Skull Imagery and Skull Magic in the Yoginī Tantras
The Buddhist tantras constitute a unique class of Buddhist literature. While developing from earlier trends in Buddhist thought and practice, they also constituted a serious challenge to Buddhist identity, largely due to the fact that many of them contain passages that appear to transgress the tenets of Buddhist morality.1 Tantric literature also departed, gradually, from the rhetorical norms of Mahayana Buddhism. While early tantras maintained the rhetorical style of the Mahayana sutras, later tantras, and most notably the Yoginī tantras, radically departed from this style.2 This essay will explore one small facet of the vast array of unusual elements that can be found in this literature, namely, the image of the skull, as well as the use of skulls in tantric ritual. Like other elements, this deployment of skulls in the tantras was disquieting to some, evoking as it does the uncanny atmosphere of the charnel ground. Through this exploration, I will argue that skulls are multifaceted symbols in tantric literature, simultaneously evoking both death and awakening. As a result, they were powerful symbols, fruitfully deployed in tantric literature in a number of interesting ways. The genre of tantric Buddhist literature in which skulls and associated charnel imagery is most powerful is the Yoginī tantras. These texts were composed in India beginning in the late seventh century or early eighth century (with the composition of the Sarvabuddhasamāyoga- ḍākiṇījālasamvara-tantra) 3 and continued to be composed up until the final decline of Buddhism in India from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries.4 They are characterized by their focus on fierce deities, particularly the yoginīs and ḍākiṇīs, who appear to have originally been understood to be flesh-eating demonesses who haunted charnel grounds and wilderness areas. As James Sanford wrote, “they were drafted into the Vajrayāna pantheon and transformed from horrifying old crones lurking in cemeteries into beautiful spiritual guides.”5Despite this transformation, they retained elements of their dreadful origins and are typically depicted as garbed with ornaments derived from the charnel ground.6 As texts that focus on such an awesome class of goddesses, they are naturally replete with imagery deriving from the fearsome setting of the charnel ground (śmaśāna). Their deities are adorned with charnel ground regalia, most notably skulls and skull bowls (kapāla). The charnel grounds are also the ideal locale for the performance of many of the rites described in these texts, such as the notorious Vetalā Sādhana, in which the adept seeks to invoke a spirit to animate a corpse in order to compel it to bestow magical powers. These texts, while at least nominally Buddhist, do not seem to derive from the normative Buddhist setting, that is, the Buddhist monastic context. According to traditional histories, they derived instead from the liminal social setting of the siddhas, the great tantric saints such as Lūipa/Matsyendranāth,7 who were seen as the originators of both the Buddhist and Śaiva tantric traditions.8 Indeed, charnel grounds were long the haunt of Śaiva renunciants. The primal charnel ground deity is clearly Śiva, whose paradoxical penchant for both asceticism and sexuality firmly earned him a liminal status in Hindu mythology.9 He is iconographically linked to the locale of the charnel ground via his penchant for ashes and bone ornaments, items that are found abundantly there, as well as the ghoulish company he was fond of keeping. His liminal status is recorded in several of the purāṇas, where we find passages such as the following, where his father-in-law Dakṣa, who disapproves of his dreadful appearance and ferocious companions, curses him: You are excluded from the rituals and are surrounded by ghosts in the burning ground; yet you fail to honor me, while all of the gods give me great honor. Good men must scorn all heretics; therefore I curse you to be outside the sacrifice, outside caste; all the Rudras will be beyond the Vedas, avowing heretic doctrines, Kāpālikas and Kālamukhas.10 The form of Śiva that most clearly embodies the spirit of the charnel ground is Bhairava, the fierce and destructive form assumed by Śiva following his beheading of the deity Brahmā in a well-known episode of Hindu mythology. As a penance for this crime, Śiva qua Bhairava wandered the world with the skull of Brahmā affixed to his hand, earning him the title kapālin. 11 Somadeva, in his eleventh-century work, the Vetālapañca-viṃśatikā, describes the charnel ground as being a virtual incarnation of Bhairava, as follows: It was obscured by a dense and terrible pall of darkness, and its aspect was rendered awful by the ghastly flames from the burning of the funeral pyres, and it produced horror by the bones, skeletons and skulls of men that appeared in it. In it were present formidable Bhūtas and Vetālas, joyfully engaged in their horrible activity, and it was alive with the loud yells of jackals so that it seemed like a mysterious and tremendous form of Bhairava.12 Śiva’s penance as the skull-bearing ascetic Bhairava was assumed as the “great observance” (mahāvrata) of the Kāpālikas, an infamous Śaiva sectarian group notorious for their extreme modes of practice involving violence and sexuality, as David Lorenzen has shown.13 However, the Śaivas were clearly not the only ones in early medieval India spending time in charnel grounds. The very horror of the śmaśāna was believed to make it an ideal site for heroic renunciants, who sought to completely cut through all attachments to the world. Included among them were Buddhists. The association of Buddhists with charnel grounds is evidently quite ancient. Archaeological excavations have shown that Buddhist monasteries were often built on or near charnel complexes, as Gregory Schopen has shown.14 Buddhists, in taking the reliquary mound (stūpa) as one of their central cult centers, implicitly rejected brahmanic notions of the impurity deriving from death. The Buddhist association with sites connected with death was not without social implications, for in choosing such sites, they deliberately placed themselves in a liminal position within larger Indian society, a position that implied a rejection of brahmanic notions of purity and pollution. Most importantly, the charnel ground was the site for a certain sort of meditation, the “mediation on impurity” (aśubhabhāvanā). Meditating in charnel grounds for the purpose of contemplating death and impermanence is an ancient Buddhist practice, which is justified by the legend that one of the four sights that inspired Siddhārtha Gautama to undertake the spiritual journey that would culminate with his achievement of awakening was the sight of a corpse.
