&quot;The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub and the Date and Sources of His Chos &#39;byung, a Chronicle of Buddhism in India and Tibet,&quot; Revue d&#39;Etudes Tibétaines 35 (2016), 203-308

Leonard van der Kuijp

This thesis re-evaluates Tibetan histories as intertextual literature, broadly following Ricoeur’s concept of mimesis. It then examines the portrayal of Khri Srong lde brtsan in these histories, whether as a Tibetan emperor, a Buddhist king or a tantric disciple. ----- To do this, it brings together all extant Tibetan sources on Khri Srong lde brtsan from the eighth to twelfth century. It rejects the attributed antiquity of some histories, on the basis of textual analysis. It also adds hitherto undiscovered texts to the already existing data, based on the author’s own discoveries. The thesis then describes Khri Srong lde brtsan’s imperial, royal and religious depictions as a process of metamorphosis over time. ----- Imperial texts depict him as a great Tibetan emperor (btsan po), endowed with the authority of his ancestors. The inscriptions at Brag lha mo and ’Phyongs rgyas even describe him as a bodhisattva, leading many of his subjects towards enlightenment. Post-imperial sources found at Dunhuang transform the emperor into a Dharma king. They identify him with idealised royal predecessors like Aśoka or King Tsa. Twelfth-century histories, such as the sBa bzhed and Nyang ral Nyi ma ’od zer’s Zangs gling ma, remember him as the patron and pupil of spiritually superior Buddhist masters. One Indian tantric master, Padmasambhava, even blames the king’s lack of faith for the future decline of the Dharma. These religious figures gradually displace the king as the central protagonists of his life history. ----- This thesis also uncovers the concerns that lie beneath early portrayals of Khri Srong lde brtsan. These include self-presentation, lineage legitimisation and complex relationships with the “golden age” of empire. The transformation of Khri Srong lde brtsan in Buddhist histories depends upon seismic shifts affecting Tibetan culture, including the cult of religious figures and the influx of Indian literary genres into Tibet.

This article is a follow-up to my 2015 paper on the childhood of Grub chen Ngag dbang Tshe ring (1657–1734), a prominent follower of the ’Brug pa school of Tibetan Buddhism, which was — and still is — well established in Ladakh. Here, I would like to present Ngag dbang Tshe ringʼs religious and wordly activities in his first years of his monkhood, and the difficulties he encounters in the monastery. These difficulties are basically twofold: on the one hand they are based on his idealistic conception of a monk’s activities and daily life, and on the other hand on his unwillingness to participate in any kind of political activity or worldly quarrel. His ideas of a monk’s life might even coincide with our own idealized concepts of life in a monastery, ignoring the fact that daily life in almost any community can give rise to all kinds of struggle or arguments that could even end up in violent and / or armed conflicts. The Yuan History (yuan shih) already reports on violent acts of monks against postal officials; obviously “Tibetan monks sometimes carried arms, a custom that was forbidden in 1276.” It seems however that the custom was kept and armed monks were not that exceptional if one thinks for example of phenomena such as the so-called “fighting monks” (ldob ldob, ldab ldob or dob dob).

U rgyan pa Rin chen dpal (1230-1309) was a great adept of the bKa' brgyud school of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly renowned for his knowledge of the Kālacakra tantra and the unique teaching known as the Approach and Attainment of the Three Vajras (rDo rje gsum gyi bsnyen sgrub), said to have been given to him in his vision by Vajrayoginī (rDo rje rnal 'byor ma) in the Miraculous Land (sprul pa'i zhing) of U rgyan. He was the student of the 2nd Karma pa, who entrusted him with the Black Hat, which he passed to the 3rd Karma pa. He was also a great traveller who journeyed widely across and beyond Tibet. He met Qubilai Khan in the capital of Yuan China and visited sacred Buddhist sites in South India. He has been aptly described by van der Kuijp as "the great Tibetan yogi, thaumaturge, scholar, alchemist, and traveler". Thanks to the availability of a large amount of hitherto unknown materials from eleven biographies, the thesis has put considerable weight on the ...

The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub and the Date and Sources of His Chos 'byung, a Chronicle of Buddhism in India and Tibet * Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp Center for Tibetan Studies, Sichuan University Harvard University For David Seyfort Ruegg, who did so much to introduce us to the polymath Bu ston, his life and some of his works, and for the intrepid individuals of the Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, who continue to provide us with so many rare books that illuminate the depth and breadth of Tibet's rich literary culture. Preliminaries: The Multiple Lives of Bu ston T o date, the principal source for the life of the great Bu ston Rin chen grub (1290-1364) was his biography by his disciple Sgra tshad pa Rin chen rgyal mtshan (1318-88), which was studied by D. Seyfort Ruegg now almost fifty years ago in the form of annotated translations and paraphrases of lengthy passages from this work; H. van den Bogaert's recent, more popular rendition is, it needs to be said, somewhat less useful for scholarly purposes and it is evident that he has not always correctly understood his text.1 Sgra tshad pa's work actually consisted of two distinct parts. Sgra tshad pa wrote the first part in Sa skya monastery, in 1355, at the request of Chos kyi rgyal mtshan (1332-59), a scion of Sa skya monastery's Lha * 1 For the prequel to this paper, see my "Some Remarks on the Textual Transmission and Text of Bu ston Rin chen grub's Chos 'byung, a Chronicle of Buddhism in India and Tibet," Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines no. 25 (Avril, 2013), 115-93. Sources that are cited more than thrice are given abbreviations and these can be found in the bibliography of the present paper. See, respectively, Seyfort Ruegg (1966) and a Handful of Flowers. A brief biography of Buton Rinchen Drub, tr. H. van den Bogaert (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1996). Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp, “The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub and the Date and Sources of His Chos ‘byung, a Chronicle of Buddhism in India and Tibet”, Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, no. 35, April 2016, pp. 203-308. 204 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines khang Residence and he composed the second part in 1366 in Bu ston's personal see of Ri phug Bde chen chos kyi pho brang that is located not far from Zhwa lu monastery where his master stayed for much of his life. Compared to other fourteenth century specimen of the genre, it is in several ways an unbalanced and rather disappointing work. Sgra tshad pa is by and large content with religious hyperbole of the kind that includes lengthy enumerations and interpretive descriptions of Bu ston's visions, all of which are detailed at the expense of surveys of other types of important historical events and the roles Bu ston played in these. This is not to say that these visions are mute and that they reveal nothing that would otherwise inform the historian of those ideas that were current during his lifetime and in which Bu ston played no insignificant roles. Of course they do, and they often contain details that are actually of crucial relevance to the subject, at times even to the extent that their misunderstanding could lead us far away from a more intimate familiarity with, if not Bu ston, then the milieu in which he breathed, lived and worked. But very little of the sort can be deduced from this biography. What Sgra tshad pa does offer his audience, therefore, are by and large minimalistic descriptions of Bu ston's relationships with his peers and his political activities. Some time ago, J. Gyatso drew attention to the circumstance that many Tibetan religious figures kept diaries that in turn formed critical sources for the composition of autobiographies and biographies.2 We do not know when this habit began or when it became more or less widespread. Sgra tshad pa's fairly thin presentation leads us to conclude that either Bu ston himself never kept a diary of the day to day events of his life, or that it had for some reason not been accessible to Sgra tshad pa, or that the latter had consciously refrained from using it. The first seems to be the more likely scenario. It is equally puzzling that Sgra tshad pa often even seems to have been unclear about the precise dates for some of his master's main compositions, which is surprising as most of their colophons provide these in an unambiguous fashion.3 Given that he himself 2 3 See her "Counting Crow's Teeth: Tibetans and Their Diaries," Les habitants du Toit du monde, eds. S. Karmay and Ph. Sagant (Paris: Société d'Ethnologie, 1997), 159-178. Sgra tshad pa also lists, respectively, one letter (spring yig) and two replies to quenries (dris lan) with some of their addressees, namely King Bsod nams lde, on whom see below, G.yag sde Paṇ chen Bsod nams dpal (1299-1378) and Rin chen ye shes. The first was written on July 3, 1339; the second probably refers to the letter in BU26, 245-6 and is undated, and the identification of the third is more problematic, the only available option is a series of replies that is found in BU26, 185-216. Dated to the first half of 1326, this important piece is cursorily discussed in section four of the present essay. Thereafter, Sgra tshad pa notes the compilation of the Zhwa lu Gser khang Tanjur and Bu ston's catalog, the latter of which, The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 205 composed two catalogs of Bu ston's oeuvre and that his master had handpicked him to succeed him as abbot of Zhwa lu monastery, we cannot conclude that he had been unable to gain access to these. In short, then, his work is undoubtedly one of the less satisfactory representatives of its genre, but it is [almost] the only source of information, and certainly the longest one, that we have for Bu ston's works and days per se. As I show below, Sgra tshad pa was not the only disciple of Bu ston to have written his master's biography. It is therefore a great pity that none of these other disciples considered it worth their while to do the required homework and sit down to write a biography worthy of their master! It is of course possible that their incapacity to do so may have been the result of the sheer weight that their master's voracious and curious intellect was able to exert on their creative impulses even long after his passing. At the very outset of his narrative, Sgra tshad pa describes at some length his master's previous births that we could say culminated in the Kashmirian Śākyaśrībhadra (1127-1225) — hereafter Śākyaśrī — who, as is well known, arrived in Tibet in 1204 at the invitation of Khro phu Lo tsā ba Byams pa'i dpal (1172-1236).4 Of course, Bu ston had very close ties with Khro phu monastery. As a young man, he had studied and taught there on numerous occasions5 and just prior to his retirement from his abbatial duties at 4 5 according to its colophon, was completed on June 12, 1335! All exact dates of the texts cited and individuals mentioned in this paper are calculated with the help of the Tabellen in D. Schuh, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der tibetischen Kalenderrechnung, Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, Supplement Band 16 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1973). For several biographies of Śākyaśrī and Khro phu Lo tsā ba, see D.P. Jackson, Two Biographies of Śākyaśrībhadra. The Eulogy of Khro phu Lo tsā ba and Its "Commentary" by Bsod nams dpal bzang po, Tibetan and Indo-Tibetan Studies, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1990) and my review article in van der Kuijp (1994). The most detailed, yet in many places still rather thin, study of the Khro phu Bka' brgyud pa sect so far is the one sketched in Rta tshag Tshe dbang rgyal po's 1446/47 survey of the Bka' brgyud pa school as a whole [minus the Shangs pa Bka' brgyud], the Bka' brgyud rin po che'i lo rgyus phyogs gcig tu bsgrigs pa, C[ultural] P[alace] of N[ationalities, Beijing] catalog no. 002448(6), fols. 185b-201b. For the C.P.N. manuscript of this work, usually known as the Lho rong chos 'byung, see my remarks in "Studies in Fourteenth Century Tibetan Cultural History III: The Oeuvre of Bla ma dam pa Bsod nams rgyal mtshan (1312-1375), Part One," Berliner Indologische Studien 7 (1993), 112, n. 4, and my "On the Fifteenth Century Lho rong chos 'byung by Rta tshag Tshe dbang rgyal and Its Importance for Tibetan Political and Religious History," Aspects of Tibetan History, eds. R. Vitali and Tashi Tsering, Lungta 14 (2001), 57-76. In the latter, I discuss inter alia its relationship to the recently printed edition, which omits much that is found towards the end of the above manuscript's narrative of the Khro phu tradition, see the Lho rong chos 'byung, ed. Gling dpon Padma skal bzang and Ma grong Mi 'gyur rdo rje (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe 206 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines Zhwa lu in 1355, he also functioned briefly as abbot of this smaller institution from circa 1353 to 1354, although his biographies do not specify the reasons for this. Khro phu monastery was the see of a branch of the Gnubs family and a relatively important center for Bka' brgyud pa school-related spiritual practices. The first entry of his "record of teachings studied" (gsan yig) — see Appendix One for an analysis of this work — relates the instructions he had received from a certain Rin po che Khro phu ba. Sgra tshad pa consistently refers to him as the unrivalled Sems dpa' chen po Rin po che Khro phu ba whose "name is difficult to utter" (mtshan brjod par dka' ba), and states that it was he who had foretold that Śākyaśrī would be reborn in the Tibetan area, albeit without mentioning the name of his Tibetan re-embodiment.6 Indeed, the period in question knows of a Sems dpa' chen po Khro phu ba (1229-98), who is the subject of a very interesting biography by a certain Mkhan chen Chos rgyal dpal bzang.7 There his name in religion is not explicitly given, but we learn that he was born in a family that was part of the Gnubs clan, that his father Mi bskyod rdo rje, the elder brother of Rdo rje bdud 'dul, had built the foundation of a/the large stūpa at Khro phu monastery at the age of fifty-eight, that his father had "excavated" a revelatory treasure text (gter ma),8 and that his father passed away at the age of 6 7 8 skrun khang, 1994), 328-37. The recent publication of yet another manuscript version of the Lho rong chos'byung follows the latter; see Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. Na [= 12] (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2010), 519-34; the text is completed in vol. Pa [= 13]. The first two pages [2-3] of vol. Na are in fact fol. 1b and the first two lines of fol. 2b of the C.P.N. manuscript after which the text follows the printed version, and pp. 593-4 of vol. Na were taken from yet another manuscript. Other surveys of the Khro phu Bka' brgyud pa sect are found in 'Gos Lo tsā ba Gzhon nu dpal's (1392-1481) chronicle in 'GOS, 616-21 [Roerich 1979: 705-11] and Dpa' bo II Gtsug lag phreng ba's (1504-66) chronicle in DPA'p1, 857-9 [DPA', 842-3]. He is mentioned in Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 55 [see also 14, n. 1], 66-7). For what follows, see the Mnyam med sems dpa' chen po khro phu ba'i rnam thar yon tan phreng ba, Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brstegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. Zu [= 82] (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2011), 343-347, 360, 362, 367 ff. The preamble of his biography gives a capsule survey of his ancestry. Gu ru Bkra shis states in the early nineteenth century Gu bkra chos 'byung, ed. Rdo rje rgyal po (Beijing: Krung go'i bod kyi shes rig dpe skrun khang, 1998), 503, that his gter ma text was "the tantra of the one carrying a red spear (mdung dmar can)," a work that is associated with Gnyal pa Nyi ma shes rab (ca. 1100). This tantra is connected to or the source for the cycle of practices associated with a form of Vaiśravaṇa who is styled Rnam thos sras Mdung dmar rta can, for which see R. de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet (Kathmandu: Pilgrims Book House, 1993), 69-70. D. Martin, "A Brief Political History of Tibet by Gu ru Bkra shis," Tibetan History and Language. Studies Dedicated to Uray Géza on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. E. Steinkellner, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 207 sixty-four in 1236. His mother was Ma gcig Bde skyid, the daughter of G.yas phyug Nyi ma rin chen, and nothing else is related about her. He himself became abbot of Khro phu in 1251 after Bla chen Bsod nams dbang phyug (1218-50), his cousin and the previous abbot, passed away at the age of thirty-two. Following this, Sa skya's Grand-Governor (dpon chen) Shākya bzang po requested that he also assume the abbacy of Brag ram monastery when Bo dong Rin chen rtse mo (1200-60), alias Bo dong the Cleft-Paleted (sho re ba), its abbot and one of his main teachers, had died at the age of sixty. Finally, noteworthy is that Sems dpa' chen po Khro phu ba is recorded to have done much to enlarge Khro phu monastery with funding that the Yuan Mongol courts in Dadu and Shangdu had released as a result of his excellent connections with the imperial family. Of course, Khro phu Lo tsā ba, too, was a scion of that branch of the Gnubs clan that founded and by and large controlled Khro phu monastery. He writes in his autobiography that his father's name was Nag po Jo 'phan (1149-99) and that his mother was Bsregs Gsal byed (1148-1215), the daughter of Bsregs Dpal gsum sgra.9 His father's nickname The Black (nag po) may refer to him being involved in black magic to the extent that, as 'Gos Lo tsā ba related,10 at one point the twenty year old Khro phu Lo tsā ba contracted a psycho-pathological disorder (nad gzhi'i rtog pa) because of his father's activities, and that these had resulted in him living a secluded life for three years. While he does disclose in his autobiography that he was prone to disease when he was in his early twenties, he does not suggest anywhere that his father's activities had something to do with it. But he does hint there that his father was prone to some unsavory practices.11 At the same time, he provides no evidence that either parent played an important role in his life. Khro phu Lo tsā ba states that, at the age of fifty-eight, which would be in 1230, he had built a stūpa at Khro phu to commemorate the passing of his teacher Śākyaśrībhadra. To be sure, he makes no 9 10 11 Buddhismuskunde, Heft 26 (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 1991), 329-51, is a valuable survey of this monumental work. For what follows, see the Paṇ grub gsum gyi rnam thar dpag bsam 'khril shing (xylograph) [= tbrc.org W1KG13616], 3a, 5a-b, 72b, 74a [= Khro lo chen pos mdzad pa'i rnam thar dpag bsam ljon shing (manuscript) (tbrc.org W1CZ1180), 3a, 5b, 83a, 86a]. 'GOS, 619; Roerich (1979: 709) equates nad gzhi'i rtog pa, with "the thought of leprosy." Gu ru Bkra shis suggests, in the Gu bkra chos 'byung, 503, that his father was [primarily] a practitioner of Rnying ma pa and not Bka' brgyud pa practises and suggests an alternate name for him, to wit, Ro zan Nag po. Paṇ grub gsum gyi rnam thar dpag bsam 'khril shing, 3a-5a [= Khro lo chen pos mdzad pa'i rnam thar dpag bsam ljon shing, 3a-5a] details his father's exploits. 208 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines explicit mention of having sired a son, never mind whether he had a wife or girlfriend. Indeed, either would have been unbefitting a supposedly celibate monk. Yet, the combined evidence from these sources that is tallied above makes it certain that Sems dpa' chen po Khro phu ba is none other than Khro phu ba Bsod nams seng ge, Khro phu Lo tsā ba's biological son. Indeed, bsod nams seng ge occurs embedded in the opening verse of Sems dpa' chen po Khro phu ba's biography, Rta tshag Tshe dbang rgyal notes him as Byang sems chen po Bsod nams seng ge, and this is also 'Gos Lo tsā ba's take on the matter.12 Of the sources that have something to say about the notion that Bu ston was Śākyaśrī's "re-birth" (sku skye ba), it is Bu ston's biography by his disciple Khyung po Lhas pa Gzhon nu bsod nams in which we find the explicit statement, right or wrong, that it was Sems dpa' chen po Khro phu ba who had initiated this connection.13 As we shall see below, Sgra tshad pa was considered to have been a re-embodiment of Dānaśīla, and this equation must be viewed as the almost logical consequence of Bu ston's spiritual identity with Śākyaśrī. Given Sems dpa' chen po Khro phu ba's salutary importance for the health and well-being of Khro phu monastery, it is quite remarkable that Bu ston makes no mention of him in his exceedingly thin description of the activities of Khro phu Lo tsā ba towards the end of his Chos 'byung proper. In the bibliography of the works that he used for his 1865 study of Buddhism in Amdo, Brag dgon Zhabs drung Dkon mchog bstan pa rab rgyas (1801-after 1871) observes that Khro phu Bsod nams seng ge had written a study of Bu ston by way of a poetic narrative tale of his life that was written for spiritual edification (rtogs brjod, 12 13 See, respectively, the Mnyam med sems dpa' chen po khro phu ba'i rnam thar yon tan phreng ba, 340: … mtha' yas bsod nams … mi'i seng ge ... , see the Bka' brgyud rin po che'i lo rgyus phyogs gcig tu bsgrigs pa, 189b [= Lho rong chos 'byung, 335], where he is said to have been born one year after his father's death, and 'GOS, 307 [= Roerich 1979: 345], which lists a Khro phu Rin po che Bsod nams seng ge between Bo dong Rin [chen] rtse [mo] and Tshad ma'i skyes bu, that is, Byams pa mgon, one of Bu ston's primary teachers. See van der Kuijp (1994: 604, n. 21) and his undated study of Bu ston's life, the Thams cad mkhyen pa bu ston rin po che'i rnam par thar pa yon tan rin po che'i lhun po, C.P.N. catalog no. 002772(2) [= tbrc.org W26456], 3a-b; a brief biography of Khyung po Lhas pa is found in Ri phug sprul sku Blo gsal bstan skyong's (1804-after 1864) circa 1835 study of Zhwa lu monastery, in ZHWA, 77-8. Not found in his biography by Mkhan chen Chos rgyal dpal bzang, Dpa' bo II suggests that Khro phu Sems dpa' chen po himself was a sku skye ba–re-birth of Buddhaśrī (1140-after 1201), the second Indic scholar Khro phu Lo tsā ba had invited to Khro phu. For a biographical sketch of Buddhaśrī, see van der Kuijp (1994: 613). The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 209 *avadāna).14 While this work may yet have to be recovered, it could very well have been the earliest literary source for "equating" him with Śākyaśrī, especially if this "Bsod nams seng ge" were indeed to refer to Khro phu Lo tsā ba's son. If so, then he would have composed it towards the very end of his life and then only on the occasion of his realization that Śākyaśrī and little Bu ston were spiritually identical — the "deep-structure" nature of the mechanism and motivation remain obscure. Although no other cognate literary instances come to mind that would support this contention, it does not seem a priori impossible that this Rtogs brjod might have focused precisely on the theme of this proposed affinity with Śākyaśrī, rather than being a study of Bu ston as such. Widely attested in titles of the fourteenth century and later developments of Tibetan biographical and autobiographical literature, the use of the expression rtogs brjod in the sense of a plain biography seems rather uncommon for this time. On the other hand, if it were a fullfledged biography, then the much more likely candidate for its authorship would be his namesake Khro phu Mkhan chen Bsod nams seng ge, a disciple of Bu ston, who was later an abbot of Khro phu monastery.15 Lastly, another possible identification of the putative author of this Rtogs brjod might be the Rin chen bsod nams seng ge whose Ngo mtshar gtam gyi rol mo in twenty-one verses is cited by Blo gsal bstan skyong as an additional, if somewhat uninformative, source on Bu ston's life.16 At first glance, he may be either of the two, or perhaps even Yang rtse pa Rin chen seng ge, another scholar active at Khro phu and a disciple of Khro phu Lo tsā ba's son, who figures as the third teacher in Bu ston's gsan yig. The probability for equating the said Rtogs brjod with this little text is not diminished by the fact that only the sixth verse, which has it that Dānaśīla had previously been one of his disciples, would point to the connection drawn between Śākyaśrī and Bu ston, since Dānaśīla was one of the nine men who had accompanied the former to Tibet in 1200. He apparently stayed on in Central Tibet and lived and taught there until the 1240s or perhaps even the 1250s, where inter alia Dar 14 15 16 See his Yul mdo smad kyi ljongs su thub bstan rin po che ji ltar dar ba'i tshul gsal bar brjod pa deb ther rgya mtsho, vol. 1 (New Delhi, 1974), 23 [= Mdo smad chos 'byung, ed. Smon lam rgya mtsho (Lanzhou: Kan su'u mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1982), 10]. This would be one of the earliest uses in Tibet of rtogs brjod designating something in the way of a biography of a human being, rather than of a bodhisattva or the historical Buddha unless, of course, Bu ston was regarded as a bodhisattva or a buddha, and…he was! ZHWA, 97. ZHWA, 367-71. In his edition of Tshal pa Kun dga' rdo rje's (1309-64) chronicle of Tibet, the late Dung dkar Dge bshes Blo bzang 'phrin las (1927-97) clearly identified the author of this work as Khro phu ba Bsod nams seng ge; see TSHAL, 383, n. 364. 