Rituals As War Propaganda in The Establ

RITUALS AS WAR PROPAGANDA 49
RITUALS AS WAR PROPAGANDA

IN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TIBETAN GANDEN PHODRANG STATE
IN THE MID-17TH CENTURY
Solomon George FitzHerbert*1
Cet article examine la politique de la « magie de guerre » – c’est-à-dire

des rituels visant à repousser les armées (tib. dmag bzlog) – au moment de la
création de l’État tibétain du Ganden Phodrang au XVIIe siècle. Utilisant des
textes rituels en langue tibétaine comme sources historiques, l’article présente la
« magie de guerre » comme une forme pré-moderne de propagande de guerre
qui a joué un rôle crucial dans la formation de l’État tibétain. Au début
du XVIIe siècle, la « magie de guerre » tibétaine, une tradition qui puisait ses
racines en Inde, s’était développée pour devenir un domaine extrêmement
compétitif, imprégné d’une rhétorique selon laquelle il fallait repousser les
« armées démoniaques des régions frontalières » et en particulier les Mongols.
Le fait que l’existence du gouvernement du Ganden Phodrang dépendait du
soutien militaire des Mongols Qoshot représentait un important défi en terme
de propagande. L’article examine les différentes stratégies que le Cinquième
Dalaï-lama Ngawang Lozang Gyatso a personnellement mises en œuvre pour
résoudre ce problème, ce qui lui a permis, avec son successeur le régent Sanggyé
Gyatso, de déployer avec succès l’arsenal très impressionnant des « pouvoirs
magiques » (tib. mthu) du Ganden Phodrang. Cela incluait notamment le
patronage des traditions ésotériques de rituels violents des Trésors du Nord,
la rédaction, par le Cinquième Dalaï-lama lui-même, de nombreux textes
rituels sur des thèmes connexes et enfin l’institution de cérémonies d’État pour
mettre en scène publiquement ces pratiques.
What the Tibetan literary record o en lacks in sources on “hard” aspects of

political power in Tibet before the nineteenth century—sources on military and
economic factors that helped determine events—it more than compensates for in
its abundance of sources on the “so ” or cultural aspects of power. These include,
in particular, sources on the legitimation and maintenance of authority through
* This research was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement 677952 “TibArmy”).
The content only reflects the author’s view and the ERC is not responsible for any use that may be
made of the information it contains. For valuable guidance, comments and suggestions on earlier
dra s of this article, the author would particularly like to thank Samten Karmay, Martin Boord
(Rig ’ǳin rdo rje), Cameron Bailey, Bryan Cuevas, Charles Ramble, Jeff Watt, Alice Travers,
Federica Venturi and Sean Jones, as well as the CEA’s formal peer reviewers. All mistakes, omis-
sions and hyperbole are the author’s own.
Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 27 (2018) : 49-119

© École ançaise d’Extrême-Orient, Paris, 2011
Do not circulate without permission of the editor / Ne pas diffuser sans autorisation de l’éditeur
CEA27 FitzHerbert.indd 49 19/06/11 18:27

50 Solomon George FitzHerbert
symbolism, discourse hegemony, pageant and ritual.1 In these areas, pre-modern

Tibetan statecra was highly sophisticated. This article looks at one particular aspect
of this: namely the role of rituals of “war magic” or “magical warcra ” (dmag zlog,
lit.: “army-repelling”), as a key area of propaganda during the establishment of the
Ganden Phodrang state in the seventeenth century.
By the seventeenth century, the willingness of Tibetan religious figures to
accept the support of Mongol chiefs in areas of hard power (wealth and military
means) had long precedent going back to the thirteenth century. But the cultiva-
tion of so power, by contrast, was an arena that Tibetan leaders guarded closely.
For it was in such areas—charismatic authority based on reputations of saintliness
and miracle-working through the efficacy of esoteric tantric rituals—that Tibetan
leaders excelled. Thaumaturgical or magical power, captured by the Tibetan term
tu (mthu),2 had been closely connected to Tibetan sensibilities concerning political
power ever since the Tibetan imperial period and even before, and it also constituted
the main asset wielded by Tibetan religious figures on the turbulent “international”
geopolitical stage of Inner Asia.
So although it would be hard to argue against the materialist historian’s assertion
that it was above all the conventional force of arms—in the form of the military
campaigns of the Qoshot Oirat chief Gushri Khan (1582–1655)—which brought the
Fi h Dalai Lama Ngawang Lozang Gyatso (Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho,
1617–82) and his Ganden Phodrang’s (Dga’ ldan pho brang) establishment to power
over a unified Tibet in 1642, the tenacity of that political establishment, which was
to become the longest-surviving government on the Tibetan plateau in Tibet’s his-
tory (1642–1959), outlasting even the Tibetan Empire (seventh to ninth centuries),
owed as much if not more to its programmes of legitimation in the cultural and
religious spheres as it did to the military and bureaucratic structures it put in place.
From 1642, through a sophisticated deployment of myth, symbol and ritual,
through text and public performance, multifaceted appeals were made to traditional
symbolic sources of authority which augmented the (already considerable) charisma
of the office of the Dalai Lama to such a degree that its political pre-eminence
amongst Tibet’s very numerous religious lineages came to be accepted across the
Tibetan cultural world. That the Ganden Phodrang survived so long, despite mani-
fold structural weaknesses in areas of hard power, illustrates the enduring power of
this cultural construction and its significance for the history of Tibet.
1. To present the use of rituals as an aspect of “so ” power (to use the terminology coined
by Joseph Nye) is to take an etic and interpretative approach to seventeenth-century Tibetan
history. The question of whether or not these rituals were or were not effective is not a question
addressed here. Instead, the article seeks to highlight the role of such rituals and related cultural
discourses (historiography, for example) for their significance in the projection of charismatic
power, and thus as aspects of “so ” power.
2. For a discussion of the term mthu and other Tibetan terms for “magical power,” see
Nicolas Sihlé, Rituels bouddhiques de pouvoir et de violence (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 217–27.
The salience of mthu to Tibetan conceptions of political authority, since at least the imperial
period, is particularly evident in the Tibetan chos ’byung genre of Tibetan religious historiography.


This article hopes to contribute in a small way to understanding one significant

area of this cultural construction: the programme undertaken by the Fi h Dalai
Lama to harness a reputation for efficacy in war magic (here broadly defined as
defensive and offensive rituals performed against perceived enemies in times of
armed conflict)3 to the institutions of the Ganden Phodrang. The article hopes to
illustrate the following:
(Part 1) Such was the stature and appeal of war magic in seventeenth-century
Tibet that no political establishment could hope to survive without garnering
such a reputation.
(Part 2) The purveyors of “state of the art” war magic as national defence in this
period were broadly aligned with forces inimical to Géluk (Dge lugs) interests.
(Part 3) The Fi h Dalai Lama personally took charge of the effort a er 1642
to compensate for the Ganden Phodrang’s potential vulnerability in this regard.
Seen in this light, one can better understand the Dalai Lama’s lifelong concern
(evident in his autobiographical works) with learning, authoring and instituting an
armoury of defensive and offensive rituals for the mobilisation of unseen forces which
could be used on behalf of his government. Through this programme, the Fi h Dalai
Lama was able to harness an unsurpassed reputation for magical power (mthu) to
the Ganden Phodrang, and together with his successor, Dési Sanggyé Gyatso (Sde
srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho, 1653–1705), was able to establish the grandest “theatre
state”4 in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. The Ganden Phodrang was not the
3. The term “war magic” constitutes the title of a recent cross-cultural anthology of articles:
War Magic: Religion, Sorcery and Performance, ed. Douglas S. Farrer (New York: Berghahn Books,
2016), which includes a chapter by Iain Sinclair on Indian Tantric Buddhism. The term is used
in a Tibetan context in Jacob Dalton, Taming the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan
Buddhism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 132 and passim. Cuevas, in a forthcoming
article which only came to the author’s attention shortly before this article went to print, prefers
the terms “magical warfare” and “magical warcra ”; see Bryan Cuevas, “The Politics of Magical
Warfare,” in Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, ed. Karl Debreczeny (Chicago:
Serindia, 2019). The broad definition of war magic given here is my own.
4. The concept of the “theatre state” was developed by Clifford Geertz in his work on tradi-
tional state ritual in Bali. In a similar vein, many of the most prominent political formations in the
history of Tibet have had ceremonialism and symbolism projecting the Tibetan cultural interest
in magical power (mthu), close to the heart of their political projects. The Ganden Phodrang
was not unique, but a particularly clear example of this. The organisation and logistics associated
with the Ganden Phodrang’s annual calendar of elaborate and esoteric state rituals—as described
in Hugh Richardson, Ceremonies of the Lhasa Year (London: Serindia, 1993)—was a major part
of its state activity. Geertz defines the Balinese theatre state thus: “[A state] pointed not toward
tyranny, whose systematic concentration of power it was incompetent to effect, and not even
very methodically toward government, which it pursued indifferently and hesitantly, but rather
toward spectacle, toward ceremony, toward the public dramatisation of the ruling obsession of
Balinese culture . . . It was a theatre state . . . [in which] mass ritual was not a device to shore


first state in Tibetan history to foreground such matters, and similar programmes
can be seen in many Tibetan state-building projects, even during the same period
(as in the case of Bhutan).5 Unique, however, was the scale and thoroughness with
which the Fi h Dalai Lama pursued this programme, and its long-lasting effects
on the Tibetan cultural and political landscape.
The major forms that this programme took were:
1) the suppression, marginalisation or co-option of those traditions of magical

warcra which had been used against the rise of the Géluk school. Examples
include the suppression of the Karma Kagyü (Karma bka’ brgyud) and Jonang
(Jo nang); marginalisation of the “Nangtsé faction” of the Nyingma (Rnying
ma);6 and co-option of the war magic of the Northern Treasures (Byang gter)
as well as some aspects of other traditions’ war magic, such as the Drigungpa
(’Bri gung pa).
2) the effective re-construction of the Nyingma school under the wing of the
Ganden Phodrang’s political authority, in particular through the patronage of
Dorjé Drak (Rdo rje brag) and Mindrölling (Smin grol gling) monasteries.
3) the institution of state-sponsored rituals based on the Fi h Dalai Lama’s

own visionary experiences and revelations.
up the state, but rather the state, even in its final gasp, was a device for the enactment of mass
ritual. Power served pomp, not pomp power”; see Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in
Nineteenth Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 13. The degree to which
such a characterisation may be considered valid of the Ganden Phodrang state depends in part on
which period is under discussion. During the rule of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (r. 1895–1933),
for example, there were efforts to modernise the Tibetan state, though these initiatives met strong
resistance om monastic interests.
5. The discourse of power in the arts of war magic also played a significant role in the
formation of the state of Bhutan om 1625. This falls outside the remit of this article. For more
on this see John Ardussi, “Formation of the State of Bhutan (’Brug gzhung) in the 17th century
and its Tibetan Antecedents,” in The Relationship between Religion and State (chos srid zung ’brel)
in Traditional Tibet, ed. Christoph Cüppers (Lumbini: Lumbini International Research Insti-
tute, 2004), 10–32. On the symbolism of the form of Padmasambhava known as the “Guru who
Repels Mongol Armies” (Guru hor sog dmag zlog) instituted as a state protector of Bhutan,
see Françoise Pommaret, “Protectors of Bhutan: The Role of Guru Rinpoché and the Eight
Categories of Gods and Demons (lHa srin sde brgyad),” in Written Treasures of Bhutan: Mirror
of the Past and Bridge to the Future; Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Rich
Scriptural Heritage of Bhutan, ed. John Ardussi and Sonam Tobgay (Thimphu: National Library
of Bhutan, 2008), 305–40.
6. The “Nangtsé faction” (snang rtse phyogs) was one of the derisory epithets the Fi h Dalai
Lama used to denote the lineage of Zhikpo Lingpa Gargyi Wangchuk (Zhig po gling pa Gar
gyi dbang phyug, 1524–83), his disciple Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen (Sog bzlog pa Blo gros rgyal
mtshan, 1552–1624), and his disciple Gongra Zhenphen Dorjé (Gong ra Gzhan phan rdo rje,
1594–1654). This Nyingma lineage was particularly associated with war magic in pre-1642 Tibet.
More about this will be said later in the article.


4) the establishment of discourse hegemony in the field of Tibetan magico-

religious historiography, and thus over the discourse of war magic itself.
These last two aspects—concerning state rituals and discourse hegemony—were

especially augmented by Dési Sanggyé Gyatso a er the Fi h Dalai Lama’s death
in 1682.
The recent efflorescence of Western-language scholarship relating to this piv-
otal period of Tibetan history means that many aspects of this programme have
already, in one way or another, been revealed in recent studies and translations.7
7. Most important of the recent contributions to Western language resources on this period
of Tibetan history has been Samten Karmay’s masterful translation of the first volume of the Fi h
Dalai Lama’s autobiography: Samten Gyeltsen Karmay, The Illusive Play: The Autobiography of the
Fifth Dalai Lama (Chicago: Serindia, 2014). This supplements Karmay’s previous work on the
Dalai Lama’s visions: Samten Karmay, Secret Visions of the Fifth Dalai Lama: The Gold Manuscript
in the Fournier Collection (London: Serindia, 1998). Also, his work on the associated rituals in the
“sealed volumes”: Samten Karmay, “The Rituals and Their Origins in the Visionary Accounts of
the Fi h Dalai Lama,” in The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in Myths, History, Rituals and Beliefs
in Tibet, ed. Samten Karmay, vol. 2 (Kathmandu: Mandala Publications, 2005), 73–94. Together,
Karmay’s several works on the Fi h Dalai Lama have revealed with clarity the key importance
of Jangdak Tashi Topgyel (Byang bdag Bkra shis stobs rgyal, c. 1550–1607) in particular, and the
Northern Treasures in general, to the Dalai Lama’s inner religious life. The Dalai Lama’s patronage
of Rinǳin Péma Trinlé (Rig ’ǳin Padma ’phrin las, 1641–1717) and the latter’s extensive work
in shaping the Northern Treasures traditions of Vajrakīla at Dorjé Drak (Rdo rje brag) has been
shown in the voluminous translations of Northern Treasures scriptures by Martin Boord / Rig
’ǳin rdo rje. In particular Rig ’ǳin rdo rje, Gathering the Elements: An Overview of the Vajrakīla
Tradition, Vajrakīla Texts of the Northern Treasures Tradition, vol. 1, Khordong Commentary
Series 10 (Berlin: Wandel Verlag, 2016 [2013]); also Rig ’ǳin rdo rje, A Roll of Thunder from the
Void, Vajrakīla Texts of the Northern Treasures Tradition, vol. 2, Khordong Commentary Series 5
(Berlin: Wandel Verlag, 2010). Also significant have been Dalton’s lucid and erudite expositions
of the Fi h Dalai Lama’s patronage of Péma Trinlé’s reworking of the seminal Dgongs pa ’dus
pa’i mdo Tantra at Dorjé Drak and the further elaboration of that tradition into the theatrical
public rituals of occult power instituted under his patronage at Mindrölling, in Jacob Dalton,
Gathering of Intentions: A History of Tibetan Tantra (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016),
78–113. On the marginalisation of the “Nangtsé faction,” which accompanied his patronage of
the Northern Treasures, see James Gentry, Power Objects in Tibetan Buddhism: The Life, Writings,
and Legacy of Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 380–408. On the establishment of
discourse hegemony in the crucial arena of Tibetan historiography and the Foucaultian “produc-
tion of truth,” see Derek Maher, “Sacralized Warfare: The Fi h Dalai Lama and the Discourse
of Religious Violence,” in Buddhist Warfare, ed. Michael K. Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 77–90. And on the seminal role of Dési Sanggyé Gyatso
in institutionalising the charismatic authority of the Great Fi h through hagiography and ritual,
see Kurtis Schaeffer, “Ritual, Festival and Authority under the Fi h Dalai Lama,” in Power, Poli-
tics and the Reinvention of Tradition: Tibet in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Bryan
Cuevas and Kurtis Schaeffer (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 187–202. The significance of the Fi h Dalai
Lama’s visionary experiences and the influence of the Nyingma school on him are also explored
in the various contributions (particularly those by Karmay, Cornu and Heller) in Rituels tibétains:
Visions secrètes du Ve Dalaï Lama; Musée national des Arts asiatiques-Guimet, 5 novembre 2002–24
février 2003, ed. Nathalie Bazin (exhibition catalogue, Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux;


The ambitions of this article, therefore, are relatively modest: to take stock of
these new materials to highlight the very significant role played by war magic in
the processes of state construction under the nascent Ganden Phodrang; to make
this sometimes esoteric subject more accessible to non-specialists; and finally, based
on explorations in numerous untranslated Tibetan sources, to add corroborating
material to the picture. It remains an incomplete survey, however, since there are
still a number of related aspects to the Ganden Phodrang’s state-building project
which this article has barely touched upon. Most glaring of these lacunae in the
present article are the roles of the Ganden Phodrang’s protective deities, and par-
ticularly Pehar (Pe har) and Bektsé (Beg tse). Prior academic treatments on both
of these figures likewise reveal the seminal role played by the Fi h Dalai Lama in
their elevation and institutionalisation.8
On a narrower level, it is argued here that the Fi h Dalai Lama’s own efforts
to co-opt and surpass his contemporary rivals in the broad and competitive field of
war magic were driven by more than just a personal affinity for such rites, but were
part of an astute political project. The Fi h Dalai Lama’s close family connections
to Nyingma tradition—and to the Northern Treasures tradition in particular—are
well-established.9 This close connection goes a long way in explaining many of
the specific forms his programme took a er 1642 to dominate the discourse on war
magic. It explains, for example, his close involvement with sponsoring Dorjé Drak,
the Northern Treasures monastery founded by his cousin Ngakgi Wangpo (Ngag gi
[Suilly-la-Tour]: Findakly, 2002). The general thesis of this paper is also consonant with the
briefer treatment of the topic in Dalton, Taming the Demons, 133–43.
8. On Pehar, see Christopher Bell, “Néchung: The Ritual History and Institutionalization
of a Tibetan Buddhist Protector Deity” (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 2013). For a resumé
of her extensive work on Bektsé, see Amy Heller, “Remarques préliminaires sur les divinités
protectrices Srung-ma dmar-nag du Potala,” in Tibet, Civilisation et Société, ed. Fernand Meyer
(Paris: Éditions Singer-Polignac, 1990), 19–27.
9. The Dalai Lama’s close family connection with the scions of the Northern Treasures tradi-
tion has been related by a number of scholars: Karmay, “Rituals and Their Origins,” 86–87; Rig
’ǳin rdo rje, Roll of Thunder, xviii–xxv; Dalton, Gathering of Intentions, 85–86; Gentry, Power
Objects, 386–87. In its basic outlines, the story runs like this: sometime a er 1565, Tashi Topgyel
Wangpodé of the Jangdak Ngamring (Byang bdag Ngam ring) family and scion of the Northern
Treasures tradition came into conflict with the newly ascendent ruler of Tsang, Zhingshakpa
Tséten Dorjé (Zhing shag pa Tshe brtan rdo rje) and his sons. As a result, Tashi Topgyel, who was
a tantrist famed for mastery in the wrathful Phurpa/Vajrakīla practices seminal to the Northern
Treasures tradition, was forced to leave his ancestral fiefdom in Jang Ngamring in Tsang and
therea er settled in Chonggyé (’Phyong rgyas) in the Yarlung Valley of Ü (Dbus), where he
married the daughter of a local aristocratic lord. Their son, Ngakgi Wangpo, succeeded his father
as the lineage holder of Northern Treasures and later (1636) founded Dorjé Drak Monastery. In
1616, Hor Düdül Rapten (Hor Bdud ’dul rab brtan), a military-minded young lord of another
prominent aristocratic family in the area, also married a lady om the same family, and their son
was the Fi h Dalai Lama-to-be. Dalton (Gathering of Intentions, 85) says that Ngakgi Wangpo’s
mother, Yiǳin Wangmo (Yid ’ǳin dbang mo) of Takse, and the Fi h Dalai Lama’s mother,
Künga Lhamǳé (Kun dga’ lha mǳes) of Yardrok, were sisters, which would make Tashi Topgyel
the Fi h Dalai Lama’s uncle, and Ngakgi Wangpo his first cousin.


dbang po, 1580–1639) as a major source of ritual support for the Ganden Phodrang.
It helps explain his historiographic work on the history of the Northern Treasures,
which re-centred authority in the Nyingma school onto the lineage-holders of the
Northern Treasures while marginalising and discrediting the “Nangtsé faction,” which
had aligned itself with the Tsangpa Dési (Gtsang pa Sde srid).10 It also sheds light
on the prominent role played in the Dalai Lama’s own visionary experiences by
the Northern Treasures scion Jangdak Tashi Topgyel (Byang bdag Bkra shis stobs
rgyal), alias Wangpodé (Dbang po sde, c. 1550–1607), who was Ngakgi Wangpo’s
father and his own uncle.11
But the Fi h Dalai Lama’s programme of patronage towards this particular
strand of Nyingma tradition was more than just a matter of religious taste and the
public expression of unshi able family loyalties. It also answered a broader political
need, and this is the context in which it is approached here. The Fi h Dalai Lama
was an astute strategist in the domains of political and cultural symbolism, and his
autobiographical works suggest he was sensitive to the necessity of propaganda, or,
in other words, of managing popular perceptions. The contention of this article is
that reaching out beyond narrowly sectarian interests, and harnessing Tibet’s cul-
tural resources in the field of war magic to its own cause, were political imperatives
for the new Ganden Phodrang government, without which its chances of ending
Tibet’s long drawn out sectarian and regional rivalries were slim. This was espe-
cially pressing because the Ganden Phodrang’s military clout in Tibet was based
largely on a widely distrusted, foreign (i.e. Mongol) soldiery with reputations for
fickleness and sectarian militancy. The article argues that this was well understood
(though never stated in such blunt terms) by the Fi h Dalai Lama himself, and
that is why he personally took charge of these areas and ensured their success and
institutionalisation as part of the state-building process.12 It was a strategy that came
at considerable cost. The Fi h Dalai Lama’s patronage of the Nyingma school in
particular created a ri within the Géluk establishment, which would have major
10. The conflicts and rivalry between Jangdak Tashi Topgyel and the “Nangtsé faction”
associated with Zhikpo Lingpa Gargyi Wangchuk are related by the Fi h Dalai Lama in his
history of the masters of the Northern Treasures (the Byang pa’i rnam thar cited below). These
are discussed in Gentry, Power Objects, 390–92.
11. It was to his karmic connection with Tashi Topgyel, above all others, which empowered
him in the seminal visions of 1642 and 1651, that the Fi h Dalai Lama credited his own power
in the practical arts of wrathful tantric action.
12. The Dalai Lama’s métier was religion. His political choices and strategies were always
expressed through this medium. Under the Ganden Phodrang’s ideology of uniting the “two
systems” (lugs gnyis) of religion and worldly affairs (chos and srid), politics was always oriented
ultimately towards religious goals—the protection and flourishing of the teachings of the Buddha-
dharma. But the other side of this coin was that religion in this era could o en be political. It
would be wrong to see the religious teachings of the Northern Treasures, for example, as in any
way political—the teachings themselves are (and were) not. However, the choice to patronise
these teachings in the highly sectarian atmosphere of mid-seventeenth-century Tibet was politi-
cal, and should be recognised as such.


and long-lasting repercussions, echoes of which continue today.13 But in political

terms, it was successful. By furnishing the Ganden Phodrang with this indispensible
cultural resource—namely, an unrivalled reputation for magical power (mthu)—it
strengthened popular pan-Tibetan cohesion around the new dispensation, heightened
the political stature of the figure of the Dalai Lama in particular, and ensured the
new establishment was armed with a key cultural asset on the international stage
of Inner Asian geopolitics.
To argue that the Great Fi h’s marked interest throughout his life in various
forms of violent ritual was part of a political strategy connected to the propaganda
value of such rites does not mean to say that his efforts in this regard were cyni-
cally motivated or somehow devoid of genuine belief. On the contrary, the evidence
suggests that the Fi h Dalai Lama was himself in tune with the popular beliefs
of the day, in that he did not doubt the efficacy of ritual—not only as a means of
protection, but also as a means to mobilise spirits and wrathful protectors in offen-
sive action. Although he regularly cast doubt in his writings on the audulent and
boastful claims to magical efficacy made by political and religious rivals, he never
doubted the potential of ritual per se to achieve tangible results. But the fact that
he sincerely believed in the power of such rituals (when undertaken by suitably
initiated and realised yogins) does not negate—indeed it bolsters—the suggestion
that he was also acutely sensitive to the immense political and military capital that
these rituals represented. For these rituals were not only (in the etic perspective of
this article) powerful weapons of what we might today call “war propaganda,” they
were also ( om an emic perspective) actually capable of influencing the outcomes
of armed conflict, by weakening an enemy’s resolve, sowing confusion in its ranks,
causing its leaders to fall sick and so on.
Now, before looking in some detail at what Tibetan “war magic” actually entailed
in this period, and then at the career of the Great Fi h himself in this field, it is
necessary first to elucidate the historical background. For to properly understand
the energy that the Great Fi h and Dési Sanggyé Gyatso expended on this esoteric
domain throughout their careers, one must appreciate the political, religious and
discursive context of the times in which they lived.
13. The Dorjé Shukden (Rdo rje shugs ldan) controversy is a modern manifestation of this
ri , which has its origins in the time of the Fi h Dalai Lama. Dorjé Shukden is considered by
some to be the deified spirit of Drakpa Gyeltsen (Grags pa rgyal mtshan, 1619–56), the prestigious
tulku (sprul sku) of the Upper Chamber (gzims khang gong ma) at Drépung (’Bras spungs), and a
contemporary of the Fi h Dalai Lama, around whom a faction of Géluk opponents to the Fi h
Dalai Lama’s patronage of the Nyingma school coalesced.