Both the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta16 and the Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta17describe the nine charnel ground contemplations or “meditation on impurity,” which involve the contemplation of corpses in their various stages of disintegration. The practice of this meditation has persisted through time, as evidenced by the continuing interest in this subject in scholastic literature, where we find varying analyses of corpses into nine or ten types.18 We also find treatments of this theme in Mahayana literature,19 and also contemporary Web sites detailing the stages of the disintegration of corpses, produced for the sake of meditators who lack access to charnel grounds.20 Such meditations were believed to serve as antidotes for attachment to the body or sensual pleasures.21 Elsewhere in the Majjhima-nikāya the Buddha recommends charnel grounds as meditation sites22 and describes his austerities as a bodhisattva thus: “I would make my bed in a charnel ground with bones of the dead for a pillow.”23 Dwelling in charnel grounds had become an acceptable vocation for Buddhist renunciants by at least the beginning of the Common Era, by which time they were designated as śmāśānika (Pāli sosānika). The Vimuttimagga, a text composed by Upatissa in Pāli in the first or second century CE, describes the benefits of this practice as including an understanding of death and impermanence, overcoming of fear, and gaining the reverence of supernatural being
The tantric texts that call upon practitioners to perform rituals, such as mandala construction in charnel grounds, or to use the substances derived from charnel grounds in rituals, followed a venerable precedent. A number of the early tantras, later classified as kriyā tantras in the Indo-Tibetan classification scheme,25 describe practices necessarily set in charnel grounds.26 These likely derive from what I have termed “the cult of the charnel ground.”27 Texts resulting from this social milieu are characterized by their focus on the charnel ground (śmaśāna) as the ideal site for practice and call for the practitioner to dress him- or herself in garb derived from this locale, most notably skulls and bone ornaments, and to live upon the foodstuffs available there. However, the charnel ground culture comes to its fruition in Buddhist literature in the Yoginī tantras. Perhaps not coincidently, this is also the genre of Buddhist literature that received the greatest degree of influence from Śaiva traditions
In additional to textual dependence on Śaiva materials, the Buddhist Yoginī tantras also drew upon Śaiva iconography.29 Among a number of iconographic elements borrowed from Śaiva sources is the decorative use of skulls. In India, the skull is clearly a symbol of death and the fear of death and is thus considered inauspicious and impure. In both Śaiva and Buddhist tantric contexts, it is deployed as a sign that the deity bearing this symbol has mastered death and has transcended the mundane world in which fear of death is nearly universal. The deity Heruka, who is prominent in a number of texts in this genre, is a clear example of a Buddhist deity modeled upon a Śaiva precursor, particularly the fierce deities Bhairava or Rudra.30 He is described as follows in the Sarvabuddhasamāyoga-ḍākiṇījālasamvara-tantra: Greatly Glorious Vajraheruka is very terrifying, blazing with ash; his visage blazes blue for beings, and his mandala of light blazes red. He is as fierce as the end time of great destruction. Greatly blazing, his voice blazes, like a charnel ground fire. He has a crown of skulls, fierce like the end time of great destruction. Possessing the methods such as anger, he is as terrifying as a charnel ground, with various faces, and eyebrows arched in anger. With his blazing gaze and dance, he completely reduces the three worlds to ash, along with Mahādeva, Viṣṇu (Upendra), the Sun, the Moon, Yama, and Brahmā.31 It is important to note that that there is a long tradition in tantric Buddhism of associating death with awakening. For early Buddhists, final emancipation, parinirvāṇa, is not attained until death. In traditions of tantric yoga, it was widely believed that in death one gained a vision of the clear light, identified with the dharmakāya or gnosis of awakening, meaning that death provided an opportunity for awakening that is difficult to achieve in normal states of consciousness.32Hence such dreadful images evoking death are also seen as symbols of awakening. As a result, in tantric Buddhist literature and art, imagery evoking death, and skull imagery in particular, is quite pervasive, precisely because it also evokes the awakening toward which the tradition aspires. Such imagery is particularly associated with the authority figures of the tradition, the deities, siddhas, and gurus or lamas, as these are seen as the awakened figures capable of bestowing the tradition’s teachings. In the Cakrasamvara-tantra,33 for example, the tradition’s chief deity, Heruka, is described as follows:
Place in the center of the lotus the hero who is the terror of Mahābhairava, who is bright and brilliant, and who makes the tremendous noise of very loud laughter. Wearing a skull rosary, divine are his three eyes and four faces. Covered with an elephant hide, his excellent eyebrows are split by a vajra. His hand wields a khatvanga staff, [and he is] ornamented with a half a hundred garland
This is immediately followed with the following description of his consort, the goddess Vajravārāhī:
The goddess who stands before him is the truly awesome Vajravārāhī, facing the deity Śrī Heruka, with three eyes and of fierce form. Her skull bowl is filled [with entrails], blood trickles from her mouth. She threatens all of the quarters together with the gods, titans, and humans.
