith 1895, 151.

12. rdzings → ’dzings.

13. ’jas ’grum → ’ja’ ’grums.

14. See Tribe 2016 and Hidas 2019a.

15. This is the Khro bo rdo rje sme brtsegs pa chen po’i rgyud; see Almogi 2014, 86. The only text dedicated to Rme/Sme brtsegs pa in the Kanjur is a short hymn, khro bo’i rgyal po sme brtsegs la bstod pa’i sngags (D.756).

16. Shaw 2015, 271, 323, and 500n90.

17. The usual Tibetan word for “treasure” (gter ma) is used here. As with earlier Indic Buddhist spells for finding treasure, there is no indication that the treasure has any religious significance.

18. Martin 1987, 28.

19. Compare the love spell in Greek magical papyrus PGM VII.459-61: “Inscribe by scratching on a tin lamella. Write and lay it down, walking over it” (Betz 1986, 130).

20. Scribe’s note: This Vajra Blaze (rdo rje rme brtsegs) is unerring; make offerings of a thousand recitations.

21. Scribe’s note: If you have one; if not, use white sandalwood.

22. “Ritual collection” here translates as no pyi ka, the same Tibetan word that is written on the cover to describe the contents of the whole book of spells.

23. Scribe’s note: This is the Blazing One.

24. nyan → gnyan.

25. Scribe’s note: malevolent ones.

26. Literally, “will come as servants to the vidyādhara.”

27. Scribe’s note: the mantra of the Blazing One.

28. Scribe’s note: ōm bur kur ti.

29. Literally, “will come to the residence of the vidyādhara.”

30. Scribe’s note: ōm ’bur kur ti.

31. Scribe’s note: If this is done with the Vajra Blaze, recite the mantra ōm ’bur kur ti.

32. ral gi → ral gri. “Wrought iron” translates the Tibetan ngur mo.

33. “Offering cakes” here translates the Tibetan gtor ma (Sanskrit bāli).

34. Scribe’s note: ōm ’bur kur ti.

35. These are the five forms of rebirth: gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings. This set omits the demigods, which are in the more common enumeration of six classes of sentient being.

36. Scribe’s note: ōm ’bur kur ti.

37. Scribe’s note: ōm ’bur kur ti.

38. For “impurity,” the term here is dri. There is a scribal note that is difficult to translate; it is approximately, “whenever this is done, it is immediately overpowered and trapped, and later it is transformed.”

39. Here, “curse” is byad and “evil sigil” is ltas ngan.

40. rtsang → gtsang.

41. Presumably this mixture is burned as incense, as in the similar prescription for madness below.

42. “Meteor” is literally “sky iron” (gnam lcags).

43. Scribe’s note: one who is unfriendly toward you. Translator’s note: The Sanskrit term is śatru.

44. Skt. priya, here referring to lovers.

45. Literally, “the feet of the vidyādhara.”

46. Scribe’s note: exactly as above.

47. Scribe’s note: This means a quarrel. Translator’s note: The Sanskrit term is vyavahāra.

48. Scribe’s note: your own mouth.

49. Scribe’s note: This is a single ritual: the performance of the samadhi (sa ma di) and mandala (man dal) of Bhṛkūti. Offer a hundred thousand recitations.

50. Scribe’s note: Recite ōm ’bur kur ti.

51. Scribe’s note: the four great kings.

52. Scribe’s note: After a day they will be friendly.

53. Slouber 2017, 39.

54. Slouber 2017, 41–42.

55. See Hidas 2019b.

56. I would like to thank Eyob Derillo for discussing similar practices found in Ethiopa.

57. Bentor 1996, 129–32.

58. On this classification of poisons, see Wujastyk 2003, 78, and 139–41. “Stationary” poisons are plant poisons; according to the text here, there are fifty-five stationary poisons.

59. On the use of wooden slips (byang bu) in non-Buddhist rituals, see van Schaik 2013.

60. Scribe’s note: Pouring scented water into the vase is the blessing of the sky-soaring deity (nam ka lding gi lhar byin gyi rlabs); visualizing oneself as deity is resting in the concentration of the sky soarer (bdag nyid nam ka lding gi ting nge ’dzin du bzhugs), and visualizing oneself sitting on a white lotus on a lake is transforming oneself into the sky soarer (bdag nyid rnam ka lding gi bsgyur).

