Renewing the Covenant: Territorial Deities, Ecological Mediation, and Treasure Revelation in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Tibet

Drawing on previously untranslated biographical, ritual, and narrative materials from the Chokling Tersar, this paper examines treasure revelation as an ongoing practice of ecological mediation between land, territorial deities, human communities, and the Buddhadharma. Through close analysis of Chokgyur Lingpa's (Mchog gyur gling pa, 1829–1870) encounters with territorial deities across multiple biographical episodes—and the ritual texts that codify these engagements—I argue that the treasure revealer's ability to navigate these relationships is not incidental to but constitutive of their identity as Padmasambhava's heirs. Foundational narratives of imperial conversion established a relational contract with the land's non-human inhabitants that required periodic reassertion; the treasure revealer, as ecological mediator, is precisely the agent qualified to do so. y propitiating, commanding, and binding territorial deities—and ensuring that each extraction is answered by a substitute that maintains the land's fertility—the treasure revealer simultaneously revitalizes the Buddhadharma for their age and renews the ecological bonds on which its transmission depends.