A red goddess, sixteen years old in the texts, dancing with a bow drawn to her ear, every weapon in her four hands made of flowers, and the buddha of the west in her crown.
Kurukulla is a female meditational deity of Vajrayana Buddhism, known for the activity the tradition calls magnetizing. She is usually red, with one face and four arms. Her first two hands draw a bow and arrow made of flowers; the other two hold a hook and a noose, also of flowers. She dances on one leg on a corpse inside a circle of sunlight. Lotsawa House calls her particularly associated with the Lotus family of the buddha Amitabha, whose image she wears in her crown. She is often treated as a form of Tara, and is sometimes called Red Tara, though Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) warns that most red Taras are not Kurukulla.
Kurukulla meaning: the name
Wikipedia calls the origin of the Sanskrit name unclear. Her mantra addresses her in the vocative, Kurukulle, and the name is often written that way. The Tibetan names differ by source. Wikipedia gives rig byed ma, "the knowledge woman" or "the woman of magic". HAR, describing two Rubin paintings, writes the Tibetan as rig che ma and translates it "The One of the Action Family". The translations differ; we give both.
Where Kurukulla comes from
HAR calls her "a Tantric Buddhist meditational deity originating in India." Lotsawa House notes that scholars have linked her with a mountain in Gujarat and with the Hindu goddess Lalita, while the Buddhist texts present her as a Buddhist deity in her own right.
She is in the tantras early. Wikipedia notes that her mantra already appears in the Hevajra Tantra, and HAR explains that in the Hevajra and Vajrapañjara tantras she is a power emanation of Hevajra. The longest single text on her is in the Tibetan canon: The Practice Manual of Noble Tārā Kurukullā, Toh 437, which 84000 calls "the most comprehensive single work" on the goddess. Its title already joins her to Tara. Wikipedia records that it was translated into Tibetan by Krishnapandita and Tsultrim Gyalwa, a disciple of Atisha.
HAR finds her across Tibetan religion: in the Kriya and highest yoga tantras of the new schools, in many revealed treasures of the Nyingma, and in the Bon tradition too.
Is Kurukulla Red Tara?
Sometimes, and not always. HAR puts the question with care. Kurukulla, it says, is a category of deity, like Mahakala or Shri Devi. A given Kurukulla can be her own entity, an emanation of Tara, or an emanation of Hevajra. "In the Kriya tantras she is often portrayed, but not exclusively, as a red power emanation of Tara. However, most forms of red Tara are not Kurukulla." HAR's page of confusions adds that she can be mistaken for the four-armed forms of Vajrayogini, and for other figures who carry a bow and arrow.
Lotsawa House regards her as a form of Tara, who is herself an emanation of Avalokiteshvara. Green Tara sits with one foot stepping down from her lotus; Kurukulla, where she is counted as a Tara, stands up and dances with the bow drawn. Green Tara's iconography and the Twenty-One Taras are in Green Tara.
Kurukulla and the Lotus family of Amitabha
Lotsawa House writes that a crown bearing the image of Amitabha "affirms her place" in his Lotus family. The Metropolitan Museum's label on its great appliqué Kurukulla says her red skin links her to the red Amitabha, "of whom she is an emanation". On both Rubin paintings described below, a red Amitabha sits at the top center.
Amitabha is the red buddha of the west, whose family is the Lotus (see Amitabha Buddha). In Tibet red belongs to that family, and to attraction, drawing what is good near. That is why her red is not a mood. It is a family name.
Kurukulla iconography
HAR's standard description comes from the Sakya compiler Ngorchen Konchog Lhundrub (1497–1557). It is precise enough to draw from:
- Body. Red, one face, three eyes, two breasts. Short fangs; the face slightly smiling and slightly angry. She has the appearance of a sixteen-year-old, with brown hair flowing upward.
- First pair of hands. A bow and arrow of utpala flowers, the string drawn back to the ear.
- Lower right hand. A hook, "a hook that subdues the Three Worlds."
- Lower left hand. A noose of utpala flowers.
- Ornaments. A crown of five dry skulls, which the text reads as the Five Families; a necklace of fifty fresh heads; the five bone ornaments; a tiger skin as a skirt.