61. The mantra given here is actually twelve syllables.

62. Scribe’s note: Whatever will happen, is happening, and has happened to oneself and others.

63. Literally a “separated skull” (thod pa’i phral ba).

64. Scribe’s note: with lacquer (gya skyegs) and cotton (shing bal).

65. Scribe’s note: eleven syllables.

66. yon po → g.yon po.

67. While the eleven-syllable mantra is suggested here, the section that follows suggests a different visualization, perhaps an alternative for protection. The stack of kaṃ, sha, and sva is also mentioned in the scribal note for the next section on curing poison, so perhaps this visualization is slightly out of place here.

68. Scribe’s note: the stack of haṃ, sha, and sva.

69. Here, “Great Seal” (mahāmudrā) refers to the visualization of one’s body as that of the deity.

70. “Vajra Club” is rdo rje be tson.

71. Kovacs and Unschuld 1998, 57, and 404–6. See also Czaja 2015.

72. Tibetan: sman dang sngags su sbyar ba’i cho ga.

73. The Sogdian/Brahmi manuscript is Or.8212/175.

74. D.691, 93-1-108b.

75. The use of skulls to supress rākṣasa is noted in later Tibet by Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1956, 518–19).

76. Here Avalokiteśvara is rendered A rgya pa lo. A bre is about two liters and a phul is one sixth of a bre.

77. smyug (arch.) = bcug.

78. sran cad → srin bu thams cad.

79. In the Siddhaikavīra (1.30), sesame seed oil is applied to the birth canal.

80. These three are products of the trees Terminalia arjuna, Terminalia bellirica, and Phyllanthus emblica, respectively. In this manuscript, skya ru ra has been corrected by a scribe to skyu ru ra, but both seem to have continued as variants.

81. The main text has bong bu, but the scribe’s note has lung bon (“oxen”).

82. gnyen po → gnyan po.

83. Compare the charms against worms in humans and cattle in the Atharvaveda (translation in Bloomfield 1973, 22–25).

84. The translation here is provisional; dre gor may refer to a packet of blended ingredients, while ke dog may refer to compressed ingredients or capsules.

85. lto lbos → lto sbos.

86. glud → blud.

87. she dag → shed drag.

88. gza’ shug → ’bza shug.

89. Bendall 1880.

90. Cantwell and Mayer 2008, 203.

91. Various paper slips depicting dragons (klu) are found among manuscript collections in Mustang (personal communication from Agnieszka Helman-Wazny, January 2019).

92. On cleansing substances, see Bentor 1996, 110–11.

93. “Food offerings” translates the Tibetan bshos, which are similar to, or may be synonymous with, the offering cakes (gtor ma).

94. Compare the Great Cloud Sutra (Bendall 1880, 309): “a blue canopy and blue dress, blue banner and all the offering is to be made blue.”

95. Here kha sha, which can mean a deer, parchment, or cotton, is translated as “cotton banner.”

96. See Siklós 1990.

97. “Miles” here translates the Indic word krośa; the exact distance indicated by a krośa seems to have changed over time, but is usually said to have been between one and two miles.

98. This disturbing instruction relies on reading the text’s drud du as drung du, and dzi hwa as a transliteration of the Sanskrit jihva. I cannot see any other way in which it could be read.

99. Here “jewels” translates phra, which usually means a jeweled inlay in later Tibetan, but at this time may have meant gilded silver.

100. See Bühnemann 2014. There is also a Parṇaśabarī sādhana in the Sādhanamāla: no. 52 in the edition in Bühnemann 1994.

101. Dharmachakra Translation Committee 2016a, 1.45–46.

102. In Tibetan translation, this text is found in the bka’ ’gyur, D.736. A much lengthier ritual, which contains similarities but does not match the one here, is described in the Rje btsun ma pa rna sha ba ri gzugs mchog in vol.22, ff.33r–36r of the ’Bri gung bka’ brgyud chos mdzod chen mo (Lhasa, 2004).

103. rta bas → rta babs.

104. rig pa → hrig pa.

105. ’ge’u → sge’u.

106. It is not stated, but presumably the water is infused with this paste.

107. See Mahāsāhasrapramardanī sūtra 1.360–374; translation in Dharmachakra Translation Committee 2016b.

108. mal nas bu zhig pa → mngal nas bu gzhag pa.

