Totemic Beliefs in the Buddhist Tantras-Wayman '61

8/2/2019 Totemic Beliefs in the Buddhist Tantras-Wayman '61

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Totemic Beliefs in the Buddhist TantrasAuthor(s): Alex WaymanReviewed work(s):Source: History of Religions, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Summer, 1961), pp. 81-94Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1061971 .

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Alex Wayman TOTEMIC BELIEFSIN THEBUDDHISTTANTRAS1

The investigation of totemic beliefs in connection with the BuddhistTantras has implications for the origins of the practices depicted inthis literature. Before expanding this idea, a few general remarks arein order.The subject of Tantra has elicited increasing attention from stu-dents of Indian religious history, but specialists in this field know thedifficulties of understanding this literature. It is vast, associated withobscure cults whose adepts take vows not to divulge the secrets tonon-initiates, and its texts often have linguistic problems. A numberof texts of Hindu Tantra have been edited; and some bulky studieson these works have appeared in Western languages. The BuddhistTantras also have been given special treatment by some qualified

scholars; and a growing, even if still modest, number of edited texts,translations, and studies are now available, properly speaking if onehas access to a good university library or its equal.The most extensive body of Buddhist Tantras is the scripturalThis paper is an expansion of a talk with the same title delivered at the annualspring meeting (1960) of the Western Branch of the American Oriental Society.Tibetan texts mentioned are for the most part in the East Asiatic Library, Uni-versity of California, Berkeley.

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TotemicBeliefs in the Buddhist Tantrascanon of translated Tantra in the Tibetan Kanjur and the translatedcommentarial literature of Tantra in the Tibetan Tanjur. Many ofthese works are extant in manuscript form in the original Indic lan-guages, but relatively few of such manuscripts have been edited inmodernformat. A considerablenumber of Buddhist Tantras are avail-able in Chinese translations and so also in Japanese versions based onthe latter. There are, moreover, a great number of native Tibetancommentaries on the Tantras, as well as a smaller body of nativeChinese and Japanese exegetical treatises.A recent work by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Lokayata.A Studyin Ancient Indian Materialism (New Delhi, 1959), discourses exten-sively on totemism in ancient India, with findings that dovetail myown researches in the Buddhist Tantras. This author's enthusiasmfor the thesis which inspired his book, as suggested by its title, hasthe advantage of bringing together many interesting materials, andit has the disadvantage of forcing certain topics to conform to thethesis. He devoted a large chapter to Tantra, but this presentation isof less value for my purposes than his discussion of totemism proper.This is not to say that I disagree with his viewpoint as embodied ina quotation (p. 329) from S. B. Dasgupta's ObscureReligious Cults:Tantrisms neitherBuddhistnorHindu n origin: t seemsto be a religiousundercurrent,riginally ndependentof any abstrusemetaphysical pecula-tion,flowingon fromanobscurepointof timein thereligioushistoryof India.Rather, my contention is that one cannot expose a common under-current simply by stripping Hinduism from the Hindu Tantras andBuddhism from the Buddhist Tantras. There are certain teachings ofthese two bodies of Tantras that are at variance with one another,quite apart from the overlay of typically Hindu or Buddhist doctrine.For instance, while both systems have a group of "centers" (cakras)in the body referredto as lotuses each with a given number of petals,there is much disagreement between the Hindu Tantras, on the onehand, and the Buddhist Tantras, on the other, in the description ofthese "centers." However, those who are motivated to find the twosystems basically identical content themselves with such primitivecomparisons as, for example (p. 326), observing that certain deitiesof the Hindu Tantras are equivalent to certain ones of the BuddhistTantras.In short, my conclusions about totemic beliefs in the BuddhistTantras imply nothing concerning Hindu Tantras. Indeed, hithertoI have not noticed during my admittedly inadequate researchesin theHindu Tantric literature the main features to be set forth in thisessay that are drawn from the Buddhist Tantras. 82


