 Good evening, and welcome. Welcome to SOS. Lucia Dorcham, the child of the Center of Buddhist Studies here at SOS. And I'm delighted to welcome you to the second of this academic year, Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation lecture series in Chinese Buddhism. I'll say a few words about the series. For those of you who have not followed us, we are now in our fourth slash fifth year. We had a bit of a slowdown with the lockdown. I went a bit online. But normally, we have three lectures every year. And these lectures are looking at Buddhism from different, Buddhism in China, from different perspectives, from the intellectual history, history, visual, material, cultural history, and contemporaries. So the series is meant to let us think or learn about Chinese Buddhism in a non-sectarian way through different methodologies and having insights from different fields of inquiry. And we also have, this is a kind of double bill. We have a public lecture tonight. And then tomorrow morning, we'll have an extended seminar for post-graded students and colleagues, hopefully. We always take advantage of the presence in London of a leading scholar in the field to offer some more training to our post-graded students. So please do also take into account the seminar tomorrow. I know that many have registered already. So I'd like to thank publicly the Robert HNO Family Foundation for giving us the opportunity to come together and to reflect, to learn about Chinese Buddhism. Now it's my great pleasure to introduce the speaker tonight, Dr. Megan Brason from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, I think. Dr. Brason is associate professor at Tennessee and also associate head of religious studies. Her research gives us really the opportunity to look at Chinese Buddhism from the borders, if I can say so, looking at what happens, the way in which what we call Chinese Buddhism, or maybe we should call it sign language Buddhism, transforms and how it relates with other cultural areas at the border of what is the main Chinese area. In her case, she has been working on the Dalai kingdom. So it is today the province of Yunnan. And her research has been really crucial to highlight intersections, both of material across cultural area, not only the Dalai kingdom, Yunnan and the main Chinese kingdom, but also between China and India and Tibet and Southeast Asia. So bridging also barriers that are often linguistic. Her first work, her dissertation has become her first monograph. Entitled, sorry, I'm very bad with titles, goodness on the frontier, religion, ethnicity, and gender in Southwest China that has come out from Stanford University Press in 2016, follows a local deity in her transformation in Dalai Buddhism. But by doing that, she also traces a number of other deities that are important in the area, that are important across different regions, which is very important for us, Mahakala as well. And as many of my students in past years have benefited and take advantage of her specific studies on Mahakala in East Asia. That is a very understudied subject. I was saying that Dr. Bryson's research crosses the borders, but also crosses into methodological borders, since her work looks at both textual material, material culture, and she has an extensive fieldwork when it was possible in the area. So also ethnographic material that follows the topic of her attention in this case, for instance, of the deity, Bheja, up to the 21st century. We will hear more about her research on the ritual text, especially the ritual text in Dalai Kingdom tomorrow in the seminar. And this will be really interesting for those of us who are interested in esoteric Buddhism, since these texts are using esoteric patterns. And this is also very interesting to see them in relation to some period of Chinese Buddhism that is very often depicted as not being interested in esoteric Buddhism. But tonight, she's going to talk to us about a different topic, which is a part of her current project that continues both methodologically and in terms of attention to the Dalai Kingdom previous work and looks at, well, plans to look at Buddhist material culture along the southern Silk Road. So going, again, from the transformation or maybe the relation, the links, that specific objects have across much of Asia. So without further ado, I think I should leave the floor to Dr. Bryson. So please join me to welcome Megan Bryson on the stage here to speak about Dali's daggers with this material culture on the southern Silk Road. Thank you. I'd like to start by thanking the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation for sponsoring this lecture series. I'd also like to thank everyone at SOAS, especially Stefania Trevagnian and Lucia Dolce for inviting me to speak and organizing this visit. And thank you to all of you for attending. I hope it proves worthy of your time and attention. In 1925, an earthquake struck the Dali region of Southwest China's Yunnan province, shaking loose the spire atop Thousand League Pagoda and sending a few of the Pagoda's Buddhist figures tumbling to the ground. Over 50 years later, in 1978, a team of archaeologists embarked on a restoration of the Pagoda, whereupon they discovered a cache of treasures inside. Thousand League Pagoda was sealed shortly after the fall of the Dali kingdom, and the Pagoda's cache constitutes the treasures of the Dali court. Several small daggers number among the hundreds of items recovered from the Pagoda. The few scholars who have written about these daggers recognize them as variations on the pegs or daggers known as Kila in Sanskrit and Proba in Tibetan. Most surviving Proba hail from Tibetan and Nepalese regions and date to the 14th century at the earliest. So this means that the Dali daggers would be among the oldest, if not the oldest, extant examples of these ritual objects. Dali daggers share many similarities with their Himalayan counterparts. They are bifurcated into a bottom half that consists of a three-faceted blade and a top half that displays the torso and head of a deity, often with three faces. They also have lotus and vasra decorations. They use similar, if not identical, materials. Most Dali daggers are made of gilt bronze or copper, but there is at least one example made of iron. Most Himalayan Proba are made of iron or wood, but there are also examples made of bronze, copper, steel, or other metal alloys. However, Dali daggers differ in several ways as well. First, they lack several features of Himalayan Proba, including the handle usually with eight facets, separating the blade from any deity image at the top. The two endless knots that often bookend the handle, the makara head from whose mouth the blade extends, and the serpents snaking down the sides of the blade. Second, Dali daggers have a feature that Himalayan Proba lack, namely they all have a ring affixed to the back. Third, the Dali daggers show greater consistency, whereas Himalayan Proba can range in size from small handheld objects to large fixed objects of worship, can appear with or without deity heads, and can include different combinations of vajras, lotus blossoms, and knots. There are essentially two kinds of Dali daggers. Those that resemble Proba in having a single triangular blade, and those that resemble single-pronged vajras in having two blades joined at the center. The former all include deities, most of which are making a mudra. All join the blade to the deity image with a lotus blossom aferral, and most feature a five-pronged vajra atop the deity's head. The latter's two blades can take slightly different shapes, and the center can include a deity's head or heads. They bear more similarities to the single-pronged vajras that survive from medieval Japan than to Himalayan Proba. This talk examines the Dali daggers to determine their routes of transmission and to better understand the Southwestern silk roads that connected Dali to its neighbors. Given that the Dali kingdom bordered Song China, Daiviet, Bagan, and Kham with Pala territory just beyond Bagan, it had many possibilities for Buddhist transmission. The historian Beinyang has shown that key goods such as cow ratios, horses, silver, and tea traveled to and from Yunnan along these silk roads. One such route connected Chengdu to Dali, and then to Bagan, Pala India, and Peshawar, where it joined the Northern Silk Road from Central Asia. Another route, often called the Old Tea and Horse Route, Chamagudao, linked Dali north to Lijiang, Gyotang, Dechenzong, and Lhasa, and South to Daiviet, and the Khmer Empire. Considering Dali kingdom daggers, alongside Tibetan Proba, and Japanese single-pronged vajras, and in relation to texts from South Asia, Tibet, and