Scene-46

In this scene the Tibetan Clan leader Omu Seng Tu broods over the emerging conflict with Rana Tenpai. A proponent of the older Bon tradition, Omu prefers to join forces with the evil figure of the Tark, who enacts a bloody ritual during the Chod celebrations. The ancient rites are presented here in all their stark reality, though they are much refined today. - JS

Darkened Minds

Omu watched the ritual of the tea offering with sullen discontent, his mind filled with disdain. He mastered his anger, sitting stolidly on his horse, silent and morose. Still, even he could not help but be swayed by the languorous mists of the Jagham brew. When the tea bowl was offered to him after Rana, he was amazed at the strange intoxicating vigor of the brew. The mellow sweetness of the leaf resolved into the most sublime hints of spice and herb, exerting a calm presence of mind and keen awareness that was extraordinary. What was this? For a moment he almost forgot his anger and resentment against Rana, but in time, particularly when he saw how the tea ceremony had melted away the defense of the city walls, he began to burn inwardly again, and bitterness returned to sour his palate.

The ceremony concluded and Rana gave orders that camp was to be set on the open plain. Soon his troops set about the building of their tents and dugouts, planting clan standards about the perimeter of the encampment. Though Rana had proclaimed they marched under one banner, the reality of clan rivalry was still painfully obvious. The signs of the Dragon, the Hawk and the Boar seemed to glower at one another, strange spirits rising up from the encampment and fluttering in the swelling breeze of the day.

It was clear to Omu that Rana was going to hold to protocol and wait for the Tark to present himself at the circle of his fire. Well, he thought, he may have a long wait, or a short one, depending on the mood of the Tark. He felt even more contempt for Rana now, a stripling whelp in his eyes, who hid behind the banner of another. He has no bones, he thought. Only the banner of Trisong Detsen. But Lhasa is far, and the Tark very near. Omu turned to Rana, his face set.

“We wait here?” He asked, disapproving.

“Yes. Will you set camp with us lord Omu, or do you return to your Lance?” Rana edged his steed closer, studying Omu carefully.

“The air here is too full of the trader’s perfumes to suit me. I rather prefer the smell of wood on the fire. Besides,” he added “I have never been one for the civilities of the Imperial Court.”

“Oh?” Rana did not understand what Omu meant at first. But the sallow faced clansman explained.

“Yes, I had thought the Emperor held court in Lhasa, but it seems he is here—complete with his Indian Guru defiling the ways of the Chöd. So I will take my leave of this, lord Rana, and return to my men. We too have drums and horns, and offerings to make. But we do not brew such sweetness as this trader’s tea. We are not children. We are the Krag Thung—The Blood Drinkers, and the teas we brew are offered in the skull of dung dmar.”

Rana took pause at the remark. It was a flagrant reference to the BönHeruka rite, and one that was clearly forbidden by the Emperor’s decree. He quelled his instinct to anger at Omu’s remark and spoke in a quiet voice. “Have you not heard,” he said. “The ways of the Bön are no longer favored.” His eyes played over the other man’s face, like a man seeking some hold on the wall of a sheer cliff. “Those that march in the emperor’s name should take heed of that.”

“It was you who raised the Imperial Standard here lord Rana, not I.” Omu spurred his horse and turned quickly away, riding hard to rejoin his men at the rear of the assembly.

All that day Omu sulked in his camp, emerging from his tent from time to time and pacing restlessly about the fire setting, clearly unhappy. He gave orders that no man of the Dragon Lance was to taste the trader’s ‘Guru’ tea as he called it. “It was enough that I had to bear such defilement to appease the boy emperor, lord Rana.” Instead he told his men that they should seek game for offerings in the manner of the old ways. They were to find a yak for the butchers to begin the rites of the Chöd in a respectable manner, with a puja smoke offering that evening. All that day his restlessness increased. His men grew edgy around him, fearing his sudden anger.