- Posture. Standing on a human corpse whose head is turned to the left, her left leg extended and the toes of the right foot at the left thigh: a half-vajra dancing posture.
- Setting. A circle of sun rays. Konchog Lhundrub says she is "visible, but not solid, like the form of illusion."
Weapons made of flowers
On the Rubin painting F1996.7.2, HAR notes that all four implements, the bow, the arrow, the hook and the lasso, are made of red utpala flowers. On another Rubin painting, F1997.21.1, HAR calls them "implements of subjugation". Those two phrases sit side by side in the same figure. A hook is something that catches. A noose is something that binds. Both are made of the softest thing a painter can draw.
The Met's label compares her arrow to that of Kamadeva, the Indian god of love, who shoots a flower-tipped arrow, and notes that this flowered arrow is typical of later images of her.
What she dances on
The sources do not agree, and painters do not either. Konchog Lhundrub's text puts a human corpse under her foot, and HAR's two Rubin paintings show a corpse, a sun disc and a lotus. Wikipedia describes her crushing Rahu, the planetary demon said to devour the sun. HAR records a form called Kalpoktam Kurukulla who stands above the head of Rahula. The Met's appliqué has her on a heap of corpses. In most, she dances inside a ring of flame or sunlight.
Other forms
The four-armed red dancer is the common one, not the only one. Lotsawa House notes forms with two, four, six or eight arms. HAR lists seated forms with two, four or six, a peaceful white Kurukulla seated with two arms, and colors from white to pink and blue. One seated four-armed form that HAR quotes from the Drub Tab Gyatsa, a Tibetan compendium of practice texts, holds the bow and arrow above and shows the gesture of fearlessness and a hook below.
Magnetizing: what the tradition means
Tantric Buddhism names four activities. Rigpa Wiki lists them: pacifying, increasing, magnetizing and subjugating. Magnetizing, in Sanskrit vaśīkaraṇa, in Tibetan dbang ba, is directed, it says, at "the three realms". That is the same reach Konchog Lhundrub gives her hook: the three worlds.
Lotsawa House describes Kurukulla as embodying this activity: drawing beings toward the path "through the radiance of wisdom and compassion", not through coercion or fear. The Met's label describes the ritual side: in tantric rites, reciting her mantra is believed to subdue or charm people of every rank, kings included. The Rubin's glossary adds that in more popular belief she is associated with love and power.
Those are the teachings and beliefs of the tradition, held by its practitioners, and Kurukulla practice is given within a lineage by a teacher. A thangka is an image of her made with care; we do not claim it attracts love, success or anything else to the person who hangs it.
Kurukulla in the Sakya tradition
The Sakya hold her in two places at once. Rigpa Wiki's list of the Thirteen Golden Dharmas of Sakya, a set of rare teachings, places Kurukulla of the Hevajra Tantra among the Three Great Red Ones, with Takkiraja and Maharakta Ganapati, and Kurukulla Tara among the Three Small Red Ones, with Red Vasudhara and Tinuma. HAR adds that the Sakya arrange their many forms of Kurukulla in five levels of profundity, the highest associated with the Hevajra and Vajrapanjara tantras.
Three Kurukullas to look at closely
The Met's appliqué, 2014.720.1
Nineteenth-century Tibet, 142.2 by 119.4 centimeters, made not with paint but with cloth: appliquéd satin, brocade and damask, embroidered silk and painted details. When the Met's conservators studied it, they found textiles that may span almost the whole Qing dynasty, pieced side by side. The figures are outlined with silk thread wrapped around a core of horsehair and couched down, so the lines stand slightly raised from the surface. An earlier repair had used a blue damask patch with a heat-set adhesive; in its selvedge they found the mark "Sin Chon H.K.", a much later Hong Kong cloth. They removed it, dyed a new fabric to match the faded ground, and gave the goddess dark-blue cotton borders.