East Asia, will demonstrate how Dali court Buddhists encountered and developed these distinctive daggers along these Southern Silk Roads. In addition, the Dali daggers show the critical importance of material culture for understanding Buddhist transmission. Dali kingdom Buddhist texts, written as they are, mainly in synodic script, strongly suggest transmission from Tang through Song territory, but surviving objects and images from the Dali kingdom point to other kinds of encounters. Unsurprisingly, most scholarship on daggers focuses on Himalayan texts and objects, which constitute the vast majority of material related to this subject. Purba ritual remains an important part of Himalayan Buddhism, and textual scholars and art historians alike have weighed in on the development of Himalayan Purba traditions. Some scholars have argued that Purba are uniquely Himalayan creations that drew inspiration from index sources, while other scholars argue that Himalayan Purba were in fact based on Indic models. The former argument relies on the absence of surviving Kila ritual texts and objects from South Asia, but as Robert Mayer notes, Purba texts and objects from Tibet show remarkable continuity with Sanskrit materials on Kila. And earlier East Asian translations of Indic texts describe Kila in similar ways. This suggests that the daggers shared South Asian roots that then branched off at different times in different regions. Earlier material spread to East Asia, where it mainly lived on as the single Prangdvaja, and slightly later material ended up in the Himalayas and Dunhuang. The transmission of Buddhism to Dali lies between these two branches, both temporally and geographically, so the Dali daggers may constitute a missing link of sorts. To understand the significance of Dali daggers within this range of objects and texts, I will first discuss texts and objects related to Kila in South Asia, then Purba in the Himalayas, and then writings and objects from East Asia before turning to Dali and locating the Dali daggers along the Southern Silk Road. South Asian writings on Kila can be traced to the Vedas in which the divine warrior King Indra lays the serpent Vritra and pierces the floating mound of earth, releasing living beings and fixing the earth in place. Later, Puranic literature refers to this primordial mountain as Indra's peg, Indra Kila, and identifies it as Mount Mandara, which in the Mahabharata is the mountain the gods used to churn the ocean and extract the ambrosia of immortality with the help of the serpent Vasuki as the churning rope. The Kila or Indra Kila symbolizes the axis Mundi and specifically the meeting of mountain and water with serpents playing integral roles. This symbolism relates to the architectural function of Kila and Indra Kila as a stabilizing vertical axis akin to the mountain through which Indra stabilized the earth. Treatises on iconography and architecture describe multiple kinds of Kila. Lily De Silva notes that in Indra Kila was the peg or bolt around which artists carved images of deities and she noted that the Indra Kila became identified with deities and served as an object of worship itself. Mayer cites prescriptions for the use of Kila in the serpent binding rite that evokes Indra's defeat of Vritra. Before construction can commence, the Naga of the site must be found and stabilized with a Kila made of Kadira wood to prevent disturbances. As construction ended, another peg or nail known as the Stoopi Kila was installed at the top of the structure directly above the Kila used to begin construction. The seventh century architectural treatise, Manasara, gives the following instructions for the shape of the Stoopi Kila which should be made of wood, preferably Kadira or iron. I've highlighted the relevant parts of this description for thinking about the material objects. So these two Kila form an axis within the structure that mirrors the cosmic axis Mundi. In addition to serving as cosmic axes, Kila also demarcated and protected designated spaces including the funeral pyre, mandala or field. De Silva and Mayer further relate these Kila to the Vedic sacrificial post Yupa that served similar functions as a vertical axis and which also relates to the later sacrificial practices associated with the Himalayan Prabha, knotted ropes tied sacrificial animals to the octagonal Yupas which were to be made of Kadira wood. South Asian Buddhists incorporated these Kila and Yupa features into their own cosmology and architecture but with a twist. Instead of Mount Mandara, the Buddhist axial mountain of Meru became identified with the Indra Kila. Many of the written descriptions of Kila and Yupa appear in Himalayan Prabha including the symbolic connections to Nagas and water, the octagonal shape and ties to knots and the roles of demarcating and protecting ritual spaces. In addition to Kila ritual objects, the deity Vajrakila likely arose in South Asian Buddhism before being incorporated into Himalayan and to a lesser extent East Asian Buddhism. Vajrakila embodies the Kila's power and later Himalayan tradition presents the God as the daggers animating presence. Cantwell and Mayer point to Vajrakila statues in Bengal and Java as evidence for the gods called outside the Himalayas but they note that Vajrakila remained a subsidiary figure in South Asian Buddhism. Other deities associated with the Kila or Prabha share this trajectory. Vajrakumara, Amrita Kundalini, Hayagriva and Mahakala all started out as relatively minor figures that had been converted to Buddhism from Hinduism but around the late 10th century, Buddhist texts and images begin to depict them as more central deities. The many references to Kila in South Asian texts indicate that these pegs or daggers played critical and widespread roles in religious ritual from demarcating protected space to stabilizing architectural structures to pinning down potentially harmful forces. Despite this apparent ubiquity, no examples of such Kila have survived. Perhaps Himalayan Prabha developed as increasingly ornate ritual objects based on much simpler South Asian precedents that were not preserved. By the seventh and eighth centuries, Kila were well-attested in South Asian Sanskrit texts even though none have been discovered in the material record. A similar dynamic continues as Buddhists from the Himalayas translated texts related to these Kila known as Prabha or Prabhu in Tibetan. Though these texts date to early periods of Himalayan Buddhism, the oldest extant daggers from these regions of which I am aware only date to the 14th century. An overview of early Tibetan Prabha ritual texts and the Himalayan Prabha objects will raise various possibilities for making sense of the relationship between text and object. Kathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer have pioneered the study of early Tibetan Prabha texts in their investigation of Dunhuang manuscripts on this topic as well as received texts in the Nyingma Canon, including the Guhyasamaja Sutra. Sorry, Tantra. They date the Dunhuang manuscripts to the late 10th to early 11th centuries. Given the post-1300 dates of most Prabha texts and objects, these pre-1300 sources are particularly valuable for showing how Tibetan Prabha practices took shape. As Cantwell and Mayer demonstrate, early Prabha texts do bridge the textual references from South Asian sources, the physical Prabha from the Himalayas, and representations of deities related to the Prabha, especially Vajrakila, aka Dorje Prabha. Nyingma tradition classifies Prabha texts in the Mahayoga category. Cantwell and Mayer connect the rise of Mahayoga texts in 8th century Tibet to the myth of taming Rudra, which justifies tantric violence. In this myth, the violent God Rudra, an emanation of Shiva, cannot be tamed peacefully, so the Buddhist deity Haruka kills him and then brings him back to life as a protector of the Dharma. Two early texts from the Nyingma old tantric canon structure the Prabha right around this narrative, such that Prabha become the instrument of liberative killing. Liberative killing justifies violence by framing it as an ultimately compassionate act that transforms ignorance into awakening. In the Prabha right, the effigy is Rudra, and the Prabha itself is Haruka or Vajrakila or a double such as Vajrakumara. By using the Haruka Prabha to kill Rudra, the practitioner effects Rudra's liberation. These early Nyingma texts overlap with some of the Prabha texts found at Dunhuang. The earliest text on Prabha is the late 10th century Dunhuang manuscript, Peleotibetan 44. This short text recounts how Padmasambhava and his disciples journeyed from Nepal to Nalanda to retrieve a Prabha text. Their journeys between Nepal and Nalanda