Merry Christmas to you too!

OK, now that you’ve given in an inch, I can just say that you’re probably perfectly correct that it’s a Christian cross. Well, at the very least just a little bit. Ha ha :->])

Merry Christmas!
- † Dab

It’s been fun crossing swords. But one final thrust and parry if you will permit. Underlying the presence of the crossed Vajra as the basis for the mandala is the (simple, totally non-Christian) cross, composed of the first two lines that are drawn as part of the construction of the mandala. That’s the four-path of the Indian texts.

I didn’t intend to make a crossed-vajra vs. Nestorian cross comparison. That’s your contribution. I just wanted to call attention to the fact that there were crosses in Indian & Tibetan culture that did and do have nothing to do with Christianity. Therefore, a wider social context in which Christianity was a (mere?) possibility is not enough to tell me that a cross is a Christian cross, regardless of the number of balls on the ends of the arms, not in the absence of a more specific context. In the case of a manuscript “cross,” it ought to have confirmation in the writing on that manuscript (and in the same ink and penmanship). That people brought up in Christian countries have minds that refuse to acknowledge the non-cross-ness of crosses is just a result of their imprinting. It’s an instant reflex. (The same principle is at work in the ‘recognition’ of other symbols…) Likewise, seeing some of those embroidered Asian/Nestorian crosses, as a Tibetan Buddhist I would be able to see nothing but mandalas, and nobody could tell me otherwise. Go ahead, tell me I’m silly, and that they are really crosses. I’d answer you that if that’s the case they must have copied them from our mandalas after all.

Cultural conditioning is powerful stuff, even when taken in moderation. Don’t you agree just a little bit?

Yours,
Dab

࿇

I guess my point was mainly that the “cross” has a history in Buddhism that very probably goes back before any real Tibetan contact with Nestorian or any other kind of Christianity. That cross, the rgya-gram, was not a Christian symbol, and should not be seen as one. Ditto the Asian/Syriac crosses that closely resemble the form of the mandala. You’re right. They’re not mandalas. But if I can admit that they aren’t mandalas, why do you have so much trouble admitting that your crosses are not Christian crosses? It really is the same logic, as far as I can see (admitting at the same time that logic isn’t always the best of tools for understanding history). Next move.

Yours,
Dab
PS: for those who aren’t familiar with the crossed vajras, there are many examples here: http://www.asianclassics.org/download/SPGraphTib.html
The Tibetan words “rdo rje rgya gram” appear at least once in a Dunhuang text (IDP database).
The Sanskrit term, as used in Indian Buddhist Vajrayāna scriptures, is catuṣpatha (‘four-path, crossroad’).

So it’s at all true to say that I “let the overwhelming evidence of the form override context.” Since two of our crosses (Pelliot tibétain 1182 and IOL Tib J 766) have nearly exact parallels in Christian iconography, and appear in a cultural context in which we can expect Nestorian Christianity to have been present, through the Uighur population primarily, there seems little point in disputing their Christian identity.

The presence of crosses in mandalas seems to be a red herring here, unless of course you can show us a mandala diagram with a cross as similar to Pelliot tibétain 1182 or IOL Tib J 766 as the Nestorian cross at Xian (and indeed the ‘cross crosslet’ and ‘croix treflee’ as illustrated in the Heraldry section of the cross glossary link in your last comment). We do have diagrams of mandalas in the Dunhuang manuscripts, and they don’t look like this.

Though as I said before there are no conclusions to be drawn from these crosses regarding the presence of Christianity in Central Tibet!