Za Rahula
Tibetan Buddhist · deity · mythic · Recorded classification
Za Rahula is the wrathful planetary protector of Tibetan Buddhism, the local development of the Indian eclipse-demon Rāhu who swallows sun and moon. He is portrayed with a dark serpent's tail in place of legs, four arms, nine heads crowned by a raven's head that caws prophecy, a gaping face in his belly, and a body covered with a thousand eyes. As chief of the gza' class of planetary demons he is feared as the bringer of strokes, epilepsy and sudden paralysis (gza' nad, 'planet-sickness'), and propitiated to avert them. In the Nyingma school he was bound by Padmasambhava as a guardian of the transmitted teachings and forms, with Ekajati and Dorje Legpa, the triad of special protectors of the Dzogchen tradition.
Domains
- planets and eclipses
- dzogchen protection
Powers
- to seize and devour the sun and moon, causing eclipses
- to strike vow-breakers with seizures, strokes and paralysis
Epithets
- ཁྱབ་འཇུག་ཆེན་པོ (Khyab 'jug chen po, 'the Great Pervader')René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet (1956) (secondary)
Relations
- ally: Dorje LegpaRahula and Dorje Legpa, together with the goddess Ekajati, are invoked as the triad of principal oath-bound guardians of the Nyingma Dzogchen teachings.Ladrang Kalsang, The Guardian Deities of Tibet (1996) (secondary)
Sources
- Za Rahula is the Tibetan Buddhist planetary protector developed from the Indian eclipse-demon Rāhu: a nine-headed, thousand-eyed, serpent-bodied lord of the gza' spirits, bound by Padmasambhava and honoured in the Nyingma school as one of the three chief Dzogchen protectors.: 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)