involved the subjugation of four goddesses and a vision of the god Vajrakumara. The text also includes practices to affect awareness of non-duality, which is achieved specifically by rolling the Purba between one's palms and performing the following visualization, which I've included on this slide with some of the key characteristics in red. As Kentwell and Mayer observe, this text connects to later Purba texts and objects in several ways. It presents Vajrakumara as the main deity associated with Purba and further associates the Purba with the class of Haruka deities. It identifies the Purba with Mount Meru, describes the practice of rolling the Purba in one's palms, and hints at several features of Himalayan Purba objects, such as the two knots and eight spokes. Additional Dunhuang Purba manuscripts expand on these themes, especially in describing the ritual of using Purba for liberative killing. For example, the text titled Supreme Pacification, the Concise and Light and Activity of Transference, prescribes Purba rights to pacify those who cannot be subjugated through nonviolent methods. I'll briefly present the sections that relate to the appearance and ritual functions of the Purba. So first, the text prescribes the materials and features of the Purba object. It should be made of iron, five other kinds of metal, sandalwood or thorny wood, eight to 12 inches in length, should have two one-inch knots. The upper part should have eight facets, the lower part a three-sided blade, and the Purba should be imposing like Mount Meru. In another section, the text identifies five deities emanating from the syllable whom at the daggers tip. Heruka in the center, Trilokia Vijaya in the east, Yomantika in the south, Hayagriva in the west, and Mahakala in the north. These deities will be important when we eventually arrive in Dali. After reciting these deities mantras and making Samaya offerings to them, the practitioner realizes non-duality. The text also describes the Purba deity. Above the waist, his hair stands on end, his three eyes glare, and he bears his fangs. Skulls and snakes adorn him and cremation fire engulfs him. His forearms hold an axe, katvango or skull staff, Vajra and Purba. Below the waist, his body is a dark blue, three-sided iron Purba. As we will see, this image appears in some of the earliest known Himalayan Purba, and it also happens to resemble the Dali daggers. Lastly, this text prescribes a few different ritual uses for Purba. The practitioner establishes and protects the ritual space using ten Purba that are consecrated as ten wrathful deities. Then the practitioner creates a triangular mandala in an appropriate place, such as a cemetery, and makes an effigy using human ashes or black sesame. The practitioner summons the ritual's target into the effigy, rolls the Purba between their palms, and then pierces the effigy's heart, shoulder, thighs, and navel while reciting the Vajra Klam mantra. Purba texts continue to proliferate in Tibetan Buddhism. Though treated with some suspicion in one late 11th century polemic, the Shakya school adopted Purba ritual, and as Martin J. Board has shown, it became a particularly important focus for the later Northern treasure lineage of Turma texts. Running parallel to but slightly later than the proliferation of Purba ritual texts is the proliferation of Purba ritual objects. Though some scholars previously identified these daggers as bone creations indigenous to Tibet, the wealth of textual evidence uncovered by Cantwell and Mayer suggests indict precedence. John Huntington's 1975 study, the cataloged different types of Purba from different regions, remains a valuable starting point for considering the relationship between these objects and the texts that describe them. Most of the examples Huntington discusses are much later than the period under consideration here, but there are hints of temporal and regional variations that may shed light on the distinctive daggers of the Dali kingdom. The standard handheld Purba type features three blades in a Y shape on the bottom that emerge from a Makara's mouth and taper into a point with serpent decorations, a handle that usually consists of two endless knots on either side of an octagonal shaft, and on top, the head of the deity Dorje Purba, aka Vajrakila, that has three faces and may also have a Vajra sticking up from the crown. Variations on this theme include lotus blossoms and or Vajra pestles forming the handle, garuda bird mounts, or the handle being replaced entirely by the upper half of a deity's body. The latter style in which the top half of the Purba is the top half of the deity's body conforms most closely to the style of the Dali daggers. The first example Huntington gives of this style also happened to be the earliest example of which he was aware. A sandalwood dagger, about 22 centimeters long, probably dating to the 14th century or earlier, with an image of the deity Purba in the Kashmiri Tibetan style of that period. Huntington deduces that the Purba came from Western Tibet near Ladakh. The deity has three faces and originally had six arms, though they have broken off. He has serpent adornments and his head is topped with an endless knot. This Purba is especially noteworthy for its rounded blunt blade and the lack of a makara or any other decorated ferrule separating the blade from the deity's torso. These features also appear in some Dali kingdom daggers suggesting a shared earlier style. Huntington observed that this Purba's blade has a line demarcating its lowest section from the rest, which indicated that the lower part of the blade rested in a holder, protecting it from incense smoke. This particular Purba recalls the description of the deity Purba in the Supreme Pacification, which was bifurcated into the dagger-shaped lower body and the rathful deity upper body. A broader point emerges from the regional characteristics of Nepalese Purba, which distinguished them from the Tibetan examples. For example, Purba from Nepal featured different deities, namely the god Vishvarupa Sambra and or his consort Papa Gandavi. Huntington observes that Nepalese art preserved the iconographic conventions of 8th to 9th century Magadha, which suggests that this style with a deity torso or body above the blade represents an early form of these objects. As Amy Heller and Thomas Marcotti have noted, Purba in this style cannot be used for most Purba ritual because their shape and decorations inhibit rolling between the palms. Instead, these deity Purba would have been objects of worship that usually stood in a base or socket. A similar kind of regional Purba tradition may have developed in Dalai, which would have been further removed from the textual bonds linking India to that in Nepal. The diverse kinds of Purba from different regions indicate that while many Purba objects were made according to the specifications of Tibetan Buddhist texts, there were also many Purba that diverged from at least some of those textual descriptions. This same question of how people in different regions translated text Purba into material Purba also arises in the East Asian context where Buddhist translators, ritual practitioners, and artists had to figure out what to do with the term Kila. Around the time a Buddhism was introduced to Tibet, monks from India and Central Asia began transmitting the scriptures of Tantric or esoteric Buddhism to Tang China where monastic teams translated them into synodic script and wrote commentaries on them. During the Song dynasty, monks from South Asia continued the project of translating Tantric Buddhist texts into synodic script, although ultimately on a smaller scale. Monks from Nara through Heian Japan and the Korean Peninsula brought these Tang dynasty translations home and wrote their own commentaries. Japanese records also show that the monks Kukai and Engyo brought back the ritual objects labeled Vajra stakes. Another term translators used for these objects was single-pronged pestle. Translators additionally transliterated the name of the deity, usually as dili jilua kilikila, and retained the Sanskrit mantras for using the kila and honoring Vajra kila. The initial set of Buddhist texts that mentioned kila were translated in the Tang dynasty, and they include texts dedicated to deities such as Hayagriva, Vajra Kumara, and Amrita Kundalini, which are also associated with Purva ritual. Tang texts call for using the kila to demarcate and protect ritual space and to actively neutralize harmful forces. For example, the Sussidikara Sutra, whose translation was supervised by Shubhakara Simha, lists the Vajra stake as a method for protecting the ritual area. It later gives the Vajra stake mantra and the rathful kilikila