1. Historical Context
Battle for Legitimacy
The main textual sources for Central Tibetan history in the period om the
early sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century are religious biographies
(rnam thar) of major ecclesiastical figures. Between the lines of such hagiographic
sources one glimpses a world of equent armed conflict based on familial, regional
and sectarian factionalism, and a er 1577 (at the latest), regular interventions by
Mongol forces.14 Since the propitiation of fierce protectors of the teachings (srung
ma) as well as tantric rituals for the “four modes of enlightened action” (’phrin las
bzhi)—namely paci ing (zhi), enriching (rgyas), controlling (dbang) and destroying
(drag)15—were shared features in all schools of Tibetan Vajrayāna Buddhism and
Bön, it was natural in a hagiographic context to ame the worldly achievements of
Tibetan religious figures—in domains such as patronage, landholding and military
affairs—as the outcomes of these enlightened activities. And this in itself fed an
intensely competitive atmosphere around both the practices and the discourse of
rites of practical magic, and destructive rites (las sbyor) in particular. By the time of
the intermittent Tibetan civil wars om the late-fi eenth to the mid-seventeenth
centuries, tantric magic provided the primary literary discourse of Tibetan warfare,
and lamas of most, if not all, denominations and lineages appear to have been
practicing defensive and offensive16 tantric rituals on behalf of allies and patrons.17
Powerful figures would routinely employ personal “bodyguards” (sku bsrung) whose
job consisted precisely in performing such rituals.18 This prominence of ritual
14. As an example of such “between the lines” references to Mongol military interventions,
the biography of Thuksé Dawa Gyeltsen (Thugs sras Zla ba rgyal mtshan, 1499–1587) contains a
chapter entitled “Repelling Foreign Armies and Discovering Profound Treasures,” which in the
words of James Gentry “offers copious examples of [his] prowess in ridding Tibet of military
incursions”; see Gentry, Power Objects, 83.
15. The classic English-language work on the complex mechanisms (involving visualisa-
tion, utterance and gesture) and logic (the dissolution into primordial emptiness and recreation
there om) of tantric ritual shared broadly by all the schools of Tibetan Buddhism and Bön, is
Stephan Beyer, The Cult of Tara: Magic and Ritual in Tibet (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 2013 [1973]).
16. It is worth distinguishing between defensive violent rites such as those for “repelling”
(zlog pa) harmful forces, om offensive violent rites such as “pressing down” (mnan pa) or even
“killing” (bsad pa). Sihlé, in his treatment of ritual violence in a Tibetan Buddhist context, also
rightly makes the distinction between the principle of “repulsion” (zlog pa) on the one hand,
and the exorcistic purgative principle at work in rites of “ransom” (glud) on the other; see Sihlé,
Rituels bouddhiques, 169–70.
17. For examples, see Gentry, Power Objects; David Templeman, “A World Upside Down:
Religious Prelates and Secular Rulers in Seventeenth Century Tsang,” in The Tenth Karmapa and
Tibet’s Turbulent Seventeenth Century, ed. Karl Debreczeny and Gray Tuttle (Chicago: Serindia,
2016), 13–28; Karmay, Illusive Play.
18. Olaf Czaja, Medieval Rule in Tibet: The Rlangs Clan and the Political and Religious History
of the Ruling House of Phag mo gru pa; With a Study of the Monastic Art of Gdan sa mthil (Vienna:
Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenscha en, 2013), 262, 270.


violence and ritual defence in the Tibetan discourse on politics and warfare had
the effect of further strengthening the status of religious leaders in Tibetan politi-
cal and military history. Through this discourse, religious figures could maintain
a virtuous aloofness om the actual (polluting) violence going on around them
(considered karmic manifestations of the “age of degeneracy” or snyigs ma’i dus),
while still being presented as the primary protagonists (and especially victors) in
those conflicts. This centrality of religious figures and their magical prowess to the
Tibetan historiographical record may be contrasted to the very marginal—indeed
o en invisible—roles played by armed forces, whether Tibetan or Mongol or (as
was common) mixed, in this early age of gunpowder and cannons.19 Very o en, all
that we hear of the armies and skirmishes and even warfare of these centuries is
that a er being despatched by the enlightened ritual activities of a powerful lama,
this or that army was dispersed or destroyed, “leaving nothing behind but a name,”
to use the favoured Tibetan idiom.20
It is also important to understand the wider context of how Mongols were
represented in the Tibetan religious discourse of the times. In the wake of the
Mongol military ventures into Tibet in the mid-thirteenth century, and the cen-
tury of Mongol domination that followed, a distinct shi had been taking place in
Tibetan literary (and one can assume oral and folkloric) mythography. No longer
was Tibet depicted, as it had been in earlier post-dynastic Second Diffusion (phyi
dar) literature, as the “barbarous borderlands” (mtha’ khob) in need of the civilis-
ing influence of Buddhism. Instead, Tibet (bod khams) itself was now increasingly
depicted as a centre of the Buddhist world,21 which was under threat om barbaric
forces of disintegration pressing at its borders. Increasingly, the core analogy was
of Tibet as a divine maṇḍala threatened on all sides by the depredations of demonic
foes.22 This shi towards a more Tibet-centric civilisational discourse, no doubt
bolstered by the destruction and demise of Buddhism in India, was particularly
19. Firearms, such as cannons (me skyogs) and somewhat later muskets (bog/ me mda’), appear
to have made their first appearance in the Tibetan cultural world during the early-seventeenth
century. Their impact on warfare by the mid-seventeenth century was marginal but not insig-
nificant (the Fi h Dalai Lama in his autobiography mentions cannons being used during Gushri
Khan’s siege of Samdruptsé). On dating the advent of firearms in Tibet, see Donald LaRocca,
Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 2006), 198–200.
20. “Becoming nothing but a name” (ming gi lhag ma tsam du gyur and similar formulations)
is the regular idiom employed to describe the successes of Tibetan lamas in defeating the armies
of perceived threats. The phrase in itself illustrates the awareness of Tibetan sources about the
power of discourse hegemony and the truism that history is written by the victors. It is also very
accurate, in that next to nothing, aside om names, is in fact known to posterity about the many
Mongol military forces whose presence was felt intermittently in Tibet during these centuries.
21. This assertiveness with regard to Tibet’s status as a centre of the Buddhist world had
its roots in the Tibetan renaissance of the eleventh century, when (in the words of Davidson)
“Tibetans confidently established their independent perspective on the architecture of the Bud-
dhist path”; see Ronald Davidson, Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan
Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 321.
22. Dalton, Taming, 129–32.


apparent in the prophecy-laden and burgeoning corpus of “revealed treasure,” or

terma (gter ma), literature popularised by the thang yig literature associated with
Orgyen Lingpa (O rgyan gling pa, b. 1323) in particular. Much of this terma lit-
erature was millenarian in tone, lamenting the “age of degeneracy” (snyigs ma’i dus)
and predicting horrors inflicted on Tibet by “demonic armies of the borderlands”
(mtha’i bdud dpung) and the necessity of opening “hidden lands” (sbas yul) to escape
such evils (a central mythic trope deployed in the foundational mythologies of the
states of Sikkim and Bhutan). The highly influential Péma Kathang (Padma bka’
thang, Péma Chronicles), in particular, was laden with prophecies of Mongol depreda-
tions predicted by Padmasambhava.23 A related core theme—conflict with demonic
armies of the four directions, and most prominently the demonic Hor (one of the
main names used for Mongols in this period)—also runs through the folklore of
the Gesar epic, which appears to have crystalised as a mainstay of popular culture
in eastern Tibet in roughly the same period (fourteenth–sixteenth centuries).24
By the sixteenth century, defence against “demonic armies of the borderlands”
(bdud kyi mtha’ dmag) was a potent re ain, which echoed through the religious and
folkloric discourses of the times. In terma literature, in its related folk-epic (sgrung)
manifestations, in hagiography (rnam thar), in religious histories (chos ’byung), and
also in the burgeoning Tibetan ritual literature specifically directed at “repelling
armies” (dmag bzlog / dmag zlog), one finds the same use of poetic formulae to this
effect, playing on the connotative merging between tédüpung (mtha’i bdud dpung)—a
phrase which in Buddhist terms could be translated with introspective resonance
as “demonic forces of extremity”— and témakpung (mtha’i dmag dpung), meaning
simply “foreign armies.” In light of the “inner-outer homology which informs so
much thinking in the Buddhist tantras,”25 the foreign armies appearing on the
Tibetan landscape causing bloodshed, disease and hardship, were thus associated and
poetically merged with the primary inner forces to be vanquished for any practicing
Buddhist, namely the destructive mental states (kleśa, nyon mongs) that arise om
the “extremes” of aversion and desire. In the Gesar epic’s core literary tableau, the
23. Orgyen gling pa (revealer), Padma bka’ thang: U rgyan gu ru padma ’byung gnas kyi skyes
rabs rnam par thar pa rgyas par bkod pa (Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1996). For
more on this text’s influence on Tibet’s civilisational discourse, see Dalton, Taming, 133.
24. The earliest textual attestation to the existence of an epic of Ling Gesar in a form
recognisable as the epic we see today is the Rlangs kyi po ti bse ru, a terma which was probably
finally redacted around the beginning of the fi eenth century. On this dating, see Rolf A. Stein,
“Une source ancienne pour l’histoire de l’épopée tibétaine : Le Rlangs Po-Ti bSe-Ru,” Journal
Asiatique 250 (1962): 100–101. For more on how the epic may have evolved in this period in dia-
logue with other Tibetan folkloric discourses concerning Mongols, see Solomon G. FitzHerbert,
“Constitutional Mythologies and Entangled Cultures in the Tibeto-Mongolian Gesar Epic,” in
Journal of American Folklore 129, no. 513 (Summer 2016): 302. Also “Gesar’s Familiars: Revisit-
ing Shamanism as a Hermeneutic for Understanding the Structure and History of the Tibetan
Gesar Epic,” in The Many Faces of Ling Gesar: Homage to Rolf A. Stein, ed. Matthew Kapstein
and Charles Ramble (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
25. Iain Sinclair, “War Magic and Just War in Indian Tantric Buddhism,” in War Magic,
ed. Farrer, 158.


four demons (bdud bzhi) of the four directions could thus also carry the religious
connotation of the four demons (māra/bdud) of classical Buddhism. In this way, the
inner and outer dimensions of tantric ritual (as fighting inner demons or external
enemies) were merged in the religious imagination.
This domination of the literary and folkloric discourse by accounts of the occult
powers of realised religious masters on the one hand, and of foreign demonic dep-
redation on the other, had the combined effect of further augmenting the central-
ity of lamas to Tibetan conceptions of political authority, while also heightening
the competition between them to be seen as the genuine destined, prophecied
and occultly-powerful defenders of the Tibetan Buddhist realm. In this context,
Tibetan religious and political leaders of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
faced a strategic balancing act. They had to weigh up the advantages to be accrued
in terms of hard military power and defence by courting the support of powerful,
wealthy and armed Mongol factions, with the disadvantages that such associa-
tions with foreign armies (mtha’ dmag) would have in the domains of propaganda,
prophecy and legitimacy.
During the intermittent civil war of the first half of the seventeenth century, two
main camps emerged, which fell on different sides of this political calculation: on
the one hand, the regime of the Tsangpa Dési (Gtsang pa sde srid), centred in Tsang
(Gtsang) province, had set itself up broadly speaking as an anti-Mongol ecumenical
coalition, while on the other hand, the Gélukpa ascendancy, based primarily in Ü
(Dbus) and Lhasa in particular, had become ever more reliant on Mongol military
support.26 With the victory of the latter in 1642, the Géluk establishment led by
the Fi h Dalai Lama had major propaganda work on its hands to redress this
imbalance and reunite Tibetans behind the new dispensation.
Ideology and War Magic under the Tsangpa Dynasty

The Dépa Tsangpa (Sde pa gtsang pa) reign formally began in 1565, when an
ambitious military commander who had been appointed governor of Tsang by
the Rinpungpa (Rin spungs pa) dynasty in 1548, usurped power for himself and
established his own royal dynasty. Zhingshakpa Tséten Dorjé (Zhing shags pa
Tshe brtan rdo rje, d. 1599) was himself a commoner whose career had started as
a groom in the Rinpungpa royal stables, and his political project had a distinctly
26. This alignment was by no means without nuance. On occasion, the Tsang Dési also appears
to have courted the support of Mongol factions, as did the Karmapa and Drigungpa hierachs, who
were both rivals broadly opposed to the rise of the Gélukpa. On their alliance with the (partially
indegenised) Horpa of the ’Dam region north of Lhasa in the late-sixteenth century, for example,
see Per K. Sørensen and Guntram Hazod, Rulers on the Celestial Plain: Ecclesiastic and Secular
Hegemony in Medieval Tibet; A Study of Tshal Gung-thang (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen
Akademie der Wissenscha en, 2007), 510; Czaja, Medieval Rule, 290 n. 194. Also, the Fi h Dalai
Lama himself expressed ambivalence in his autobiography about backing his Mongol partisans’
invasion of Central Tibet. But in general, this characterisation is valid.


populist, regionalist and even nationalist flavour.27 According to one recent scholar,
his aim was “to protect Tibet om the ‘foreign’ intervention of the Mongols” and he
appears to have inculcated this goal in his progeny, “all of whom were to follow his
vision of a united, Mongol- ee, prosperous and well-governed Tsang.”28 The main
obstacles to this project were the Gélukpa with their main centres in Ü (and Lhasa
in particular) who, a er the famous meeting between Sönam Gyatso (Bsod nams
rgya mtsho, 1543–88) and Altan Khan of the Tümed Mongols in 1577–78 (when the
title “Dalai Lama” was coined), had rapidly become by far the most favoured of the
Tibetan Buddhist schools among the Mongol tribes. Cementing this relationship,
a Mongol descendent of Altan Khan himself was recognised as the Fourth Dalai
Lama.29 Partly out of fears for his safety in Tibet (where the Tsangpa Dési had
extended political control into Ü), the Fourth Dalai Lama, Yönten Gyatso (Yon
tan rgya mtsho, 1589–1617), spent his entire childhood among his Mongol brethren
and only arrived in Lhasa for the first time as an adolescent in 1603, wherea er
he received ordination as a monk.30 The arrival of the Fourth Dalai Lama in Tibet
further swelled the ranks of Mongol monks in the main Gélukpa centres of Lhasa
and in Drépung’s Gomang (Sgo mang) college in particular,31 and was bitterly
27. Some argue that to use the word “national” in a pre-modern Tibetan context is anach-
ronistic, since even in the mid-twentieth century, national consciousness was weak. From the
point of view of Tibetan literature and myth, however, the term “national” is certainly valid. From
as early as the eleventh century, Tibet had a clear and well-established national mythography to
which political and religious leaders regularly appealed, based on a salvific mythology concern-
ing the repeated interventions in Tibetan affairs by the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Spyan ras
gzigs). Despite the cogency of this national mythography (and national is the correct word for
it—it concerns the people “of the snowlands” and involves myths concerning their shared descent
om the “six proto-tribes” [mi’u gdung drug]), the Tibetan plateau was rarely politically united.
But this did not stop successive regimes on the Tibetan plateau (almost without exception) om
drawing on this national mythography in attempts to bolster their legitimacy. The Tsangpa Dési
dynasty was clearly one such example. Much more could be said on this topic. For an early essay
on the subject, see Georges Dreyfus [1994], “Cherished Memories, Cherished Communities:
Proto-Nationalism in Tibet,” reproduced in The History of Tibet, ed. Alex McKay (New York:
Routledge, 2003), vol. 2, 492–522.
28. David Templeman, “The Seventeenth Century Tsang Rulers and Their Strategies of
Legitimation,” in The Tenth Karmapa and Tibet’s Turbulent Seventeenth Century, 33 (see note
17). Templeman cites as the source for this characterisation the “writings of his [Zhingshakpa’s]
sons.” Unfortunately, he gives no direct reference to these writings. His direct source is a work
of modern Tibetan historical scholarship, which appears to utilise hitherto untapped archival
materials om Tsang, namely Thub bstan phun tshogs, Bod kyi lo rgyus spyi don Padma rā ga’i
lde mig (Chengdu: Si kron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1996), which he refers to as The Ruby Key.
29. Other prestigious Géluk re-incarnation lineages were likewise recognised in prominent
Mongol families in Amdo during this period; see Gray Tuttle, “The Role of Mongol Elite and
Educational Degrees in the Advent of Reincarnation Lineages in Seventeenth Century Amdo,”
in The Tenth Karmapa and Tibet’s Turbulent Seventeenth Century (see note 17), 244–48.
30. The Fourth Dalai Lama’s arrival in Tibet was only months a er the death of the Ninth
Karmapa, Wangchuk Dorjé (Dbang phyugs rdo rje, 1556–1603); see Czaja, Medieval Rule in Tibet, 303.
31. Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa, One Hundred Thousand Moons, An Advanced Political
History of Tibet, trans. Derek Maher (Leiden: Brill, 2010), vol. 1, 291.


opposed by the virulently anti-Mongol Tsangpa Dési Phüntsok Namgyel (Phun

tshogs rnam rgyal, 1550–1621/32).32 War soon followed (1603–21), and, even a er the
truce of 1621, would continue fitfully and culminate in the major war of 1639–42,
which was concluded by the Géluk-Mongol victory of the Water Horse year (1642).
Initially, the Tsang Dési dynasty appears to have had the upper hand. They had
consolidated power in the rich agricultural regions of Tsang, and were successfully
extending their authority over Ü. This expansion was achieved through a combination
of strategic alliance, ecumenical patronage, military action and civil organisation.
Buddhist traditions were patronised; institutions echoing those of the Tibetan
imperial period were revived; law codes were promulgated;33 and symbolic capital
was accrued by appeals to prophecy34 and mythology.35 So by the early decades of
seventeenth century, the Tsang Dési was the acknowledged suzerain over most of
Ü and Tsang. Only control over Géluk-dominated Lhasa itself—home to Tibet’s
sanctum sanctorum and the uncontested centre of Tibetan civilisation36 without
which any “national” project was bound to fail—remained elusive, largely due to the
repeated interventions of Mongol forces. This overlordship across central Tibet is
reflected in the fact that the marriage of the Fi h Dalai Lama’s own parents—his
father Hor Düdül Rapten (Hor Bdud ’dul rab brtan) being an aristocratic local
lord in the symbolic and prestigious fiefdom of Chonggyé (’Phyong rgyas)—was
arranged in 1616 by none other than Dési Phüntsok Namgyel himself. During the
youth of his father, writes the Dalai Lama, the Tsang Dési “governed most of the
regions of Ü and Tsang in both name and fact.”37 It was at some point around this
time that the youngish Tibetan Géluk monk Sönam Rapten, alias Sönam Chöphel
(Bsod nams rab brtan / Bsod nams chos spel, 1595–1657), took on the role of the
32. There is uncertainty as to when Dési Phüntsok Namgyel died and his son, Karma
Tenkyong Wangpo (1606–42), took over. Many scholars have cited his death at 1621, but Shakabpa
(ibid., vol. 1, 284) argues strongly for dating it to 1632. The confusion may be a product of the
Tsang court having concealed his death for some years.
33. Samten Karmay, “The Fi h Dalai Lama and His Reunification of Tibet,” in Lhasa in
the Seventeenth Century: The Capital of the Dalai Lamas, ed. Françoise Pommaret (Leiden: Brill,
2003), 66.
34. As related by Templeman, citing The Ruby Key (see note 28 above), Zhingshakpa had
been prophesied by Karmapa Mikyö Dorjé (Mi bskyod rdo rje, 1507–54) and Künga Drölchok
(Kun dga’ grol mchog, 1507–66, an incarnation predecessor of Tāranātha) to “become completely
victorious over the areas of Ü and Tsang”; see Templeman, “Strategies of Legitimation,” 38.
35. The Ruby Key further suggests that Zhingshakpa himself was considered a manifestation
(sprul sku/ nirmāṇakāya) of the Tibetan martial culture hero Gesar, while the last incumbent of
the dynasty, Karma Tenkyong Wangpo (1606–42), was considered a prophesied incarnation of
the wrathful Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi; see Templeman, “Strategies of Legitimation,” 40–41.
36. The Ra-sa sprul snang temple (known more commonly in recent centuries as the Jo
khang), established in the seventh century under the Tibetan emperor and dharmaraja Songtsen
Gampo (Srong btsan sgam po, 604–50), was central to Tibet’s national mythography. Sørensen
describes it as “Tibet’s true sanctum sanctorum that governed and shaped medieval Tibetan poli-
tics,” and as Tibet’s “national shrine”; see Per K. Sørensen, “Control over the Lha-sa Mandala
Zone,” in Sørensen and Hazod, Celestial Plain, 401, 449.
37. Karmay, Illusive Play, 35.


Fourth Dalai Lama’s manager (phyag mǳod). He would later continue in this role
under the Fi h Dalai Lama and, with his close relations to Mongol power politics,
would be the main broker of the Géluk-Qoshot alliance which brought the Ganden
Phodrang to power in 1642. Sönam Rapten was without doubt the most important
Tibetan political figure of his generation.
When the Fourth Dalai Lama died in 1617, Phüntsok Namgyel along with allied
forces om Dakpo (Dwags po) and Kongpo (Kong po), launched a major offensive
against Lhasa (1618)38 and forbade the search for his reincarnation.39 So the iden-
tification of Hor Düdül Rapten’s son as the Fi h Dalai Lama must have been a
huge affront to the Tsang Dési (who had wanted the child recognised as a Karma
Kagyü incarnation). Soon Hor Düdül Rapten openly rebelled against the Tsang
Dési (1619) and was imprisoned. He died during this incarceration and never saw
his famed son again.40 Meanwhile on the military ont, the tide had turned again
in favour of the Gélukpa a er the intervention of a sizeable Mongol army, which
together with the local Tibetan army of Kyishö (Skyid shod) retook Lhasa om the
Tsang forces in 1621. A truce was then mediated by the Panchen Lama and many
of the monasteries seized om the Gélukpa in the Lhasa area were returned.41 In
the late 1620s, the tide again appears to have turned in favour of the Tsangpa forces.
In their forging of an ecumenical alliance in the name of defending religion and
Tibet om foreign armies (mtha’ dmag), the successive leaders of the Tsang dynasty
gave particular favour to lamas with a reputation for efficacy in wrathful, protec-
tive and repelling rites. The main recipients of Tsangpa patronage were the Karma
Kagyü school, and the “black hat” Karmapa (Karma pa) and “red hat” Zhamarpa
(Zhwa dmar pa) lineages in particular. Major patronage was also extended to the
Jonangpa, whose hugely prestigious contemporary scion Tāranātha was the leading
Sanskrit scholar and historian of his generation. Tāranātha, too, was eǌoined to
undertake repelling rites on behalf of his patrons.42
However, with respect to the application of tantric rituals for the particular
purpose of “repelling armies” (dmag zlog), the seminal figure in the ritual arsenal of
the Tsangpa side was undoubtedly the Nyingmapa lama Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen
(Sog bzlog pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan, 1552–1624), the self-styled “Repeller of
Mongols” (sog bzlog pa), who was the main heir to the renowned corpus of terma
38. This offensive is described in detail in Shakabpa, Moons, vol. 1, 329–30.

39. For a compelling narrative concerning this proscription, see K. Dhondup, The Water
Horse and Other Years: A History of 17th and 18th Century Tibet (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan
Works and Archives, 1984), 12–15.
40. Shakabpa, Moons, vol. 1, 285.
41. Ibid., 331.
42. Among the major activities undertaken by Tāranātha on behalf of his Tsangpa patrons,
according to Templeman, were: “preventing the effects of black magic curses against various rulers
of Tsang; nulli ing effects of magic against the rulers and redirecting them back to the Géluk.”
His rituals were, for example, considered a major cause of the Tsang Dési Phüntsok Namgyel’s
military victory over the Dépa of Narthang in 1617, a er which prestigious religious treasures
obtained as the spoils of war were donated to Tāranātha’s newly constructed Takten (Rtag brtan)
Monastery; Templeman, “Upside Down,” 21, 26.


known as Twenty Five Ways of Repelling Armies (Dmag zlog nyi shu rtsa lnga) revealed
by his root guru Zhikpo Lingpa Gargyi Wangchuktsel (Zhig po gling pa Gar gyi
dbang phyug rtsal, 1524–83) of Nangtsé (more about whom will be said below). In
an earlier period, Zhikpo Lingpa had himself been a rival of the Third Dalai Lama
Sönam Gyatso, as the two competed to be seen as the true protectors of Lhasa,43
and in the later writings of the Fi h Dalai Lama the “Nangtsé faction,” associated
with Zhikpo Lingpa and Sokdokpa, would be a particular object of his polemical
ire.44 Sokdokpa first met the Tsang Dési Phüntsok Namgyel in 1599, by which time
his Mongol-repelling rites were already widely renowned. Thenceforth, his regular
rituals of war magic were performed in close alignment with the military campaigns
of his Tsangpa patrons, and in recompense for this ritual support he was given
lavish material patronage.45 A particularly elaborate rite (probably a mdos) was, for
example, performed in 1605 to coincide with Phüntsok Namgyel’s offensive in Ü.
It involved printing, by Sokdokpa’s own estimation, some 150,000 paper effigies
(liṅga) of enemy soldiers.46 Based on prophecy, he also enlisted the ritual support
of Bönpo specialists for this rite.47
The Tsangpa Dési’s patronage of rites of protection and aversion in support of his
military campaigns did not stop here, however. Among others, major and prestigious
rites of wrathful action were also commissioned om the Sakya hierarch Amnyé
Zhab Ngawang Künga Sönam (A myes zhabs Ngag dbang kun dga’ bsod nams,
1597–1659), who performed rites for “repelling inimical forces” in 1622 and again in
43. Matthew Akester, “The ‘Vajra Temple’ of gTer ston Zhig po gling pa and the Politics of
Flood Control in 16th Century lHa sa,” Tibet Journal 26, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 3–24. On the long
history of politics of flood control at Lhasa in general, see Sørensen and Hazod, Celestial Plain,
401–525. On the particular role of the Third Dalai Lama in this, see ibid., 526–29.
44. The Fi h Dalai Lama did not recognise Gargyi Wangchuktsel as the true Zhikpo Lingpa
and considered him an impostor, and thus his whole lineage as audulent. For a treatment of
the Fi h Dalai Lama’s polemics against the “Nangtsé faction” (snang rtse phyogs), see Gentry,
Power Objects, 384–408. These polemics are found across many of the Fi h Dalai Lama’s histori-
cal, biographical and autobiographical works, and are related to his lionisation of Jangdak Tashi
Topgyel as the true centre of authority in sixteenth-century Nyingma history, something which
had been obscured and distorted by the aberrant Tsangpa Dési dynasty (who had exiled Tashi
Topgyel om Tsang). As such, the polemics against the Nangtsé faction are found particularly
in the Fi h Dalai Lama’s biography of Ngakgi Wangpo, which includes histories of the prior
masters of the Northern Treasures; see Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Byang pa rig ’ǳin chen
po ngag gi dbang po’i rnam par thar pa ngo mtshar bkod pa rgya mtsho (henceforth Byang pa’i rnam
thar), in Rgyal dbang lnga pa ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i gsung ’bum (Beĳing: Krung go’i
bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2009; BDRC W1PD107937), vol. 11, 476–567. This Gsung ’bum is
henceforth referred to as Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009).
45. James Gentry, “Representations of Efficacy: The Ritual Expulsion of Mongol Armies
in the Consolidation and Expansion of the Tsang (Gtsang) Dynasty,” in Tibetan Ritual, ed. José
Cabezón (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 148. The patronage of Sokdokpa is also
discussed in Dalton, Taming, 138.
46. linga ’bum phrag phyed dang gnyis tsam spar btab nas; see Blo gros rgyal mtshan, Sog
bzlog bgyis tshul gyi lo rgyus, in Sog bzlog pa blo gros rgyal mtshan gyi gsung ’bum (New Delhi: Saǌe
Dorje, 1975; W8870), vol. 1, fol. 252.
47. Gentry, Power Objects, 127.


