Relying on The Offering Ritual of the Holy Astral Mother of the Middle Way composed in the Tangut script excavated from Khara-Khoto for primary evidence, N. A. Nevsky successfully identified and explained the astral mandala from that same collection in 1931. The Grahamat kādhāranī is likely one of the sources of The Offering Ritual’s content; this is a text whose religious importance in the Hexi region is suggested by numerous manuscripts of its Chinese or Tibetan translations from the Dunhuang Library Cave(Cave 17) while Tangut versions have successively been found in Khara-Khoto and Wuwei. Compared with similar materials from Tibet and the Hexi region, this Xixia mandala provides a valuable clue for the accurate evaluation of both the active cultural communication among the traditions of these disparate places and the contribution made by the local Hexi people.