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Another point to be settled is the use of the expression "totemicbeliefs.'' Here I mean that the classification of the animate and inani-mate objects of the world under one or other of the families of Buddhas(usually five in number) constitutes totemic beliefs in the BuddhistTantras. This is not to maintain that these Tantric families have allthe features which anthropologists attribute to totemism as it is foundin various "primitive" tribes. For example, the feature of exogamy isnot generally adhered to by the deities of these Tantric families. Amale deity may have as consort a goddess which is actually his owncreation through his "seal" (mudra). Notably, one of the most cele-brated of our supposedly human ancestors, Adam by name, had acomparable consort.This very example-where the story of Adam and Eve comes tomind in connection with the fact of a male deity marrying his ownfemale emanation-illustrates our procedure: analogy. This way ofthinking, if properly conducted, serves to carry the scientific formula-tions of one field of data to another field and to specialize accordinglythe viewpoint toward the latter. If it be admitted that a vast subjectsuch as Tantra can be treated only in limited aspects through theagency of a good-sized book-still less by an essay of the present

scope-it should also be admitted that a methodical limitation ispreferable to a haphazard one. The method herein adopted to providethe limitation is that of analogy. But the method of analogy has itspitfalls, especially if one does not seek systematic resemblances.The foregoing defines the writer's task.THE TOTEM

We learn from Durkheim's treatment of the native Australian tribesthat the totemis the collective designation of the clan. It is a namefirst of all and then an emblem. It is the typical sacred thing. Theobjects which serve as totems belong preponderately to the animal orthe vegetable kingdom; inanimate things are sometimes, but morerarely, employed. All things, animate and inanimate, are classifiedunder the various clans of a tribe. "Men regard the things in theirclan as their relatives or associates; they call them their friends andthink that they are made out of the same flesh as themselves."2The five Buddhas under which disparate objects are usually classi-fied have the names Vairocana, Aksobhya, Amitabha, Ratnasambha-va, and Amoghasiddhi. Their families or clans (kula) are called, re-spectively, (1) Cakra (wheel) or Tathagata (thus-come), (2) Vajra

2 fmile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. J. W.Swain (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1954), pp. 102, 103, 110, 119, 142, 149.83


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Totemic Beliefs in the Buddhist Tantras(diamond or thunderbolt), (3) Padma (lotus), (4) Ratna (jewel), and(5) Khadga (sword), Karma (ritual action), or Samaya (pledge).Each of the five Tantric clans has a name which is an emblem andrefers to a concrete entity, wheel, etc., that has a sacred character,although it is true that the first and fifth of these clans are called morefrequently the Tathagata and Karma clans, respectively.Especially the first three emblems, that is, cakra, padma, and vajra,have rich and ancient mythological associations in India. The identi-fication of Vairocana, a name of the sun, with the Cakra Clan showsthat the word cakra (wheel) maintains its primary value as a symbolof the sun, and the alternate name Tathagata (thus-come, or "onewho has come the same way") confirms this interpretation.3The lotus"means the source of life and the power to continue to give life"; italso "stands for purity, as it rises from mud but remains clean."4The vajra, as thunderbolt or diamond, stands for the power thatovercomes obstacles; in the Rigveda Indra overcomes the personifiedobstacle Vrtra with this vajra; in the Buddhist Tantras a like func-tion is credited to Vajrapani ("thunderbolt-handed"), the Bodhisattvamaster of the Vajra Clan.It is of interest that the pentad can be reduced to an earliertriad byabsorption of Amoghasiddhi into Vairocana, and Ratnasambhavainto Amitabha.6In the latter case, the Ratna (jewel) Clan is absorbedinto the Padma (lotus) Clan, and we recall the celebrated mantra,Ommani padme hum ("Om, the Jewel [magi] in the Lotus, Hum"), sug-gesting the creative act and the intrinsic purity of the mind. In theformer case, the significance of the absorption is seen better throughthe names Tathagata (thus-come or thus-comprehended) and Karma(ritual action), pointing to the unity action-intuition or practicalwisdom.The increase to seven clans in the Mother Tantra of the Anuttara-yoga-tantra6 division involves a sixth Buddha, Vajrasattva, and aseventh, Heruka. These, in turn, may be taken together as one clan

