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In the matter of devil dancing and sorcery, Tibet takes the lead.
Witness its great mystery play, which might be called the "Great
Apocalypse of Sorcery." Man, according to the Lāmas, is
surrounded by hordes of man-eating devils who vex him with diseases
and accidents. These demons infest the air, the earth, the water, and
are ever seeking to destroy him. Against this endless persecution he
can himself do nothing, but the great Siva benignly comes to his
aid and places at his disposal charms, spells, talismans which are
wielded by the good spirits or Lāmas; and these aids can be obtained
by a proper attention to Lāmaic rites, and above all Lāmaic
offerings. In the drama I am considering, millions of fiends battle
together, and brief victories occur, to the good sometimes and the bad
sometimes, for the effect of Karma or magical energy is transient.
"And only for a time," says Surgeon-Major Waddell,
"can this relief from persecution endure for all the exorcisms of
all the saints are of little avail to keep back the advancing hordes.
The shrieking demons must close in upon the soul again." *
The great "Miracle-play" or "Mystery" of Tibet
is called "The Sacrificial Body of the Dead Year;" and it
"is acted on the last day of the year by all sects of Lāmas,"
as Surgeon-Major Waddell tells us.
Strictly analysed it has two parts, and two distinct plots or
motifs.
(1) To set forth the importance of Tāntrika rites, charms, etc.
(2) To reveal the mighty secret of the old world, immortal life
through drinking the blood of Siva, impersonating the dead year,
and being sacrificed for the purpose.
These sections are plainly of different dates; indeed, if you saw
the play acted for the first time, your first question would
be"What has all this to do with the dead year, and where is
its body?"
The first part is a tedious and overdone battle between demons
white, red, and black, who assail one another with charms and magic
weapons. The plot is a confused plot telling a local story of the
Lama, who assumed the disguise of a "black-hatted
devil-dancer" to assassinate King Lan Darma.
Then comes the part that most interests the modern reader.
Four ghouls bring on an object wrapped in a black cloth. These
ghouls are called
the "Four Cemetery Ghouls." They place the
object on the ground, and dance round it "with intricate
steps." They raise the cloth and discover a large dough statue of
a man. Organs representing the heart, lungs, liver, brain, stomach,
intestines, etc., are inserted into it, and the heart and the large
blood-vessels and limbs are filled with a red-coloured fluid to
represent blood. Plainly in the original version of the play a real
man was killed. This is confessed. Cannibalism was an ingredient in
the play until the great Tibetan saint, Padma Sambhava, in the ninth
century substituted a man of dough for a victim of human flesh.
Then comes a great procession of pantomime gods and devils, naked
figures with the heads of tigers, serpents, horses, bulls, with
"demoniac Brahmās" and Vishnus and Indras, and even
"demoniac Buddhas," for every being, divine or otherwise, in
Sivism, has two aspects like the divine chief. These are followed
by the fiendesses, including the "twelve Tan-ma" under Devī.
Tom-toms sound, and cymbals and large trumpets eight or ten feet long,
and wooden tambourines, and a portentous and long-drawn whistling
"with the fingers on the mouth."
Now comes on the chief fiend, the "Religious King-devil,"
with the head of a bull, holding in his right hand a dagger and in his
left the pasa or Thug-noose. This character can only be assumed by
a monk of the purest morals. The Emperor of China on one occasion
rewarded him with a dress of great price. There is no great secrecy in
this Mystery about the identity of this Demon King. The more
intelligent Lāmas admit that he is Siva as Mahākāla, *
and that the stage of this mighty drama is Siva's hell.
Now for the great climax. After more devil-dancing the Demon King
draws a sword and stabs and hacks the figure of dough, ringing a bell
all the time, assisted by his devils, who tear the figure to pieces.
These are collected in a huge silver basin, shaped like a skull and
carried in a procession to the Demon King, who eats a small portion
and then throws the rest into the air. "They are fought for by
the other demons, who throw the pieces about in a frantic manner. Then
a sacrifice of apparently the same figure in papier maché is made,
with blood and arak in a human skull."
Now if we put this description side by side with that of the victim
in the Sivan mystery, we find that they mutually explain one
another. The dough figure in Tibet is the "Sacrificial body of
the dead year:" the name explains everything. And so is the
Victim described in the Kālīka Purāna. And the scraps of flesh and
the skull with blood and spirit are the immortal food scrambled for by
the gods and men in the old mysteries. Tibet in the old days reeked
with cannibalism. "At the new year in Tibet," says an
ancient Chinese manuscript, deciphered by Dr. Bushell, "the
Tibetans sacrifice men, or offer monkeys."
"Up to the Middle Ages," says Dr. Waddell,
"cannibalism is reported, and vestiges survive in the dough
images, the sacrifice of which form an essential part of the Lāmaist
daily worship." He mentions, too, that so great is the craze for
human flesh even now that the Tibetans chew a portion of the human
skin when preparing the human thigh bone for a "bone
trumpet." Also we learn from him that the neighbours of the Lāmas
in the Tsang Po valley are cannibals to this day. *
A minor scene in the great Miracle play must not be omitted. A
figure of a child in dough is brought in, and naked skeletons
something like Siva as a skeleton, at Elora, dance round it and
make believe to attack it with long spears. Then, to solemn chanting,
low music and the swinging of censers, a stately procession comes
through the porch of the temple and slowly descends the steps. Under a
canopy borne by attendants comes a tall form in beautiful silk robes,
wearing a large mask representing a benign and peaceful face. "As
he advanced, men and boys dressed as abbots and acolytes of the Church
of Rome," prostrated themselves before him and addressed him with
intoning and pleasing chanting.
There are doubts whether this figure is Padma Sambhava, a popular
local saint and indeed local Buddha, or Buddha himself. The demons
flee away with loud shrieks. A more important question arises:Was
this little child the new year? The pontiff covers him with flour to
render him safe against the fiends of hell. This reminds one of what
was alleged of the Gnostic sects in Alexandria. They, too, covered a
child with flour, at the date of the new year. But why was he
sacrificed? This seems to have been his fate both in Alexandria and in
Tibet. Logically, the big dough figure is the old year and the little
dough figure is the new year. What is the white flour? plainly the
white ash of the men and gods and systems that remorseless Mahākāla
has swept away.
Mr. Meredith urges that even the phraseology of the Roman Catholic
Eucharist bears traces of a real sacrifice. The word "Sacramentum"
in old days could only have meant an oath, the oath, in fact, of the
early Christians not to reveal their mysteries under the pain of
death. Then the word "host" meant a sacrificial victim and
not a piece of bread. And what is still called the "altar"
must have been a real altar up to the time when the ninth and tenth
Canon of the Council of Nice imposed upon the Christian priests
degradation if they sacrificed any more." *
And the word "mass" from "Ita missa est" was also
pagan. Certainly, the Catholic and the Tibetan "mysteries,"
and their modifications seem to have run on the same lines.
But how terribly important is all this to our special
investigation, cannibalism and Bacchantic licentiousness forced into
the Holy of Holies of the religion of the blameless, vegetarian,
water-drinker Sākya Muni.
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