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Abstract
Among the rich heritage of medieval forms of Tantric Buddhism and Hinduism surviving among the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley is a unique series of elaborate old age rituals that are performed upon the attainment of a particular age. Drawing upon the vocabulary of planetary appeasement and other birthday rituals of life-cycle sacraments and of dhāraṇī practice, they serve to protect and sanctify the celebrants and prolong their life. After offering a comprehensive overview of these rituals that registers local variations, this paper probes into their origins and function and, in the process, pays particular attention to the intricate ways in which the Buddhist and Hindu versions of these ceremonies relate to each other.
Notes
1 Siegfried Lienhard, ‘Religionssynkretismus in Nepal’, in Heinz Bechert (ed.), Buddhism in Ceylon and Studies on Religious Syncretism in Buddhist Countries: Report on a Symposium in Göttingen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), pp. 146–77.
2 An important exception to the parallelism identified by Lienhard is the boyhood initiation for hereditary monks. Instead of undergoing the upanayana, these boys are ordained as monks, a status they keep for three days before disrobing. However, the transformation of the ordination ritual into a rite of passage reflects the influence of the upanayana, both in content and form. For details, see Alexander von Rospatt, ‘The Transformation of the Monastic Ordination (Pravrajyā) into a Rite of Passage in Newar Buddhism’, in Jörg Gengnagel, U. Hüsken and S. Raman (eds), Words and Deeds: Hindu and Buddhist Rituals in South Asia (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), pp. 199–234.
3 See Todd T. Lewis, ‘A Modern Guide for Mahāyāna Buddhist Life-Cycle Rites: The Nepāl Jana Jīvan Kriyā Paddhati’, in Indo-Iranian Journal, Vol. 37, no. 1 (1994), pp. 1–46; and David Gellner, Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and Its Hierarchy of Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 197–213.
4 Rajbali Pandey, Hindu Saṃskāras. Socio-Religious Study of the Hindu Sacraments (Banaras: Vikrama Publications, 1949). See also Mahamahopadhyaya P.V. Kane's monumental History of Dharmaśāstra: Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1930–53).
5 The ihi rite revolves around the ritualised gifting of one's daughter (kanyādāna), but there is no human recipient (hence, the term ‘mock marriage’ is sometimes used in anthropological literature); rather, the girl's groom is typically understood to be a deity, in a Hindu context normally Skanda. Assuming the sacralising function of the Brahmanical wedding ritual, the ihi serves as a life-cycle rite of initiation, turning the girls into full-fledged members of their caste, just as the upanayana initiation transforms boys ritually speaking into adult men. Thanks to an important essay by Michael Allen, which has complemented his groundbreaking research on the cult of Kumārī, the ihi ritual is reasonably well known. See Michael Allen, ‘Girls’ Pre-Puberty Rites’, Chap. 6, in his The Cult of Kumari: Virgin Worship in Nepal (Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point, rev. ed., 1996). For more recent treatments of the ihi, see Niels Gutschow, Axel Michaels and Christian Bau, Growing Up: Hindu and Buddhist Initiation Rituals among Newar Children in Bhaktapur, Nepal (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008); and Alexander von Rospatt, ‘Remarks on the Consecration Ceremony in Kuladatta's Kriyāsaṃgrahapañjikā and its Development in Newar Buddhism’, in Astrid and Christof Zotter (eds), Hindu and Buddhist Initiations in Nepal and India (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), pp. 238–45. More importantly, Christoph Emmrich has researched the ihi and the bārāḥ ritual (a further rite of passage that negotiates the first onset of menstruation) for some years and has prepared an as-yet unpublished monograph dedicated to this topic.
6 Most important among these is Marianna Kropf, ‘Rituelle Traditionen der Planetengottheiten (Navagraha) im Kathmandutal. Strukturen–Praktiken–Weltbilder’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Heidelberg, 2005, pp. 270–4 [http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/5897/2/ProzessHeidok.pdf, accessed 19 Oct. 2013]. I myself have offered a first assessment in ‘Der nahende Tod. Altersrituale bei den Newars (Approaching Death. Old Age Rituals among the Newars)’, in Jan Assmann, Franz Maciejewski and Axel Michaels (eds), Der Abschied von den Toten. Trauerrituale im Kulturvergleich [Farewell to the Dead: A Crosscultural Study of Rituals of Mourning] (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2005, rpr. 2007), pp. 199–222. The present paper has been authored on a much broader material basis; it incorporates new research results and offers a thorough reassessment, which includes a better informed overview and a more nuanced treatment of the function and origins of the old age rituals than presented in my earlier, more provisional paper. I am deeply indebted to Iain Sinclair, who has not only been a meticulous editor, but also contributed substantially to this paper with his detailed feedback and learned input, including pointing me towards pertinent materials I was not aware of.