210 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines ma [or: Chos kyi] rgyal mtshan (1227-1305), alias Bcom ldan {rig[s] pa'i} ral gri and Bcom ldan ral gri, had been one of his students. It is hardly surprising that not one single text of the considerable literary corpus on Śākyaśrī's life, from the major and most authoritative study by Khro phu Lo tsā ba and the other relatively early biographies that I signaled in my paper to the one we find in Mang thos Klu sgrub rgya mtsho (1523-96), 17 confirms that the Kashmirian master himself "occurred" in a sequence of ongoing embodiments. It is therefore transparent that such a series was either fully unknown to them, which is unconvincing, or that the authors of the later, post-fifteenth century studies of Śākyaśrī's lives considered it irrelevant or perhaps even suspect. Given the evidence that, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the idea of the re-embodiment of important masters was gradually being brought into focus in the Rnying ma tradition and among certain sects of the Bka' gdams pa and Bka' brgyud pa schools, 18 we can only interpret Khro phu Mkhan chen Bsod nams seng ge's and Khyung po Lhas pa's assertions of an intrinsic connection between Śākyaśrī and Bu ston as their attempt to construct such a series for the Khro phu sect of the Bka' brgyud pa, most likely with the aim of securing a measure of conti17 18 See the references in van der Kuijp (1994) and MANG, 153-60, 176-7, for the biographies of Śākyaśrī and Bu ston respectively. Mang thos began his important work in 1564, completed it two years later in 1566, and then substantially revised in 1587. In an entry for the year 1565 (glang lo) of his autobiography, we learn that by this time he had finished about one hundred folios of this treatise; see his Rang gi rnam par thar pa yul sna tshogs kyi bdud rtsi myong ba'i gtam du byas pa zol zog rdzun gyis ma bslad pa sgeg mo'i me long, The Slob bshad Tradition of the Sa skya Lam 'bras, vol. III (Dehra Dun: Sa skya Centre, 1983), 443, 546. For the Bka' gdams pa, in which we find one of the earliest instances of a Tibetan being the re-embodiment of a Tibetan and not of one or the other Indian master or Buddhist deity, see the brief remarks in my "The Dalai Lamas and the Origins of Reincarnate Lamas," The Dalai Lamas: a Visual History, ed. M. Brauen (Chicago: Serindia, 2005), 29. Of course, it would seem that Nyang ral Nyi ma 'od zer (1124-92) — on him, see below n. 114 — considered himself to be the re-embodiment of the Mighty One (btsan po) Khri srong lde btsan (r. ca.742-800). Karma pa II Karma Pak shi (1204/6-83) is usually said to have been the first embodiment of this kind in Tibet, but this was not the case. Although the Karma Bka' brgyud pa tradition holds that he was the immediate re-embodiment of Karma pa I Dus gsum mkhyen pa (1110-93), Mang thos writes that Karma Pak shi had himself stated that he was the reembodiment of Saraha, and not of Dus gsum mkhyen pa; see MANG, 171. To be sure, this requires further investigation. Attempts at making sense of the notion of embodiment are, for example, T. Wylie, "Reincarnation: A Political Innovation in Tibetan Buddhism," Proceedings of the Csoma de Koros Symposium ed. L. Ligeti (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1978) 579-86, and especially K.H. Everding, Die Präexistenzen der Lcang skya Qutuqtus, Asiatische Forschungen, Band 104 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1988), 182-6. Tibetan and Chinese scholars in the People's Republic of China have recently published a spate of papers on the subject. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 211 nuity and stability for his monastery's abbatial succession and economic integrity. In this connection, it is important to stress that his family had no apparent heirs to succeed him by way of a progression of father-son (yab sras) or uncle-nephew (khu dbon) sequences, which would have kept the monastery and the estates attached to it in this family's purview and under its control. Since no re-embodiments of Bu ston are recorded to have held official positions at Khro phu or Zhwa lu, Bsod nams seng ge's and Khyung po Lhas pa's propositions seem to have had no lasting impact on their further developments.19 One of the reasons for Bu ston's appointment to Zhwa lu monastery's abbatial throne in 1320 by Sku zhang Grags pa rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po (?-after 1333)20, a scion of the Lce family whose mem19 20 The history of Tibetan Buddhism is littered with onsets of reincarnate lines that for one reason or another never quite made it and simply fluttered out. This would seem to have befallen initially to the one of Rgod tshang pa Mgon po rdo rje (1189-1258), whom U rgyan pa Rin chen dpal (1230-1309) met in circa 1280; see Bsod nams 'od zer, Grub chen u rgyan pa'i rnam par thar pa byin brlabs kyi chu rgyun (Gangtok, 1976), 143. The biography of Karma pa III Rang byung rdo rje (1284-1339) notes that the re-embodiment of U rgyan pa was among the Karma pa's disciples; see TSHAL, 107. The biography of that re-embodiment, actually the account of how he was invited to and then feted at U rgyan pa's see of Sbu tra, as well as some notes on his pre-embodiments are found in U rgyan sprul sku'i rnam par thar pa, Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brstegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. Dzi [= 49] (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2011), 411-21, but I have yet to come across his proper name in religion. The Tshal pa Bka' brgyud pa sect knows of Sangs rgyas 'bum, the abbot of Tshal Gung thang monastery from 1214 to 1219, who is called the "re-embodiment of Sgom bde [monastery]" in TSHAL, 133. While a thorough study of its occurrence is still outstanding, it appears that, at least in the post-fifteenth century Tibetan literature, the idea of successions of pre-embodiments is encapsulated by the expression 'khrungs rabs. Note his name in religion that evidently is connected to the vinaya-line of Śākyaśrī, none of our sources elicit the year in which the Sku zhang passed away. R. Vitali, Early Temples of Central Tibet (London: Serindia Publications, 1990), 100-2, provides an accessible account of his activities. For the genealogy of his family, see G. Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, vol. II (Rome: La Libreria Dello Stato, 1949), 656-62, which is based on the Chos grwa chen po dpal zhwa lu gser khang gi bdag po jo bo lce'i gdung rabs by Bkra shis don grub; my thanks to Cyrus R. Stearns for long ago providing me with a copy of this text. This work is in turn based on a variety of sources including, no doubt, the introductory remarks of Zhwa lu Lo tsā ba Rin chen chos skyong bzang po's (1441-1528) biography of Rin chen mkhyen rab mchog grub (1433-97), alias Mkhyen rab Chos rje, of 1494, which also presents a genealogy of this family; see the Zhwa lu sku zhang mkhyen rab[s] pa'i rnam thar, C.P.N. catalog no. 004399(6), indigenous catalog number 'bras spungs nang, 2b-11a. A synopsis of their genealogy is also found as an introduction to the biography of Rin chen bstan pa'i gsal byed (1658-96), a re-embodiment of 'Ba' ra ba Rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po (1310-91), for which see the Chos rje 'ba' ra ba sprul sku rin chen bstan pa'i gsal byed kyi rnam thar mu tig 'phreng ba, Bka' brgyud gser phreng chen mo, vol. III (Dehradun, 1970), 159-61. Finally, another genealogy of this family that was compiled by Rin chen dpal ldan 212 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines bers ruled over Zhwa lu and her estates as myriarchs for most of the time when Tibet was at least de jure part of the Mongol empire from 1240 to 1368, was no doubt due to the fact that he was among the best of the younger generation of scholars to have been ordained as a full monk by Bka' bzhi pa Grags pa gzhon nu (1257-1315) in 1312.21 This man had been appointed [or elected], in 1294, as abbot of the Tshogs community of monks, one of three [and later four] monastic communities that had their origin in Śākyaśrī’s vinaya transmission,22 after which he also functioned as Zhwa lu's abbot upon the death of his predecessor Grags pa brtson 'grus. Earlier, the vinaya followed in Zhwa lu seems to have been a somewhat mixed affair, inasmuch as the transmission that issued from the one begun by Bla chen Dgongs pa rab gsal in the tenth century appears to have existed side by side with one that was associated with Abhayākaragupta (ca.1065-ca. 1125). Lce Shes rab 'byung gnas, who had built Zhwa lu's Gser khang temple in 1123, had received the latter's vinaya transmission while studying under him in Bodhgayā. However, beginning with Grags pa gzhon nu the vinaya lineage of Zhwa lu changed to the one that was initiated by Śākyaśrī, but it is difficult to assess what these changes or juxtaposed vinaya traditions in one institution might have really entailed, if anything. Blo gsal bstan skyong astutely connects this change to the political circumstances of the time. He first indicates that Sa skya Paṇḍita himself was ordained by Śākyaśrī in the temple of Rgyan gong Byang chub dge gnas, located in Zhwa lu's immediate vicinity, and that Tibet was under the control of Sa skya's 'Khon family. Of course, with his nephew Phyag na rdo rje (1239-67) being wedded to inter alia Manggala, a daughter of the Mongol prince of the blood Köten, and Mkha' 'gro 'bum of Zhwa lu's Lce family, the latter came to be related in matrimony to Sa skya's branch of the 'Khon family and therefore to the Mongol imperial house as well. The son he had with Mkha' 'gro 'bum was Dharmapalarakṣita 21 22 blo gros was published in Jo bo lce yi gdung rabs, Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brstegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. Thi [= 40] (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2011), 341-54. His primary source consisted of the information provided him by a certain Mkhan chen Thams cad mkhyen pa. I wonder if this may refer to Bu ston, since the last Zhwa lu Sku zhang mentioned by him is Ye shes kun dga' and his three sons. See Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 78), with an inadvertent omission of "Grags pa." The designation shing stag in ZHWA, 364 must be corrected to shing rta. What follows is based on ZHWA, 365-6. See now the exhaustive study in J. Heimbel, "The Jo gdan tshogs sde bzhi: An Investigation into the History of the Four Monastic Communities in Śākyaśrībhadra's Vinaya Tradition," Nepalica-Tibetica. Festgabe für Christoph Cüppers, Band 1, ed. F.-K. Ehrhard and P. Maurer (Andiast: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH, 2013), 188-241. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 213 (1268-87), who himself married both a daughter of J̌ ibik Temür, Köten's son, with whom he had no children, and the Tibetan lady Jo mo Stag 'bum, with whom he had a son who, however, died in virtual infancy at the age four. With Dharmapālarakṣita's sudden passing in 1287, the 'Khon family found itself precariously tottering on the brink of extinction. New life was decisively breathed into his family when the Mongol court allowed Bdag chen Bzang po dpal (1262-1322/4), its last male descendant, to be recalled from his exile in south China and begin his committed and fecund effort to create male offspring at Sa skya. Mistakenly conflating two events, Blo gsal bstan skyong then writes that when Bzang po dpal and one of his many sons Ti shri (< Ch. dishi), Imperial Preceptor Kun dga' blo gros (1299-1327), were ordained as full monks in, respectively, 1313 and 1322, the question arose which vinaya ought to be followed. That this issue was raised at all might imply that either the integrity of the transmissions of the Bla chen and Abhayākaragupta was being questioned at that time in some circles, or, more likely, that it had become important and possibly a matter of prestige to reintroduce the vinaya affiliation of which Sa skya Paṇḍita and his nephew 'Phags pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan (1235-80), the first Imperial Preceptor at the Mongol court, so important for Tibetan-Mongol relations, and hence also the economic integrity of Zhwa lu, had been major exponents. We must of course not rule out the significance of the fact that the Sku zhang was after all related by marriage to both the 'Khon family and the Mongol imperial family. In any event, it was then decided in Zhwa lu that Śākyaśrī's tradition be adopted. But this was not all. Blo gsal bstan skyong proffers another reason for Bu ston's selection, one that devolves solely on the Sku zhang's dreams and premonitions and how he arrived at his decision.23 Looking around Zhwa lu monastery after he had built several structures, restored those buildings that had fallen into disrepair, had a number of religious images made, and instituted regular ritual obervances and endowments for the monastic community, the Sku zhang had no idea whom to appoint religious leader (chos dpon), that is, abbot, due to the absence in his eyes of anyone worthy of his efforts in or capable of raising Zhwa lu to a first-rate monastic establishment. An emanation (rnam 'phrul) of Vaiśravaṇa and a descendant of Činggis Qan, as Blo gsal bstan skyong somewhat hyperbolically insists, the Sku zhang petitioned the divine for inspiration. And…he was soon answered. Yellow colored, Mañjuśrī and Vaiśravaṇa appeared, respectively, as a fifteen year-old boy and as a man, riding a great lion. They told him in unison that he would find a suitable candidate in Khro phu, after 23 ZHWA, 23-5. 214 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines which they disappeared. This is a slight variation from the accounts of Sgra tshad pa and Khyung po Lhas pa, another disciple-biographer of Bu ston.24 Not stated by them, however, was that the Sku zhang still hesitated due to the deities' oracular vagueness and was troubled by the possibility of obstacles hindering him in realizing his goal. These factors induced him to look elsewhere for confirmation and this led him to dispatch an envoy (gser yig pa) to China to solicit further information from a clairvoyant Chinese astrologer (rgya'i rtsis mkhan) by the name of Kiṃ ha shang (< Ch. ?Jin heshang, "gold monk"). The envoy told him about the Sku zhang's dilemma and requested him to draw a likeness of the person. A year and a half went by until the envoy returned to Zhwa lu with drawings of the face of the person the Sku zhang was looking for, the shape of his body, his age, ritual implements, etc. The Sku zhang had copies made and then dispatched a messenger to Khro phu to find someone who would fit the bill and, as it turned out, the drawing closely resembled Bu ston's particulars.25 Thus Bu ston was found and was invited to come to Zhwa lu. He was then thirty years old but was already in the possession of a resume with which anyone would be satisfied. However, the wisdom of the Sku zhang's choice of Bu ston did not go unchallenged, and he encountered initial opposition from the clergy of Khro phu, who were loath to loose one their seminary's leading lights, as well as from the same in Zhwa lu. The troubled (thugs 'khrugs) Bu ston addressed the Sku zhang in a piece in verse titled Chos kyi don grub, Realizing Religion's Aim, in three chapters, in which he laid out his needs and his goals.26 The contending parties having been appeased and Bu ston satsified, the master was then able to proceed to pursue these during his abbacy of the monastery. Absent from Khyung po Lhas pa's narrative, Sgra tshad pa's deliberations on Bu ston's pre-embodiments are singularly unsystematic and superficial in both structure and content, which may be indicative of the pristine and virginal nature of their formulation. He states that Bu ston pre-embodied himself numerous times in various forms and then suggests the following three prior to the master's 24 25 26 See, respectively, Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 92-3) and Khyung po Lhas pa's undated study of Bu ston's life, the Thams cad mkhyen pa bu ston rin po che'i rnam par thar pa yon tan rin po che'i lhun po, 12b ff. To these we should add the reports in the other biographies of Bu ston that are mentioned below. For a highly stylized painting of Bu ston, see, for example, M.M.Rhie and R.A.F. Thurman [and photographs by J.B. Taylor], Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991), 212-213. A portion of this work is cited in ZHWA, 25-6. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 215 advent in the Bhadrakalpa-aeon as Śākyaśrī27: 1. A merchant-disciple of Tathāgata Mtha' yas 'od (* Anantaprabha) 2. A/The son of King Bsod nams me tog (*Puṇyapuṣpa) and a disciple of Tathāgata Brtson 'grus mtha' yas (*Vīryakoṭi) 3. A south-Indian Paṇḍita [4. Śākyaśrī] Upon Bu ston's passing, two competing traditions arose in connection with the identification of his subsequent, volitional re-embodiment. As is recorded in his biography, one of these was 'Jam dbyangs Grags pa rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po (1365-1448), Mkhan chen II of Zhwa lu.28 But this supposition was short lived, and seems to have found very little subsequent support, or at least no support backed by any form of religious or political power that would have made it stick. The other was Grub chen Kun dga' blo gros rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po (1365-1443), a scion of the influential Shar kha ba family that ruled over Rgyal mkhar rtse and himself an erstwhile abbot of the monasteries of Rtse chen and Jo mo nang. Neither Sgra tshad pa nor Blo gsal bstan skyong mention the name of the individual who should be placed in the temporal interval between Śākyaśrī's death and Bu ston's birth. At the beginning of the rewarding study of his teacher Kun dga' blo gros rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po's life, Dkon mchog bzang po (1397-1476) suggests that Śā kyaśrī was immediately preceded by a certain Lha rje Chos kyi byang chub and inserts a certain Chos sku 'od zer between Śākyaśrī and Bu ston, without giving any precise dates for him. 29 The great Kun dga' snying po (1575-1635), alias Tāranātha, the author of the history of Buddhism in the Myang river valley, stretching roughly from Rgyal mkhar rtse to Gzhis ka rtse, mentions him in connection with having founded a monastery or temple in Rgyang ro G.ye dmar that is located in this valley, and he also cites there what may have been an 27 28 29 Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 49-56). For his biography, see ZHWA, 101-5. Titled Dpal ldan bla ma dam pa'i rnam par thar pa dngos grub kyi rgya mtsho, a beautifully calligraphied, but in some place rather corrupt, manuscript of this work in ninety-eight folios, was part of the holdings of the C.P.N. under catalog no. 002776(1). Ratnabhadra, that is, Dkon mchog bzang po, wrote this work in 1456. Capsule biographies of both are given in A mes zhabs Ngag dbang kun dga' bsod nams' (1597-1659) 1636 study of the Kālacakra cycle, the Dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i zab pa dang rgya che ba'i dam pa'i chos byung ba'i tshul legs par bshad pa ngo mtshar dad pa'i shing rta, Collected Works, ed. Si khron bod yig dpe rnying myur skyob 'tshol sgrig khang, vol. 25 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 2012), 180-5. 216 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines inscription at this institution in which this Lha rje-physician is mentioned.30 Now there are some fundamental problems in connection with the dates of Chos sku 'od zer, alias Gser sdings pa, and his place within Bu ston's 'khrungs rabs, the sequence of his re-embodiments. 'Gos Lo tsā ba records that his disciple Kun spangs pa Thugs rje brtson 'grus (?-1313) had written his biography,31 but this work has yet to turn up. Beginning with Bu ston, Chos sku 'od zer begins to figure rather prominently in the various pre-sixteenth century discussions of the transmission of the Guhyasamāja literature and, to a lesser extent, in the chronicles of the Kālacakra teachings as well.32 For one, Bu ston's study of the former cycle, the Dpal gsang ba 'dus pa'i rgyud 'grel gyi bshad thabs kyi yan lag gsang ba'i sgo 'byed, which he completed on November 22, 1348, deals with some aspects of his life in a biographical sketch devoted to his major disciple [and Bu ston's main master] 'Phags pa 'od yon tan rgya mtsho (1268-?), and we learn that he passed away when 'Phags pa was twenty-four years old.33 Bu ston does not give any dates for 'Phags pa 'od, but he does state that he took his monk's vows shortly thereafter from Skyo ston Smon lam tshul khrims (1219-99) at Snar thang, of which he was its eighth abbot from 1285 to 1299. The year of 'Phags pa 'od's birth, namely 1268 (sa pho 'brug), is given in Bya btang Padma gar dbang's study of the transmission of the Sha wa dbang phyug gi snyan rgyud, 30 31 32 33 Myang yul stod smad bar gsum gyi ngo mtshar gtam gyi legs bshad mkhas pa'i 'jug ngogs, ed. Lhag pa tshe ring (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1983), 68-9 [= Ibid, Jo nang rje btsun tā ra nā tha'i gsung 'bum dpe bsdur ma, vol. 44/45, Mes po'i shul bzhag 86, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2008), 70]. 'GOS, 370 [Roerich 1979: 422]. For Kun spangs pa's biography by Byang sems Rgyal ba ye shes (1257-1320), see the notes in my "Apropos of Some Recently Recovered Texts Belonging to the Lam 'bras Teachings of the Sa skya pa and Ko brag pa," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 17 (1994), 190-3, and now also Byang sems Rgyal ba ye shes, Dpal ldan dus kyi 'khor lo jo nang pa'i lugs kyi bla ma brgyud pa'i rnam thar, ed. Bstan 'dzin phun tshogs (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2004), 64-142. The biography does not record when Chos sku 'od zer passed away or that Kun spangs pa had written his biography. For the latter, see the very brief mention of him in Mkhas grub Dge legs dpal bzang po's (1385-1438) Dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i 'grel chen dri ma med pa'i 'od kyi rgya cher bshad pa de kho na nyid snang bar byed pa, Collected Works, vol. Kha (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1981), 182, and in the somewhat more lengthy one in Stag tshang Lo tsā ba Shes rab rin chen's (1405-77) 1467 study, the Dus 'khor spyi don bstan pa'i rgya mtsho (New Delhi, 1973), 73. BU9, 83-7. The biography of 'Phags pa 'od is found in BU9, 83-99. The latter is also known as the Gsang 'dus chos 'byung or the 'Dus pa'i chos 'byung. De Rossi Filibeck (1994: 24) wrongly dated it to November 1 of that year. BYA, 28b-39b amounts to what is thus far the most lengthy account of Chos sku 'od zer's life. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 217 which he completed in 153834; he does not provide the year in which he passed away, being content with stating that he lived for a long time. What the year of his birth does of course suggest is that Chos sku 'od zer may have died in 1292, two years after Bu ston was born. Glancing at the enormous number of texts, text-cycles and their teachings which, according to Bu ston's gsan yig,35 the latter transmitted to 'Phags pa 'od, with whom Bu ston himself had studied in the 1320s and 1330s, we learn that his main teachers were Stag ston Spyil bu pa {or: Nag[s] phug pa} Shes rab 'od zer, alias 'Jam dbyangs gsar ma, and his own father Gser sdings pa Gzhon nu 'od zer. Bu ston does not mention him in his own survey of the Kālacakra, the Dus 'khor chos 'byung rgyud sde'i zab mo sgo 'byed rin chen gces pa'i lde mig, which he completed on April 30, 1329, but this may be attributable to the fact that he had not yet fully received 'Phags pa 'od's teachings.36 Although they do mention Chos sku 'od zer, neither of the aforementioned histories of the Kālacakra teachings written by Mkhas grub and Stag tshang Lo tsā ba, nor Dkon mchog bzang po give his dates. Indeed, with the exception of the latter, none of these authors even so much as hint at the proposition that he was Bu ston's pre-embodiment. Of the literature that is presently available to me, the first recorded date of Chos sku 'od zer's birth is given by 'Gos Lo tsā ba, who writes that he was born in 1214 (shing khyi), one year after Śākyaśrī's departure (gshegs) from Central Tibet. 37 Earlier, he states at one point that he was Śākyaśrī's re-embodiment, but this is of course rather problematic, especially in view of the fact that in his opinion Śākyaśrī died in 1225.38 On the other hand, his biography in Bya btang's study states with greater precision that he was born when a solar eclipse took place in the intermediate autumn-month of the shing pho khyi year, that is, in the intermediate autumn-month of 1214 (shing pho khy'i ston zla 'bring po'i nyi ma sgra can gyi[s] bzung ba) and that he passed away aged seventy-eight on the twenty-ninth day of the third hor-month of the dragon-year, that is, on April 13, 1292, 34 35 36 37 38 BYA, 39b. For his autobiography, see my "Apropos of Some Recently Recovered Texts Belonging to the Lam 'bras Teachings of the Sa skya pa and Ko brag pa," 186-7, and now also Byang sems Rgyal ba ye shes, Dpal ldan dus kyi 'khor lo jo nang pa'i lugs kyi bla ma brgyud pa'i rnam thar, 51-63. De Rossi Filibeck (1994: 17) wrongly dates it to April 1, 1329. A manuscript of this work is also included in Bo dong Paṇ chen Phyogs las rnam rgyal's (1373/5-1451) De kho nyid kyi 'dus pa, Encyclopedia Tibetica. The Collected Works of Bo dong Paṇ chen Phyogs las rnam rgyal, vol. 117 (New Delhi: The Tibet House, 1970), 569-642. 'GOS, 323 [Roerich 1979: 365]. The problems of fixing the years of Śākyaśrī's birth and death will be discussed in a forthcoming essay. 'GOS, 677 [Roerich 1979: 770]. 218 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines and these years are then echoed in Dalai Lama V Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho's (1617-82) biography of Tshar chen Blo gsal rgya mtsho (1502-66).39 To be sure, the dates given by 'Gos Lo tsā ba and Dalai Lama V neither tally with the year in which Śākyaśrī most probably passed away, namely in 1225 - the year 1214 is too early according to any of the numerous attested scenarios -, nor with the year in which Bu ston was born. Hence, if we really wish to press the issue, then we are only left with 1225 (shing bya!) as a possible year of his birth, and but handed an empty bag when it comes to the year in which he passed away. The most obvious solution to the problem vis-à-vis Dkon mchog bzang po would be that he had mistakenly opted for one of the two basic senses of gshegs, for it means "departed" in the dual sense of "left a place" or "died, passed away." Chos sku 'od zer's spiritual tie with Śākyaśrī did not begin with him, however. Bya btang suggests that the source for Chos kyi 'od zer being Śākyaśrī's re-embodiment was his embarrassed father, a monk with vows of celibacy, who, when Chos kyi 'od zer's mother and maternal uncle confronted him publicly with his son, had made this identification and happily told his audience the good news!40 But there is yet an additional problem with triangulating Chos sku 'od zer's place in Bu ston's 'khrungs rabs. Given the widespread flexibility with which various lines of re-embodiments are dealt with in post-fifteenth century Tibetan literature, it is hardly surprising that there are a number of fundamental inconsistencies in other proposed lines in which Bu ston figures. For one, Dalai Lama V offers the following succession up to Bu ston, one for which he is inter alia indebted to the Bstod pa bkra shis mtshan bzang ma and the Tshigs bcad ma, two earlier eulogies to Tshar chen by, respectively, Mkhyen brtse'i dbang phyug (1524-68) and 'Dar pa Rin cen [or: chen] dpal bzang po, where the former recounts some thirteen embodiments of Tshar chen41: 39 40 41 BYA, 29b, 39a, and Dalai Lama V's 1676 Rigs dang dkyil 'khor kun gyi khyab bdag rdo rje 'chang blo gsal rgya mtsho grags pa rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po'i rnam par thar pa slob bshad bstan pa'i nyi 'od, Sa skya Lam 'Bras Literature Series, vol. 2 (Dehra Dun: Sakya Centre, 1983), 424-6 [= Lhasa xylograph, Collected Works, vol. 9 (Gangtok: Sikkim Research Institute, 1991-5), 396-8; Collected Works, ed. Ser gtsug nang bstan dpe rnying 'tshol bsdu phyogs sgrig khang, vol. 12 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig dpe skrun khang, 2009), 283-4]. BYA, 31a. Dalai Lama V, Rigs dang dkyil 'khor kun gyi khyab bdag rdo rje 'chang blo gsal rgya mtsho grags pa rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po'i rnam par thar pa slob bshad bstan pa'i nyi 'od, 404 [ = Collected Works, vol. 9, 376; Collected Works, vol. 12, 268]; Tshar chen's biography is also quoted in ZHWA, 10-11. In fact, as Blo gsal bstan skyong stated in ZHWA, 8, his work is by and large an exegesis of Dalai Lama V's Dpal ldan zhwa lu pa'i bstan pa la bka' drin che ba'i dam pa rnams la gsol 'debs kyi tshigs su bcad pa The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 219 Virūpa (born in India) Stha bi ra [Sthavira] (born in *Uḍḍiyāna) Mahāpaṇḍita Dharmapāla (born in India) Gha ya dha ra (born in India) Khyung po Rnal 'byor (?940-1140) Śākyaśrī Shangs pa Chos rje Sangs rgyas ston pa (1195-1266) Mag Dge sdings pa Chos sku 'od zer Bu ston The inclusion of Sangs rgyas ston pa, an important exponent of the Shangs pa Bka' brgyud pa teachings founded by Khyung po Rnal 'byor, is rather puzzling. The available biographical literature — the library of the Cultural Palace of Nationalities contained an astonishing number of studies of the lives of Shangs pa masters, including many manuscripts concerning Sangs rgyas ston pa — neither suggest that he was a re-embodiment of Khyung po Rnal 'byor, the founding patriarch of this tradition, nor expressly give his dates, although they indicate that he was born in a hare-year (yos bu) and that he died aged seventy-one in a tiger-year (stag).42 We also learn43 that he received his novitiate vows from a Tsa ri Ras pa at twelve and that, upon his ordination as a monk at the age of eighteen, he studied the cycle of Zhang 'tshal pa (zhang 'tshal pa'i chos skor) under a Lama Spang po44, after which he requested teachings from Bla ma Khro phu ba and Bla ma Sa skya pa. The Zhang 'tshal pa cycle must refer to the teachings of Zhang G.yu brag Brtson 'grus grags pa (1121/3-93), who founded Tshal Gung thang monastery in 1175. Hence, he must have been born in one of the following hare-years: 42 43 44 padma rā ga'i 'phreng ba, for which see his Collected Works, Ser tsug nang bstan dpe rnying 'tshol bsdu phyogs sgrig khang, vol. 18 (Beijing: Krung go'i rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2009), 364-8 These years are taken from an account of his death in the Sangs rgyas [b]ston pa'i rnam thar mya[ng] ngan 'das tshul, Shangs pa Bka' brgyud pa Texts, vol. II (Sumra, 1977), 111 [= Shangs pa bka' brgyud bla rabs kyi rnam thar, ed. Bsod nams tshe brtan, Gangs can rig mdzod, vol. 28 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod rig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1996), 263]. For what follows, see the Sangs rgyas ston pa'i rnam thar, Shangs pa Bka' brgyud pa Texts, vol. II, 127-30 [= Shangs pa bka' brgyud bla rabs kyi rnam thar, ed. Bsod nams tshe brtan, 212-5]. Tshal pa's account of the Tshal pa Bka brgyud pa sect, in TSHAL, 126-49, does not mention an individual with this epithet. He is also not mentioned in the huge work on the Tshal pa Bka' brgyud pa sect per se in P.K. Sørensen and G. Hazod with Tsering Gyalbo, Rulers on the Celestial Plain: Ecclesiastic and Secular Hegemony in Medieval Tibet, a Study of Tshal Gung-thang (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007). 