Langberg 2016 Madison Conference Abstract

Navigating Erosion and Erasure in a Comparative Analysis of Buddhist Ritual Families (mantra kulas) in Texts and Stone Sculpture, ca. 6 th-7 th centuries CE Indian Buddhist ritual texts (ca. 6th-7th centuries CE) detail a systematization of mantra families (kulas) through which female deities gain new importance in Mahāyāna ritual and soteriological contexts. These systems consist of a minimum of three ritual families: the Buddha (headed by the Buddha Śākyamuni or Vairocana), the Lotus (headed by the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara), and the Vajra (headed by the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi). They are populated by a range of male and female deities who both effectuate practitioners' mantras and personify the physical and mental attributes of their kula leaders. The Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa, perhaps the earliest of these kula-system texts to survive in Sanskrit, characterizes the kula goddesses as female Bodhisattvas who respond to the mantras of their respective families and simultaneously work to establish beings on the path to Enlightenment. This paper focuses on the structure of a specific maṇḍala (sacred deity diagram) that encompasses all or most of these three kulas. It examines the ritual functions of a little-studied class of mantra goddesses (vidyārājñīs) including their processes of embodiment, personification, and positioning in relation to their kula leaders and male counterparts (vidyārājas). Navigating issues of erosion and absence, my analysis compares cognate forms of this early maṇḍala across mediums. Examples include: a stone relief sculpture in situ at the Pandavleni caves in Nāsik, Maharashtra (with figures missing), the sole remaining complete redaction of the Sanskrit Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa, and the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra (a text that survives only its Chinese and Tibetan translations). Therefore, within this process of text-image comparison, my study emphasizes methodological points of difficulty due to the decay or erasure of my primary source materials (including lost sections of manuscript, manuscripts no longer extant, and the wearing away of sculptural imagery).