cult of Ta ̄ra ̄ that gives both textual and practical examples of
Ta ̄ra ̄ worship and the way in which the divine power of Ta ̄ra ̄
can be acquired.
Blonay, Godefroy de. Matériaux pour Servir à l’Histoire de la Dé-
esse Buddhique Ta ̄ra ̄. Paris, 1895.
Chandra, Lokesh. Hymns to Ta ̄ra ̄. New Delhi, 1967.
Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad, ed. Ta ̄rana ̄tha’s History of Buddhism
in India. Translated from Tibetan by Lama Chimpa and
Alaka Chattopadhyaya. Simla, India, 1970. Events related to
Ta ̄ra ̄ are discussed throughout this religious history of Bud-
dhism in India.
Ghosh, Mallar. Development of Buddhist Iconography in Eastern
India: A Study of Ta ̄ra ̄, Prajñas of Five Tatha ̄gatas and Bhakti.
New Delhi, 1980.
Kumar, Pushpendra. Ta ̄ra ̄: The Supreme Goddess. Delhi, 1992.
Mullin, Glenn H., ed. Meditations upon Arya Ta ̄ra ̄. By the First,
Fifth and Seventh Dalai Lamas. Dharamsala, 1978.
Mullin, Glenn H., ed. Six Texts Related to the Ta ̄ra ̄ Tantra. By the
First Dalai Lama. New Delhi, 1980.
Rinpoche, Zopa. Ta ̄ra ̄: The Liberator. Boston, 1993.
Rituals for the Practice of the Sarvadurgatipari ́sodhana,
Avalokite ́svarasadhana, Tarasadhana, and Usnisavijaya
Teachings. By various Masters of the Phan-po Nalendra tra-
dition. New Delhi, 1978.
Sastri, Hiranand. The Origin and Cult of Ta ̄ra ̄. New Delhi, 1977.
Sircar, Dines Chandra, ed. The S ́akti Cult and Ta ̄ra ̄. Calcutta,
- Proceedings of lectures and seminars organized by the
U.G.C. Centre of Advanced Study in the Department of An-
cient Indian History and Culture, University of Calcutta.
Contains twelve papers on S ́akti and six papers on Ta ̄ra ̄. A
useful guide to the various problems related to a study of
Ta ̄ra ̄.
Taranatha, Jo-nan-pa. History of the Ta ̄ra ̄ Cult in Tantric Bud-
dhism. Translated and edited by David Templeman.
Dharamsala, 1981.
Taranatha, Jo-nan-pa. The Origin of Ta ̄ra ̄ Tantra. Translated and
edited by David Templeman. Dharamsala, 1981.
Tromge, Jane. Red Ta ̄ra ̄ Commentary: Instructions for the Concise
Practice known as Red Ta ̄ra ̄: An Open Door to Bliss and Ulti-
mate Awareness. Junction City, Calif., 1994.
Tulku, Chagdud, trans. Red Ta ̄ra ̄: An Open Door to Bliss and Ulti-
mate Awareness. Junction City, Calif., 1991.
Wayman, Alex. “The Twenty-One Praises of Ta ̄ra ̄: A Syncretism
of Caivism and Buddhism.” Journal of Bihar Research Society
45, nos. 36–43 (1959).
Willson, Martin. In Praise of Ta ̄ra ̄: Songs to the Saviouress. Boston,
Yeshe, Lama Thubten. Cittamani Ta ̄ra ̄: A Commentary on the An-
nuttarayoga-tantra Method of Cittamani Ta ̄ra ̄. Arnstorf,
Yeshe, Lama Thubten. Cittamani Ta ̄ra ̄: An Extended Sadhana.
Translated and edited by Martin Willson. Boston, 1993.
LESLIE S. KAWAMURA (1987 AND 2005)
TARASCAN RELIGION. The Tarascan Indians,
speakers of a genetically unaffiliated language, created one of
the major empires of pre-Conquest Mexico, rivaling and suc-
cessfully repulsing the Aztec. Like the latter, they had a com-
plex religious hierarchy, a priest-king, and a developed sys-
tem of rites, myths, and religious legends. During and
following the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century,
however, more than 90 percent of these people were de-
stroyed in a holocaust of slaughter, disease, and slave labor.
In the early twenty-first century about ninety thousand Indi-
ans (about two-thirds Tarascan speaking)—surrounded by
non-Tarascans—live on in the high, cool, green Sierra Taras-
ca, where they subsist by various combinations of lumbering,
arts and crafts, fishing, farming (mainly maize), and raising
livestock. Immediate to moderately extended families are
grouped into villages of several hundred to several thousand
persons. Factional rivalries within the villages are exceeded
by the nearly ubiquitous intervillage hostilities, and both,
like the rivalries between families, are balanced by a strong
ethic of familial and communal solidarity and the integrative
function of religious ritual.
Tarascan history is still reflected in today’s religious cul-
ture. Prehistoric ritual groups such as the “moon maidens”
and mythical symbols such as deer masks and “the tigers” fig-
ure in the fiestas. But the main historic source of Tarascan
religion is Spain of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—
evident not only in “the Moors” and other ritual actors in
Tarascan religious fiestas but also in the dogmatically simple
focus on Saint Francis and the holy family brought to them
by Franciscan missionaries, notably the great humanist Don
Vasco de Quiroga. Tarascan religious practice, whatever its
sources, is marked by aesthetic integration, perhaps above all
in the music of its many bands, and the diagnostic Dance
of the Little Old Men (hunched, red-masked figures who al-
ternate between hobbling on canes and jigging with adoles-
cent energy).
A major axis of Tarascan religion lies in individual rites
of passage. Baptism, ideally, takes place a week after birth:
A man and a woman, usually spouses, become the child’s
godparents and, more important, the ritual co-parents
(Span., compadre; Tarascan, kúmpa) of the child’s parents.
At two or three subsequent rites, notably that of confirma-
tion, the parents acquire additional but less valued compadres
who, in particular, help with obligations in religious ritual.
The major individual rite, the wedding, includes a ceremony
in a Roman Catholic church and a great deal of folk religious
ritual—conspicuously the climactic and widespread kúpera
dance between the couple and their siblings and cousins,
who successively dance up to each other, exchange drinks,
and lightly scratch each others’ faces with rose thorns. This
wedding also invokes and creates ties of ritual kinship (kin-
ship and religious ritual are largely thought of and acted out
in terms of each other). Death is celebrated by a night-long
wake, with much drinking, and a funeral procession through
the entire village. (If the deceased was an infant or a child,
the body is borne on a table.)
The main way the Tarascan relates to the supernatural,
however (aside from individual sorcery and witchcraft), isTARASCAN RELIGION 9001