The master (ācārya), like the deities, also must assume a charnelground-derived garb when performing major rituals. He is described as follows:
He has the proper knowledge and understands the tantra and Śrī Heruka’s mantra. He is not angry, is pure and competent, and he understands yoga and is perfected in knowledge. His hair is marked with skulls, his limbs are smeared with ash. His body is decorated with ornaments, and [he] has a bone garland. His hair is formed into one plait, and he wears a bone garland
The Hevajra-tantra gives additional information concerning the master’s garb, adding details concerning the construction of a skull-tiara that “marks” the master’s hair, as well as ash and the sacred thread, as follows:
Now he, whose nature is hūṃ, should arrange his piled-up hair as a crest and for the performance of yoga he should wear the skull tiara, representing the five buddhas. Making pieces of skull five inches long, he should secure them to the crest. He should wear the two-stranded cord of hair, which symbolizes Wisdom and Means, the ashes and the sacred thread of hair.
This imagery firmly places these texts within the context of charnel ground culture.
Apparently the use of skulls in tantric Buddhist iconography and ritual sparked criticism. Although we do not know the source of this criticism, the author or authors of the Cakrasamvara-tantra presumed that it would be leveled against the text and thus included a preemptive response. It occurs as follows:
By whom is the skull of the relics of the reality body disparaged, arising as it does from the tripartite cause of conch, mother-of-pearl, and pearl? The hero who has a skull garland and who is adorned with a half moon is regarded as one who is born as the heroes’ hero.3
While it is certainly possible that criticism might have come from within the Buddhist community, made by Buddhists uncomfortable with charnel ground imagery and practices, it seems far more likely that this text was directed toward Hindu critics, most likely brahmins, who would view these bone implements as polluting.39 That this is the case is suggested by the late ninth-century commentator Bhavabhaṭṭa,40 who explained that “just as conch and so forth is purifying for Vedic brahmins, likewise the skull is as well.”41 In other words, the text compares the “impure” skull with the “pure” objects of similar appearance, such as the conch, used in Vedic ritual. Interestingly, this passage also refers to a myth in a Vedic canonical text, the Atharva Veda, related in its effort to legitimate the use of skulls in tantric ritual. This is the myth that holds that pearl and mother of pearl derives from the bones of the slain asura Vṛta.42 It is particularly interesting that the author of this tantra was familiar with the Atharva Veda, given the long association of the study of this text with Śaiva groups such as the Pāśupatas.43 While it seems likely that this text was composed in expectation of criticism from Hindu circles, the author or authors of this text (or, perhaps, a later Buddhist reviser) also attempted to legitimate the use of skulls in a Buddhist fashion. They did this with a reference to a key Buddhist philosophical concept, through the modification of the term skull (kapālaṃ) with the unusual qualifier “of the relics of the reality body” (dharmakāyaśarīrāṇāṃ). At first glance this seems somewhat strange. Technically speaking, bone relics should be classified as belonging to a buddha’s “form body” (rūpakāya), not the intangible “reality body,” dharmakāya. 44 A closely related term, dharmaśarīra, typically refers to “textual relics,” often mantra or dhāriṇī inscriptions
The text here associates a skull with the dharmakāya, the “reality body” of a buddha, representing either the collection of a buddha’s teachings or the gnosis of a buddha (buddhajñāna), the realized wisdom whereby a buddha is awakened. This association is rooted in several trends in Mahayana Buddhism. One factor was the development of Buddhist hierarchical systems of classifying Buddhist teachings in terms of the three bodies of a buddha.46 Another factor was the rise of the “relic cult,” centering upon stūpas, in Buddhist communities.47 Since stūpas are basically reliquary mounds, believed to enshrine the physical relics of a buddha, the rising popularity of this cult would naturally elevate the significance of these relics.48 The famous talking stūpa episodein the Lotus Sūtra, for example, highlights not only the belief that stūpas somehow embody the Buddha and preserve his presence,49 but even that a stūpa itself could manifest the voice of a buddha (buddhavacana), thus embodying his or her “reality body” in the same manner as a textual relic.50 With the composition of the Yoginī tantras, it is not only stūpas that can talk and thus manifest the Buddha’s wisdom. Talking skulls, too, are found in the increasingly bizarre terrain of tantric literature. The Buddhakapāla Yoginītantrarāja, a ninth-century text, begins with a nidāna opening passage that narrates the origin of the scripture. It relates the death of Śākyamuni Buddha immediately following his sexual union with the yoginī Citrasenā. Although physically dead, his presence lives on via his skull, which gives a discourse, and also disgorges this text itself, the “Buddha skull king of yoginī tantras.”51 This text, then, clearly indicates what is meant in the tantric context by a skull that is a “relic of the reality body,” a skull that can manifest a buddha’s gnosis. It is an image that unites the ideas of death and awakening. The skull, then, is a symbol that is particularly meaningful in the tantric context, in which death truly is seen as an occasion for the realization of the dharmakāya, and hence awakening.