1630 when a Mongol army had surrounded the Samdruptsé fortress.48 Rites were
also performed by the Nyingmapa Third Yölmo Tulku Tenǳin Norbu (Yol mo sprul
sku bstan ’ǳin nor bu, 1598–1644), a lineage holder of the Northern Treasures, who
also performed a set of “rituals for repelling the Mongols” on behalf of the Tsang
Dési in 1630.49 It is also possible that the Tsang kings were successful in enlisting
Géluk elements hostile to the Ganden Phodrang labrang50 to their cause, since there
is evidence of occult magic being used even in Géluk institutions in Tsang against
officials of the Ganden Phodrang.51 As stated by James Gentry, “staging exorcisms
aimed at destroying foreign and domestic enemies of the Tsangpa house is a recurring
theme throughout the biographical and autobiographical literature of this period.”52
In addition, a er Sokdokpa’s death in 1624, the Tsangpa Dési Phüntsok Namgyel
further cemented his alliance with the powerful Drigung Kagyü order, which had
long been a major rival of the Géluk ascendancy in Ü.53 In 1627 (Fire Hare year),
the head of Drigung Monastery, Chökyi Drakpa (Chos kyi grags pa, 1595–1659),
married the daughter of the Tsang Dési.54 This marriage alliance is relevant to our
48. Templeman, “Upside Down,” 18, citing Jan-Ulrich Sobisch, Transmissions and Works
of A-mes-zhabs Ngag-dbang-kun-dga’-bsod-nams, the Great 17th Century Sa-skya-pa Bibliophile
(Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007), 20.
49. This is described in his autobiography; see Beǌamin Bogin, The Illuminated Life of
the Great Yolmowa (Chicago: Serindia, 2013), 237–38. Templeman dates these events to 1630
(Templeman, “Upside Down,” 17).
50. Prior to 1642, the Ganden Phodrang was just the name of the personal labrang (bla
brang), or estate, of the Dalai Lamas in Drépung Monastery, which later gave its name to the
government of Tibet.
51. The Fi h Dalai Lama mentions in his autobiography that in 1633, the name of his man-
ager, Sönam Rapten, had been placed along with curses into the mouth of a statue of Makzorma
(dmag zor ma / dpal ldan lha mo) at Wensa (Dben sa) Monastery, a major Gélukpa centre in Tsang
(Karmay, Illusive Play, 116).
52. Gentry, Power Objects, 43 n. 22.
53. The political rivalry between the Drigungpa and the Gélukpa in Ü went back several
generations and was sharpened by familial competition. For example, a younger brother in the
(hereditary) ruling family of Drigung had been passed over as a candidate for the reincarnation
of the Third Dalai Lama; see Leonard van der Kuĳp, “Tibetan Belles-Lettres: The Influence of
Daṇḍin and Kṣemendra,” in Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, ed. José Cabezón and Roger
Jackson (New York: Snow Lion, 1996), 404. On the Drigung-Géluk struggle for supremacy over
Lhasa in the wake of this, see Sørensen and Hazod, Celestial Plain, 481–82. In the early-seventeenth
century, the rivalry was also heightened by the fact that the Sixth Zhamarpa Lama Garwang
Chökyi Wangchuk (Gar dbang Chos kyi dbang phyugs, 1584–1630), one of the most active and
influential figures in the court of the Tsang Dési, was born in the Drigung ruling family; see Czaja,
Medieval Rule in Tibet, 292 n. 201, citing the Kam tshang brgyud pa 2:255.2. On the priest-patron
relations between the Drigungpa and the (partially indigenised) ’Dam Mongols (based north of
Lhasa) in the late-sixteenth century and beyond, see Elliot Sperling, “Notes on References to
’Bri-gung-pa-Mongol Contact in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” in Tibetan
Studies: Proceedings of the 5th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Narita
1989, ed. Shōren Ihara and Zuihō Yamaguchi (Narita: Naritasan Shinshoji, 1992), vol. 2, 741–50.
54. ’Bri gung bstan ’ǳin padma’i rgyal mtshan [b. 1770], ’Bri gung gdan rabs gser phreng,
Gangs can rig mǳod 8 (Lhasa: Bod ǉongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1989), 275.


theme because Chökyi Drakpa was himself a tāntrika with an unrivalled reputa-
tion for the efficacy of his destructive rites. In particular, he was renowned for
his mastery of the Yangdok Mé Pudri (yang bzlog me’i spu gri, “Ultra-Repelling
Fiery Razor”) cycle, also practiced by the Fi h Dalai Lama, which centred on a
particularly violent form of Yamāntaka deployed for rites of “protecting, repelling
and killing” (srung zlog bsad gsum). Only one year a er this marriage alliance with
the Tsang Dési, Chökyi Drakpa is reported to have used his esoteric rites (in this
case, rites of “the Black Tortoise,” the “Red Wind” and the “Red- and Black-faced
Rāhula”) against “Tümed Mongols and other enemies of religion,” so that “though
the Tümed encampment was vast [lit.: a city of 90,000], nothing was le behind
but the name.”55
While the Tsang Dési Phüntsok Namgyel appears to have been effective in forg-
ing a broad and ecumenical alliance of anti-Mongol, anti-Géluk forces, his son and
successor, Karma Tenkyong, alias Tensung Wangpo (Karma bstan skyong / Bstan
srung dbang po, 1604–42), appears to have been less so, though this impression may
be the product of later polemical historiography which sought to portray him in a
very negative light. According to later sources, a er Phüntsok Namgyel’s death—
reputedly at the hands of offensive magic being hurled at him by the Zhapdrung
Ngawang Namgyel (Zhabs drung Ngag dbang rnam rgyal, 1594–1651), founder of
the state of Bhutan56—Karma Tenkyong is said to have allied with the anti-Géluk
Mongol faction of Chokthu in the Kokonor region, and with the Bönpo king Donyö
Dorjé (Don yod rdo rje, d. 1640) of Béri, who controlled much of Kham om his
power base just east of Chamdo (Chab mdo).57 These ill-fated associations, and the
personal abrasiveness and arrogance of Karma Tenkyong himself,58 appear to have
squandered much of the status as defenders of the faith that had been so carefully
cra ed by his father Phüntsok Namgyel.59
55. Ibid.
56. Shakabpa, Moons, vol. 1, 284.
57. Many scholars have in the past mistakenly associated Béri gyelpo Dönyö Dorjé with the
Béri principality in the Tre-Hor region of eastern Kham (in modern Dkar mǳes / Ganzi Prefecture,
Sichuan Province). However, Chamdo Shérap, in his history of Chamdo, convincingly corrects this
persistent mistake and shows that Dönyö Dorjé’s power-base was in fact the Béri which lies to
the east of Chamdo, currently falling within the Chamdo prefecture of the Tibetan Autonomous
Region (TAR). Chab mdo shes rab, Chab mdo’i yig tshang rin chen spungs pa (Dharamsala: ’Phags
yul chab mdo lo rgyus rtsom sgrig khang, 2006), vol. 1, 409–69. Thanks to Tenpa Nyima of the
TibArmy research project in Paris for pointing out this reference.
58. Karma Tenkyong’s arrogance is described, for example, by Yölmo Tulku in his 1632
memoir; see Beǌamin Bogin, “Royal Blood and Political Power: Contrasting Allegiances in the
Memoirs of Yol mo Bstan ’ǳin nor bu (1598–1644),” in Cuevas and Schaeffer, Power and the
Reinvention of Tradition, 13–14. Also discussed by Templeman, “Upside Down,” 17–20.
59. The alliance with Chokthu was undone by the volte face of Chokthu’s son, Arsalang,
in 1635, when he decided to support the Géluk side a er all. He died a year later and Tibetan
sources (especially the Fi h Dalai Lama’s autobiography) suggest the death was evidence of his
succumbing finally to the array of violent rituals which had been directed against him om all
sides; see Karmay, Illusive Play, 122–25. The putative alliance between the Tsang Dési and the
Bönpo king of Béri appears to have dinted the former’s claim to be the true defender of the


The broader point to be emphasised here is that in the face of this ecumenical
alliance on the Tsangpa side, the Géluks were by contrast relatively weak in the
crucial charismatic arena of war magic and the associated discourse of magical power
(mthu) and national defence against demonic foreign armies (mtha’ dmag). This
situation, of course, was not black and white. The propitiation of fierce protectors
was a prominent part of Géluk tradition as much as it was in other schools, and
Géluk masters also practiced violent tantric rites. Tsongkhapa himself had been a
master of all the major tantric cycles and his explanations of tantra (tāntra, rgyud)
were widely influential across sectarian lines. In particular, the Géluk association
with the fierce protector Makzorma (Dmag zor ma, “Lady of the Army[-defeating]
Weapon”), also known as Dökham Wangchukma (’Dod khams dbang phyug ma,
“Controller of the Desire Realm”), which had been a major part of Géluk tradition
since the Second Dalai Lama Gendün Gyatso (Dge ’dun rgya mtsho, 1475–1542),
carried its own intimidating power. As did the other fierce protectors favoured by
the Ganden Phodrang.60 But it is nevertheless still fair to say that what distinguished
Géluk tradition om the other schools in this period (and in periods since) was
its emphasis on philosophical training and debate, while the unrestrained use of
practical magic to mobilise spirit-forces for the sake of worldly goals was broadly
owned upon. Also, although the Ganden Phodrang was already equipped with
its own ritual college in the form of the Namgyel Dratsang (Rnam rgyal grwa
tshang / Phan bde legs bshad gling),61 in the period prior to its expansion under
the Fi h Dalai Lama this institution carried no particular reputation for efficacy
in offensive rites. And the highly charismatic Néchung (Gnas chung) oracle, which
harnessed the occult power and mythic status of the revered and feared oath-bound
deity Pehar (Pe har), also only became formally tied to the interests of the Ganden
Phodrang under the Fi h Dalai Lama. In the period before the latter’s rule, it
seems that practical magic was not an arena for which the Géluk school was par-
ticularly renowned.62 It is telling, perhaps, that one Tibetan spelling used for the
Buddhist faith, since Dönyö Dorjé had a record of suppressing various Buddhist schools, even
though such suppression of rivals was common practice on all sides in this period. The use of
elements of Bön rituals was not anathema to the Tsang dynasty. Sokdokpa himself, on occasion,
enlisted the support of Bön ritualists, who were reputed to have particular efficacy with regard
to the shamanic mobilisation of worldly spirits; see Gentry, “Representations,” 151. Later, a er
1642, the Fi h Dalai Lama would also extend patronage to Bön rituals.
60. For a survey of some of the main protectors of the Dalai Lama lineage; see Amy Heller,
“The Great Protector Deities of the Dalai Lamas,” in Lhasa in the Seventeenth Century (see note
33), 81–98.
61. Also known as Pendé Lekshéling (Phan bde legs bshad gling), the Namgyel college
had been established by the Third Dalai Lama Sönam Gyatso largely to help him carry out the
elaborate long-life rituals for his Mongol patron Altan Khan.
62. A recent article by Bryan Cuevas, “The Politics of Magical Warfare,” which only came
to the author’s attention at a late stage of editing, would appear to contradict this claim, by citing
several examples of Géluk war magic relating to periods before 1642. However, it is worth observ-
ing that nearly all of Cuevas’s examples are taken om biographical writings by the Fi h Dalai
Lama himself (in particular his biographies of the Second, Third and Fourth Dalai Lamas).
As such, these examples can actually support the argument made here that it was the Great


Tümed Mongol patrons of the Géluk school in the pre-1630 period was mthu med,
meaning “without magical power.”63 In the post-1642 period, the Fi h Dalai Lama
would work on redressing this perceived weakness in his biographical works on his
predecessors, portraying the Fourth Dalai Lama Yönten Gyatso, for example, as a
tütobpa (mthu stobs pa, “one skilled in magical power”).64
Now, before looking at the Fi h Dalai Lama’s own relationship to war magic
and how he turned the tide in this crucial arena of Tibetan discourse in the second
half of the seventeenth century, it is worth spending a little time surveying the
religious context of Tibetan war magic and the “state of the art” in this period. What
did Buddhist war magic actually entail? How do such rituals relate to Buddhist
phenomenology? Why did the Nyingma school have such a particular reputation
in this field? How were such rites squared with Buddhist ethics? And who were
the main figures in this field during this historical period?
Fi h himself who was responsible, above all others, for foregrounding such activities in the
historical/biographic record of prior Géluk masters, and thus bolstering for posterity the otherwise
potentially weak reputation of the Géluk school in this realm.
63. This is the spelling used, for example, in the ’Bri gung gdan rabs gser phreng cited in note
54 above. One also finds the same spelling even in the writings of the Fi h Dalai Lama himself,
as, for example, in his biography of the Third Dalai Lama Sönam Gyatso; see Ngag dbang blo
bzang rgya mtsho, Rje btsun thams cad mkhyen pa bsod nams rgya mtsho’i rnam thar dngos grub
rgya mtsho’i shing rta, in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 11, 137, 154.
64. In his biography of the Fourth Dalai Lama Yönten Gyatso, the Fi h Dalai Lama describes
how a number of ritualists met Yönten Gyatso during his visit to Tsang, and one night performed
in his presence a “hurling of the ritual bomb” (gtor zor), which produced an amazing storm of
thunder and lightning. He then gives an anecdote that he attributes to Karnak Lotsawa (Mkhar
nag lo tsa ba), another Géluk biographer of Yönten Gyatso: that a er he returned to Lhasa, he
went into retreat for some time with his tutelary deity. During this time, Ü came under attack
om “an army of evil men” (mi bsrun skye bo’i dmag). Stirred by compassion, in the Iron Pig year
(1611) Yönten Gyatso performed a gtor zor himself by means of which the dharma-protectors were
dispatched (rbad) in a thick dark cloud, which emitted laughter-like roars of thunder and waves
of golden lightning. With a huge noise that shook the mountains themselves, a great fear was
induced and not long a erwards the enemy army retreated “like scorpions scuttling back to their
nests.” On account of this, he says, Yönten Gyatso was honoured with the name Thutop Chökyi
Gyatso (Mthu stobs Chos kyi rgya mtsho), “Ocean of dharmic magical power.” In the following
years he received empowerment in a number of violent rituals (las sbyor); see Ngag dbang rgya
mtsho, ’Jig rten dbang phyug thams cad mkhyen pa yon tan rgya mtsho dpal bzang po’i rnam par thar
pa nor bu’i ’phreng ba, in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 11, 219–22.


2. Religious Context
Foundations and Justifications of Buddhist War Magic
The use of Buddhist tantric ritual in warfare was certainly not a Tibetan innova-
tion, but it was developed to new heights of elaboration by Tibetan adepts. Indeed,
the use of transcendent gnosis for mundane or worldly purposes appears to have
been close to the heart of the development of tantrism itself in fourth–fi h-
century India, and much of the “ritual technology” one sees in Tibetan rites of
practical magic has its origins in the early Indian tantric practices broadly shared
between Śaiva, Pāñcarātra and Buddhist traditions.65 The Sanskrit compound
sainyastambha, i.e. “army-repelling” or “army-stunning,” is not uncommon in extant
Sanskrit Buddhist texts. A recent study of war magic in Indian tantric Buddhism
reveals the wealth of sources available on this theme.66 The introduction to the
Hevajra (Kye rdo rje) Tantra, for example, states that “black magic for paralyzing
armies” is part of its “manifold purpose.”67 And the Kālacakra (Dus kyi ’khor lo)
Tantra, in its millenarian mythology, includes the description of elaborate war
machines such as catapults, traps, siege towers and so on.68 As Cuevas has pointed
out, many aspects of the rites of sorcery which evolved within Indian tantric Bud-
dhism were probably based on even older precedents. The use of human effigies
(liṅga) in offensive rituals against enemies, for example, which is a marked feature
of Tibetan rites of enemy-killing and exorcism (for an example, see fig. 2), drew on
Vedic traditions which themselves were likely rooted in even older Indo-European
heritage.69 Tāranātha, the foremost Sanskrit scholar in seventeenth-century Tibet,
in his History of Buddhism in India (Rgya gar chos ’byung), gives a number of specific
examples of tantric Buddhist rituals being used by early Indian Buddhist rulers to
attack enemy armies.70 And he says that Dharmapāla, one of the Buddhist kings
65. See Dominic Goodall and Harunaga Isaacson, “On the Shared ‘Ritual Syntax’ of the
Early Tantric Traditions,” in Tantric Studies: Fruits of a Franco-German Project on Early Tantra,
ed. Dominic Goodall and Harunaga Isaacson, Collection Indologie 131, Early Tantra Series 4
(Pondichéry: Institut Français de Pondichéry, 2016), 1–76. For a rich survey of “magic tantras”
in Śaiva and Jain sources, see Aaron Ullrey, “Grim Grimoires: Pragmatic Ritual in the Magic
Tantras” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 2016).
66. Sinclair, “War Magic.” Some references to Indian Buddhist war magic in the work of
Alexis Sanderson are also cited by Dalton, Taming, 254 n. 31.
67. Sinclair, “War Magic,” 158.
68. Ibid., 160.
69. In his article on the use of human effigies (liṅga) in particular, Cuevas states that “In
India, prescriptions for the use of effigies (puttalī), especially for the purpose of destroying enemies,
appear equently in the ancient Vedic texts, above all in the Atharvaveda and the Kauśika-sūtra
(c. eighth century BCE), though such operations are likely rooted in an even more distant Indo-
European heritage”; see Bryan Cuevas, “Illustrations of Human Effigies in Tibetan Ritual Texts:
With Remarks on Specific Anatomical Figures and Their Possible Iconographic Source,” Journal
of the Royal Asiatic Society, third series, 21, no. 1 (January 2011): 74.
70. “[During the reign of Līlāvajra] . . . , at this time he heard of an impending Turuska
invasion and defeated their soldiers by drawing the Yamāri-cakra. A er reaching Magadha the


of the Pāla Dynasty, had the goddess Tāra emblazoned on his war banners.71 The
use of Buddhist tantric magic against enemies is thus probably as old as Buddhism
itself in Tibet, and quickly took root in the Tibetan religious imagination.72
How rituals for attacking enemies related to Buddhist philosophy and how they
were squared with Buddhist ethics are large questions which can barely be treated
here. In general, one can say that in a Buddhist context, rituals for the manipulation
of worldly phenomena are underpinned by a basic philosophical logic. Namely, that
through meditative immersion (ting nge ’ǳin, samādhi) in the unconstructed ground
of phenomenal reality known as emptiness (stong pa nyid, śūnyatā), the realised
adept is able to act upon his/her compassionate desire to alleviate the sufferings of
beings by performing “enlightened (ritual) action” (’phrin las). This ritual “action”
is able to impact phenomenal reality by accessing it om its ground (gzhi) in non-
dual emptiness, om which both saṃsāra and nirvāṇa arise. Through such gnosis
(o en associated in Bön and Nyingma schools with the practice of ǲokchen), the
adept can in theory gain omnipotence over the constructed world of appearances,
which can be played out in any number of ritual ways, mediated by deity-forms
which “touch emptiness” (to use a phrase om Beyer). Through appropriate lineage
empowerment (dbang bskur) into specific practices with origins in the teachings of
an enlightened Buddha, and through extensive and elaborate ritual service (bskang
gso) to such deity-forms (yi dam), the adept can establish a strong karmic relation-
ship that enables powerful self-identification. Through this, the adept can summon
soldiers became dumb and inactive and remained so for a long time. Thus they were turned
away . . . . [Two generations later, . . . Kamalarakśita] thought of holding a gaṇa-cakra in the
crematorium of Vikrama. Along with many tāntrika disciples, he brought there the materials for
sādhanā carried by the yogins. On the way, they encountered the minister of the Turuska king
of Kama of the west, who was then proceeding to invade Magadha with five hundred Turuskas.
They plundered the materials for sādhanā. When, however, they came near the ācārya and his
attendants, the ācārya threw at them an earthen pitcher full of charmed water. Immediately was
generated a terrible storm and black men were seen emerging om it and striking the Turuskas
with daggers in hand [fol. 1288]. The minister himself vomited blood and died and the others
were afflicted with various diseases. Excepting one, none of them returned to their country. This
made both the tîrthikas and Turuskas terror-striken”; see Tāranātha’s History of Buddhism in
India, trans. Lama Chimpa and Alaka Chattopadhyaya, ed. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 1970), 326–28.
71. Alexis Sanderson, “The Śaiva Age: The Rise and Dominance of Śaivism during the Early
Medieval Period,” in Genesis and Development of Tantrism, ed. Shingo Einoo (Tokyo: Institute
of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 2009), 94 and n. 173.
72. Apprehension about this dangerous aspect of the Buddhist heritage being imported
om India during the Tibetan imperial period led to an imperial ban on the translation of tantric
materials, and Padmasambhava himself is said to have been expelled om Tibet in the eighth cen-
tury because of the alarm his occult rites were arousing amongst the political elite under Emperor
Trisong Détsen (Khri srong lde brtsan, 742–ca. 800). Such rites appear to have proliferated a er
the demise of the empire in 842, and were the subject of the famous late-tenth-century ordinance
of Lha Lama Yéshé Ö (Lha bla ma ye shes ’od, c. 959–1040). On this, see Samten Karmay, “The
Ordinance of lHa Bla-ma Ye-shes-’od,” in The Arrow and the Spindle, 3–16. For an illuminating
discussion of the history of the “liberation rite” in these early centuries of Tibetan Buddhism,
see Dalton, Taming, 44–76, 97–125.


(’gugs), incite (bskul) and despatch (rbad) the many spirit-forces who are sworn
to defend the dharma. Or he may seek to manipulate the (four or five) elements
(’byung ba lnga), analogically represented by different colours—which are primal
expressions of saṃsāra arising om the unconstructed clear light of emptiness—and
thereby influence weather, and so on. In these and many other ways, the tāntrika
can impact what Beyer has called the “public non-reality” of worldly appearances,
by paci ing it (in the case of rites of pacification zhi for example) or agitating it
(in the case of rites of destruction drag) om its foundation in emptiness.73 Tantric
ritual could thus be used for any number of enriching or harm-averting purposes
( om producing good outcomes in trade and competition to controlling the weather,
preventing floods, or dispelling disease), of which action against enemies (dgra) in
general, and armies (dmag) in particular, were just specific applications.
The perceived efficacy of Buddhist ritualists in impacting worldly reality was
thus in theory grounded in a universalistic philosophy (of emptiness as ultimate
reality), and in an ethic of altruism (the benefit of beings). This may be compared to
the more particularist “shamanic” practices of ritual magic in Indic and Himalayan
religious heritage in which ritual efficacy was based on non-moralised relations of
exchange with an o en localised or pagan spirit world. The success of Buddhism,
as a universalised and ethicised system, in both absorbing and supplanting earlier
non-moralised pagan ritual traditions, is a major theme in Tibetan cultural history
more broadly.74
This raises an important point, somewhat overlooked by some recent scholarship
on the history of Tibetan ritual violence.75 Namely, that Tibetan Buddhism since
its origins was heir to a rich double heritage. On the one hand were the diverse
tantric sādhana (sgrub thabs, “methods of realisation”) associated with the many
cycles and transmissions of Indic Vajrayāna Buddhism. In these, the basic organising
principle was the maṇḍala with an enlightened deity at its centre and entourages
73. Stephan Beyer’s seminal work on tantric ritual was based on the guidance of Khamtrül
Rinpoché (Khams sprul rin po che) and quotes widely om Tsongkhapa’s explanations of Tantra.
The core principle, as presented by Beyer, is that the ritualist, through immersion in the non-
duality of emptiness which grounds both saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, is able to go back to the source of
phenomenal reality, and then with enlightened intention, to re-create it in any number of ways.
Beyer, for example, cites Tsongkhapa as saying “if he firmly places himself in Emptiness and then
arises there om, he is able thereby to empower the appearance of anything he wishes.” Beyer
continues, “he is then the owner of the universe, for he understands and is able to manipulate the
very processes that create the cosmos . . . he can produce real effects upon ordinary appearances by
the merest projection of mental event” (Beyer, Magic and Ritual, 75). Elsewhere, Beyer explains it
thus: “the ability to control ‘appearances’ is the affirmation of the practitioner’s control of reality
itself . . . in a universe where all events dissolve ontologically into Emptiness, the touching of
Emptiness in the ritual is the recreation of the world in its actuality” (ibid., 69).
74. For more on this dynamic—the replacement of particularist shamanic rituals of exchange
with Buddhist counterparts based on a universalist philosophical foundation, see for example
Stan Mumford, Tibetan Lamas and Gurung Shamans in Nepal (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1989).
75. A weakness of Dalton’s groundbreaking work on the history of Tibetan ritual violence
is that it looks only at its Buddhist foundations, while ignoring the debt in such areas to Bön.


of protective forces at its edges, and methods of self-identification, visualisation,

recitation and gesture were the primary tools of ritual empowerment. And on the
other hand were the autochthonous Bodic or Himalayan traditions of to (gto) rituals,
amed as re-enactments of primordial mythic antecedents of exchange in the spirit
world. Rituals of this type, o en associated with the Bön tradition through which
they were preserved, were very varied, but on the whole were oriented towards the
manipulation or re-balancing of relations with a multifarious and dangerous spirit
world, and used dynamics of purification, ransom, substitution and deception as
their main methods.76 Both of these broad strands of Tibetan ritual heritage made
copious use of what James Frazer described as the principles of “sympathetic magic”
(i.e. magic effected through the dual principles of imitation and contagion),77 and
as such “power substances,” whether pure or impure, played a major role in both.78
The astonishingly rich and diverse culture of apotropaic rituals that evolved in
Tibet was the result of the combination, and o en the blending, of these two strands
of ritual heritage. While Buddhism predominantly came to furnish the hegemonic
philosophical, ethical and meditative discourses concerning the transcendent insight,
or gnosis (ye shes, jñāna),79 required to make such ritual action (’phrin las, “enlightened
action”) effective, the native cultural complex still retained much of its prestige
when it came to the paraphernalia, materials and methods one could use to placate,
76. This basic parsing of Tibetan ritual culture into two categories, sādhana and gto, has
been suggested by Samten Karmay, “Tibetan Indigenous Myths and Rituals with Reference to
the Ancient Bön Text: The Nyenbum (Gnyan ’bum),” in Tibetan Ritual, ed. José Cabezón, 54.
It has also been taken up by Charles Ramble in the commentary to his multi-media project to
present some Himalayan Bön rituals in both text and video (www.kalpa-bon.com).
77. The principles of “magic by imitation (or homeopathy)” and “magic by contagion” are
both at work, for example, in the use of human effigies (liṅga, ngar mi) in enemy-suppressing
rites. The effigy, as an image of the enemy to be attacked, is an example of magic by imitation.
That such effigies are considered more effective when inscribed with the enemy’s specific name or
when some intimate personal effects of the enemy (hair or clothing, for example) are attached to
it, are examples of magic by contagion. Rites also make a lot of use of impure or taboo substances
(the blood of a person killed by a knife, poison, animal excrement and so on), which are also
examples of magic by contagion. On Frazer’s seminal work on sympathetic magic, see for example
Sir James George Frazer, The New Golden Bough: A New Abridgement of the Classic Work by Sir
James George Frazer, ed. Theodor H. Gaster (New York: Mentor, 1964), 35–81.
78. The tantric movement in India om around the fi h century CE was characterised by its
elaborate prescriptions for the use of particular substances, and Tibetan ritual texts o en prescribe
the use of substances (kuśa grass, for example) not easily available in Tibet. Bön traditions draw
on a more native pharmacopeia. The use of juniper, rhododendron and ferns in Tibetan rites of
smoke purification (bsang) is one example of this, indicating the autochthonous origins of that
particular ritual tradition. The centrality of powerful substances (such as the flesh of a seven-
times-born Brahmin) to the sorcery traditions of the Buddhist rituals in use in this period is the
central theme of Gentry’s groundbreaking study; see Gentry, Power Objects.
79. The term ye shes in Tibetan is used as the Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit jñāna
(cognate with Greek, gnosis). The Tibetan term can be etymologically expanded out as ye nas
shes pa: knowledge (shes pa) om (nas) the primordial origin (ye), thus “transcendent insight.” In
Bön mythology, ye is also the name of the gods of primordial existence in their eternal conflict
with the demons of adversity, known as ngam.


propitiate, entrap, agitate and control the worldly spirits. As such, elements of
“native” practices lived on not just in the Bön school, but also in the Buddhist
schools, and particularly in the “Old” or Nyingma tradition most closely associ-
ated with Padmasambhava, the archetype of the Buddhist tāntrika, who was able
to subdue and control Tibet’s powerful native spirits.
In the “New” Sarma (gsar ma) schools (Sakya, Kagyü, Kadam/Géluk), in which
Indic elements were preferred, cultural motifs and elements relating to native
spirits, spirit-mediumship and authochthonous traditions of sorcery tended to be
associated almost exclusively with the myths (and thus the methods of propitia-
tion) concerning the oath-bound religious protectors (dam can srung ma). These
protectors were o en amed as native Inner Asian spirits, which had been subdued,
converted and bound by oath (dam la btags) to serve the Buddha-dharma by realised
adepts of Buddhist wrathful tantra.80 And standing head and shoulders above all
such adepts (even for the Sarma schools) in Tibetan religious and folkloric lore was
Padmasambhava—the eighth-century adept om Orgyen, credited with bringing
the practices of wrathful tantra (and the Vajrakīla / Phur pa practices in particular)
to Tibet for the first time.
Due to the close association between Padmasambhava and the Nyingma or
“Old” school—in which Padmasambhava occupies a foundational role at every level
of Buddhist practice and not just with regard to protectors—it was masters of this
tradition above all who gained the reputation for being adept at controlling Tibet’s
powerful spirit world. As such, it was also within the Nyingma school above all
others, that aspects of Tibet’s native ritual heritage concerning relations with unseen
worldly forces of numina was adapted to Buddhist ameworks. This was achieved
partly through the legitimacy accorded in Nyingma tradition to scriptural revelation
through pure vision (dag snang) and mind-treasure (dgongs gter). Such revelations
(seeded by Padmasambhava himself in the mind-streams of his disciples so as to
be revealed when needed) both affirmed Padmasambhava’s ongoing immanence in
Tibetan affairs through the Nyingma traditions, and also gave his own authorita-
tive imprimatur to the visionary and ritual revelations of Nyingma adepts through
the centuries. For according to legend, Padmasambhava’s work in Tibet had been
interrupted when he was expelled by Emperor Trisong Detsen’s jealous ministers,81
leaving his spirit-taming work in Tibet unfinished and in need of constant renewal.
In this way, a rich stock of ritual methods and paraphernalia for navigating relations
of exchange with the spirit world, not all of which can be considered originally
Indic (and thus pukka Buddhist), were used and developed by Nyingma adepts and
visionaries in their arsenals of harm-averting and offensive ritual action. So, in
practice in medieval Tibet, more prevalent than the use of Hevajra and Kālacakra
tantras mentioned above in war magic contexts, were actually wrathful practices
80. A prime example of this pattern is Pehar, one of the chief protector deities who, under
the Fi h Dalai Lama, came to serve the Ganden Phodrang government through the state oracle
of Néchung; see Bell, “Néchung: The Ritual History and Institutionalization of a Tibetan Bud-
dhist Protector Deity.”
81. See note 72 above.


based on terma revelations of Tibetan tantric masters, o en centring in particular on

Yamāntaka/Yamāri/Vajrabhairava; Mahākāla; Heruka/Cakrasaṃvara; and Vajrakīla.
In fact, since army-repelling (dmag bzlog) was just another form of harm-aversion,
all kinds of dharmic activities, and not just tantric practices, could be adapted for
use in times of armed conflict. These are hard to summarise because of their sheer
diversity. They could range om general meritorious activities, such as reciting
scriptures; to simple acts, such as wearing protective amulets or carrying blessed
grains of barley (phyag nas); to geomantic activities, such as building temples and
stupas or erecting statues or other “supports” (rten) of the dharma at places divined
through clairvoyance; to performative propitiatory activities, such as making puri -
ing smoke offerings (bsang) to the worldly spirits, processing with power objects, or
performing religious dances (’cham). They also included rites that ranged om the
simple casting of spells to elaborate ritual performances which could take dozens
of ritualists weeks to prepare for and perform. In the period under review here, it
was certainly these more elaborate and esoteric practices that appear to have most
captured the popular imagination.82 Such rites were known under various rubrics,
such as dö (mdos), jinsek (sbyin bsregs) or torgyak (gtor rgyag). And within them were
embedded many different wrathful (drag po) modes of action, such as protection
(srung), casting out (gtor), repelling (bzlog), suppressing (mnan) and even killing
(bsad). These elaborate (and theatrical) rites could involve large amounts of resources
in barley and butter (for gtor ma sculpted offerings), paper (for liṅga effigies), pig-
ments, and many other rare combustibles and power objects, thus necessitating
considerable community participation.
The complexity of the subject is further heightened by the fact that “no two
tantric rituals are ever identical.”83 Textual sources on war magic in the period
under discussion here reflect the formulaic profusion of diversity characteristic of
tantric ritual practice in general: diversity in the forms and names of the protec-
tive and tutelary deities summoned and propitiated; in the subtle permutations
and sequencing of visualisation, generation and dissolution; in the many mantras
(sngags) and dhāraṇī (gzungs) to be recited; in the gestures (phyag rgya) deployed; in
the pure and impure substances utilised; and in the elaborate ritual constructions
involved. These included torma (gtor ma) dough-effigies, which were prescribed in
a great variety of shapes, colours and sizes, and used variously as either offerings
or as visualisation supports; maṇḍala (dkyil ’khor) constructions of varying levels
of complexity; thread crosses (nam mkha’); tally sticks (rgyang bu); fire pits (brub
khung); drawn or printed effigies (liṅga); and ritual “bombs” (zor).84
82. While discussing the long cultural history of flood-control at Lhasa, Sørensen notes
that although the scriptural and spiritual authenticity of Nyingmapa terma ritual cycles for the
defence of Lhasa (whether chu bzlog or dmag bzlog) was o en queried, the popular appeal of such
rites remained undimmed, eventually forcing the Gélukpa (under the Great Fi h) to embrace
them; see Sørensen and Hazod, Celestial Plain, 495.
83. José Cabezón in the introduction to Tibetan Ritual, ed. Cabezón, 15.
84. The objects empowered as “bombs” (zor) are also in fact torma (gtor ma), as the things
to be “hurled” (gtor).