109. Skt. arjaka, a kind of basil. This threat appears in several Buddhist texts, including the Mahā-daṇḍadhāraṇī-śītavatī. See Hidas 2017, 180: “If a Graha does not release, his head will split into seven like the blossom of the Arjaka plant.”

110. Bohak 2017.

111. The scribe has inserted a rya pa lo before svā ha as an interlinear addition.

112. gom phang → go ’phang (a scribal variant based on pronunciation), usually refers to status or rank, but here it refers to distance.

113. “Forty miles” here translates the Indic measurement of ten yojana. A yojana is usually said to be between four and eight miles.

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TIBETAN TEXTS

Bari’s Hundred (Ba ri brgya rtsa) — Bsgrub thabs brgya rtsa. Collection of Sādhanas for Invoking the Various Tutelary Deities of Lamaism. W4CZ307390.

Bari’s Spellbook (Ba ri ’be’u bum) — Be’u bum of Ba-ri Lo-tsa-ba Rin-chen-grags: A Collection of Magico-Medical Spells, Incantations and Esoteric Formulae Transmitted in Tibet through the Lo-tsā-ba of Ba-ri, Rin-chen-grags. Reproduced from a manuscript from Darjeeling by Lama Jurme Drakpa. Delhi: Jurme Drakpa, 1974. W15562.

Secret Moon Spellbook (Zla gsang be’u bum) — Zla gsaṅ be’u bum: Collected Rites for Invoking Gśin-rje for Various Purposes. Reproduced from a manuscript belonging to Smin gling khri chen. Dehra Dun, India: D. G. Khochchen Trulku, 1975. W2CZ7967.

INDEX

Note: Index entries from the print edition of this book have been included for use as search terms. They can be located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.

Abhi Lhamo

abhidharma

Abhinavagupta

Afghanistan

Africa

aggressive magic

in Bari’s Spellbook

in Bhṛkutī cycle

Buddhist ethics and

in Chinese Buddhism

compassion in

contextualization of

corpses in

enlightened activity and

in Mesopotamia

in Pali canon

in supreme yoga tantra

Agni

All-Accomplishing Hero Tantra

Amoghapāśa

Amoghapāśa’s Dharani

Amoghapāśa’s King of Ritual Manuals

amulets

in Atharvaveda

dharani

in early Buddhism

in Gilgit manuscripts

in Jewish magic

in Mesopotamian magic

in Migtsema

in pregnancy rites

in Southeast Asia

Ānanda

anger spells

animals

curing disease in

dog bites

taming

See also effigies; snakebites

Apuleius

Ashburnipal (king of Assyria)

Aśvaghoṣa

Atharvaveda

Atiyoga (Great Perfection)

Avalokiteśvara

Avalokiteśvara cycle

Ayurveda

Babylon

Baker, G. P.

Bald’s Leechbook

Bari Rinchen Dragpa (Bari Lotsawa)

Bari’s Spellbook

aggressive magic in

Portable Instructions

Profound Advice for Doctors

Some Profound Instructions

Bavarian State Library (Munich)

Berounsky, Daniel

Betz, Hans Dieter

Bhagavaddharma

Bhaiṣajyarāja

bhakti movements

Bharhut

Bhṛkutī

Bhṛkutī cycle

Bhṛkutī Tantra

Bikkru Pradnya Praba. See Pradnya Praba

Biographies of Eminent Monks (Huijiao)

Blanc, Karen

Bloomfield, Maurice

Bodhgaya

bodhisattvas

Bohak, Gideon

Bonpo tradition

Bower Manuscript

Brahmā

Brahma Net Sutra

Brahmanas

Brahmins

British Library

Bronkhorst, Johannes

buddha realms

Buddha Śākyamuni

devotional hymns to

image bathing ritual of

magical powers of

ship’s captain, previous life as

spells taught by

Buddharakṣita

buddhas

Buddha’s Armour (To)

Buddhism

appropriation of

in Bower Manuscript

idealization of

magic in, barriers to understanding

magic in, importance of

magic in, overview

material culture of

in Nepal

scripture and practice traditions in

spreading of

superstition and reason in

See also Chinese Buddhism; early Buddhism; Indian Buddhism;