Passages such as the above clearly highlight the significance of skulls in tantric Buddhist literature and help us to understand their centrality in later tantric Buddhist iconography. They are also very important in tantric Buddhist ritual. Skulls, or more properly, skull bowls, are ubiquitous elements in the tantric Buddhist ritual practices associated with the Yoginī tantras. In the Newar and Tibetan Buddhist contexts, these bowls are formed from the upper hemisphere of a human skull, the inside of which is often covered with a decorative layer of metal that makes it water-impermeable. These skull bowls are used in a wide variety of rituals such as abhiṣeka initiation rites, usually in conjunction with a vajra. When so deployed, the skull bowl replaces the lotus, symbolizing wisdom (prajñā), while the vajra symbolizes expedience (upāya). However, in the remainder of this article I will focus on several ritual practices in which the skull plays a central role, the focus of the ritual, rather than a necessary but peripheral ritual implement. In these cases, the skull retains its dual association with awakening and death, and thus can serve as an agent for either one of these potentialities. The example that sparked my interest in this topic is the infamous Tachikawa Skull Ritual studied by Jim Sanford. The surviving texts that describe this ritual portray it as a secret method for producing for oneself a talking skull, one that will tell one the secrets of the world.52 While I have not found a ritual for the production of a talking skull in any of the Indian materials I have studied, in my study of the Cakrasamvaratantra I have come across several ritual practices employing skulls that contain elements of the Tachikawa ritual, including the anointing of skulls with body fluids and the association of these rituals with ḍākiṇīs and jackals.
In tantric literature, the skull is often used in rituals employing sympathetic magic techniques. Chapter twelve of the Cakrasamvara-tantra describes a ritual for giving one’s enemy a hemorrhage or a headache. This ritual involves the creation of a simulacrum of one’s enemy’s skull, which one enchants with mantra and then ritually acts upon. It occurs as follows:
With this mantra, the quintessence53 of Śrī Heruka’s essence, make a substitute skull devoid of flesh, and rub it with the tip of one’s forefinger. His blood will be drawn out. By rubbing it with the left it will return again. If, enchanting with mantra, the skull is struck with one’s fist, the head of him whose name one utters will ache. Calling the mantra to mind, fill the skull with milk and he will be relieved
As is typical of the tantras, the text gives a rather bare-boned description of the ritual, leaving out many elements essential for its practice. For example, one element that is left out is the fact that, when performing the ritual for causing hemorrhage, one visualizes oneself as the fierce deity Vajrarudra and then invokes the fierce goddess Khaṇḍarohā. The visualization one then performs is described as follows by the ninthcentury commentator Jayabhadra:
As for “with the tip of the forefinger,” etc., this refers to drawing out blood. The procedure for this is as follows: taking a human skull, the mantrin who has performed the prior service instantly utters the syllable hūṃ while in union with Vajrarudra. Khaṇḍarohā, with a sword in hand, issues from the deity’s right nostril. Visualize that she pierces in five places the head of him who is named and that the skull fills with streams of his blood.5
As is typically the case with these rituals, the text also provides the ritual antidote. In this case, anointing the skull with milk, a pacifying element in Indian magic, relieves the injury caused by the rite.56 The Cakrasamvara-tantra also describes another ritual that is the closest analogue I have found in Indian literature to the Tachikawa Skull Ritual. Like the latter ritual, it involves anointing a skull with sexual fluids and is associated with ḍākiṇīs and jackals. However, unlike that rite, it is a violent ritual, used for the elimination of one’s enemies. Chapter 46 of the Cakrasamvara-tantra opens with the following passage:
Next, there is the accomplishment of all ritual actions through the five ha syllables, by means of which there is rapid engagement in power through the cognized only. One should rub one’s hands on which are the five syllables, haṃ hau ho hai haḥ. Drawing blood from his mouth with a [word of] command, one’s foe dies instantly. Should one anoint the skull that is the receptacle of one’s own blood with the blood of one’s ring finger, as soon as it dries the victim perishes. Should one, angered and with reddened eyes, repeat [the syllables] excitedly, the king will quickly be killed, along with his army and his mount. Make an offering of the ḍākiṇī sacrifice (bali), with cat, mongoose, dog, crow, crane, and jackal; there is no doubt that in this tantra this quickly yields power
This passage appears to describe two rituals, the first being a ritual for killing an enemy by drawing a yantra in the shape of a five-petalled lotus on one’s palm, in the center of which is written both the victim’s name and a ritual command, and on the petals of which are written the five mantra syllables. The skull ritual can apparently accomplish this same aim, but can also be performed so as to kill on a far grander scale, namely, for the elimination of an enemy king along with his army. The ritual description is very bare-boned. It clearly involves a skull, but one which is “the receptacle of one’s own blood.” It is then anointed with the “blood of one’s ring finger.” This seems clear, but the commentator Bhavabhaṭṭa, who lived circa 900 CE, glosses the term “ring finger” (anāmikā) as a “childless woman” (anapatyā) whose “blood” is uterine blood or menstrual discharge.58 This detail, along with the injunction that one should perform a sacrifice to the ḍākiṇī involving the meat of a number of animals, including jackal, invokes the charnel-ground culture that appears to be the ultimate origin or inspiration of not only the Cakrasamvara-tantra, but also the East Asian tradition that gave rise to the Tachikawa Skull Ritual. Tantric literature focuses on human skulls, which is natural, given the fact that in early medieval India, these would be readily available in the charnel grounds that were positioned on the outskirts of cities and major towns. However, the tantras also contain rituals employing animal skulls. In these cases, they are used in order to invoke qualities associated with these animals. For example, chapter 12 of the Cakrasamvara-tantra describes the following ritual for driving one’s enemy or enemies insane: “Binding the conjoined skull seals, repeat [the quintessence mantra] without breathing. He whose name the fierce one [utters] will instantly become mad. As many as one thousand people will be maddened. One can mentally release them.”59 The late ninth-century commentator Kambala comments upon it as follows: Place the magical diagram (yantra) augmented with the name of whomever [is the victim] within the conjoined skull seals, i.e., conjoined skull [hemispheres] of a rabid dog, together with the five intoxicants. Repeat [the mantra] seven times without breathing, then bind and seal them. Should one conceal it together with his name in a charnel ground, he will become mad.60 Clearly, the ritual calls for the use of rabid dog skulls in order to inflict a similar sort of madness upon the victim of the rite. The aura of madness that this ritual evokes is further heightened in the following description written by the fifteenth-century Tibetan commentator Tsong Khapa:
Draw a wheel augmented with the victim’s name.