In all such rites, the “inner-outer homology” of tantric ritual in general created
a hermeneutic ambiguity as to whether the symbolically violent actions performed
should be considered metaphorically.85 This issue was particularly vexed in the
discourse around the seminal tantric rite of “liberation-killing” (bsgral ba), amed
as the ritual re-enactment of the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi (Phyag na rdo rje / Gsang
ba’i bdag) slaying the arch-demon Rudra. This paradigm was foundational to the
culture of wrathful Buddhist ritual, and occupied a central position in Tibet’s reli-
gious discourse, especially concerning righteous killing or “just war.”86
The proliferation of tantric teachings in Tibet during the Second Diffusion (phyi
dar) of Buddhism in the tenth to twel h centuries shows how violent Buddhist
rites were being used not just against non-Buddhists, but also against sectarian
rivals.87 By the time of the period under discussion here, that cultural phenomenon
reached its apex.
But since re aining om killing is considered to be one of the five basic precepts
to be followed by any Buddhist practitioner, how were such rituals for harming
or killing enemies squared with Buddhist ethics? This is another complex subject
on which Buddhist masters have come to different conclusions. In the context of
the present discussion, it may be briefly answered in two basic ways. One is that
the performance of rituals orientated towards violence (even killing) does not have
the same ethical status as actual physical violence or actual physical killing. This
is because, in Buddhist terms, such rituals are only efficacious when they dovetail
with the operations of the law of karma—they are not in and of themselves suf-
ficient to bring about the destruction of an enemy, but can only serve to bring to
uition the enemy’s own sinful karma as an enemy of the teachings, and bounce
that powerful negativity back upon themselves (the meaning of bzlog pa is “bounc-
ing back”). One of the most common terms in Tibetan for violent tantric ritual in
general is léjor (las sbyor), the “eǌoinment to action” or “enactment,” which could
85. The “inner-outer homology” is a central feature of all tantric rituals. For example, as
Sinclair writes, “in the Kālacakra system a yogin’s campaign against his inner mental defilements
is simultaneously a battle against the outer mleccha-asuradharma armies. Correspondences
between wars within the body (dehe) and the outer world are delineated in a dedicated section
of the Kālacakra-tantra (II. 48–50)” (Sinclair, “War Magic,” 160). As such, it would be incor-
rect to consider all uses of wrathful rites as forms of war magic. However, it is clear in certain
circumstances that such rites were used directly against outer, human, worldly enemies, as this
article illustrates.
86. Jacob Dalton presents the thesis that the liberation rite constitutes the liturgical founda-
tion for all ritual violence in Tibetan Buddhism; see Dalton, Taming.
87. The military exploits against (Buddhist) rivals of the lama-general Lama Zhang
(1123–93), also known as “the great magician of Ü” (dbus ma mthu chen), are regularly amed in
his hagiographic materials as “fierce [enlightened] activities” (drag po’i ’phrin las), thus blurring
the distinction between ritual violence and actual military violence. Some of his monk-soldiers
were also said to have achieved mahāmudrā realisation on the field of battle. It is worth noting
that Buddhist tantric magic is however always distinguished om (non-Buddhist) “evil magic”
(ngan byed), which Lama Zhang, like Milarepa (Rje btsun mi la ras pa, 1052–1135), had renounced;
see Carl S. Yamamoto, Vision and Violence: Lama Zhang and the Politics of Charisma in Twelfth-
Century Tibet (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 223–33.


also be translated as “the eǌoinment of karma.” That the efficacy of violent ritual in
a Buddhist context only operates within this wider karmic context helps understand
the central importance that prophecy plays in the discourse of war magic in Tibet:
an enemy will only be destroyed by ritual action if his suppression is at some level
predestined, and prophecies offer a window onto that elusive field of predestination.
If the suppression of an enemy is prophesied, this not only legitimates and validates
the violent ritualist, it also serves to absolve him om ethical responsibility. A related
argument (and one used by the Fi h Dalai Lama himself ) is that violence meted
out on an enemy through ritual is not directly performed by the ritualist himself,
but rather by the spirit forces he mobilises. The ritualist’s own responsibility for
violence is thus mitigated by this mediation.88
This argument—that ritual killing isn’t really killing at all—does not, however,
get around the problem, since Buddhist ethics is based primarily on motivation. In
Buddhist ethics, it is the hateful intent to harm or kill another which is the primary
pollution, while outcomes (arising om a great and inscrutable confluence of causes
and conditions) are of only secondary ethical relevance. This brings us to the sec-
ond argument, which amounts to something akin to an esoteric tantric Buddhist
equivalent of “just war theory,” namely the doctrine of the “ten conditions” or “ten
fields” (zhing bcu), the fulfilment of which justifies destructive action for the sake
of protecting the teachings and thus the greater good. When an enemy fulfils all or
any of these ten criteria,89 he may be considered a proper object for such rites, and
the latter can be amed ethically as actions undertaken in defence of the dharma,
consonant with compassion (snying rje) and the core moral principle of Mahāyāna
Buddhism, namely to work “for the benefit of beings” (’gro ba’i don). Indeed, the
altruistic enlightened intention of bodhicitta (byang chub sems) generally occupies as
salient a role in violent (drag po) rituals as it does in any other form of Mahāyāna
Buddhist ritual, a seminal case in point being the “liberation-killing” (bsgral ba)
rite.90 The Fi h Dalai Lama makes recourse to the justification of the “ten fields”
88. This is an argument made by the Fi h Dalai Lama himself in his autobiography, when
he refutes the criticism that magic rituals should not be undertaken “against ordinary people.”
“We do not need to be ashamed of this,” he says, “as it is taught in the Tantras. Moreover, it is
the eight kinds of spirits who fiercely execute the punishment”; see Karmay, Illusive Play, 128.
89. The “ten fields of liberation” (bsgral ba’i zhing bcu), the fulfilment of which can justi
killing by means of violent tantric ritual, are: those who cause harm to Buddhist religion; those
who bring dishonour to the Three Jewels; those who embezzle the property of the Sangha; those
who slander the Mahāyāna; those who endanger the life of the guru; those who sow discord among
the vajra community; those who prevent others om attaining siddhi; those who are without love
and compassion; those who abandon the sacred vows; those who have perverted views concerning
karma and its retribution; see Rig ’ǳin rdo rje, Gathering the Elements, 281 n. 692. The ten fields
are also listed (according to an eighteenth-century source) in Gentry, “Representations,” 186 n. 37.
The original scriptural source of the “ten fields” doctrine remains unclear to me.
90. Dalton, Taming. This seminal rite, which dates back to the earliest periods of Tibetan
Buddhism, re-enacts the slaying/liberation of the arch-demon Rudra by his enlightened mirror-
image Vajrapāṇi, and is found for example in the Dunhuang document PT408, the relevant sec-
tion of which is translated by Dalton, Taming, 210–13. Dalton argues that this rite constitutes
the foundational archetype of all wrathful tantric violence in the history of Tibetan Buddhism.


quite equently in his writings, for example when he says that the Bönpo King
of Béri (crushed by Gushri Khan in 1639–40) “fulfilled the ten conditions, [and]
obviously deserved to be the aim of destructive rites.”91
State of the Art of War Magic in Sixteenth–Seventeenth Century Tibet

In the historical period under review here, the pièce de résistance in Tibet’s rich and
diverse ritual culture of repelling inimical forces, and enemy armies in particular,
were the elaborate and theatrical dö (mdos) rites borrowed om Bön tradition.92 These
elaborate rites involved the offering of a vast altar of ritual constructions symbolis-
ing the entire phenomenal universe (including the planets and constellations) and
required large amounts of resources and community participation, typically utilising
myriad torma (gtor ma) in different shapes, sizes and colours, thread crosses (nam
kha’), tally sticks (rgyang bu) and enemy effigies (liṅga, ngar mi). Seeded within the
ritual ameworks of dö ceremonies were many of the other enemy-repelling ritual
modes, such as ritual dance (’cham), fire offering (sbyin sregs, homa), ransom (bslu
glud), pressing down (mnan) and the hurling of [ritually-empowered] weapons (gtor
zor), so that altogether the dö ceremonies served as a kind of all-encompassing
multi-dimensional community expression of occult enemy- and obstacle-averting
exorcistic power, and thus came to have a key role as expressions of political com-
munity in the Tibetan cultural context.93
In the late-sixteenth to early-seventeenth century, one secret ritual corpus associ-
ated with dö rites had come to eǌoy particular prestige and renown in the field of
Buddhist war magic, namely the Twenty-five Means of Repelling Armies (Dmag zlog
nyi shu rtsa lnga), “revealed” by the Nyingma tertön (gter ston, “treasure-revealer”)
Zhikpo Lingpa of Nangtsé, mentioned above. In this corpus, for the first time,94
91. be ri ’di zhing bcu tshang nges pas las sbyor gyi yul yin par mngon; see Karmay, Illusive Play, 151.
92. Both Tucci and Karmay have stated that the origins of the mdos rites lie in Bön tradition,
and such rites are still the preserve of the Bön and Nyingma schools today. For an important essay
on a particular mdos rite, see Anne-Marie Blondeau, “The mKha’ klong gsang mdos: Some Questions
on Ritual Structure and Cosmology,” in New Horizons in Bon Studies, ed. Samten Karmay and
Yasuhiko Nagano (Delhi: Saujanya Publications, 2004), 249–87. On the community significance
of a mdos rite in a contemporary Himalayan Bönpo community, see Charles Ramble, “The secular
surroundings of a Bonpo Ceremony: Games, Popular Rituals and Economic Structures in the
mDos rgyab of Klu brag Monastery (Nepal),” in New Horizons, ed. Karmay and Nagano, 289–316.
93. Sihlé, Rituels bouddhiques.
94. Prior to Zhikpo Lingpa, use of the specific phrase dmag bzlog/zlog appears to have been
rare in Tibetan texts, and army-repelling was not singled out as the object of specific practices.
An early use of the phrase appears in the Padma bka’ thang (Péma Chronicles), the liberation story
of Padmasambhava revealed by Orgyen Lingpa, chapter 42, which is entitled “Chapter [in which
the Master] Repels a Foreign Army in the Land of Zahor” (Za hor yul du mtha’ dmag bzlog pa’i
le’u); see O rgyan gling pa (revealer), Padma bka’ thang (Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun
khang, 1996), 273–75. To summarise: when a foreign army (mtha’ dmag) led by an Indian prince
named Mahāpāla invades Zahor, many people flee, burning the land as they go, while others stay
to fight. Then Padmasambhava, in a flash, goes to the land of the asuras, where he borrows a
huge bow and arrows which he sends to Zahor loaded on a mighty elephant. None of the enemy’s


Fig. 1: The main effigy, known as dok

ché (zlog chas “repulsion material”) used
in a dö (mdos) ritual, under construc-
tion at the Bonpo temple of Lubrak,
Mustang, Nepal, 2008 (Photo: Charles
Ramble).
“army-repelling” (dmag zlog) had become the explicit central concern of a whole
cycle of teachings. As mentioned already, unfortunately for the Gélukpa, the heir
and master of these jealously guarded practices was Lodrö Gyeltsen, the “Mongol-
Repeller” (sog bzlog pa), who was firmly aligned with the cause of the Tsang Dési
against the Mongols and their perceived Géluk vassals. Zhikpo Lingpa’s Twenty-five
Means of Repelling Armies offers a window onto the “state of the art” of Tibetan war
magic in this period, so it is worth digressing a little here to make a few observa-
tions on what this corpus (or what remains of it) reveals.95 Unless otherwise stated,
all translations and summaries of Tibetan sources cited here are the author’s own.
athletes can string the bow, but then Padmasambhava strings it and hits the target of a horn
set up ten yojanas away. He then deploys a terri ing emanation of Viṣṇu-Rahūla with a crow’s
head and a body covered with eyes, and the enemy army melts away. Another early reference to
dmag zlog occurs in the biography of Dorjé Lingpa (Rdo rje gling pa, 1346–1405), when Dorjé
Lingpa apparently went to Lhasa to perform a repelling rite against a Chinese or Indian army
(rgya’i dmag). He performed a fire ritual (sbyin bsreg) and a suppression rite (mnan pa rgya tsa),
and then, upon finding destined disciples, gave a dharma teaching about “twenty-five solutions”
(ci byed pa nyi shu rtsa lnga), though these are general pieces of dharma advice, not ways of repel-
ling armies; see Nyang ston Chos dbyings rang grol, Gter chen rdo rje gling pa’i rnam thar dang
zhal gdams bcas (Thimphu: Druk Sherig Press), 319–26.
95. The observations here supplement the survey treatment in Gentry, “Representations.”


The Twenty-five Means of Repelling Armies
In the context of the present discussion of rituals as war propaganda, what is of

particular interest about the Twenty-five Means texts deployed against the Gélukpa
and their Mongol patrons are the millenarian and national literary overtones in
which they were couched. And it is testimony to the cultural capital attached to
this corpus that the Fi h Dalai Lama himself, despite his own derision towards
the Zhikpo Lingpa-Sokdokpa-Gongra lineage,96 was so keen, in the post-1642
period, to gain access to these teachings. This is revealed in his autobiography
when he relates his meeting in 1651 with Sokdokpa’s main heir and disciple, Gongra
Zhenphen Dorjé. By his own admission, the Dalai Lama’s motivation in holding
this meeting was to obtain om Gongra “the text of the Dmag bzlog nyer lnga,”
which, he says, “was very important for me.”97 For obvious reasons, however,
the meeting was awkward. The Dalai Lama describes Gongra as “a very haughty
person,” and it seems he was unable to bring himself to ask for what he wanted
and le the meeting empty-handed. 98
The brief summary of what remains of this corpus given below is based on seven
texts included in the Rinchen Terǳö (Rin chen gter mǳod) collection. As identically
parsed in two available editions of that collection, these seven texts are as follows
(references to the Paro and Tsadra editions respectively):99
1. A General Summary of Some Methods for Repelling (Dmag zlog nyi shu rtsa
lnga las/ spyi ru zlog thabs kyi rim pa sde tshan byas pa) [Paro, vol. 71, fols. 57–72;
Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44, text 73]
2. A Ceremony for Conferring the sādhana of the Four Kings for the Purpose
of Protecting the City and Emboldening the Common People (Dmag zlog nyi
shu rtsa lnga las/ rgyal chen bzhi’i sgrub thabs mchod phrin grong khyer srung ba
96. Gentry, Power Objects, 380–408.

98. Ibid., 259.
99. Three editions of the Rinchen Terǳö were available to the author. 1. The Pelpung
blockprint redaction published in Chengdu (BDRC W1PD96185). In this edition the Dmag zlog
nyi shu rtsa lnga texts are gathered into just four texts located in volume 44 (phi), between folios
681 and 793. The print-quality of this edition is not very clear. 2. The Paro edition, an enlarged
Rinchen Terǳö based on the Tölung Tshurphu edition, was compiled at the order of Dilgo
Khyentsé Rinpoché and published at Paro in Bhutan 1976–80 (BDRC W20578). In this edition,
the Dmag zlog nyi shu rtsa lnga texts are classed as seven texts located in volume 71 (phi-bi), between
folios 57 and 246 (the text between folios 137–67 does not appear to belong to the Zhikpo Lingpa
corpus). 3. The Tsadra Terǳod edition. This is a digital transcription of the Zhéchen (Zhe chen)
edition of the Dilgo Khyentse Paro edition (2. above). The full Tibetan texts of the Tsadra edition
are available online in transcribed dbu can typeset at terǳod.tsadra.org. Here the Zhikpo Lingpa
texts are found in volume 44, texts 73–80 (excluding text 77). This is the edition used for the
translations and summaries found here. http://rtz.tsadra.org/index.php/RTZ_Volume_44. Last
accessed 02/12/2018. Unless stated otherwise, all translations and summaries are the author’s own.


yul khams mnga’ ’bangs su gtad pa’i thabs bcas) [Paro, vol. 71, fols. 73–92; Tsadra
Terǳod, vol. 44, text 74]
3. A Hurling Ritual with the Four Gatekeepers and Four Border Guards of Tibet
(Dmag bzlog nyer lnga las/ bod kyi sgo srung bzhi dang ’phrang srung bzhi’i gtor
chog [Paro, vol. 71, fols. 93–103; Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44, text 75]
4. The Wheel of Weapons for Inciting the Four Kings and Their Entourages
to Wrath (Dmag bzlog nyi shu rtsa lnga las/ rgyal chen gtso ’khor gyi drag bskul
mtshon cha’i ’khor lo) [Paro, vol. 71, fols. 105–21; Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44, text 76]
5. A Method for How to Construct a Dö for the 72 Protectors and How to Incite
Them (Dmag bzlog nyi shu rtsa lnga las/ mgon po bdun cu rtsa gnyis mdos bca’ thabs
bskul pa dang bcas pa) [Paro, vol. 71, fols. 123–36; Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44, text 78]
6. A Method for Offering to the Great Kings and a Comprehensible Practice

Manual for the Practices of Hurling (gtor), Repelling (zlog) and Dö (Zhig gling
gi gter byon dmag zlog nyer lnga las/ rgyal chen mchod thabs dang gtor zlog mdos
rnams nyams su blang ba’i lag len bklag chog mthong bas don rtogs) [Paro, vol. 71,
fols. 169–215; Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44, text 79]
7. Instructions and Practice Manual for Life-Conferment to the Four Great

Kings for the Purpose of Bringing Peace to Tibet (Dmag zlog nyi shu rtsa lnga
las/ rgyal chen sde bzhi’i srog dbang bka’ rgya can bskur ba’i lag len gsal bar bkod pa
bod khams bde ba’i las ’jug) [Paro, vol. 71, fols. 217–46; Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44,
text 80]
One point is immediately worth observing about this list: the majority of these
texts (texts 2, 4, 6, 7) centre on practices with the Four Great Kings (rgyal chen bzhi).
This observation in itself reflects the point made earlier about how Tibet, despite
its political agmentation in this period, was being represented in literary terms
as a polity at the centre of a Buddhist maṇḍala. Of particular importance in the
Zhikpo Lingpa corpus is the King of the East, Dhṛtarāṣṭra (Yul ’khor srung), who
as his name suggests (meaning “protector of the realm” or “protector of state”) was
considered particularly important for protecting the land of Tibet and its people.
This Tibet-centric “national” orientation of Zhikpo Lingpa’s corpus, and its
extensive use of native Tibetan (or Bönpo-esque) loci of magical authority, is par-
ticularly evident in text 3, a propitiation of the “four gatekeepers of Tibet” (bod kyi
sgo srung bzhi), who are described as being in the spirit classes of nyen, mu, lu and
dü (gnyan, dmu, klu and bdud). The text opens with the words: “In order to protect
the Snowlands of Tibet om foreign armies” (bod khams kha ba can gyi ǉongs mtha’
dmag srung bar bya ba’i phyir), and goes on to prescribe an elaborate offering-altar
to its powerful (mthu bo che) worldly spirits (srid pa’i lha). In a manner similar to
a dö ceremony, the altar is replete with torma and namkha and gyangbu, and at its
centre stands a square torma for Thanglha, the ancient mountain deity who guards


the northern approaches to the central Tibetan heartland of Ü. The invitation to

the four gatekeepers is here couched in re ains that allude to the mythology of
Tibet’s imperial era:
In this snow-filled pureland of noble ones, with
High peaks and pure earth, in this pristine realm,
This kingdom of Pugyel Tibet (spu rgyal bod),
The great worldly gods (srid pa’i lha chen) are mighty in magical power (mthu bo che):
The ‘body-god’ (sku lha) Tanglha yazhur (Thang lha ya zhur)
The long-haired Relpachiring (Ral pa spyi ring), Lord of mu (dmu)
The nine-snake-headed king of lu (klu)
And Tramkhana (Khram kha na), king of dü (bdud).
O four great gatekeepers of Tibet,
Together with your queens, your progeny, and ministers,
Please approach!100
But the propitiation of territorial protectors, whether classically Buddhist (as

in the Four Great Kings) or natively Tibetan (as in the four gatekeepers above), is
by no means all that Zhikpo Lingpa’s rituals involve. In two of the texts, a full list
of his “twenty-five ways” are given as follows:101
1, 2 and 3. Repelling (zlog pa) by means of the Three Roots (i.e. bla ma, yi dam,
mkha’ ’gro);
4. repelling by means of white mustard seeds (yungs kar gyi zlog pa);
5. by means of evil mantras (ngan sngags kyi zlog pa);
6. through construction (bcas kyi zlog pa);
7. through realisation of Shiǌé (Gshin rje, Yama) and Phurpa (Phur pa, Vajrakīla)
(gshin rje dang phur pa’i sgrub pa la brten nas zlog pa);
8. by means of a powerful potion made by steeping magical substances in water

(chu la rǳas kyis ngar blud nas zlog pa);
9. by means of [magical] substances (rǳas kyi zlog pa);
10. by means of various methods (zang zing yas);
100. ’phags pa’i zhing khams kha ba can / ri mtho sa gtsang bsil ba’i gnas / spu rgyal bod kyi rgyal
khams na / srid pa’i lha chen mthu bo che / sku lha thang lha ya zhur dang / ral pa spyi ring dmu yi
rje / klu rgyal sbrul mgo dgu pa dang / bdud kyi rgyal po khram kha na / bod kyi sgo srung chen po
bzhi / btsun mo sras dang blon ’khor bcas / ma lus ’khor bcas gshegs su gsol; see Tsadra Terǳod, vol.
44, text 75. The Tsadra edition of these texts is not paginated, so in the excerpts and summaries
given here, only the volume and text number are cited (without page or folio number).
101. Ibid., texts 73 and 79. The list is also presented in Gentry, “Representations,” 137.