mantra, which I've included here. The Sussidikara Sutra also explains how to make and empower these objects. So using kadira wood, make four stakes, one, two, finger, hand span in size, sharpen one end like a single-pronged Vajra pestle, rub the stakes with red sandalwood unguant, and then tie a dark red string around them. Using the Vajra stake seal, hold them with a clenched fist, montrify them with a mantra for the Vajra stake 100 times, and drive them into the four corners with a tip of the stake slightly visible. In the next chapter on Retrieving Stolen Ritual Items, the text presents Vajra stakes as more active ritual tools rather than passive boundary markers and protectors. The practitioner is to make a wax effigy of the thief and then flog the effigy with a stick and broil it with fire, beat it in various violent ways, stab its limbs with modern thorns in accordance with the right for Vajra stakes, rub salt mixed with black mustard oil all over its body, and torment it and inflict injury on it as you please. We also find three entries related to Keela in the Tangmeng Huilin's reference work Sounds and Meaning of All Scriptures. These entries show how people in Tang China translated and understood these objects. The entry for Like Nailing a Stake defines this term as peg and identifies the materials that should be used in its creation. We also learn of a counterfeit stake that was produced during the time of the female emperor Wu, which may have cast a pall over these objects. The next entries, single prong and single pronged pestle, are self-explanatory. Huilin's entries demonstrate an understanding of the Vajra stake as a wooden or metal implement used for nailing and the related single pronged pestle as a Vajra pestle with only one spike rather than the common configuration of three or five spikes. Moreover, these entries, along with other Tang sources, suggest that translators were not aware of texts or objects related to the three-bladed Keela with an octagonal shaft as described in Sanskrit sources and rendered in later Himalayan Buddhism. However, Buddhist translation work continued in the Song dynasty when Himalayan probatex had begun to circulate. Song translations also engaged with the more transgressive content that was developing in South Asian Tantra. For the Keela, this meant expanding into more transgressive substances and purposes. Dona Pala's translation Rituals for Accomplishing the Great Brilliance of Vajra Incense Bodhisattva illustrates this shift. The scripture is framed as Vajrapani's request that the Buddha teach methods to neutralize the various rakshasas or demons terrorizing the world. In response, the Buddha adopts a wrathful form and teaches the mantra of Vajra Incense Bodhisattva as well as various rituals for attaining siddhi. And this is the passage related to making the Vajra Steak or Keela, which prescribes the use of human bone and human blood, and then using the stake to beat Maheshpura's head and step on the god Maheshpura. So this passage introduces two new developments to synodic texts related to Keela. So first, it prescribes the use of human bone and blood, which aligns with the increasingly transgressive content of the later tantras. And second, the ritual for driving away the enemy invokes the myth of Heruka defeating Rudra, aka Maheshpura. However, despite these textual shifts that brought east Asian understandings of Keela closer to contemporaneous South Asian and Himalayan traditions, there is no indication that Song Dynasty Buddhist transmissions also included Keela or Purva as physical objects. Therefore, the material culture of Vajra Steaks or single-pronged pestles in East Asia looks very different than the Himalayan Purva. Evidence of this material culture mainly survives from medieval Japan, but those references to Vajra Steaks in Kukai and Angyo's catalogs indicate that these objects were used in Tang China as well. Iconographic manuals from medieval Japan include illustrations of stakes and single-pronged pestles that show the conflation of these objects. For example, the 12th century Kakusen's notes depicts in its stake image a symmetrical object with a handle from which two blades extend on either side. A very similar image appears as a single prong in the great compassionate womb realm Samaya mandala images from Ishiyama Dera. Several examples of these objects have survived with the oldest dating to the Heian period. A single, sorry, a gilt bronze single-pronged Vajra from the late 12th century is almost identical to the illustration in Kakusen's notes. The center of its handle bulges out slightly and is divided into four rounded sections, each with a double ring in the center. On each side of this are two sets of lotus blossoms that each touch at their base. The short four-sided bases of the Vajra's blades extend from these lotuses. The blades also have four sides, but each side has a ridge in the middle, giving the impression of an eight-sided blade. This overview of East Asian Vajra stakes and single-pronged Vajra pestles illustrates how a shared textual tradition can generate very different material culture. In East Asia, the translations of Kila into synodic script and descriptions of the objects led people to understand them as single-pronged Vajra pestles rather than triangular stakes. East Asian Buddhists treated these single-pronged Vajra pestles as valuable ritual objects along the model of the multi-pronged Vajra pestles that survive in much greater numbers. So having examined the trajectories of the Kila in the material and textual Buddhist culture of the Himalayas and East Asia, I now turn to the central question of this talk, namely, how do Dali kingdom daggers further illuminate the transmission of material culture along the silk roads? The Dali kingdom pagoda cash preserves both daggers that resemble Purba and those that resemble the single-pronged Vajras of East Asia. It thus suggests a point of contact between the two trajectories considered thus far. The Dali kingdom ruled a large swath of land that encompassed all of present-day Yunnan province, parts of Sichuan and Guizhou provinces, and parts of Burma and Laos. Understanding the Dali kingdom, including its distinctive form of Buddhism and its routes of transmission, requires first understanding a little bit about the history and religion of the preceding Nanjiao kingdom. The Hmong rulers of Nanjiao proved particularly adept at expanding their territory by alternating allegiances to the larger empires on their border, Tang China and Tibet. After allying with Tang China to help curb Tibet's southwestern encroachment, Nanjiao broke with Tang to ally with Tibet in 752. Then in 794, tired of Tibet's demands, Nanjiao reinstated its alliance with Tang China. However, this alliance remained fragile as the 9th century saw frequent Nanjiao raids on Tang cities in Sichuan and attacks on Tang interests in Annam in present-day Vietnam. Nanjiao expansion in the 9th century coincided with its rulers' adoption of Buddhism. Among the large-scale Buddhist projects of the 9th century were the grotto carvings at Stone Treasure Mountain to the northwest of the Dali plain, the temple for revering the Holy One in the Nanjiao capital, the temple's Thousand League Pagoda, and the 899 illustrated history of Nanjiao that recounts in text and images how the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara introduced Buddhism to the region. One of the patterns we see in the illustrated history that continues into the Dali kingdom is the combination of synodic script, including references to Chinese classics, images of Avalokiteshvara that draw an Indian and Southeast Asian iconography and esoteric Buddhism. Despite Nanjiao's decades-long alliance with Tibet, there are few Tibetan records about Nanjiao, and no Tibetan language materials have been found from either Nanjiao or the Dali kingdom. Avalokiteshvara devotion, esoteric Buddhism, and this combination of synodic script and Indian iconography continued into the Dali kingdom, which was ruled by the Duan family who had served as high-ranking officials under Nanjiao. The Duan rulers, like their late Nanjiao counterparts, claimed the title of emperor, Huang Di. While Nanjiao claims of imperial status had provoked Tong wrath, the Song court adopted a policy of non-engagement with Dali due to the Tong quagmire in the southwest. However, after northern channels for acquiring horses were cut off by the mid-12th century, the Song court looked to Dali for its horses. In exchange, the Dali court requested books, including Buddhist scriptures. Overall, there are fewer Song records about Dali than there are Tong records about Nanjiao. However, more materials survive