7 The most important local publication for the Buddhist version of old age rituals is a booklet reproducing a ritual manual for the bhīmarathārohaṇa and the two subsequent jaṃkos, as transmitted by Dharmaratna Vajrācārya in 2009. See Dharmaratna Vajrācārya and Madan Sena Vajrācārya (ed.), Bhīma, deva va mahārathārohaṇa pūjāvidhikriyā (Kathmandu: Siddhi Dharmaharṣa Dhārmika Saṃrakṣaṇa Saṃsthā, 2009). The booklet also provides a useful introduction to the old age rituals (pp. ‘ca’–‘tha’). Two Newar treatises on life-cycle rituals that include the old age rituals have been translated into English, namely a brief summary by Badrīratna and Ratnakājī Vajrācāryya, in Lewis, ‘A Modern Guide for Mahāyāna Buddhist Life-Cycle Rites’; and a monograph by Āśākāzī Bajrācārya, the long-time collaborator of Michael Allen. See Āśākāzī Bajrācārya (trans.), The Daśakarma Vidhi: Fundamental Knowledge on Traditional Customs of Ten Rites of Passage amongst the Buddhist Newars (Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point, 2010).
8 Cf. Pratapaditya Pal, ‘The Bhīmaratha Rite and Nepali Art’, in Oriental Art, Vol. 23, no. 2 (1977), pp. 176–89; and Anne Vergati, ‘Image et rituel: A propos des peintures bouddhiques népalaises’, in Arts Asiatiques, Vol. 54 (1999), pp. 33–43.
9 See Marko Geslani, ‘The Ritual Culture of Appeasement: Śānti Rites in Post-Vedic Sources’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2011, UMI no. 3467902 [http://gradworks.umi.com/3467902.pdf, accessed 6 Dec. 2013].
10 Occasionally, the term candrarathārohaṇa is also encountered, but this is obviously a secondary formation with little traction.
11 Cf. von Rospatt, ‘Remarks on the Consecration Ceremony in Kuladatta's Kriyāsaṃgrahapañjikā and Its Development in Newar Buddhism’, in Astrid and Christof Zotter (eds), Hindu and Buddhist Initiations in Nepal and India (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), pp. 199–262.
12 See, for instance, sādhana 191 or 211 of Benoytosh Bhattacharya (ed.), Sādhanamālā (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1925).
13 Gudrun Bühnemann's article, ‘Tantric Deities in an Illustrated Dhāraṇi Manuscript’, provides a useful review of iconographic studies pertaining to Uṣṇīṣavijayā, Vasudhārā and Grahamātṛkā. See Gudrun Bühnemann, ‘Tantric Deities in an Illustrated Dhāraṇi Manuscript’, in Adalbert J. Gail, Gerd J.R. Mevissen and Richard Salomon (eds), Script and Image: Papers on Art and Epigraphy (Papers of the 12th World Sanskrit Conference held in Helsinki, Finland, 13–18 July, 2003, Volume 11.1) (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2006), pp. 29–64. It includes mention of Gerd Mevissen's extensive work on Grahamātṛkā, such as his study of early miniature depictions from illuminated manuscripts and book covers. See Gerd Mevissen, ‘Die früheste Darstellung der Grahamātṛkā. Buchmalerei aus Nepal’, in Indo-Asiatische Zeitschrift, Vol. 8 (2004), pp. 47–62.
14 Pratapaditya Pal, The Arts of Nepal: Part 2 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978), p. 76. His reading of the inscription cannot be confirmed since the inscription has been concealed in the process of conserving the painting's fabric.
