Organizer and Chair: Leonard W. J. Van der Kuijp, Harvard University
The late medieval and pre-modern periods in India, Nepal, and Tibet were characterized by extensive socio-cultural interaction spanning the Himalayas. This interaction resulted in the Tibetan acculturation, modification, and dissemination of Indian ideas. To explore this process of cultural reinterpretation, our panel examines methodologies appropriate to the analysis of biographical materials. With the purpose of determining the relative chronology and influence of various narratives that constitute "the" narrative, we also consider intertextual relationships between biographical, hagiographical, and tantric texts and the concomitant Western imputation of genre distinctions upon source materials.
During the late medieval and pre-modern periods, social, political, and economic motivations influenced the tone and distribution of textual materials. The vicissitudes of the Indian biographical tradition can be traced to the transformations in the narratives of particular figures throughout the literature. In analyzing this process, we consider the roles biographical figures assumed, and the use to which these figures were put in the religious life of the community; and we also consider the unique roles women assumed in the imaginations of male authors.
Notes on the Life of the Indian Master, Mitrayogin (12th Century)
Leonard W. J. Van der Kuijp, Harvard University
The autobiography of Khro phu Lo tsa ba (1172-1236), one of the earliest witnesses of the autobiographical genre in Tibetan literature, is extant in two forms-a manuscript and a blockprint. This text is in large part structured around the biography of three Indian masters with whom Khro phu studied in Nepal and Tibet. The presentation will involve an examination of the life of one of these masters, namely the thaumaturge Mitrayogin. The sources from which we drew our inspiration include the succinct narrative of Khro phu Lo tsa ba's biography, as well as, more importantly, his translation of Mitrayogin's so-called Indian biography (Tib. mam thar rgya gar ma) of intermediate length.
Ritualized Dialogue Between a Man and a Woman in the Kalackra Tantra
Jensine Andresen, Harvard University
Thirteen verses near the end of the third chapter of the Srilaghu Kalacakratantra (KT III. 186-198) detail a ritualized dialogue between a male and a female practitioner of Kalacakra's yogic exercises. Probably composed in the early 11th century, this dialogue illuminates social customs, real or idealized, between men and women in Kalacakra's tantric community. It also provides an influential textual example of the role-portrayal of a woman by a male author of the period. Bo dong Panchen's (1375-1471) later commentary on these verses of the Srilaghu Kalacakratantra reveal additional layers of nuance in the psychological dynamic between the male and the female member of the consort couple. Because the original dialogue was composed in Sanskrit, Bo dong's commentary also provides insight into the Tibetan transposition and interpretation of the ritualized male-female encounter in the tantric practice.
On the Tibetan Lives of the Indian Buddhist Poet-Saint Saraha: One Magus Among
Many in The Lives of the Eighty-Four Adepts
Kurtis R. Schaeffer, Harvard University
In literary terms, Saraha, one of the most well-known names in late Indian Tantric Buddhist history, has had many lives in Tibetan literature, where we find no less than four traditions separately transmitted from India and Nepal during the eleventh and twelfth centuries preserving his teachings and stories of his life. One of these takes as its source the translation team consisting of the Indian teacher Abhayadattasri and "The Translator from Hsi Hsia," Mi nyag Smon grub shes rab, who brought The Lives of the Eighty-Four Adepts [Tibetan: Grub thob brgyad cu rtsa bzhi'i lo rgyus/rnam thar] to Tibet, as well as the Indian Viraprakasa [Dpa' bo'od gsal] who is held to have compiled The Essentials of the Realizations of the Eighty-Four Adepts [Grub thob brgyad cu rtsa bzhi'i rtogs pa'i snying po], a compendium of verses attributed to the Adepts. These works form part of a textual corpus comprising nearly a dozen interrelated works and enjoying over eight hundred years of transmission and development in Tibet. In this corpus, Saraha plays many roles: a conveyer of doctrine, a lineage holder and authorizer of tradition, an exemplar for living, an object of reverence, and a source of blessings. As part of a larger project on the figure of Saraha in India, Nepal and Tibet, this paper will describe the variegated portrait of this poet-saint in the Eighty-Four Adepts literature, as well as the ritual, meditational, and polemical activities in which this portrait may have been used. A detailed focus on one of the adepts will also shed light on the textual interrelations within the corpus, giving us a small glimpse into the development of one literary tradition in Tibet.