328 karénina kollmar-paulenz
- Origin Myths
In Tibetan sources the origin of the Tibetan people and their rulers
are presented in different, sometimes contradicting myths. In the earliest
legends and myths the Tibetan people originate from the coupling of a
forest-monkey and a demoness of the rocks, a srin-mo. In some accounts
their meeting-place is supposed to be the Yarlung valley, the ancient
“heart of Tibet”, in others it is the southeastern region of Amdo. The
off-spring of the monkey and the demoness, which became the Tibetan
people, were half monkey, half human in the beginning, and thus,
being considered “wild”, had to be tamed. The myth is retold in the
Mai-bka’-’bum, a corpus of scriptures allegedly written by Srong-btsan-
sgam-po, the rst of the three so-called “dharma-kings”, but actually a
divergent corpus of texts focusing on the cult of the king as bodhisattva.
Already in the Mai-bka’-’bum the origin myth is “buddhisised”: the
monkey turns into a bodhisattva, whereas the wild demoness becomes
a cipher for the Tibetan people, who need to be converted from their
barbarian to a Buddhist way of life. In the rGyal-rabs-gsal-ba’i-me-long
the narrative goes thus:
Then rya Avalokitevara bestowed on an ape who displayed miracles
the vow of a lay-devotee and afterwards sent him to the snow-covered
realm of Tibet in order to meditate. There the ape [sat] meditating on
a black rock, and while he was meditating on benevolence, compassion
and the thought of enlightenment, and showing affection for the profound
doctrine of emptiness, a rock-demoness, tormented by [her] karman,
approached [him], and, after showing many signs of passion and desire,
went off again.^43The story carries on with the demoness begging the ape become her
husband, which the bodhisattva-monkey rst denies her, pointing to his
vow of a Buddhist lay-devotee. The demoness, however, describes
the fate which will befall Tibet if the monkey does not obey her: she
will cohabit with a male demon and the country will be inhabited
by “ogress-infants”, thus turning the land of snow “into a town of
ogresses whereafter sentient beings, wherever they are, will be devoured
by ogresses.”^44 Thereupon the monkey agrees to marry the demoness,
after consulting with Avalokitevara, who predicted
(^43) rGyal-rabs-gsal-ba-me-long, p. 49 (line 16)–p. 50 (line 3). See also Sørensen 1994,
p. 127.
(^44) Sørensen 1994, p. 128.