from the Dali kingdom than from the Nanjiao kingdom, and most of these surviving materials are Buddhist. This makes Buddhism the best documented facet of Dali kingdom culture. Buddhist materials include architectural structures, stone carvings, paintings, manuscripts, and ritual objects and statues. Most of the latter two categories were recovered from Pagodas and temples in or near the Dali capital. The texts consist of 33 manuscripts from the capitals Buddha Pagoda, as well as Dharma Treasury Temple, the family temple of the Dong clan, who served as national preceptors under the Dali kingdom. Most of these texts are Tong dynasty synodic translations of popular Buddhist scriptures such as the Lotus Sutra, Flower Garland Sutra, and Diamond Sutra. Dali kingdom Buddhists like their counterparts elsewhere in East Asia used Sanskrit for Darani and Mantras, but not much else. Also like their Song dynasty counterparts, Dali kingdom Buddhists used Nagari script rather than the earlier Siddham. A Nagari syllabary survives from Dharma Treasury Temple, and Nagari is used for Darani, Mantras, and Bijja. Some texts include unknown characters for notations and commentary. While some scholars identify this as a written form of the bi-language, these characters will require further study to fully decipher. What sets Dali kingdom Buddhist texts apart are the six ritual texts and one sub-commentary from the Dharma Treasury Temple cache that have not been found elsewhere. The sub-commentary concerns Omogavajra's Prajnaparamita scripture for humane kings to protect their countries. Of the six ritual texts, two focus on food distribution. Two offer esoteric rituals for inviting various deities. One is a sadhana text devoted to the god Mahakala. And one is an extended Homa consecration ritual text that centers on Vajrasattva. Though more research is needed on these seven texts, it is apparent that most of them draw from genres and texts in Tang through Song China, such as water and land food distribution rituals and many translations by Omogavajra. However, they also contain references to deities or forms of deities that were not part of Tang through Song Buddhism or which only played peripheral roles there, such as the god Mahakala. Dali kingdom texts also use Sanskrit dharani that do not seem to appear elsewhere and they use distinctive synodic translations and transliterations of Sanskrit terms, including Kila. Kila are mentioned in two Dali kingdom manuscripts, invitation ritual procedures for general use and ritual procedures for inviting Buddha's bodhisattvas, Vajra beings, et cetera. Both texts translate Kila as single tooth, duchi, suggesting a different route of transmission for this material than Tang through Song China. Though both ritual manuals draw directly from several Tang texts they probably incorporated other kinds of sources as well. For example, Kawasaki Kazuhiro has argued that parts of ritual procedures for inviting Buddha's bodhisattvas, Vajra beings, et cetera, drew from the Mahajala tantras. Single tooth only appears once in invitation ritual procedures for general use at the very end of the main ritual text. After receiving consecration from the Buddhas, the practitioner next circumambulates the various protectors, including the three Vajra beings, Heruka, mighty strength or Mahabala, and single tooth, Kila. Afterward, the practitioner snaps their fingers three times. This reference, brief, though it may be, shows connections to Heruka and Mahabala's roles in Himalayan Prabha ritual. Similar connections appear in ritual procedures for inviting Buddha's bodhisattvas, Vajra beings, et cetera, which is a long compendium of rituals to invite a variety of powerful beings. Ritual procedures for inviting Buddha's bodhisattvas, Vajra beings, et cetera, prescribes the single tooth mantra and mudra 31 times across several of its sections. In three places, the text gives versions of the following mantra in synodic transcription and or nagari script, which indicates a common source with the tongue translations that render the mantra in similar ways but with different synodic characters when it's transliterated. These variations in the synodic characters and translation suggest that Dalai kingdom Buddhists were working with either alternative synodic translations or from manuscripts in other languages. One of the sections of the invitation ritual's text that includes the Kili Kili Mantra is dedicated to the white Vajra. This section also includes the texts only use of the character stake in the name humkara stake, one of the deities of a white Vajra's mandala. As we see in the full translation of this passage, humkara's stake happens to appear alongside the gods Vajra Heruka and Vajra Kundali on a triangular mandala. Triangular mandalas are commonly used in Tibetan proba rites, which describe them as prisons for the harmful forces targeted in the ritual. The Dalai kingdom ritual text does not explicitly state this, but it does describe the triangular altar as follows. In the center of the mandala draw three skulls, each encircled by a red serpent. Next, a gold wheel encircles these. Next, three corpses form a triangle that connects around the wheel and skulls with three black-topped gates. On the main side in front of the throne draw a white syllable om. This is Heruka Vajra who controls living beings greed. Next, inside the left gate draw a blue-black syllable om. This is humkara Vajra above who controls living beings anger. Next, inside the right gate draw a red syllable ah. This is Kundali Vajra below who controls living beings ignorance. The ensuing ritual calls for the practitioner to manifest greed, anger, and ignorance to first identify as these three Vajra beings and then to transform the three poisons into awareness of true emptiness. As such, it aligns with many of the themes in Tibetan proba ritual. The manuscript even includes an illustration of this triangular mandala, which is extremely rare. This text only includes one other illustration. This material from the white Vajra mandala is highly significant. First, this mandala ties the invitation rituals manuscript to the 1170s painting of Buddhist images, as we will see shortly. Second, this section includes a triangular mandala that is both described and illustrated in the ritual text. Third, this mandala relates to deities such as Heruka and Amrita Kundalini that are tied to the proba in Tibetan texts. It thus does not seem to be a coincidence that this manuscript's only use of the term stake appears in this section. To appreciate the significance of the manuscript's mandala illustration, let's look at it next to a frame from the painting of Buddhist images, a court-sponsored project that was overseen by the painter Zhang Shengwen. In the triangular mandala forms the foundation upon which stands one of the many wrathful deities that populates the painting's ladder section. The deity in question has nine faces, 18 arms, and three legs, and black wing feathers and tail feathers are visible behind his many limbs and implements. Matsumoto Moritaka originally identified this figure as a Garuda king. However, given the connections to the white vajra, part of the ritual text, it seems more likely that this figure is a Heruka deity with Garuda features. Such deities appear in the Ningma school where they are closely associated with Purba practices. While Heruka deities usually have three heads, six arms, and four legs, there are some Garuda deities with nine heads and 18 arms, though often still with four legs. The winged figure in frame 118 of the painting of Buddhist images happens to appear near the figure in frame 116, who holds a multi-pronged vajra in his top right hand. As Albert Lutz noted, a very similar guilt-bron statue of a wrathful deity was found in Thousand League Pagoda. This statue appears to hold a dagger or single-pronged vajra in his top right hand. So these images finally bring us to our central focus, the Dali daggers themselves. Daggers from Dali, resembling Purba or single-pronged vajras, occasionally pop up in catalogs of museum exhibits or auctions, but few scholars have paid much attention to them. Albert Lutz gave an overview of these objects in the 1991 Der Goldschatz to a dry pagodin in which he presciently suggested that Dali daggers support the theory that Purba originated in India and then spread north and east. It is difficult to determine the total number of daggers and single-pronged vajras from Thousand League Pagoda because both are included in the excavation reports vajra-pessel category, which contained 213 objects. Of these 213 vajra-pessels, most were multi-pronged, double-headed vajra-pessels attached to a ring in the center. I know of