Songs of realization, or
Songs of Experience (;
Devanāgarī: दोहा; Romanized Sanskrit:
Dohā;
Oriya: ପଦ) are sung poetry forms characteristic of the
tantric movement in both
Hinduism and in
Vajrayana Buddhism.
Doha is also a specific poetic form. Various forms of these songs exist, including
caryagiti , or 'performance songs' and
vajragiti (Sanskrit:
vajragīti, Tibetan:
rDo-rje gan-sung ), or 'diamond songs', sometimes translated as
vajra songs and
doha (Sanskrit:
dohā, दोह, 'that which results from milking the cow'), also called
doha songs, distinguishing them from the unsung Indian poetry form of the
doha. According to Roger Jackson, caryagiti and vajragiti "differ generically from dohās because of their different context and function"; the doha being primarily spiritual
aphorisms expressed in the form of
rhyming couplets whilst caryagiti are stand-alone performance songs and vajragiti are songs that can only be understood in the context of a
ganachakra or
tantric feast. Many collections of songs of realization are preserved in the
Tibetan Buddhist canon, however many of these texts have yet to be translated from the
Tibetan language.