11. by means of dö (mdos);
12. by means of fire-rituals (sbyin sreg);
13. by means of forms of hurling (gtor zlog rnams kyi zlog pa);
14. by mastering the elements (’byung ba kha bsgyur gyi zlog pa);
15. by means of the three defilements of mantra and vow (sngags pa dam tshig
nyams pa gsum gyi zlog pa);
16. by means of the three non-defilements (ma nyams pa gsum gyi zlog pa);
17. by means of the three defilements of the monastic code (btsun pa ’dul khrims
nyams pa gsum gyi zlog pa);
18. by means of the three non-defilements (ma nyams pa gsum gyi zlog pa);
19. by means of the invisibility-stick (lus/lung sgrib shing gi zlog pa) [text 1 has
lung, text 6 has lus];
20. by means of mantras of Yulkhorsung (yul ’khor srung gi man, Dhṛtarāṣṭra);
21. protecting the realm through realisation of Tamdrin (Hayagrīva) (rta mgrin
gyi sgrub pa byas la yul ’khor srung ba);
22. paralysing an army by gaining control over the spirits and cutting off the
route (lha ’dre dbang du bsdus la dmag dpung jag chings bya ste lam bcad pa);
23. by striking the general’s effigy (dmag dpon yi ga gcu ba / dmag dpon gyi ga
gcu ba);102
24. by proclaiming the holy teachings (gsung rab sgrogs te zlog pa);
25. by means of the dharmic activity of prohibiting hunting in the mountains

and valleys (ri rgya klung rgya bya zhing chos spyod la ’bad de zlog pa).
This list illustrates the diversity of activities that could be amed as methods
for repelling armies, ranging om simple acts of piety for paci ing the land and
quelling negative forces, to elaborate esoteric rituals of attack. One can also note the
prominence given by Zhikpo Lingpa to the use of special substances. And one can
102. In light of the notes he gives on this method (summarised later), and the spelling
variation, there seems to be a scribal confusion here. Gentry reads it as yig gcu ba and translates
it as “crumpling a paper effigy of a general,” which works well; see ibid.


also note that the tantric realisations of the classical wrathful enlightened divinities
(as in numbers 7 and 21 above—repelling with Shiǌé / Yamāntaka, Phurpa / Vajrakīla
and Tamdrin / Hayagrīva), although important, constitute only a few among the
many methods employed.
To illustrate the kind of rituals that these methods involved, brief summaries and
discussions are now presented of two of the Twenty-five Means texts listed above.
The first is the “General Summary of Methods for Repelling”103 (text 1). This
text is particularly notable for the insight it offers into the discursive packaging of
the Twenty-five Means as Tibet-centric national defence.
The first object of homage in this text is Vajrapāṇi, corroborating the point
made forcefully by Dalton (2011) that it is Vajrapāṇi, by virtue of his role as the
subduer (and mirror-image) of Rudra in the foundation myth of Buddhist wrath-
ful tantra, who stands astride the entire corpus of repelling rites. The text is then
amed by millenarian prophetic themes typical of “treasure” (gter ma) literature,
coming om the mouth of Padmasambhava: “A er five hundred years, when the
armies of Du-ru-ka (i.e. Turk) attack Tibet (bod), these practices will be called
for, and only these will be seen to be genuine.” These rituals are to be used “when
the beings of Tibet (bod khams sems can) are being oppressed by evil foreign armies
(ma rungs mtha’ dmag ngan pa).”104
Also evoked in the text is the core black-white dualism central to Tibetan mil-
lenarian myth and epic folklore alike—the perennial battle between the “light side”
(dkar phyogs) and the “dark side” (nag phyogs). Here, it is stated that the practitioner
must be firmly established on the side of the former through extensive prior practice
with the “six-letter mantra” of Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion and
Tibet’s national saviour. It would be inaccurate, therefore, om an emic point of
view, to describe the arts of army-repelling contained here as “black magic,” since
they are explicitly amed as acts of white magic directed at threats to Tibet, to the
teachings of the Buddha and thus to the welfare of beings in general.
The instructions then begin with a brief preparation of substances required for
summoning spirits om their abodes and inciting them to ferocity. This mobilisa-
tion involves a mixture of enticement and flattery (with pure substances) and offence
and agitation (with impure subtsances). In the preamble, the ritualist is instructed
to gather the meat and hearts of various animals, together with types of wood and
grains, and to combine these with earth and water into pellets the “size of pigeons’
heads,” which are to be placed in various kinds of slingshots and flung while evoking
the (intentional) power of various kinds of laws along with their transgression.105
103. Dmag zlog nyi shu rtsa lnga las / spyi ru zlog thabs kyi rim pa sde tshan byas pa; see Tsadra
Terǳod, vol. 44, text 73.
104. Ibid.
105. “A slingshot with a tigerskin pouch and rope woven om rabbit’s hair, evoking civil
law (khrims); a slingshot made om the hair of a murderer (dme pa’i skra las byas pa), evoking
the vows (dam tshig) of a tāntrika; a slingshot made om the hair of a person killed by a knife,
evoking the violation of tantric vows; one made om the hair and other substances (thun) of
Buddhist and Bön celibates (ban bon rabs chad), evoking the intention of a butcher (bshan pa);


This use of a magically empowered slingshot (’ur rdo) to mobilise the spirit
world resonates with a core theme in the Gesar epic in which the slingshot is the
weapon of choice used by the Tibetan epic hero to gather the dralha (dgra lha)
“battle-spirits.”106 In the Twenty-five Means text, however, we find no mention of the
dralha at all. This absence is interesting, since it suggests that the idea of dralha/
drala (dgra lha / dgra bla) only became a central theme in the discourse and rituals
of Nyingmapa war magic in the period after the authoritative imprimatur given to
it by the Fi h Dalai Lama.107 In this area, as in so many others, the Great Fi h
had a major impact on the directions of later cultural discourse.
Returning to the Twenty-five Means text at hand, it is also worth noting that the
spells prescribed here are a mixture of Sanskrit and Tibetan (re-affirming the point
made earlier about the nativisation of the Tibetan culture of war magic through the
terma tradition). And one re ain recurs equently in various formulations: “since
even armies of demons are repelled like this, there’s no doubt that a mere army of
humans will be repelled!”108
Some explanatory notes are then presented on a few of the key methods outlined
in the list above. The notes on repelling with zangzingyé (zang zing yas, number 10
above) eǌoin the practitioner to a wide variety of cleansing or purificatory actions,
suggestive of sang (bsang) rites: “puri the lha (lha sel); puri the lu (klu sel); puri
quarrels (mkhon); puri internecine feuds (dme); puri negative influences (gdon)
and so on, and having completed this, perform ablutions (khrus chog) and propitiate
and one woven om the hair of vow-breakers and law-breakers, evoking monastic law”; see
Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44, text 73.
106. The term dgra lha has no definitive translation. Its semiotic range in Tibetan is
reflected by a fluidity of spellings—dgra lha, dgra bla, sgra bla and sgra lha. Translated literally,
dgra lha would be “enemy-god.” The equivalent in Mongolian is dayisun tngri (also lit.: “enemy-
god”). In all spellings, and in both Bön and Buddhist (chiefly Nyingma) traditions, these spirits
are associated with conflict and battle. Typically, they are “called in” to items of weaponry and
armour when conflict is imminent. For an illuminating discussion of the ritual history of such
battle-spirits, see Daniel Berounský, “ ‘Soul of the Enemy’ and Warrior Deities (dgra bla): Two
Tibetan Myths on Primordial Battle,” in Mongolica-Tibetica Pragensia, vol. 2, no. 2 (Prague:
Charles University, 2009), 19–57.
107. The Fi h Dalai Lama is associated with a well-known “Praise for the Battle Spirits”
(dgra bla dpangs stod). A version of this prayer, as still recited in Nyingmapa liturgies today, is
contained in the Tsadra edition of the Rinchen Terǳö, where it is attributed to the Fi h Dalai
Lama (Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 43, text 27). Berounský gives an English translation of what appears
to be the same text (Berounský, “Soul of the Enemy,” 41–9), which he tentatively attributes to
Rinǳin Gödemchen, the founder of the Northern Treasures tradition. Since the legacies of Rinǳin
Gödemchen were a primary springboard for the Fi h Dalai Lama’s reconstruction of Nyingma
tradition (and particularly its culture of war magic), an ambivalence about authorship between
these two figures makes sense. This poetic prayer, evoking the primordial battle of the devas and
asuras, had a major impact for the cult of dayisun tngri in Mongolia, where the prayer was also
attributed to the Fi h Dalai Lama himself; see Walther Heissig, Religions of Mongolia, trans.
G. Samuel (London: Routledge and Paul, 1980), 91. See also notes 238–41 below.
108. des ni bdud kyi dmag kyang zlog na ’jig rten mi’i dmag tsam zlog par the tshom med; see


the medicine Buddha (sman bla) and perform the ‘Hundredfold Homage for Mend-
ing Breaches’; do the practices of confession and purification of Vajra hell; confess
all one’s failings (of bodhicitta); and build temples and stupas as much as one is able,
so as to reconcile all conflict and warfare.” These, the text says, “are the repellings
of the secret yas” (gu hya yas kyi zlog pa).109
In the notes on the performance of dö ceremonies, a triangle (i.e. a corral of
wrathful intent) is to be set up below whatever dö has been constructed—the dö itself
being an elaborate offering altar. Into this triangular receptacle are placed images
(liṅga) of the soldiers and horses of Duruka drawn on corpse-cloths (ro ras). In this
way, it says, the entire army should be offered as ransom substances (yas)110 to the
dö itself (dmag thams cad mdos bdag la yas su ’bul), and at the end, the dö should be
ritually discarded in the direction om which the offending army is approaching.111
In the notes on the use of fire ritual (sbyin sreg) for repelling, the instructions
are to dig a triangular pit in a place where the earth is black and into it to place
wolf, weasel and otter excrement, and then, in the middle of this, place a liṅga
depicting the enemy general with his name and various spells written around the
outside. This should then be burnt in the sacralised fire (hom) and served to all the
gods, ghosts and haughty spirits (lha ’dre dregs pa can kun). This, it says, should be
done in the direction of the oncoming army, while the ritualist visualises himself
as supremely powerful, and the entire enemy army, together with all destructive
emotions and the five poisons, being burnt into nothingness by the blazing fire of
transcendent gnosis (ye shes kyi me).112
The notes on repelling by hurling of ritually empowered “bombs” (gtor zor gyi
zlog pa) instruct the ritualist to imagine the tutelary divinity-embodying torma as
a bomb-like weapon, which is deployed by means of meditative focus (dmigs) to
strike the personal protective spirits (’go ba’i lha) [of the enemy] in the fire pit (brub
khung). In this way, all the abilities (nus pa), power (mthu), and strength (stobs) of
the enemy army will be neutralised. The enemy troops are visualised as stunned
into paralysis, others knocked out, and all of them rendered incapable. The spirits
supporting one’s own side (rang phyogs kyi mi ma yin) are visualised in dazzling
splendor, devouring meat, drinking blood, and ripping out the hearts of enemies
and shackling them by hand and foot. The notes on this method conclude on the
re ain “if, like this, an army of spirits can be vanquished, then there’s no doubting
[its ability to destroy] a mere army of men.”113
Notes on other forms of repelling are those “by means of recitation” (gsung sgrog),
in which it is stated that the recitation of faultless scripture (bka’) in general is
powerful in repelling harm. In particular, one should use spells (gzungs) for victory
109. Ibid.
110. For references to yas as ransom substances, see Gentry, “Representations,” 157 n. 23.
111. Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44, text 73.
112. Ibid.
113. Ibid.


over demons (bdud) and for victory over the “eight fears” (’jigs pa brgyad), which
should be recited facing the direction of the oncoming army.114
There are then many instructions about power substances (thun and mǳas),
which can be used to incite the spirits to action. These include tiger’s fangs, the heart
and claws of a bear, the blood of a wolf, and whatever meat, blood and bones one
can find. Instructions are given on how to mix these substances with dark clay and,
with this mixture, on how to fashion the form of a wrathful deity with a dagger in
one hand and a stake in the other. This figure is then used as a support for calling
upon Vajrapāṇi as the “fierce lord who vanquishes harm-bringing non-believers” (mu
stegs log ’dren ’joms pa’i khro rgyal). This method, he says, is a “treasure” concealed by
Padmasambhva, who is then exhorted to protect the teachings at the end of times
and in particular to come to their aid “in future generations, when the common
people of Tibet are oppressed and terrified by foreign armies.”115
With regard to protectors, it is the Great King (rgyal chen) of the eastern direc-
tion, Dhṛtarāṣṭra (Yul ’khor srung), who, for Zhikpo Lingpa, appears to have had
the greatest importance among all the guardians (mgon po kun gyi nang nas) for
protecting the country (yul dang yul khams srung ba), and he gives instructions on
the design of a banner for mobilising this deity.116
On the method for “striking the general’s effigy,” the ritualist is instructed
that, having generated himself as whatever (wrathful) yidam is being practiced, he
should draw an effigy of the enemy general on poisonous paper with exhortations
of suppression written on the head, heart, navel and genitals. This paper effigy is
then inserted into a torma made om dog excrement, and this is followed by visu-
alisations and the incantation of fierce mantras. Suitable torma offerings are then
made to the four gatekeepers and finally the dog-excrement torma with the effigy
inside it is buried at a crossroads. This, he says, will banish fear, thwart the enemy
army and deliver victory to one’s own country.117
The second text partially summarised here is the longest text in the Twenty-five
Means corpus, namely the 42 folio “Method for Offering to the Great Kings and
a Comprehensible Practice Manual for the Practices of Hurling (gtor), Repelling
(zlog) and dö (mdos)”118 (text 6 above). This text gives detailed instructions on how
to execute an elaborate repelling ritual. It was not authored by Zhikpo Lingpa him-
self, as in the preamble homage is paid to him (Gargyi Wangchuk Zhikpo Ling) as
well as to his lineage disciples, Lodrö Gyeltsen (Sokdokpa) and Zhenphen Dorjé
(Gongra).119 Nevertheless, it offers a valuable insight into the ritual methods for
114. Ibid.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid.
117. Ibid.
118. Zhig gling gi gter byon dmag zlog nyer lnga las / rgyal chen mchod thabs dang gtor zlog mdos
rnams nyams su blang ba’i lag len bklag chog mthong bas don rtogs; see Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44, text 79.
119. The author of this text is listed as Smyos btsun Rin chen rnam rgyal, who Cuevas has
identified as Minling Rinchen Namgyel (Smin gling Rin chen rnam rgyal, 1694–1758), one of
Terdak Lingpa’s (Gter bdag gling pa, 1646–1714) sons; see Cuevas, “Human Effigies,” 77.


repelling armies associated with the Twenty-five Means. The text begins by aming
the contents as instructions for how a suitably qualified practitioner—who has already
done thorough ritual service to the Four Great Kings and the seventy-five protec-
tors—may use them against foreign armies for “protecting, repelling and killing”
(srung zlog bsad gsum). In an indication of the importance of ǲokchen for Zhikpo
Lingpa as furnishing the prerequisite gnosis (ye shes), which makes all of these rites
effective, it states that they should only be undertaken “when all phenomena have
been brought under the purview of one’s altruistic intention and, having realised that
cultivated meditational deities and mantras are like illusory plays of transcendent
awareness, one has reached an extremely open mode of behaviour, or, having other-
wise understood the general meaning of the view, one may practice [these methods]
having become fully familiarised with the oral instructions.”120
Then, a er a re-cap of the twenty-five ways, the text offers further instruction
on practice with the Four Kings, repelling with hurling (gtor zlog), dö (mdos) and
fire-ritual (sbyin sreg). One interesting instruction featured here is that when the
suitably accomplished ritualist (sgrub pa po) is eǌoined to “bring the enemies and
obstructors onto the path of purity as objects of focus,” he is told that, “beyond the
compassionate attitude of bodhicitta, [he] should also at that time have the courage
and confidence that come om the motivation of hatred.”121
The preparations for the dö ceremony then described are very elaborate, involving
the construction of a three-tier altar on which are arranged a great variety of torma:
on the first tier, several visualisation-support torma for the enlightened yidams (yi
dam lha’i ’das gtor) along with offering torma (mchod gtor) for the dharma protec-
tors, guardians of treasures and local protectors (gzhi bdag). On the second tier,
four elaborate torma for the directional Great Kings, described in great detail,122
are arranged around a symbolic representation of Mount Meru along with other
120. chos thams cad rang rig byang chub sems su rtogs pa’i lta ba dang / sgom pa lha sngags ye
shes kyi rol pa sgyu ma lta bur mngon du gyur pas spyod lam kun tu rgyas thebs pa’am / min na yang
lta ba’i don spyi la go ba chags pa tsam gyis / ’di lag lan man ngag la goms ’dris dang ldan par bya
ste; see Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44, text 79.
121. dgra bgegs sogs dmigs yul rnams yang dag pa’i lam la dkri bar bya’o snyam pa’i gzhi dus
kyi bsam pa snying rje byang chub kyi sems las de dus kyi kun slong zhe sdang gi dpa’ gding dang ldan
pas bsgrub par bya ba; see ibid.
122. The torma for the Four Kings are prescribed as follows: around a red torma representing
Mount Meru are four torma for the Four Kings, each of which consists of a central body flanked
in each direction by four further torma representing the four actions (east: round and white for
paci ing; south: black and triangular for destroying; west: semicircular and red for controlling;
and north: yellow and square for enriching). And between these are torma for the eleven protec-
tors of the intermediate directions, with shapes and colours likewise stipulated. And around the
outside of each, a further thirty-two pieces—eight at the ont for the lha (white and round);
eight on the right for the klu (rubbed with medicine); eight at the back for the planets (gza’) (four
red and triangular, and four white and round); and eight on the le for the nöjin “harm-givers”
(gnod sbyin) (white and round-bellied). And around each, a further twenty-eight pieces for the
twenty-eight constellations (fourteen white and round, and fourteen red and round), and around
these, five further round-bellied white pieces for the nöjin, and the entirety of each surrounded
by finger-like pieces (mtheb kyu); see ibid.


torma for the mountain deity Thanglha and the border-guards of Tibet (called
gnyan gtor); and on the third tier are placed appeasing torma (skong gtor) and the
inner and outer offerings. In ont of all this, at the site where the ritual is to be
performed, a maṇḍala representing Mount Meru is drawn in various colours and,
at the centre of this, is placed a ransom effigy (ngar phye) made out of flour wet-
ted with beer (chang) and blood (khrag). Around the latter are arranged multiple
triangular (wrathful) effigies along with thorns, mustard seeds, and bits of meat,
and the whole lot is wreathed in intestines under a black triangular parasol, “so as
to give a terri ing impression.” Beneath this, in a fire-pit (’brub khung) smeared
with blood and poison, are placed the liṅga (paper effigies) of the enemy men and
horses, inscribed with fierce mantras and preferably including their family names.123
Fig. 2: An example of printed liṅga effigy (Himalayan Art

Resources [HAR] 53745).
The description of the three-tiered altar is followed by instructions for the

construction of thread crosses and for the summoning of the deities. Seventy-two
worldly deities are summoned, each riding a different mount. The evocation is
deliberately Indic: included are Brahmā and Indra, Śiva, Viṣṇu, Śiva’s sons Kārtikeya
and Gaṇeśa, Māra, Agni (fire), Varuṇa (rain), and Vāyu (wind), the sun and moon,
the eight nāga (klu) kings, the planets and constellations. The list also includes
“demonic” sounding figures, like a sinpo (srin po) riding upon a human corpse, and
a nöjin (gnod sbyin) riding a yellow horse. Interestingly, again, these deities are not
described here as dralha. The liṅga of the enemy men and horses are offered to this
host of protectors with exhortations to “take them as your food!” (khyed rnams kyi
zas skal du gtad do), “vanquish their power and abilities!” (stobs dang nus pa choms)
and “scatter their strategies to the wind” (mdun jus rlung la skur).
This constitutes only the beginning of an elaborate dö ritual, which cannot be
described in full here due to constraints of space. But the information provided
above gives a taste of the kind of ritual elaboration that was being deployed as war
magic on behalf of the Tsang alliance in the early-seventeenth century. With this,
we conclude our discussion of the political and religious contexts of the times, and
now turn to the Fi h Dalai Lama himself and his campaign to surpass all rivals in
this competitive occult field.
123. Ibid.


3. The Fifth Dalai Lama and War Magic
That the Fi h Dalai Lama saw the domain of practical violent rituals (las sbyor / mngon
spyod) as central to his religious life in general, and to the religio-temporal duties
of his office in particular, is revealed through a wide range of his writings. These
include his The Flow of the River Ganga: Record of Teachings Received (Gsan yig);124
his biographical works,125 especially his biographies of the Northern Treasures mas-
ters126 and of his predecessors as Dalai Lama,127 and of his “root lama” Zur Chöying
Rangdröl (Zur Chos dbyings rang grol, 1604–57);128 and his autobiographical works,
both “secret”129 and “outer.”130 It is also evidenced by the many ritual texts he authored
or “revealed” during the course of his life, most of which are not included in his
Collected Works, but are found instead in the twenty-five rituals of the two “sealed
124. The Fi h Dalai Lama’s Gsan yig (also known as his Thob yig), entitled The Flow of the
River Ganga (Gang+gA’i chu rgyun), contains a wealth of information about the lineage histories of
the teachings he received and propagated, many of which are relevant to our theme. The text fills
four volumes of his Collected Works: Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Zab pa dang rgya che ba’i
dam pa’i chos kyi thob yig Gang+gA’i chu rgyun, in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vols. 1–4.
125. His biographical works fill two volumes of the Collected Works: Fifth Dalai Lama gsung
’bum (2009), vols. 11–12.
126. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Byang ba rig ’ǳin chen po ngag gi dbang po’i rnam
thar pa ngo mtshar bkod pa rgya mtsho, in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 11.
127. Notably, his biography of the Third Dalai Lama, Sönam Gyatso: Ngag dbang blo bzang
rgya mtsho, Rje btsun thams cad mkhyen pa bsod nams rgya mtsho’i rnam thar dngos grub rgya
mtsho’i shing rta; and his biography of the Fourth Dalai Lama, Yönten Gyatso, ’Jig rten dbang
phyug thams cad mkhyen pa yon tan rgya mtsho’i rnam par thar pa nor bu’i phreng ba, both in Fifth
Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 11.
128. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Zur thams cad mkhyen pa chos dbyings rang grol gyi
rnam thar theg mchog bstan pa’i shing rta, in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 12.
129. The secret biography Gsang ba’ rnam thar rgya can ma is not included in his Collected
Works but is available in the dbu med manuscript om Hemis Monastery published at Leh in 1972
(BDRC W21992). A summary of it is contained as part of the “Golden Manuscript” published
along with English translation and accompanying essays in Karmay, Secret Visions.
130. The three-volume “outer” autobiography, known as the Dukula, or the Good Silk Cloth,
or the Illusive Play (using different elements of its full name Za hor bande ngag dbang blo bzang
rgya mtsho’i ’di snang ’khrul pa’i rol rtsed rtogs brjod kyi tshul du bkod pa du ku la’i gos bzang), is
found in his Collected Works: Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vols. 5–7. The first volume of
the autobiography, which narrates his life up until 1665, and was composed at the height of his
temporal power in 1667, is translated in Karmay, Illusive Play. The entire Dukula actually consists
of six volumes in total, only the first three of which are by the Fi h Dalai Lama himself. The last
three (vols. 8–10 of the Gsung ’bum) are the hagiography of the Great Fi h by his last regent and
political successor, Dési Sanggyé Gyatso. The first part of Dési Sanggyé Gyatso’s three-volume
hagiography (i.e. the fourth volume of the Dukula) is translated in Zahiruddin Ahmad, trans.,
Saṅs-rGyas rGya-mTSHo Life of the Fifth Dalai Lama, vol. 4, part 1 (New Delhi: International
Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1999).


volumes” (rgya can)131 and also in the Rinchen Terǳö.132 A full account of the Dalai
Lama’s relationship to ritual action for the aversion of obstacles in general, and
vanquishing enemies in particular, would require more extensive research than has
been possible for this article, which is again limited to a few observations.
In the autobiography (the first volume of which exists in an English translation
by Samten Karmay om which many quotes are drawn below),133 we see that the
Dalai Lama was a master of many fields and pursued a wide variety of interests,
religious, historical and literary. His concern with practical magic in particular, which
constitutes one of the significant themes of his outer autobiography, particularly in
its earlier parts, appears to have been closely tied to his sense of political duty, and
as such, went through various stages. In the pre-1639 section of the diary, we hear
of the gradual development of his “keen interest in rituals that were concerned with
immediate purpose”134 and his ustration at the obstacles being placed in his way,
which thwarted his desire to master these unorthodox ( om a Géluk perspective)
arts. Then, during the war (1639–42), we see his full immersion in such rituals in
support of the war effort. And in the post-war diary, we see him emerge emboldened
and actively embracing and cultivating his growing reputation as a master of violent
practical magic. This autobiography was written in 1667, when the Dalai Lama was
already at the height of his temporal power,135 and is candid and diplomatic in equal
measure, written no doubt with an eye to the hagiographic tradition that would
inevitably soon follow, and giving that tradition plenty of material with which to
paint him as a miracle-worker.
Before 1642
In his early life in particular, we find the Dalai Lama o en looking to the natural
world for portents and signs—mostly weather events but also the appearances of
birds, animals and insects—as indications of the power of his rites and the favour
or displeasure of the protective forces he propitiates and seeks to command. In the
131. These are the subjects of a general survey by Karmay, who correlates them to the Dalai
Lama’s secret visions; see Karmay, “The Rituals and Their Origins.”
132. In the Tsadra edition of the Rinchen Terǳö, a total of thirty-three texts are attributed
to the Fi h Dalai Lama, the majority of which can be considered related in some way to war
magic. These are reviewed later in the article.
133. When quoting om this volume of the autobiography, which covers his life up to 1665,
Karmay’s translation (Illusive Play) is cited. Quotations of the orginal Tibetan are om Ngag
dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Za hor bande ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i ’di snang ’khrul pa’i
rol rtsed rtogs brjod kyi tshul du bkod pa du kU la’i gos bzang las glegs bam, in Fifth Dalai Lama
gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 5.
134. gnas skabs kyi las tshogs ’dra la dga’ tshor che ba; see Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009),
vol. 5, 116; Karmay, Illusive Play, 120.
135. With the death of Gushri Khan in 1654, and of the Dépa Sönam Chöphel in 1658, the
Dalai Lama became not only the symbolic but also the practical head of state. The height of his
temporal power thus lasted om 1658 to 1679, when his disciple and protégé Sanggyé Gyatso
took over the duties of Dépa.


autobiography, his remarks concerning his lack of magical power during his early
youth—despite the claims being made even then on his behalf136—actually serve
to heighten the perception of the skills that he later accrued, since his disavowal
of his own magical power in his youth establishes the autobiography as something
more candid and sceptical than a simple work of self-aggrandisement.
The first mention he makes of himself practicing a defensive aversion ritual
dates to 1633, when he was sixteen years of age. On that occasion, destructive
magic was apparently being directed against his manager whom he referred to as
zhelngo (zhal ngo), Sönam Rapten (alias Sönam Chöphel), om a Géluk monastery
in Tsang.137 The latter thus asked the Dalai Lama to do a repelling ritual (zlog pa)
to counteract its effect. According to his own account, he did not know what to
do, but eventually found a suitable text, which he used “in order to urge Mahākāla
to take violent action and hurled the torma with [my] curse.” Seven months later,
he reports, the object of the ritual (Lunpo Choǳe) died. This, he says, “was not
because of my magic, but people like to think so. My action was childish play, but
considering the availability of large numbers of magic mantras of Padmasambhava
and Nup (Sanggyé Yéshé), the act was at least a good coincidence.”138 He then goes
on to express his derision towards the many self-proclaimed practitioners of the
magical arts (many of whom, as we have seen, were associated in some way with
the Tsangpa Dési) and his belief that there is more to offensive ritual than merely
performing ritual service to the wrathful protectors. “If one sees those who regard
themselves as being able to command the religious protectors [just] because of their
knowledge of the atonement ritual (bskang gso tsam shes pa), then I too could be
[counted] one of them, but that would prove that I am audulent.”139
Starting om the following year (1634), we have regular mentions of destructive
magic as a major preoccupation of the young lama. In that year he met his teacher
Phabongkha and told him of his desire to learn “rituals concerned with immediate
purpose” (gnas skabs kyi las tshogs). Phabongkha’s response immediately diverts the
conversation towards the teachings of the Nyingma school, illustrating the very
close association between the latter and magical rites in this period. Phabongkha
suggests that if the young lama is interested in Nyingma teachings, he should pursue
the instructions of ǲokchen rather than the tantric path. Even though the Dalai
Lama always had the highest respect for Phabongkha among his Gélukpa teachers,
it seems that he was most keen on learning the tantric teachings and mastery of
the “four actions.” He spent the spring of that year reading the popular life story
136. He records that even before he had recited a single mantra or performed a single
sādhana, people said the protective knots he gave out, as well as the holy water mixed with his
spittle, “were more effective than . . . those om already accomplished [masters]”; see ibid., 40.
137. We have no further details about this incident, and do not know if the sorcery supposedly
aimed at the zhelngo was patronised by the Tsang Dési or not. It is likely that it was connected
to the zhelngo’s close alliance with Mongol interests, since he had been the former manager of
the Mongol-born Fourth Dalai Lama.
138. Ibid., 116.
139. Ibid.


of Padmasambhava, known as the Péma Kathang (Padma bka’ thang), the terma
revelation of Orgyen Lingpa mentioned earlier, a er which the Nyingma lama
Zur Chöying Rangdröl (Zur Chos dbyings rang grol, 1604–69) arrived and the
young Dalai Lama entered his first extensive retreat under his direction.140 From
this time until his death in 1657, Zur Chöying Rangdröl—who himself had been
educated since the age of nine by the Dalai Lama’s cousin, the Northern Treasures
scion Ngakgi Wangpo—would continue as the Dalai Lama’s main Nyingma guru
and guide in matters of practical magic. Zur is regularly referred to in The Flow
of the River Ganga: Record of Teachings Received (Gsan yig) as his “root guru” (zur
rtsa ba’i bla ma).
The following year (1635), con onted with the imminent arrival of a dreaded
Mongol army led by Arsalang (son of Chokthu), Central Tibet was in a high state
of tension. Arsalang’s sectarian intentions were unclear and the source of much
speculation. His arrival appears to have been universally dreaded by all (and for good
reason, as it brought in its wake an outbreak of smallpox). In this context, the Dalai
Lama reports that the Dakchen (Bdag chen) of Sakya, known as Thutopa (Mthu
stobs pa, “Mighty in Magical Power,” 1588–1646), who was the elder brother of
Amnyé Zhab mentioned earlier, arrived in Lhasa and “performed rituals for averting
the Mongols.” These rituals appeared powerful to the Dalai Lama, who remarks
on a storm that rose over Sera Monastery in their wake, and on the umbrage that
some of the (pro-Mongol) Géluk monks took to their performance. However, in a
manner typical of his competitive attitude to the occult arts, he adds that, “within
four months, a large number of Mongols arrived. So it appeared that the rituals
performed by the Dagchen [Dakchen] actually summoned the Mongols!” This
remark is telling. Not only does it cast doubt on the ritual efficacy of an ecclestiatic
rival, it also derides the pretension of the non-Géluk schools to be the defenders
of Tibet om the (by and large Géluk-associated) Mongols. This was evidently
a concern for the Dalai Lama, and in his autobiography the Arsalang episode
provides the setting for him to both prove his own stripes as a Mongol-repeller
and at the same time undermine the claims of the other schools to be acting as
national defenders. In his narration of this episode, the Dalai Lama suggests that
it was his own rituals directed at Arsalang (when it looked as though the latter was
under the influence of the Zhamarpa and was coming to central Tibet to destroy
the Gélukpa)141 that were the more effective. The young Dalai Lama, with encour-
agement om Phabongkha, had spent a week performing “the ritual of hurling
140. Ibid., 121.