about eight Dali-kingdom Purba-style daggers and only a few single-pronged vajras, but there are undoubtedly more examples in private collections and museums inside and outside of Yunnan. The single-pronged vajras have received less attention and there is less information about their composition and dimensions. However, photographs suggest that they were slightly shorter than the Purba-style daggers. The Purba daggers range in length from about 11 to 19 centimeters and are made of copper, bronze, gilt bronze, and iron. An overview of three Dali-kingdom Purba-style daggers will further illuminate their similarities to and differences from their Himalayan counterparts. One of the most similar examples to Himalayan Purba is the only Dali-kingdom Purba-style dagger to only display the deity's head instead of also including the torso. This bronze dagger is 16.3 centimeters long with a three-faceted blade below a ring of beads topped with a lotus blossom. The wrathful three-faced deity sits above the lotus blossom and a serpent ring extends from between the two faces on the sides. Its faces each have three eyes and the main face bears upturned fangs. Above the deity's head is another lotus blossom that supports the five-pronged vajra finial. Though I do not know of any Himalayan Purba that corresponds perfectly to this dagger, this dagger shows more similarities to Himalayan examples than any other Dali-kingdom object. Huntington's category of Vajra-topped Purba comes the closest, particularly his subtype with double lotus handles. A more representative example of Dali-kingdom daggers is this 11-centimeter long gilt bronze dagger with a three-faced wrathful deity making the bodyagri mudra and a five-pronged vajra atop the deity's crown. The back of the deity features the common serpentine ring and the uncommon folded wings, which do not appear on other Dali daggers. The deity's bracelet, armlets, necklace, and crown appear to be somewhat worn, but they are not the clearly defined skulls and snakes that adorn some of the other dagger deities. Just like the Purba that John Huntington discusses, the deity's three faces make slightly different wrathful expressions. The bodyagri mudra is associated with the Buddha Virochana, so perhaps this deity is a wrathful manifestation of Virochana whose folded wings place it in a Heruka category. Another Dali-kingdom dagger, features a wrathful deity that resembles Dali-kingdom images of Mahakala. This is the only iron dagger I know of from the Dali-kingdom. It's 15.6 centimeters in length and has apertures along each of the three blades. The deity's torso rises up from the lotus blossom atop the blade. He wears a sash and necklace of skulls, and his hands appear to make the abhisheka mudra in which the thumb and fingers are pressed together, pointing up, while the remaining fingers interlace. He only has one face, and he appears to wear a tall crown instead of a five-pronged vajra. Like other Dali-kingdom daggers, a ring is affixed to the back, but it does not appear to be a serpent. This dagger's details are cruder than some of the other Dali-kingdom daggers, and the face has such shallow features. It looks flat from the side. Considering how few iron statues survive from the Dali-kingdom, perhaps artists were not as skilled in working with this medium compared to bronze. As a group, the Dali-dagger is most closely resemble the earliest known example from Huntington's study, the sandalwood dagger with a rounded blade and a torso and head of a three-faced wrathful deity. The Dali-kingdom daggers also share with the Nepalese proba an emphasis on the deity image. None of these examples could be rolled between the palms. The Himalayan examples were kept in their stands, and the Dali examples were probably worn on the finger or looped on a string or piece of cloth. These conclusions also apply to the single-pronged vajras from the Dali-kingdom, which are similarly attached to rings. Two of these single-pronged vajras have faces separating the two blades, while the third separates the blades with the serpentine coils of the ring. One of the vajras has blades made of crystal, with a ring attachment made of metal, while the other two are completely made of metal. The metal band in the middle of the crystal vajra has three wrathful faces each with three eyes. One of the metal vajras and one in the middle has a single face separating the blades. The face resembles the bearded mahala type that also appears on Dali-kingdom per bustyle daggers. This face has a well-defined beard, fangs jutting up from an open mouth, three glaring eyes, a crown of skulls, and a miniature Buddha on the crown. Having presented the Dali-kingdom daggers within the larger context of Buddhist ritual daggers or stakes, I now turn to the key question of what these daggers show about transmission on the southern silk road. Starting with the single-pronged vajras, the closest comparisons appear in medieval Japan. However, the most similar objects to both the per bustyle daggers into the vajra rings appear not in India or the Himalayas but in Java. In the 1930s, F.D.K. Bosch wrote about a bronze per bustyle dagger whose top half he identified as the deity Hayagriva, though I'm not completely sure why. This dagger is somewhat distinctive in having a quadrangular instead of a triangular blade and in featuring a deity with only one face instead of three. But these variations appear in Himalayan and Dali daggers as well. When we consider Huntington's earliest known Himalayan dagger alongside a similar Dali dagger and this Javanese dagger, we see a fairly strong resemblance. In addition to this dagger, a gold vajra ring from 8th to 10th century Java shows noteworthy similarities to the vajra rings found in Dali. Though the proportions differ, these objects suggest a common practice of wearing vajras attached to rings. The question that now remains is, what do these similarities between Dali daggers and objects in Japan and Java show about southern silk road circulations? In each case, they suggest a missing link. In the case of the single Prangvajras, this would seem to be tongued through Song China, which we already know was a major transmission partner for the Dali kingdom. In the case of the per bustyle daggers, I think the missing link is Northeastern India, specifically the regions of Bihar and Bengal. Other features of Dali and Javanese Buddhism reveal connections to Bihar and Bengal. In Dali, images of the God Mahakala bear their closest resemblance to images from these regions. And aspects of the Nagari script used in Dali suggest links to Bengal. As for Java, scholars such as Claudian Bautse-Pakron and Andrea Atre have shown that strong ties linking its Buddhist texts and art to Northeastern India. In conclusion, the daggers from the Dali kingdom, when considered in relation to the example from Java and the earliest Himalayan example, suggest that an early form of this object corresponded to the description of the dagger deity in early Tibetan texts. That is, these versions lack the octagonal shaft and endless knots. Their form resists rolling between the palms, and they would have been too valuable to use for demarcation. Instead, they materialize the power of the God Vajrakila, or similar deities associated with this object. In Dali, the ritual texts reinforce this interpretation by consistently using the term Kila in deity's names. Such objects were probably carried from Bihar and Bengal to the Himalayas, to Dali and to Java, where they took on different trajectories. Most studies of the Southern Silk Roads have focused on the circulation of commodities such as horses, silver, cowrie shells, and tea. Dali kingdom daggers show that Buddhist material culture and visual culture also circulated along these understudied routes, which introduces new possibilities for understanding Buddhist transmission in the middle period of 800 to 1400 CE. The Northern Silk Roads and Maritime Silk Roads remain critical channels for this transmission. But further studies of Southern Silk Roads may yield still more discoveries of Buddhist texts, images, and objects. Thank you. I look forward to your comments and questions. It was a brilliant journey across many objects and many ritual texts. I was fascinated. I think I would never look anymore at the talk show in the same way. I never realized what it meant, what could be a single... I mean, yes, could be many things in Japan, although never with a ring. That's very interesting. I think I should leave the floor to the audience for any comment and questions across the regions. Who will start? Maybe I should have asked a bigger question. There, Lars. Do we know anything about objects that were used in