Amulet Box

A universal component of Tibetan attire, an amulet-container or charm box for anyone outside Tibet, the Himalayan people’s jantar, a colloquial form of ‘yantra’, the ‘mantra’s’ counterpart in Tantrism having same mystic power as the ‘mantra’, is a piece of jewellery worn by almost all Tibetans, male, female or a child, tribes or elite, or the officers of the state, as also by those from the eastern and western sub-Himalayan region to include Nepal and Ladakh. This ‘jantar’ or amulet box is also known as ‘ga’u’, ‘ten’ and by several other names specific to different areas. Besides that as a piece of jewellery a beautifully conceived and crafted amulet box is an answer to the most common ubiquitous human concern for personal vanity, or reveals aesthetic ideals of a land and its culture, or is a tool for displaying the wearer’s social status or political authority, it has convincingly guarded for ages now the Himalayan community, Hindu, Buddhist or any, against evil, illnesses or harm and has served as the courier of good and benevolence.

With its talismanic powers which it derives from elements beyond it requiring such elements’ infusion, even symbolic, into its conception for its effective functioning, an amulet box is often a synthesis of form, function and symbolism : beauty being its form, auspiciousness, its function, and symbolism, connotation of its various parts. It seems that exceptionally inhospitable conditions of life in Himalayan terrain – floods, hail, sandstorms, winds clubbed with snow-storms, necessitated some kind of protective cover to make life secured. It was perhaps in such background that in ancient Tibet there evolved a cosmography that sought to cope up with such natural disasters.

Such cosmography was based on the belief that material elements in the environment causing disasters derived their power from the nature’s invisible spirits, their patrons, that gave them strength but also wielded control over them. Some of these spirits were benevolent, while others, malignant. This ancient cosmographical vision sought aid of the benign spirits by propitiating them, and evaded or controlled the malignant ones with magical protections; and, it was perhaps out of this perception that the idea of amulet box developed.

Crafted as a piece of jewellery, an amulet box added beauty to the appearance; the use of auspicious and divine motifs, which propitiated benevolent spirits, gave it symbolic dimensions; and, various charms – holy hymns and syllables inscribed on cloth or paper, sacred rice, gems or stones, carried in it provided with protection against evil spirits and their influence. Besides that the charm – the sacred hymn or whatever, which the amulet box carried, could be replaced by another for evading a different kind of calamity, one could have and wear more than one amulet box on his or her person, though essentially in the direct touch with the body which alone would enable the body to draw the charm’s power and infuse the same into it.

As required its function, this amulet box has been cast with two horizontally dividing basic parts that fit together with the help of an inner flange, an almost universal pattern for a container. These parts provide access to the inner space which contains a charm. A hexagon with arrow-like projecting right and left ends and curved middles it not only acquires octagonal dimensions but with a rising that a net appended on a blind wall affording it alluring perspective, a plain moulding over it providing it with the breathing space, and then a coral line intercepted by strings of mini beads define, reveal sensuous contours, and the feeling that it is a box is dispelled.

The top of the box has been inlaid with a large size oval piece of turquoise framed in a fine beautifully crafted silver-socket, the metal of which the entire amulet box is made. Coral beads in two sizes arranged in groups of three and five each define the layer below the top. These courses of coral beads are laid over an elegantly crafted silver-sheet with mesh-design. There is under it a course of turquoise-beads, in groups of three each on upper and lower sides, and those of four, on the right and left. The upper side has a pipe with eight rings, and the lower, a double drum type ‘vajra’ motif. Both, on the top and bottom, there are groups of three beads each.

Unlike many other amulet boxes that have some divine image on their fronts or have at least a holy inscription, this box has been endowed with strange numerical symbols; the top being one, symbolising the Master; the pipe that holds the box to the bosom having eight parts, the eight-fold path of the Buddha; the three beads, on the upper and the lower sides and the corresponding sides of the front, being ‘Tri-Ratna’ – the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha; groups of five, denoting Buddha’s first five disciples, who set the Wheel of Law in motion; the total of them both, the ten, being ten Cardinals of the Buddhism.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.