Mahayana tradition; tantric

Buddhism; Theravada tradition

Buddhist canons. See also Pali canon

Burma

Byzantine tradition

Cantwell, Cathy

Cario Genizah

Celtic tradition

Chan tradition

Chandra Das, Sarat

China

magic in

medicine in

nāgas in

rainmaking in

Sanskrit in

Chinese Buddhism

Christianity

clairaudience

clairvoyance

Collins, Randall

compassion

compendiums

of aggressive magic

be’u ’bum genre

cross-cultural comparisons of

legendary

purposes of

Thai

See also Bower Manuscript; spell books (grimoires)

corpse magic

crop enhancement and protection rituals

Crown Parasol Dharani

Crown Victor Dharani

Cuevas, Bryan

cuneiform tablets

Dalai Lamas

identifying

Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, Fifth

Dampa Sangye

d’Anastasi, Jean

Daoism

Davidson, Ronald

death

DeCaroli, Robert

deities

Egyptian and Greek

female

Indian

Indo-Aryan

in mandalas

in tantra

Vedic

worldly

wrathful

demons

in Atharvaveda

in Avalokiteśvara cycle

in Bhṛkutī cycle

cat

in Chinese magic

in dharani sutras

divination by

elves as

in Greek papyri

in Jewish magic

in Mesopotamian magic

in Munich handbook

use of term

devotion

devotional hymns

dharani

Avalokiteśvara in

in Gilgit manuscripts

in Mahayana sutras

Dharani Compendium

Dharani Miscellany, The

Dharani of Parṇaśabarī

Dharani of the Blue-Necked One

Dharmakṣema

Dhṛtarāṣṭra

Digha nikaya

divination

in Bower Manuscript

in Buddhist monasticism

in Chinese Buddhism

in Mesopotamian magic

in Pali canon

in Tibet

See also scrying

donation circuit

dragons (nāga)

as cause of illness

in Chinese Buddhism

controlling

depictions of

in dharani sutras

divination by

effigies of

in Indian Buddhism

repelling

in weather control

Dunhuang

Buddhist communities in

discovery of

imagery from

manuscript collections from

Tibetan Buddhism in

See also Tibetan Buddhist book of spells (IOL Tib J 401)

Durkheim, Émile

early Buddhism

Bhṛkutī in

corpse magic in

evidence of magic in

kriyā tantra and

magic users in

medicine in

mirror-scrying in

sources on

threatening beings in

yantras in

Early Jewish Magic (Bohak)

Eastman, Kenneth

economics

effigies

cats

crow/raven

dragon

duck

frogs

human

rabbit

Egypt

elves

empirico-rational tradition

enemies, spells regarding

in Atharvaveda

in Avalokiteśvara cycle

in Bari’s Spellbook

in Bhṛkutī cycle

in Chinese Buddhism

in corpse magic

in Mahayana sutras

in Tibetan history

England, Anglo-Saxon

enlightenment

ethics and morality

Europe

books of magic in

corpse magic in

mirror-scrying in

See also England, Anglo-Saxon

Evans-Pritchard, E. E.

exorcism

in Chinese magic

in Greek papyri

in Indian Buddhism

in Tibet

eye medicine

family resemblance approach

five buddha families

Five Protections compilation

flight, power of

Fotudeng

four great kings

Frazer, James G.

Game of Thrones, A (Martin)

Gandhara

Gandhari scrolls

“Gandhari spells,”

Ganesha

Garuda

Garuda cycle

Gautamasvāmī

Geller, Markham

Gelugpa school

Genghis Khan

Gernet, Jacques

gestures. See mudras

ghosts (bhūta)

ghouls (rākṣasa)

camel-headed

female

tiger-headed

Giddens, Anthony

Gilgit

Gilgit manuscripts

Ginzburg, Carlo

Gobi Desert

gods and spirits

Golden Ass (Apuleius)

Golden Bough, The (Frazer)

Great Amulet, Queen of Spells

aggressive magic in

benefits of

psychological role of

structure of

threatening beings in

Great Cloud Sutra

Great Cool Grove

Great Destroyer of the Universe (goddess)

Great Destroyer of the Universe (sutra). See Sutra of the Great Destroyer of the Universe

Great Mantra Specialist

Great Peacock Feather

Great Seal (mahāmudrā)