The day waxed and waned. The sun fell toward the horizon, a thick amber smear lowering over the western reaches of the desert. His men had scoured the countryside for firewood, cutting down trees and digging deep pits for their night fires. By nightfall preparations were completed for the killing of the yak. Omu presided over the ritual, slaughtering the beast and presenting sections to his Khur Kan leaders in order of rank. No part was left unused, and before the evening meal was concluded, every man had tasted of the flesh of the beast and sipped blood from a broiling stew that steamed on the main camp fire. Offerings were made, and the men chanted the old songs around the fire, hefting their lances and swords as they welcomed the night.

Omu seemed strangely distracted. He stared at the flickering fires without seeing them, his eyes dark and vacant. Some of his men had begun to think he was bothered by a fire demon, though none dared speak to him where he sat at the edge of the flames, ominous and silent. In reality he was reciting the inner chants of the Heruka rite, the offering of the body to a wrathful deity. It was a way of losing the thin connections to the self that bound him to this world, bringing his mind in tune with the ancient rhythms that guided and enlivened all things. Tonight he could not lose himself in the prayer, for he was possessed by an inner fire, called back to the heart of the moment a desire and resentment that burned within him. Always it returned, an unsatisfied hunger, a waiting, a soulful listening in the night. He lingered on the edge of this world and could not embrace the spirit chants within. There was too much unfinished work before him now. The fires would not be quenched.

All the men in his circle of ten sat with him, their faces painted red with the blood of the yak, their eyes tracd with charcoal, hair twisted in wild braids. They were all fully armored in the dark chain of the heavy infantry. It seemed that Omu sat at the head of a circle of demons from hell, silent, brooding, and ill at ease. The hours passed as the moon slipped through the skies, fleeing at last like a frightened, milky mare. It was then, at the hour of the setting moon, that Omu heard the sound he had been waiting for. First there came the deep, rhythmic rumble of drums, as if the earth itself had become restless and troubled in the night, and its heart had begun to beat with fear. Then came the vacant moaning call of the bones. Omu knew at once that the sounding of thighbone trumpets called the believers to rise and make offering.

His eyes opened wide, blazing more with an inner light; the bright reflection of the fire merely an ornament to the life that surged from within. He stood up abruptly. The ten men of his inner circle rose with him, eyes fixed fast upon their clan leader, anxious and waiting.

“It is time,” Omu growled at the night. He turned from the fire, striding away like a demon in the dark with ten angry spirits in his wake.

Far off, behind the rubble of the walls of Charchan, a great blazing fire scorched the night and sent spirals of cinder and smoke billowing up into the dark. Men were gathered in a wide circle about the fire, and many held up rounded drums fixed at the end of long shaped spars of carved wood. They beat upon them with yarrow wands, timing out a ritual, pulsing rhythm. Other men blew hideous notes through the bleached white bones of human thighs. For days past the Tark had given orders that all the dead among the Chinese were to be taken to a central pit near the edge of the city. There the bodies were butchered and sorted for burial. None were given the honor of the sky-funeral, but all were dismembered, their heads severed, the flesh of their faces and scalps scraped away, and the wet, wrinkled brain scooped out for burning in the charnel pits. The skulls were boiled and laid out in long rows to dry. Bones were ground to powder and mixed with blood to be cast on the fires as a smoke offering—All except the thigh bones. These were set aside and hollowed out with long spits of wood, until all the marrow had been purged and a man could blow upon the bone like a horn. Now the ranks of the Tebu clansmen played a terrible symphony on the thighbone trumpets of the dead. The skulls had been hewn with Kartrika choppers and set out as Kapala cups to be filled with blood. It was as if Rudra, a demon of the underworld, had appeared and roused the naga ghosts and ghouls to his call to arms.

But the offering tonight was not for Rudra. In the center of the ring, close by the fire, stood the vast animal shape of the Tark. His head was adorned with the horned skull of a yak, his face painted red and black with blood and char. He wore a garland of freshly severed skulls, some still bright with runnels of dripping blood. In his right hand he held the haft of a banner pole where the embroidered emblem of Heruka was sewn, a wrathful deity of great power: Chemchok Heruka, the supreme one. The likeness of the god was centered in a corona of raging fire, his body twisted in dance and his face a mask of ferocity and ire. Devils and demons danced about him. His many arms held fast to skull-choppers and daggers, and a magical vajra and gantha, the scepter and bell. His feet trod upon naked corpses, as did those of the Tark, where he danced and stomped to the rhythm of the drums, defiling the bare, white bodies of three Chinese girls where they lay at his feet.