3Cf. Paul Horsch, "The Wheel: An Indian Pattern of World Interpretation,"Liebenthal Festschrift ("Sino-Indian Studies," No. 5, 3-4 [Santiniketan, 1957]),pp. 62-79.4Wing-tsit Chan "The Lotus Sutra " mimeographed text, presented at Con-ference on Oriental Classics in General Education, Columbia University, Septem-ber 12-13, 1958.5D. L. Snellgrove, The Hevajra Tantra ("London Oriental Series," No. 6 [Lon-don, 1959]), I, 61, n. 2.6The standard division of Buddhist Tantric literature as arranged in theTantra section (rgyud hbum) of the Tibetan Kanjur is into the Kriya Tantra,Carya Tantra, Yoga Tantra, and Anuttara-yoga Tantra. The Anuttara-yogaTantra in turn is divided into "Father Tantras" and "Mother Tantras."

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in the Anuttara-yoga-tantra by regarding Vajrasattva as the causalVajradhara and Heruka as the fruitional Vajradhara. This unifiedclan is headed by the Buddha Vajradhara. It will not be necessary forthe purposes of the present essay to consider further these sixth andseventh clans.The division of Tantras called "Yoga-tantra" has the pentad, butits correspondencesystem is generally based on four clans. An impor-tant commentary following the school of Buddhaguhya states:He said: "That one of those clanswhicharisesfromthe 'heart'(hrdaya)of the Tathagata s the Tathagataclan. The one arisingfrom the Vajraisthe Vajraclan. The onearising romthe Padma s the Padmaclan. The onearising romthe Ratna is the Ratnaclan."Thushe taughtdiverseclans.7This passage shows the relationship of the various members of a par-ticular clan: they have the same origin or ancestor.

PERSONS IN THE CLANSThe commentary previously quoted classifies persons in those clansin terms of the major defect to be eliminated. This emphasis on thenegativecult is consistent with the oldest forms of Buddhism whichexpressed the religious goal in negative terms. Thus Nirvana itself isunderstood to mean the "blowing out" of the passions, the "release"from the phenomenal world. The commentary states:In regard o the series,"Vajra,Padma,Ratna, . . Clans(kula)," hat isthe way the Bhagavathas taughtthe jewel-likeBodhisattvas;and sincethesentientbeingsto be trainedare of fourkindsaccording s they possess ust(raga),hatred(dveqa), elusion(moha),or pride(mana),his teachingsareoffourkindsas antidotes.8The work then relates explicitly each of the four clans to the particu-lar candidates for training. The correspondenceis as listed.

Clan CandidateTathagata............... Preponderancef lustVajra ................... Preponderancef hatredPadma..... ........ Preponderancef delusionRatna .................. Preponderancef prideThe first three qualities, lust, hatred, and delusion, are ancient Bud-dhist categories referred to as the fundamental corruptions (mula-kleta) and as the "three poisons." The addition of pride as the fourthis consistent with Asafiga's Srdvakabhumi,where the classification of7This work by Padmavajra,called Tantrdrthdvatdravyakhyana,s a commen-tary of Buddhaguhya's Tantrdrthdvatdra.The citation is part of a longer passageon this subject located in the Derge Tanjur (Tohoku Catalog No. 2502), Rgyud,hi, 113b-7 ff.8Ibid., same passage.

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TotemicBeliefs in the Buddhist Tantraspersons who have definite meditative objects by reason of conductlists preponderanceof lust, hatred, or delusion, as the first three andadds pride and discursive thought (vitarka) as the fourth and fifth.9However, Anandagarbha's school of the Yoga-tantra has preponder-ance of avarice (mdtsarya)as the fourth, rather than pride.10This di-vergence between the two schools of the Yoga-tantra in the matter ofthe fourth clan, while the two maintain consistency on this point ofthe first three clans, further indicates the primacy of these threeclans, which are now related to the old Buddhist terminology of"three poisons."

