Kangling
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Kangling (Tibetan: རྐང་གླིང།, Wylie: rkang-gling) is the Tibetan word for a trumpet or horn made out of a human thighbone, used in Himalayan Buddhist funeral rituals.[1] The femur of a criminal or a person who died a violent death is preferred.[2] (It may also be made out of wood or metal.)
The kangling is usually only used in Tantric rituals, and seldom played in the open.[2] In Tantric Chöd practice the practitioner, motivated by compassion, plays the kangling to summon hungry spirits and demons so that s/he may satisfy their hunger and thereby relieve their sufferings.[citation needed] It is also played as a way of "cutting off of the ego."[citation needed]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Vinding, Michael (1998). The Thakali: a Himalayan ethnography. London: Serindia Publications. pp. 316. ISBN 0-906026-50-4.
- ^ a b O.C. Handa (2005). Buddhist Monasteries of Himachal. Indus Publishing Company. pp. 320. ISBN 81-7387-170-1.
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