The Cult of Tara

10 MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
icles, we can see taking place an iconographization of the king and
his wives, considering them a historical embodiment of the canonical
triad of Avalokitesvara, Tara, and Bhrkuti- This iconographic
arrangement of the Bodhisattva with his two female companions
is found as early as the Manjusri-mulakalpa; 25
it is found in the
Mahavairocana-sutra 2i
and is placed by the Japanese Shingon sect
in their great Garbhakosa—"embryo receptacle" or "womb"—mandate;
27
there are many evocations of Avalokitesvara in this form
in the canonical anthologies. 28
The discrepancies between this
classical arrangement and the description in modern works may be
resolved by considering, simply, that this triad has dropped out of
iconographic style in recent years, and informants other than historical
scholars might be unaware of its historical application (although
my informants tended, in the main, to report the older
tradition); yet the firm traditional identification of the Chinese
queen with Green Tara leaves them only the option of considering
the Nepalese queen to have been White Tara, as she is the only
other iconographic form readily available to replace the little-known
Bhrkuti. I have a suspicion that the earlier Western works that
reversed this attibution did so on their own, so that it might conform
better to ethnological expectations.
We can follow this original identification with Tara backward in
time only as far as the fourteenth-century chronicles that record it;
and we can say little more about this earliest development of Tara's
cult beyond the fact that there was possibly an image of Tara in
Tibet in the mid-seventh century. It is not until the second half of
the eighth century that we can say for certain that at least some
texts on Tara had been translated into Tibetan, for there is preserved
in the Tenjur a catalogue from the reign of King Tr'isong
detsen (ruled 755-797) 29
of "translations of scripture and commentary
in the palace of Denkar, in the Tot'ang." 30
This catalogue and its
authors have been discussed by M. Lalou, who sees no reason to
doubt the date attributed to it. 31
This list of translations includes only
three works on Tara: the Spell called "Mother of Avalokitesvara,"
the 108 Names of the Goddess Tara, and Candragomin's Praises of
the Noble Tara Who Saves from A11 Great Terrors. 32
None of these works, however, can be considered of really central
importance to the cult as it later developed (the spell translated,
for example, is not a particularly significant one); and these works
seem all but buried in the list of more than 700 texts. It is thus