The Cult of Tara

APPLICATION 241
vided by personal acquaintance and in the replacement of the mantra
by the Homages to the Twenty-one Taras.
I was told one such story by two monks in the monastery, Lodrb
rabje and Lungten togpa, both of whom came from the village of
Norma rowa, ceded to K'amtrii rinpoch'e three hundred years ago
by the king of Lhat'og. Forty years ago, they said, there was a
man in their village named Ch'odrub who, at the age of thirty, was
supplying horses and yaks for a merchant caravan jointly owned by
a Tibetan and a Chinese, plying the main road between Ch'amdo
and Dege. Between these two towns is a place called Chornam dot'ang,
and there a thief murdered the Chinese merchant; but the
latter's friends in Ch'amdo accused Ch'odrub not only of the murder
but of several others as well. Now Ch'odrub, my informants agreed,
was very honest but not very bright, and he was condemned in
court for murder; during the five or six months he was awaiting
execution, he recited the Homages to the Twenty-one Taras two
hundred times every day. Finally the warden informed him that
he was to be killed the next morning, and he cried in despair as his
hands were bound behind his back with a long chain ending in a
heavy stone.
About one o'clock in the morning, when he could not sleep, he
suddenly forgot it was night; there was a little window, for air, near
the ceiling in his cell, and although it was the twenty-ninth day of
the month he thought he could see moonlight. He looked up and
saw, gazing down at him from the window, the form of .a girl who
was at that time famous in Ch'amdo for her beauty. "Why did she
come?" he thought. "That window is small, yet I can see her from
the waist up." She was adorned with white roses and pearls, smelling
a white rose and smiling. All at once he forgot he was in prison;
she pointed to the warden, to show he was asleep; she chewed on the
stem of the rose and threw a piece to him. He felt light and happy,
and he knew it must be Tara. She turned away, beckoning him to
follow her through the window, and she disappeared. As the light
faded he realized that he was unchained. With almost miraculous
strength he threw the chain so that the stone hooked over the edge
of the window; he climbed out and jumped, and though the window
was very high he was unhurt. He left all his clothes behind and ran
naked all night.
Toward sunrise he neared Norma rowa and saw two wolves; he
thought that if he killed them he could wear their skins. But then