Mārīcī

SHE IS THE CLEAREST CASE IN THIS BLOCK OF A FIGURE WHO OUTGREW A SET: the source's own point about her is that she began as one of twenty-one and acquired shrines of her own. That is precisely the test this programme applies when deciding whether a member of a series gets a record, and here the source applies it for us. TYPE deity IS THE NEAREST CATEGORY THIS SCHEMA HAS AND THE TRADITION DOES NOT USE IT; lane 26 escalated this and nothing is decided here.

Domains

• light
• dawn

Relations

• counted among the twenty one taras with: Tārā

Sources

• Reference treatment of Tara and the female deities of Tibetan Buddhism: many prominent female Buddhist deities found their place among the Twenty-One Taras, among them Sarasvati, Usnisavijaya, Sitatapatra, Kurukulla, Bhrkuti, Mahamayuri and Marici; Tara's peaceful forms are white or green and her angry forms red, yellow or blue, and she is a completely enlightened buddha who especially protects from the eight fears; Kurukulla is the four-armed red Tara, red-complexioned, seated on a red lotus, dancing, an archer holding an arrow and a bow of flowers with arrows of red lotus buds, whose bow relates to the subjugation of ego and the use of attraction in the service of the dharma; Usnisavijaya is a very popular goddess in Tibet, with three heads - the right yellow, the central white, the left black - and eight arms; Sitatapatra, the White Parasol, also called Usnisa-sitatapatra, is a protector described in the Surangama Sutra, with a thousand faces, arms and legs, her central faces white like her body, those to the right yellow and those to the left green; Marici has emerged in the tradition as an independent goddess with shrines dedicated to her.