The Cult of Tara

238 MAGIC AND RITUAL. IN TIBET
One such image which I have seen was named the "Lady of the
Goring Yak." It was a so-called thunderstone image, found already
formed within the ground and considered to be a petrified thunderbolt;
it was about three inches high, a complete image of Tara, with
the silky sheen and smooth surface typical of such images (see pi. 5).
Its present owner, the young Ch'oje jats'o VIII, told me that it
had been found about a century ago, buried in the earth in K'am,
and had originally been purchased by the sixth incarnation of his
lineage. Now this lama was a yogin, who lived in a cave in the
hermitage of Drugugon, the monastery of which he was head. Since
his cave had no proper shrine room, he handed out his collection of
images to various other yogins in the hermitage, that they might be
properly enshrined and the proper offerings be made to them.
The hermitage, too, could not possess collective property like the
monastery, so the yogins would go out begging twice a year, summer
and autumn, for their supplies. A man could not travel alone in
K'am for fear of wolves and bears, and Dragon Kajii yogins were
not allowed to ride horses; so the yogin who had been given the
thunderstone image of Tara lent it to his lay servant for his protection,
and they both set out together.
In K'am there are wild yaks, called "eagles," who stand, I was
told, five feet high at the shoulder and have their horns pointed
forward, and who occasionally become mad and attack travelers.
Such a yak charged the two mendicants, and after a chase he caught
and gored the servant, but the yak's horns merely bent themselves
upon the servant's body. This miracle was attributed, after some
discussion, to the magical powers of the image he carried, and as the
story spread the image became known as the Lady of the Goring Yak.
After a while the original owner of the image died and was reincarnated
as the seventh Ch'oje jats'o, and the thunderstone image
found itself involved in the religious politics that periodically afflict
Tibet. The image was lent to a monastery of the "ancient" Nyingma
sect, named Kajegon and located in the capital of Dragyab, right
next to another monastery of the Gelug sect. Indeed, it had been
founded by the abbot of the latter monastery, an incarnation
called Lord Refuge of Dragyab, who had been fascinated by the
"ancient" teachings. The two neighbor monasteries shared the same
facilities and officers, differing only in the performance of their rituals
in their individual temples; and here the image rested in the
amity of these sometimes rival sects.