connection with the daggers? Because you mentioned incense at some point as part of the mudra ritual. Is anything perhaps... Have archaeologists examined the daggers to see whether any... whether certain... Well, what should I call them? Biochemical remnants remain on the daggers. That's a wonderful question. The answer is not to my knowledge for the daggers in Dali. That's something that I've been hoping to be able to do is connect with folks in Yunnan and some of the museums that hold these objects to study more the material composition, you know, where the metal is coming from, and also to try to answer those sorts of questions. I suspect there are far more studies done of the Himalayan examples that would give much richer answers, but it's such a more complex field with far more textual and material stuff. So at this point, all I can say is I don't know. But it's an excellent question. Thank you. I had a very similar question, but it was more related to whether in the ritual sources and scriptures that you're looking at, the dagger or pestle is ever used to actually pestle any kind of substance from sesame seed to anything that can be turned into a banditine because this is what we find in Japanese ritual practices where the object translated as pestle is actually used to pestle things. I think there's going to be a pattern in some of my responses, which is to say I wish we had more materials to answer that. And I think the similar kinds of processes maybe to test the daggers could answer if there were any other sorts of substances that adhered to them. So far in what we know at least from the texts and these objects, there's nothing in the texts that prescribes that. I will note that the one ritual text of the six that I mentioned, the one that really has not been studied, at least to my knowledge, is the Homa Consecration text. And so that would be my next kind of project is trying to figure out whether there might be answers there because in the others I could say pretty categorically there's nothing that would indicate using the daggers in that way. But it's always possible and some of the substances that are prescribed in the ritual text also have defied my own attempts to identify and explain them. So it's quite possible that there might be other clues in those texts but the texts themselves include some pretty distinctive terminology. So all I can say is we don't know yet but you're giving me a lot of things to hopefully be able to look for one day. Thank you. I wonder whether I can come in to ask about the ritual texts whether they were connected or whether they are completely independent texts. So the six ritual texts, two of them, there's one called the Guangshu Zhe Daochang Yi and then there's the Dahitian Shen Daochang Yi. Those appear together on the other side of the Yuan Jue Jing Shu, this scripture of perfect awakening, commentary on the scripture of perfect awakening and some scholars see them as being the same text but Ho Chong who's probably been at the forefront of studying these has made, I think, a very compelling argument that these are distinct texts because one includes certain red punctuation markings, the other does not. The other texts though are, I mean, would seem to be separate, although connected. Like I was thinking of whether they are part of a larger ritual system that has different pieces and bits. I think you definitely see the resonance between them and what I've been looking at mostly are the deities. So particular forms of Mahakala that I haven't found elsewhere, especially this form called the Yaksha or Kala of Great Bliss who distinctively stands on the Northern Dipper. That is a figure who appears in the Mahakala ritual text, in the invitation ritual text and in the painting of Buddhist images. So you can see those kinds of patterns form out of the different texts that do suggest a kind of cohesive system. And so the challenge I'm currently working with this is where to fit these daggers into that system because they're such fascinating objects but there's also still little information about how precisely people were engaging with them. Thanks. Thank you for that really comprehensive lecture. I'm much more interested in Southeast Asian material given my area of expertise. So I was really interested at the end when you showed the proba from Java. So I'm just wondering, is that the only example you know or are there quite a lot of them? How extant is that tradition and does it continue up to about 14th, 15th century or? So that's the only example that I know of I happened to stumble across it last week and looking at an article by a Claudian Batsapikron where in which she mentions this kind of dagger and then I had to request through interlibrary loan the Dutch journal article in which it appeared because I was thinking perhaps this is connected and then when I saw it, it was just you know, it's one of those really gratifying moments. I haven't found any other references but I know this is such an erudite audience with many, many scholars who are far more expert in a lot of the regions I'm talking about than I am. So I'm always happy to be corrected. If anyone has other examples that they know of, I would very much welcome that information. I haven't seen any others. There's another very different kind of dagger that Batsapikron has written about and Natasha Reichel also an Indonesian art where it has a Bayreva or is it Mahakala figure on one side and then the female counterpart on the other but that's, I mean, and Batsapikron hypothesizes that maybe that's a kind of interpretation of a Purba kind of dagger but the example that Bosch photographed and cataloged is a much closer example to what we're looking at. So that's a one-off as far as I know but it's another avenue of investigation that I need to look into. Thank you very much for a wonderful talk. I had a question about the distribution and temporal span of them. You mentioned 14th century and you referred to Himalayan and Dali. Have you published where they are exactly where they have found and is there much context to their finding? Yeah, so in terms of the Dali examples, the only ones that I'm aware of are from the Pagoda, Thousand League Pagoda, which is in the Dali capital. There are a lot of examples that are currently out there on various auction sites. So I'm not entirely convinced of the authenticity of all of them. There are a few here that I think have been very well documented in terms of their provenance coming from Thousand League Pagoda. There are others that I would need to look into more but the answer is that it's all from this Pagoda. Yeah, so there were many small statues of deities, miniature stupas, other kinds of, there's one Bijamandala, Vajradhatu Mandala that was found there. So that was the main repository for a lot of those objects and a lot of the manuscripts were found elsewhere at a family temple where they were also more subject to sort of historical vicissitudes and things like that but the Pagoda objects seem to have been sealed up after the fall of the Dali kingdom. So they're fairly reliable in the dating. Like materials, we saw a lot of things from the Dali kingdom. It was only a few of things claimed to be from the Nanzhao and I'm just wondering, were there any kind of dagger example from the Nanzhao period? Because Nanzhao was a very powerful country between it's like the late eighth and beginning of the ninth century and it's kind of power reached in today's Thousand Thailand and Myanmar and Laos and they had a lot of controls in these regions. It was a very powerful kingdom. So I'm just wondering like what if was Nanzhao's Buddhist culture influenced these surrounding civilizations? Because many of Western and also like scholars claimed that it was the Southeast areas civilization influenced the Nanzhao and but Chinese scholars claimed it was the Tang dynasty as well as the Tibetan dynasty influenced the Nanzhao but during both Tang and Tibetan you know like the seventh to the ninth century they had kind of anti-Buddhist movement and whereas Nanzhao was the center we were kind of attracted a lot of Buddhist monks from back these areas. How about like they generated something new and then influenced the surrounding area? Yeah, that's a really great question and it also gets at some of the methodological challenges of studying the region and I think of distinguishing between Nanzhao and Dali sources and materials because the Dali rulers as you know adopted and copied so much from Nanzhao including the veneration of Atsui Guan Yin this Ajaya Avalokiteshvara figure you know very similar style of attire similar crowns using the same titles and systems of government and that often presents