3 - Powerful Objects in Powerful Places: Pilgrimage, Relics and Sacred Texts in Tibetan Buddhism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
Summary
Abstract
Since the advent of Buddhism, the remains of the Buddha and of those who have embodied his message have been considered powerful. In Tibet, relics, including texts understood as embodiments of speech, have been the focus of popular devotion. Often connected to particular sites, these powerful objects appear in biographies of spiritual masters and pilgrimage guides, and are still revered today. Prized for their protective and healing powers and deemed capable of bringing disgrace to those who mishandle them, relics have also functioned to restore sacredness to Buddhist sites following their destruction and reconstruction. This chapter explores examples from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Tibetan sources as well as contemporary practices to highlight this form of religious materiality that presents remarkable parallels with Christian practices.
Keywords: Buddhism; pilgrimage; relics; Tibet
Around 1440 the Tibetan princess, Chokyi Dronma, was sent as a bride to the neighbouring kingdom, the polity of Southern Lato. She would have preferred a religious life, but she had no option but to follow the wish of her father, the King of Gungthang, and the custom of her time. As in early modern Europe, in fifteenth-century Tibet marriage alliances were important to guarantee stable political relations and maintain peaceful relations in a politically fragmented world. According to her biography (Plate 3.1) Chokyi Dronma had spent her childhood in her homeland, the Kingdom of Mangyul Gungthang in south-western Tibet, where she had led a very devout and scholarly life with the support of her mother, and had learnt to respect books. After arriving in her new home as a bride, she discovered a collection of holy scriptures that had been taken there from her homeland – a gift or, more likely, war booty. Distressed at finding them in a neglected condition, she took care to restore them. These items were more than passive objects to her; these literary artefacts affected her in the most intimate way and exercised significant moral pressure on her as sacred objects. She believed they had the power to give blessing to her and the community and that their mistreatment was profoundly inauspicious. She accordingly restored the collection, provided the customary cloth to wrap them, and ensured that there was a caretaker to look after them and perform rituals in their honour.
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- Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World , pp. 67 - 84Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019