15 This painting has been published numerous times, the last time lavishly in John Huntington and Dina Bangdel, The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art (Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2003, plate 6), where, however, the image has been laterally inverted.
16 The ślokas cited in Buddhist ritual handbooks of both the Patan and Kathmandu tradition are found in the third chapter of a Newar text composed in Sanskrit with the title, Buddhokta Saṃsārāmaya, which assigns some of the same ślokas to a text entitled Nemasūtra Pārājikā. I am not familiar with this text, the title of which is conspicuously absent from the list of texts microfilmed by the Nepal German Manuscript Preservation Project. See Badrīratna and Ratnakājī Vajrācārya, in Lewis, ‘A Modern Guide for Mahāyāna Buddhist Life-Cycle Rites’, p. 28f.
17 See, for example, Amoghavajra Vajrācārya, Saptavāra Pustakam (Kathmandu: Saṃkaṭā Press, 1975/76), pp. 31–46.
18 This tradition has already been recorded with the same details in Jagaddarpaṇa, Ācāryakriyāsamuccaya, in a section entitled Grahamātṛkāsvastyanavidhi in a facsimile edition by Lokesh Chandra (New Delhi: Sharada Rani, 1977), 427,3–433,1, to which Iain Sinclair kindly drew my attention. The maṇḍala is also depicted in this configuration as part of the final tableau of the Ngor-chen Vajrāvalī cycle to be discussed below.
19 An alternate set of eight Uṣṇīṣa deities, going back to the Ācāryakriyāsamuccaya, tends to be used for the worship of the uṣṇīṣavijayā-maṇḍala of the third jaṃko. In Newar handbooks (so, for instance, manuscript 2174, fol. 85v of the Asha Archives, Kathmandu), they are commonly known by their short form as Prakṛtigarbha-uṣṇīṣa, Gagaṇa-uṣṇīṣa, Kṣitigarbha-uṣṇīṣa, Maṇigarbha-uṣṇīṣa, (Rā)joga(?)garbha-uṣṇīṣa, Amitagarbha-uṣṇīṣa, Tejogarbha-uṣṇīṣa and Dundubhisvara-uṣṇīṣa.
20 For instance, a handbook from a private collection in Patan reads: ‘atha navagraha-pūjā | maṇḍalamadhye paṃcarakṣā-svarūpa-pūjā ||’.
21 The handbook from a private collection in Patan I consulted aligned the eight auspicious signs (aṣṭamaṅgala) and the aṣṭaciraṃjīvins in the following way: Aśvatthāman: endless knot (śrīvatsa); Bali: lotus flower (puṇḍarīka); Vyāsa: royal banner (dhvaja); Mārkaṇḍa: water vase (kalaśa); Kṛpācārya: white yak-tail whisk (śvetacāmara); Paraśurāma: fish (matsya); Hanumāna: honorific parasol (chattra); and Vibhīṣaṇa: conch shell (śaṅkha). Note that Hanumāna and Mārkaṇḍa have traded places in this scheme and that Kṛpa is addressed as Kṛpācārya.
22 The association of Śiva with Avalokiteśvara is a prominent theme in Mahāyāna literature. It is already attested to in the Kāraṇḍavyūha, where Avalokiteśvara emanates Maheśvara from his forehead. See P.L. Vaidya (ed.), Mahāyāna-sūtra-saṅgrahaḥ 1 (Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute, 1961), p. 265. Avalokiteśvara later prophesies that Maheśvara will eventually become a Buddha called Bhasmeśvara (Ibid., p. 304), a theme that is repeated in the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha. See K. Horiuchi (ed.), Shoe Kongōchōkyō no Kenkyū, Bonpon Kōteihen Benzōkan Tasihō, Vols. 1 & 2 (Kōyasan University: Mikkyō Bunka Kenkyūjo, 1983), Vol. 1, p. 349, § 732.
23 Cf. Kropf, ‘Rituelle Traditionen der Planetengottheiten im Kathmandutal’, p. 89.
24 Rādhākānta, Śabdakalpadruma (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, rpr. 1961), Vol. 3, p. 513: ‘saptasaptatike varṣe saptame māsi saptamī / rātrir bhīmarathī nāma narāṇāṃ duratikramā’. Rādhākānta adduces another text, entitled Vaidyaka, under the entry for bhīmarathī. It offers a variant of this śloka, which forms part of the citation adduced below in n. 33.
