The Cult of Tara

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the monks. The monks quickly knelt before the image of Tara
and begged her to save them. They suddenly heard Tara say:
"Shouldn't you have sought me before you were in trouble? But
I'll tell you: kneel down in the water ditch and you may yet be
spared." The monks looked down the steps into the water ditch,
which was about the size of a bowl, and they thought, "How can
we all kneel down there? It would be very difficult." Tara urged
them and said, "Kneel down quickly ! The guards are approaching
the gate." The monks, greatly startled, crouched their bodies
together and went in; and, sure enough, there was no hindrance.
Thus the king looked for them, but he couldn't find them, and
they were saved.
This theme of the miraculous image seems to have been part of
the standard repertoire of the Indian story-teller, from whom it was
transmitted to Tibet. Several examples are preserved in the biography
of the Translator of Ch'ag, and it is interesting to note that
he invariably refers his tales to specific images of the goddess, as if
he were repeating the words of an Indian temple guide who was
himself repeating the story of a local legend. Thus the traveling
translator refers to one such image located in a temple at
Vajrasana: 14
In Vajrasana there was a Tara temple, in which was a miraculous
stone image of the goddess. Originally she had faced toward
the outside; but the storekeeper once thought, "Since the offerings
are made inside, it is not right that you face the outside."
So the image said "All right" and turned her head around to the
inside. This image is known as the "Tara with the turned face,"
and even today there is a stone image there with its head turned
around. And once when Atisa came to that temple, the door
opened for him by itself, and the Tara with the turned face said
to him: "If you wish to pass from the cause, the level of ordinary
beings, to the effect, the level of Buddhahood, then you must
purify your thought of enlightenment."
Such magical and/or talking images are considered in Tibet to
be among the most potent of protections for an individual, a dwelling,
or an entire district, and the Tibetans have installed in their temples
miraculous images of Tara, each with its own local story attached
to it. Indeed, the native Tibetan temple guidebooks are so full of
casual references to talking images of the goddess that one gets the
impression that they were not even considered unusual; Hugh
Richardson mentions an image of Tara at Tr'adrug which "was
pointed out to me as miraculous and I understood that it had once
eaten an offering." 16