220 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 1159, 1171, 1183, 1195, 1207, 1219 or 1231. The last two are eliminated because the so-called Shri rnam 3 gyi gdams pa, which figures among the texts that he had studied with Bla ma Khro phu ba, is listed in the Man ngag brgya rtsa collection of Khro phu Lo tsā ba, so that we can be sure that "Bla ma Khro phu ba" must refer to the latter. This rules out the possibility for him being born in either 1219 or 1231. Pending further study, we may therefore tentatively conclude that his dates are 1195 to 1266. To inject, as did Dalai Lama V, two individuals between Śākyaśrī and Bu ston is of course hardly acceptable on historical grounds — it may be an indication of an acceptance of co-existing embodiments which, however, is so far not attested for the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries —, but it would be interesting to make an attempt to ascertain the "metaphysical" reasons underlying it.45 Whatever lies at the bottom of this — it is not neccesarily predicable on sloppy analysis —, Dalai Lama V then completes the post-Bu ston 'khrungs rabs up to his time: [9. 10. 11. 12. [13. Bu ston] Yar klungs pa chen po Seng ge rgyal mtshan (1344-1400) Pha rgod Bsod nams bzang po Rnal 'byor Dbang mo46 Tshar chen] Blo gsal bstan skyong adds that some scholars had suggested that, when Bu ston was still alive, monks from the Zhang zhung area in Mnga' ris had identified him as a reembodiment of Lo tsā ba Rin chen bzang po (958-1055), and had sent him a letter to this effect. Bu ston then acknowledged this to have been the case, which means that, at least for Blo gsal bstan skyong, Rin chen bzang po should be 45 46 The possibility of and an argument for multiple, simultaneous re-embodiments that have one single origin is briefly mentioned in Dalai Lama V's biography of his pre-embodiment Dalai Lama III Bsod nams rgya mtsho (1543-88), where he has it that one moon can have many simultaneous reflections in various bodies of water; see Dalai Lama V, Rje btsun thams cad mkhyen pa bsod nams rgya mtsho'i rnam thar dngos grub rgya mtsho'i shing rta (Dolanji: Tashi Dorje, 1982), 175-6 [= Collected Works, ed. Ser gtsug nang bstan dpe rnying 'tshol bsdu phyogs sgrig khang, vol. 11 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig dpe skrun khang, 2009), 128-9]. The metaphor of one moon and many reflections may have been taken from a passage in the Avataṃsakasūtra, for which see the Bka' 'gyur [dpe sdur ma] ed. Krung go'i bod rig pa zhib 'jug lte gnas kyi bka' bstan dpe sdur khang, vol. 35 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2006), 822. My thanks go out to my student Ian MacCormack for this reference. Klong rdol Lama Ngag dbang blo bzang dpal bzang po (1719-95) glosses her as a disciple of Stag tshang Lo tsā ba in KLONG, 1212. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 221 included in his 'khrungs rabs.47 Now Bu ston's miscellaneous works contain two letters that have to do with Zhang zhung,48 of which the first is a letter addressed to the Buddhist community of Gu ge in Zhang zhung, and was written in response to a petition, the contents of which are not made explicit, that had been brought to him by the layman Bsam gtan bzang po. His own catalog of his oeuvre registers it as a letter addressed to the communties in Tho [or: Mtho] ling, Rin chen bzang po's see, and Mang nang in Zhang zhung.49 Rin chen bzang po is mentioned twice therein, albeit without any reference to him being part of his 'khrungs rabs. To be sure, Bu ston does call him a "re-embodiment" (sprul sku) in his Chos 'byung, but that is all.50 The second is a letter addressed to the king of Zhang zhung, styled with unmitigated enthusiasm "Lord over all of Tibet's citizenry" (bod 'bangs yongs kyi rje), who is identified as “Puṇyaa(sic)". This letter is registered by Sgra tshad pa in his biography of Bu ston in entries that are explicitly placed between the years 1332 and 1344.51 There he observes that King Puṇyamalla52 had sent Bu ston a letter and presents "from India (sic)." To be sure, puṇyamalla renders Tibetan bsod nams lde, so that there is no room for doubting that both names refer to one and the same person. Bu ston's replies are dated July 3, 1339. Bu ston was also "appropriated" by the Dge lugs pa intelligentia of Amdo during the enormous surge of this school in that area during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that gave rise to a veritable inflationary atmosphere of re-embodiment lines in which well known Central Tibetan figures of the past were placed in slots of well known Amdo masters of the present. Thus Bu ston was part of the on-going re-embodiment series of Shing bza' III Paṇḍita Blo bzang bstan pa'i dbang phyug tshul khrims phun tshogs dpal bzang po (1825-97), the fifty-eighth abbot of Sku 'bum monastery in Qinghai, whose line runs as follows53: 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 This is related in ZHWA, 11. No such an equivalence is met with in any of the relevant texts found in the Collected Biographical Material About Lo chen Rin chen bzang po and His Subsequent Reembodiments (New Delhi, 1977). BU26, 286-90, 333-4. BU26, 654. BU24, 741 [BUx, 82, Obermiller 1931: 137]. Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 114, 121). For Bsod nams lde/Puṇyamalla, see R. Vitali, The Kingdoms of Gu.ge Pu.hrang According to the Mnga' ris rgyal rabs by Gu ge Mkhan chen Ngag dbang grags pa (Dharamsala: Tho ling gtsug lag khang lo gcig stong 'khor ba'i rjes dran mdzad sgo'i go sgrig tshogs chung, 1996), 122-3, 453 ff. See Gser tog Blo bzang tshul khrims rgya mtsho's (1845-1915) 1906 history of Sku 'bum monastery, the Sku 'bum byams pa gling gi gdan rabs don ldan tshangs pa'i dbyangs snyan (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1982), 101-2. 222 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines G.yu yi ne tso 'Phags pa Gnas brtan Gser be'u Slob dpon Ngag dbang grags pa Lha bla ma Ye shes 'od (947-1019/24) Bsod nams rgyan, the daughter of Ma gcig ?Lab sgron (1055-1149) Mkhas grub Gdu bu pa Śākyaśrībhadra Mnyam med Smre ba Brtson 'grus rgya mtsho Shing mo bza' A chos Grub chen Na kha pa Thar pa'i rgyal mtshan Tshar chen Blo gsal rgya mtsho Byams gling pa Blo bzang don grub Rgyal Mkhan chen Skal bzang rab rgyas (1704-?) Shing bza' Sgom chen pa Rje Blo bzang dar rgyas rgya mtsho (1752/9-1824) Lastly, let me add further complications to Bu stons's line of pre-embodiments and end wilfully on an ambivalent note. Klong rdol Lama writes of a succession in the form of a series of verses that is radically different from that of Dalai Lama V and the one he himself had written about later in his work, that is, one in which, for example Haribhadra (ca. 800) and a Vasubandhu occupy, respectively, the fourth and seventh places of his pre-embodiments.54 Sgra tshad pa, too, was given a series of pre-embodiments, the first attestation of which I am aware is found in the introductory material of his biography by his disciple So ston Shākya dpal (1355-1432).55 There we have a far more systematic treatment of his master's previous embodiments, one that for good reason runs parallel to that of Bu ston, than the one Sgra tshad pa had offered for Bu ston. Clearly, So ston's motivation for their parallel lives was not only to adduce evidence that Sgra tshad pa had been with Bu ston throughout ahistorical and quasi-historical time, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to buttress and legitimize Sgra tshad pa's special status among Bu ston's numerous disciples, as well as to eulogize him in a befitting fashion. One should also keep in mind that praising one's teacher often also implies a measure of self-praise! Closing the hermeneutical circle that seals their relationship, So ston 54 55 KLONG, 1156-7; this is also quoted in ZHWA, 11-2 and Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 50-1, n. 1). A capsule study of his life is found in ZHWA, 123-39, which, as Blo gsal bstan skyong states, is based on Yi ge ma mo Slob dpon Hūṃkara's work. A manuscript of this biography in twenty-five folios reads his name Hūṃkara bi ja ya Rang byung rdo rje [= tbrc.org W27406]. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 223 writes that the disciples of, respectively, Śākyaśrī and Chos sku 'od zer, had been his pre-embodiments; the two disciples in question were56: Dānaśīla Rong po Shes rab seng ge (1251-1315) An expert in the Kālacakra, Rong po had just passed away when Bu ston arrived at his see in the late 1310s. This led him to study with Rong po's nephew Rdo rje rgyal mtshan.57 We do not find a hint of this in Sgra tshad pa's own oeuvre or that Bu ston himself was aware of this curious connection and set of circumstances. Ultimately, Sgra tshad pa's line embodied itself in the A kya lineage of Sku 'bum monastery in Amdo, where the following 'khrungs rabs is given58: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Dgra bcom pa Dge 'dun bsrungs (*Arhat Saṅgharakṣita) Zhang Rdo rje bdud 'dul Dge ba'i 'byung gnas Sras Zla ba'i dbang po Nag mo khol pa Sa yi snying po Lo ston Dge 'dun Lo tsā ba Rin chen rnam rgyal Zhang zhung Chos dbang grags pa (1404-69)59 As stated earier, the almost arbitrary assimilation of significant religious figures of early Tibet into their own fold reached virtually epidemic, inflationary proportions among the Dge lugs pa establishments, especially but by no means exclusively of Amdo and Khams, with many curious inconsistencies, the schemata and interpenetra56 57 58 59 See his narrative leading up to Sgra tshad pa's birth in the Thugs sras lo tstsha ba chen po rin chen rnam par rgyal ba'i rnam par thar pa, fols. 46 [missing is fol. 31]; dbu can manuscript, C.P.N. catalog no. 002834(3); indigenous catalog no. phyi ra 129, 5a-20b [= Ibid., Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. Zhi {= 51} (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2010), 392-417]. This is also alluded to in ZHWA, 43-4. See Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 87), which passage So ston cites in Thugs sras lo tstsha ba chen po rin chen rnam par rgyal ba'i rnam par thar pa, 19a [= Ibid., 415]. See Gser tog Blo bzang tshul khrims rgya mtsho, Sku 'bum byams pa gling gi gdan rabs don ldan tshangs pa'i dbyangs snyan, 73. He also figures in the series of pre-embodiments of Dge 'dun zla ba grags pa (1734-1810) in a line which does not include Sgra tshad pa; see Bis pa 'Jam dbyangs grags pa et al., Bis mdo dgon chen bkra shis thos bsam chos 'khor gling gi gdan rabs dad pa'i chu bo gzhol ba'i 'bab stegs (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1991), 405-10. 224 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines tions of which need urgent study.60 Presumably, part of the rationale for this assimilation would seem to have been that the Dge lugs pa, being a relatively recent development within Tibetan Buddhism, had none of the direct links with India that the other earlier schools were able to claim and that, to some degree, ensured the legitimacy of their respective doctrinal entities. The fact that, perhaps beginning in the sixteenth century, the Dge lugs pa also referred to themselves as the "New Bka' gdams pa" may have stemmed from a similar kind of doctrinal insecurity. The spectacular rise of the Dge lugs pa in the Amdo region can probably be explained in part by their political and economic connections with a number of Mongol communities, in Amdo as well as in "Inner" and "Outer" Mongolia, not to mention with the late Ming and Qing courts. To be sure, that is certainly not the entire picture. There are still many questions that need to be asked. For example, why did the different communities in Amdo, Mongol, Tibetan, and hybrid-like Monguor, opted fundamentally [but not entirely exclusively] to support the Dge lugs pa tradition rather than, say, the Sa skya pa, one or the other Bka' brgyud pa sects, or the Rnying ma pa, to stay within the realm of Tibetan Buddhism. What would have been or were the advantages, real and perceived, for doing so? What, indeed, was so attractive about the Dge lugs tradition? How does religion economics fit in this picture? What were the sociological dimensions that seemingly played a crucual role in this surge? Verily, there is quite a bit to be done here! Some of the defects found in Sgra tshad pa's work are to a limited extent remedied by seven other biographies of Bu ston that have only become available over the last few decades. The first two were written by two of his other disciples, one of whom was, as we have seen Khyung po Lhas pa, and both are located in a large collection of biographies of some of the principal scholars who had been active in Zhwa lu monastery. The other one was Mgon po dpal, 61 who authored the Chos rje'i rnam thar rin chen phreng ba of which an eighteen-folio dbu med manuscript is located under C.P.N. catalog no. 002772(3) and is now available from tbrc.org W26457. He completed 60 61 A comprehensive but by no means complete listing of such lines, including some non-Dge lugs pa ones, is found in Bod dang / bar khams / rgya sog bcas kyi bla sprul rnams kyi skye phreng deb gzhung, Bod kyi gal che'i lo rgyus yig cha bdams bsgrigs, ed. Ma grong Mi 'gyur rdo rje Gangs can rig mdzod 16 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1991), 281-369. No doubt politically and historically motivated would be the inclusion of such Sa skya pa scholars as 'Phags pa in the line of pre-embodiments of the Lcang skya line, while he also figures as a pre-embodiment of the Dalai Lama line; for the former, see K.-H. Everding, Die Präexistenzen der Lcang skya Qutuqtus, 100 ff. His biographical sketch is found in ZHWA, 73-5. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 225 his brief work on the first yar ngo day of the dbo month of a khyu mchog year, that is, on February 14, 1401, in an unidentified place; his scribe was Grub pa dpal bzang po. The next two belong to the one transmitted by the Bo dong tradition. Thus, a biography of Bu ston is found in the undated history of the Guhyasamāja cycle of texts, possibly by Bo dong Paṇ chen, and another one is included in the aforementioned study of Bya tang.62 The remaining three are, firstly, the one that forms a kind of preface in Yongs 'dzin Ye shes rgyal mtshan's (1713-93) catalog to the Bkra shis bsam gtan gling manuscript of Bu ston's collected oeuvre, for which see Appendix Two. The second of the triad is the one met with in Blo gsal bstan skyong's chronicle of Zhwa lu monastery.63 And the third is found as an introduction to a manuscript of his collected works that was published some years ago in China.64 Future research on his life should be based on these sources that are now readily available. A curious omission in all of these is that they fail to explain why Bu ston was called "Bu ston." This lacuna is convincingly filled by Mang thos and 'Brug chen V Padma dkar po (1525-92), whereby the former may have been the first to write65: nyer gcig pa la yab dang lhan cig tu dbus gtsang gnyis su grwa skor mdzad / dbus nas mkhas pa shākya gzhon nu dang / kha rag byang gzhon / gtsang nas mkhas pa dpal ldan seng ge dang / 'jam skya sogs lung rigs kyis btul bas pha ston bu ston du grags / At twenty, he engaged in monastic examination rounds (grwa skor) in Dbus and Gtsang together with his father Brag ston Rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po. Since both defeated, by means of citing scriptural authority and reasoned debate, Mkhas pa Shākya gzhon nu and Kha rag Byang chub gzhon nu from Dbus and Mkhas pa Dpal ldan seng ge and 'Jam skya Nam mkha' bzang po etc. from Gtsang, they became re62 63 64 65 See Gsang 'dus lung rigs man ngag ston par byed pa'i bla ma tshad ma'i lo rgyus, Encyclopedia Tibetica. The Collected Works of Bo dong Paṇ chen Phyogs las rnam rgyal, vol. 64 (New Delhi: The Tibet House, 1970) 490-577. Unfortunately, the relevant folios of BYA are not available to me at present. YE, 305-51, and ZHWA, 8-43. See Collected Works, vol. 1, Phyag bris gces btus, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 12 (Beijing: krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2008), 3-11. This biography was translated in Stein (2013: 389-95); for remarks on Stein's work, see below. The reference to the latter is given in Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 3, n. 3); for the passage quoted, see MANG, 177. 'Brug chen V completed his tract in 1575. 226 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines nowned as "the father as teacher" (pha ston) and "the son as teacher" (bu ston). Khyung po Lhas pa states that he became known as "the great translator Bu ston" after he had completed his studies of Sanskrit with Thar pa Lo tsā ba Nyi ma rgyal mtshan (ca.1260-ca.1330) in the 1310s.66 After years of fairly quiet and unobtrusive but insistent scholarship and meditative practice, Bu ston passed away in Zhwa lu at the age of seventy-four at daybreak of Sunday, July 1, of 1364. There occurs a poignant narrative in A mes zhabs' biography of Zhwa lu Lo tsā ba Chos skyong bzang po (1441-1528), himself a scion of Zhwa lu's local aristocracy, which we encounter in his chronicle of the Kālacakra cycle. In around 1520, Bco brgyad pa Chos rje 'Jam dbyangs asked the aging Zhwa lu Lo tsā ba to come to Zhwa lu and…67: ri phug kyi chos khri khar phebs te / brgyad stong pa'i lung sogs nyi ma mang po'i bar dge 'dun brgya phrag du ma'i tshogs la gsungs shing / bu ston rin po che'i rnam thar gyi lung yang gsungs / de nyin nam mkha' la 'ja' tshon shin tu bkra ba / bzo dbyibs ngo mtshar ba sna tshogs pa ri mor bris pa lta bu ches khyad par du 'phags pa byung zhing / bu ston sku gshegs pa'i rnam thar gyi skabs su spyan chab kyang mdzad / …he went to Ri phug's religious throne and stated, that is, gave the authorizations to read (lung) the Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitāsūtra, etc., to a host of hundreds of clerics. He also recited the authorization to read Bu ston's biography. On that day, there appeared in the sky a quite unique, extremely multi-colored rainbow as if painted in various wondrous designs. And, when he got to the account of Bu ston's passing, he even broke out in tears. 66 67 Thams cad mkhyen pa bu ston rin po che'i rnam par thar pa yon tan rin po che'i lhun po, C.P.N. catalog no. 002772(2) [= tbrc.org W26456], 7a. See his Dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i zab pa dang rgya che ba'i dam pa'i chos byung ba'i tshul legs par bshad pa ngo mtshar dad pa'i shing rta, 231. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 227 I. On the Date of the Chos 'byung's Composition According to the 1917-9 Lhasa [Zhol] xylograph of the Chos 'byung, its full title seems to have been Bde bar gshegs pa'i bstan pa'i gsal byed chos kyi 'byung gnas gsung rab rin po che'i mdzod, but there are some variations to this.68 In my earlier essay, I made some bibliographical remarks on this work and indicated a few details pertaining to its printing history. To the first we can now add the new translation by L. Stein [?and Ngawang Zangpo].69 Their new translation omits, as does the earlier one by E. Obermiller,70 the very important third and 68 69 70 BU24, 633. The title is given according to the title page of the Lhasa xylograph, which may very well be inaccurate. Indeed, Bu ston himself refers to the title of his text, in BU24, 700, 876, 917, 1051, 1054 [BUx, 51, 179, 211, 314, 317], as the Chos kyi 'byung gnas gsung rab rin po che'i mdzod. He titles it Chos spyi'i byung tshul dang rnam bzhag bstan pa chos kyi 'byung gnas gsung rab rin po che'i mdzod in his own incomplete catalog of his oeuvre in BU26, 646. The two catalogs of his writings by his disciple Sgra tshad pa refer to it as the Chos kyi 'byung gnas rin po che'i mdzod [BU28, 331] and as the Chos spyi'i byung tshul gsung rab rin po che'i mdzod [BU28, 334]. The listing of his collected writings by Klong rdol Lama, in which it occurs in volume Ka [= 1], titles it as the Chos spyi 'byung tshul dang rnam bzhag bstan pa chos 'byung gsung rab rin po che'i mdzod; see KLONG, 1289 [= MHTL, no. 13617]. His contemporary Yongs 'dzin Ye shes rgyal mtshan reproduces a title identical to the Lhasa xylograph in his 1779 catalog of a collection of Bu ston’s oeuvre that was housed in Bkra shis bsam gtan gling monastery in Skyid grong; see YE, 352. However, in YE, 371, he refers to it as the Chos kyi 'byung gnas gsung rab rin po che'i mdzod, and characterizes it as a great catalog of the canon. And a version of the Sba bzhed refers to it as the Gsung rab rin po che'i bang mdzod; see Une chronique ancienne de Bsam yas: Sba bzhed, ed. R.A. Stein (Paris: Adrien-Maissoneuve, 1961), 54, and Bashi, ed. and tr. Tong Jinhua and Huang Bufan (Chengdu: Sichuan minzu chubanshe, 1990), 160, but this went unnoticed in their translation on p. 48. Stein (2013). Obermiller (1931) and (1932) as opposed to Guo Heqing, who translated this portion of the text in Guo (1986: 208-443), as did Pu Wencheng in Pu (2007: 186-231). For earlier scholarship on the Chos 'byung, see Vostrikov (1970: 140-2). Not mentioned is E. Obermiller, "Bu ston’s History of Buddhism and the Mañjuśrīmūlatantra," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1935), 299-306. In the Introduction to Part I of Obermiller's translation, in Obermiller (1931: 4), Th. Stcherbatsky writes that the text of his translation was that of an "old xylograph edition" and that a copy of the Lhasa xylograph of his collected oeuvre "in 15 volumes" (sic) had not yet arrived in Leningrad. Obermiller (1932: 5) himself stated in his Introduction to Part II that he had access to the Lhasa xylograph of the text which, he writes, "contains a great number of mistakes in the proper names" and that he corrected these in light of the readings given in the Sde dge canon. A comparison of the folio numbers given by Obermiller in his translation of the section that deals with Tibet bears out the statement in Vostrikov (1970: 141, n. 405), that the "old blockprint" in question was the one from Bkra shis lhun po monastery. The latter is briefly described in Schuh (1981: 76, n. 25). Vostrikov's work was written in 1936 but only published in 1962 as Tibetskaya Istoritchiskaya Literatura, Bibliotheca Buddhica XXXII (Moscow). He writes in 228 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines last section, Bu ston's catalog of translated scripture. A few preliminary observations may be made about this recent contribution. Firstly, it appears that Stein was solely responsible for the published translation. While both names appear on the front and inside cover, only she signed the Translator's Foreword and, in his Translator's Introduction, Ngawang Zangpo recommended this book as if it were owed to Stein alone: "I am delighted to recommend her work to all readers…". And, lastly, many footnotes are written in the first person singular. While Stein does not inform the reader what recension of the text she has translated, her translation is undoubtedly a labor of devotion and deserves our respect. But it is unfortunate that she did not think it worthwhile to identify the citations, the majority of which Obermiller had already identified, more often than not with precise canonical references. Obermiller's translation is, to be sure, a monumental piece of scholarship, one on which he labored under trying conditions, but it was certainly not flawless, as his junior colleague Vostrikov indiated in his somewhat intemperate criticism. The same can also be said of Stein's translation, which is also rather spotty in places and suggests that she and her colleague were not always in control of this specimen of indigenous Tibetan scholarship. Thus, the title Mdo sde rgyan [= {Mahāyana}-sūtrālaṃkāra] becomes "The Ornament of the Discourses" rather than "The Ornament of the [Mahayana] Discourses", the enumeration mngon sum [/] rjes dpag is rendered "direct and inferential logic" rather than "immediate perception, inference", and the phrase rnam nges kyi ṭī ka chos mchog becomes "Dharmottara's Ascertainment of Dignāga's 'Compendium of Logic'" rather than "Dharmottara's 'Commentary on Dharmakīrti's Ascertainment [of the Valid Means of Cognition] ([Pramāṇa]viniścaya)'".71 At one point, Vostrikov took Obermiller to task for having misunderstood the somewhat technical piece Bu ston had written on Śākyaśrī's calculations of the passing of the historical Buddha and how long his doctrine would remain in the world.72 He corrected 71 72 Vostrikov (1970: 109, n. 337), that Bu ston's "astronomical works are not at our disposal", which would imply that the entire Lhasa xylograph of his collected works had not arrived in Leningrad by 1936. BU24, 645, 665, 849 [BUx, 9, 24, 160] and Stein (2013: 16, 43, 248). A glance at Obermiller (1931: 17 [145, n. 133], 44, 1932: 151) would have settled these and the many other infelicitous issues. BU24, 817- [BUx, 24, 137-8] and Obermiller (1932: 213-4) and Vostrikov (1970: 111-2, n. 341), who cites fols. 103b-4a of his edition of the Chos 'byung. This is fol. 93a of the Lhasa xylograph and fol. 84b of the Zhwa lu xylograph, that is, BUzh [see below n. 76], which virtually have identical readings. Vostrikov notes that the entire passage suggests that Śākyaśrī made four calculations, but as I hope to show elsewhere I believe he is here in error, since I think that the record provides evidence for only three of these. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 229 Obermiller's translation, but now Stein has made the very same error that Obermiller had committed earlier!73 In the prequel to this essay, we have seen that a number of essays have been devoted to the Chos 'byung. Ms. Li Zhiying, one of my students at Sichuan University, kindly drew my attention to a recent MA thesis and a doctoral dissertation that focused in one way or another on Bu ston's intellectual life. As far as the thesis is concerned, Ms. Sgrol ma tshe ring made a very useful study of Bu ston's life and works, especially with a view on his activities as a translator. 74 Hardly her fault, she was unable to evaluate Bu ston's undoubtable prowess as a scholar of Sanskrit, since, studying in Lhasa, she has had no direct dealings with that language and only appears to have studied some Sanskrit through the medium of traditional Tibetan Sanskrit studies which is not the same thing! This situation reflects the overall state of the study of Sanskrit in China, which, to be sure, is still in its beginnings; as far as I am aware, Sanskrit is taught in but a handful of institutions, but things are definitely improving. Again, a reflection of the difficulty of gaining access to basic source material is that she was evidently unaware of P. Verhagen's exhaustive surveys of Sanskrit studies in Tibet. And, again, she carries no blame for this. For her dissertation, Ms. Jinniao dabala conducted a comparative study of Bu ston's Chos 'byung and the Mongol text of J̌imbadorǰi's Bolur Toli of 1834-1837.75 Of course, I am not at all sure of how much one can take away or learn from such a comparison other than that, as is rather well known, much of post-sixteenth century Mongol Buddhist historiography is owed to the earlier Tibetan historians. Since the Chos 'byung had an enormous influence on Buddhological scholarship and its perception of the development of Buddhism in India in particular, it will not be out of place to scrutinize its own "history" a little closer than has been done hithertofore. In the remainder of this paper, I shall first briefly examine the year in which Bu ston composed his work. My discussion is of necessity somewhat thin and succinct because of the paucity of exact information on this important, yet surpirisingly controversial detail. I shall then deal with its transmission and spread in the Tibetan cultural area by way of a survey of the extant manuscripts and, above all, xylographs. This is followed by a survey of its reception by his fellow scholars 73 74 75 Stein (2013: 214). See her Bu ston Rin chen grub kyis saṃ bod lo tsā'i bya gzhag 'phel rim khrod bzhag pa'i mdzad pa la rags tsam dpyad pa, Tibet University Masters thesis (Lhasa, 2012), pp. 96. See his Bütön Čöyičung kiged Bolur Toli-yin Qaričaγuluγsen Sinǰilel, University of Inner Mongolia doctoral dissertation (Huhehot, 2012), pp. 116. 230 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines during the fourteenth century. The two appendices that conclude this paper provide, firstly, an analysis of the texts and textual cycles he had received from his teachers and, secondly, an overview of the various handwritten recensions of his collected oeuvre that were present in Central Tibet together with a brief and, undoubtedly, woefully incomplete listing of isolated xylograph "editions" of individual works therefrom. In the prequel to this essay, we have seen that printing blocks for the text of the Chos 'byung were carved on at least four different occasions; these are the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. Zhwa lu xylograph in 190 folios76 Bkra shis lhun po xylograph in 244 folios Sde dge xylograph in 203 folios Lhasa xylograph in 212 folios Of these, the colophons of the Lhasa and Sde dge xylographs do not offer anything in the way of its date of composition, nor do they signal the identity of the petitioner [or petitioners], if there ever were one, or the scribe.77 The same applies to the manuscript of the Chos 'byung that is at my disposal.78 This state of affairs is somewhat of an anomaly when compared to Bu ston's other major writings, which are almost invariably given explicit dates in addition to which they very often the name [or names] of the individual [or individuals] at whose request these were written is [or are] provided. Among the ones on exoteric Buddhist philosophy, we may count his commentaries on the Abhidharmasamuccaya, Abhisamayālaṃkāra, Bodhicāryāvatāra, Pramāṇaviniścaya and the Vinayasūtra. We should point out that the first two of these were also not formally petitioned. Of course, like the Chos 'byung, they are all treatises (bstan bcos, śāstra). While the precise range of the meaning and hermeneutics of a "treatise" in a Buddhist context still needs to be examined diachronically, 76 77 78 My thanks go out to Dr. M. Sernesi who first informed me that that this xylograph can now be downloaded from the collecton of digital texts that the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, Germany, has made available to the public. She also kindly sent me its PDF. BU24, 1054-5 [BUx, 317, Guo 1986: 451, Pu 2007: 233] and Schuh (1981: 75, no. 24), who has reproduced the author's colophon (mdzad/byas byang) as well as the only partly legible print colophon (par byang) of the Zhwa lu xylograph. BUm; this same manuscript was also published in the Bu ston gsung 'bum, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 24 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod kyi rig shes dpe skrun khang, 2008), 847-1414, and in the Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. Ti [= 39] (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2011). My references are to the former. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 231 we may note here a remark in the chronicle of Mkhas pa Lde'u.79 There he writes, in an undoubtedly prescriptive vein, that their composition — here we must of course also include exegeses on tantric theory and practice — needs, firstly, to be based on insight into the subject-matter and, secondly, on a compassionate attitude. As for the latter, Mkhas pa Lde'u gives a two-fold analysis, of which the first is that an author should write a treatise on the basis of a general kind of compassion aimed at benefiting others, and the second, one that is more personal (sgos), involves writing such a work because one has been petitioned to do so by an individual [or individuals]. In this connection, there are two interesting passages in the history of Bla brang Bkra shis 'khyil monastery of 1800 by Dbal mang II Dkon mchog rgyal mtshan (1764-1853) that shed some light on what may potentially be an underlying causality that may give rise to the composition of treatises, although these should by no means be universalized.80 The first one observes that Sde khri Blo bzang don grub (1673-1746), her third grand-abbot, was extremely learned in Indo-Tibetan history and that although he had wished to write a chronicle of sorts, he did not do so in the absence of a petitioner (bskul mkhan). Dbal mang II writes something similar about Rje Bsod nams dbang rgyal (1726-93), the monastery's fifteenth grand-abbot, whose Nachlass consisted of many unfinished texts that had all been waiting for a petitioner who, alas, was never found. In this connection, we may also refer to a passage in the autobiography of Dalai Lama V, where he evidently found it necessary to stipulate that he wrote a versified means for evoking Sarāsvatī without the benificent presence of a petitioner (bskul ba po med pa).81 The idea of needing one to make a request for writing a work was of course never a truly well-established tradition. When we look into the colophons of the oeuvre of such early authors as Rngog Lo tsā ba or Sa skya Paṇḍita, we cannot help but notice that none of their available writings suggest that they were the result of a request. Hence, we can hardly maintain that a request was customary and had become part of a tradition. Indeed, it may be more appropriate to assert that writing 79 80 81 See Rgya bod kyi chos 'byung rgyas pa, ed. Chab spel Tshe brtan phun tshogs (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1987) 135. For these, see his Mdo smad bstan pa'i 'byung gnas dpal ldan bkra shis 'khyil gyi gdan rabs rang bzhin dbyangs su brjod pa'i lha'i rnga bo che, Collected Works, vol. 1 (New Delhi, 1974), 376, 454 [= Bla brang bkra shis 'khyil gyi gdan rabs lha'i rnga chen (Lanzhou: Kan su'u mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1987), 337, 415]. See the Za hor gyi bande ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho'i 'di snang 'khrul pa'i rol rtsed rtogs brjod kyi tshul du bkod pa du kū la'i gos bzang, vol. 1 (Ochghat: Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Community, 1983) 233 [= Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho'i rnam thar, Stod cha (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1989), 237]. 232 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines per request was a personal choice on the part of an author and that many, if not most, Tibetan authors, including Bu ston, appear to have reacted to such petitions. To be sure, the apparent colophons of the Zhwa lu and Bkra shis lhun po xylographs of the Chos 'byung do have it that it was written in the water-dog year, that is, in 1322.82 But the authorship of these colophons cannot, I would argue, be traced back to Bu ston himself, for they occur after the dedicatory line: "May the great ocean of samsaric suffering quickly dry up by means of this [work]!" ('dis 'khor ba sdug bsngal gyi rgya mtsho chen po myur du skems par gyur cig). This line is a kind of trademark of Bu ston and it occurs in much of his oeuvre — we also find it echoed in Sgra tshad pa's writings, obviously in emulation or under the influence of his teacher. Bu ston quite frequently concludes his treatises with this line and, when given, it is preceded by the colophon in which he gives such particulars as his name, the place and date of its composition, and the name of his scribe. Hence we must conclude that this line of the Chos 'byung either formed part of the printer's colophon and must therefore be a later addition to the text, or that it was added by a later unknown hand based as it is on an interpretation of certain remarks made in the text itself, or both. The Tibetan collection of the C.P.N. has at least two manuscripts of the Chos 'byung that might bear out these scenarios. The first is found under C.P.N. catalog no.002432 and consists of 347 folios with six lines per folio side; the upper center of the title page reads 'bras spungs nang 51, indicating that it originally belonged to the library system of 'Bras spungs monastery, presumably the library of the Dga' ldan pho brang. A gloss after the dedicatory line on fol. 347a observes: // sangs rgyas kyi bstan pa sum stong bzhi brgya lnga bcu rtsa lnga song chu // pho khyi lo dgong (sic) lo sum bcu rtsa gsum bzhes pa'i dus su brtsams so / yang zhwa lu spar ma zhig dang bstun nas dag par byas / We thus learn that the calculation of its alleged year of composition was evidently adapted from passages within the text itself, and that the text of the manuscript was also edited on the basis of the Zhwa lu 82 Vostrikov (1970: 141, n. 405). For the colophons of the Zhwa lu and Bkra shis lhun po xylographs, see Schuh (1981: 75-6, nos. 24-5). A xylograph of the latter may also be found in the library of the Bihar Research Society, Patna, for which see D.P. Jackson, The 'Miscellaneous series' of Tibetan Texts in the Bihar Research Society, Patna, Tibetan and Indo-Tibetan Studies 2 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1989), 191, no. 1401. Other exemplars of this xylograph are found under catalog no. 4404 of the Beijing National Library and the C.P.N. catalog no. 002421. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 233 xylograph. The same, albeit without reference to this xylograph, is met with in yet another dbu med manuscript of the text in 499 folios with five lines per folio side that is cataloged under C.P.N. no.002435. While the date of 1322 represents more or less the received view, there are therefore considerable grounds for doubting its veracity. It has been often pointed out that Bu ston does mention the year 1322 in the text; there are in all four passages to this effect, the second of which reads with the interlinear note in << >>83: ..chu pho khyi <<rnga chen>> lo la bla ma ti shria kun dga' blo gros rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po bod du bsnyen rdzogs la byon pa'i lo yan chad la sum stong bzhi brgya lnga bcu rtsa lnga 'das / rtsa drug pa'i steng na yod… a BU24, shri. …From the year that Bla ma Ti shrī [< Ch. dishi, Imperial Preceptor] Kun dga' blo gros rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po came to Tibet [from China] for complete ordination as a monk, in the water-male-dog <<grand-drum>> year [1322], three thousand four hundred and fifty-five years have passed since the passing of the Buddha. Now we are in the three thousand four hundred and fifty-sixth year. This is really all it says and despite interpretations to this effect there is absolutely nothing in the text to suggest that Bu ston intended this year as the year in which he completed his work, or that it he finished it in 1323. All that we can infer from this and the other three passages is that he was in the process of writing the Chos 'byung in those years.84 He reverts once more to the water-male-dog year in 83 84 BU24, 817 [BUx, 137, Obermiller 1932: 106, Guo 1986: 120, Pu 2007: 84]. According to the Sa skya pa tradition, which Bu ston is following here, the Buddha's nirvana, that is, passing, took place in the year 2133 B.C.; see, for example, A. Macdonald, "Préambule à la lecture d'un Rgya-bod yig-chaṅ," Journal asiatique CCLI (1963), 66, 117, n. 52-3, 56; see also below. The year 1322 was Ye shes rgyal mtshan's opinion, for which see YE, 371, and Blo gsal bstan skyong even implicitly suggests that it was composed while he was teaching at Khro phu, for which see ZHWA, 23. For the sake of completeness, we must mention Tucci (1949: 141), who states that it was written in "the year khrag skyug…= 1347...", and he was followed by H.H.R. Hoffmann, "Tibetan Historiography and the Approach of Tibetans to History," Journal of Asian History 4 (1970) 173, albeit without any textual substantiation. Of course, khrag skyug is the poetic name for the water-pig year which would not be "1347", but rather 1323; 234 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines connection with some who, in his opinion quite erroneously, held that, in accordance with a Kālacakra–derived chronology, up to the year 1322 one thousand six hundred and thirteen years had passed since the birth of the Buddha, and that in his opinion, again with reference to the year 1322, two thousand one hundred and ninety-eight years had passed from the time when the Buddha had taught the basic [Kālacakramūla]tantra. Bu ston's biography by Sgra tshad pa even implies that the Chos 'byung was composed prior to the year 1320, and around the same time as his commentary on Haribhadra's Sphuṭārthā exegesis of the Abhisamayālaṃkāra and two related works on prajñāpāramitā, his Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa grub pa'i rab tu byed pa lta ba'i ngan sel and the Lung gi snye ma'i skabs skabs su mkho ba’i zur 'debs mthong lam stong thun. The first of these, subtitled Lung gi snye ma, was completed on May 21 or June 19, 1319.85 The colophons of the remaining two do not specify their dates of composition, and all we can say at present is that the last one was clearly written after his commentary on Haribhadra.86 85 86 1347 is me phag, that is, the thams cad 'dul year. Tucci has it that this is found in "the colophon added by the author [= Bu ston, vdK] himself", but nothing of the kind is met with in the colophons of either the Lhasa, Sde dge, Zhwa lu or Bkra shis lhun po editions. Earlier, G. Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, 104, but signals the first of these editions. P.K. Sørenson, A Fourteenth Century Tibetan Historical Work. Rgyal rabs gsal ba'i me long (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1986), 44, writes more persuasively [and correctly] in aggregate that Bu ston completed it in 1322 to 1323 — he notes in his Tibetan Buddhist Historiography. The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies, Asiatische Forschungen 128 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1994), 633, that there are "some versions with glosses up to 1326 A.D." — and, lastly, Seyfort Ruegg, "Notes on some Indian and Tibetan Reckonings of the Buddha's Nirvāṇa and the Duration of his Teaching." The Dating of the Historical Buddha / Die Datierung des historischen Buddha, Part 2, ed. H. Bechert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 275, states conservatively but more accurately that 1322 was "the year in which his Chos 'byung was nearing completion." The date of composition reads in BU18, 725: "...the first day of the intermediate spring-month of the earth-female-sheep year..." (...sa mo lug gi lo dpyid zla 'bring po'i tshes gcig..). The intermediate spring-month can be equated with either dbo [zla ba] (phālguna), or with nag [zla ba] (caitra), which would potentially shift the complex from the second to the third lunar month. The dating given by Bu ston follows the chronology of the Sa skya school, so that one will have to ascertain how it aligned this intermediate spring-month with these Kālacakratantra designations. Schuh, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der tibetischen Kalenderrechnung, 8, 114, observes that for Rje btsun Grags pa rgyal mtshan (1147-1216), the third Sa skya pa patriarch, the beginning of a new year coincided with a tiger-month, which is the equivalent of the final spring-month. However, there is as yet no such clarity with the determinations of 'Phags pa, the Sa skya pa school's fifth patriarch. For the moment, and pending further research into 'Phags pa's calendar[s], we are therefore forced to leave this date of Bu ston's work somewhat ambiguous. Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 87). They are contained, respectively, in BU19, 1-61 and The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 235 Although it would probably not be too far off the mark if we were to hold that he finished the major part of the text some time in or shortly after the year 1322, we can, on the other hand, be absolutely certain that the text that he calls his Chos 'byung must have been completed prior to April-June of 1326, for he refers to it in his reply to a series of questions posed to him anent his work by a Rin chen ye shes, which dates from that time. The reply is found in his Gsung rab thor bu ba, a collection of his miscellaneous writings that is contained in the twenty-sixth volume of the Lhasa Zhol print of his oeuvre. This reply will be discussed below. II. Apropos of Xylographs and Manuscripts of the Chos 'byung The text of the Chos 'byung, as do a number of other writings of Bu ston, of the Lhasa xylograph of his oeuvre — the same holds for the manuscript of the Chos 'byung that I have sporadically used — presents us with many text-historical problems, for it is filled with interlinear notes, and potentially with such unmarked interpolations that force us to date the witnesses on which these are based to a much later period. Let us briefly take two examples, the first of which is a rather well known one, for MacDonald already translated and analyzed it.87 It is taken from his survey of Buddhism in Tibet and the gloss occurs in Bu ston's very succinct survey of the fortunes of Tibet's imperial families in the Mnga' ris region anent Khri lde mgon po, the son of the imperial scion who was nicknamed Yum brtan, and thus the grandson of U 'dum btsan, alias Glang dar ma (d. 841)88: 87 88 63-90. The first of these two works is written in a format used in debating manuals and appears to be the earliest attested text to do so in a systematic and comprehensive fashion. For a survey of this method, see T.J.F. Tillemans, "Formal and Semantic Aspects of Tibetan Buddhist Debate Logic," Journal of Indian Philosophy 17 (1989), 265-97, and also Shunzo Onoda, Monastic Debate in Tibet. A Study on the History and Structures of Bsdus grwa Logic, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 27 (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 1992) and the more recent Huang Chün Yuan, A Record of a Tibetan Medieval Debate: History, Language, and Efficacy of Tibetan Buddhist Debate, Harvard University doctoral dissertation (Cambridge, 2014) and the literature cited therein. See her "Préambule à la lecture d'un Rgya-bod yig-chaṅ," 90, 137, n. 162. The identity of Ye shes mtsho who figures in the gloss remains wholly unknown. In BU24, 894, the gloss is placed after … khri lde mgon po /, whereas it was placed after the end of the previous sentence … zhes grags te / in BUx, 192. See also Szerb (1990: 52-53, n. 20). It is translated in Guo (1986: 180) as well as in Pu (2007: 122). Of the xylographs used by Szerb, the gloss is only found in the Lhasa xylograph as well as in BUm, 1202. To be sure, Yum brtan has a serious problem with his 236 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines rgyal po gnya' khri btsan po nas tho tho ri snyan shal gyi bar la lo drug brgya drug cu / de nas srong btsan sgam po 'khrungs pa'i bar la brgya lnga bcu / des nas byang gi ston pas rgyal rabs dpag bsam ljon shing brtsams pa yan la lo dgu brgya dang nyi rtsa gsum / de nas me pho khyi yan la deb ther dmar po brtsams pa yan chad la stong bdun brgya go bzhi song / de nas thams cad mkhyen pa ye shes mtshos lcags pho 'brug man la brtsis pas stong brgyad rgya dgu bcu go drug song 'dug gsungs so // As pointed out by Macdonald, the year of this gloss anent the All-knowing Ye shes mtsho's calculation of the Buddha's nirvana must have been 1438, so that, as she indicated, the year lcag pho 'brug [1460] needed to be corrected to sa pho 'brug [1438]. The other gloss is found in the catalog portion of the text, where we have an interpolated text between << >>89: rang gi lta ba'i 'dod pa mdor bstan pa sgra tshad pa rin rgyal gyis bsgyur pa ma rnyed <<'di'i rgya dpe rnyed nas kun spangs chos grags dpal bzang pos bsgyur ba yod >> do // The *Svadarśanamatoddeśa translation by Sgra tshad pa Rin chen rgyal mtshan was not obtained <<there is a translation by Kun spangs pa Chos grags dpal bzang po (1283-?63) after he had obtained its Indian-Sanskrit text>>. Attributed to Yaśas, the text of this Kālacakra-oriented work is extant in the Peking and Snar thang Tanjur xylographs, as well as in the so-called Golden Tanjur dbu can manuscript, but not in the Sde dge and Co ne Tanjur xylographs. This work is not listed in Bu ston's catalog of the Zhwa lu Tanjur manuscript — it is dated the twenty-first day of the snron-month of the na tshod ldan year, that is, June 13, 1335 —, but it is registered, for example, in Mnga' ris Chos rje Phyogs las rnam rgyal's (1307-86) undated catalog of the Byang 89 "royal status" concerning which see now also G. Hazod, "The Yum brtan Lineage," in Tsering Gyalbo et al., Civilization at the Foot of Mount Sham-po. The Royal House of Lha Bug pa can and the History of the G.ya' bzang (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 177-187. BU24, 1034 [BUx, 301]; the interlinear note was not translated in Guo (1986: 417) while Pu (2007: 220) has it. This note is not found in Zhwa lu xylograph and also not in BUzh, 191a, but BUm, 1386, does have it. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 237 Ngam ring Tanjur manuscript.90 The Newar scholar Mañjuśrī and Kun spangs pa — the latter expresses his debt of gratitude to Dpang Lo tsā ba Blo gros brtan pa (1276-1342) for his Sanskrit studies — translated this work in Sa skya monastery. Kun spangs pa later compared the translation with a Sanskrit manuscript at his own see of Bzang ldan and revised the earlier translation. Mañjuśrī is known to have been active in Central Tibet in the 1330s as he is recorded to have aided in the decorative inscriptions of Dol po pa Shes rab rgyal mtshan's (1292-1361/2) great stupa of Jo nang monastery that was completed in 1333. The final part of the section on the development of Buddhism in Tibet is devoted to a list of the names of those Indic and Nepalese scholars of Sanskrit who were active in translation work, which is followed by a list of the names of the Tibetan translators. The penultimate name in the latter is Sgra tshad Rin rgyal. He should be identified as Sgra tshad pa Rin chen rgyal mtshan91 and the entry ought not be interpreted as an interpolation of Sgra tshad pa Rin [chen] rnam [rgyal]'s name! As far as I can tell, Stein does not inform her reader which xylograph or manuscript of Bu ston's Chos 'byung she translated, but given that she observed that many glosses in her text were not found in the one used by Obermiller, I think we can safely assume that it was the Lhasa xylograph.92 In the Introduction to his excellent edition of the Chos 'byung's history of Buddhism in Tibet in which my late friend Helmut Krasser also played an important part, J. Szerb described no less than the above four xylographs and two additional manuscripts that he was able to use for his edition.93 We may signal here one additional manuscript tucked away in an edition of the writings of Kaḥ thog Rig 'dzin, which consists of notes that summarize the Chos 'byung's section on Tibet, minus the interlinear annotations found in the Lhasa print, up to the passage where Bu ston tries to establish the chronol90 91 92 93 See his Bstan 'gyur ro 'tshal gyi dkar chag dri med 'od kyi phreng ba, Jo nang dpe tshogs, vol. 23, ed. Ngag dbang kun dga' 'jam dbyangs blo gros (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skun khang, 2010), 14. See the entry in the Gangs ljongs skad gnyis smra ba du ma'i 'gyur byang blo gsal dga' skyed, comp. Kan lho bod rigs rang skyong khul rtsom sgyur cu'u (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1983), 307-308. See, for example, the first three references in Stein (2013: 10, 12, 24), which correlate precisely with BU24, 641, 642, 650 [BUx, 6, 7, 13]. The first two are absent in the corresponding translation in Obermiller (1931: 12, 14), but the third, the reference to "Mchims pa", is indeed found in Obermiller (1931: 25). All three are absent in BUzh, 4b, 5a, and 8b. On the other hand, while BUm, 10, 12 correspond to BU24, 641, 642, the reference to "Mchims pa" is absent in BUm, 23. Szerb (1990: XIII-XV). 