141. There is some obscurity around these events. The well-known narrative (widely propa-
gated a er 1642) holds that Arsalang was sent by his father Chokthu, who, through the intrigues
of the Sixth Zhamarpa (Gar dbang Chos kyi dbang phyugs, 1584–1630), had allied with Tsang
in order to wipe out the Géluk school. However, this narrative is not corroborated by the Dalai
Lama’s own autobiography. There, it is clear that the main military opposition being offered to
Arsalang’s invasion came om the Tsang Dési. This is revealed in the Great Fi h’s statement:
“Zhelngo asked me to check which side we should take, the Tsangpa or the Mongols” (ibid., 123).
Also, the Sixth Zhamarpa Lama had died in 1630, so it is unclear how the supposed intrigues
were undertaken.


the zor based on the deity Zilnön Dudra.”142 And he recalls the apparent efficacy
of his own rites by the sign of success he witnessed, namely that “although it was
winter and extremely cold, I saw insects running in the triangle box, [and] when
the zor was just about to be hurled, there was such a storm of a type never known
before.”143 Soon a er, having met with Gushri Khan and changed sides, Arsalang
made unexpected obeisance to the Dalai Lama. A few months later, while facing off
against the Tsang army, Arsalang suddenly fell ill. Clearly, this looked like a case of
effective rites being performed against him, and the Dalai Lama is emphatic about
which rites were responsible. This illness, he says, was not due to “the influence of
the Garpa (Karmapa) . . . and the cham of the Sakya, [which] could not convince
[the Mongols] to leave,” but rather to “the old Nyingma tantrists, who were able
to command the eight kinds of spirits like slaves, [and] caused the Thaĳi to become
suddenly ill.”144 A year later, while Gushri Khan was campaigning against Arsalang’s
father Chokthu Taĳi in the Kokonor region, and Arsalang was preparing to attack
Béri, Arsalang died, apparently killed on the orders of his father.145 That the deeply
unpopular Arsalang was coming to destroy the Gélukpa and was only averted by
being subdued by the charisma and the ritual action of the Great Fi h himself, was
something that would later be enshrined as a central pillar of the historiographic
orthodoxy that developed around these events.146
In the meantime, the Dalai Lama was busy learning Nyingma rites om his lama,
Zur Chöying Rangdröl. In 1636, Zur stayed with the Dalai Lama for five months and
imparted “innumerable profound teachings,” and together they established a new dö
(mdos) rite based on the Dalai Lama’s favoured protrectress, Makzorma (Dmag zor
ma, “Lady of the army[-destroying] weapon”), and Khyaǌuk (Khyab ’jug, Viṣṇu).
The Fi h Dalai Lama’s relationship with Makzorma—his favoured form of
the “Glorious Goddess” Śri Dēvi (Dpal ldan lha mo), also known as Dökham
Wangchukma—was extremely important to his practice of aversion rites in gen-
eral. She is mentioned some sixty-seven times in the first volume of the outer
autobiography alone. He first received initiation into the atonement rite or ritual
service (bskang gso) for Makzorma at the age of six or seven (1624), and appears
to have taken to it quickly, even though he recalls not having fully understood its
symbolism at the time. Only a few months later, while staying at Lhundrub Gatsel
(Lhun grub dga’ tshal) hermitage, which he describes as “a place where the rites of
power and violence can be performed [effectively],”147 he reports that he performed
142. Karmay, Illusive Play, 122. On the lineage of the violent rites with Jampel Zilnön (’Jam
dpal zil gnon), a fierce form of “Mañjuśrī with the suppressing gesture,” which were passed through
the tenth-century tertön and master of wrathful rites Nup Sanggyé Yéshé (Gnubs Sangs rgyas
ye shes); see Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Gnubs sangs rgyas ye shes kyi gdams pa ’jam dpal
phyag rgya zil gnon du bad um bu’i skor, in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 2, 292–319.
144. Ibid., 125.
145. Ibid., 129.
146. A good example of the way that this story was simplistically amed for posterity is
found in the Mongol lama ǲaya Paṇḍita’s biography of the Great Fi h, quoted later in the article.


the full atonement rite again. Makzorma practices had strong Géluk antecedent,
having been greatly popularised by the Second Dalai Lama Gendün Gyatso (Dge
’dun rgya mtsho, 1475–1542).148 But the lineages presented by the Fi h Dalai Lama
for his own violent practices with this protectress brought together the heritage
of all the Buddhist schools. We see this in a text included in The Flow of the River
Ganga: Record of Teachings Received (Gsan yig) concerning “The Lineages of Various
Violent Rites.”149 Here, particular attention is paid to the many non-Géluk lineages
of violent Makzorma practices that he had received, which had been passed through
some of the most authoritative names of the Kagyü and Sakya schools.150 In another
text in The Flow of the River Ganga: Record of Teachings Received, he gives further
information on his practices with Makzorma, though not exclusively concerning
rites of violent action.151 In this text he states that the goddess had been brought
into service of the dharma by Padmasambhava during his second visit to Tibet,
and that she is known under many names and forms, including, interestingly, Sipä
Gyelmo (Srid pa’i rgyal mo, “Queen of Existence”), the main protectress of the
Bön school. He also describes the transmission lineage of a torma-offering practice
to a peaceful form of the goddess as coming through a lineage which establishes
him clearly as the heir to the national salvific mythology of Tibet: first, it passes
through the Padma family of compassionate buddhas: Amitabha (as chos sku,
dharmakāya), Avalokiteśvara (as longs sku, sambhogakāya), and Padmasambhava (as
sprul sku, nirmāṇakāya); then, through further emanations (yang sprul), to Songt-
sen Gampo and the Third Dalai Lama Sönam Gyatso; and then to himself via his
two main gurus, Géluk and Nyingma respectively, namely Phabongkha and Zur
Chöying Rangdröl.152 The inclusion of both Phabongkha and Chöying Rangdröl
as lamas through whom the Great Fi h was heir to this most seminal lineage of
national salvation is worth drawing attention to, as it illustrates that it was this very
combination which, for the Dalai Lama, constituted his role as national unifier.
148. Heller, “Great Protector Deities,” 86.

149. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Las sbyor thor bu’i skor las sgrub thabs sna tshogs kyi
brgyud lugs, in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 1, 509–18.
150. For example, he states that the root text for the “outer sadhana” of Dökham Wangchukma,
with its five functions of achieving enlightenment, paying ritual service, gaining accomplishment,
performing destructive rites and “making mad and killing” (513), had been translated into Tibetan
by the Mahasiddha Naropa (eleventh century)—the main font of Kagyüpa esoteric traditions—and
the Tibetan translator Bandhe Lokaśri, and passed through the translator Marpa (1012–97) who
added methods of “summoning, despatching and killing” (bod [sic] rbad gsad gsum) and methods
for feeding torma and liṅga to the goddess. It was then, he says, passed down om father to
son in the Ngok tradition (rngog gzhung). He then goes on to show how all extant violent ritual
transmissions based on the goddess, including those passed through Ghayadhara and Drokmi
(’Brog mi, through whom much of the esoteric tradition of the Sakya school passed), as well
as those passed through the Ngor tradition, came down to him personally through a variety
of Nyingma and Sakya Lamas; see Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Las sbyor thor bu’i skor
las sgrub thabs sna tshogs kyi brgyud lugs, in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 1, 514–17.
151. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, ’Dod khams bdag mo dpal ldan dmag zor ma rje khol
gyis kyi dbang rjes gnang ji ltar nos tshul skor, in Fi h Dalai Lama gsung’bum (2009), vol. 2, 320–28.
152. Ibid., 322.


Fig. 3: Makzor Gyalmo. “Queen of the Army[-defeating] Weapon.” Central Tibet,

c. 1720. On the right of the central figure, at the top, is the Fifth Dalai Lama Ngawang
Lozang Gyatso, recognisable by the ritual dagger (phur pa) tucked into his waistband
(Rubin Museum of Art. C2016.3 [HAR 105]).


To return to our historical narrative, the Makzorma dö referred to here, which

he instituted in 1636, may have been the one he describes in The Flow of the River
Ganga: Record of Teachings Received as the “atonement dö (bskang mdos) and fire ritual
(sbyin sreg) for Makzorma”; he says this dö came om Padmasambhava and was passed
through the Second Dalai Lama Gedün Gyatso and on to him by Phabongkha.153
It is clear om the autobiography that the Dalai Lama saw practical magic as a
key duty of his office. There is an air of dismissiveness about the way he describes
the pacific approach to religion adopted by his elder contemporary, the Panchen
Lama Lozang Chökyi Gyeltsen (Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan, 1570–1662):
“He never bothered to take interest in gods, demons or astrologers. He wrote
spontaneous songs beginning with the words ‘it is good if one lives long and does
good things.’ This is exactly what he was practicing.” He then notes with barely
concealed incredulity that “for the ordinary people, it was hard to comprehend.”154
This remark reveals how attuned the Dalai Lama was to popular perceptions, and
thus his awareness of the key value that a reputation for magic had to the charis-
matic authority wielded by lamas in Tibetan society.
Meanwhile the zhelngo (zhal ngo) Sönam Rapten was becoming increasingly
disapproving of the young master’s growing enthusiasm for astrology and Nyingma
rites. He expressed particular disapproval when, a er some signs of success in his
“enemy suppression” practices (namely a little bird falling into the triangular pit),
the Dalai Lama expressed the need for the specific names of individual enemies (to
be written on effigies) so as to make his rites more effective.155 This theme of being
thwarted and criticised by the zhelngo continues for some time. Later he writes:
“zhelngo never liked me performing violent rites. He would not allow me to meet
a lama whom I would have wished to take as a master. I thought that for the time
being it would be hard to find someone om whom I could get a complete teaching
of the tantric initiation and rites, but I never gave up my hope.”156 Recalling such
obstacles in the autobiography, the Dalai Lama sometimes expresses indignation
at the criticisms he faced. In one passage, he vehemently rebukes those who were
claiming “hypocritically that one does not perform magic rites against ordinary
people” (in other words, that sorcery should only be directed against demonic spirits
or for repelling the attacks of others). This he rejects roundly, saying that “we do
not need to be ashamed of this, because it is taught in the Tantras. On top of that,
the eight kind of spirits fiercely execute the punishment.”157
153. Ibid., 322.

154. tshur mthong gi ’gro ba rnams kyi blo’i yul du mi chud par gda’; see Fifth Dalai Lama
gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 5, 129 and Karmay, Illusive Play, 133.
155. Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 5, 125; Karmay, Illusive Play, 128.
156. Ibid., 134.
157. rgyud sde nas bshad pa’i kha sbyor dbye ba ’di ga ngo mi gnod zhing lha srin sde brgyad kyang
chad btsan par ’dug; see Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 5, 125 and Karmay, Illusive Play,
128. The justification of rituals to harm or even kill opponents is here broadly consonant with
the arguments presented in part 2 of this article. Namely, that on the one hand, violent rites
are condoned by Vajrayāna tradition when directed against enemies of the teachings; and on the


However, when the war of 1639–42 was launched, it seems the zhelngo forgot
his former misgivings and became one of the most vocal figures demanding that
the Dalai Lama perform violent rites in support of the war effort. During Gushri
Khan’s campaigns against the Bönpo King of Béri, for example, we find the zhelngo
explicitly asking the Dalai Lama on repeated occasions to perform violent rites,158
no doubt fearing the reputed efficacy of the Bön rites being hurled against them. In
the face of these iǌunctions, the Dalai Lama recalls his bitter ustration: “When
I wanted to know about the ‘violent rites,’ he did not allow me to pursue them.
Now we are in need of those rites.”159 Nevertheless, in spite of his own professed
inadequacy, he says, “I began to write a brief manual for the rite of the deity Shiǌé
Mé Pudri (Gshin rje me’i spu gri, ‘Fiery Razor Lord of Death’),” basing it on
the partial instructions he had received om Zur. He also directed the monks at
Namgyel to perform rites of protection and aversion. And, as directed by zhelngo,
he says, he put the names of those “tāntrikas in Tsang” (gtsang pa’i sngags pa) who
were practicing against Gushri, into these rituals.160
At this point, Gushri Khan and Sönam Rapten had already turned their military
campaign on Tsang, and the war had reached a pitch of ferocity om which the Dalai
Lama felt there was no turning back, so he entered into a period of intense ritual
activity in support of the war effort, even going into dark retreat for some time to
intensi his meditative concentration on the rites of suppression.161 Meanwhile, all the
monks of Drépung and Sera were enlisted to do continuous sutra recitations, while
monks of Namgyel College, led by Drakna Chöje (Brag sna chos rje), performed
“rites of suppression and killing based on the deity Shiǌé.”162 Shortly a erwards,
with the siege of Samdruptsé continuing, he performed a rite of the “wind-wheel”
(rlung ’khor) of the “disturbing red wind” (rlung dmar ’khrugs che) based on instruc-
tions om Zur Chöying Rangdröl, and then, with the situation in the country
having reached a critical juncture, he performed “the destructive rite of the deity
Namchak Urmo (Gnam lcags ’ur mo) and the hurling rite of the zor.”163 Later, he
reports on conducting further “rites of destructive action against the troops of the
Karmapa faction in Kongpo” and, noting their surprise defeat shortly a erwards,
credits this to the “severe punishment meted out by the eight kinds of religious
protectors.”164 As the war dragged on, religious services “were continuously carried
out for the situation in Tsang,” while the Dalai Lama himself was busy learning
new destructive rites om Zur and “presided over the hurling ritual (gtor) aimed
at the conflict in Tsang.” Once again, he credits unusual sounds heard that night
other, that the violence meted out is not performed directly by the ritualist but is mediated by
the spirits he incites, thus absolving him of direct responsibility.
158. Ibid., 149–51.
159. Ibid., 150.
160. Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 5, 147; Karmay, Illusive Play, 150.
161. Ibid., 157.
162. Ibid.
163. Ibid., 158.
164. Ibid., 160.


as signs of ritual success, and reports approvingly a story then circulating among
the general populace that local people had seen visions of Makzorma carrying
the corpse of the Tsang Dési on her back.165 The war continued over that Tibetan
New Year, and Lhasa began to fill with Mongols. When the final assault on the
Samdruptsé fort began, in the second month of the Water Horse year (1642), the
Dalai Lama again directed the monks of Namgyel (Lekshéling) to perform Shiǌé
(Yamāntaka) rituals and the hurling rite, while he himself practiced rites of Shiǌé
while in retreat. Some days later, the news arrived that Gushri Khan (also known
in Tibetan sources as Tenǳin Chögyel, Bstan ’ǳin chos rgyal) had vanquished all
of Tibet.166
After 1642
The Géluk-Mongol victory of 1642 marked the most important watershed in
Tibet’s early modern history. It also marked a distinct shi in the Great Fi h’s
personal relationship to war magic. A er the war, one sees a new assertiveness in
the Dalai Lama. Henceforth, he would embrace and cultivate his reputation as a
tutobpa (mthu stobs pa) “master of magical power” and use this as a major part of
his state-building project.
In the wake of the 1642 victory, it was Sönam Rapten ( om this time known
as the Dépa) who was in charge of the practical affairs of state, while Gushri Khan
remained commander-in-chief in military matters. The Dalai Lama’s own role in
the triumvirate of power, while ceremonially the highest of the three, was therefore
a largely symbolic one, at least during the first decade: as the titular head of state
in a newly formed theocracy, his primary duties lay in furnishing the new regime
with religious legitimacy and charismatic authority.167 In executing this limited but
highly important role, it is clear that the Dalai Lama was no longer going to be
swayed by his minders. He now had a mandate and a fearsome reputation of his
own. He knew he had to unite a divided country. And he discerned with remarkable
clear-sightedness that his own Nyingma connections, and his status within Nyingma
circles, provided him with a crucial alternative (i.e. non-Géluk) source of authority
that was necessary if his charisma was to transcend the narrow sectarian interests
of the new political elite. For the political project of the Dépa (Sönam Rapten) and
the King (Gushri Khan) was an unambiguously sectarian one. The Karma Kagyü
and Jonangpa schools, in particular, were suppressed, and the confiscation of estates
and the forced conversion of monasteries which had allied themselves with the cause
of the Tsangpa Dési were standard practices during the first decade a er 1642. We
know that the Dalai Lama was himself involved in these activities—it is testified
165. Ibid., 161–62.

166. Ibid., 164.
167. For a discussion of the respective roles of these three figures based on extant decrees
and other formal legal documents of the time, see Peter Schwieger, The Dalai Lama and the
Emperor of China: A Political History of the Institution of Reincarnation (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2015), 50–70.


to, for example, by his comments on the conversion of Tāranātha’s main Jonangpa
seat at Takten (Rtag brtan) in 1650168—but he also maintained distance om the
blatant sectarianism of the new regime. This was crucial if his roles as an incarna-
tion of Tibet’s patron Bodhisattva, Avalokiteśvara, and as a successor to Songtsen
Gampo (the combined symbolism of which was expressed through the building
of the Potala Palace, begun in 1645)169 were to be accepted beyond sectarian lines.
From 1642, we see clarity and consistency in the Dalai Lama’s approach to the
politics of war magic. We see him building up the arsenal of rituals and “power
objects” in his own ritual college (Namgyel College). We see him marginalising, or
else co-opting, those lineages which had used violent rites on behalf of the Tsang
Dési during the war. And we see him reconstructing the Nyingma school, placing
the Northern Treasures tradition, with which he had close personal associations, at
its heart, thus impressing his personal authority and that of his office on the main
locus of war magic in Tibetan religion.
Fortifying the Ganden Phodrang’s Ritual Arsenal

The Northern Treasures tradition, which the Dalai Lama practiced and patronised,
had its origins in the fourteenth-century revelations of Rinǳin Gödemchen (Rig
’ǳin rgod ldem can, b. 1337)170 and was renowned for its particular emphasis on
the practices of Phurpa (Vajrakīla) and Shiǌé (Yamāntaka) and the efficacy of its
wrathful magic. Whether driven by family loyalties or by the sincerity of religious
experience (and probably by both), as a polemical strategy the elevation of this tradi-
tion under the wing of the Ganden Phodrang government was a stroke of political
genius. For by nailing his colours to the mast of the Northern Treasures, several
things were achieved at once: he had a clear angle on the religious illegitimacy of
the Tsangpa Dynasty om its inception with Zhingshakpa Tséten Dorjé; he could
effectively marginalise that strand of the Nyingma tradition which had allied itself
to the Tsangpa cause (namely the “Nangtsé faction” of Zhikpo Lingpa-Sokdokpa-
Gongra); and he had at his disposal an entire esoteric tradition of intimidating
168. He recalls that following the conversion, the monastery “remained like ‘gilt bronze’ ”
(i.e. changed on the outside but not on the inside), so he sent some representatives to “expel
senior monks” and “cleanse the monastery thoroughly by making it a Géluk establishment in
both word and thought”; see Karmay, Illusive Play, 385. It is notable, in light of the discussion
of the Dalai Lama’s visions and revelations later in the article, that part of his programme of
conversion involved an initiation into the Karma Guru practices. We thus have the Dalai Lama
here explicitly aming his (Nyingma-inspired) Karma Guru transmissions as Géluk practices.
169. The Potala mountain is the mythic abode of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Chenrézik /
Spyan ras gzigs). The Dalai Lama’s palace of the same name was built on the site of the seventh-
century Tibetan Emperor Songtsen Gampo’s former palace on the Red Hill (dmar po ri) over-
looking Lhasa. In Tibetan historiographic tradition since the eleventh century, Songtsen Gampo
had been considered an incarnation of Avalokiteśvara.
170. On Rinǳin Gödemchen’s career of treasure revelation, see Rig ’ǳin rdo rje, Elements,
38–45. Also Berounský, “Soul of the Enemy,” 40.


wrathful tantric practices and practical magic, which could be brought into the
service of the state.
The key historical figure in this polemical strategy was his own uncle,171 Jangdak
Tashi Topgyel, alias Wangpodé, who had been exiled om his hereditary fiefdom
of Jang Ngamring a er a dispute with the newly ascendant Tsangpa Dési dynas-
ty.172 The young Dalai Lama had been brought up on stories of Tashi Topgyel’s
magical prowess. Praising Tashi Topgyel’s vanquishing of Zhingshakpa (reputed
to have died due to his wrathful magic), the latter is described as one who fulfilled
the “ten conditions” of an enemy of religion.173 The Dalai Lama writes in his Biog-
raphies of the Northern Treasures (Byang pa’i rnam thar): “in his [Tashi Topgyel’s]
magical powers and abilities, he was unmatched by any other.”174 Tashi Topgyel’s
rivalry with the faction of Zhikpo Lingpa was also very important, since the latter
(inconveniently for the Dalai Lama) also had associations with the former lineage
holders of the Northern Treasures.175 This enmity between Tashi Topgyel and the
Nangtsé faction176 gave the Dalai Lama an angle om which he could discredit
that lineage retrospectively, and not just on openly political grounds connected
to the recent war. Tashi Topgyel had been succeeded as the head of the Northern
Treasures lineage by his son (the Fi h Dalai Lama’s cousin), Ngakgi Wangpo, who
had established Dorjé Drak Monastery in 1632 as a new home of the Northern
Treasures. A er Ngakgi Wangpo’s death in 1639, the Fi h Dalai Lama—by merit
of these connections and his close discipleship of Zur Chöying Rangdröl (himself
Ngakgi Wangpo’s protégé)177—now had a strong and legitimate claim to being the
main lineage successor of the tradition. This was particularly so a er 1642, when
the other potentially important figure in the Northern Treasures tradition, the Third
171. See note 9 above.

172. The Dalai Lama says the dispute was due to the sons of Zhingshakpa, who were “incar-
nations of dam sri (harmful spirit)”; see Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Byang pa’i rnam thar,
in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 11, 505. As discussed by Dalton, Wangpodé Tashi
Topgyel was recognised by Lekden Dorjé (Legs ldan rdo rje, 1512–1625) as the reincarnation of
his brother Ngari Panchen (Mnga’ ris paN chen, 1487–1542). Dalton has suggested, based on his
reading of the relevant sections of the Fi h Dalai Lama’s Byang pa’i rnam thar, that the source
of this contention may have been conflict over candidates to be recognised as this prestigious
incarnation (of Ngari Panchen); see Dalton, Gathering of Intentions, 92.
173. On the exchange of puns playing on the names of the protagonists through which this
conflict was enshrined in popular lore (“zhing” shakpa as one who fulfils the ten “fields” zhing),
see Karmay, “Rituals and Their Origins,” 86.
174. mthu stobs dang nus pa la gzhan gyis ’gran zla dang bral ba yin; see Ngag dbang blo bzang
rgya mtsho, Byang pa’i rnam thar, in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 11, 505.
175. Zhikpo Lingpa met the brothers Lekden Dorjé and Ngari Panchen (holders of the
Northern Treasures lineage before Tashi Topgyel Wangpodé) in Samye and the three performed
rituals together; see Rig ’ǳin rdo rje, Elements, 46.
176. On the reputedly insulting treatment of Tashi Topgyel at the hands of the Nangtsé
faction during his visit to Kahtog Monastery in Kham (as related in the Byang pa’i rnam thar),
see ibid., 50.
177. Ibid., 55.


Yölmo Tulku Tenǳin Norbu,178 was in disgrace on account of the rituals (mentioned
earlier) he had performed on behalf of the Tsangpa Dési, which in the post-war
period le him in a very vulnerable supplicant position vis-à-vis the Dalai Lama.
A er 1642, the Dalai Lama decisively embraced his role as a champion of the
Northern Treasures. The year a er the military victory (1643), he took it upon himself,
in concert with Yölmo Tulku—whom he was careful to shield om retributions
in the a ermath of the war179— to recognise a new Dorjé Drak tulku. This tulku,
Péma Trinlé (Padma ’phrin las, 1641–1717), was henceforth to be among the Fi h
Dalai Lama’s closest disciples, and under his tutelage would play a seminal role in
the liturgical reconstruction of the Nyingma tradition in Central Tibet over the
ensuing decades.
The subject of the Great Fi h’s close relationship with Péma Trinlé, and the
latter’s re-working of the liturgies of the Northern Treasures Phurpa (Vajrakīla) cycles,
replete with wrathful rites of “scattering, burning and suppressing” (gtor sreg mnan
gsum), has been covered extensively by the translations and commentaries of Martin
Boord (Rig ’ǳin rdo rje).180 Among these liturgies are many violent rites that would
certainly quali as war magic.181 In addition, the Great Fi h also patronised Péma
Trinlé’s re-working of another seminal Nyingmapa tantric cycle that centred on the
“liberation” (bsgral ba) rite, namely the Gathering of Intentions Sutra (Dgongs pa ’dus
pa’i mdo), treated extensively by Dalton.182 In this way, the Dalai Lama’s authority,
via his disciple Péma Trinlé, would forever be impressed on both the terma (gter
ma) and kama (bka’ ma) traditions of wrathful tantra practiced at Dorjé Drak and
its associated network of monasteries. For under Péma Trinlé’s leadership, Dorjé
Drak would soon become one of the leading Nyingmapa monasteries in all of Tibet
and the main Nyingmapa institution for the performance of wrathful tantric rituals
for the defence of the Ganden Phodrang state, and the lineage of the Dalai Lamas
in particular.183 As Boord (Rig ’ǳin rdo rje) states:
178. On the history of the Yölmo Tulku lineage as the other main transmission lineage of
the Northern Treasures, see ibid., 64–71.
179. A er the war, the Dalai Lama was quick to ensure that Yölmo Tulku was spared,
issuing instructions in writing in 1642 that his monastery and property were to be protected; see
Karmay, Illusive Play, 157. The following year, Yölmo Tulku was invited to Lhasa and the two
had lengthy discussions. The Dalai Lama praised him effusively as “an uncontestable textual re-
discoverer” whose “analytic spirit was very pure,” and granted him an additional estate adjoining
his monastery at Evam Chokgar (E waM lcog sgar); see Karmay, Illusive Play, 180. The two then
joined forces in the recognition and enthronement of the young Dorjé Drak tulku, Péma Trinlé.
180. On the very close relations between Péma Trinlé and the Great Fi h, see Rig ’ǳin rdo
rje, Roll of Thunder, xviii–xxvi. And for the seminal role played by Péma Trinlé in shaping the
Northern Treasures liturgies of wrathful tantra, see Rig ’ǳin rdo rje, Elements, 58–62.
181. For an extensive account of the Northern Treasures Vajrakīla practices for killing an
enemy, for example, reworked into their current form by Péma Trinlé, see ibid., 274–309; also
see Rig ’ǳin rdo rje, Roll of Thunder, 217–61.
182. Dalton, Gathering of Intentions, 79–96.
183. In exile, Dorjé Drak has been re-established in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, and contin-
ues to perform extensive annual exorcisitic rituals in defence of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan
government-in-exile. When the author visited in November 2017, several monks were engaged


As knowledge of the Byang-gter [Northern Treasures] spread throughout Tibet, it gradually

became established as a major religious system with over fi monasteries propagating
its teachings, chief among which was the mother monastery of rDo-rje-brag. Monks
of this seminary, properly trained in its rituals, have always been highly prized for their
religious expertise. One such monk, for example, was invariably required in the sKu lnga
shrine in the Jo-khang in Lhasa, another at the lHa mo khang, and eight in the mGon
khang at the base of the Potala palace engaged in the worship of Mahākāla. Four monks
om rDo-rje-brag annually performed the ’Gong po ar gtad ritual for the suppression
of demons at the Lhasa Rigs-gsum shrine and the oracle of dGa’-gdong was regularly
consulted to divine the whereabouts of deceased lamas.184
In retrospect, however, of even greater impact than his patronage of Péma Trinlé
and Dorjé Drak was the further patronage extended by the Great Fi h towards
the end of his life—and which continued crucially under the regent Dési Sanggyé
Gyatso—to the brothers Terdak Lingpa Gyurmé Dorjé (Gter bdag gling pa ’Gyur
med rdo rje, 1646–1714) and Lochen Dharmaśri (Lo chen Dharma shri, 1654–1717),
who together founded Mindrölling Monastery not far om Dorjé Drak in 1676.
As written about lucidly by Dalton in his most recent work, the extensive tantric
liturgies and dramatic public performances of occult power instituted at Mindrölling
were to have a huge impact, which would soon “pervade the ritual fabric of nearly
every major Nyingma monastery” across the Tibetan cultural world.185 And as Dalton
rightly observes, this emphasis on public rituals had strong political overtones,186
both mirroring and sharing much in common with the contemporaneous activities of
Dési Sanggyé Gyatso to establish public rituals of state in Lhasa (a subject discussed
further below), in order to bolster the symbolic authority of the Ganden Phodrang.
As a result of this patronage, the Nyingma school in Central Tibet would hence-
forth be tied to the fortunes of the Ganden Phodrang. And the Ganden Phodrang
could henceforth benefit om the propaganda value of the Nyingmapa occult arts;
it could call upon their services in war magic if and when required; and they could,
with some justification, claim to be more than a narrow sectarian government by and
for the Gélukpa at the exclusion of all others. The usefulness of the ritual arsenal
of war magic amassed by the Fi h Dalai Lama became particularly apparent in his
darkest hour, namely during the Earth Pig year (1659) revolt against his rule led by
full time in fashioning wrathful (triangular) torma for the upcoming performance of the hurling
rite (gtor rgyag) of Shiǌé, performed annually in defence of the Dalai Lama as part of one of the
New Year ceremonies, the Gutor Chenmo (dgu gtor chen mo).
184. Rig ’ǳin rdo rje, Elements, 3.
185. Dalton, Gathering of Intentions, 99. Richard Kohn’s classic ritual ethnography of the
Mani Rimdu (maṇi ril sgrub) festival concerns one such public ritual of occult exorcisitic power
established at Mindrölling as part of this programme, which spread across the Tibetan cultural
sphere; see Richard J. Kohn, Lord of the Dance: The Mani Rimdu Festival in Tibet and Nepal
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001).
186. Dalton, Gathering of Intentions, 97–101.


