เครื่องรางกาอู (ตลับเครื่องรางทิเบต)Gauག་འུ།

James Gentry, writing for Project Himalayan Art at the Rubin Museum in 2023, catalogues one box closely enough to see into it. It was made in Kathmandu in the first decade of the twenty-first century, measures 9 × 8 × 4 cm, and is a golden nimbus-shaped box built to imitate a Buddhist reliquary, with the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel above its window and offerings below. Behind the window sits an amulet diagram wrapped in five-coloured cords with three dark brown pills; also inside are two reddish brown pills composed of relics said to be from the eighth-century Indian tantric master Padmasambhava, and two small golden pills of unknown composition. The box shows the diagram through the window and keeps the rest concealed behind it.

The contents were handselected by Chokling Rinpoche, who prepared them and consecrated the box, and the box was a personal gift from the Tsike Chokling, Fourth Karma Mingyur Dewe Dorje (1953–2020), to two of his students. That chain — a named lama fills it, a named lama gives it, a named student wears it — is what the object is. A gau bought empty is a case.

More broadly the boxes hold miniature statues, photographs of lamas, votive plaques, amulets, Sanskrit mantras written on small pieces of paper, relic pills, and materials taken from sacred sites; Himalayan Art Resources adds small texts, blessing cords and consecrated medicine, and notes they are typically carried on pilgrimage or on long business trips, with larger ones serving as makeshift shrines while travelling.

Assembled and consecrated by a lama, then closed. Smaller boxes hang from a cord or strap at the neck; larger ones are worn over the chest or under the arm on a leather strap or a cloth band. This atlas does not print how a gau is filled or what is said over it: the filling is a lama's work, done for a particular wearer, and the rite belongs to a body of practice Tibetan Buddhism restricts to those who have received empowerment.

Made and worn across the Tibetan-Buddhist world as of 2026 — Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, Ladakh, Sikkim, Mongolia — and made for sale in Kathmandu, where Gentry's example was made. Empty gaus are also a standard item in the Himalayan visitor trade, sold as jewellery, and whether an empty one is the same object is a question the tradition answers by asking who filled it.