238 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines ogy of the beginning of the "later propagation [of Buddhism]" (phyi dar).94 However, its readings do not permit us to triangulate its filiation with the texts used in Szerb's edition. The unpaginated index to the enormous encyclopedia, the expanded version of the De kho na nyid kyi bsdus pa by Bo dong Paṇ chen, that is included in its first volume, indicates that the Bstan pa spyi'i rnam par bzhag pa'i stod cha'i dkar chag, a biography of the Buddha and a chronicle of Buddhism in India,95 is in fact nothing but Bu ston's Chos 'byung. This is certainly not the case. A superficial comparison of the two reveals immediately that these are different texts and, indeed, from my admittedly thin acquaintance with Bo dong Paṇ chen's diction and argumentative style, I would be inclined to hold that it was authored by the great scholar himself. Nonetheless, there are certain indications that the author adopted bits and pieces from the Chos 'byung, which was without any doubt the most influential work of its kind during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The two manuscripts that were used by Szerb are essentially undatable and unlocalizable at the present state of our knowledge of Tibetan paleography and the sociology of knowledge in Tibet, both of which remain virtually undeveloped. We are but in a slightly better situation when it comes to the actual dates on which each of these four xylographs were prepared. In his study of Bu ston's biography, Seyfort Ruegg added some information on the various editions and xylographs of his collected 94 95 See his Bu ston kha ches mdzad pa'i chos 'byung rin po che'i mdzod las / rig pa 'dzin pa tshe dbang nor bus nye bar btus pa'o, Collected Works, vol. IV (Darjeeling, 1973), 539-52 [= Collected Works, Bar cha/vol. 2 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2006), 196-200]. There are at least two other, later works that have a direct bearing on the Chos 'byung, one of which may prove to be of some importance for its textual history. This is a series of memoranda (brjed byang) and notes on the text compiled by A kya Blo bzang bstan pa'i rgyal mtshan (1708-68), registered in M. Taube, Tibetische Handschriften und Blockdrucke, vol. III (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1966), 1049, no. 2852. The other is a eulogy to Dignāga which is based on the Chos 'byung's biographical note on this scholar in BU24, 847-50 [BUx, 158-60, Obermiller 1932: 149-52] by the same A kya Blo bzang bstan rgyan [= bstan pa'i rgyal mtshan], for which see M. Taube, Tibetische Handschriften und Blockdrucke, vol. II (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1966), 412, no. 1203. To be sure, Bu ston's note on Dignāga is in part based on Dharmottara's introductory remarks in his Pramāṇaviniścayaṭīkā, as well as on earlier Tibetan materials; see L.W.J. van der Kuijp and A. McKeown, Bcom ldan ral gri (1227-1305) on Indian Buddhist Logic and Epistemology: His Commentary on Dignāga's Pramāṇasamuccaya, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 80 (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2013), lxiv-ix. For this work, see the Encyclopedia Tibetica. The Collected Works of Bo dong Paṇ chen Phyogs las rnam rgyal, vols. 11-2 (New Delhi: The Tibet House, 1970). The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 239 works (bka' 'bum),96 and Szerb has given us a few notes on the editions of the Chos 'byung as such. Their remarks can now be somewhat supplemented and, where possible and necessary, corrected or made more precise. In brief, Tibetan xylographs of individual works confront us with essentially two possibilities when we question their origin: either they were prepared independently from a xylograph edition of the given scholar's collected works, if such a collection did exist in the first place, or they formed part of such an edition. To be sure, the printing of texts previously available only in handwritten form make them more "public", allow for their more widespread dissemination and consumption, and therefore, for being more readily available for critical inspection. What is at times lost sight of in a Tibetan context is that scholarly or polemic reaction to certain texts very often, but of course not always, go hand in hand with their recent printing. Examples of this would be the reaction against Stag tshang Lo tsā ba's work on the philosophical systems, the Grub mtha' kun shes [and autocommentary], by 'Jam dbyangs bzhad pa'i rdo rje I Ngag dbang brtson ‘grus (1648-1722) and Phur bu lcog Ngag dbang byams pa (1682-1762), which was made possible only by the fact that Dalai Lama V had taken a personal interest in this work and had financed its printing in 1666. The latter, in his turn, may have been influenced by one of his teachers, namely, Paṇ chen I Lama Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan (1567-1662), whose critique of the madhyamaka position of that work [contra Tsong kha pa Blo bzang grags pa (1357-1419)] is among the earlier ones, albeit probably not the earliest, of its kind and was, significantly, written prior to its second printing in 1666.97 Or, to take another example, Dbal mang II's critical appraisal of Rnying ma pa thought was made possible only through the fact that several collections of texts belonging to this school had been printed, projects that were funded by Blo gros rgya mtsho (1722-74) of the House of Sde dge and the seventh abbot of its royal monastery of Lhun grub steng, specifically a number of Klong chen 96 97 Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 41-2, n. 3). See his Sgra pa shes rab rin chen pa'i rtsod lan lung rigs seng ge'i nga ro, Miscellaneous Works of the First Paṇ chen Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan (Gemur, 1972), 373-462 [= Collected Works, vol. 4 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2009), 343-406], in which he rejects Stag tshang Lo tsā ba's "eighteen points" of criticism of Tsong kha pa's madhyamaka philosophy. The colophon does not date this work. For a discussion of some of Stag tshang Lo tsā ba's points, see H. Tauscher, "Controversies in Tibetan Madhyamaka Exegesis: Stag tshang Lo tsa ba's Critique of Tsong kha pa's Assertion of Validly Established Phenomena," Asiatische Studien / Études Asiatiques [Professor J. May Festschrift] XLVI.1 (1992), 411-36, and J.I. Cabezón, "On the Sgra pa Shes rab rin chen chen pa'i rtsod lan of Paṇ chen Blo bzang chos rgyan,” Asiatische Studien / Études Asiatiques XLIX (1995), 643-69. 240 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines Rab 'byams’ (1308-64) writings, and more or less independent monasteries such as Rdzogs chen in Khams.98 And, lastly, there is evidence that the raucous and bitter rencounters that shook the Dge lugs pa world of Amdo and Central Tibet during the first half of this century, that, not without irony revolved around a renewed appraisal of the various types of duḥkha, sāsrava, the upadānaskandhas, in short samsara, had at least in part to do with the printing of Mchims 'Jam pa'i dbyangs' late thirteenth century Abhidharmakośa exegesis in Lhasa in 1893. Accordingly, it is therefore hardly accidental that the Chos 'byung was frequently made use of by scholars who did not have explicit ties with Zhwa lu monastery from the end of the fifteenth century onward — these would include Gser mdog Paṇ chen Shākya mchog ldan (1428-1507), Paṇ chen Bsod nams grags pa (1473-1554) and Dpa' bo II — must be understood by the fact that the Zhwa lu xylograph was in circulation at this time and was, therefore, more or less readily accessible. In Bu ston's case, the printing of his oeuvre in its entirety had to wait until the beginning of this century. We do know that he had already prepared a catalog for an edition of a handwritten bka' 'bum collection of his writings [an autograph edition?] not long before his passing. In this catalog, the Chos 'byung is registered at the very beginning of this collection, meaning that it must have constituted volume Ka [= 1] of his oeuvre,99 even though the catalog itself does not provide any details about the number of volumes. Sgra tshad pa's writings, which were printed as a kind of appendix to those of Bu ston in the Lhasa edition of Bu ston's bka' 'bum of 1917-1919, contain two separate catalogs of editions of the bka' 'bum in which the arrangement of the texts in one of these exhibits marked departures from Bu ston's own catalog.100 In the first, one that was evidently compiled shortly before Bu ston's death, the Chos 'byung is contained in volume Sha [= 27], the last volume, whereas in the second, a mere list without volume letter-indicators, the text is listed at the very beginning which probably indicates that it, too, formed volume Ka of that particular edition. The vast Tibetan holdings of the C.P.N. contained, aside from the texts in a number of manuscript "editions" of Bu ston's collected works, at least the following "separate" manuscripts of the Chos 'byung in addition to the ones mentioned previously: 98 99 100 See 'Gyur med kun bzang rnam rgyal blo gsal rgya mtsho, Rgyal ba gnyis pa kun mkhyen ngag gi dbang po'i gsung rab las mdzod bdun ngal gso gsang ṭīk rnams rmad byung 'phrul gyi phyi chos ji ltar bsgrub pa'i tshul las brtsams pa'i ngo mtshar gtam gyi gling bu skal bzang rna ba'i dga' ston [Mdzod bdun dkar chag] (Gangtok, 1976). BU26, 646; for further details, see Appendix Two of this paper. For details, see Appendix Two. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 241 1. C.P.N. catalog no. 002428, fols. 215 with 7 lines per folio-side; incomplete, it ends with mi skye'i chos la bzod pa thob par... 2. C.P.N. catalog no. 002429, fols. 245 with 7 lines per folio-side; incomplete, it ends with bstan 'dzin skye bo'i thun mtshams... 3. C.P.N. catalog no. 002430, indigenous catalog no. nang 92; fols. 355 with 5 lines per folio-side; incomplete colophon: mkhas pa chen po tshad ma'i skyes bu'i gsung gi 'od zer las skyes pa khro phu ba… 4. C.P.N. catalog no. 002431, fols. 222 with 8 lines per folio-side; it has two indigenous catalog nos.: snag 120 and nang 120. 5. C.P.N. catalog no. 002434, indigenous catalog no. Zu 100; fols. 368 with 7 lines per folio-side. The catalog of the so-called 'Bras spungs collection of Tibetan texts also registers a good number of manuscripts of the Chos 'byung. 101 While Szerb observed concerning the first of the above mentioned four different xylographs, namely the one from Zhwa lu, that "it cannot be later than approximately the middle of the 18th century," we are unable to follow him in his surmise that the catalog in which it is registered may have been authored by Stag lung brag pa Blo gros rgya mtsho whom he dates 1535 to 1618, which would argue that "roughly the second half of the 16th century must be included as a possible date for this edition." The first statement cannot be maintained if only because of the fact that the Lhasa xylograph of the collected oeuvres of Bu ston and Sgra tshad pa — for this xylograph see below — is mentioned in this work.102 In his introduction to this text, E. Gene Smith states that it "was probably compiled at the order of the then regent, Stag brag." The Stag brag regent who might have in fact ordered the compilation of this catalog of a very large, but by not any means complete, number of printing blocks available in Central Tibet was Ngag dbang gsung rab whose dates are approximately 1873 to 1952.103 101 102 103 See 'Bras spungs dgon du bzhugs su gsol ba'i dpe rnying dkar chag, Stod cha [1]-Smad cha [2], comp. Karma bde legs et al. (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2004). Szerb (1990, XIV-XV); DKAR, 219. DKAR, 172-3. Eimer (1992-3: 5) dates it "in die Zeit nach 1940." One of the very last entries of this catalog, DKAR, 242, is Dge 'dun chos 'phel's (1903-51) [Dbu ma'i zab gnad snying por dril ba'i legs bshad] klu sgrub dgongs rgyan of 1951, albeit via the notes taken by Rong pa Zla ba bzang po. Various editions of this work have been published to date; for a translation and study, see D.S. Lopez Jr., The Madman's Middle Way. Reflections on Reality of the Tibetan Monk Gendun Chopel (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006). For the Stag brag Regent, see, for example, M. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet. The Demise of the Lamaist State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), Index, 895-6. 242 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines In other words, then, we are obliged to look elsewhere for information on this xylograph, and the best starting point would of course be Blo gsal bstan skyong's history of Zhwa lu monastery. While it does not provide any details on the transmission of Bu ston's oeuvre as a whole, it does contain two very interesting notices, which inform us of projects that had been initiated to have at least several of his writings printed. The first of these is mentioned in the biography of 'Jam dbyangs Grags pa rgyal mtshan, Mkhan chen II of Zhwa lu, where we read that the gong ma Grags pa rgyal mtshan (1374-1432) of Sne’u gdong — he was the Phag mo gru scion and ruler of Dbus and, at least nominally, of Gtsang — had been a patron of the preparation of the printing blocks for some of Bu ston's texts.104 Unfortunately, no specifics are indicated, but the internal evidence of this passage suggests that this probably took place towards the end of Grags pa rgyal mtshan's life. The second notice occurs in the biography of 'Khrul zhig Tshul khrims rgyal mtshan (1399-1473), Mkhan chen IV, and is equally short on concrete information. The text states in part that at the age of seventy [= sixty-nine] he had conceived a plan to commit all of Bu ston's writings to the printing block. To this end, he dispatched Dka' bcu pa Don 'grub bkra shis as his envoy to find possible underwriters, notably from Lho ka, for this large-scale and undoubtedly very costly project. However, when the 104 ZHWA, 101-5, specifically 102-3. It is rather interesting to observe that he is styled as the ti shrī (Ch. dishi), "Imperial Preceptor," of Gong ma Dbang (Ch. wang) Grags pa rgyal mtshan. This is not an uncommon designation in post-Mongol period Tibet. Dalai Lama V makes a similar characterization in his autobiography; see the Za hor gyi bande ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho'i 'di snang 'khrul pa'i rol rtsed rtogs brjod kyi tshul du bkod pa du kū la'i gos bzang, vol. II (Dolanji: Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Centre, 1982), 277 [= Ibid., Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi rigs dpe skrun khang 1991), 267]. There he makes a statement to the effect that Dalai Lama III Bsod nams rgya mtsho (1543-88) was the ti shri of the Phag mo gru, that is, of Ngag gi dbang phyug bkra shis grags pa rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po (1488-1564) and the Mongol rgyal po Altan Qan (1505-82). The name of the Phag mo gru ruler in question is given in Dalai Lama V's 1646 biography of Dalai Lama III, for which see the Rje bstun thams cad mkhyen pa bsod nams rgya mtsho'i rnam thar dngos grub rgya mtsho'i shing rta, Biographies of the Third and Fourth Dalai Lamas of Tibet by the Fifth Dalai Lama (Dolanji: Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Centre, 1982), 126. As far as I have been able to determine, Dalai Lama V does not style his precursor Bsod nams rgya mtsho as a ti shri in any context whatsoever in this work, and the fact that he does so in his autobiography may thus very well reflect a change in his perception of himself, the institution he quite literally embodied, and his newly acquired relations with the Manchu imperial family. To be noted is that Tibetan gong ma, here "the one on high", is an equivalent of "emperor" since Tibet's "Mongol period", and that, moreover, in this context, dbang is actually a short form of the Chinese title guanding guoshi chanhua wang, which the Ming court had bestowed on the Phag mo gru rulers since March 21, 1406, when the Yongle emperor (r. 1402-24) so appointed Grags pa rgyal mtshan. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 243 blocks for but a few volumes had been carved, he fell seriously ill with an undisclosed ailment from which he apparently never fully recovered despite the numerous propitiations of Amitāyus that were made on his behalf.105 In addition, to his dismay, the interest for this undertaking at Zhwa lu itself was rather lacklustre and thus, ultimately, nothing came of his plans. D. Schuh described a xylograph of the Chos 'byung, which J. Szerb correctly identified as having Zhwa lu monastery as its origin.106 As noted in the colophon, this particular xylograph was prepared at the instigation of a Tshul khrims rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po, whom I would identify as none other than this Mkhan chen IV inasmuch as dpal bzang po (śrībhadra), often an "affix" to a name in religion indicating that the ordination procedures originated with Śākyaśrī, is frequently omitted from the individual's "core-name". Blo gsal bstan skyong's biography of Tshul khrims rgyal mtshan does not explicitly state that dpal bzang po was affixed to tshul khrims rgyal mtshan, the name he received during his ordination as a novice in 1408, after which he was ordained a monk. However, in both instances, the abbot (mkhan po, upādhyāya), the person presiding over the ceremonies, was Zhwa lu Mkhan chen II 'Jam dbyangs Grags pa rgyal mtshan [dpal bzang po].107 We may conclude from this that the latter had given him rgyal mtshan as part of his monastic name during the first ordination — tshul khrims most likely had its origin in Rin chen tshul khrims, a master at Zhwa lu, under whom he studied during this time — to which was then added dpal bzang po, when he became a fullfledged monk. All of this means that the Zhwa lu xylograph of the Chos 'byung can be dated to the early 1470s. Inasmuch as it carries the marginal notation of "Ka", the anticipated printing project to have Bu ston's oeuvre printed had probably taken as its point of departure Bu ston's own arrangement of his writings by way of his aforementioned catalog. Indeed, this xylograph may even have been based on the autograph. Appendix Two registers a few additional Zhwa lu xylographs of other specimen of his writings. During a visit to Zhwa lu in September of 1982, I 105 106 107 See ZHWA, 139-64, specifically 158-9. ZHWA, 158 reads: dgung lo bdun cu bzhes pa'i tshe...bu ston bka' 'bum rags bsdus par du brko ba bzhed nas dka' bcu pa don 'grub bkra shis ming bkra'i khyad lho ka bzhi'i yon bdag rnams kyi sar 'bul sdud la mngags shing rje nyid kyi sde dpon sa sar bka' shog phyag mdud sogs stsal / po ti kha cig par du bzhengs grub mtshams su sku khams cung zad mnyel… . Schuh (1981: 75, no. 24) and Yamaguchi (1970: 94-95, 345B-2558); Szerb (1990: XIV). The colophon states that the donor for the undertaking was a Dka' bcu pa Bslab gsum rgyan ldan Don 'grub rin chen. The C.P.N. houses at least three different exemplars of this xylograph: no. 001268 with an upper center notation of "?187" on the title page, no. 002420 with an upper center notation of "'bras spungs nang 38", and no. 002421 without any notation. ZHWA, 140-141, 101. He is there stated to be a re-embodiment of Bu ston. 244 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines was told that a number of autographs of Bu ston's oeuvre had survived, although it was not possible to inspect these at the time. They must have been among a large pile of loose pages that I glanced upon in some dismay in one of the rooms near the main shrine room on the first floor. However, the printing blocks that were housed in the monastery were apparently all destroyed during the "cultural revolution". The Bkra shis lhun po xylograph of the Chos 'byung in 244 folios is also registered in the "Stag brag" catalog. The title page of this exemplar has the marginal notation "Pa", which could suggest that it formed a part of an edition of his collected works. However, the portion of the catalog that lists the various collections of printing blocks housed at Bkra shis lhun po monastery does not refer to one for Bu ston's collected works as a whole. Schuh writes that its colophon reads the same as that of the Zhwa lu xylograph, and this may just indicate that it is but a virtual clone of the latter, something that is hardly surprising given the geographic proximity of these two institutions.108 I do not know when the blocks for this xylograph were prepared, but they certainly postdate those of Zhwa lu. Now it has been alleged in several places that the Sde dge xylograph of the Chos 'byung in 203 folios formed part of a printed edition of his collected writings, but this cannot be the case. There never existed a Sde dge print of his collected writings.109 However, in addition to those for the Chos 'byung, the printing house at Sde dge did possess printing blocks for several other specimen of Bu ston's oeuvre. For one, his Kālacakra rituals were introduced by Chos rgyal Bstan pa tshe ring (1678-1738), Lhun grub steng's fifth abbot, while his son Chos rgyal Blo gros rgya mtsho (1723-84) figures in the colophon of a xylograph of one of his ritual works anent the vajradhātumaṇḍala as the sponsor of this xylograph, the blocks for which were also prepared at Lhun grub steng.110 One of the editions of the Chos 'byung 108 109 110 Schuh (1981: 76, no.25). We need to excorcize a ghost here. A. Ferrari, Mk'yen brtse's Guide to the Holy Places of Central Tibet, Serie Orientale Roma XVI (Roma: Istituto Italiano Per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1958), 143, n. 427, maintains that there was a Sde dge xylograph of Bu ston's oeuvre in twenty-six volumes, and for this she cites Kanakura (1953: 1-86, nos. 5001-206)! She was then cited affirmatively in Szerb (1990: XIV, n. 23). The Tōhuko catalog lists the Lhasa xylograph of the writings of Bu ston (twenty-six volumes) and Sgra tshad pa (two volumes), and makes no mention whatsoever of any Sde dge xylograph. In fact, the catalog of the Sde dge Dgon chen printery, the Sde dge par khang / Dege yinqing yuan (Chengdu: Sichuan minzu chubanshe, 1983), but registers the Chos 'byung on p. 338, and Bu ston's eulogy to Kālacakra and his affiliated deities, the Dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i bstod pa 'dod don grub pa [= BU5, 1-28], in 17 folios, on pp. 361-2. Schuh (1981: 215-6, no. 225). The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 245 used for the present paper, namely BUx, is said by the editor to be based on this Sde dge xylograph. A comparison of its readings, and especially the lengthy glosses in its section on Tibet, with Szerb's critical edition shows that it cannot be based on the xylograph from Sde dge. Rather, it is but a copy of the Lhasa xylograph, for, in contradistinction to the text from Sde dge, BUx contains all the interlinear notes of the Lhasa xylograph. Yamaguchi Zuihō noted that the colophons of the Chos 'byung's Sde dge xylograph mention two individuals, both of whom can be dated.111 These are Phun tshogs bstan pa (?-1766) alias Bla chen Kun dga' 'phrin las rgya mtsho, the sixth abbot of the Sde dge monastery of Lhun grub steng from 1739 to 1766, the underwriter of this xylograph, and Zhu chen Tshul khrims rin chen (1697-1774), its editor. So far, I have been unable to come up with additional sources to the circumstances of its printing. Zhu chen's autobiography does not include an entry where the particulars of this printing project might have been given, so that it cannot be dated with precision on this basis, and the same holds for the autobiography of Dpal ldan chos skyong (1701-59), together with Zhu chen's supplement.112 We are far better informed about the Lhasa xylograph of the text which, as already indicated, in fact forms part of a xylograph of his collected works that was prepared during the years 1917 to 1919.113 The thirteenth Dalai Lama composed a catalog and brief afterword to this edition in 1921 — the latter is also reproduced in his biography 111 112 113 Yamaguchi (1970: 95-6, no. 345D-2560). An examplar of this xylograph is also housed in the Beijing National Library under catalog no. 3015. See his Chos smra ba'i bande tshul khrims rin chen du bod pa'i skye ba phal pa'i rkang 'thung dge sdig 'dres ma'i las kyi yal ga phan tshun du 'dzings par bde sdug gi lo 'dab dus kyi rgyal mos re mos su bsgyur ba, The Autobiography of Tshul khrims rin chen of Sde dge and Other of His Selected Writings (New Delhi, 1971) 278-587. The reign of Bla chen Kun dga' 'phrin las rgya mtsho is dealt with on pp.506-?57 but no mention is made of the Chos 'byung. For some reason, Zhu chen races through the last eight years, from 1761 to 1768, devoting only some seven folios, or fourteen pages, to these, namely pp. 544-57. For Dpal ldan chos skyong, see the Ngor mkhan chen dpal ldan chos skyong zhabs kyi rnam thar sna tshogs ljon pa stug po'i khri shing, 4 vols. (Palampur: Tibetan Craft Community Tashijong, 1974), where vol. 4, pp. 288 ff. was completed by Zhu chen in 1762. Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 41-2, n. 3) has said all that needs to be said. The Tibetan sources for this undertaking are BU, 28, 628-31, Phur lcog Thub bstan byams pa tshul khrims bstan 'dzin's biography of Dalai Lama XIII, the Lhar bcas srid zhi'i gtsug rgyan 7 gong sa rgyal ba'i dbang po bka' drin mtshungs med sku phreng bcu gsum pa chen po'i rnam par thar pa rgya mtsho lta bu las mdo tsam brjod pa ngo mtshar rin po che'i phreng ba, Stod cha, The Collected Works of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, vol. 7 (New Delhi, 1981), 338-61, 401-5, and the biography of Shes rab rgya mtsho (1884-1968) by Skal bzang rgya mtsho, the Rje btsun dam pa Pra dznya sa ra'i rnam par thar pa phun tshogs legs lam gyi rtse mo, Collected Works of Rje btsun Shes rab rgya mtsho vol. 3 (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1984), 620. 246 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines — and we read there that in the absence of an earlier printed edition it was based on manuscripts that belonged to the seat of government (gzhung sa), that is, the Dga' ldan pho brang, and two handwritten examplars from Zhwa lu. The story should be well known and thus does not need to be repeated here. It is not clear how these four xylographs are related to each other. Given the information provided in the colophon of the Lhasa edition of his oeuvre, it seems quite likely that they do not constitute a monogenous series of texts, that is, that the three later xylographs all go back to the same ancestor, presumably the Zhwa lu xylograph. In fact, it is quite likely that they are polygenous, that is to say, they fall into two or more lines of descent from a common ancestor, ultimately perhaps from Bu ston's autograph or some edited version that Sgra tshad pa had prepared for one of his "editions" of Bu ston's collected writings. The variant readings in Szerb's edition do not allow for a clearcut decision on the genealogical relationships among these xylographs. III. The Overt Tibetan Sources of the Chos 'byung A superficial comparison of the section on the development of Buddhism in Tibet in the Chos 'byung with the cognate sections of such earlier chronicles as the ones by Nyang ral Nyi ma 'od zer and Ne'u/Sne'u/Nel Paṇḍita Grags pa smon lam blo gros of 1283114 — 114 Nyang ral's dates are not entirely controversial. I follow here the notice in his biography by Myang / Nyang Rig 'dzin Lhun grub 'od zer (?-?), Mnga' bdag myang Nyi ma 'od zer gyi rnam thar gsal ba'i me long, Mnga' bdag bla ma brgyud pa'i rnam thar, Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Literature Series, vol. 122 (Rewalsar: Zigar Drukpa Kargyud Institute, 1985), 158. The issue of his dates is also discussed in the Introduction of D.A. Hirshberg, Delivering the Lotus-Born: Historiography in the Tibetan Renaissance, Harvard University doctoral dissertation (Cambridge, 2012), as is the question of the authorship of the chronicle that is attributed to him. Before a final verdict is reached, I assume here that he was indeed its author. The best study of Ne'u Paṇḍita's chronicle is H. Uebach, tr., Nel pa Paṇḍita's Chronik Me tog phreng ba…, Studia Tibetica. Quellen und Studien zur tibetischen Lexicographie, Band 1 (Munich: Kommission für Zentralasiatische Studien, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987). Bu ston makes no mention of this work, although it seems hardly likely that he was not acquainted with it, given his excellent knowledge of the various traditions of Gsang phu ne'u thog monastery where this author was active. Nonetheless, we cannot assume that he was familiar with it. By the same token, we may also not assume that he was acquainted with the chronicle of U rgyan pa, the Rgyal po rab[s] kyi phreng ba of 1278, of which I located a manuscript under C.P.N. catalog no. 002898. However, from his record of teachings studied (gsan yig), we know that he was privy to several of his writings on the Bsnyen grub teachings. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 247 we should most likely also have to include here the ones by *Lde'u Jo sras, Mkhas pa Lde'u and Bcom ldan ral gri — forces the conclusion, that the measure of its relative popularity and influence cannot have been due to this rather thin section of the text. Indeed, Nyang ral and Mkhas pa Lde'u go far beyond Bu ston in terms of detail and scope in virtually every case. But we must ask the question: What about the sections of the Chos 'byung that have to do with hermeneutics and Indian Buddhism? While Nyang ral and Ne'u Paṇḍita are insignificant in this regard, the second Sa skya pa patriarch, Master (slob dpon) Bsod nams rtse mo's (1142-82) work on Buddhist history,115 not to mention the one by Mkhas pa Lde'u, contains a great deal that is reflected in Bu ston some one hundred and sixty and seventy years later. As just indicated, the texts of Nyang ral and Mkhas pa Lde'u go in many, but not all, respects well beyond the Chos 'byung, and I am not even considering here their signal use of tantric literature, both Rnying ma and Gsar ma, which is singularly absent from Bu ston's text. Sometimes they provide details that serve to underscore their obvious antecedence to Bu ston, and at times they offer invaluable indications about the kind of sources Bu ston must have been working with, sources that have thusfar not yet been recovered from their hiding places. As far as I am aware, Szerb was the first to address, albeit not systematically, the issue of the Chos 'byung's Tibetan bibliography, that is, the sources which Bu ston employed while writing his work, whereby he was able to offer some circumstantial evidence that Bu ston either used sources similar to the ones employed by Bsod nams rtse mo and Nyang ral, or that he had in fact used these two texts themselves. 116 The question concerning the textual sources of the Chos 'byung is something that must be raised for, obviously, it was not written in an historical vacuum, and because it enjoyed, and continues to do so, a great reputation and has profoundly influenced our perceptions of especially the history of Indian Buddhism. The legitimacy of this question is, to be sure, of necessity preconditioned and accentuated by the recent availability of several earlier historical 115 116 See his Chos la 'jug pa'i sgo, SSBB3, no. 17, 318/3-45/3; this work is now translated in Chr. Wilkinson, Sonam Tsemo. Admission at Dharma's Gate, Sakya Kongma Series, vol. 3 (Concord: Suvarna Publishing, 2014). I should like to thank Mr. Wilkinson for kindly providing me with his valuable book. See his "Two Notes on the Sources of the Chos-'byung of Bu-ston Rin-chen-grub," Reflections on Tibetan Culture. Essays in Memory of Turrell V. Wylie, ed. L. Epstein and R.F. Sherburne (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 143-8, where he draws attention to parallels between the Chos 'byung, the Chos la 'jug pa'i sgo, and the chronicle that is attributed to Nyang ral. He also corrected one of the points made there in Szerb (1990: 15, n. 3). 248 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines works that present us with an opportunity, although still by no means an ideal one, for many sources are still lacking, to assess more transparently the significance of this work in terms of what its original contributions were, if any, and what Bu ston adapted or borrowed from the writings of his earlier Tibetan colleagues. In what follows, I will make an attempt to bring into focus some aspects of the textual background of the Chos 'byung and its subsequent reception, whereby I shall deal here only with the information given about these by Bu ston himself and by the relevant annotations in the Lhasa xylograph of the text. The ensuing is therefore a kind of prolegomenon for future, more analytic than expository studies in the Chos 'byung in which special attention will have to be paid to its architecture, which shows many parallels with the earlier works of its genre, and to the specific features of its contents. We may as well begin by pointing out that he himself relates that he was familiar with the following five chos 'byung-chronicles117: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge (1109-69)118 Gtsang nag pa [Brtson 'grus seng ge (?-after 1195] Khro phu Lo tsā ba Byams pa'i dpal Chag Lo tsā ba Chos rje dpal (1197-1264) Mkhan po Mchims [?Nam mkha' grags (1210-85)] Now with the exception of the first, the other four men are referred to in the Lhasa xylograph of the Chos 'byung as well as in the interlinear notes which, of course, were not necessarily authored by Bu ston himself, and should for this reason not be unreservedly ascribed to him. The text of the Chos 'byung also mentions by name other Tibetans who are not included among these four, and it will be useful to tabulate these as well, if only because these do provide us with an insight into its literary background, and possibly into Bu ston's own workshop. The identifications of the persons behind Bu ston's own anonymous kha cig / la la, "some", are marked by an "*" — the first reference to Gtsang nag pa is an exception, inasmuch as his name 117 118 BU26, 192. For the writings by Phywa pa or Phya pa that are now available, see the Bka' gdams gsung 'bum phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vols. 6-9 (Chengdu: Si khron dpe skrun tshogs pa / Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2006). See also H. Tauscher, "Remarks on Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge and his Madhyamaka Treatises," The Tibet Journal XXXIV-XXXV (2009-2010) [The Earth-Ox Papers, ed. R. Vitali], 1-35, and P. Hugon, "Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge on Argumentation by Consequence (thal 'gyur): The Nature, Function, and Form of Consequence Statements," Journal of Indian Philosophy 41 (2013), 617-702, and the literature cited there. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 249 was inserted in a passage which did not read "some"; those entries in the translations of Obermiller that are marked by an "#" indicate that they are not found in the translations themselves. 1. Lo tsā ba Rin chen bzang po The text of the Chos 'byung proper, that is, the text without the catalog, contains but one entry for Lo tsā ba Rin chen bzang po and his writings, but the entry in question was radically misunderstood by Obermiller. 119 There the great translator is styled sprul sku, "re-embodiment", which he took to mean that Rin chen bzang po was an "incarnation [of Atiśa (982-1054)]"! The text Bu ston referred to, namely his Sngags log sun 'byin, Refutation of Spurious Mantric [Literature], which has yet to surface, is also mentioned by him in his catalog120 regarding a problem with the authenticity of the Dpal gsang ba 'dus pa'i bshad rgyud gnyis su med pa mnyam pa nyid rnam par rgyal ba (*Śrīguhyasamājavyākhyatantrādvayasamatavijaya) in the translation by [Mar pa] Chos kyi blo gros [and Jñānagarbha].121 Aside from Lo tsā ba Rin chen bzang po's study of allegedly spurious tantras, Bu ston 119 120 121 BU24, 741 [BUx, 82, Obermiller 1931: 137]; see also Chr. Luczanits, "The Sources for Bu ston's Introduction to the Acts of the Buddha," Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens XXXVII (1993), 105. For his extant writings, including his Rab gnas kyi sdom [= ?Rab tu gnas pa], which is mentioned in BU24, 1049 [BUx, 313, Guo 1986: 445, Pu 2007: 230], see now Bka' gdams gsung 'bum phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 1 (Chengdu: Si khron dpe skrun tshogs pa / Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2006), 1-78. BU24, 1049 [BUx, 313, Guo 1986: 445, Pu 2007: 230], calls it an extensive work. Elsewhere, in BU24, 985 [BUx, 262, Guo 1986: 323, Pu 2007: 188], Bu ston signals that Lo tsā ba Rin chen bzang po had said therein, that "Since these aforementioned *cāryatantra-s have aspects of both *cārya and yogatantra-s, they are tantras belonging to both classes." This would indicate that it was not solely devoted to a refutation of spurious tantras. Indirect references to this work are made in BU24, 906, 990 [BUx, 202, 266, Obermiller 1932: 214, Guo 1986: 191, 333, Pu 2007: 129, 192]. The earliest reference to this work so far seems to be a passage Sa skya Paṇḍita's Sdom gsum rab tu dbye ba, SSBB5, no. 24, 319/2/4-5 [= J.D. Rhoton, tr., A Clear Differentiation of the Three Codes, 175], although Chag Lo tsā ba appears to refer to it as well in the undated *Sngags log sun 'byin shes rab ral gri, Sngags log sun 'byin gyi skor (Thimphu: Kunsang Topgyel and Mani Dorji, 1979), 17, that is probably wrongly attributed to him. For additional notes on Chag Lo tsā ba's work, see below. BU24, 986 [BUx, 263, Guo 1986: 325, Pu 2007: 189]; see also briefly, Roerich (1979: 417, n. 4) and Y. Imaeda, "Mise au point concernant les éditions chinoises du Kanjur et du Tanjur tibétains," Essais sur l'art du Tibet, ed A. MacDonald and Y. Imaeda (Paris: Librairie d'Amérique et d'Orient, 1977), 30-1. See also the more detailed remarks in Zhu chen's undated Rgyal po chen po rnam thos sras las brtsams pa'i bka' 'lung gi dri ba'i bka' lan mtsho byung lus phra'i glu dbyangs, Collected Works, vol. 4 (New Delhi, 1972), 251 ff. 250 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines mentions but one other title of an indigenous Tibetan work in the text of the Chos 'byung proper, namely, the Rba bzhed [= Sba bzhed].122 He cites and not merely refers to additional indigenous Tibetan works in his catalogue of translated scripture, which also includes a number of works written by Tibetans during the imperial period. A number of what can only be called the Lo tsā ba's minor writings were recently published in Chengdu.123 2. Gtsang nag pa124 We have two entries for him.125 The first occurs in a curious place insofar as Bu ston does not explicitly relate here a point of view proposed by someone else. This he usually does by prefixing someone else's position by kha cig. And here he has simply written ... gsung, "it is said".126 The Tibetan library of the Cultural Palace of Nationalities 122 123 124 125 126 See my "Some Remarks on the textual Transmission and Text of Bu ston Rin chen grub's Chos 'byung, a Chronicle of Buddhism in India and Tibet," 159, 164. See Bka' gdams gsung 'bum phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 1 (Chengdu: Si khron dpe skrun tshogs pa / Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2006). For him, see my now dated "An Introduction to Gtsang nag pa's Tshad ma rnam par nges pa'i ṭi ka legs bshad bsdus pa," An Ancient Commentary on Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇaviniścaya, Ōtani University Collection No. 13971, Ōtani University Tibetan Works Series, volume II (Kyoto: Rinsen Book Co., 1989), 1-33, and P. Hugon, "Gtsang nag pa on Similar/Dissimilar Instances and Examples," The Role of the Example (dṛṣṭānta) in Classical Indian Logic, ed. Katsura, Shoryu and E. Steinkellner, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 58 (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2004), 53-90, and P. Hugon, Trésors du raisonnement. Sa skya Paṇḍita et ses prédécesseurs tibétains sur les modes de fonctionnement de la pensée et le fondement de l'inférence. Édition et traduction annotée du quatrième chapitre et d'une section du dixième chapitre du Tshad ma rigs pa'i gter, 2 vols., Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 69, 1-2 (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2008). A number of his works have now been published in the Bka' gdams gsung 'bum phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 13 (Chengdu: Si khron dpe skrun tshogs pa / Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2006), 1-742. In addition to these works and the one mentioned below, we now have available one further tract by him. This one is titled [B]rtsod pa'i de nyid, The Nature of Disputation. It is also signed by a Brtson 'grus seng ge, and I suppose that he is none other than Gtsang nag pa. It is housed in the Cultural Palace of Nationalities where it is cataloged under no. 004900(7) and consists of four folios. BU24, 684*, 904 [BUx, 38-9*, 200, Obermiller 1931: 69#, 1932: 212, Guo 1986: 35#, 189, Pu 2007: 27, 128, Szerb 1990: 83]. The translation in Pu (2007: 27) does not countenenance this as a gloss. The passage reads with << >> being the annotation: "It is said <<by Gtsang nag pa>> that the teacher needs to be tolerant of wrong doing by his entourage..." ('khor << gtsang nag pa>> gyis log sgrub bzod pa dgos gsung ste..). The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 251 has a twenty-one folio dbu med manuscript — folio 3 is missing — under catalog no. 004343(7), which is titled Chos 'byung kun dga' snying po. It title page elicits two indigenous catalog numbers: in red, phyi la 189; in black nga 414.127 Its terse colophon reads: chos 'byung kun dag (sic) snying po zhes bya ba dge' slong brtson 'grus seng ges sbyar ba rdzogs shyo // Its colophon stipulates that its author was Brtson 'grus seng ge, who may be identified as Gtsang nag pa, the logician. This possibility gains in strength by the fact that its diction is clearly inspired by the Tibetan terminology of logical texts — it uses, for instance, on the very first page the triad of definiens (mtshan nyid), definiendum (mtshon bya) and definitional instance (mtshon gzhi), the lengthy discussion of which is an outstanding feature of his recently published Pramāṇaviniścaya commentary.128 In other words, it mainly has to do with hermeneutics, and falls in the same genric category as Bsod nams rtse mo's work. The second reference has to do with him not accepting an intermediate phase in the development (bar dar) of Buddhism in Tibet. To be sure, Bu ston but marshalls his statement "the way in which the later propagation of the Teaching took place" (bstan pa phyi ma dar ba'i tshul ni) in support of his claim against Bcom ldan ral gri's tripartite division of the spread of Buddhism in Tibet, for which see below. 3. Khro phu Lo tsā ba Of a total of three entries,129 the first occurs in Bu ston's reflection on the Buddha-Word (bka'). The remaining two references relate to his assessment of the period of time during which the Buddha taught texts classified as belonging to the intermediate cycle of the Buddha-Word (bka' bar pa), to which he assigns a thirty-year period. In conjunction with this cycle, Bu ston also refers to him in connection 127 128 129 See the Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. Da [= 11] (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2010), 297-338. On this topic, its background, and the reflections of Gtsang nag pa's teacher Phya pa, see P. Hugon, "The Origin of the Theory of Definition and Its Place in Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge's Philosophical System," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 32/1-2 (2009 [2010]), 319-68. BU24, 663*, 772-4, 910-1 [BUx, 22*, 104-6, 205, Obermiller 1931: 41#, 1932: 48, 51-2, 222, Szerb 1990: 102-3]. Henceforth, I will no longer give references to Guo (1986) or Pu (2007), since these do not add substantially to my narrative. 252 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines with a detail about an interpretation of the history of the compilation of the Prajñāpāramitāsūtra literature. Obermiller's rendition of Bu ston's citation of an observation that was apparently made by a 'Bum phrag gsum pa (*Trilakṣa)130 via Khro phu Lo tsā ba and Chag Lo tsā 130 'Bum phrag gsum pa (late 11th to early 12th c.) was an Indian paṇḍita whose actual name was Sthirapāla or Sthirapālaśrībhadra. He is allegedly noted by Nyang ral as one of Rngog Lo tsā ba's masters of Buddhist logic and epistemology, specifically anent Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇaviniścaya; see his Chos 'byung me tog snying po sbrang rtsi'i bcud, ed. Nyan shul Mkhyen rab 'od gsal, Gangs can rigs mdzod 5 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1988), 471, 482. In what may be called Bu ston's Mkhan po gdan sa pa la snyan skul gyi yi ge, an undated admonition to Sgra tshad pa as abbot of Zhwa lu (mkhan po gdan sa pa) at BU26, 313-4, we read that he and Rngog Lo tsā ba had founded a seminary of textual studies (bshad grwa) at Zhwa lu. According to ZHWA, 359, this institution was especially designed for the study of the Abhidharma- samuccaya; Zhwa lu was also the place where his ritual conch shell was preserved and he is also associated with Bo dong E monastery in Dbus. Dpa' bo II has some interesting things to say about him in his chronicle at DPA'1, 509 [DPA', 511-2]. Another institution with which he was affiliated was monastery in eastern Gtsang. Tāranātha observes that he functioned as the abbot of Gnas snying [read: rnying]; see his Myang yul stod smad bar gsum gyi ngo mtshar gtam gyi legs bshad mkhas pa'i 'jug ngogs, ed. Lhag pa tshe ring, 88 [= Ibid, Jo nang rje btsun tā ra nā tha'i gsung 'bum dpe bsdur ma, 85]. Mnyam nyid rin chen does mention him as having visited Gnas rnying in his ?1522 Gnas rnying chos 'byung, but does not state thate he was its erstwhile abbot; see his Skyes bu dam pa rnams kyi rnam par thar pa rin po che'i gter mdzod [xylograph] [= tbrc.org W1KG9256], 12b. Sde srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho gives a brief synopsis of the abbatial succession of this monastery and its affiliated colleges in his survey of Dge lugs pa monasteries of 1698, but fails to mention him in this connection; see the Dga' ldan chos 'byung baiḍū rya ser po, ed. Rdo rje rgyal po (Beijing: Zhongguo zangxue chubanshe, 1989), 247-9. While MHTL does not register a commentary on prajñāpāramitā/Abhisamayālaṃkāra philosophy by him, evidence of his association with it is found in Bu ston's own lineage of transmission at BU26, 32. As far as I have been able to determine, he is not quoted by Bu ston in his Lung gi snye ma exegesis of the Abhisamayālaṃkāra. However, other authors do. A case in point is Gser mdog Paṇ chen in his Abhisamayālaṃkāra commentaries; see, for instance, his Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa'i man ngag gi bstan bcos mngon par rtogs pa'i rgyan 'grel pa dang bcas pa'i dka' ba'i gnas rnams rnam par bshad nas rang gzhan gyi grub pa'i mtha' rnam par dbye ba lung rigs kyi rol mtsho, Collected Works, vol. 1 (Thimphu, 1975), 18. The first of three Tibetans with the same nickname of "'Bum phrag gsum pa" was Byams pa chos grub (1433-1504), who apparently came to be styled in this way owing to the well nigh incredible fact that he had committed to memory the entire Śatasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitāsūtra within the space of one month — see his capsule biographyin-verse by Mang thos in the Dpal 'bum phrag gsum pa'i rnam thar yid kyi gdung sel snyan pa'i nga ro, Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. Li [= 56] (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2011), 353-65, as well as MANG, 233-6, and Ichijō Ogawa's introduction to his Legs par bshad pa nyi ma'i 'od zer, Ōtani University Collection no. 13971, Ōtani University Tibetan Works Series, vol. VI (Kyoto: Rinsen Book Co., 1991), 3. The second one was Paṇ chen 'Bum phrag gsum pa Rin chen chos kyi dbang po (?16th cent.) who is recorded in ZHWA, 241. And the third was 'Bum phrag gsum The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 253 ba, namely sdud pa pos de ltar sdud mi nus pa'i skyon med de sangs rgyas nyid kyi byin rlabs sam rnam 'phrul yin pas so [//] is defective. For his "...for this is a miracle produced by the blessing of the Buddha himself.", we should read: "for it was either due to a blessing of the Buddha himself or due to a miracle of the Buddha." The last reference to Khro phu Lo tsā ba signals that in his view the Buddha taught the third and last cycle of the doctrine, namely the one that is primarily concerned with yogācāra doctrine, for some twelve years. Concerning this particular passage, which includes views on this issue proposed by others as well, Bu ston remarks rather dryly: "I have not seen clear sources for these determinations of the duration of the three cycles." (dus kyi nges pa 'di rnams kyi khungs gsal ba kho bos ma mthong ngo //). The last entry simply provides a few details about him having invited three paṇḍitas, Ś rījagatamitrānanda, alias Mitrayogin, Buddhaśrījñāna and Śākyaśrī, and his activities as a translator. In the absence of anything textual, it seems probable that the years he assigned for the duration of the third cycle may have been derived from the oral teachings he had received from these three men. Such chronological details are not noted either by Bsod nams rtse mo, or by Nyang ral. However, we do encounter them in the chronicles by Lde'u Jo sras and Mkhas pa Lde'u.131 Both have it, the latter it seems simply taking over the relevant passages of the former, that the first cycle, the one of primarily Nikāya-Buddhist teachings, lasted for seven years and two months, the second, one consisting mainly of madhyamaka precepts, for twenty-eight to thirty years, from the Buddha aged forty-two [= forty-one] to seventy [= sixty-nine], and the third one for the last ten to twelve years of the Buddha's life. This scenario closely approaches the one proffered by Mchims Nam mkha' grags, for which see below ad no. 6. Of considerable interest is that we also find something of this kind in Rgyal sras Thugs mchog rtsal's history of 1522.132 There we read the fol- 131 132 pa Dge 'dun rgya mtsho, the "confessor" during the ordination of 'Jam mgon Bstan 'dzin dbang po (1639-90) of Sa skya's Rtse gdong Residence in 1659, for which see Sngags 'chang Kun dga' blo gros' (1729-83) study of the history of Sa skya monastery and its affiliates in his Sa skya'i gdung rabs ngo mtshar bang mdzod kyi kha skong, ed. Rdo rje rgyal po (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1991), 123, 129, 131, 136. The published manuscript of Sngags 'chang's work was appartently incomplete and lacked the final page[s]. See, respectively, Lde'u chos 'byung, ed. Chos 'dzoms (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1987), 38, and Rgya bod kyi chos 'byung rgyas pa, 89. See the Chos 'byung rin po che'i gter mdzod bstan pa gsal bar byed pa'i nyi 'od, vol. 1 (Gangtok, 1976), 224-36 [= Ibid., Gangs can rig mdzod, vol. 17, ed. Bsod nams rtse mo and Rta mgrin tshe dbang (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1991), 109-15]. For this work and its date, see my "On the Authorship and Date of the Ecclesiastic Chronicle Chos 'byung rin po che'i gter mdzod bstan pa gsal 254 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines lowing painfully precisely documented periods of time during which the Buddha apparently promulgated these three cycles: he was engaged in the first cycle from the age of thirty-five [= thirty-four], the eighth day of the intermediate autumn month of the earth-female-pig year to the age of forty-two [= forty-one], to the twenty-ninth day of the first autumn month of a horse-year, that is, for a period of seven years and nine days; in the second cycle from the age of forty-one [= forty], the first day of the intermediate autumn month of a horse-year, to the age of seventy-three [= seventy-two], to the fourteenth day of the intermediate autumn month of an ox-year, that is, for thirty-one years and thirteen days; in the third cycle from the age of seventy-two, the fifteenth day of the intermediate autumn month, to the age of eighty [= seventy-nine], to the fifteenth day of the intermediate summer month of a monkey-year, in all for nine years and three months. Rgyal sras gives no sources for these details, but he does point out that Khro phu Lo tsā ba had maintained that the second cycle had lasted thirty years and that the third cycle had lasted for twelve years, which is something that is not found in the Chos 'byung. The sources for these calculations still need to be determined, but we probably have to take into account the way [or: ways] in which a a kind reverse engineering of dates was [or: were] performed by using the calculus provided by especially the first chapter of the Laghukālacakratantra and its Vimalaprabhā commentary. bar byed pa'i nyi 'od," Tibet Studien. Festschrift für Dieter Schuh zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. P. Maurer and P. Schwieger (Bonn: Bier'sche Verlagsanstalt, 2007), 127-48. The very same set of datings of these three cycles, albeit only in terms of years, is found in Klong chen pa's Grub mtha' rin po che'i mdzod, Mdzod bdun [Sde dge xylograph], vol. Cha (Gangtok, 1983), 124-6 [= R. Barron, tr., The Precious Treasury of Philosophical Systems (Junction City: Padma Publishing, 2007), 15-6]. Yar lung Jo bo Shākya rin chen sde's chronicle of 1376 contains, in YAR, 14 [YAR1, 16], various options about the duration of the three cycles, which appear to have been lifted in part from the Chos 'byung. For the first, it has six or seven years and for the second, thirty-one, twenty-seven, or thirty years. For the third cycle, it has the alternatives of ten, twelve, seven and twenty-six or twenty-eight years. Only the text of YAR has three interlinear notes correlating some of these years for the third cycle with some names, which were inadequately numbered by the editor or printer. In his translation, Tang Chi'an connects the ten years with Mchims *Nam mkha' grags, the twelve years with Khro phu Lo tsā ba, and the seven year period with Chag Lo tsā ba, which is confirmed by the corresponding passage on fol. 10b of the manuscript of Yar lung Jo bo's text under C.P.N. catalog no. 002446(2); see his Yalong zunzhe jiaofa shi (Lhasa: Xizang renmin chubanshe, 1989), 15. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 255 4. Sa skya Paṇḍita133 The first of the two references to him is found in the Chos 'byung's section on Buddhist chronology where Bu ston refers to Sa skya Paṇḍita's biography of his uncle Rje btsun Grags pa rgyal mtshan which, as is well known, he adapted from the cognate text of his other uncle Bsod nams rtse mo.134 I cannot enter into a discussion of the vicissitudes of these rather peculiar calendrical calculations of these later Tibetan texts wherein the Buddha's death is placed in the year 2133 B.C., one that seems to be based on a work titled Lugs chen po. The same holds for their consequences for the Sa skya school, and the rather interesting fact that they go quite counter to the ones proposed by Śākyaśrī, Sa skya Paṇḍita's own master! Suffice it to say that these were hotly contested in many quarters.135 The second reference has to do with him and Klu mes [?Dbang phyug grags] having made some judgements on several spurious sutras, specifically the "Ko'u shi ka, Blo gros bzang mo chung ba, Ljon shing gi mdo etc." The first two [plus one other one] are mentioned in his Sdom gsum rab tu dbye ba, and its annotated version adds an additional one.136 133 134 135 136 BU24, 816-8 [BUx, 136-8, 227, Obermiller 1932: 106-7]. See, respectively, SSBB5, no 17, 147/2/3-3/2, and SSBB2, no. 17, 314/4/5-5/1/4; a recent translation of the relevant passage is found in Chr. Wilkinson, tr., Sonam Tsemo. Admission at Dharma's Gate, 148 ff. For critiques of this rather strange position, see, for example, Grwa phug pa Lhun grub rgya mtsho's 1447 study of Kālacakra astronomy, the Rtsis gzhung pad dkar zhal lung, ed. Yum pa (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2002), 7-10, and Dga' ldan khri pa XIV Rin chen 'od zer's (1453-1540) 1517 study of Buddhist chronology (bstan rtsis) in his Bstan rtsis gsal ba'i sgron me [= tbrc.org W2CZ7895], 12a ff. SSBB5, no. 24, 317/4/6-8/1/1; the other one is the De bzhin 'phags pa shig can. The text with the annotations adds the Sdong po rgyan; see Sdom pa gsum gyi rab tu dbye ba'i bstan bcos. Sdom gsum rang mchan 'khrul med (New Delhi, 1987), 144. For a discussion of the authenticity of the latter, see D.P. Jackson, "Several Works of Unusual Provenance Ascribed to Sa skya Paṇḍita," Tibetan History and Language. Studies dedicated to Uray Géza on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. E. Steinkellner, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 26 (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 1991), 242-9. The only other place that I know of where he addresses the question of spurious "canonical" texts is the Chag Lo tsā ba'i zhus lan, SSBB5, no. 94, 411/3/1-3. Sutras are not mentioned therein, however. 