In a different class of Tantric literature, the correspondenceof clansto persons may vary considerably. We might therefore introduce theterminology of "tribe," especially to differentiate the set of clans ineach of the four principal divisions of Tantra.For example, the Hevajra-tantrais now accessible, as edited bySnellgrove, to illustrate such a tribe of clans in the Anuttara-yoga-tantra. Here we find the five Buddhas correspondingto five types ofcandidates as shown in the accompanying listing.Vairocana...................... DelusionAk4obhya...................... HatredAmitabha...................... LustRatnasambhava................ Slander paisunya)Amoghasiddhi.................. Jealousy(irsya)

Again we see the "three poisons" made to correspondto the primarythree Buddhas, but only Akeobhya's Vajra Clan is consistent with theYoga-tantra in the correspondence to hatred. On the other hand,Vairocana's Tathagata or Cakra Clan and Amitabha's Padma Clanhave interchanged the correspondences, now to delusion and lust,respectively. This differenceof correspondencesamounts to an alteredinterpretation of all three totems, Cakra, Padma, and Vajra. In theAnuttara-yoga-tantra, as contrasted with the other three Tantra divi-sions, the expressions Vajra and Padma are employed in sexual sym-bolism and refer to "male" and "female," respectively. In this wayof thinking, hatred is "male" and lust is "female."A natural question is: Which clan would include the person whodoes not exhibit any of those basic faults in a preponderant manner?The Yoga-tantra holds that the person having "the three poisons inequal parts" evokes all five Buddhas." This idea is clear from non-9Alex Wayman, Analysis of the Srdvakabhumi Manuscript, in press in the series"University of California Publications in Classical Philology."10F. D. Lessing and Alex Wayman (trans.), "Mkhas grub rje's General Sum-mary of the Tantras" (typescript MS).n Ibid.

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Tantric Buddhism, where the person with "conduct in equal parts"(samabhdgacarita), ince none of the psychological poisons are strongenough to predominate in him, adopts according to his pleasure anyone of the five meditative objects set forth for the five kinds of pre-dominant conduct.12The Tantric author Indrabhuti, commenting on an important Tan-tra lying in the domain of the Mother Tantra of the Anuttara-yoga-tantra, writes: "Furthermore, the expression 'complete universal seal(mudrd)' means that all the sentient beings of the three realms aresealed by right knowledge."'3Here, "the three realms" are the realmof desire, realm of form, and formless realm-standard terminologyof non-Tantric Buddhism. ''Right knowledge" presumably refers tothe five kinds of knowledge which are respectively essential to the fiveBuddhas, as portrayed in the next section.

CLASSIFICATION IN CLANSGiven a Tantric tribe with its clans, the Tantric school involved thendivides up among these clans the universe of things that matter. Inthe Anuttara-yoga-tantra, the five Buddhas with male appearanceare said to be the five personality aggregates, the five kinds of knowl-edge, and the five ambrosias. The five Buddhas, having assumed fe-male appearance, are the purity of the five elements and of the fiveouter sensory domains. Many other correspondencesare presented inthe Tantric works, not always consistent. The Anuttara-yoga-tantracorrespondence with candidates was shown in the preceding section.Table 1, including other classified entities, is entirely drawn fromtexts, but a selection was made to exhibit those elements which aremost suggestive for Indian religious psychology in the attire of theBuddhist Tantras.14

12 Alex Wayman (trans.), "The Meditative Section of the Lam rim chen mo"(typescript MS). The doctrine is taken from Asanga's Srdvakabhami.13This is his commentary, called Smrtisamdarsanaloka, on the "Mother" oryogini Tantra, entitled Sri Samputatilaka. The passage is from the Derge Tanjur,Rgyud, Ca, 153b-3: "yan na kun du sna tshogs phyag rgya ni khams gsum gyiserns can thams cad yan dag pahi ye ses kyis rgyas btab pah.o."14 The Table results from my readings in this literature over a number of years.Many such textual correspondences are presented by way of identification withthe five winds, prdna, apdna, udana, samdna, and vydna, which in the given orderare the natures of the five Buddhas, Aksobhya, and so on, of the Table. This is

the order in which they are explained in the collected works. Klofi rdol bla maSec. Ga (Peking ed.), 29a-4 ff., identified with the Buddhas, elements, andbodily locations. The correspondence of Buddhas to knowledges is that given inthe Advayavajra-Samgraha ("Gaekwad Oriental Series," Vol. XC), p. 36; this isconsistent with F. D. Lessing and Alex Wayman (trans.), op. cit. I gave a referencefor the Buddha-skandha equation in my article "Contributions Regarding theThirty-two Characteristics of the Great Person," Liebenthal Festschrift, p. 245,87