real challenges in figuring out whether a particular image especially in terms of the visual culture or material culture is Nanzhao or Dali and I've erred on the side of thinking that things are later especially because of the dates of other you know materials from the Pagoda as well as from the Fajangs, the Dharma Treasury Temple but you're absolutely right and I think you also get this other question about Nanzhao Dali which is this perception of this region is always receiving influence rather than exerting its own influence on others and I think I've fallen victim to that trap as well because it's located in the middle of such a diverse region and so the tendency I think certainly with me has been to think about which of these things were people there adopting rather than thinking more carefully about you know how was this distinctive you know regional and political form of Buddhism than you know spreading to surrounding areas. I think it's difficult to make really strong arguments about the influence that Nanzhao in particular might have had further in Southeast Asia because so little survives from Nanzhao itself that at least it can be reliably dated to Nanzhao. I mean we have the Nanzhao Tujuan and then I mean some other architectural materials some stone carvings but without knowing more I think about what Nanzhao Buddhism included it's harder than to know which of that then spread farther south or farther southeast. Certainly there are more recent archeological findings that will hopefully you know maybe already have given you know more indications of what those specific kinds of Buddhist materials were that could have spread but that's another question that I keep asking with this material especially with things like the seven forms of Mahakala that are identified in the Mahakala ritual text from Dali that doesn't have to come from anywhere. I mean I think it could have very very well been a set that was developed there and some of these practices. Certainly the practices of wearing the daggers on rings I mean that's you know I think a fairly distinctive thing that I think seems to be a regional phenomenon so I think it's entirely possible that there was that kind of influence going out it's just the question of how to go about you know discovering it or identifying it that seems to be the challenge. Thank you because I just read an article from our own public source and I think that the scholar was graduated from Stanford something you know like he wrote something about like he was doing his research in Thailand he found some kind of clues about Nanzhao's you know like influence in already kind of reached the Thailand in the 7th century. Yeah that would be great. The naming system of the kings of Nanzhao is very different in Southeast Asian countries from China and Tibet yeah it's just maybe it's a you know like a clue to it. Yeah that's a great source so thank you for mentioning that I'll definitely look into it. I also I think that you know there was definitely political influence there I mean because Nanzhao went in and to have conquered a lot of those regions but then the question of you know how that coincided with Buddhism I think is the one that remains sort of open at least as far as I know but that would be a wonderful channel to look at thank you. Thank you thank you very much. To this day there's always usually the answers are I don't know or that would be great to look at. Love it I think it's a difficulty of working across borders there's always that. It's always very difficult to find material. Is there a question over there? Thank you for good presentation very good presentation and I have a question. You mentioned that there's missed Gavkasi in the northeast India. I know that the Tibetans because they believe that because at first Mahakala Thharani was written in Bihar in Mahakala cave. So did you look at the samdhi shesh because on this Thharani Sanskrit because I know that because they use a lot of the term Kelaik in this Thharani. Yeah definitely so I've you know focused a lot on the Bihar and Bengal regions especially the images because I think those are the closest to the Delhi images of Mahakala. Yes and also because the first Mahakala Thharani because it was written in Mahakala cave in Bihar. So if you will visit because of this place you will see a lot of Kelaik in this Mahakala cave. So if you have some research. Yeah I mean so I can certainly look more at that cave in that tradition because it sounds like it would be highly relevant for what I'm working on. So thank you for sharing that suggestion. Then also because another question because you mentioned that Kelaik is used for liberation and you use the term because of Moksha and Tibetan that term because of Dolva. So because I worry about is it appropriate to use the Tibetan term Dolva because the Tibetan term Dolva is used is nine stage of Dolva. So it's last stage because of liberation is called Tibetan Yandei. Yeah thank you and then for this I should note that I'm relying completely on other scholars work because- Because it looks because of so some weakness because of this because of interpretation on Tibetan. Because Tibetan because of the term Dolva because I use nine stages of Dolva and last stage is called Yandei. And also because of Sanskrit term because of Moksha because it's very similar to Brahmanic because of Moksha. Is it same because there is niroda or not? Yeah I mean this is what I was getting mainly from the work of Kathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer the terminology that they were using in their studies of these early I mean in this case Nyingma texts. So I'm not completely sure Dolva I believe was the term that they were seeing in those texts but I'm not sure about the Moksha translation. But thank you for bringing that to my attention I really appreciate it. Information. Then I'll ask my question. I'm very much interested in the what maybe we can call it symbolic or philosophical use of objects. So the Vajra, the single Vajra, single Prange Vajra in Japan serves not just as a ritual instrument or something to do something within the ritual but also as a embodiment of many other things including the country of Japan itself. If these daggers are so important and so distinctive of the Dalai Lama is there any way in which they serve or they are used in a different type of context that is not to the more material one and they are made to somehow I don't want to use the word symbol but to stand for something more that is distinctively Buddhist interpretation of the area. Yeah, I think in this case the connections that I would make are to the ritual texts especially the one for inviting various deities because a recurring concern in that text is the protection of the state. And even though Dalai is not specified in that text whereas it is like some of the other ritual texts specifically mention donors from the Dalai kingdom. I mean they use that phrase the Dalai kingdom donor. In this ritual text that doesn't show up but state protection is just a crucial concern and I think from that perspective and because of the fact that that was in the pagoda where these daggers were found is a court structure. So I do think from those perspectives one can make the argument that these daggers along with the other similar kinds of objects in this pagoda, the other rings especially the Vajra rings whether single or multi-pronged are in some ways materializing the power of the Dalai kingdom. I think that they're materializing the deities power in the case of the Purba style daggers because they're so consistently deity style daggers with the top half representing usually a wrathful sometimes a benign kind of figure. So I think that the daggers power is sort of inseparable from the Dalai kingdom's power in that sense and that's true of a lot of what survives from the Dalai kingdom. A lot of it is court material. So I think it's like any other object they're doing a lot of different things. They're embodying I think different forces especially depending on who is using them and how but given the kind of location I think that certainly a kind of argument can be made that they are connected to the power of the state as well that they're channeling and materializing that. Interesting. Thank you. Close, yeah, yeah. Thank you, Amagan, for a wonderful, very insightful journey really to Asia for making us think about all that that we don't know yet. We will know that. So thank you to start with. I'd like to invite you all to join us for Wine Reception which is in the other building next to us in the college building and in the Sino-Koma room. So please follow us up there after we have closed up, yeah. Thank you. Thank you.