Fearless Dawn, Bloodless Demon: literary and iconographic manifestations of a little-known Bonpo protector
Résumé
According to histories of the Sakyapa (Sa skya pa) school of Tibetan Buddhism, the name of the founding family, Khon (’Khon) is dervived from a dispute (Tib. ’khon) over a woman. The woman is named Yadrum Silima (g.Ya’ ’brum Si li ma) and the two rivals are Yapangkye (g.Ya’ spang skyes), the ancestor of Khon line, and a demon named Kyareng Trakme. For Giuseppe Tucci, the protagonists represent the crucial elements of a medical myth: Yadrum Silima stands for smallpox; Yapang, verdigris, a treatment for the disease; and Kyareng Trakme – “pale, stiff, bloodless” – represents death. The same trio appear in certain divination tables recently published by Alexander Smith. The present article focuses on the least-known member of the triad: the demon Kyareng Trakme. Although he seems not to appear in Buddhist sources outside the Sakyapa histories, he does feature in Bonpo works from Amdo and, especially, Mustang, where he is still worshipped as a territorial divinity of some importance.
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