Subject: Three Witches of Sakya (Video Transcript)
Three Witches of Sakya (Bamo)An Introduction to the Sakya Witches
'So the topic is witches, but a particular type of witch, not witches in general. This is a form of witch, a category of witches called 'Bamo,' and these are particularly associated with Sakya Monastery and the Sakya tradition. And the reason that they matter at all is because we find a lot of physical representations in the form of masks. And these masks you'll find in branch monasteries, the main monastery, all kinds of Sakya monasteries, plus in Mustang, in Lo Manthang, in the capital town, walled city of upper Mustang, then traditionally, I don't know now, traditionally they used to have yearly 'Bamo' dances where monks would dress up as witches and wear masks, which is very unusual because I've not found this in Central Tibet or West Tibet or Sakya Monastery. It may exist, but I've just not heard of it or seen it, only in Mustang.
So normally these witches are represented by masks and they're quite ugly, a little deformed, often they'll have a big green-blue turquoise in the center of the forehead as an ornament.
Traditionally there were three main 'Bamo' witches and that was Mamo Rekyi, Namkha Drolma and Shangmo. Mamo Rikyi is sort of the ringleader, the boss. Namkha Drolma was actually a monk who was killed around about the 15th, 16th century. And then Shangmo is a witch who was subjugated in the village of Shang and thus she's named after the village. So Shangmo, 'mo' is the feminine indicator.
So we have these three main ones and there are ritual texts for these to offer a smoke offering or whatnot. And the masks are found in abundance in Sakya monasteries and we find a few, not many, but there are some scroll paintings that also will depict these three and others. There are others besides these. Now for monasteries they will often have these kind of life-size masks which could be used, I suppose, for dance and which are used for dance in Mustang. But then you have also small masks which are not more than three, four inches, five inches in size, which are traditionally made by high lamas of the tradition for practitioners who wish to have some sort of protection by some kind of witch. So that's a bit of an unusual object but we do find these in some abundance in Sakya monasteries throughout Tibet and those regions where the Sakya tradition has continued. So that's Bamo witches.' (Jeff Watt, YouTube, August 24th, 2020).
HAR Team [added 12-2023]
