The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2441 page)

(Skt. ‘Star’, Tib.
sgrol.ma
or
drolma
‘She who saves’; possibly from Skt.,
t
rayati
, ‘crossing, transcending’). Tibet's most important deity. She is a
bodhisattva
who for many Tibetans has already become a
Buddha
, having vowed—on being advised of the spiritual advantages of male rebirth—never to relinquish her female form. T
r
has the epithet ‘mother of all the Buddhas’, and is viewed with great affection by Tibetans. Originally she was a
Tantric
deity, prominent in 7th-cent.
tantras
. By the 8th cent. her cult was established at
Borobodur
in Java, in itself showing the early extent of Tantric influence. Although her appearance in Tibet has been noted as 8th cent., it was not until the arrival of
Ati
a
in 1042 that worship of T
r
became widespread.
Tibetan Buddhism recognizes twenty-one T
r
s, according to the definitive text on her worship,
Homages to the Twenty One T
r
s
, brought from India by Darmadra in the 11th cent. Each T
r
has a different function (averting disasters, wish-fulfilling, increasing wisdom, healing, etc.), each has a particular colour,
mudr
, and
mantra
, and each emanates from Green T