When Omu came upon the scene with his escort of mailed warriors it seemed to him that the Tark was the living embodiment of Chemchok Heruka himself, fierce, wild, wrathful; his vast, dark shape silhouetted against the blaze of the fire with flames leaping up in a searing corona about his horned head. All the men in the circle began to chant, their bodies swaying to the evil music of the bones and drums. Omu took his place by the fire, eyes wild, his soul soaring up into the night on the billows and swirling curls of charnel smoke. He reached to the amulet that hung in the center of his broad chest, his fist clasping to the image of the broken cross, holding it fast.

Offerings were made to all the three realms of existence, the sky, the earth and the lands below. Appeasement was made to the Gods of air and fire, and to the mountain gods who would so often become the tormentors of men, sitting on their thrones of rock and raining down affliction with wild abandon. Offerings were made to the demon serpent spirits that lived in the netherworld so that they would be comforted, and not take shape in the world of men to walk among them as ogres and hungry ghouls.

The men danced and played, invigorated by the dark specter of the Tark. The low murmur of their mantras soon became shrill and wild as their voices called out in the night, until it seemed that an uncontrollable blood lust was upon them. The Kapala cups were filled with a dark, seething brew, as the Tark dipped one severed skull after another into a great black kettle until they brimmed with blood—a malevolent tea that was passed from one man to another in the circle of the fire. It was a ritual of smoke, and fire, and burning flesh and blood. When the skull cup was passed to Omu he drank deeply, until the red, savage stain had dribbled down his chin, falling in thick running droplets on the burnished armor of his chest.

---

Rana was awakened by the deep, thumbing of the drums, starting up from shadowy dreams, his body drenched with sweat. He instinctively reached for his sword, groping for the haft of the blade in the dark, though he knew that he was well guarded, safe behind the mailed cordon of his personal guard. As his senses gathered, he heard the sibilant whisper of a hushed voice in the dark. He recognized it at once, throwing off his bedding to crawl to the doorway of his tent.

“My lord,” the voice of Keemah whispered. Rana beckoned that Keemah should enter, and his long-time friend and advisor slipped through the entrance, holding a butter lamp in his outstretched arm.

“There is evil at hand tonight,” Rana whispered. “Do you hear it Keemah?”

“The Tark, lord. He has lit fire for a ritual offering—and certainly a red feast offering from the sound of things. Do you hear the bone trumpets calling?”

“He desecrates the Chöd,” said Rana. “He has no understanding of the Dharma. The man is an animal, cruel and barbaric. His mind is darkened. How he ever came to the head of his clan I cannot comprehend.”

Keemah nodded agreement, but his eyes were fixed fast upon Rana’s drawn sword. The blade glinted in the light of the butter lamp, and Keemah gestured to it as he spoke. “Your sword,” he began. “You need not fear, Rana. The guards are well posted. No one will enter the circle of your camp unbidden. Even I had to harangue with the captain of the guards to gain passage here.”

“Old habit,” said Rana, as he laid the blade across his outstretched legs, leaning back, his chest glinting with the sweat of his dreams.

“You are troubled, lord. Does the heathen ritual disturb you so? Do not listen to it!”

Rana drew his arm across his brow. “Yes, it troubles me, Keemah. But not in the way you may think. I do not fear the wrathful deities, or tremble at the approach of old naga spirits as some might do. Still, the drums are a problem, are they not? I am charged by the Emperor, and bound to his proclamation that the old ways are to be abandoned. The new Dharmas must be embraced by all who speak his name.”

“The old ways will not be set aside so easily,” said Keemah. “We both know that.”

“How can I allow this? Should I take up arms against the Tark and spill more blood? Then it would seem to me that the dark spirits he calls upon now will have prevailed.”