Greco-Roman magical medicine

Greek magical papyri

grimoires. See spell books (grimoires)

gugul (type of incense)

burning

pills

Hacker, G. M. S.

hail prevention

Hārītī

Harper, Donald

Hayagrīva

healing

animals

in Atharvaveda

in Avalokiteśvara cycle

in Bari’s Hundred

in Bhṛkutī cycle

in dharani sutras

monastics, roles of in

protection during

reagents for

in Tibetan book of spells

See also medicine

Hekate

Hindu traditions

history, micro and macro analysis in

Hoernle, Rudolf

householders. See laity

Huijiao

imps (sri)

incest, corpse magic and

India

dragons in

magic users in

prasena ritual in

spell books in

yantras in

Indian Buddhism

Indonesia

Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (Snellgrove)

insanity

insight, rituals to increase

invisibility

Islam. See Muslim magic

Japan

Jātaka stories

Jetavana monastery

Jewish magic

John of Salisbury

Kaniṣka

karma

Khotan/Khotanese

Kieckhefer, Richard

killing

“king of spells” (vidyārāja)

Kinnara

Kizil cave temples

knowledge of treatises, perfect

Korea

kriyā tantra

Kroraina

Kucha

Kukai

Kushan empire

Lacnunga

laity

confession rituals for

in dharani sutras

divination rites for

effigy magic and

as magic users

and monastics, relationship between

protection from misfortune

in Thailand

Langenberg, Amy

languages

Akkadian

Arabic

in Dunhuang manuscripts

Gandhari

Great Destroyer of the Universe in

in Greek papyri

Hebrew

Latin

Prakrit

See also Sanskrit; scripts

liberation

locatives, three types

long-life prayers and rituals

Lotus Sutra

love magic

in Atharvaveda

in Avalokiteśvara cycle

in Bari’s Hundred

in Bhṛkutī cycle

in Buddhist monasticism

in Greek papyri

in Mesopotamian magic

in tantric Buddhism

magic

Buddhist, threefold definition

importance of

and medicine, relationship between

powers, three types

purposes of

shared features of

true and false

uses of term

variant views on

as “wrong” livelihood

See also aggressive magic; corpse magic; love magic; pregnancy and conception magic; sympathetic magic

magic circles

magic users (vidyādhara)

attire of

in Buddhism, role of

in Burma

in Europe

geographic locations of

increasing power of, rite for

of Jewish magic

religious traditions of

study and practice spells for

in tantric Buddhism

in Thailand

in Tibet

titles of

transforming into

See also ritual specialists

magic users’ collection (vidyādhara piṭaka)

Mahāvamsa

Mahayana tradition

bodhisattvas in

development of

in Gandhari scrolls

magical powers in

merit in

rituals in

spells and dharani in

Maitreya cult

mandalas

of Bhṛkutī

in conception rites

in dharani sutras

in Garuda cycle

in kriyā tantra

in rainmaking

Mañjuśrī

Mañjuśrījñāna

Mañjuśrī’s Original Ritual Manual

mantras

of Amoghapāśa

of Avalokiteśvara

for bestowing commitments

of Bhṛkutī

for bodily protection

demon-taming

for eyesight, sharpening

in Gandhari scrolls

of Great Destroyer of the Universe

in healing rituals

of indestructible vajra

for insight

from Kizil cave temples

languages of

of Medicine Buddha Baidurya

in mirror-scrying

for mustard seed scattering

of Parṇaśabarī

proto-Tantric

for removing obstructive forces

for swift walking

of Vairocana

for weather control

of Yamantaka

manuscripts

compiling

copying

formats of

studying, biases in

studying, purposes of

traditions of

See also under Dunhuang

Marpa Lotsawa

Martin, George R. R.

