Aacharya Premsagar Chaturvedi Abhinandan Granth

SR No.: 022848
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Ajaykumar Pandey
Publisher: Pratibha Prakashan
Publication Year: 2010
Total Pages: 502
Language: Hindi
Classification: Smruti_Granth
File Size: 36 MB

Page 487

Tārā (Buddhism)
455 in a later life as the Nepalese princess Tritsun. A teardrop from his left eye, fell upon the plain and became the reverend Tārā. She also declared, 'Son of your race! As you are striving for the sake of sentient beings in the Land of Snows, intercede in their suffering, and I shall be your companion in this endeavour! Tārā was also reabsorbed into Avalokiteshvara's left eye, and was reborn in a later life as the Chinese princess Kongjo (Princess Wencheng).?
The Tārā figure originated not in Buddhism but in Hinduism, where she, Tārā, was one of a number of Mother Goddess figures alongside Sarasvati, Lakshmi, Parvati, and Shakti. In the 6th century C.E., during the era of the Pala Empire, Tārā was adopted into the Buddhist pantheon as an important bodhisattva figure just a few centuries after the Pragyaparmita Sutra had been introduced into what was becoming the Mahayana Buddhism of India. It would seem that the feminine principle makes its first appearance in Buddhism as the “Mother of Perfected Wisdom" and then later Tārā comes to be seen as an expression of the compassion of perfected wisdom. However, sometimes Tārā is also known as "the Mother of the Buddhas," which usually refers to the enlightened wisdom of the Buddhas, so in approaching Buddhist deities, one learns not to impose totally strict boundaries about what one deity covers, as opposed to another deity.
Tārā then became very popular as an object of worship and was becoming an object of Tantric worship and practice by the 7th century C.E. With the movement and crosspollination of Indian Buddhism into Tibet, the worship and practices of Tārā became incorporated into Tibetan Buddhism. Independent of whether she is classified as a deity, a Buddha or a bodhisattva, Tārā remains very popular in Tibet and Mongolia. And as Ms. Getty notes, one other reason for her popularity was that Tārā became to be known as a Buddhist deity who could be appealed to directly by lay folk without the necessity or intervention of a lama or monk.