Kritik am Buch „The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama ... - Neues von Shi De

The scapegoat of Gyantse, adorned with animal intestines
Yet it is not just an annual psycho-purification of Lamaism which is conducted through the Tibetan
Monlam feast, but also the collective cleansing of the historical defilement which bleeds as a deep
wound in the subconscious of the monastic state. The driving off or killing of the scapegoat is, just
like the cham dance, a ritual of atonement for the murder of King Langdarma. In fact, numerous
symbolic references are made to the original deed in the scenario of the festivities. For example, the
“ox demon” (one of the names for the scapegoat) appears colored in black and white and flees on a
white horse just like the regicide, Palgyi Dorje. The “ox” was also Langdarma’s totem animal. During
the feast, from a mountain where the grave of the apostate king could be found, units of the Tibetan
Artillery fired off three cannon, two of which were called the “old and the young demoness”. “Since
the Dalai Lamas are actually, in a broad historical sense, beneficiaries of Palgyi Dorje's [Langdarma’s
murderer] crime,” the ethnologist Robert A. Paul writes, “we may suppose that part of the purpose of
the annual scapegoat ritual is to allow the guilt for that act to be expressed through the figure of the
Ox-demon; and then to reassert the legitimacy of the Dalai Lama's reign by demonstrating his ability
to withstand this challenge to his innocence” (R. Paul, 1982, p. 296).
Authors like James George Frazer and Robert Bleichsteiner are even of the opinion that the “king of