Prepare the seeds, roots, stalk, leaves, and branches of the datura plant,61 and put it in the closed mouth of a rabid dog’s skull. Bind its fissures with mud [made of] charnel ground ash, and repeat the augmented quintessence mantra seven times without breathing. If you put it in a charnel ground, he whose name one [utters] will become mad. As many as one thousand people will be maddened. If one bathes [the skull] with milk reciting with a peaceful mind, they will be released.
The addition of the potent and poisonous intoxicant datura was clearly intended to heighten the efficacy of the rite. Tsong Khapa’s description also firmly places this ritual within the scope of charnel-ground culture. In conclusion, it is clear that the skull is a powerful symbol in tantric literature and ritual. It is a symbol with twofold significance, just like the rituals in which skulls can be employed. Just as “achievement” (siddhi) is understood in tantric literature to be twofold, manifesting the ultimate achievement of buddhahood or the worldly achievement of mundane ends,63 the skull can be a cipher for awakening itself, representing the Buddha’s gnosis, and can be employed in ritual to invoke awakening, the achievement of enlightening knowledge. But they are also employed in rituals to achieve worldly ends, such as the torment or destruction of one’s enemies. These worldly applications are largely violent, but this seems understandable, given the fact that the skull is commonly understood as a symbol of death. It thus plays a prominent role in the violent abhicāra Buddhist rituals that are intended to harm or destroy enemies.
Both the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta16 and the Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta17describe the nine charnel ground contemplations or “meditation on impurity,” which involve the contemplation of corpses in their various stages of disintegration. The practice of this meditation has persisted through time, as evidenced by the continuing interest in this subject in scholastic literature, where we find varying analyses of corpses into nine or ten types.18 We also find treatments of this theme in Mahayana literature,19 and also contemporary Web sites detailing the stages of the disintegration of corpses, produced for the sake of meditators who lack access to charnel grounds.20 Such meditations were believed to serve as antidotes for attachment to the body or sensual pleasures.21 Elsewhere in the Majjhima-nikāya the Buddha recommends charnel grounds as meditation sites22 and describes his austerities as a bodhisattva thus: “I would make my bed in a charnel ground with bones of the dead for a pillow.”23 Dwelling in charnel grounds had become an acceptable vocation for Buddhist renunciants by at least the beginning of the Common Era, by which time they were designated as śmāśānika (Pāli sosānika). The Vimuttimagga, a text composed by Upatissa in Pāli in the first or second century CE, describes the benefits of this practice as including an understanding of death and impermanence, overcoming of fear, and gaining the reverence of supernatural being
The tantric texts that call upon practitioners to perform rituals, such as mandala construction in charnel grounds, or to use the substances derived from charnel grounds in rituals, followed a venerable precedent. A number of the early tantras, later classified as kriyā tantras in the Indo-Tibetan classification scheme,25 describe practices necessarily set in charnel grounds.26 These likely derive from what I have termed “the cult of the charnel ground.”27 Texts resulting from this social milieu are characterized by their focus on the charnel ground (śmaśāna) as the ideal site for practice and call for the practitioner to dress him- or herself in garb derived from this locale, most notably skulls and bone ornaments, and to live upon the foodstuffs available there. However, the charnel ground culture comes to its fruition in Buddhist literature in the Yoginī tantras. Perhaps not coincidently, this is also the genre of Buddhist literature that received the greatest degree of influence from Śaiva traditions