256 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 5. Chag Lo tsā ba137 For him, the Chos 'byung has a total of four entries,138 the first three of which have to do with a determination of the number of years in which the Buddha proclaimed the three cycles of his doctrine. According to Chag Lo tsā ba, these lasted respectively six years and ten months, twenty-seven years, and seven or nine years. Again, though unlikely, this information may also have been based on an oral tradition current in some quarters in Nepal and India. In the fourth entry, we find him objecting to an eleventh century conceptualisation of these three cycles by Sajjana, who apparently had attempted to accommodate the so-called pratyekabuddha within this triad. The last entry has it that he rendered into Tibetan a version of the Sar- 137 138 On him, see G. Roerich, tr., Biography of Dharmasvāmin (Chag Lo tsa-ba Chos rje-dpal). A Tibetan Monk Pilgrim (Patna: K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute, 1959) and C.T Zongtse, The Biography of Chag Lo-tsā-ba Chos rje dpal (Dharmasvāmin) (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1981), which includes a corrected listing of his translations of Sanskrit texts on pp. 12-5. As far as I am aware, only three works attributed to him have so far come down to us. The first is his open letter in which he argued against spurious Rnying ma and Gsar ma tantric literature which may have borne the title of *Sngags log sun 'byin shes rab ral gri. The title is derived from a passage in the Sngags log sun 'byin gyi skor (Thimphu: Kunsang Topgyel and Mani Dorji, 1979), 2, for the published version does not have a title page for this work, and no title is mentioned in the colophon; see also D. Martin, Unearthing Bon Treasures. Life and Contested Legacy of a Tibetan Scripture Revealer with a General Bibliography of Bon (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 111 ff. Its printing blocks were/are located in Dga' ldan chos 'khor gling monastery in A mchog; see the catalog of her printery in R.O. Meisezahl, "Der Katalog der Klosterdruckerei A mchog dga' ldan chos 'khor gling in Ch'ing hai (Nordwest-China)," Oriens 29-30 (1986), 314, 324, nos. 81-5. K. Raudsepp, "The Dating and Authorship Problems in the Sngags log sun 'byin Attributed to Chag Lo tsā ba Chos rje dpal," Contemporary Visions in Tibetan Studies. The First International Seminar of Young Tibetologists, London, September 2007, ed. B. Dotson et al. (Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2009), 281-97, has argued for holding that this work was probably not written by him, but, in my opinion, this remains unsettled. The second is his Chag lo'i zhu ba, SSBB5, no. 93, 408/1/6-9/1/1, a series of questions posed to Sa skya Paṇḍita anent his Sdom gsum rab tu dbye ba. This work is translated in J.D. Rhoton, tr., A Clear Differentiation of the Three Codes (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2002), 205-23. And the third is his Rnam par 'joms pa'i mngon rtogs bsdus pa, of which a three-folio dbu med manuscript is housed in the Tibetan library of the C.P.N. under catalog no. 005129(10); its colophon reads on fol. 3b: "The text was put together by Chag Lo tsha ba in accordance with the oral instruction of Paṇḍita Ānanda." (pan di ta a nan ta'i zhal gyi man ngag bzhin chag lo tsha bas bkod pa'o //). Bu ston's record of teachings received, for which see Appendix One, has preserved a great deal of information on the Chag Lo tsā ba's activities as a writer, about which we are barely informed in his biography. BU24, 770, 772-4, 776 [BUx. 103-7, 178, 205; Obermiller 1932: 46, 48, 51-2, 55, 223; Szerb 1990: 105]. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 257 vadurgatipariśodhanatantra and corrected earlier translations.139 Now Chag Lo tsā ba was affiliated with Lte'u/Te'u ra monastery located in the Gnyal district in southern Central Tibet. Both versions of Mang thos' Bstan rtsis quote a Te'u ra pa140 in the body of the text to the effect that he had maintained that, when the Buddha reached the age of thirty-eight [= thirty-seven], he was given the Rgyal byed (*Jetavana) grove in Mnyam yod (*Srāvasti) by his patron Mgon med zas sbyin (*Anāthapiṇḍada). They also contain three interlinear notes that refer to this very same Te'u ra pa,141 where the first one indicates that it was taken from from his history of the Kālacakra teachings. Chag Lo tsā ba was among Te'u ra monastery's most famous sons, but he is not known to have written such a work and it is for this reason that I would be disinclined to identify him with this Te'u ra pa. As far as I am aware, the Tibetan tradition knows of three different men who are called Chag Lo tsā ba. The first was Chos rje dpal's uncle Chag Dgra bcom (1153-1216), the second was Chos rje dpal himself, and the third was Chag Lo tsā ba Rin chen chos kyi rgyal po (1447-?).142 Mang thos' work on Buddhist chronology contains three 139 140 141 142 The text reads here: "Tantra of Nine Hairknots (gtsug tor, uṣṇīṣa)" (gtsug tor dgu'i rgyud) so that E. Obermiller's remark that this refers to "the 9 Uṣṇīṣa-tantras" is incorrect; see also Roerich, Biography of Dharmasvāmin (Chag Lo tsa-ba Chos rje-dpal). A Tibetan Monk Pilgrim, 42, 109, and Zongtse, The Biography of Chag Lo-tsā-ba Chos rje dpal (Dharmasvāmin), 207. As we read in one of Bu ston's analyses of the Yogatantra-s, it is simply a way of designating a particular version of the Sarvadurgatipariśodhanatantra; see his Rnal 'byor rgyud kyi rgya mtshor 'jug pa'i gru gzings, in BU11, 80, which he completed on November 24, 1341. For the text of this tantra, see T. Skorupski, ed. and tr., The Sarvadurgatipariśodhanatantra. Elimination of All Evil Destinies, (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983), under "Version B", and the very preliminary survey in my "Notes Apropos of the Transmission of the Sarvadurgatipariśodhanatantra in Tibet," Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik 16/17 (1992), 109-25, where the problem with the authenticity of Ānandagarbha's (?early 8thc.) exegesis of this work is also noted. MANG, 18. MANG, 14. See, for example, Tshe tan Zhabs drung, Bstan rtsis kun las btus pa (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1982), 219, and D. Martin with Y. Bentor, Tibetan Histories, A Bibliography of Tibetan-Language Historical Works (London: Serindia Publications, 1997), 74-5, no. 133. No dates for his passing are given. In some sources he is even noted as the fourth Chag Lo tsā ba; see, for instance, Dngos grub rgya mtsho, Tha snyad rig gnas lnga ji ltar byung ba'i tshul gsal bar byed pa blo gsal mgrin rgyan legs bshad nor bu'i phreng ba in Bstan rtsis gsal ba'i nyin byed, Tha snyad rig gnas lnga'i byung tshul, Gangs can rig mdzod 4, ed. Nor brang O rgyan (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1988), 313. This is an oversight. Dpa' bo II consistently refers to him as the third Chag Lo tsā ba and also knew and used his history of the Kālacakra, for which see DPA'1 502-3, DPA'2, 680 [DPA', 505, 1501]. He figures severally in the oeuvre of Zhwa dmar IV Chos grags ye shes (1453-1524), for which see, for example, the series of his replies to Chag Lo tsā ba III's queries in his Collected Works, vol. 6, ed. Yangs can dgon ris med dpe rnying 258 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines interlinear citations that are allegedly taken from the latter's undated Kālacakra chronicle. These are indeed worth citing in full, even if a portion of the second and the third are not found in the only witness of Rin chen chos kyi rgyal po's work that is available to me, one that was written in three different hands. The first of these reads in the diction that is found in the manuscript copy that was recently published: Citation One143 nga gcig pa la bya rgod phung po'i ri la sher phyin dang de bzhin gshegs pa'i snying rje chen po bstan pa gsungs / lo de'i mchu zla'i tshes gcig nas nya'i bar la mnyan yod du cho 'phrul chen po bstan pas mu stegs ston pa drug btul / de nas sum cu rtsa gsum du gshegs te yum bden pa la bkod / sum cu rtsa gsum nas brtsams te 'dod gzugs kyi lha rnams dang lhan cig lha gnas gong ma gong mar byon nas dam tshig gsum bkod pa'i rgyud gsungs / dbyu gi zla'i nyer gnyis la grong khyer gsal ldan du lha las babs / lhas byin gyis dge 'dun 'khor lo'i dbyen byas pa mchog zung gis bzlums / ko'u shambhir gdengs can gyi kun dga' ra bar rgyal po shar pa yang dag pa'i lam la bkod… In his fifty-first [= fiftieth] year, he pronounced the Prajñāpāramitāsūtras and the Tathāgatamahākaruṇikānirdeśasūtra on Mount Bya rgod phung po (*Gṛdhrakūṭa), and manifested a wonder (cho 'phrul) up to the fifteenth day of its first month (mchu zla, *māgha). Thereafter, he established the Yum [= Prajñāpāramitāsūtras] in truth in the thirty-three heavenly realms. Gradually coming up to 'Og min (*Akaniṣṭha) heaven, he pronounced the Trisamayavyūharājatantra. On the twenty-second day of the ninth month (dbyug = tha skar, *āṣvina), he descended from the gods (lha las babs) in the town of Gsal ldan [*Kāśī]. The Supreme Pair (mchog zung) [= Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana] subdued the discord created by Lhas byin (*Devadatta). 143 myur skyob khang (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2009), 394-413. See the Dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i brgyud pa rin po che'i rtogs pa brjod pa dpag bsam gyi snye ma, Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. Dza [= 19] (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2011), 33-4; see also the citations in MANG, 22-3. I dispense with giving the variant readings for this and the next two passages. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 259 In the Gangs can (*Himavat) Kun dga' ra ba (*Ārāma) in Ko'u shambhi (*Kauśambhī), King Shar pa (*Udayana) was established on the authentic path… . Citation Two144 don drug pa la bya rgod phung po'i rir dam chos padma dkar po gsungs / de nas lcang lo can du phyag na rdo rje la bde chen ral gcig gi rgyud gsungs / brgyad cu pa [35] la… He pronounced the Saddharmapuṇḍarikasūtra in his seventy-sixth [= seventy-fifth] year on Mount Bya rgod phung po'i ri (*Gṛdhrakūṭa). He then stated the [Bhagavan]mahāsukha-ekajaṭatantra to Phyag na rdo rje (*Vajrapāṇi) in Lcang lo can (*Adakavati). In his eightieth [= seventy-ninth] year,… Mang thos' text then has: …sngon drang srong gis 'bras so ba'i char phab pas 'bras spungs su grags pa / lhas brtsigs pa shrī dha ṇya ka ṭa ga ste dpal so ba'i phung po'am / 'bras spungs kyi mchod rten phyed mtsho'i nang du nub par zla ba bzang pos zhus pa'i ngor dus 'khor rtsa rgyud / kye rdor 'bum phrag lnga pa sogs dang / mdo dgongs 'grel / lang gshegs / myang 'das chen po sogs gsungs… Mang thos' text then has: …he pronounced the Kālacakramūlatantra at the request of Zla ba bzang po (*Sucandra) at the Śrī-Dhānyakaṭaka - built by the gods, known as 'Bras spungs because earlier a seer had let down a rain of rice grains -, that is, the Dpal so ba'i phung po or 'Bras spungs stupa, half-submerged in a lake, the Hevajratantra in five hundred thousand quatrains, etc. and the Saṅdhinirmocanasūtra, the Laṅkāvatārasūtra, the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra etc…. 144 See the Dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i brgyud pa rin po che'i rtogs pa brjod pa dpag bsam gyi snye ma, 34-35, up to brgyad cu la!; the remainder are the citations found in in MANG, 22-3. 260 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines Citation Three145 de yang dgongs 'grel yangs pa can dang / lang gshegs sngon srin pos bzung ba lang ka'i yul dang / myang 'das rtswa mchog tu gsungs… Moreover, he pronounced the Saṅdhinirmocanasūtra in Yangs pa can (*Vaiśalī), the Laṅkāvatārasūtra in Laṅka that had earlier been seized by a demon [= Rāvaṇa], and the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra in Rtswa mchog (*Kuśinagarī). 6. Mchims [Nam mkha' grags]146 145 146 MANG, 22-3. His dates are taken from his undated biography by his disciple Skyo ston Smon lam tshul khrims, which states in SKYO, 3a, that he was born in 1210 (lcags pho rta'i lo mgo la bde bar bltums), whereafter it affirms, in SKYO, 47a, that he passed away on the fourteenth day of the smal po [= eleventh] month of the [wood-hen] year, that is, probably on November 12, 1285. These dates are also confirmed the Dpal snar thang chos sde'i lo rgyus (Lhasa: Xizang renmin chubanshe, 1983), 39-40, which is partly based on documents from Snar thang itself that now lies in ravished ruins. The listing of his considerable oeuvre in SKYO, 37a-9, mentions indeed a Chos 'byung in SKYO, 39a, and the catalog of the C.P.N. lists an dbu med manuscript in thirty-three folios of a so-called Mchims chos 'byung under no. 004399(7). However, its actual title is the De 4n gshegs pa bdun gyi mchod pa ji ltar bsgrub pa'i tshul; it bears the indigenous marking of 'bras spungs nang 12. This work does contain some historical information on the development of the ritual that focuses on the seven Tathāgatha-s, but nothing of the kind that Bu ston predicates of him; for further remarks, see my The Kālacakra and the Patronage of Tibetan Buddhism by the Mongol Imperial Family, The Central Eurasian Studies Lectures 4, ed. F. Venturi (Bloomington: Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University, 2004), 4-8. It is now published among many other of his works in the Bka' gdams gsung 'bum phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 13 (Chengdu: Si khron dpe skrun tshogs pa / Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2009) as well as in the Bka' gdams gsung 'bum phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 47 (Chengdu: Si khron dpe skrun tshogs pa / Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2006), 167-452, vol. 48, and vol. 49, 3-262. Bu ston's record of teachings received, in BU26, 137-8, informs us that Mchims had also composed a work anent the Sixteen Elders entitled Gnas brtan bcu drug gi gsol 'debs kyi cho ga — see also SKYO 39a —, the transmission for which he had obtained from 'Phags pa 'od yon tan rgya mtsho. The history of the Bka' gdams pa school by Las chen Kun dga' rgyal mtshan (1432-1506) of 1494 [with subsequent additions by Dalai Lama V] in Bka' gdams chos 'byung gsal ba'i sgron me, vol. II (New Delhi, 1972), 162-74 [= Bka' gdams chos 'byung gsal ba'i sgron me, ed. Mig dmar rgyal mtshan (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 2003), 514-21], gives a very interesting account of the origin of the cult around the Sixteen Elders, initially propagated in Snar thang in particular, which, the Las chen affirms, was especially based on The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 261 Mchims' writings. In this connection, he mentions his Gnas brtan gyi sgrub yig rgyas pa and Phyag mchod pa. The former is probably the same work referred to as the Sgrub yig by Zhu chen Tshul khrims rin chen in his study of the history of this cult of 1774; see his Ston mchog nyi ma'i rtsa lag bstan skyong gnas brtan bcu drug zhabs 'bring dharma ta la mi bdag ha shang bka' sdod rgyal chen bcas pa'i rtogs pa brjod pa bstan pa'i pad tshal rgyas pa'i nyin byed, The Autobiography of Tshul khrims rin chen of Sde dge and Other of His Selected Writings (New Delhi, 1971), 259. 'Phags pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan may have received from Mchims the transmission of an evocation-offering ritual anent the Elders; see his *Lung dang brgyud pa sna tshogs thob pa'i gsan yig, SSBB7, no. 315, 288/1/2. He also wrote a very brief eulogy to these sixteen, for which see his Gnas brtan bcu drug la bstod pa, SSBB7, no. 202, 170/1/3-5. The cult appears to have been introduced into Snar thang monastery in the eleventh century by Klu mes 'Brom chung on the basis of Chinese documents, and this scion of the Klu mes clan had some eighteen thangkas painted, one each of the Buddha, Dharmatāla and the Sixteen Elders, which were housed in Yer pa Ri ba (read ?Ra ba, ?Ri pa) at the time of his writing. They were still there in the beginning of this century, for which see Kaḥ thog Si tu Chos kyi rgya mtsho (1880-1925) in his entry for the Gnas bcu khang of Yer pa in his well known travelog — see An Account of a Pilgrimage to Central Tibet During he Years 1918-1920 (Tashijong: The Sungrab Nyamso Gyunphel Parkhang Tibetan Craft Community, 1972), 138 [= Kaḥ thog si tu'i dbus gtsang gnas yig, Gangs can rig mdzod, vol. 33, ed. Bsod nams tshe brtan (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1999), 99-100] — and Zhi ba'i snying po, Sgrub pa'i gnas mchog yer pa'i dkar chag dad pa'i sa bon, Tibetan Guides to Places of Pilgrimage (Dharamsala, 1985), 89-90. This passage is also quoted in E. de Rossi Filibeck, "Names of Known and Less Known Places in Yer Pa," Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, ed. L. Ligeti (Budapest: Akademiai Kiaidò, 1984), 244-5. One cannot follow her reading that "the images of the sixteen Arhats" were "donated by a king of China." The reconstruction of "*Klume" from a Chinese expression quoted in S. Lévi and É. Chavannes, "Les seize Arhat protecteurs de la loi," Journal asiatique VIII (1916), 283, can now be corrected to "Klu mes". The very important and, to my knowledge, so far the most exhaustive study of this cult, is Yongs 'dzin Ye shes rgyal mtshan, Thub pa'i dbang po 'phags pa gnas brtan bcu drug 'khor dang bcas pa'i rtogs pa brjod pa rgyal bstan rin po che'i mdzes rgyan phul byung gser gyi phreng ba of 1783 which occupies volume 11 of his Collected Works (New Delhi, 1975); for the most important historical notes on the origin and propagation of this cult in Tibet in the text, see pp. 101-4, 344, 366-7, 407-11, 429-31, and 583-8. Another series of biographies of these Sixteen Elders was authored by Paṇ chen Lama III/VI Dpal ldan ye shes (1738-80), of which a handy annotated version may be found in Gangs ljongs mkhas dbang rim byon gyi rtsom yig gser gyi sgram bu, vol. 2, ed. Blo bzang chos grags and Bsod nams rtse mo (Xining: Qinghai minzu chubanshe, 1989), 1274-95. An earlier series of biographies was written by Cog gra Snyan grags dpal bzang (1617-80) in a work entitled Rgyal ba'i bstan skyong 'phags pa'i gnas brtan bcu drug gi rtogs pa brjod pa dzambu'i snye ma; see The Biography of Cog-gra Snyan-grags dpal-bzang mi-pham phun-tshogs shes-rab (Darjeeling, 1984), 525-80. In addition to the text by Mchims, Cog gra explicitly notes two other works on pp. 579-80. The first is Byams gling Paṇ chen Bsod nams rnam rgyal (1400-75), Mchod chog byin brlabs sprin phung. This is most probably his Gnas brtan bcu drug gi phyag mchod kyi cho ga rgyas pa of 1470. The other is 'Brug chen V Dpag bsam dbang po's (1593-1653) Gnas brtan gyi cho ga. For additional secondary literature, see Tucci (1949: 555-70), Hakuyū Hadano, "The Influence of the Sixteen Arhats in Tibet [in Japanese]," Bunka 19 (1955), 39-52, P. Demiéville, "Appendice 262 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines There are seven entries147 in all for him of which the first two have to do with hermeneutic issues, a characterization of the Buddha-Word — one to which Bu ston takes exception — and a gloss on pedagogy and the methods of instruction. The third entry signals his statement on a piece of scholasticism that deals with the length of time during which the historical Buddha had accumulated merit in his previous lives. The fourth, fifth and sixth notices register his views on the number of years the Buddha proclaimed each of the three cycles of his pronouncements, namely respectively, seven, twenty-seven, and ten years. We find the last two also noted by Rgyal sras. It is not known whether he had studied with a paṇḍita so that I cannot postulate here that these entries are based on some oral tradition, which would have been transmitted to him by a non-Tibetan teacher. Of course, it is quite possible that these ultimately had their origin in such a tradition. The last entry relates to his calculation of the number of years that has elapsed since Buddhism was first promulgated and, thus, by implication, the period of time it will last until the "end time". This calculation, allegedly done in accordance with an earlier one that is attributed to Atiśa, was made in the year 1257 and is quoted in many later sources. 7. Bcom ldan ral gri Bcom ldan ral gri is mentioned twice in the main body of the Chos 'byung.148 Both have to do with his views on the historical development of Buddhism in Tibet. In the first, Bu ston associates him with one of a number of different opinions that have to do with the development of the early Tibetan lineages along which monastic regulations, the vinaya, were passed on. He states there that Bcom ldan ral 147 148 sur 'Damoduoluo' (Dharmatrā[ta])," in Jao Tsongyi, Peintures monochromes de Dunhuang (Dunhuang baihua), Fasc.1, Mémoires Archéologiques XIII (Paris: Publications de l'École Française d'Extrême Orient, 1978), 43-9, L.S. Dagyab, Die Sādhanas der Sammlung Snar-thang brgya-rtsa, Ikonographie und Symbolik des Tibetischen Buddhismus, Teil D, ed. K. Sagaster (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1986), 13-4, J. Tate, "The Sixteen Arhats in Tibetan Painting," Oriental Art XXXV (1988-1989), 196-206, Rhie and Thurman, Wisdom and Compassion. The Sacred Art of Tibet, 102-19, and of course the marvelous archive of the Himalayan Art Resources at himalayanart.org. For several Bon po texts anent these, see the collection under the heading of 'Phags pa'i gnas brten(!) gyi mchod pa mdo sde me tog 'phreng ba, Texts of the New Bon Tradition (Dolanji: Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Community), 1985, 1-213. BU24, 650*, 685, 770, 772, 774, 816 [BUx, 13*, 39, 76, 103-104, 106, 137, Obermiller 1931: 25, 71, 126; 1932: 46, 48, 52, 106]. BU24, 903-4 [BUx, 199-200, Obermiller 1932: 211-2, Szerb 1980: 81-3]. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 263 gri had alleged that a group of ten men from Dbus and Gtsang received their vows from Grum Ye shes rgyal mtshan, the ordinand (mkhan bu) of Bla chen Dgongs pa rab gsal. And he comments that this opinion, and the others as well, should be looked into. Bu ston's source for this statement is unknown. So far, Bcom ldan ral gri's professed treatises of the vinaya have yet to be discovered,149 and we find nothing of the kind in either the Bstan pa rgyan gyi me tog, his brief chronicle of Buddhism in India and Tibet, which he wrote in 1264 while he was still a relatively young man, or in his undated catalog of Buddhist scripture of most probably the 1270s.150 The other mention of him by Bu ston concerns his introduction of a tripartite division into the spread of Buddhism in Tibet instead of what is at least now the more widely accepted bipartite model of an early and a later spread with a hiatus after the alleged persecution of Buddhist institutions by emperor U 'dum btsan, alias Glang dar ma, in circa 840. This we find in both of the aforementioned works.151 Thus he writes in his chronicle: gnyis pa bar dar ni / bkra shis mgon gyi sras / lha bla ma ye shes 'od kyis mtho lding bzhengs te / paṇḍi ta dharma pa la spyan drangs nas / ratna pa la sogs nyi shu rtsa gcig kha cher chos slob tu bcug go / de'i tsha bo lha ldes / paṇḍi ta sub ha shrī spyan drangs so / de'i sras zhi ba 'od dang / byang chub 'od do // des jo bo rje spyan drangs so // de'i tshe paṇḍi ta pra ta ka ra barma dang / padma ka ra barma dang / lo tsa ba rin chen bzang po / shākya blo gros / dge ba blo gros sogs kyis rgyud sde bzhi bsgyur ro // de gnyis kyi gcung po mdo sdes kyang kha che dznyā [95] na shrī spyan drangs so // de'i sras rtse ldes kyang sun a ma shrī spyan drangs so // de'i pha spun dbang ldes kyang / rngog lo'i 'gyur gyi yon bdag mdzad do // gsum pa phyi dar ni /rgyal pos byas pa ma yin te / paṇḍi ta smri ti sogs dang / lo tsa ba 'brog mi mgos / rngog zangs 149 150 151 See Slob dpon bcom ldan ral gri nyid kyis bstan bcos brtsams pa'i dkar chag, Bka' gdams gsung 'bum phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 51 (Chengdu: Si khron dpe skrun tshogs pa / Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2007), 38-9. For these, see his Gsung 'bum, vol. 1 (Kathmandu: Sa skya rgyal yongs gsung rab slob nyer khang, 2007), 57-101, and also K.R. Schaeffer and L.W. J van der Kuijp, An Early Tibetan Survey of Buddhist Literature: The Bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi 'od of Bcom ldan ral gri, Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 64 (Cambridge: The Department of Indian and Sanskrit Studies, Harvard University, 2009). For these, see his Gsung 'bum, vol. 1, 94-5, and Schaeffer and van der Kuijp, An Early Tibetan Survey of Buddhist Literature: The Bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi 'od of Bcom ldan ral gri, 194. 264 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines dkar / gnyan / khyung po / sa [read: pa] tshab / mal g.yo la sogs pas 'gyur du ma mdzad do // Second, the intermediate spread: Lha Bla ma Ye shes 'od, the son of Bkra shis mgon, had Mtho lding152 constructed and, having invited Paṇḍita Dharmapāla, he dispatched twenty-one men such as Ratnapāla etc. to Kashmir to study Buddhism. His grandson Lha lde invited Paṇḍita Subhaśrī. His sons were Zhi ba 'od (1016-1111) and Byang chub 'od (984-1078). They invited Jo bo rje Atiśa. At that time, Paṇḍita Prabhakaravarma, Padmakaravarma, Lo tsā ba Rin chen bzang po, Shākya blo gros, Dge ba blo gros etc. translated the four genres of tantric literature. The younger brother of those two, too, invited the Kashmirian Jñānaśrī. His son Rtse lde, too, invited Su ma śrī. His father's relation Dbang lde, too, acted as the financial sponsor of Rngog Lo tsā ba's translations. Third, the later spread was not initiated by a king; Paṇḍita Smṛtijñānakīrti etc. and Lo tsā ba 'Brog mi, 'Gos, Rngog, Zangs dkar, Gnyan, Khyung pa, Pa tshab and Mal g.yo etc. effected many translations. But he stated things rather differently in his catalog: … da ni bstan pa bar dar bshad te / lo tsha ba' rin chen bzang po'i gong du paṇḍi ta smri ti byon te dbus rtsang [gtsang] na bdag byed pa med pas / 'khams su byon te 'dan glong thang du bzhugs nas … de ltar dang po dang bar pa gnyis rgyal pos dar bar byas so // … now the intermediate spread: Paṇḍita Smṛtijñānakīrti arrived prior to Lo tsā ba Rin chen bzang po; since Dbus and Gtsang had no leadership, he went to Khams and stayed in Klong thang in Ldan ma … so, the first and the intermediate spread were initiated by a king [or: kings]. 