25 Rādhākānta's explanation of the term bhīmaratha is also problematic insofar as the ritual is frequently known as bhīmarathārohaṇa, i.e., the mounting of the Bhīma vehicle. This term suggests that bhīma is not to be taken as an adjective, but, rather, as a name, possibly an epithet of the ‘owner’ of the vehicle (ratha)—i.e., that bhīmaratha is a tatpuruṣa and not as a karmadhāraya. Since the vehicle (ratha) is identified with the sun and accordingly adorned with horses, it ought to be of the sun. However, to my knowledge, bhīma does not function as an epithet for the sun, though given the ferocious heat of the Indian summer sun, its characterisation in such terms would not be implausible.
26 I have not been able to verify a single case where the jaṃko's ratha was stored and then used for fabricating the funerary bier. It seems that this is not common practice. Whatever the facticity of these claims, what matters here is that the deification of the elders is—not unreasonably—linked to their heavenly ascent in the beyond.
27 See Klaus-Werner Müller, Das brahmanische Totenritual nach der Antyeṣṭipaddhati des Nārāyaṇabhaṭṭa (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1992), p. 86.
28 See Joachim Sprockhoff, ‘Die Alten im alten Indien. Ein Versuch nach brahmanischen Quellen’, in Saeculum, Vol. 30 (1979), pp. 374–433.
29 A brief and incomplete treatment of Indic old age rituals and their background can be found in Chintaharan Chakravarti, ‘Propitiatory Rites for Warding Off the Evils of Old Age’, in S.M. Katre and P.K. Gode (eds), A Volume of Eastern and Indian Studies: Presented to Frederick William Thomas, on his 72nd Birth-day, 21st March 1939 (Bombay: Karnatak Publishing House, 1939), pp. 43–5.
30 I am grateful to Ute Huesken for sharing her images and notes of a performance of the thousand moon ritual among the Vaikhānasas of Tamil Nadu in Singaperumal in January 2002.
31 For a spectacular example, see website reports of the bhīmarathaśānti that Sathya Sai Baba performed for 275 couples in one grand ceremony on 10 February 2005. The official account focuses on the re-enactment of the wedding rites performed as part of the bhīmarathaśānti. These included the tying of the maṅgalasūtra and the mutual garlanding by the spouses [http://www.saibaba.ws/reports/2005/bheemarathashanthi.htm, accessed 6 Oct. 2013].
32 See Lawrence Cohen, No Ageing in India. Alzheimer's, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), p. 157.
33 Rādhākānta, Śabdakalpadruma, Vol. 3, p. 513: ‘saptasaptativarṣāṇāṃ saptame māsi saptamī / rātrir bhīmarathī nāma nārāṇāṃ atidustarā // tām atītya naro yo ‘sau dināni yāni jīvati / kratubhis tāni tulyāni suvarṇaśatadakṣiṇaiḥ // gatiḥ pradakṣiṇaṃ viṣṇor jalpanam mantrabhāṣaṇam / dhyānaṃ nidrā sudhā cānnaṃ bhīmarathyāḥ phalaśrutiḥ’.
34 In his article, ‘The Bhīmaratha Rite and Nepali Art’, Pal, who hails from Bengal, claims that this rite marks the entry into ‘the realm of senility’, where the elders ‘are no longer responsible for their actions’ (p. 176), thus projecting an inappropriate Bangla understanding of bhīmaratha upon his Nepalese material.
35 Ācāryakriyāsamuccaya 427,3f: ‘grahādidoṣopaśamāya caiva dāridryaduḥkhapravināśanāya / alpāyuṣāṃ cāyuvivṛddhihetos trimaṇḍalaiḥ svastyayanaṃ praśastaṃ //’ (amending the c-pada to read cāyurvivṛddhihetos would corrupt the meter).
36 See Marylin Rhie, Robert Thurman and John Taylor, Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet (New York: Tibet House New York, 1996), Plate 73, pp. 226–9.
37 Cf. von Rospatt, ‘The Transformation of the Monastic Ordination (Pravrajyā) into a Rite of Passage in Newar Buddhism’, pp. 199–234.