Potent Substances in Sowa Riga and Buddhist Rituals

Potent Substances-in-Becoming: Materials and their Entangled Histories among Sowa Rigpa and Buddhist Ritual Practitioners in India and Bhutan

The potency of substances is a complex issue in the Tibetan cultural world, entangling ritual and medical domains. Emerging in practice through the skilful engagement of specialists with materials, potency (nüpa) is both crafted and attributed in multiple ways in Tibetan medical (Sowa Rigpa) and Buddhist ritual texts and practices. We will explore how specific (largely herbal and mineral)
substances are considered potent and why. How do practitioners enhance potency during processing and ritual consecration?
Expanding on Tim Ingold’s approach to materials as ‘substances-in-becoming,’ which proposes that skilfully working with material properties is a source of their agency and power, we focus on how practitioners engage their senses (smell, taste, touch, vision, etc.) in the attribution and enhancement of potency. Coalescing textual, ethno-pharmacological and ethnographic methods, we will test the following hypothesis: Both medical and ritual practitioners approach potency as a potential inherent in substances, but one that must be actualised and enhanced through skilful intervention (e.g. processing and/or consecration) to become active. Potency thus emerges in fields of practice as substances are transformed, becoming enmeshed in human-centred lifeworlds. We investigate practitioners’ uses and interpretations of nüpa in specific texts, ethnographically and ethno-pharmacologically explore direct engagement with substances during
actual processing (e.g. cleaning, sorting and detoxification procedures), and identify and characterise these substances ethno-botanically. We will participate in and document three related, especially revealing events carried out by both institutionally trained Sowa Rigpa physicians (in northwestern India) and in a Dudjom Nyingma community (northeastern India and Bhutan): 1) the processing of calcite (chongzhi) for use in both Sowa Rigpa formulas and ‘accomplished medicines’ (mendrup); 2) the enhancement of substances through consecration rituals in pharmacy and temple contexts; and 3) a comparative case study on the potency of poisonous substances used in both Nyingma expelling rites and Sowa Rigpa medicines. Together, these provide a comprehensive, ground-breaking understanding of potency across the Tibetan medico-ritual nexus. Our trans-disciplinary team uniquely combines the expertise necessary to disentangle the complex practitioner-text-substance intersections from which potency emerges: Dr. Barbara Gerke (PI, 100%), a medical anthropologist specialising in Sowa Rigpa, combining textual and ethnographic methods; Dr. Jan van der Valk (Postdoc, 50%), an ethnobotanist with relevant ethno-pharmacological and anthropological expertise on Tibetan pharmaceuticals; and Dr. Cathy Cantwell (Postdoc, 20%), a senior Tibetanist specialising in early Nyingma tantric traditions and the Dudjom lineage. Our original results will elucidate how early Nyingma rituals shaped ideas of potency in Sowa Rigpa while contributing a novel take on efficacy studies, moving beyond clinical trials or conventional socio-cultural interpretations by considering how the direct engagement of practitioners with substances impacts potency in fundamental ways.