Earlier this year, from 13–16 March, the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference was held in the city of Columbus in the state of Ohio. Despite the shadow of US President Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on higher education hanging over the conference, one of the bright spots was the Tangut studies panel, the first panel devoted to Tangutology in the history of AAS. There are several conditions that have resulted in this unexpected resurgence in interest and research output regarding Tangutology.
One of them is a growing recognition that the Tangut state, the White and Lofty State-on-High that was once dominant in northwestern China from 1038–1222, brought together the Chinese and Tibetan traditions of Buddhism in a very unique way. This blend of “Buddhisms” formed a distinctive ritual and courtly culture that would directly influence the Mongol assimilation of Vajrayana during the subsequent Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). The “bridging” of the Tanguts between Tibet and China can help us to understand the Tibetan Buddhist landscape from the 11th to 13th centuries, while immersing us in the powerful ritual legacy of the Tanguts in our modern time.
We explored these matters with Alla Sizova, who was one of the panel presenters and a young and rising name in the field of Tangut studies. A Mongolist, Tibetologist, and beginning Tangutologist all in one, she is an expert in philology and manuscript studies. A researcher at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg until 2022, she has been enrolled in the doctoral program in Buddhist Studies at Munich’s Ludwigs-Maximilian-Universität since 2023.
BDG: How did you become interested in Tangutology and research in Inner Asian history and religion?
Alla Sizova: There is a strong Russian tradition of Tangutology, which went parallel with developments in China. The Russian Tangutologist Nikolai Nevsky (1892–1937) worked in the same period as the acclaimed Wang Jingru (1903–90) and they were the first to establish the foundation of Tangutology. The Russian scholar E. I. Kychanov (1932–2013) carried on the study of the Tangut script in the second half of the 20th century, while St. Petersburg was still called Leningrad. His PhD was on the history of the Tangut state based on Chinese sources, and over his life he translated many Tangut texts, including Xixia law codes.
My interest was indeed sparked by Kychanov, who was still alive when I started working at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts. The Institute houses a famous collection of Tangut and Chinese texts from Khara-khoto, along with a portion of Tibetan texts originating in the Tangut state. They are fewer in number than Tangut and Chinese ones and might have been overlooked in the early decades of Tangut studies, but have gained deserved attention in recent years.
BDG: This panel that you participated in at the AAS was the first that was devoted purely to the Tangut Empire. What has changed in recent trends in Tangut research that made this the right time for such panel?
AS: I think there is a crop of young scholars who recently defended their doctoral dissertations in Tangut studies, and this has been bearing fruit in recent years. It is still a very small field, but perhaps the tools that have recently appeared in the last few years have helped researchers to study Xixia more easily: for example, Tangut Unicode was implemented in 2016 and online dictionaries have made reading the texts a little easier than before.
BDG: What were the collections and sources that you used for your panel talk?
AS: I didn’t focus on any particular texts but I tried to show a bird’s eye view of the Tibetan manuscripts—with Tangut and Chinese parallels—suggesting that there were two main groups. First, there are texts intended for recitation, performed individually or during group ceremonies. These texts—short sutras, dharani-sutras, pranidhanas, and so on—are not inherently ritual texts, but when used in the context of circulation in Xixia and deployed by adepts for rulers with access to tantric teachings or common people,both of whom have goals to fulfil and problems to overcome, they take on a ritual function. Second, we have ritual texts per se, containing instructions for conducting various rituals. These could also include texts meant for reading—hymns, confessions, and more. They could be classified as exoteric texts—texts that did not need transmission to be practiced) and esoteric texts texts that were read in secrecy at the royal court and could only be used by a qualified tantric master.
We know best the exoteric texts from The Revised and Newly Approved Code of the Heavenly Prosperity Reign (1149–68), in which the 11th juan specifies 11 Tibetan and Tangut texts that candidates had to memorize for ordination.* These texts would most definitely have been in very high demand, and well-known among the monastic establishment of the Tangut Empire from the highest ranking court preceptors to monks in training.**
BDG: What are some of the Tibetan Buddhist rituals that became important in the Tangut state, including war magic and protective spells?
AS: The Tibetan masters who worked at the Tangut court fortunately had biographies written about them, so we are able to glean some information about the rituals they did. One extremely important text is the biography of Tishri Repa Sherab Sengge (1164–1236). He was a monk who was at the Tangut court before the Mongol invasion. When Chinggis Khan (1162–1227) attacked Western Xia for the first time in 1209–10, Tishri Repa and his peers, according to sources, made successful efforts to repel the attack with Mahakala rituals. His biography describes in detail how they conducted offerings to several deities, which consisted of acts like making ritual cakes, the construction of mandalas, and invoking the deities: “When there was talk that the Mongols appeared to be coming, and [I] was asked to perform rituals to repel the army, [I] constructed a Cakrasaṃvara maṇḍala. I performed fire offerings for pacification, increase, control, subjugation, and destructive rites.” (Ras pa dkar po 2018, 306)
The Tantric deities invoked by the practitioners in the Tangut state included: Mahakala (Four-Armed Knowledge Protector and the Raven-Faced Mahakala), Cakrasamvara, Vajravahari, Vajrapani, Acala, Jvalamukhi, and even a Hindu deity Vishnu Narasimha. [my emphasis]
The esoteric dimension certainly seems to have become more emphasized as the Mongol armies closed in on the Xixia. The Tanguts still had an exoteric dimension where the public texts, many of them brought over from Chinese Buddhism, remained important.
