South Asia is no stranger to intense religious and political sentiment as I have learned from Twitterati commenting on some of my recent columns. In earlier editions of Thinking Medieval, we’ve seen Shaivite saints attacking Buddhists and Jains, acrimonious debates over food and purity, and, of course, outright violence between Turkic Muslims and Shaivite North Indians, Shaivite South Indians and Sri Lankan Buddhists, and Manipuri Vaishnavites, animists, and Burmese Buddhists, though all of these bore their own complexities.
One aspect of this turmoil—often invisible to us today—is the rich, colourful world of tantric Buddhism. In the early medieval period, the primary rivals of Shaivites were not Vaishnavites but tantric Buddhists, who had their own rival set of magical rituals. Lacking anything like social media, tantric Buddhists turned to the production and circulation of religious texts to try and subsume Shaivites. The tantric god Trailokyavijaya, ‘victor over the three worlds’, will allow us to explore how medieval people navigated the religious rivalries that have come to define our world.
The Myth of Trailokyavijaya
By the 7th-8th centuries CE, a bright new age was dawning on Monsoon Asia. Stretching from Kashmir to Vietnam, a huge proportion of the world population had come to live in very similar states based on the cultivation of irrigated grain, with economies centred on temples and long-distance trading emporia, a mobile Sanskrit-speaking intellectual class, networks of monasteries, and a political elite interested in rituals to gain and express power and rulership.
In southern India, one of the crucial nodes of this world, great changes were afoot. The Pallava dynasty—one of whose princes had become a tantric Buddhist master and emigrated to China—was beginning to turn decisively toward Shaivism. The Buddhists took immediate note, composing a text called the Assembly of the Essence of All Buddhas (Sarva-tathagata-tattva-sangraha). In Chapter 6 of Part II of the text, they narrated the origins of the deity Trailokyavijaya (TLV), an abridged version of which goes as follows. (Here I use the translation provided by Buddhism scholar Michel Gauvain in his article The Conqueror of the Three Worlds.)
The bodhisattva (future Buddha) Vajrapani is unable to create a mandala—a magical circle consisting of all the gods—because of what he calls “the violent and criminal conduct” of beings such as Shiva. The cosmic Buddha Vairochana intervenes, chanting a mantra that leads to the creation of the wrathful god TLV. Vairochana then chants another mantra, which “drags” Shiva and his entourage into his presence. TLV and Shiva then engage in a shouting match, as the latter refuses to acknowledge the former’s authority — “Hey, you’re just a pathetic nature-spirit! I am the creator and destroyer of all beings, the paramount Lord of the Three Worlds!”. Shiva is deliberately cast in a rather petulant manner. All his bravado is for nothing, as TLV simply utters a mantra, throws him to the ground, threatens him again, embarrasses him before his retinue, and then tramples both Shiva and his consort Parvati. At last, Vairochana intervenes again, granting Shiva nirvana and rebirth as the Buddha Bhasmeshvara-Nirghosha.
A rather colourful story, but also a very political one. Shiva, emerging as the dominant god of a world of luxurious royal courts, is presented as an immature, undignified, egoistic being—in stark contrast to the benevolent and merciful Buddhas and bodhisattvas, who nevertheless possess righteous wrath and powers to back it up. The implication was that Buddhist ritual experts, and the kings they initiated, were both morally and magically superior to the Shaivites. However, this argument was only partially successful. It was mostly in Bihar, the stronghold of monastic Buddhism, where TLV became truly popular in the subcontinent. Elsewhere in South Asia, the monastic and ritual bulwark of Shaivism more than weathered his challenge.
But in the rest of Asia, where Shaivism was barely-present and easy to mock, TLV’s worship took off, especially in China and Tibet. Java offered an interesting new ground for the god: With both Shaivism and tantric Buddhism popular on the island, the Buddhists would adhere to some rather sneaky techniques to achieve primacy.
Also read: This is how Shiva became Asia’s most popular god – innovation, assimilation, conquest
The ensnaring of a Javanese King
During the 7th-8th centuries, Java was slowly developing into a major power. As historian Kenneth R Hall explains in A History of Early Southeast Asia, groups in rice-cultivating villages selected local “big brothers” or rakrayan who sought ritual powers through temple and monastery construction. In the mist-wreathed Diegn Plateau of north-central Java, a Javanese Shaiva centre was established, declaring the plateau and its hot water springs to be a mountain of the gods. This centre granted powers to emerging royals.
But in the Kedu Plain to the south, a new dynasty, the Shailendras, or Lords of the Mountain, inclined toward tantric Buddhism, granting lands to tantric masters from across the Indian Ocean, especially Sri Lanka. A Javanese town was even named Lankapura, and a monastery given the title of Abhayagiri, the same as a famous tantric Buddhist order near the Lankan capital of Anuradhapura. It was in this region that we see Asia’s most prolific mentions of the god TLV. In one rolled piece of bronze discovered in 1974, he is summoned with hair-raising Sanskrit verses:
“Homage to the Lord, […] who has a body adorned with four arms, who is of terrible appearance… whose right foot hangs down over the heap of twisted locks of Paśupati (Śiva), whose left foot is placed on… Pārvatī! […] Destroy the evil thought, the bad thought, the angry thought! […] Destroy all evil, destroy all enemies, destroy all obstacles, destroy all diseases, destroy all illnesses, destroy all Vināyakas… Fierce one, fierce one! Kill, kill! Tear, tear! Slay, slay! […] Hail!”
Here we see the Vinayakas or Lords of Obstances—propitiated in India as a single benevolent elephant god Ganesha—in the tantric Buddhist form, obstacle-creators to be subordinated by the mighty TLV.
An even more interesting mention of TLV comes from a gold foil, discovered under a temple near the aforementioned Abhayagiri monastery. Here the mantras of TLV are inscribed, but within a loopy font, within which the name of a Shaivite Javanese king is written. It is highly possible that this was meant to harness TLV’s powers of summoning, subjugating, and converting Shiva, applying them to a Shaivite king whom the monks were seeking to convert. Alternatively, it might have had the more benign purpose of summoning other gods to help the king, currying favour with the court. Whether either of these attempts were successful is unclear. But by the end of the 8th century, the Shailendras of Java were sufficiently Buddhist to order the construction of one of Asia’s largest monuments — the immense, three-dimensional cosmic mandala of Borobudur.
TLV was victorious over Shiva—but only briefly. We will visit Borobudur, and see the response of Asia’s Shaivites, in a future edition of Thinking Medieval.
Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of Lords of the Deccan, a new history of medieval South India, and hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti. Views are personal.
This article is a part of the ‘Thinking Medieval‘ series that takes a deep dive into India’s medieval culture, politics, and history.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)