In additional to textual dependence on Śaiva materials, the Buddhist Yoginī tantras also drew upon Śaiva iconography.29 Among a number of iconographic elements borrowed from Śaiva sources is the decorative use of skulls. In India, the skull is clearly a symbol of death and the fear of death and is thus considered inauspicious and impure. In both Śaiva and Buddhist tantric contexts, it is deployed as a sign that the deity bearing this symbol has mastered death and has transcended the mundane world in which fear of death is nearly universal. The deity Heruka, who is prominent in a number of texts in this genre, is a clear example of a Buddhist deity modeled upon a Śaiva precursor, particularly the fierce deities Bhairava or Rudra.30 He is described as follows in the Sarvabuddhasamāyoga-ḍākiṇījālasamvara-tantra: Greatly Glorious Vajraheruka is very terrifying, blazing with ash; his visage blazes blue for beings, and his mandala of light blazes red. He is as fierce as the end time of great destruction. Greatly blazing, his voice blazes, like a charnel ground fire. He has a crown of skulls, fierce like the end time of great destruction. Possessing the methods such as anger, he is as terrifying as a charnel ground, with various faces, and eyebrows arched in anger. With his blazing gaze and dance, he completely reduces the three worlds to ash, along with Mahādeva, Viṣṇu (Upendra), the Sun, the Moon, Yama, and Brahmā.31 It is important to note that that there is a long tradition in tantric Buddhism of associating death with awakening. For early Buddhists, final emancipation, parinirvāṇa, is not attained until death. In traditions of tantric yoga, it was widely believed that in death one gained a vision of the clear light, identified with the dharmakāya or gnosis of awakening, meaning that death provided an opportunity for awakening that is difficult to achieve in normal states of consciousness.32Hence such dreadful images evoking death are also seen as symbols of awakening. As a result, in tantric Buddhist literature and art, imagery evoking death, and skull imagery in particular, is quite pervasive, precisely because it also evokes the awakening toward which the tradition aspires. Such imagery is particularly associated with the authority figures of the tradition, the deities, siddhas, and gurus or lamas, as these are seen as the awakened figures capable of bestowing the tradition’s teachings. In the Cakrasamvara-tantra,33 for example, the tradition’s chief deity, Heruka, is described as follows:
Place in the center of the lotus the hero who is the terror of Mahābhairava, who is bright and brilliant, and who makes the tremendous noise of very loud laughter. Wearing a skull rosary, divine are his three eyes and four faces. Covered with an elephant hide, his excellent eyebrows are split by a vajra. His hand wields a khatvanga staff, [and he is] ornamented with a half a hundred garland
This is immediately followed with the following description of his consort, the goddess Vajravārāhī:
The goddess who stands before him is the truly awesome Vajravārāhī, facing the deity Śrī Heruka, with three eyes and of fierce form. Her skull bowl is filled [with entrails], blood trickles from her mouth. She threatens all of the quarters together with the gods, titans, and humans.
The master (ācārya), like the deities, also must assume a charnelground-derived garb when performing major rituals. He is described as follows:
He has the proper knowledge and understands the tantra and Śrī Heruka’s mantra. He is not angry, is pure and competent, and he understands yoga and is perfected in knowledge. His hair is marked with skulls, his limbs are smeared with ash. His body is decorated with ornaments, and [he] has a bone garland. His hair is formed into one plait, and he wears a bone garland
The Hevajra-tantra gives additional information concerning the master’s garb, adding details concerning the construction of a skull-tiara that “marks” the master’s hair, as well as ash and the sacred thread, as follows:
Now he, whose nature is hūṃ, should arrange his piled-up hair as a crest and for the performance of yoga he should wear the skull tiara, representing the five buddhas. Making pieces of skull five inches long, he should secure them to the crest. He should wear the two-stranded cord of hair, which symbolizes Wisdom and Means, the ashes and the sacred thread of hair.
This imagery firmly places these texts within the context of charnel ground culture.