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Clan NameVajra (thunderboltordiamond)..........Ratna (jewel)........Padma(lotus)........Khadga (sword), Kar-ma (ritual action),orSamaya(pledge)....Cakra(wheel), or Ta-thagata (thus-come)

BuddhaAksobhya"The un-troubledone"Ratnasambhava

"Sourceof jewels"Amitabha "Bound-less light"

TABLE 1TABLE FOR CLASSIFICATION IN CLA

PersonalityAggregate Knowledge A(skandha) (jnana) (Perceptions Mirror-like Uri(vijndna)Feelings Of equality Blo

(vedand)Ideas Discrimina- Se(sanmjhd) tiveAmoghasiddhi"Un- Motivations Of the proce- Hufailing success" (samskdra) dureof dutyVairocana"The il- Form (rupa) Ofthe natural Exluminator" realm(dhar-madhdtu)


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For example, the candidate of predominant hatred is tamed by theVajra Clan, the progenitor of which is the Buddha Ak$obhya. Amongknowledges, this Buddha is the mirror-like knowledge; among per-sonality aggregates, he is perception, principally located in the heart;and among ambrosias, he is urine. He superintendsthe mind. Throughhis female manifestation, he is the purity of sound and the purity ofwater.The members of Aksobhya's clan suggest that the association ofvarious entities in one clan is not a haphazard matter. The relationsare established through similarities noticed by persons of a given cul-ture. Thus the mirror-like knowledge is easily related to water. Re-garding the association of perception (vijndna) or mind (citta) withwater, these are compared with the ocean or its waves and with amirrorin the Lankdvatdra-sutra.1'he inclusion of the purity of soundsis less comprehensible. Possibly this inclusion derives from a yogicexperience gained through concentration on the heart.n. 10. The identification with the ambrosias is cited in the following section, "TheFive Ambrosias." The identification of Buddhas with vortices of elements is in aSanskrit passage of the Vajramala, as quoted in the Vajrajapakrama of the Panca-krama, ed. De la Vallee Poussin. For the clan names cf. Snellgrove, op. cit., p. 128.The correspondence with sensory domains is part of a passage in Tsoni-kha-pa'scollected works, Vol. Ca (Lhasa ed.), "Dkah gnad," 4b-1 ff. While I explainedthe purity of the sensory domains as female appearances of the Buddhas, strictlyspeaking, according to the latter text, this viewpoint falls in the category "purityof insight (prajnd)" (T. ges rab kyi rnam dag); while this purity can be treatedalso as the five Buddhas themselves through the category "purity of means(updya)" (T. thabs kyi rnam dag). In some contexts the correspondences with"Body" (last line in Table) are localized in the crown of the head rather thanthroughout the body. This is the case with the column "Superintendence," wherethe normal order would be (1) body, (2) speech, (3) mind, (4) acts, and (5) merits,co-ordinated with crown of the head, and so on down to privities, associated re-spectively with the five germ syllables Om Ah Him, Sva-Ha. This set of corre-spondences is found in a Tantra (Tohoku Catalog No. 453), the Advayasamatdvi-jaya, Derge Kanjur, Rgyud hbum, Cha, 240a-2 and 241a-1. While some of theabove references are made to native Tibetan texts, there is no doubt that all thesecorrespondences are drawn ultimately from the Tantras and Tantric commen-taries originally in Sanskrit and translated into Tibetan as available in the Kanjurand Tanjur. For example, the correspondences of Buddhas to winds and bodilylocations is found in Ratnaraksita's commentary called the Padmizn (TohokuCatalog No. 1420), Derge Tanjur, Rgyud, Wa, fol. 26. However, the nativeTibetan works are sometimes more convenient sources for utilizing and under-standing these materials. When correspondences found in these or other texts areinconsistent with the Table, this situation frequently results from positing aBuddha other than Vairocana for the "center of the mandala" and thus accordingthat other Buddha the "Knowledge of the Natural Realm (dharmadhdtu)." Fur-thermore, a yogic attainment involving the movement of a "wind" from onecenter to another naturally changes the correspondences to bodily locations.

