BuddhistRoad Paper 7.4 "Avalokiteśvara in Dunhuang and Tibet: The Development of the Bodhisattva’s Tibetan Cult (with a Study of the History of the Ma ṇi bka’ ’bum)"

The period in which the famous Tibetan cult of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Tib. sPyan ras gzigs) took shape remains disputed. Some have sought his cult’s incipience towards the end of the second millennium or even at the dusk of the Tibetan Empire (ca. 7th c. to 842, Tib. Bod chen po), while others consider it the fruit of religious developments during Tibet’s so-called later propagation of Buddhism (from the late 10th/early 11th c. onward, Tib. phyi dar). This paper illuminates the matter by studying the textual history of two highly influential early Tibetan sources concerning this bodhisattva, the Ma ṇi bka’ ’bum [Collected Works on the Maṇi (Mantra)] and the bKa’ chems ka khol ma [Pillar Testament]. Diachronic analyses of these two works are important topics in their own right, yet also illuminate the growth of the distinctively Tibetan mythology that would come to surround Avalokiteśvara. In a bid to further draw out historical developments, findings from these two sources are presented in combination with Tibetan Dunhuang (敦煌) documents and Tibetan Plateau sources from the period of the later propagation of Buddhism in Tibet. This combined survey provides a more fine-grained view of Avalokiteśvara’s unparalleled rise in Tibetan religion. In the process, the article rewrites our understanding of the history of the Collected Works on the Maṇi (Mantra), while also developing new insights into the rise to prominence of the six-syllable mantra Oṃ ma ṇi pad me hūṃ, Avalokiteśvara’s growing roles in Tibetan history, as well as his relation to Amitābha/Amitāyus.