Apparently the use of skulls in tantric Buddhist iconography and ritual sparked criticism. Although we do not know the source of this criticism, the author or authors of the Cakrasamvara-tantra presumed that it would be leveled against the text and thus included a preemptive response. It occurs as follows:
By whom is the skull of the relics of the reality body disparaged, arising as it does from the tripartite cause of conch, mother-of-pearl, and pearl? The hero who has a skull garland and who is adorned with a half moon is regarded as one who is born as the heroes’ hero.3
While it is certainly possible that criticism might have come from within the Buddhist community, made by Buddhists uncomfortable with charnel ground imagery and practices, it seems far more likely that this text was directed toward Hindu critics, most likely brahmins, who would view these bone implements as polluting.39 That this is the case is suggested by the late ninth-century commentator Bhavabhaṭṭa,40 who explained that “just as conch and so forth is purifying for Vedic brahmins, likewise the skull is as well.”41 In other words, the text compares the “impure” skull with the “pure” objects of similar appearance, such as the conch, used in Vedic ritual. Interestingly, this passage also refers to a myth in a Vedic canonical text, the Atharva Veda, related in its effort to legitimate the use of skulls in tantric ritual. This is the myth that holds that pearl and mother of pearl derives from the bones of the slain asura Vṛta.42 It is particularly interesting that the author of this tantra was familiar with the Atharva Veda, given the long association of the study of this text with Śaiva groups such as the Pāśupatas.43 While it seems likely that this text was composed in expectation of criticism from Hindu circles, the author or authors of this text (or, perhaps, a later Buddhist reviser) also attempted to legitimate the use of skulls in a Buddhist fashion. They did this with a reference to a key Buddhist philosophical concept, through the modification of the term skull (kapālaṃ) with the unusual qualifier “of the relics of the reality body” (dharmakāyaśarīrāṇāṃ). At first glance this seems somewhat strange. Technically speaking, bone relics should be classified as belonging to a buddha’s “form body” (rūpakāya), not the intangible “reality body,” dharmakāya. 44 A closely related term, dharmaśarīra, typically refers to “textual relics,” often mantra or dhāriṇī inscriptions
The text here associates a skull with the dharmakāya, the “reality body” of a buddha, representing either the collection of a buddha’s teachings or the gnosis of a buddha (buddhajñāna), the realized wisdom whereby a buddha is awakened. This association is rooted in several trends in Mahayana Buddhism. One factor was the development of Buddhist hierarchical systems of classifying Buddhist teachings in terms of the three bodies of a buddha.46 Another factor was the rise of the “relic cult,” centering upon stūpas, in Buddhist communities.47 Since stūpas are basically reliquary mounds, believed to enshrine the physical relics of a buddha, the rising popularity of this cult would naturally elevate the significance of these relics.48 The famous talking stūpa episodein the Lotus Sūtra, for example, highlights not only the belief that stūpas somehow embody the Buddha and preserve his presence,49 but even that a stūpa itself could manifest the voice of a buddha (buddhavacana), thus embodying his or her “reality body” in the same manner as a textual relic.50 With the composition of the Yoginī tantras, it is not only stūpas that can talk and thus manifest the Buddha’s wisdom. Talking skulls, too, are found in the increasingly bizarre terrain of tantric literature. The Buddhakapāla Yoginītantrarāja, a ninth-century text, begins with a nidāna opening passage that narrates the origin of the scripture. It relates the death of Śākyamuni Buddha immediately following his sexual union with the yoginī Citrasenā. Although physically dead, his presence lives on via his skull, which gives a discourse, and also disgorges this text itself, the “Buddha skull king of yoginī tantras.”51 This text, then, clearly indicates what is meant in the tantric context by a skull that is a “relic of the reality body,” a skull that can manifest a buddha’s gnosis. It is an image that unites the ideas of death and awakening. The skull, then, is a symbol that is particularly meaningful in the tantric context, in which death truly is seen as an occasion for the realization of the dharmakāya, and hence awakening.
Passages such as the above clearly highlight the significance of skulls in tantric Buddhist literature and help us to understand their centrality in later tantric Buddhist iconography. They are also very important in tantric Buddhist ritual. Skulls, or more properly, skull bowls, are ubiquitous elements in the tantric Buddhist ritual practices associated with the Yoginī tantras. In the Newar and Tibetan Buddhist contexts, these bowls are formed from the upper hemisphere of a human skull, the inside of which is often covered with a decorative layer of metal that makes it water-impermeable. These skull bowls are used in a wide variety of rituals such as abhiṣeka initiation rites, usually in conjunction with a vajra. When so deployed, the skull bowl replaces the lotus, symbolizing wisdom (prajñā), while the vajra symbolizes expedience (upāya). However, in the remainder of this article I will focus on several ritual practices in which the skull plays a central role, the focus of the ritual, rather than a necessary but peripheral ritual implement. In these cases, the skull retains its dual association with awakening and death, and thus can serve as an agent for either one of these potentialities. The example that sparked my interest in this topic is the infamous Tachikawa Skull Ritual studied by Jim Sanford. The surviving texts that describe this ritual portray it as a secret method for producing for oneself a talking skull, one that will tell one the secrets of the world.52 While I have not found a ritual for the production of a talking skull in any of the Indian materials I have studied, in my study of the Cakrasamvaratantra I have come across several ritual practices employing skulls that contain elements of the Tachikawa ritual, including the anointing of skulls with body fluids and the association of these rituals with ḍākiṇīs and jackals.