The Rubin's red-ground painting, F1996.7.2
A small painting, about 29 by 22 centimeters in HAR's record, from nineteenth-century Central Tibet, in the style HAR identifies with Dzongsar Monastery in Dege. It is a tsal tang: gold line on a red ground, a type HAR says is generally used for power and long-life deities. Red Kurukulla dances on red. Amitabha sits at the top center, the mahasiddha Virupa at the top left, Green Tara at the bottom left, and at the bottom center a protector riding a mule, the Queen of the Weapon Army, whom HAR identifies as the special protector of the Khyentse household at Dzongsar.
The Rubin's gold Kurukulla, F1997.21.1
Nineteenth-century Tibet, 73 by 51.4 centimeters. HAR notes that she is normally red but was painted here in gold, as an offering. Around her, in a ring, stand ninety-nine small red emanations of her, each with one face and two hands, each drawing its own bow and arrow of utpala flowers.
The Kurukulla mantra
om kurukulle hrih svaha
Wikipedia, citing Stephan Beyer's The Cult of Tara (1978), gives this as her essential mantra, with her name in the vocative. Longer and shorter forms are taught in different lineages.
Our Kurukulla thangka
Our Kurukulla Red Thangka is part of our thangka collection. In Tibet red is the color of the Lotus family and of attraction, of drawing good things near, which is her color in the texts.
She holds a bow and arrow made of flowers. Her young, intense, three-eyed face sits under a crown of small white skulls, her hair a blaze of gold, and her ornaments of bone and jewels are set with crystals. She stands above a lotus and sun seat on a reclining figure, her whole body leaning into the drawn bow. Everything is red, the ground, the clouds, the flames and the goddess, separated only by fine gold and white lines. Below, two smaller red figures sit in their own haloes, with offerings in white skull bowls between them. The piece shown is framed in our Crimson Cloud brocade.
Like all our thangkas, it is our own drawing, kept to traditional iconometric proportions and printed on heavy card. It is not hand-painted and not mineral pigment. Elderly lay Buddhists who practice at a temple finish it by hand there, setting glass crystals one by one and tracing the outlines in gold glitter, which is not gilding; each piece takes about two days. The frame is 55 by 71 centimeters around an image of 40.2 by 56.2 centimeters, with a silk brocade frame-within-a-frame, a wood frame and an acrylic front. Part of every order goes to that temple, so every thangka is also an offering.
The others are in the thangka collection. How a thangka is made is in What Is a Thangka?, and where to hang one in How to Hang a Thangka.
Kurukulla questions
Who is Kurukulla?
A female meditational deity of Vajrayana Buddhism, associated with the activity of magnetizing and with the Lotus family of Amitabha. She is usually red, four-armed and dancing.
Is Kurukulla the same as Red Tara?
Often she is treated as a red form of Tara, and the canonical text calls her Noble Tara Kurukulla. But HAR notes that most forms of red Tara are not Kurukulla, and that some Kurukullas are emanations of Hevajra instead.
What does Kurukulla hold?
A bow and arrow drawn to the ear in her first two hands, a hook and a noose in the other two. All are made of red utpala flowers.
Why is Kurukulla red?
Red is the color of Amitabha's Lotus family, associated in Tibet with drawing good things near. The Met reads her red skin as a link to the red Amitabha.
What does magnetizing mean in Tibetan Buddhism?
One of the four tantric activities, with pacifying, increasing and subjugating. Lotsawa House describes it as drawing beings toward the path through wisdom and compassion.
What is the Kurukulla mantra?
Om kurukulle hrih svaha, with variations by lineage.
Is Kurukulla peaceful or wrathful?
Both, a little. Konchog Lhundrub describes her face as slightly smiling and slightly angry. HAR calls her semi-peaceful, and some forms are fully peaceful.
Ninety-nine bows
On the gold painting at the Rubin, someone drew the goddess once, large, and then drew her again ninety-nine times, small and red, in a ring around her. Each of the small ones has two hands. Each is drawing a bow. Every arrow is a flower.
May whatever is drawn near be drawn by kindness.
Kurukulla Red Thangka · Thangka collection
More from the Journal: Green Tara · Amitabha Buddha · What Is a Thangka? · How to Hang a Thangka
More thangka deities: The Three Long-Life Deities · Yellow Jambhala · Manjushri · Six-Armed Mahakala