Mon, 21 Aug 2006
Zombies
Every country hs the favorite monster or boogeyman. For the modern West it seems to be space aliens. For Tibetans it's zombies (rolang). I remember when Khenchen Konchog visited KTD with two of his students. One of them asked me to explain the Twenty One Praises to Tara, and I was hard put to explain why it says Tara subdues "demons, zombies, and ghosts." The Tibetan lore says zombies are corpses animated by malevolent spirits. This essay explains more about zombies (pdf file).
Once arisen, rolang have particular abilities and qualities, and there are various methods of prevention and destruction available to the rolang's potential victims. Rolang are said to move only in a straight forward direction and cannot bend at the knees. They can kill others and often make other people into rolangas well by touching them. Song Rinpoche (1979, p. 11) wrote that "... people die instantly when the rolangsays 'Ha!' If it cannot kill then it tries to damage. It hits people or breathes on them, and they may die." Tibetans speak of four types of rolang. Ruelang are "bone-rolang," draklang are "blood rolang," wuelang are "breath-rolang," and mewalang are "mole-rolang." A ruelang can be destroyed by breaking its leg bone; a draklang must be made to bleed; and the wuelang must be suffocated. The mewalang is the most difficult rolangto destroy as one must find a mole on its body and find a way to cut it out. However, in many stories the rolang is defeated by other more simple means, such as by chanting mantra (a mystical formula of invocation or incantation) while whipping or hitting the rolang, or by pushing its head back down before it fully arises. It has been said that " ... if you spit before a rolang can breathe on you, then it cannot harm you" (Song Rinpoche 1979, p. 13).