16The Lahkdvatdra Sutra ed. Bunyiu Nanjio (reprinted Kyoto, 1956), p. 44;trans. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (London, 1932), p. 40.89


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TotemicBeliefs in the Buddhist TantrasTHE FIVE AMBROSIAS

One of the most striking identifications of the five Buddhas is withthe five kinds of ambrosia (amrta) in a context where they are ex-plained as blood, semen, human flesh, urine, and excrement. This con-text is the conclusion of yoga in the "stages of production" (utpatti-krama) in the Anuttara-yoga-tantra, preliminary to the "stages ofcompletion" (sampanna-krama).Tsoi-kha-pa (A.D.1357-1419), found-er of the Gelugpa sect in Tibet, sets forth this topic in his reformof the Tantras, called Snags rim chenmo, with the views of numerousauthorities.16Now, I wish to signal some of the essential ideas.Because the preceding main part of the yoga has wearied body andmind, there is this rite of enjoying the ambrosia, envigorating thebody. The yogin imagines at the top of his head a lunar disk markedwith an Om. From this Om ambrosia trickles down moistening thefinest particles all the way to his feet. But that is the end result ofan evocation process, which is variously described, and presumablyconnected with the celebrated Hindu account of the churning of theocean to extract the amrta, over which the gods (deva) and demigods(asura) fought.In these texts cited by Tsof-kha-pa one starts with three vesselsof authorized kind, skull bowl, and so on,-one in front containingliquid offering materials (Skt. = bali), such as milk, and two more onthe right and left sides containing solid offering materials, such asmeat and fish. However, Tsof-kha-pa says that, if these materialsare not available, one can use just water. Presumably the yogin is sit-ting with crossed legs. He "generates" the offering materials in threesteps or evocations, stacking up a wind, on that a fire, and on thelatter a skull bowl, the latter itself resting on a trivet of skull bowls.In that skull bowl, level with his own head (or is it his own head?),he generates from ten germ syllables, starting with Haim, the fiveambrosias and the five kinds of flesh. Here there is the flesh of cowin the east, of dog in the south, of elephant in the west, of horse in the

16 The section herein treated occupies almost four folios in the Peking editionof the Shags rim chen mo, beginning 394b-4. The "stages of production" are vari-ously described, but the presentation in which "enjoyment of the ambrosia" ismade explicit is shown by Tsofi-kha-pa to have six members, that is, to constitutea sadatga-yoga. The members in brief are (1) generation of the palace, throughVairocana; (2) attraction (anuraga) of the residents, through Vajrasattva; (3) ini-tiation (or anointment, "sprinkling"), through Aksobhya; (4) offerings, throughAmoghasiddhi; (5) praises, through Ratnasambhava; and (6) enjoyment of theambrosia, through Amitabha. The "stages of completion" can also be describedwith terminology of six members, namely (1) pratydhdra, (2) dhydna, (3) prandyd-ma, (4) dhdrand, (5) anusmrti, and (6) samddhi. Tsofn-kha-pa's discussion of thetwo sets of stages occupies a large portion of his Siags rim chen mo.

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north, and of man in the middle. In the intermediate directions andcenter there are the five ambrosias, and Tson-kha-pa quotes from theMahdmudrdtilaka:Ratnasambhavas blood,Amitabha s semen;Amoghasiddhis humanflesh,Akiobhya s urine;Vairocanas excrement.These are the five best ambrosias.17

