Dorje Legpa

Damchen Dorje Legpa, 'the oath-bound Excellent Vajra' (Sanskrit Vajrasādhu), is among the best known of the indigenous Tibetan deities converted to Buddhism. Tradition holds that Padmasambhava subdued him in the eighth century and bound him under oath to protect the doctrine. He is depicted as a red, wrathful figure in the dress of a layman, wearing a round wide-brimmed hat and riding a brown billy-goat (or in other forms a snow lion), holding a vajra, a smith's hammer or a heart. He is the patron deity of Tibetan blacksmiths, a craft-association that links him with fire and the forge, and in the Nyingma school he serves, with Ekajati and Rahula, as one of the three special protectors of the Dzogchen (Great Perfection) teachings.

Domains

• oath bound protection
• smithcraft

Powers

• to guard the Dzogchen teachings and those who practise them
• to forge weapons and strike enemies with the smith's hammer

Epithets

• དམ་ཅན (Dam can, 'the Oath-Bound One')René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet (1956) (secondary)

Relations

• ally: Za RahulaDorje Legpa and the planetary deity Rahula, together with the goddess Ekajati, form the triad of principal guardians of the Nyingma Dzogchen teachings and are invoked together in that school's protector rites.Ladrang Kalsang, The Guardian Deities of Tibet (1996) (secondary)

Sources

• Dorje Legpa (Vajrasādhu) is an indigenous Tibetan spirit subdued by Padmasambhava and bound by oath as a Buddhist protector, worshipped as a goat-riding blacksmith god and one of the three chief guardians of the Nyingma Dzogchen teachings.: René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities (1956) (secondary); Ladrang Kalsang, The Guardian Deities of Tibet (Dharamsala: Little Lhasa Publications, 1996) (secondary)