Dépa Norbu, Sönam Chöphel’s brother and successor, who was probably the most
prominent lay Tibetan military figure of the time.187
Concomitant with this patronage and with the recentring and harnessing of
Nyingma authority to the cause of the Ganden Phodrang, was the Fi h Dalai Lama’s
consistent concern with discrediting and marginalising the “Nangtsé” lineage of
Zhikpo Lingpa and Sokdokpa (associated with the Twenty-five Means for Repelling
Armies discussed earlier). Couched in terms of the historic antagonism between
partisans of the ( audulent) Zhikpo Lingpa and Tashi Topgyel Wangpodé, these
polemics have been well covered in the recent scholarship of James Gentry, who
writes: “so recurrent [in the Fi h Dalai Lama’s writings] is this juxtaposition of the
Northern Treasure tradition’s greatness with the Zhig-gling tradition’s audulence
and futility, that the figures of Zhig po gling pa, Sog bzlog pa and Gong ra ba appear
as foils against which the Great Fi h could valorize and accentuate the greatness
of his own Treasure Tradition.”188 Once again, we can see how championing the
Northern Treasures gave the Dalai Lama the vantage point om which he could
discredit his erstwhile rivals om within their own school, without having to cast
any aspersions on the prestige of the Nyingma school more generally, or make any
imputations concerning the sacred legacies of Padmasambhava.
Patronage of a re-constituted Nyingma tradition recentred on Dorjé Drak and
Mindrölling was undoubtedly an important feature of the Dalai Lama’s programme
to harness the charisma of wrathful magic to the Ganden Phodrang establishment,
but it was by no means the whole story. Attention was also given to building up
the ritual repertoire and armoury of “power objects” held by the Dalai Lama’s
personal tantric college at Namgyel, which was expanded and relocated to within
the newly built Potala Palace. As an indication of the importance attached to such
ritual paraphernalia, the items donated to his private college are listed extensively in
his autobiography. Items donated between 1642 and 1660, for example, included a
meteorite-iron dagger (gnam lcags phur pa), which had been used by Padmasambhava
187. Nangso Norbu was married to tulku Drakpa Gyeltsen’s sister. Under the wing of his
powerful brother (the Dépa Sönam Rapten / Sönam Chöphel), Norbu (also known as Gékhasapa
[Gad kha sa pa] a er the family—Gad kha sa—into which he had married and with whom his
loyalties apparently lay) was the most senior Tibetan lay/military figure in post-1642 Tibet. His
relations with Mongol commanders appear to have been less than harmonious. He is portrayed
in the Fi h Dalai Lama’s autobiography as a vain and useless individual and is blamed for the
failure of the military campaigns to subdue Bhutan, which he led. However, he cannot have been
quite as useless as the Dalai Lama suggests in the autobiography, or his career would surely have
languished, which it did not. A er Sönam Chöphel’s death, the Dalai Lama even appointed him
Dépa in his brother’s stead, but soon a erwards Norbu rose against the Ganden Phodrang, with
backing om some powerful Tsang factions. On this revolt, see Karmay, Illusive Play, 409–25.
On the rivalry with the Gékhasa family and the “tulku of the upper chamber” (gzims khang gong
ma’i sprul sku)—Drakpa Gyeltsen—whom some considered the real reincarnation of the Fourth
Dalai Lama, and his suspicious death in 1656, see Zuihō Yamaguchi, “The Sovereign Power of
the Fi h Dalai Lama: sPrul sku gZims-khang-gong-ma and the Removal of Governor Nor-
bu,” Memoirs of the Research Department of The Toyo Bunko 53 (1995): 12–27.
188. Gentry, Power Objects, 390.


himself to elimate obstacles; four golden images of Chakdrukpa (Phyag drug pa,
the six-armed form of Gonpo/Mahākāla); dozens of thangkas of fierce meditational
deities, which had formerly been the “spiritual supports” for the practices of many
tantrists of particular repute, including Tashi Topgyel, the Second Dalai Lama,
and the Drigungpa Chökyi Drakpa; three iron triangular boxes (for use in fierce
rituals); a “human skin for the mat of liṅga”; an iron tripod; and a whole array of
armour and weaponry.189 Also noted at a later date are “a pair of ritual horns,” one
for dry substances and one for wet, which once belonged to Nupchen Sanggyé Yéshé
(Gnubs chen sangs rgyas ye shes, ninth-tenth century)190 and had formerly been a
sacred heirloom of the (largely anti-Géluk) Rinpungpa dynasty.191 The prominent
use of yak horns in enemy-vanquishing rites is another example of Bön traditions
being accommodated into the ritual lore of Buddhist masters.192 These are just a few
examples of the ritual paraphernalia for the performance of potentially violent rites
amassed by the Fi h Dalai Lama for use in state defence. In Nebesky-Wojkowitz’s
survey of Tibetan destructive magic, he also describes a “mill of Shiǌé” (gshin rje’i
rang thag) which, he says, was used “to this day” on behalf of the Tibetan govern-
ment to grind the magical substances used in fierce rites.193 This mill, which in the
early-twentieth century was kept at the Khardo (Mkhar rdo) shrine near Lhasa,
may, it seems, have originally been requisitioned by the Ganden Phodrang om
the Drigungpa a er the 1642 war.194
In addition to amassing ritual paraphernalia, the Dalai Lama also instituted
many new rituals and le his imprimatur on them. From as early as 1642, he had
already started to institutionalise elements of the Northern Treasures in his own ritual
college. As recorded in the autobiography, in the winter immediately following the
victory of 1642, he took in hand the re-writing of a ritual manual which had been
le incomplete by the Third Dalai Lama, using as his main source “the medium
version of the byang gter thugs sgrub,”195 thus melding together for posterity his own
189. Karmay, Illusive Play, 167–68.

190. Nupchen Sanggyé Yéshé was a seminal figure in Nyingma traditions of violent tantric
teachings. For more on his legacies in this regard, see Dalton, Taming, 49–55.
191. Ibid., 231.
192. On the use of yak horns in general in destructive rites, see René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz,
Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities (Graz:
Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1975 [1956]), 484–85; for the discussion and translation
of a Bön text for imprisoning the souls of enemies (dgra bla) in yak horns, see Berounský, “Soul
of the Enemy,” 30–37.
193. Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons, 481–502.
194. Drigung Kyapgön Chétsang Rinpoché (’Bri gung skyabs mgon che tshang rin po che;
born in 1946), the current head of the Drigung order, said that Drigung had formerly possessed
a stone mill for the preparation of substances used in rites of black magic. A er 1642, it was
taken om Drigung and housed in the Zhé Lhakhang (Zhwa’i lha khang) for use by the Ganden
Phodrang government. Author interview with Chétsang Rinpoché at Songtsen Library, Dehra
Dun, November 2017. This is likely to be the same mill discussed by Nebesky-Wojkowitz, which,
he says, was housed in the early twentieth century at Khardo Monastery (Mkhar rdo dgon pa)
near Lhasa.


Fig. 4: Blazing Razor of Extreme Repelling Yamāri (Yangdok Shiǌé Mé Pudri).

Drigungpa. Gya Zhangtrom tradition. Tibet, ca. 1740s–1760s. At the top right, in the
second row, are depicted Rinǳin Chökyi Drakpa, Padmasambhava and Nup Sanggyé
Yéshé (Rubin Museum of Art. F1998.16.3 [HAR 661]).
expertise in the Northern Treasures with the authoritative legacy of his forebear as
Dalai Lama. Not long a erwards, we hear that the Dalai Lama had also “recently
compiled” a practice manual for the Byang gter phur pa lcags khang ma.196 He also
institutionalised elements of the overtly violent ritual magic of the Shiǌé Mé Pudri
cycle, which had hitherto been a speciality of Drigung masters.
The Great Fi h’s particular interest in the Yangdok Shiǌé Mé Pudri rites
(“Ultra-Repelling Fiery Razor Yamāntaka/Yamāri,” see fig. 4) would continue late
into his life. The Flow of the River Ganga: Record of Teachings Received includes
196. Ibid., 190. Some of the Fi h Dalai Lama’s copious writings on the Northern Treasures’
Phurpa practices are included in Martin Boord’s latest book, which only went to print recently
and was thus unavailable to this author at the time of writing.


an extensive essay on the lineage of this particularly violent cycle of teachings for
“protecting, repelling and killing” (bsrung zlog gsad gsum), which illuminates the
personal attention he gave to acquiring expertise in this cycle, even om erstwhile
adversaries.197 The text includes many notes on the practices as well as a long list
of empowerments (dbang) required to practice them.198 The practices, he says,
were passed down through Vasudhara and the tertön Nup Sanggyé Yéshé,199 who
received them on the last of his seven trips to Nepal and concealed them. A er their
rediscovery by Gyazhang Trom (Rgya zhang khrom, probably eleventh century),
they became the particular speciality of the Drigung hierarchs Rinchen Phüntsok
(Rin chen phun tshogs, 1509–57) and the Fi h’s own elder contemporary, Rinǳin
Chökyi Drakpa (mentioned earlier in connection to his performance of ritual magic
against the Tümed and his marriage alliance with the Tsangpa Dési dynasty). It
was this Chökyi Drakpa, widely renowned for his displays of fierce magic, who is
credited with editing the teachings of Shiǌé Mé Pudri and compiling them into a
compendium of four volumes.200 During the war of 1639–42, Chökyi Drakpa appears
to have used these rites against the forces of Gushri Khan and the Ganden Phodrang
a number of times.201 In the post-war period, he was arrested and imprisoned (in
1645), but a er sharing his ritual expertise with the Great Fi h and swearing a formal
197. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Yang bzlog nag po’i spu gri phung po ri bo che nas sprul
sku rgya zhang khrom gyis drangs pa’i skor, in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 3, 33–44.
198. Many points of practical importance to the efficacy of the rites are highlighted. For
example, the appearance of the liṅga; how it should be bound; how the consciousness of the
object is to be summoned into it; how to master the functions of protection, repelling, killing
and pressing down reliant on the ’go ba’i lha lnga (the personal protectors of the individual, said
to reside at various parts of the body); how to do soul summoning (bla ’gugs) using the five feel-
ings (tshor ba lnga); mastery of dgra sri gnon (suppression of the “enemy sri”); what foods and
anointments are appropriate for the particular deities evoked; what mantras are to be used for
repelling and killing; instructions on projecting the “four-razor wheel” based on the four ele-
ments (’byung ba bzhi); and the very secret mantras of the four-razor wheel; and so on. The list
of empowerments required to practice this secret and particularly violent ritual cycle is very long.
Interestingly, they include “the thod rgal empowerment into the four visions.” This reference to
ǲokchen is interesting in light of Zhikpo Lingpa’s similar emphasis on the transcendent gnosis
gained through ǲokchen as a basis for particular magical efficacy (ibid., 33–35).
199. The figure of Lharjé Nupchung (Lha rje gnubs chung), who is also mentioned as a key
figure in the lineage of the Mé Pudri practices, was probably his son, elsewhere known as Nup
Yönten Gyatso (Gnubs Yon tan rgya mtsho). He is famous in particular for having taught the
arts of violent magic to Milarepa, the foundational figure for all branches of the Kagyü school;
see Samten G. Karmay, The Great Perfection (rǳogs chen): A Philosophical and Meditative Teaching
of Tibetan Buddhism (Leiden, Brill, 2007 [1998]), 101 n. 91.
200. ’Bri gung Rig ’ǳin chos kyi grags pa (revealer), ’Jam dpal gshin rje’i gshed yang bzlog
me’i spu gri’i chos skor (Bir: D. Tsondrue Senghe, 1977–82; BDRC W23166).
201. Rites practiced on specific dates in the Earth Hare year (1639), the Water Horse year
(1642) and the Earth Tiger year (1638) are mentioned; see Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho,
Yang bzlog nag po’i spu gri phung po ri bo che nas sprul sku rgya zhang khrom gyis drangs pa’i skor,
in Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 3, 40.


oath never to practice against the Ganden Phodrang again, he was released202 and
therea er relations between him and the Dalai Lama were close, though the Drigung
order would never regain the scale of its pre-war dominion in terms of estates and
monasteries. Soon a er this episode, the Dalai Lama instituted propitiation rites
for the “Ultra-Repelling” (yang bzlog) Shiǌé Mé Pudri at Namgyel College.203 Two
years later, in 1648, he initiated Gushri Khan himself into the cycle.204 And in 1656,
he had further detailed discussions and exchanges of notes on the cycle with Chökyi
Drakpa.205 Some time later (a er Chökyi Drakpa’s death), the Dalai Lama himself
authored (or revealed) a number of ritual texts on Yangdok Mé Pudri, including a
full deity-yoga (mahāyoga) instruction text, which he planned to institute as a regular
tantric practice for the monks of Namgyel.206 The story of the “Ultra-Repelling
202. The story concerning Chökyi Drakpa’s imprisonment is told rather differently in
different sources. In Drigung sources, we hear of a devastating famine which ravaged Ü follow-
ing the Géluk victory of 1642, and of how Chökyi Drakpa’s arrest in the summer of 1645 was
accompanied by a large earthquake. When he was imprisoned, it is said that the Mongol guards
holding him witnessed flames emitting om his body and in the night they heard sounds of a
large army. When the Fi h Dalai Lama was informed of these miracles, he personally sent orders
for Chökyi Drakpa to be released and brought to see him. A er their face-to-face meeting, it
is said, the two established good priest-patron relations and Chökyi Drakpa formally swore not
to practice violent magic against him again (mngon spyod kyi las mi mǳad pa’i gtsig ’bul gnang);
see ’Bri gung gdan rabs gser phreng, 280–81. In the Dalai Lama’s autobiography, the story is told
somewhat differently, though the basic elements and the date are the same. The Dalai Lama says
that his personal intervention to have him released om incarceration was based on the sugges-
tion of Zur Chöying Rangdröl, and was motivated by the fact that, because both were heirs to
teachings (i.e. the Mé Pudri teachings) passed through Rinchen Phüntsok, “[he] was spiritually
bound to [the Drigung hierarch] by vows.” He records that the Dépa (Sönam Chöphel) was
against his release, but the Dalai Lama insisted by formally requesting it in a written petition
“to both the prelate and the benefactor” (i.e. Sönam Chöphel and Gushri Khan). Chökyi Drakpa
then made the formal pledge in ont of the Lhasa Jowo never to “perform destructive magic
rites against us.” No mention is made of Chökyi Drakpa’s magical displays in ont of his guards,
and the Dalai Lama also says that “he [Chökyi Drakpa] wanted to see me in person, but I told
him that . . . I was too busy and would meet him on a later occasion”; see Karmay, Illusive Play,
200. Although one can see here the Dalai Lama asserting the asymmetry of the relationship,
he elsewhere attests to how important the clarifications he received om Chökyi Drakpa were
concerning the Mé Pudri cycle. We see this in both The Flow of the Ganga text mentioned above,
and also in the autobiography, in which he highly praises Chökyi Drakpa’s knowledge of the
Jampel Shiǌé cycle, and says: “I put to him many questions about my own doubts and made a
number of notes. Later I sent him scrolls of my notes of our conversation, and he satisfactorily
added notes of his own”; see Karmay, Illusive Play, 370.
203. Ibid., 201.
204. Ibid., 215.
205. Ibid., 370. Also mentioned in the colophon to the Rdo rje’i thog mda’ ritual; see note
206 below.
206. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho (revealer), Yang zlog nag po me’i spu gri’i las byang
rdo rje’i thog mda’ [The Vajra Lightning Bolt Ritual with the Ultra-Repelling Black Mé Pudri],
Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 17, text 18. The colophon of this text alludes to the Dalai Lama’s earlier
attempts to compose the ritual and his later revising of it. It reads as follows: “This ritual, which
was written earlier, was difficult to practice due to the scarcity of those who understood it clearly


Fiery Razor” cycle thus constitutes a particularly clear example of how the Fi h
Dalai Lama appropriated and successfully gave his own imprimatur to war magic
practices used by former rivals, harnessing their intimidating power to the cause of
the Ganden Phodrang through institutionalisation.207
Rituals of State
Perhaps most important in the Dalai Lama’s programme to enlist the power of the
occult arts to the cause of the Ganden Phodrang were the esoteric rituals based on
his own visionary experiences, that were instituted as rituals of state for the “ben-
efit of the people of Tibet,” which have been the subject of an important article
by Karmay.208 These were compiled into a secret or “sealed” (rgya can) corpus of
twenty-five ritual cycles (the number twenty-five perhaps deliberately echoing and
thus supplanting the “twenty-five means” of his erstwhile rivals), whose secrecy
only heightened their aura of occult power. Many of the fierce rituals in this corpus
relate to a deity known in the Dalai Lama’s writings as Karma Guru (“Master of
Action”) or Karma Drakpotsel (Karma drag po rtsal, “Skilled in Fierce Action”), a
ferocious form of Padmasambhava similar in appearance to Dorjé Drolö (Rdo rje
gro lod).209 As Karmay has shown, the Dalai Lama’s Karma Guru revelations were
directly linked to his own secret visions, through which he had been initiated by
the masters of the Northern Treasures, and especially (once again) by Tashi Topgyel
Wangpodé.
The timing of these visions in the context of the Dalai Lama’s political career is
significant. The first vision of Karma Guru, in which the Dalai Lama is first initiated
into the practice of a deity he does not immediately recognise, took place shortly
a er the Dalai Lama’s return om the victory pageant at Shigatse, which followed
the military defeat of the Tsang Dési in 1642. In Shigatse, he had developed a lung
infection which persisted for two months a erwards. He relates that some people
and fully, and were willing to give [the necessary] empowerments. Though I had long seen
the importance of instituting the practice for the monks of Namgyel Lekshéling, it got post-
poned due to various distractions. More recently, at the instigation of lama Ngakchang Lozang
Ngawang and a few other zealous seekers, I began composing it, having received the transmission
and diligently learnt the mantras om the all-knowing Zur Chöying Rangdröl, along with other
holy lamas. I found further confidence in these extremely profound and hidden oral instructions
for the practical guidelines based on a discussion with Urnyong (dbur smyong) Chökyi Drakpa.
And so I, the Black Mantrika of the Hor Lineage, Skilled in Fierce Destruction (hor gyi rigs las
sngags nag po zil gnon drag po rtsal), in the Wood Snake year (1665) in the seventh Mongol month
[end of summer], . . . composed this at the Potala Palace and the scribe was Nésar Jamyang.
Sarva Mangalam.”
207. On the iconography of this deity, which is the subject of some very fine examples of
Tibetan art, see David Jackson, Painting Traditions of the Drigung Kagyu School (New York: Rubin
Museum of Art, 2015); and Olaf Czaja, Reflections of the Divine: Treasures of Tibetan Painting, The
Ulrich Wörz Collection (Weimar: VDG, 2018), 57–63.
208. Karmay, “Rituals and Their Origins,” 88.
209. On the appearance of this deity see note 234 below.


believed the illness was caused by poisoning, but he believes it to have been caused
by contact with the pollution of broken vows during his visit there.210 Then, on the
28th day of the 8th month (the Dalai Lama records the date with precision in both
the outer and secret biographies), “in the evening, I went to bed feeling ill, but
the next morning there was nothing, as if an embedded thorn were taken out. I
could not understand why. It was very strange.”211 The significance of this overnight
recovery is revealed only in the Secret Biography, in which he describes—on the
same date—his dream initiation into the practice of Karma Guru by the erstwhile
masters of the Northern Treasures, Lekden Dorjé and Tashi Topgyel. For the Dalai
Lama, this vision had clear political indications, as reflected in how the dream ends.
To quote Karmay’s summary:
dBang-po-sde then performs the empowerment ceremony of the divinity Karmaguru
and gives him [the Dalai Lama] a ritual dagger (phur-pa). At that moment he feels
the Treasurer bSod-nams rab-brtan and other (dGe-lugs-pa) monks are looking at him
through the window at the eastern side of the chapel of Mahākāla, giving the impression
that they do not approve of his participating in the ceremony which is performed by the
rNying-ma-pa lamas. He thinks that if they, the dGe-lugs-pa monks, criticize him, he
will hit them with the ritual dagger and rushes out, but the monks are very subdued.
He then awakes feeling totally recovered om his illness.212
This vision clearly marks the shi noted earlier in the Dalai Lama’s assertiveness
with regard to his Nyingma leanings a er 1642, and his open embrace therea er
of Vajrakīla as his main tutelary deity (yi dam). From this date onwards, “to the
disapproval of his personal attendants, he [the Dalai Lama] adopted the habit of
wearing a ritual kīla [phur pa] stuck into the belt of his monastic robes.”213
The second major vision of this deity occurs ten years later, shortly before the
Dalai Lama’s departure to meet the Manchu emperor in China. This time, the
vision was extremely elaborate and included his full empowerment as the deity
himself, thus paving the way for his numerous later terma revelations concerning
practices with this fierce form of Padmasambhava. Concerning this elaborate vision
of empowerment and realisation, Boord (Rig ’ǳin rdo rje) writes: “a religious
210. That is to say, his sickness came om his contact in Shigatse with monks and oth-
ers who had broken their vows by taking part in the fighting: ’di lo gzhi ka rtser bsdad pa dang
phrad mi sna tshogs ki dam sel la brten glo nad ’dra ba la ’phrod bsten gang yang mi len pa zhig gis
zla ba gyis tsam mnar; see Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 5, 170; Karmay, Illusive Play,
174. Dalton (Taming, 140) says that the Dalai Lama blamed this illness on the pollution he had
brought upon himself by casting violent spells on the Tsangpa Dési. This appears to be Dalton’s
reading of a condensed parallel passage concerning this illness in the secret biography; see Karmay,
Secret Visions, 30, [Tibetan text] 179. In the outer autobiography, there is no suggestion that he
incurred pollution through his own ritual activities. He does however state earlier that he avoided
meeting the captured Tsangpa Dési in person, in light of the “many rites of destructive action”
he had cast against him; see Karmay, Illusive Play, 167.
211. Ibid., 174.
212. Karmay, Secret Visions, 30, [Tibetan text] 179.
213. Rig ’ǳin rdo rje, Roll of Thunder, xx; Karmay, “Rituals and Their Origins,” 85. This is
a common motif in pictoral representations of the Great Fi h (see fig. 3 in this article).


commentary on the significance of this single day’s visions could fill a book.”214 Just
as the 1642 vision marked the turning point in the Dalai Lama’s assertiveness with
regard to his patronage of the Northern Treasures, the 1651 vision marked a major
emboldening of his role, this time as a tertön. Henceforth he would start furnish-
ing the Ganden Phodrang with a unique ritual identity, which carried his own
imprimatur as a master whose practices transcended the Géluk-Nyingma dichotomy.
Soon a er the 1651 vision, during his long overland journey across northeastern
Tibet towards China, the Dalai Lama called a halt to the post-war sectarian conver-
sion policies being pursued aggressively by his government. In a scroll delivered to
Dépa Sönam Chöphel in 1652 (which may not be extant), the Dalai Lama made
his case for pluralism explicit, calling for a new period of greater religious toler-
ance. The contents of the missive are paraphrased in the autobiography as follows
(translation by Karmay):
Around this time, the adepts of the Sakya, Kagyu and Nyingma schools were not allowed
to wear hats in their own way, and it was intended that their religious affinities would
gradually be converted to the Gelug [Géluk]. Many of our major and minor figures
had given their approval for this and even made pleas (for this policy) . . . however, to
have a unified [universal] school would be beneficial neither to our own school nor the
others . . . this was a gross policy that needed to be renounced, because there was little
purpose in it: no conversion of the schools should be undertaken and no hat style to be
changed; the bad example of the big schools preventing the small ones om recruiting
new monks was to be discouraged.215
He further went on to decree that “the temples that were built to tame the
grounds of the borderlands and their peripheries were to be restored” (referring to
the earliest geomantic Buddhist temples erected in Tibet by Songtsen Gampo),216
with a last stipulation that “rituals for the benefit of the Tibetan people” (bod dbangs
bde thabs su spyi sgos kyi rim gro) were to be established.
This reference to “rituals for the benefit of the Tibetan people” is significant
since it appears to mark the beginning of the construction of the Ganden Phodrang’s
elaborate “theatre state,” whose rituals were based in considerable degree on the
Fi h Dalai Lama’s own unique religious and temporal legacy. This was a process
that would continue for several decades and would particularly gain momentum
a er Dépa Sönam Chöphel’s death (1658), when the Fi h Dalai Lama himself
took charge over the running of the state, and did much of the writing that would
214. Rig ’ǳin rdo rje, Roll of Thunder, xxi–xxiii. The Dalai Lama’s account of the 1651/52
vision is given in Karmay, Secret Visions, 33–34; also Rig ’ǳin rdo rje, Elements, 56–57. The Dalai
Lama had further visions concerning Karma Guru in 1660/61 and 1672. Karmay provides the
following commentary: “The central deity Karma drag-po, who is in fact identical to rDo-rje
gro-lod, is considered an ‘action’ aspect of Padmasambhava [one of his Eight Forms]. The origin
of the ritual cycle goes back to Byang-bdag bKra-shis stobs-rgyal (1550–1607) who is believed to
have ‘rediscovered’ the texts om a cave in gTsang-rong. The Dalai Lama obtained the teaching
om the gter-ston in visions on four occasions”; Karmay, Secret Visions, 74.
215. Karmay, Illusive Play, 270; Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 5, 265–66.


later define his legacy. But it would only reach its culmination a er his own death
(1682), under the guidance of his close disciple and confidante Dési Sanggyé Gyatso.
The public rituals of state for “the benefit of the Tibetan people” (a re ain that
runs through the rituals outlined in the “sealed volumes”),217 instituted by the Fi h
Dalai Lama and his successor Dési Sanggyé Gyatso, continued to be performed
right up until the end of the Ganden Phodrang’s rule in Tibet in 1959. With great
skill, these theatrical rituals (eyewitness accounts of several are contained in Hugh
Richardson’s Ceremonies of the Lhasa Year) blended esoteric apotropaic rituals of
power with echoes of Tibet’s national mythography, and were garnished theatri-
cally with militaristic motifs recalling the wars, weaponry and soldiery of the mid-
seventeenth century, which brought the Ganden Phodrang to power.218
Probably the most theatrical of these was the elaborate annual dö ceremony,
known as the Ransom King (Glud ’gong rgyal po), said to have been based on a
vision of the Fi h Dalai Lama (though which one remains unclear) and instituted
in his own lifetime.219 Among the many other public rituals of note with regard
to our theme were the Pelha Ridra (Dpal lha ri gra), in honour of the glorious
goddess (which involved the veneration of an image of Palden Lhamo, said to have
been discovered in the twel h century by the notorious master of war magic Lama
Zhang);220 the Golden Procession (Ser spreng [sic]), which prominently featured
the Four Guardian Kings and was also said to have been based on a vision of the
Fi h Dalai Lama;221 the rituals performed on the eve of the Tibetan New Year,
such as the Sera Phurbu, which involved a public procession of the sacred dagger;
and the Tsé gutor (Rtse dgu gtor), in which zimchongpa guards played a prominent
supporting role for an elaborate apotropaic masked dance, an effigy-burning and
an enactment of a ritual slaying (using an effigy) by the Lord of Death (Shiǌé).222
The public rituals enumerated by Richardson in his Ceremonies of the Lhasa
Year appear to constitute only a action of the total number of rituals of state that
were performed. Ascertaining the precise relationship between these state rituals
217. Karmay discusses the repeated use of a number of related phrases (bod ’bangs bde thabs,
bod bde thabs, bod kyi bstan srid for example) to this effect in the “sealed volumes” (Rgya can), cf.
Karmay, “Rituals and Their Origins,” 82.
218. See for example Richardson, Ceremonies, 30–37. Some of the rituals involved the Dalai
Lama’s former personal bodyguard, known as the zimchungpa (gzims chung pa), preserved in
later times only for ceremonial purposes, who were said to be the descendants of Gushri Khan’s
infantry; see ibid., 40–45, 116, 123.
219. Richardson reports one informant stating that this ceremony was based on a vision
of the Fi h Dalai Lama, but was not able to clari the veracity of that claim; see ibid., 62. For
more on the ancient Tibetan origins of the “ransom” (glud) ceremony, see Samten Karmay, “The
Man and the Ox: A Ritual for Offering the glud,” in The Arrow and the Spindle, 339–79 (originally
published in Journal Asiatique 279, nos. 3–4 [1991]: 327–81).
220. Richardson, Ceremonies, 110.
221. Ibid., 74. Though which vision remains unclear. None of the visions recounted in the
secret autobiography (Karmay, Secret Visions) appear to relate to the Four Kings. Given the promi-
nence of the Four Kings in the army-repelling methods of Zhikpo Lingpa, it is interesting to see
their theatrical institutionalisation among the apotropaic rituals of the Ganden Phodrang state.
222. On these rituals, see Richardson, Ceremonies, 115–23.