The yogin stacks the three germ syllables, Om, Ah, Hum, in thatorder, apparently at the level of the crown of the head, level of theeyebrows, and level of the little tongue, uvula. These syllables irradi-ate, and attract the ambrosia of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas ofthe ten directions, as well as the ambrosia in the oceans.The upward evocation can be interpreted in terms of "centers" ofthe body by reference to the Table of the precedingsection. There thewind disk is in the navel and the fire disk in the throat. The third evo-cation, that of the skull bowl, would thus correspond to one's ownhead. This upward "generation" naturally reminds one of Vignu'sThree Steps. In fact, in the Hindu legend of the churningof the oceanof milk, Viinu himself is seated on the mountain Mandara, whichconstitutes the churning stick. This scene is beautifully depicted inPlate 5, M. S. Randhawa's Basohli Painting (Government of India,1959). Among the objects which arose from the churning process werethe divine cow Surabhi, the seven-headed steed, and the white ele-phant Airavata. These three may account for three kinds of fleshgenerated in the skull bowl. Flesh of man in the middle may derivefrom Vignu's central position. Alone flesh of dog is not accounted forin the Hindu legend. Hence this remarkableyogic evocation describedin the Buddhist Tantras seems intimately related to certain legendsabout Vignu.In evaluating this curious description of the five ambrosias, whichin this literature are said to purify the offering materials, it is well toobserve that Tsoii-kha-pa in the Bodhisattva section of his Steps ofthe Path to Enlightenment, the Lam rim chenmo, speaks of the impro-priety of certain gifts. For example, the Bodhisattva must not givefood and drink polluted with excrement and urine, spittle, vomit, pusand blood; or give forbidden flesh.18 t is my opinion that Tsof-kha-pa

17 Shags rim chen mo (Peking ed.), 3956-5: "phyag chen thig le las / rin chendban po khrag ces b6ad / snanl ba mthah yas khu bar brjod / don yod grub pasa chen te / mi bskyod pa ni dri yi chu / rnam par snanrmdzad rtug par bsad /hdi rnams bdud rtsi lfia mchog go / zes gsufis so."18 This prohibition is part of a lengthy statement about the impropriety ofgiving, occurring in the Tashilunpo edition of the Lam rim chen mo on folio 230a,where Tsoni-kha-pa mentions Asaiga's Bodhisattvabhumi as the source of thisparticular material.

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Totemic Beliefs in the Buddhist Tantrasbothers to mention this in the light of the Tantric doctrine of the fiveambrosias.

Durkheim, when discussing the eating of the totem, holds that thisritual consumption is forbidden to the profane, whose organism can-not withstand the dread nature of the totem; hence the totem is notan ordinary article of food.'9 The "five best ambrosias" exemplify theredoubtable principles of the five totemic clans. In the Tantric ritethese entities, blood and so on, are not present in their gross forms,but in sublimated, imaginative forms. Just as Durkheim said: "theimages of totemicbeings are more sacred than the beings themselves."20In effect, these imaginative ambrosias become or are transformed intothe ambrosia which trickles down from the imagined Om at the topof the head and proceeds throughout the body.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE FOREGOINGIt was remarked above that the Buddha Ak4obhya is the mirror-likeknowledge among knowledges, is the aggregate of perceptions amongthe personality aggregates, and so on. The Hindu work Bhagavadgitd(chap. X) has a strikingly comparablesituation in a long list of Krnia'sidentifications. For example, he says (verse 28), "Of weapons I amthe thunderbolt; of cows I am the wish-granting cow; I am the pro-genitor God of love; of the serpents I am Vasuki." Of course, Krsnais identifying himself with the traditional best one of each class. Hisis a special case of identification with a privileged member of eachclass otherwise considered worthwhile to mention.What is important to observe is that we have here an approachthat is by no means exclusive to the Buddhist Tantras. And it is anapproach especially characteristic of totemic systems. That is to say,in these systems the members of a given class considered worthwhileto be so treated are parceled out, distributed among the clans, sub-sumed under the clan banners or the emblems called also totems.This does not amount solely to an intellectual exercise of tabulation:there is a non-rational element in this investiture of the "given"things with a sacred character. For Krsna says (Bhagavadgita),IX, 4):"All beings abide in me but I do not abide in them." The pebbles arein the river; the river not in the pebbles. Just so, the five Buddhasmoisten the disparate entities with divine life and overflow them.But the Tantric clans are not really totemic clans in the ordinaryanthropological sense. They appear to be analogical systems pat-terned after the anthropological clans. This interpretation involves anassumption that there existed in India such totemic clans, and that

