The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP
the same author quotes the poet-saint Mila repa as saying: "Because
a demon had penetrated the heart of Tibet, the venerable
master Atlsa was not allowed to preach the Diamond Vehicle." 44
In any event, the result of this proscription, imposed to prevent
misunderstanding and spiritual malpractice, was that scriptural
authority for the cult of Green Tara (as opposed to the personal
authority of Atlsa) worked its way piecemeal into Tibet only gradually
over the next hundred years, as the original puritan impulse
wore off; and, indeed, "it was not until later that, from among the
disciples of the great magician RatnakaraSanti, the reverend Jonangpa
[i.e., Taranatha, born in 1575] 45
diffused these Tantras
widely here in Tibet, and he alone." 48
The second half of the eleventh century did see an efflorescence of
interest in Tara, much of it due to the direct personal influence of the
"venerable master." Darmadra, the Translator of Nyen, brought
back from India traditions concerning what was to become the
single most important canonical text of the Tara cult, the Homages
to the Twenty-one Taras;" it is not clear whether he himself translated
this text into Tibetan, since the Kajur catalogue gives no
translator, but in Dragpa jets'en's commentary on the text, published
a hundred years later, Darmadra is given credit for the translation.
48
Meanwhile, Rinch'endra, the Translator of Bari (born
1040), was translating texts on Tara; he had met Atlsa when he was
only fifteen, 49
and he too seems to have fallen under the spell of the
master's devotion; when he took over the see of Sacha after the
death of its founder K'on Konch'og jepo in 1102 he brought with
him an image of the goddess. 50
There was thus a flourishing tradition
of Tara at Sacha Monastery by the time Dragpa jets'en (1147-
1216) 51
became abbot in 1172, and he himself was the author of no
fewer than thirteen works on the cult of the goddess. 52
About the
same time, in the late twelfth century, Ch'ochi zangpo helped
translate another central text of the cult, the Tantra Which is the
Source for All the Functions of Tara, Mother of All the Talhagatas. M
A century and a half later, when the Red Annals were written,
Tara had become indisputably the mother of the Tibetan people.
THE SECTS
The cult of Tara, reintroduced into Tibet during the later spread
of the Law, did not become the exclusive property of any of the
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