Mātṛceta

Mayer, Robert

McDaniel, Justin

medicine

Avalokiteśvara and

in Bari’s Spellbook

in Bower Manuscript

Buddhist, development of

in Burma

in China

in Greek papyri

and magic, relationship between

in Mesopotamian magic

in Pali canon

See also Ayurveda

Medicine Buddha

meditation

merit

Mesopotamia

microhistory

Migtsema verse

Milarepa

Mimaut, Jean Francois

mindfulness

Miran site

mirror-scrying. See scrying

monasticism

aggressive magic in

care for pregnant women

in Chinese Buddhism

confession ritual (poṣada) in

in Indian Buddhism

and laity, relationship between

magical images in

medicine in

rainmaking in

and royalty, relationship between

in Southeast Asia

in Tibet

writing in, role of

Mongol empire

Mongolia

moxibustion

mudras

of Bhṛkutī

for bodily protection

of indestructible vajra

of Kinnara

of Parṇaśabarī

protection

for removing obstructive forces

Muller, Charles

Muslim magic

Mustang

mustard seeds

myrobalan

myrrh, Indian. See gugul (type of incense)

Nāgārjuna

nāgas. See dragons

Naigameśa

Nazawa’s Spellbook

necromancy

Nepal

kriyā tantra in

manuscripts from

modern rituals in

Newar Buddhism in

shamanic healers in

nirvana, deferring

Norse tradition

Nubchen Sangye Yeshe

Nyingma school. See also Atiyoga (Great Perfection)

Oddiyana

offerings

burnt

fire

food

incense

ritual cakes (torma)

ogres (yakṣa)

in Bower manuscript

in early Buddhist texts

in Gandhari scrolls

in Indian Buddhism

in Tibetan book of spells

Vajrapāṇi

omniscience

oral tradition

Ortner, Sherry

Padmasambhava

Pakistan. See also Swat Valley

Pali canon

dating of

divination in

idealization in

magic in

protection ritual in

Parṇaśabarī

Paul, Robert

Pelliot tibétain (41 and 44)

perfection of wisdom literature

Persephone

Persia

Peshawar Valley

Peters, Larry

Philo of Alexandria

Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein)

philosophy

Buddhist

Western

poetry, Buddhist

poison treatments

political power

Pollock, Sheldon

Pradānaśūra

Pradnya Praba

prasena ritual. See scrying

pregnancy and conception magic

amulets for

in Atharvaveda

in Bari’s Spellbook

in Buddhist monasteries

childbirth complications

in dharani sutras

in Mesopotamian magic

in Tibetan book of spells

print technology

prosperity spells and rites

in Atharvaveda

in Bari’s Hundred

in Bhṛkutī cycle

in dharani sutras

in Mahayana sutras

for women

protection spells and rites

in dharani sutras

in early Buddhism

in Gandhari scrolls

in Garuda cycle

in Gilgit manuscripts

in Greek papyri

while healing another

from Kizil cave temples

in Mahayana sutras

in Migtsema

in Nazawa’s Spellbook

in Pali canon

in tantric Buddhism

purification rites

Questions of Subahu

Ra Lotsawa

Rainmaker, The (Woolf and Blanc)

rainmaking

black rain ritual

in Buddhist monasticism

in China

in dharani sutras

in Great Cloud Sutra

in Migtsema

in Nepal

in Tibetan book of spells

in Tibetan government in exile

Rāmāyana

Ramble, Charles

rationalism

reagents

rebirth

reciters (bhāṇaka)

Rees, Gethin

religion

Rig Veda

ritual implements

“hail pills,”

incantation bowls

phurba (ritual dagger)

skull cups

See also thread, ritual

ritual specialists

Greek

in Mesopotamian magic

ngagpas

roles of

traveling

rituals

categorization of

rationalism and

and result, relationship between

Sanskrit’s power in

texts as objects in

Western acceptance of

worldly

royalty

sādhana uses of term

Sakya Pandita

Sakya school

Śākyamuni. See Buddha Śākyamuni

Salomon, Richard

salvation

Sanchi

Sanderson, Alexis

Sangye Repa

Sanskrit

on amulets

in compendiums

cosmopolis

dharani in

in early Buddhist literature

family resemblance in

in Gilgit manuscript

grammar

preservation of

in Tibetan spell books

Śaraṇanātha

Sarasvatī

Sarvāstivāda sect

Schecter, Solomon

Schopen, Gregory

Schwarz, Martin

science

scripts

Brahmi

Chinese

Gupta Brahmi

Kharoṣṭhī

Siddham

Sogdian

scrying

in Garuda cycle

outside of Asia

in Tibet

Secret Gathering Tantra

Secret Moon Spellbook (Nubchen Sangye Yeshe)