Fig. 5: liṅga from the Gold

Manuscript of the Fournier
Collection, as published in
Karmay, Secret Visions, 165,
plate 48 (Musée Guimet,
Paris).
and the Dalai Lama’s own personal visions is not an easy matter, but that a strong
relationship pertains is clear. Karmay states that five of the ritual cycles enumerated
in the “sealed volumes” (Rgya can) were “instituted as state ceremonies”223 (though
they do not obviously correspond to the rituals enumerated by Richardson). He
further indicates that “the Karma guru ritual cycle became one of the most impor-
tant state rituals. It was o en performed in public by the monks of the Nam-rgyal
monastery in the Potala Palace.”224
That the rites of Karma Guru initiated by the Fi h Dalai Lama can be con-
sidered examples of “war magic” is apparent om the diagrams that accompanied
223. Karmay, “Rituals and Their Origins,” 88.

224. Ibid., 85. Further information on this has remained elusive. During a visit to Dharamsala
in October 2018, the author was told by monks at Namgyel: “we used to do such rituals but not
any more.” Under the influence of the present Fourteenth Dalai Lama (born in 1935), violent (drag
po) rituals for the aversion of negative forces have been discontinued and the monks of Namgyel
College are now mostly engaged in long-life and other such peaceful and enriching rituals.


the cycle, which were appended to the Secret Biography (completed in 1673). These
include some very fine examples of the human effigies (liṅga) used in rites of violent
sorcery.225 One of these liṅga in particular (see fig. 5) is explicitly designed for use
against “foreign armies” (mtha’i dmag dpung). As observed by Karmay, around the
effigy are drawn Chinese houses and Mongolian yurts,226 and on the cakras drawn
at the effigy’s crown, throat, heart, navel and genitals are inscribed, respectively,
the words “vanquish the body of the army” (dmag dpung lus choms), “suppress the
voice of the army” (dmag dpung ngag nan), “summon the mind of the army” (dmag
dpung yid ’gugs), “destroy the plans of the army” (dmag dpung bsam sbyor shig) and
“vanquish the power and skill of the army” (dmag dpung stobs rtsal choms). And on
the head of the liṅga is written the instruction to “write the clan name” (rus ’bri)
(of the offending military force or general).227
It is clear that a er the Dalai Lama’s death, the rituals of the “sealed volumes”
took on a life of their own among Nyingma tāntrikas. This is attested by the fact
that, in the catalogue of Nyingma manuscripts held at the Potala Palace, some 186
texts, filling four volumes, relate to the twenty-five cycles and are grouped together
under the heading “Rituals related to the secret sealed volumes” (Gsang ba rgya can
gyi chos skor).228 For a tsakali image of Karma Guru to be used in a ritual context,
see fig. 6.
In addition to (or in certain cases overlapping with) the sealed volumes, there are
some thirty-three terma “treasure texts” attributed to the Fi h Dalai Lama in the
Rinchen Terǳö (the anthology of terma texts first compiled in the late-nineteenth
century by Jamgön Kongtrül), over half of which could be considered in some way
related to the theme of war magic. Many of those directly relevant to our theme were
composed during the height of the Dalai Lama’s temporal power (i.e. between 1658
and 1679). These include two mahāyoga texts of particular interest, one for Shiǌé
Mé Pudri (cited above) composed at the Potala Palace in 1665, supplemented by
three further texts centring on the same deity;229 and one for Karma Guru / Karma
Drakpo with the title “Demon-Destroying Butcher’s Play,”230 which, according to
the colophon, was composed upon a request om Péma Trinlé and Terdak Lingpa
225. The diagrams relating to the ritual cycle of Karma Drakpo are found on plates 42–55
in Karmay, Secret Visions, 157–73.
226. Ibid., 165, caption.
227. Ibid., plate 48 [see fig. 5 in this article].
228. These texts are listed in Dom po Thub bstan rgyal mtshan, Po ta lar bzhugs pa’i rnying
ma’i gsung ’bum dkar chag (Lhasa, 1992; BDRC W19822). Discussed by Karmay, “Rituals and
Their Origins,” 77–78.
229. Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 17, text 18. In the same volume, texts 19, 20 and 21 (also attributed
to the Fi h Dalai Lama) also focus on Mé Pudri.
230. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Yang gsang karma drag po’i las byang dang dbang
chog gtor bzlog dang bcas pa rnams phyogs gcig tu bsgrigs pa bdud sde ’joms pa’i bshan pa rnam rol
[The Demon-Destroying Butcher’s Play: A Ritual Manual for the Ultra Secret Karma Drakpo,
[Being] a Collection of Instructions for Empowerment, Hurling, and Repelling], Tsadra Terzod,
vol. 13, text 11.


Fig. 6: tsakali depicting Karma Guru (HAR 53050675).
in 1671.231 This text is further accompanied by three texts of the Karma Drakpo
cyle and four of the Dorjé Drolö cycle.232 The appearance of the Dalai Lama’s
Karma Drakpo is very similar to Dorjé Drolö and is described in detail in the third
samādhi233 of the “Butcher’s Play.”234 The covenant (chad to) evoked in this text again
231. The dating of this text to 1671 (Iron Pig year) and the aforementioned text on Mé Pudri
to 1665 (Wood Snake year) is notable since in the secret biography, the Dalai Lama states that he
had no visions between “the 23rd day of the fourth month of Water Hare year (1663) and the 10th
of the second month of Water Mouse year (1672)”; see Karmay, Secret Visions, 60. This period,
however, appears to have been a prolific one for his writings, rituals and otherwise.
232. Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 13. Texts 6, 7, 8 and 9 belong to the Fi h Dalai Lama’s Dorjé
Drolö cycle, while texts 10, 11, 12 and 13 to his Karma Drakpo cycle.
233. The third samādhi being that of the “causal syllable”—i.e. the samādhi in which the
tāntrika actually takes action to alleviate suffering, which follows the first two samādhis of empti-
ness and limitless compassion respectively.
234. Dark blue-black in colour, short, corpulent, with a big belly. One face and two arms.
The expression is very fierce, with a gaping mouth, tongue rolled back, fangs bared. He has
three bloodshot eyes open wide. His eyebrows, moustache and beard are blazing like fire. Red


reiterates the importance of the visionary transmission received om Tashi Topgyel

Wangpodé discussed above, and opens a window onto the perceived power of this
practice as a means for commanding the worldly pagan spirits.235
Also notable among the texts attributed to the Fi h Dalai Lama in the Rinchen
Terǳö are two instruction texts on strengthening and repairing the protective power
of the Five Personal Protective deities (or “deities of the head,” ’go ba’i lha lnga).236
The authoritative imprimatur given to the cultus of the five personal deities (usually
enumerated as pho lha, mo lha, srog lha, yul lha and dgra lha) by the Great Fi h,
led to an efflorescence in the culture (in prayers and in paintings) of these personal
deities, particularly in Mongolia and in Eastern Tibet where martial culture was
traditionally strong.
The Great Fi h is also credited with propagating a very influential and poetic
“Praise for the Warrior Deities (dgra bla) bestowed by Vajrapāṇi.”237 This text had
a major impact on how the “battle spirits” or “enemy-gods” (Tib.: dgra lha [sp.
var.]; Mong.: dayisun tngri) came to be understood in both Tibetan and Mongolian
and yellow flame-like hair streams upward. His waist band is a black snake. In his right hand, he
brandishes a meteorite-iron sword with fire blazing om its tip, and in the le , a meteorite-iron
phurpa decorated with jewels, bone and snakeskin. His body is adorned with the eight charnel
ground accoutrements. His legs are in pratyālīḍha posture (right tucked up, le extended), and
he is ringed with gnosis-fire (ye shes me dpung). At each of the cakras, emanating om different
symbols, are deities each elaborately described (and then deities within deities). At the crown
of the head, a black Shiǌé (Gshin rje / Yama / Yamāntaka); at the throat, a red Tamdrin (Rta
mgrin / Hayagrīva); at the heart, a blue-black Chakna Dorjé (Phyag na rdo rje / Vajrapāṇi); at
the navel, a red Dorjé Pakmo (Rdo rje phag mo / Vajravārāhī); and at the “secret place,” a red
Méwel (Me dbal); see Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Yang gsang karma drag po’i las byang
dang dbang chog gtor bzlog dang bcas pa rnams phyogs gcig tu bsgrigs pa bdud sde ’joms pa’i bshan pa
rnam rol, Tsadra Terzod, vol. 13, text 11.
235. “As for the covenant: Hum! As when, in the Primordial Age, the blood-drinking
ultra-secret Karma Heruka subdued the arrogant spirits in the eight charnel grounds and bound
them as protectors, thus clearing the obstacles of the siddhas, [now too] make the enlightened
action of these torma effective! As when, in the Intermediate Age, the Ācārya Padmasambhava
and [Yéshé] Tshogyäl bound the demons by oath and hid the great treasures in Kham Lung
Lhang Lhang, thus clearing the obstacles of the siddhas, [now too] make the enlightened action
of these torma effective! As when, in the Final Age, Dharmarāja Wangpodé bound the gruesome
demons by oath at the peak of the Langka palace, thus clearing the obstacles of the siddhas, [now
too] make the enlightened action of these torma effective!”; see ibid.
236. The first of these texts is Lha lnga dgyes kyi ’khor lo dbu ru shAkya ’od kyi gter ma, a brief
instruction on how to repair defilement of the personal protective deities through making amulets
to be worn around the neck and erecting prayer flags. Though attributed to the Fi h Dalai Lama
in the Rinchen Terǳö, he (as indicated in the title) presented it as a terma revealed by Shakya-Ö
of Ü; see Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44, text 42. The other text, Lha lnga’i gsol mchod bsod nams dpal
skyed, is longer and is dated to 1678 (Earth Horse year). It is an offering for the purification of
the “five deities of the head” and is presented as a complementary practice to whatever wrathful
yidam practices are being undertaken; see Tsadra Terǳod, vol. 44, text 43.
237. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Gsang ba’i bdag pos gnang ba’i dgra bla dpangs stod,


Buddhism in later periods.238 The original author of this text may, in fact, have been
Rinǳin Gödemchen, the fourteenth-century founder of the Northern Treasures,239
but its dissemination was certainly due to the favour it found with the Great Fi h,
to whom it is credited in both Mongolian and Tibetan anthologies.240 The text is
still recited in the liturgies of major Nyingmapa monasteries today.241 This reflects
the degree to which the Dalai Lama’s personal authority has imprinted itself on
the liturgies of the Nyingma school.
Historiography
A final important aspect to consider concerning the Fi h Dalai Lama’s seminal
influence over the cultural landscape of war magic in the Tibetan world is how his
role in the war which brought him to power came to be portrayed in later hagio-
graphic and historiographical accounts.
In these accounts, the orthodoxy that emerged placed the ritual activities
undertaken personally by the Fi h Dalai Lama during the war of 1639–42 at cen-
tre stage. Indeed, these activities would be portrayed as the major cause of Gushri
Khan’s victory, while the political, economic and above all military factors—in an
age of cannon warfare and also one in which monks took an active part in military
assaults242—were gradually filtered out. One suspects that the Fi h Dalai Lama
himself anticipated this narrative in the way he wrote his own autobiographies, with
238. See notes 106 and 107 above. Since the time of the Fi h Dalai Lama, and perhaps
largely due to the influence of this particular text, the main Buddhist presentation of the mythic
place of these spirits (whose origins may lie in Bön) relates them to the weaponry of the gods
(lha/deva) in their primordial conflict with the titans (lha ma yin / asura). Generally speaking,
the dgra bla / dgra lha may thus be regarded as battle-spirits who assist the godly “side of light”
(dkar phyogs) in its eternal conflict with the demonic forces of the “dark side” (nag phyogs). As
such, it is a broad and fluid class. Many prominent warrior-deities in Tibetan culture, including
for example Pehar or Gesar, may be praised as “king of dgra lha” (dgra lha’i rgyal po), as they are
examples of warriors able to summon and arouse their personal deities.
239. Berounský shows how it may be related to older Bönpo traditions concerning the dgra
bla warrior deities and the custom of imprisoning the souls of enemies in yak horns to be used
as weapons in further conflicts; see Berounský, “Soul of the Enemy,” 41–49.
240. Heissig, when discussing the influence of this text for the development of the dayisun
tengri as a part of Mongolian Buddhism, attributes it to the Great Fi h and cites his Collected
Works; see Heissig, Religions of Mongolia, 91 n. 335. The text does not appear to be included in
the Tibetan edition of the Collected Works (Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum [2009]) used here. It
is, however, found in the Rinchen Terǳö anthology.
241. The colophon of this text in the Zhéchen edition of the Rinchen Terǳö (digitised
at terǳod.tsadra.org) says that these “words of the Great Fi h” were not included in earlier
editions of Terǳö, but were included in this edition based on “the recitations of the monks of
Mindrölling and Zhechen . . . , further research is required on the transmission lineage”; see
Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Gsang ba’i bdag pos gnang ba’i dgra bla dpangs stod, Tsadra
Terǳod, vol. 43, text 27.
242. There are several mentions of cannons in the Dalai Lama’s account of the war (see, for
example, Karmay, Secret Visions, 159). On the participation of the monks of Sera in the storming
of the Tsang Dési citadel, see ibid., 157.


their many suggestions regarding the efficacy of his rites. In the outer autobiography
(written in 1667), he also gives at one point a succinct account of what he consid-
ered as the primary reasons for the victory of the siege of Samdruptsé (the main
fortress of the Tsangpa side, modern Shigatse). The victory, he says, was due to
just three factors: “the fame of the king (Gushri Khan),” “prophetical predictions,”
and “because of the occult powers of the religious protectors.”243 This presentation,
which underplays hard power factors such as cannons, experienced Mongol soldiers
and the duration of the siege, and elevates so power factors of reputation, destiny
and occultism, is in interesting contrast to the presentation one finds in his earlier
history of Tibet (The Song of the Queen of Spring), written immediately a er the
war (1643), in which Gushri Khan’s role in the victory is presented as paramount.
As time went on, the hagiographic orthodoxy that developed around these events
laid credit for the victory of 1642 squarely at the feet of the Great Fi h himself,
whose enlightened (ritual) action and occult power was presented as its major cause.
It is worth illustrating this point with some examples. In Dési Sanggyé Gyatso’s
biography, for example, the Great Fi h’s life is parsed into “twelve deeds” analogous
to the Twelve Deeds (mǳad pa bcu gnyis) of the Buddha Śākyamuni. In this anal-
ogy, the Dalai Lama’s practice of war magic during the wars of 1639–42 is equated
with the ninth deed of the Buddha, namely “victory over demons” (bdud sde bcoms).
But here, the phrase is adapted by the replacement of just one word—to the “vic-
tory over other sects” (gzhan sde bcoms).244 Another influential hagiography, which
likewise underplayed the political and military action of his partisans and elevated
the occult role of the Dalai Lama himself, is the biography of the Dalai Lama by
ǲaya Paṇḍita Lozang Trinlé (ǲa ya paṇḍita Blo bzang ’phrin las, 1642–1715), who
was among the most influential Mongolian Géluk lamas of his generation.245 It is
worth quoting this succinct account at length since it so clearly illustrates the degree
to which the narrative of this war had quickly become one about the enlightened
ritual action (’phrin las) of the Great Fi h himself, while ironing out all ambiguities
and subtleties, and the crucial power-play of religious patronage. Concerning the
Arsalang episode (1635–36), ǲaya Paṇḍita writes:
Before that, Arsalang, son of Chokthu, who bore hostility to the teachings of the second
Buddha [Tsongkhapa], arrived in Tibet with a large army. Seeing that Chokthu, both
father and son, possessed the “ten fields” (zhing bcu) and were thus fit for “liberation,”
for the sake of increasing peace and happiness in Tibet and protecting the precious
teachings of the second Buddha [Tsongkhapa], he [the Fi h Dalai Lama] “pacified”
his hatefulness and, by “gazing on the fierce spirits” (’gong po ar gtad) and performing
243. Ibid.
244. Fifth Dalai Lama gsung ’bum (2009), vol. 8, 237–38. For a translation, see Ahmad,
Life of the Fifth Dalai Lama, 251–52; the passage is also reproduced in translation in Sources of
Tibetan Tradition, ed. Kurtis Schaeffer, Matthew Kapstein and Gray Tuttle (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2013), 534–35.
245. The life and works of ǲaya Paṇḍita are the subject of a doctoral dissertation by
Sangseraima Ujeed, “The Thob yig gsal ba’i me long by ǲaya Paṇḍita Blo-bzang ’phrin-las
(1642–1715): An Enquiry into Biographies as Lineage History” (D.Phil. thesis, University of
Oxford, Faculty of Oriental Studies, 2017).


suitable wrathful rituals of “direct action” (mngon spyod kyi las), excellent signs [of suc-
cess] appeared . . . [so that,] although before meeting him, [Arsalang] had resolved not
to carry out the custom of reverence [to the Dalai Lama], as soon as they actually met
face-to-face, his [Arsalang’s] previous resolve was as impossible to maintain as trying to
squeeze sand into dough effigies, and he made obeisance and requested blessings. Not
long a erwards, the chief Gushri arrived in Ü-Tsang having reduced Chokthu and his
followers to nothing but a name.246
Concerning the campaign to crush the Bönpo King Dönyö (Don yod) of Béri
(1639–40), he writes:
In Domé [Kham], Dönyö of Béri and his faction bore hostility to the teachings of the
Buddha in general, and in particular towards those of the second Buddha [Tsongkhapa].
So, discerning that they were in the realm of the “ten fields,” out of great compassion
he [the Fi h Dalai Lama] performed ritual practices of Jampel Zilnön at Pendé Lekshé
Ling [Namgyel College], and, due to these wrathful rituals of immediate action and their
own innumerable poisonous deeds, only their name remained.247
In his depiction of Gushri’s final campaign to crush the Dési Tsangpa, although
ǲaya Paṇḍita does concede the importance of the military factor, he again credits
the ultimate success of the campaign to the Great Fi h’s occult power:
If the military might of the Mongol army had not also intervened in Tsang, the teaching
of the Second Buddha Tsongkhapa would have been in danger om those who bore
hostility towards it. So, the lord himself [the Fi h Dalai Lama] made a stupa filled with
materials of great repelling power (rǳas bzlog stobs chen) and, by performing destructive
rites (las ’byor) with Jampel Chakya Zilnön [Mañjuśrī with the subduing mudrā] and
others, the Tsang faction was reduced to nothing but a name.248
That such a narrative was adopted by a very influential Mongol figure only one
generation a er the events themselves shows how quickly the narrative of the war
which brought the Ganden Phodrang to power, came to be packaged in Tibetan
246. de gong du rje rgyal ba gnyis pa’i bstan pa la log par ’khu ba’i chog thu’i ar sa lang dmag
dpung gtos che ba dang bcas bod du ’byor par chog thu pha bu bcas pa zhing bcu tshad pa’i bsgral byar
gzigs nas / bod khams kyi bde skyid spel ba dang / rje rgyal ba gnyis pa’i bstan pa rin po che bsrung ba’i
slad du / ’gong po ar gtad sogs sdang sems zhi byed dang / mngon spyod kyi las kyang ci rigs mǳad
pas rtags khyad par can byung / . . . rje ’di ma mjal gong tu / mjal ba tsam ma gtogs phyag sogs mi
byed pa’i khrims bcas kyang / zhal gyi dkyil ’khor mjal ma thag dam bca’ bye ma’i chang bu ltar zhig
ste phyag btsal / byin rlabs zhu ba sogs byas /mi ring bar dpon po gu shrIs tshog thu ’khor bcas ming gi
lhag mar byas nas / dbus gtsang du ’byor, om ǲaya Paṇḍita’s biography of the Fi h Dalai Lama
found in chapter 9 of his Thob yig (a er the translation of Ujeed, “The Thob yig gsal ba’i me long
by ǲaya Paṇḍita Blo-bzang ’phrin-las,” 152).
247. mdo smad du be ri don yod sogs spyir rgyal ba’i bstan pa / khyad par rje rgyal ba gnyis pa’i
bstan pa la log par ’khu ba’i sems ldan de dag zhing bcu’i yul du dgongs nas / snying rje chen po’i sgo
nas phan bde (F268a) legs bshad gling du ’jam dpal phyag rgya zil gnon gyi chog sgrigs phyag len rnams
btsugs te mngon spyod kyi las / gdug gis dad bye rmongs kyi las rab ’byams gnang bas de dag ming gi
lhag ma tsam du gyur (a er the translation of Ujeed, ibid., 152–53).
248. gtsang nas kyang sog dmag gi nus pa mngon du ma gyur na / le lan rje rgyal ba gnyis ba’i
bstan pa la log pa’i sems ’chang bar brten rje ’dis kyang rǳas bzlog stobs chen gyi mchod rten byas te /
’jam dpal phyag rgya zil gnon sogs kyi sgo nas las sbyor gnang bas gtsang ba ming gi lhag mar gyur
(a er the translation of Ujeed, ibid., 153).


and Mongolian religious discourse as the enlightened action of the Fi h Dalai

Lama himself.249
Conclusion
The Fi h Dalai Lama’s programme to impress his charismatic authority on Tibet’s

rich cultural heritage of war magic could be further illustrated, nuanced and
enriched with many more examples om his outer and secret autobiographies and
his Collected Works, and this would no doubt be a uitful area of further historical
research. But even with these limited examples, the importance attached by this
historical figure to providing the Ganden Phodrang with the cultural resources it
needed to establish a “theatre state” which could effectively project its occult power
in the realm of war magic, is clear. The success of this programme, continued and
extended a er the Dalai Lama’s death by Dési Sanggyé Gyatso, may be considered
a significant factor in the Ganden Phodrang’s state charisma and thus its longevity
as the government of Tibet.
Although this programme was largely successful in uniting Tibetans (and
Mongols) under the Dalai Lama’s religio-political authority and arming the state
with the cultural resources it required for the effective projection of power, it also
came at a considerable cost. For it was the Dalai Lama’s ecumenicism with regard to
ritual, and his close association and patronage of the Nyingma school in particular,
which also created a lasting ri within the Géluk tradition itself, and in the Dalai
Lama’s own monastery of Drépung in particular, which would have wide-ranging
and long-lasting political repercussions in the eighteenth century and beyond.
The subject of war magic is one that reaches into the heart of Tibetan religious
politics and Tibet’s cultural standing in pre-modern Inner Asia. The survey presented
here of the politics of war magic in the establishment of the Ganden Phodrang state
is far om complete and could be further enriched with many more details and
nuances. But it is hoped that this summary goes some way towards illustrating the
key role that violent rituals for practical purpose played in the state-construction
of the Ganden Phodrang, and the importance of the Fi h Dalai Lama’s legacy in
this regard, not just for internal Tibetan politics, but also for the geopolitics of
Inner Asia.
249. There is nothing particularly unique about ǲaya Paṇḍita’s account, which follows much
the same hagiographic lines as the writings of Dési Sanggyé Gyatso, who worked so assiduously
to augment the Great Fi h’s reputation in posterity. It has been estimated that in total, the
Dési wrote over 7,000 folios of text extolling the greatness of his former master; see Schaeffer,
“Ritual, Festival and Authority,” 188.


Rituals As War Propaganda in The Establ

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RITUALS AS WAR PROPAGANDA 49

RITUALS AS WAR PROPAGANDA

Solomon George FitzHerbert*1

Cet article examine la politique de la « magie de guerre » – c’est-à-dire

What the Tibetan literary record o en lacks in sources on “hard” aspects of

Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 27 (2018) : 49-119

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symbolism, discourse hegemony, pageant and ritual.1 In these areas, pre-modern

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This article hopes to contribute in a small way to understanding one signiﬁcant

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1) the suppression, marginalisation or co-option of those traditions of magical

3) the institution of state-sponsored rituals based on the Fi h Dalai Lama’s

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4) the establishment of discourse hegemony in the ﬁeld of Tibetan magico-

These last two aspects—concerning state rituals and discourse hegemony—were

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and long-lasting repercussions, echoes of which continue today.13 But in political

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Battle for Legitimacy

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apparent in the prophecy-laden and burgeoning corpus of “revealed treasure,” or

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Ideology and War Magic under the Tsangpa Dynasty

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opposed by the virulently anti-Mongol Tsangpa Dési Phüntsok Namgyel (Phun

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38. This oﬀensive is described in detail in Shakabpa, Moons, vol. 1, 329–30.

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Foundations and Justiﬁcations of Buddhist War Magic

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