BDG: Is there a continuity or common thread running through the imperial Tibetan Buddhism that was preached in Xixia, and which was then absorbed by the Mongol court and by the Yuan dynasty?
AS: We do know that the Mongols absorbed the cult of Mahakala from the Tanguts after the latter’s final defeat at their hands. Tishrī Repa Sherab Sengge, the famous court monk who initially helped to ward off the Mongol attacks, retreated to Tibet and we do not know of any collaboration he might have had with the new Mongol overlords. But as a people, Tangut teachers remained active for a very long time among Mongolians. They continued to produce literature and work as translators, with Tangut books being printed well into the Yuan era. So the transference of the Buddhist tradition from Xixia to Yuan was quite intense and undeniable.
BDG: The Tangut Empire was extinguished as a political entity, but it does not seem that the Tanguts were destroyed by the Mongols as completely as popular stories make them out to be. What evidence might we have of this continuity?
AS: Manuscript evidence at Khara-khoto suggests a change in the political periods of the Xixia and the Yuan. It is my job to discern which texts belong to the Yuan period and which belong to the preceding, pre-conquest era. Tangut communities continued to live in Khara-khoto, but were gradually replaced by Mongol and Tibetan elements. We know this because the later stratum of texts belongs to the 13th to 14th centuries, and these findings are not associated with the Tangut religious culture, like the ones we’ve discussed in this interview. Instead, we have, for example, the Dzogchen texts by Longchenpa (1308–64).
Khara-khoto was actually a military outpost and not a major city in its time. It was not the main cultural center and in fact we know that they sent convicts and prisoners there. It is by chance that the majority of the Tangut heritage we have so far is from there. I should also mention findings in Dunhuang, which was under Tangut rule for a short period. I have not heard of much textual evidence from Liangzhou (present-day Wuwei), but there has been a lot of material evidence excavated there. And Yinchuan was the capital of the Tangut Empire, and good archeological work is being done there.
BDG: In closing, what is your current direction of research as you continue to research about Tibetan Buddhism at the Xixia court?
AS: My current task is to translate all the Tibetan texts from Khara-khoto with my colleague Alexander Zorin. This is a large body of scriptures, although heavily damaged by time, and it therefore exists in a fragmented state! We also need to make philological comparisons with extant Chinese and Tangut counterparts, which can shed light on the nature of these rituals and how they would have been performed.
An interesting detail I would like to add is that the Tanguts had their own Wutaishan complex because they had a very powerful cult of Manjushri, which they actually imported from the original Wutaishan in Shanxi Province. Once they were forbidden to go there by the Song imperium due to their military conflicts, the Tanguts founded their own temples for Manjushri on Helanshan (賀蘭山) and produced ritual texts for Manjushri.
This is just another example of the complex intertwining of “Tangut Buddhism” with Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism, despite the esoteric versus exoteric distinction. Given their relatively short time on the world stage, the Tanguts played an outsize role in how their Buddhism was both spatially, temporally, and ritualistically embedded in multiple streams of Buddhist traditions that continued on well after the Yuan and became the Mahayana and Vajrayana practices that we know today.
* Prajñāpāramitā Scripture for Humane Kings Who Wish to Protect Their States, Chanting the Names of Mañjuśrī (Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgīti); Prayer for Completely Good Conduct (Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna); The Confession of Downfalls to the Thirty-Five Buddhas; The Heart Sūtra; Prayer of Aspiration from the Sūtra “Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm” (Mahāsahasrapramardanī-bhāṣita-praṇidhāna); “The Gateway to Every Direction” Chapter 25 from the Lotus Sūtra; “Verses on the Collection of Precious Qualities” (Prajñāpāramitā Ratnaguṇasaṃcayagāthā); Uṣṇīṣavijayā-dhāraṇī; [Dhāraṇī of] Immaculate Radiance (Raśmivimalaviśuddhaprabhā-[dhāraṇī]); and The Diamond Sūtra.
** Kirill Solonin has noted that the Xixia ecclesiastical structure was an eightfold ranking system that would influence the Mongol sangha. In descending order: imperial preceptor (dishi); state preceptor (guoshi); Dharma master (fashi); meditation master (chanshi); Vinaya judge (sengpan); monastic registrar (senglu); abbot (zuozhu); and monastic member/cleric/monk (sengren).
References
Alla Sizova. 2025. The Ritual Aspect of Tibetan Buddhism in the Tangut State: Manuscript Collections and Historical Sources. Lecture given at AAS 2025 Annual Conference March 13–16, 2025. Columbus, Ohio.
Ras pa dkar po. 2018. “Bla ma rin po che ‘gro ba’i mgon po ti shri ras pa’i rnam par thar pa bzhugs pa’i dbu phyogs lags so.” In Lam yig phyogs bsgrigs. Edited by Dhīḥ lha ldan. Hong Kong: Krung go’i shes rig dpe skrun khang. 255–365.
See more
Kirill Solonin (人民大學) – Tangut Synthesis: Sino-Tibetan Buddhism during 11th-13th centuries (YouTube)
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