When Chinggis Khan first laid siege to the Tangut capital in 1210, the Tangut’s Tibetan court chaplain summoned Mahakala to the battlefield, at which point the dams the Mongols were using to flood the city burst, drowning Mongol troops and forcing Chinggis to withdraw. Tibetan accounts clearly state that when the imperial preceptor made a torma he had a vision of Mahakala on the battlefield, and the Mongols were forced to retreat. This account of their unusual military setback through effective religious ritual no doubt caught Mongol attention.
(Rubin)
The year was 1227, the eve of the annihilation of the Tangut nation.
The sky was darkened by great flaming balls of Mongol artillery, while the clanging of lances, swords, and axes continued to ring across the battlefield just beyond the burning gates of Yinchuan, the Tangut capital. Already, the Tangut emperor, who had given himself over as a hostage, had been executed by the terrifying Genghis Khan. The Mongol leader died shortly after, and in vengeance, the Mongols had surrounded Yinchuan. The feared trebuchets of the Mongols, manned by Persian engineers, hurled terrible ball of burning oil at the stone walls of a city engulfed in bedlam, its people staring down their doom.
Below the gates of this last stronghold of the Western Xia, the remnants of the Iron Hawks, the shock cavalry of the Tangut Empire, made charge after determined charge at the Mongol lines, hurling their own bodies and those of their steeds against the spears and maces of the Mongol soldiers. The line buckled, and the Mongols were forced back slightly from the dread force of the Iron Hawks’ mighty, thrusting lances. The spears smashed into the front ranks of the warriors, piercing past shields and stabbing into rattan armor and flesh. But the Mongols shouted at each other to move aside, a carefully rehearsed and practiced manoeuvre, and from the flanks and rear of the Iron Hawks galloped archers mounted on nimble horses. They quickly encircled the Iron Hawks and fired their deadly arrows on horseback, the iron tips expertly finding their way past the Iron Hawks’ invincible armor. The once-invincible men slumped, some being dragged along the dusty ground by their panicking steeds, or falling off their horses altogether.
The world of the Great State of White and High was collapsing before the very eyes of its last defenders.
The Mongol artillery intensified its assault, trebuchets hurling burning balls of flammable hay and great stones at Yinchuan as the Mongol lancers charged past the infantry’s parted formation. They began to overwhelm the remaining few Iron Hawks, pushing back the remaining conscripts and militia that the Tangut commanders had desperately thrown at the lancers in a last-ditch attempt to delay the fall of the city. The screams and shouts of the Tangut men could be heard past the city fortifications, among the streets where civilians were evacuating in terror, and in the center of the city, where the great monastery of Avalokiteshvara stood. Inside was a great mandala, with statues of deities carved out of luxuriant wood from the forests of Sichuan and Yunnan, regions from where the ancestral Tanguts first migrated out from their ancestral Tibetan homeland, and into the inner reaches of the Chinese orbit. The buildings and sculptures populating the mandala in perfect symmetry were coated in the purest gold, smelted from the same foundries that created the Iron Hawks’ lances. At the center of the mandala stood the mighty, roaring visage and pot-bellied dancing body of Mahakala: the Great Black One, deity of the Tangut imperial cult.
Beside the mandala stood a diminutive figure, head cleanly shaved and eyes wise. He was a lama of advancing years, clothed in the robes of a senior preceptor. He had come to the Tangut Empire, residing in the capital at the emperor’s request for many months. He was observing the mandala admiringly, much like a painter enjoys his completed masterpiece. When he first constructed and consecrated this mandala, he had placed the name of the Tanguts’ hated enemy in the center, in the grasping claws of the Mahakala image. It was a supercharged curse, a mystical artillery that only the Tanguts knew. A hex directed right at the Mongol leader’s heart. “Kill Genghis Khan.”
The lama sighed, allowing himself a pinch of pride. Shortly after that puja, the great conqueror was dead.
Could he have really done it? Did he cause the Mongolian overlord’s sudden demise? Perhaps, perhaps not. But the Tanguts were sorely mistaken if they thought he could repeat his ritual and hit true twice, this time against Genghis’ second-in-command.
“You must not return to Tibet, Lord Sangye Repa,” came a hiss at his side. He turned, eyes falling on a desperate looking attendant who looked like he hadn’t slept for several nights. “You can hear the very cries of our countrymen just outside! The brutal bellows of the Mongol barbarians – we stand no chance without Mahakala’s protective power!”
And here we are, Sangye Repa thought wearily to himself. “I told your imperial preceptor the same thing I shall say to you now,” he said. “The Mongols have figured out what we are doing, why we Tibetans are at court. It was all for holding these consecrations to Mahakala that would bring calamity to them. But their determination to defeat you has surpassed the power that even we lamas hold. We could not scare them away with the death of their leader. So they batter down your walls, and we watch helplessly as they sweep away your world.”
The attendant fell to his knees, wailing in despair. His heart trained to accept impermanence and ephemerality, Sangye Repa gazed at the distant plumes of smoke, the trail of destruction that was inching ever closer.
“I’ll return to Tibet, my homeland of snows,” he said to himself quietly. “The diffusion of our new schools continues apace. Loyal attendant, you’d best take your family and flee too. A civilization brought to ruin isn’t worth the suffering of your loved ones.”
He turned his back on Mahakala’s mandala, bidding it one final goodbye. He was happy with the work he had done, and the fact that he had done his best to protect the Great State of White and High.
“I hope the Mongols revere and pay respects to you too, Great Black One,” he murmured.
*
Present day
In the yurt of the great khan and emperor of China, Marco Polo shuddered, instinctively taking a sip of yak milk to calm himself. He reminded himself that he was only listening to a speculative recount from Kublai, that the Tanguts were long gone. “Who knows if Sangye Ripa really said all that,” snorted the great khan-emperor, jolting Polo out of his reverie. “Who knows if anything unfolded the way I retold. What I do know is that after the fall of the Tangut capital, in just a few months, we were worshipping Mahakala too.”
Kublai Khan slapped his knee, his robust, penetrating gaze boring into Polo’s eyes. “It’s a haunting coincidence. A question that is perhaps best left to your, and my, continued speculation. I don’t even know where my grandfather’s buried. The circumstances of his death might have something to do with it.”
Polo nodded tersely, eager to move on from the subject. Explorer and khan would continue to talk late into the night, conversing on all manner of subjects about science, discovery, and their homelands’ cultures. But never did they bring up the cursed day that the Western Xia fell. It all felt too heavy. All that remained was the Mongol reverence to Mahakala, the prime celestial of fury and power that held life and death in his hands. Tangut, Mongol, or Venetian: there would be no discrimination.
Reference
Houran Hou. 2022. “Mahākāla Literature Unearthed from Karakhoto.” In Yukiyo Kasai and Henrik H. Sorensen. (eds.) Buddhism in Central Asia II: Practices and Rituals, Visual and Material Transfer. Leiden: Brill, 400 – 29.
See more
War Magic: The Wizarding World of Tibetan Sorcery (Rubin)
Related blog posts from BDG
Mahakala, Tangut and Mongol Deity of Ritual Warfare: The Guardian of Western Xia
Mahakala, Tangut and Mongol Deity of Ritual Warfare: Kublai KhanBack to Tangut Time
Back to Tangut Time
