Khenchen Pema Tsewang

Martial Conquest (g.yul rgyal)

• An esoteric ssystem of divination based on the Svarodaya Tantra (Yuddhajaya nāma tantrarāja svarodaya, T. 4322), which is said to have Śaivite origins and reached Tibet from Jumla in Western Nepal during the thirteenth century. The most important indigenous Tibetan commentary is the Supreme Delight (mchog dga'), composed by Phug-pa lhun-grub rgya-mtsho in the mid-fifteenth century. Interest in the martial calculations of the Svarodaya Tantra appears to have reached its height during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries when military strategy assumed a particular importance for Dalai Lama V and his third regent Sangs-rgyas rgya-mtsho during the Tibetan civil war. Although this system is rarely practise at the present day, the transmission of the Svarodaya Tantra has been maintained, along with extant examples of 178 charts, which correspond to the themes of the text's ten chapters. GD (from the Glossary to Tibetan Elemental Divination Paintings)