manasataramgini
manasataramgini

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6 Tweets 7 reads May 07, 2023
Not endorsing the deity id but some comments. The dice prognostication with 64 omens reappears in the Turkic Irk bitig suggesting it remained popular in central Asia over a period. There are earlier dice of similar type in kuShANa sites from central Asia:
manasataramgini.wordpress.com
The reference to the plurality of marut-s and not in the sense of vAyu is notable here. I 've hence considered this a late survival of an archaic tradition that lost currency in "middle India". The garlic manuscript is evidently a recension of the lAshUNa-kalpa or the gandha-maha
i.e., the annual stench festival that was described in the medical kAshyapa saMhitA. See: manasataramgini.wordpress.com
We suspect the Arya-s & eastern Iranian-s had shared garlic taboo going back to their days on the steppe & possibly related to the purity of the hotR^i & adhvaryu
The dice prognostication incantation to a goddess named vimalA & mAli, is IMO an important early attestation of the key pUrvAMnAya goddess who is central to that system as the one who takes the form of the garland of letters & the consort of the symmetric shabdarAshI bhairava
Her name adorns the title of the famous pUrvAMnAya-tantra mAlinIvijaya -- the uttarabhAga of which was the focus of abhinavagupta's development of the system. Notably, he opens his ma~NgalAcharaNa of the commentary on the mAlinIvijaya with the phrase vimala-kalAshraya:
the vimala-kala is the supreme kala of the system, standing over the 16 basic kala-s, and identified with the great goddess mAlinI (it is also a play on the name of abhinava's biological mother vimalA). Hence, we see this combination as an early attestation of that goddess.

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