Selene

sex and reproduction spells. See also pregnancy and conception magic

Shaivism

Shaw, Julia

Shaw, Miranda

Sherpas

Shi Hu

Shi Le

Shinohara, Koichi

Shiva

Shuihudi bamboo slips

Siddhaikavīra

siddhi (accomplishments)

Silk, Jonathan

Silk Road

Buddhist communities along

manuscripts from

trade along

Sitātapatrā

Śīvaratna

Skilling, Peter

Sky Soarer. See Garuda

Slouber, Michael

snakebites

Snellgrove, David

social structure

Sogdogpa

Somdet To

Sonam Tsemo

Songyun

speed-walking

spell books (grimoires)

aggressive magic in

cultural contexts of

European

structure of

See also Bari’s Spellbook; compendiums; Tibetan Buddhist book of spells (IOL Tib J 401)

spirits. See also gods and spirits

springs, lakes, river spells

sri. See imps

Sri Lanka

Śrīdevi

star water

Stein, Aurel

“structuration,”

stupas

supernatural beings

classifying, difficulties in

in early Buddhism

in Europe

as magic users

as power source

types of

wrathful

See also individual beings

supernormal cognitive powers

superstition

supreme yoga tantra

Sutra from Atanata

Sutra of Golden Light

Sutra of Manasva

Sutra of Skillful Means

Sutra of the Great Destroyer of the Universe

Sutra on Fetal Development

Swat Valley

sweet flag (herb)

swift-feet. See speed-walking

syllables

in Gandhari scrolls

in Greco-Roman tradition

in Greek papyri

in Lotus Sutra

power of

in rainmaking

visualization of

sympathetic magic

Syria

Taklamakan Desert

talismans

Tambiah, Stanley

Tangut kingdom

tantric Buddhism

categorization of

confession in

corpses in

development of

magic users in

magical powers in

Shaivism’s influence on

See also Vajrayana

Tārā

Taxila

Thai Buddhism

Thailand

Thebes

Theravada tradition

thread, ritual

for animal healing

for dispelling fear

insanity and

in pregnancy rites

Tibet

dragons in

eye medicine in

government in exile

kriyā tantra in

magic users in

magical practices in

prasena ritual in

ritual literature in

Sanskrit in

shamanic healers in

spell books in

state use of magic in

Tibetan Buddhism

medical practice in

monasticism in

Padmasambhava and

terms for magic in

in West

yantras in

Tibetan Buddhist book of spells (IOL Tib J 401)

Central Asian synthesis in

concluding prayer

contents and sources of

corpses in

dating and format of

and Dharani of the Blue-Necked One relationship between

discovery of

effigies in

inscription on

mirror-scrying (prasena) in

modern correspondences in

name of

pregnancy and conception in

purposes of studying

reagents in

significance of

sources for

tantric elements in

torma (ritual cakes). See under offerings

treasure, finding

Treasury of Words and Meanings

“Treatise on Occult Sciences, Complete Edition by Master Yannachot, The,”

Tri Song Detsen

Tsongkhapa. See also Migtsema verse

Vairocana

Vairocanavajra

Vaiśravaṇa

Vajra Beak Vow

Vajra Hūṃkāra

Vajra Tent Tantra

Vajrabhairava

Vajrabhairava Tantra

Vajrakhroda

Vajrakīlaya

Vajrapāṇi

Vajrarakṣa

Vajrasattva

Vajrayakṣa

Vajrayana. See also tantric Buddhism

Varṇārhavarṇa

Varuna

Vedas. See also Atharvaveda

vidyādharas (rig ’dzin), uses of term

vinaya

Vinaya vibhanga

Vishnu

von Hinüber, Oskar

voodoo dolls. See effigies

Wasserstrom, Steven

weather control. See also hail prevention; rainmaking

White, Erick wisdom beings

Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Evans-Pritchard)

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

women

in Atharvaveda

excluded from rituals

as magic users

during medicine rites

in Mesopotamian magic

protection of

See also pregnancy and conception magic

Woolf, Marsha

Wright, Arthur F.

writing

authority of

in Chinese magic

literacy and

as magical practice

Wu, Empress

Xuanzang

yakṣa. See ogres

Yama

Yamantaka

Yaśomitra

Yeshe Dorje

Yijing

yoga tantra

Zen tradition

zombies

Zürcher, Eric

Zysk, Kenneth

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