19Durkheim, op. cit., pp. 128-29. 20 Ibid., p. 133.92


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they flourished sufficiently in space and time to form models for theTantric systems. Here I appeal to the evidence collected in Chatto-padhyaya's work, already alluded to. His materials on the chantingdogs, on the rats and elephants, among others, are impressive. Myacceptance of this particular position of his does not involve anyjudgment of his basic materialistic thesis. On the other hand, he doesnot present materials related to the apportionment of valuablesamong the various clans in the manner in which such clans couldserve as models for the analogical systems of the present paper. In-deed, there is no indication that he sought such materials. His con-clusion (p. 571), "the implication is that there was originally nowealth that was not shared out," supports his thesis, while the wayof distribution would not necessarily support it.However, Chattopadhyaya's discussion (pp. 571-72) of thiswealth-sharing is suggestive and significant. Thus the Vedic deitySavitr has the epithet bhaga-bhakta,"the divider of wealth" or "theapportioner of the shares." The name of the Vedic deity Bhaga means"the dispenser." Chattopadhyaya shows that various Vedic gods, forexample, Agni, were implored to provide shares (bhaga,am?a). Indradivided up the battle loot; he was also the divider of the shares of food.

Now, what is this "wealth" being distributed; what is this "food"?If we assume that in the Vedic period "food" meant the ordinaryconcrete entity required for subsistence, still we should observe thatthe Upanisads contain many passages with metaphysical views onfoods. Thus the Brhad-dranyaka Upanisad (I, 4, 6) says, "This whole[world]is just food and the eater of food. Soma is food and fire is theeater of food.' Early Buddhist scriptures, for example, Samyutta-Nikaya II (Nidana-Vagga), Pali text, p. 98, speak of four foods:(1) morsel food, coarse or subtle; (2) contact (with the sense object);(3) volition; and (4) perception. When these foods, with their in-evitable varieties, are regarded as distributed among the people in"shares," we approach the point of view of the Buddhist Tantras.Besides the word bhaga, another word bhakti is of paramount im-portance in the Hindu period; both are based on the verb root bhaj-"to divine, apportion to," and the like. Commentaries on the namebhagavatshow that the word bhaga has its ordinary significance of"share" with the connotation "share of good fortune," and that theshare is of six things.21The name therefore means "Who has the

21 In my "Contributions ..." Liebenthal Festschrift, p. 244, I translated the sixlisted in a standard verse of the Buddhist Tantras as follows: controlling power(aisvarya), excellent form (samagra-rupa), fame (yasas), prosperity (srz), knowl-edge (jndna), and potency of the desirable (arthaprayatna). In the same place Imade comparison with the list in S. K. De, Early History of the Vai.nava Faith andMovement in Bengal (Calcutta, 1942), p. 209.93


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TotemicBeliefs in the Buddhist Tantrasshare(s) [of good fortune]." This name is often rendered "Lord" inthe book title Bhagavadgitd,hence "Song of the Lord." It is of par-ticular interest that the word bhakti,used in Indian for the devotionalcults especially centered about the Lord Kr'na, has the basic signifi-cance of "distribution, portion."The above facts indicate a cultural congeniality for the type of dis-tributions I have described in terms of totemic beliefs of BuddhistTantras. Thus I assume that, prior to the emergence of these Tantrasas presently constituted, there were actual totemic clans in India andthe way of thinking peculiar to such clans. As Berdyaev puts it:

Language s socialized,and the stampof conventionalityies upon it; itbearsthe impressof enmityandof the limitationsof all socialorganizations.22So much in brief for the languageof those Tantras.There remains to be made explicit the difference between thetotemistic Tantric clans and actual historical totemic clans. Of coursethe Tantric adepts follow an esoteric cult, while in their public livesthey belong to social groups which may or may not be totemic clansor relics of such clans. The difference in terms of human thinking issuggested by Berdyaev's syncretic formulations.23 We may call thestage of actual totemic clans "prelogical"and subject to L6vy-Bruhl'sloi de participation. The stone is magical. The next stage-that ofcivilization-is "logical" with objectification. The stone is inanimate.The final stage is "supralogical" with both participation and objecti-fication. We love the stone. The subject matter of the Buddhist Tan-tras has relics of the first stage, necessarily uses language impressedwith the second stage, and aims at the third stage.

22 Nicholas Berdyaev, TheBeginningand the End (HarperTorchbooks),p. 73.23 Ibid., esp. pp. 60-61. But my formulation n three stages with illustrationsin terms of the stone may possibly not be consistentwith Berdyaev'sviews.

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Totemic Beliefs in the Buddhist Tantras-Wayman '61

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