In tantric literature, the skull is often used in rituals employing sympathetic magic techniques. Chapter twelve of the Cakrasamvara-tantra describes a ritual for giving one’s enemy a hemorrhage or a headache. This ritual involves the creation of a simulacrum of one’s enemy’s skull, which one enchants with mantra and then ritually acts upon. It occurs as follows:
With this mantra, the quintessence53 of Śrī Heruka’s essence, make a substitute skull devoid of flesh, and rub it with the tip of one’s forefinger. His blood will be drawn out. By rubbing it with the left it will return again. If, enchanting with mantra, the skull is struck with one’s fist, the head of him whose name one utters will ache. Calling the mantra to mind, fill the skull with milk and he will be relieved
As is typical of the tantras, the text gives a rather bare-boned description of the ritual, leaving out many elements essential for its practice. For example, one element that is left out is the fact that, when performing the ritual for causing hemorrhage, one visualizes oneself as the fierce deity Vajrarudra and then invokes the fierce goddess Khaṇḍarohā. The visualization one then performs is described as follows by the ninthcentury commentator Jayabhadra:
As for “with the tip of the forefinger,” etc., this refers to drawing out blood. The procedure for this is as follows: taking a human skull, the mantrin who has performed the prior service instantly utters the syllable hūṃ while in union with Vajrarudra. Khaṇḍarohā, with a sword in hand, issues from the deity’s right nostril. Visualize that she pierces in five places the head of him who is named and that the skull fills with streams of his blood.5
As is typically the case with these rituals, the text also provides the ritual antidote. In this case, anointing the skull with milk, a pacifying element in Indian magic, relieves the injury caused by the rite.56 The Cakrasamvara-tantra also describes another ritual that is the closest analogue I have found in Indian literature to the Tachikawa Skull Ritual. Like the latter ritual, it involves anointing a skull with sexual fluids and is associated with ḍākiṇīs and jackals. However, unlike that rite, it is a violent ritual, used for the elimination of one’s enemies. Chapter 46 of the Cakrasamvara-tantra opens with the following passage:
Next, there is the accomplishment of all ritual actions through the five ha syllables, by means of which there is rapid engagement in power through the cognized only. One should rub one’s hands on which are the five syllables, haṃ hau ho hai haḥ. Drawing blood from his mouth with a [word of] command, one’s foe dies instantly. Should one anoint the skull that is the receptacle of one’s own blood with the blood of one’s ring finger, as soon as it dries the victim perishes. Should one, angered and with reddened eyes, repeat [the syllables] excitedly, the king will quickly be killed, along with his army and his mount. Make an offering of the ḍākiṇī sacrifice (bali), with cat, mongoose, dog, crow, crane, and jackal; there is no doubt that in this tantra this quickly yields power
This passage appears to describe two rituals, the first being a ritual for killing an enemy by drawing a yantra in the shape of a five-petalled lotus on one’s palm, in the center of which is written both the victim’s name and a ritual command, and on the petals of which are written the five mantra syllables. The skull ritual can apparently accomplish this same aim, but can also be performed so as to kill on a far grander scale, namely, for the elimination of an enemy king along with his army. The ritual description is very bare-boned. It clearly involves a skull, but one which is “the receptacle of one’s own blood.” It is then anointed with the “blood of one’s ring finger.” This seems clear, but the commentator Bhavabhaṭṭa, who lived circa 900 CE, glosses the term “ring finger” (anāmikā) as a “childless woman” (anapatyā) whose “blood” is uterine blood or menstrual discharge.58 This detail, along with the injunction that one should perform a sacrifice to the ḍākiṇī involving the meat of a number of animals, including jackal, invokes the charnel-ground culture that appears to be the ultimate origin or inspiration of not only the Cakrasamvara-tantra, but also the East Asian tradition that gave rise to the Tachikawa Skull Ritual. Tantric literature focuses on human skulls, which is natural, given the fact that in early medieval India, these would be readily available in the charnel grounds that were positioned on the outskirts of cities and major towns. However, the tantras also contain rituals employing animal skulls. In these cases, they are used in order to invoke qualities associated with these animals. For example, chapter 12 of the Cakrasamvara-tantra describes the following ritual for driving one’s enemy or enemies insane: “Binding the conjoined skull seals, repeat [the quintessence mantra] without breathing. He whose name the fierce one [utters] will instantly become mad. As many as one thousand people will be maddened. One can mentally release them.”59 The late ninth-century commentator Kambala comments upon it as follows: Place the magical diagram (yantra) augmented with the name of whomever [is the victim] within the conjoined skull seals, i.e., conjoined skull [hemispheres] of a rabid dog, together with the five intoxicants. Repeat [the mantra] seven times without breathing, then bind and seal them. Should one conceal it together with his name in a charnel ground, he will become mad.60 Clearly, the ritual calls for the use of rabid dog skulls in order to inflict a similar sort of madness upon the victim of the rite. The aura of madness that this ritual evokes is further heightened in the following description written by the fifteenth-century Tibetan commentator Tsong Khapa:
Draw a wheel augmented with the victim’s name.
Prepare the seeds, roots, stalk, leaves, and branches of the datura plant,61 and put it in the closed mouth of a rabid dog’s skull. Bind its fissures with mud [made of] charnel ground ash, and repeat the augmented quintessence mantra seven times without breathing. If you put it in a charnel ground, he whose name one [utters] will become mad. As many as one thousand people will be maddened. If one bathes [the skull] with milk reciting with a peaceful mind, they will be released.
The addition of the potent and poisonous intoxicant datura was clearly intended to heighten the efficacy of the rite. Tsong Khapa’s description also firmly places this ritual within the scope of charnel-ground culture. In conclusion, it is clear that the skull is a powerful symbol in tantric literature and ritual. It is a symbol with twofold significance, just like the rituals in which skulls can be employed. Just as “achievement” (siddhi) is understood in tantric literature to be twofold, manifesting the ultimate achievement of buddhahood or the worldly achievement of mundane ends,63 the skull can be a cipher for awakening itself, representing the Buddha’s gnosis, and can be employed in ritual to invoke awakening, the achievement of enlightening knowledge. But they are also employed in rituals to achieve worldly ends, such as the torment or destruction of one’s enemies. These worldly applications are largely violent, but this seems understandable, given the fact that the skull is commonly understood as a symbol of death. It thus plays a prominent role in the violent abhicāra Buddhist rituals that are intended to harm or destroy enemies.
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