“You have made your offering, Rana. The trader performed the tea ceremony wonderfully! Every man who tasted of it was changed by it. I could see as much. If now they taste the blood of the red offering, that cannot be helped. A man must choose in these matters, be it tea or blood. Perhaps the emperor was not wise to proclaim this new Dharma. Yes, I know the reasons, as do you. But the soul will reach and find what it may. Can we so easily change a man’s heart and mind by Imperial decree?”

“Then what do you advise?”

“Only this lord. Let the night pass and become day. We will soon meet with the Tark, if he can bring himself to waken after a night of dancing at the edge of his fire. Then, if words must be spoken, so be it. It will be enough for you to declare the Emperor’s mind on this, for you are his mouth and voice. Say what you must, but leave the choice in this matter to those who hear.”

Rana thought deeply, still troubled. Then he smiled. “The trader was exceptional, wasn’t he? I have never seen such a scene.”

“What were those strange horns his men were playing?” Keemah nearly laughed at the recollection.

“Snake flutes!” Rana remembered them from his boyhood. “When my father took me to the Indus Valley I saw them played in many ritual offerings. They are used to calm the serpents of that land, and are said to have some magic about them. I knew them at once by the sound. I tell you, Keemah, that man is a bit of a magician himself! The tea was sublime! Even the Tebu clansmen were melted by the brew. They were lapping the bowls like children, and begging for more!”

Rana shivered, the sweat on his body cooling him in the chill of the night. Keemah reached for a swath of cotton cloth, handing it to him. “You have been dreaming,” he said with knowing certainty. “You are drenched with the night. You should oil yourself. It is very cold.”

Bathing was often shunned in Tibet, for the high mountain latitudes, and the severe winds and cold, would quickly rob a man of his warmth if he was not well protected by natural oils or a veneer of fat and grease that would help the body retain its heat.

“Forget these dreams, whatever they were. Who could sleep with the wail of the bones on the night air?”

Rana thought for a moment, then took in a deep breath, as if coming to some inner conclusion. “The Tark is dangerous,” he said. “He is headstrong and wild. Now the Lord Omu will find a kindred spirit here to stand with him in opposition to my will. Even so, I cannot leave the matter of the red-feast unspoken. But you have wisdom in this, Keemah. It will be enough for me to speak the Emperor’s decree, and then let the matter go. Did I not do as much on that hillock days ago when the Wend enacted the rites of the sky-funeral? He was skillful enough to blend both the old and the new in his ritual. I must do the same.”

“That may be wise, lord,” Keemah agreed. “And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow we will speak with the Tark,” Rana said at last. “Have my mount made ready with the rising sun. We will take our morning meal, and then ride in to the city. The Wend will lead us. He knows the way.”

“On that matter, there is still the problem of the challenge. A lance was thrown down by one of the Tark’s Khur Kan leaders. The scout took it up as if…”

“As if what?”

Keemah hesitated, his eyes searching. “I spoke with Yoru on the matter. You recall the brief delay as we approached the city? It seems a Tebu Khur Kan leader made challenge. The scout took up the lance as if he knew our ways; as if born to them. This man is very strange, Rana. He is not what he seems.”

“I have thought that from the moment he first spoke, Keemah. Yes, it is strange how he alone was able to speak our tongue, and even read our script. And the sky funeral—That is a rite known to very few, but yet he stood in the circle of six and spoke well. Somehow I feel that this scout of Khotan has lived another life.”

“Many lives,” Keemah agreed. “Perhaps he was a countryman in one.”

“It is only this life I concern myself with now, Keemah. He serves me well. That is all that matters.

Keemah rose quietly. “Shall I leave the butter lamp, lord? Yours has blown out.”

“Yes, leave it. I do not think I will sleep just yet. I wish to listen for a while, and see what I might hear.”

“Do not listen too long, lord. The song of the bones will darken your dreams again.”

Keemah bowed, and took his leave, and Rana settled back into the warmth of his bedding, his mind fingering the distant, wild song of the Tark.

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