Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

THL Title Text
Date Of Record Release: 2007-11-02 13:58:51
Title: The Importance of the Underworlds: Asuras’ Caves in Buddhism, and Some Other Themes in Early Buddhist Tantras Reminiscent of the Later Padmasambhava Legends
Language of title: English
Author/Creator: Robert Mayer
One Sentence Summary: This article surveys beliefs of asura caves as the entrances to magical underworlds, and their relation to Padmasambhava legends.

Description: Creator’s Description: the story of Padmasambhava taming
non-human females at the Asura Cave at
Pharping is well known. Much less widely known is the wider
tradition of asura’s caves as the entrances
to Pātāla, the magical underworlds of asuras and nāgas, a colorful and often eroticized and popular belief which played a
prominent role in early Indian and Chinese
Buddhist tantras. This paper surveys these now largely forgotten
beliefs, and then proceeds to raise (but not answer) the question: might further
widely attested kriyātantra themes, such as
treasure recovery, kīlas, and water magic,
have influenced the popular mythology of Padmasambhava?

Publisher: Tibetan and Himalayan Library
Normalized publisher place: Charlottesville, VA
Publisher country: United States
Publisher URL: http://www.thlib.org/
Published Date: 2007-11
URL: http://www.thlib.org/collections/texts/jiats/#jiats=/03/mayer/
Classification: Tibetan and Himalayan -- Journals -- THL-Hosted Online Journals -- JIATS -- Issue 3 (December 2007)
Tibetan and Himalayan -- Journals -- Journals Focused on Regions -- Tibet -- JIATS -- Issue 3 (December 2007)
Cultural Coverage: Tibet
Temporal coverage: 8th century CE
9th century CE
Language: English
Source URL: http://www.jiats.org/
Source: Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies
Source Editor: José Cabezón
Source Type: Journal
Source Number: 3
ISBN/ISSN: 1550-6363

Means of availability: online

Access rights: public domain
Format: Online resource
Media type: Text
Resource Type: Article
Digital Encoding: xml
Release Flag: OK for viewing
Date Of Record Creation: 2007-11-02 13:58:37
Date Record Checked: 2005-09-20
Date Last Modified: 2008-11-20 19:11:58
Cumulative Rating: this resource has a 1 star rating
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