152 For a study of this institution, see R. Vitali, Records of Tho.ling. A Literary and Visual Reconstruction of the "Mother" Monastery in Gu.ge (Daramshala: High Asia, 1999). See now also Blo bzang bstan 'dzin rnam rgyal, Mtho gling mkhan brgyud, Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brstegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. Pi [= 43] (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2011), 107-14. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 265 And he basically stretches his idea of the intermediate spread up to and including the era of Atiśa and the translations with which he was involved up to his passing in 1054. Significant is the idea that is expressed in both works, which is namely, that the later spread (phyi dar) was not initiated by a king (rgyal po byas pa ma yin). It also becomes apparent that, written in his late thirties, Bcom ldan ral gri's chronicle does not attest to the kind of maturity of thought that we feel present when reading Bu ston's Chos 'byung, even though that work was written when the author was some seven or so years younger than his senior counterpart. Indeed, the passage that I quoted from his chronicle, while absolutely not representative of his work as a whole, is rambling, unsystematic, and somewhat ill considered. Bu ston's reference to Bcom ldan ral gri's position is somewhat different from these two passages. According to him, Bcom ldan ral gri's criterion for inserting an intermediate spread into the historical narrative was because he had stated:153 rigs ral na re / mi bcu nas lo tshaa ba rin bzang ma byon bar du /b bshad nyan med pas bstan pa'i gzugs brnyan yin / de nas rgyal pos sbyin bdag byas nas /b lo paṇ gyis chos bsgyur ba nic bstan pa bar dar yin / de nas rgyal pos ma byas par /b rngog la sogs pas 'gyur mdzad pa bstan pa phyi dar yin zer ba / mi 'thadd de / a b BU24, BUx : tsā. BU24, BUx: omit. c d BU24, BUx: adds BUzh: thad. /. Rigs ral suggested that since there were no studies (bshad nyan) of Buddhism from the ten men154 up to the era of Lo tsā ba Rin chen bzang po, the period involved a semblance of the Teaching; then, with a king having acted as a sponsor, the translation of religious texts by translators and Indian Paṇḍita-scholars involved the Teaching's intermediate spread; then with a king not having acted as sponsor, the act of translating by Rngog etc. involved the Teaching's later spread. This is incorrect, …. Bu ston argues that this is problematic on several counts. In the first place, Bcom ldan ral gri acknowleged that there was a "pure vow" on 153 154 BU24, 903-4 [BUx, 199-200, Obermiller 1932: 211-2, Szerb 1980: 81-3], BUzh, 122b. Obermiller (1932: 211) has here "6 men." 266 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines the part of the monks, so that to suggest that during the period in question there was only "a semblance of the Teaching" is self-contradictory and, in addition, that there were no "studies" being undertaken by the clergy was not proven. The binome bshad nyan that I rendered by "studies" literally means "explaining (bshad) and listening" (nyan). It is true that, at least for the later period, the conferral of monastic vows includes the recitation of and instruction in several texts belonging to the canon law of the vinaya. And we can presume with Bu ston that this also held for the period in question, so that bshad nyan did in fact occur. But it is harder to swallow that this was indeed Bcom ldan ral gri's position! Secondly, for Bu ston there was no intermediate spread and for him the so-called later spread essentially begins with the revival of interest in Buddhism under the aegis of Lha bla ma Ye shes 'od.155 Bu ston mentions Bcom ldan ral gri twice in his catalog of Buddhist scripture.156 In the first, he refers to him in connection with the Gshin rje khro bo rnam par rgyal ba sra khog snang rtsa ba'i rgyud and its supplementary texts the Rgyud phyi ma, and its [Rgyud] phyi ma'i phyi ma. In contradistinction to some unnamed ones who had alleged that these were not authentic Indic texts but rather written by Tibetans, Bcom ldan ral gri had apparently maintained that much of the wording in these texts is cited in reliable and authentic ?Indic tantric commentaries ('grel tīk).157 Bu ston dryly suggests that this is a site for inquiry. All too brief, the second reference is to his defense of at least one tantra of the Rnying ma school, namely, the Guhyagarbhatantra. Bcom ldan ral gri is known for having signaled the existence of a Sanskrit manuscript of this work in the libraries of Bsam yas monastery and he even wrote a colophon to its translation and a work on the Guhyagarbhatantra itself.158 155 156 157 158 For him and his biography, see my forthcoming "A Fifteenth Century Biography of Lha bla ma Ye shes 'od (947-1019/24): Part One: Its Prolegomenon and Prophecies," which has been "in press" in China for some five years! BU24, 985, 990 [BUx, 262, 266; BUzh, 157b, 160a]. Bu ston's source for this was presumably Bcom ldan ral gri's yet to be retrieved analysis of tantric literature, to which he refers his reader in his catalog; see Schaeffer and van der Kuijp, An Early Tibetan Survey of Buddhist Literature: The Bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi 'od of Bcom ldan ral gri, 257, 262. See the Gsang ba snying po'i mdzad byang, Bka' gdams gsung 'bum phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 56 (Chengdu: Si khron dpe skrun tshogs pa / Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2006), 555; this is a xylograph of the translator's note (mdzad byang) that was written by Bcom ldan ral gri. He wrote a larger piece on this tantra, which has not [?yet] been accessible. An edition of his oeuvre contains a work that consists of a collage of a variety of his remarks on this tantra as quoted by later authors; see the *Gsang snying sgrub pa rgyan gyi me tog, Collected Works, ed. Khams sprul Bsod nams don grub, vol. 10 (Lhasa, 2006), 142-79; [= tbrc.org W00EGS1017426]. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 267 8. Rgyang ro ba Two natives of Rgyang ro in Gtsang may come into question here, if at all, namely Dar ma mgon and Byang chub 'bum, but my hunch is that ours is the latter. We have two entries for him,159 where in the first Rgyang ro ba apparently noted that the "immeasurable aeons", during which time the historical Buddha accumulated the merit necessary for the attainment of Buddhahood, began with the path of application (sbyor lam, prayogamārga), the second of the five paths leading to Buddhahood. For this he based himself on a passage from the Bodhisattvabhūmi and the commentary. But Bu ston did not assent to this opinion. The interlinear note of the second and last reference implies that Rgyang ro ba dismissed the view that Buddha's First Act consisted of his descent from Tuśita, and it is interesting to note that the Chos 'byung therefore suggests that he went explicitly against the position taken by his teacher Bcom ldan ral gri. The latter was involved in the compilation of what came to be known as the Snar thang Bka' and Bstan'gyur-s under the patronage of the Mongol court via Mchims 'Jam pa'i dbyangs. In its description of Snar thang monastery, the travelog of Kaḥ thog Si tu indicates that a manuscript of the Bka' 'gyur text prepared by Bcom ldan ral gri, Dbus pa Blo gsal, and Rgyang ro Byang chub 'bum, was housed in Zhwa lu, to which was later added Thar pa Lo tsā ba Nyi ma rgyal mtshan's translation of some thirteen sutras and Bu ston's rendition of the authenticated Guhyasamājadvayavijaya. 160 Unfortunately, he does not mention the other noteworthy collections of manuscripts that he must have seen while in Zhwa lu and its affiliated temples; we may add that the vast majority of this monastery's library holdings are no more. For this reason, there is very little room for doubting that the Chos 'byung's rgyang ro points to Byang chub 'bum. The Tibetan library of the Cultural Palace of Nationalities has an dbu med manuscript in eighty-one folios of a catalog of the Bstan 'gyur that was "erected" by Mchims 'Jam pa'i dbyangs. The text is entitled Bstan bcos kyi dkar chag, was written by Dbus pa Blo gsal, and is now available at tbrc.org W2CZ7507. The introductory matter reads: thams cad mkhyen pa 'jig rten gyi sgron ma dam pa dpal śākya seng ge la phyag 'tshal lo // 159 160 BU24, 730*, 738* [BUx, 74*, 80*, Obermiller 1931: 123#, 134#]. An Account of a Pilgrimage to Central Tibet During he Years 1918-1920, 406 [= Kaḥ thog si tu'i dbus gtsang gnas yig, 294]. 268 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines Fol. 2b: ...'chad pa dang rtsod pa dang rtsom pa'i yon tan rin po che'i tshogs bsam gyis mi khyab pa / legs par bshad pa'i dga' ston rgya chen po gyed par mdzad cing / skye dgu rnams kyi phan bde sgrub pa la brtson pa ldan bcas pa'i ston pa yongs su rdzogs pa'i mkhas pa chen po 'jam pa'i dbyangs kyis : bde bar gshegs pa'i bka' dang bstan bcos dri ma med pa 'gyur ro cog tu grags pa rnams nye bar bzhengs pa las bstan bcos rnam kyi rim pa ni dkar chag tu bri bar bya'o // The actual listing of texts can be schematized as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. Bstod pa'i skor; vols. Ka-Ga, fols. 3a-10a. Dpal kyā'i rdo rje'i skor; vols. Ka-Ca, fols. 10a-13a. Dpal 'khor lo sdom pa'i skor; vols. Cha-Ta, fols. 13a-15b. Dpal sgyu 'phrul chen mo la swo[gs] pa'i skor; vols. Ta-Tha, fols. 15b-16b. Dpal gsang ba 'dus pa la swo[gs] pa'i skor; vols. Ta [read: Tha]-'A, fols. 16b-21b. Dpal dus kyi 'khor lo la sogs pa'i skor; vols. Ya-Sa, fols. 21b-23b. Rnal 'byor gyi rgyud kyi skor; vols. Ha-Ci, fols. 24a-25a. Spyod pa'i rgyud dang bya ba'i rgyud kyi skor; vols. Ci-Ji, fols. 25a-30a. Lha so so'i mngon par rtogs pa'i skor; vol. Nyi, fols. 30a-32a. Gsang sngags kyi lam gyi rim pa'i skor; vols. Ti-Di, fols. 32a-38a. Theg chen gyi mdo sde rin po che'i skor; vols. Ka-Zha, fols. 38a-42a. Theg pa chen po dbu ma'i skor; vols. Za-Gi, fols. 42a-44b. Theg pa chen po sems tsam gyi skor; vols. Ngi-Tsi, fols. 44b-47a. Theg pa chung ngu'i skor; vols. Tshi-Thu, fols. 47a-49b. Byang chub sems dpa'i lam rim gyi skor; vols. Du-Bu, fols. 49b-55a. Tshad ma'i skor; vols. Mu-Ke, fols. 55a-58a. Bso [read: Gso] dpyad dang sgra la swo[gs] pa'i skor; vols. Khe-Je, fols. 58a-59a. Smon lam dang bkra shis la swo[gs] pa'i skor; vol. Je, fols. 59a-61b. Shin du dkon pa'i dpe phyis brtson pa mchog gis rnyed nas bris pa; vols. Ni-Tsi, Nye-The, fols. 61ba-69a. Bod kyi mkhan po mkhas pa rnams kyis mdzad pa'i dpe dkon pa bris pa; vol. De, fols. 69a-70a. Slar yang dpe dkon pa rnams rnyed nas bris pa; vols. Ne-Phe, fols. 70a-79a. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 269 And the concluding colophon reads: Fol. 59a-b: shākya'i dge slong 'jam pa'i dbyangs kyi thugs kyi dgongs pa ji lta bar : de nyid kyi zhabs kyi rdul spyi bos len pa dbus pa blo gsal rtsod pa'i seng ge dang / rkyang ro'i btsun pa byang chub 'bum la swo[gs] pas rkyen dam par bgyis te / bla [ma]'i dkar chag chen po nyid gzhir byas nas rnam par dag par bzhengs shing : rab tu gnas pa bzang po dang : de dag [g]i dga' ston rgya chen po dang bcas pa legs par grub pa'i rjes la : dpal snar thang gi chos gra chen por dbu pa blo [59b] gsal gyis dkar chag tu bkod nas phyag tu phul ba'o // de ltar thams cad sdoms pas rgya gar gyi bstan bcos dri ma med pa stong phrag 2 dang : bcu phrag phyed dang 2 kyis brgyan pa bzhugs[s]o // 'di dag las gzhan dpe phyi dkon pa rnyed na phyis bri dgos pas da dung bsnan du yod do // bkra shis dang bde legs chen pos phyogs dus thams cad du khyab par gyur cig / dge'o // It turn out that Rgyang ro was responsible for the titles and/or manuscripts of the ones listed in the twenty-first chapter. And the "large catalog of the Lama" (bla ma'i dkar chag chen po) which Dbus pa Blo gsal took as his point of departure for his work most probably refers to the one by his teacher Bcom ldan ral gri, for which see above. Furthermore, there is no question that Bu ston used Dbus pa Blo gsal's catalog for his own catalog that he appended to the Chos 'byung. There he refers to it as the Snar thang gi bstan bcos 'gyur ro cog gi dkar chag.161 Of further interest is that the C.P.N. catalog no. 2376(2) lists an eighty-folio manuscript of the Lhan/Ldan dkar ma catalog titled Dkar chab [read: chag] ldan dkar ma; its indigenous catalog number is phyi la 344. On fol. 80a, we read that this "old manuscript of yore" (sngon gyi dpe rnying) had belonged to none other than Ryang ro. And lastly, Sog bzlog pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan (1552-1624) devoted a not insignificant section in the supplement of 1605 to his 1604 celebrated defense of Rnying ma pa lore and literature to a study of a few scattered folios (shog 'khyar 'ga') of Rgyang ro's treatise on what the latter considered to be authentic and inauthentic translations/works that had found their way into Tibetan intellectual communities.162 Rgyang ro's work includes references to several of his teacher Bcom ldan ral 161 162 BU24, 1050 [BUx, 314, BUzh, 188b]. See his Gsang sngags snga 'gyur la bod du rtsod pa snga phyir byung ba rnams kyi lan du brjod pa nges pa don gyi 'brug sgra, Collected Works, vol. 1 (New Delhi, 1975), 544-608 [= ed. Padma tshul khrims, Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1997-8), 284-340]. 270 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines gri's comments on some controversial texts as well as to his reservations about a number of works that can be found in the twenty-ninth chapter of the latter's catalog and in Bcom ldan ral gri's earlier work to which he refers at the end of that particular chapter.163 9. Lho pa164 The single entry is found in Bu ston's discussion of the nature and typology of a bstan bcos-treatise. Lho pa apparently was inclined to categorise "pedantic-formalistic" (thos pa lhur len) and "sophistic-polemical" (rtsod pa lhur len) texts as belonging to the class of superior treatises, a position with which Bu ston disagreed, basing himself on a passage from the Yogācārabhūmi.165 163 164 165 See Schaeffer and van der Kuijp, An Early Tibetan Survey of Buddhist Literature: The Bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi 'od of Bcom ldan ral gri, 255-62. Bcom ldan ral gri figures implicitly, by way of an added gloss, and explicitly in the Gsang sngags snga 'gyur la bod du rtsod pa snga phyir byung ba rnams kyi lan du brjod pa nges pa don gyi 'brug sgra, 570-2, 576, 583 [= ed. Padma tshul khrims, 310-1, 315, 322]. BU24, 664* [BUx, 24*, Obermiller 1931: 43#]. From the entries of his record of teachings received, there are several possibilities for the identity of this Lho pa, "the Southerner". He may perhaps be identified as Lho pa Grub seng, a teacher of Bsod nams mgon, alias Tshad ma'i skyes bu, one of Bu ston's own masters. Other Lho pa-s in his record of teachings received — see below Appendix One —, who needs to be distinguished from Grub[? pa] seng[ ge], include Lho pa Thams cad mkhyen pa and Lho pa Chos ldan. See the Yogācārabhūmi'sViniścayasaṃgrahanī section in Bstan 'gyur [dpe sdur ma], ed. Krung go'i bod rig pa zhib 'jug lte gnas kyi bka' bstan dpe sdur khang, vol. 74 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 1997), 477; this very same passage is paraphrased by, for example, Mkhas pa Lde'u in Rgya bod kyi chos 'byung rgyas pa, ed. Chab spel Tshe brtan phun tshogs, 129, as well as by Klong chen pa in his Grub mtha' rin po che'i mdzod, 142-3 [Barron, tr., The Precious Treasury of Philosophical Systems, 38-9]. As illustrations of treatises that embody these two characteristics, the text gives the arcane/obscurantist diction (gsang tshig) of Brahmins and treatises on logic and epistemology (gtan tshigs kyi bstan bcos) of non-Buddhists. We often come across the term gsang tshig in connection with descriptions of non-Buddhist traditions. For example, Bu ston used it in relation to Sāṃkhya doctrines — see BU24, 851 [BUx, 161, Obermiller 1932: 153] —, Dbus pa Blo gsal employed it in his survey of Vaiśnava thought; see the text of his doxography in Mimaki Katsumi, Blo gsal grub mtha' (Kyoto: Zinbun Kagaku Kenkyusyo-Université de Kyoto, 1982), 47b. In his discussion of the Mimāṃsa school (spyod pa pa), and, in a similar vein, in his analysis of vedic thought, Klong chen pa used it inter alia as the name of a Veda; see his Theg pa chen po'i man ngag gi bstan bcos yid bzhin rin po che'i mdzod kyi 'grel pa padma dkar po, Mdzod bdun [Sde dge xylograph], vol. Ka (Gangtok, 1983), 384-7, 390. However, the term gsang tshig is not only reserved for non-Buddhist philosophical traditions. Thus, Sa skya Paṇḍita employed it in a positive sense in connection with the two stages (rim gnyis) of Buddhist tantric realisation in his Sdom gsum rab tu dbye ba; see The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 271 There occur two names of individuals in the Chos 'byung that could not be identified; these are: 10. Mkha' rag pa The first of two entries166 draws attention to a rather interesting view, namely that, whereas all the sutras are provisional (drang don) for a Buddha, they are "ultimate" (nges don) for his disciples. Bu ston rejects this position aside in utter disdain without, however, sharing his reasons with his readers. The second passage is concerned with a query whether or not the paths of accumulation (tshogs lam, sambharamārga) and application, being not emotively tainted (zag med, anāsrava), belong to the actual fourth noble truth, namely the path to liberation from samsara as such. Mkha' rag pa, apparently, considered this to be not the case and gives several reasons which evidently met with Bu ston's approval. Mkha' rag pa may perhaps be, or is probably, a scribal error or a "carvo" for Kha rag pa, the name of a major Bka' gdams pa exponent of the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, whose "trilogy" (skor gsum) was widely studied. 11. Ston phur167 In the single entry for this man we learn that this vinaya specialist suggested that the Vinayakṣudraka held that the Buddha passed away SSBB5, 166 167 no. 24, 297/3/2 [= J.D. Rhoton, tr., A Clear Differentiation of the Three Codes, 40]. But 'Jigs med 'bangs used it in a patently negative sense in his synopsis of several problematic issues in Sautrāntika thought in his biography of Bo dong Paṇ chen of 1453; see the Dpal ldan bla ma dam pa thams cad mkhyen pa bo dong phyogs las rnam par rgyal ba'i zhabs kyi rnam par thar pa ngo gyi mtshar dga' ston (Chengdu: Sichuan minzu chubanshe, 1990), 210. Lastly, it is evidently used in connection with speculative logic (rtog ge, tarka) in the biography of the Amdo Dge lugs pa scholar Zhwa dmar Dge 'dun bstan 'dzin rgya mtsho (1852-1912), where we read: "...he understood all the arcane terminology of treatises on epistemology (blo [rigs]) and logic (rtags [rigs]) etc..." (...blo rtags sogs rtog ge'i gsang tshig ma lus pa thugs su chud...); see Dge bshes Grags pa rgya mtsho, Rje zhwa dmar dge 'dun bstan 'dzin rgya mtsho'i rnam thar (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1990), 73. See also S.G. Karmay, The Great Perfection: A Philosophical and Meditative Teaching of Tibetan Buddhism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988), 153, note 73, in connection with Rong zom Chos kyi bzang po (11th c.) and the expression 'jig rten gyi gsang tshig. BU24, 655*, 725* [BUx, 17*, 70*, Obermiller 1931: 30#, 118#]. BU24, 787* [BUx, 115*, Obermiller 1932: 70#]. 272 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines aged eighty-four. Bu ston dismisses this view by a quotation from this very text in which it is clearly stated that the Buddha passed away at the age of eighty.168 It will be fairly obvious from the foregoing, as well as from the annotations to the Chos 'byung, that Bu ston [and his interpreters] were working with a considerable arsenal of Tibetan sources. At the same time, it is equally evident that his bibliographic remarks in his reply to Rin chen ye shes are rather incomplete, for he does not register anywhere the chronicles of Nyang ral and Ne'u Paṇḍita, or any of the other ones of which we are certain that they predate him as well. This fact allows for the conjecture that he had not by any means been in the position to inspect every single Tibetan chronicle that was potentially available, something for which we can of course hardly fault him.169 However, he is also silent about Bsod nams rtse mo's work with which, however, as one with close affiliations with Sa skya and Sa skya pa doctrine, we can assume he was familiar.170 168 169 170 Bka' 'gyur [dpe sdur ma] ed. Krung go'i bod rig pa zhib 'jug lte gnas kyi bka' bstan dpe sdur khang, vol. 11 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2006), 596. His record of teachings received also registers what could be a hitherto unknown history of Buddhism by a certain Bla ma Bsod nams dbang po, one of his teachers, which, nonetheless, is nowhere expressly cited by him; see BU26, 40. There are numerous other histories and chronicles predating Bu ston that have not yet been considered in this paper, and that are either yet to be retrieved, if they be still extant, or that are not mentioned by Bu ston. A virtually exhaustive, annotated list of these is Martin and Bentor, Tibetan Histories, A Bibliography of Tibetan-Language Historical Works, and its long addenda et corrigenda supplement that is available on-line. We may possibly add a history of Buddhism written by Zhogs ston Mtshe ma, which is registered in Brag dgon Zhabs drung's bibliography Yul mdo smad kyi ljongs su thub bstan rin po che ji ltar dar ba'i tshul gsal bar brjod pa deb ther rgya mtsho, vol. 1, 7 [= Mdo smad chos 'byung, ed. Smon lam rgya mtsho, 3]. It is also listed under MHTL, no. 10830, which reads "Zhog mtsho ma" and adds that he was a disciple of Sangs rgyas dbon ston (1138-1210). Also known as Dbon ston Rin po che and Gzhon nu 'byung gnas, the latter was the second abbot of Rin chen sgang monastery in Rgya ma, an institution that was famed for being a repository of the instructions of Bka' gdams pa "oral precepts" (man ngag). That MHTL's additional note, namely that the author of this history was a student of Sangs rgyas dbon ston, may be correct, is confirmed by Las chen study of Bka' gdams pa history where, at the end of Sangs rgyas dbon ston'capsule biography, we read that Zhog[s]su ston pa [M]tshe ma was indeed one of his disciples; see the Bka' gdams chos 'byung gsal ba'i sgron me, vol. I (New Delhi, 1972), 413 [= Bka' gdams chos 'byung gsal ba'i sgron me, ed. Mig dmar rgyal mtshan, 277]. His record of teachings received mentions the following works of Bsod nams rtse mo for which he obtained the lung: 1. BU26, 9: SSBB2, no. 20. 2. BU26, 9: SSBB2, no. 26. 3. BU26, 15-6: SSBB2, no.?. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 273 IV. The Reception of the Chos 'byung For an initial disclosure of the way in which the Chos 'byung was received, we can first stay within the confines of Bu ston’s oeuvre, for it is already there that we come across his very own assessment of the text and its reception in response to one of his critics, namely, the aforementioned Rin chen ye shes. The work in which this is found bears no title and is not identified as a separate text in either the catalog edited by inter alia Kanakura, or in the table of contents of the twenty-sixth volume of his collected oeuvre in which it is contained among Bu ston's miscellaneous works (gsung thor bu).171 Indeed, both sequentially register works that consist of Bu ston's replies to Chos dpal mgon po, Chos kyi dkon mchog mdzod 'dzin and Spyi bo lhas pa. However, the one written in response to the second one commences only in BU26, 216, that is, on fol. 37a, and not on fol. 22a as in Kanakura, or on p. 185 as in the table of contents of BU26. The reply to the queries by Chos kyi dkon mchog mdzod 'dzin extends in fact from BU26, 216 to 236, that is, from fols. 37b to 47b of the text. Bu ston's biography registers but one person with the name Rin chen ye shes, namely presumably the same person who is connected to this particular set of queries. The text in BU24, 186, incorporates his name in the third opening verse of his reply, and states: "…, requested/respectfully stated by Bu ston before the one who is Lama Rin chen ye shes." (bla ma rin chen ye shes pa'i spyan sngar / bu ston gyis zhu ba..). While we do come across first-person personal pronouns, the phrase bu ston gyis zhu ba is nonetheless a bit curious. Fortunately, Blo gsal bstan skyong's history of Zhwa lu has an interlineary note anent a Lama Rin chen ye shes,172 which reads somewhat ambiguously that he had apparently undergone two phases in his intellectual development. Only the second and last phase is explicitly mentioned, namely that he was indebted to Bu ston for his understanding of madhyamaka, central way philosophy. Moreover, the note also records that he had been previously "protected" by Dol po pa, one of Bu ston's main "intellectual rivals" for the interpretation of the Kālacakra literature and the development of Indian Buddhism per se, and that he had petitioned the latter for "general analyses of the tantric literary corpora" (rgyud sde spyi rnams). In connection with the origins of the term gzhan stong, Tāranātha writes that a "reply to a query" (dris lan) by Bu ston apparently noted that it was part and 171 172 4. BU26, 133: 5. BU26, 137: Kanakura (1953: 74-5). ZHWA, 97. SSBB2, SSBB 2 nos. 30, 33; probably also nos. 31 and 32. no. 36. 274 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines parcel of the philosophical system of a Rin chen ye shes from Rta nag, and that it was subsequently adopted by Dol po pa.173 Tāranātha suggests that this ought to be looked into. And I can only concur, since I have not encountered any such a statement in any of Bu ston's dris lan texts and, indeed, as far as I am aware, he nowhere mentions Dol po pa in any of his writings. Kun dga' grol mchog (1507-66) recognizes this Rta nag pa in the context of the lineage of transmission of Spo/Po to ba Rin chen gsal's (1027/31-1105) Dpe chos collection.174 However, we do have now available to us a large commentary on the Uttaratantra that was written by a Rin chen ye shes who may just have been the very same Rin chen ye shes who had responded to Bu ston's Chos 'byung.175 Unfortunately, none of the questions Rin chen ye shes asked of Bu ston are really addressed in this work. His questions solely revolved around issues relating to statements Bu ston made concerning sources, doctrine, exegesis and the classification and authentication of canonical texts. At the outset of his reply, Bu ston relates the following about his Chos 'byung's genesis and the initial reaction it had apparently engendered among his contemporaries176: skabs kyi zhu don / bde bar gshegs pa'i bstan pa rin po che'i byung tshul / bod kyi bla ma mkhas pa chen po rnams kyis mdzad pa'i phyag bris kyi yi ge mang du gda' ba la brten nas bdag cag gis kyang khong rnams kyis mdzad pa'i legs bshad kyi cha gzhir bzhag ste / mdo rgyud dang / rgya gar gyis mkhas grub rnams kyis mdzad pa'i bstan bcos la brten nas chos 'byung zhig sug bris su bgyis pa de / sngar mkhas par rlom pa re re gnyis gnyis kyis bltas kyang / phrag dog gi chang gis yid myos shing / phyogs 'dzin gyi ling tog gis mig bsgribs / legs nyes kyi cha gsal bar ma mthong ste / 173 174 175 176 See his Khrid brgya'i brgyud pa'i lo rgyus, Gdams ngag mdzod, ed. Kong sprul Blo gros mtha' yas, vol. 18 (Paro, 1981), 84. In his undated work on the philosophical systems Stag tshang Lo tsā ba mentions a Rta nag Rin [chen] ye [shes] in connection with him being an exponent of the "extrinsic-emptiness" (gzhan stong) point of view; see his Grub mtha' kun shes nas mtha' bral sgrub pa zhes bya ba'i bstan bcos rnam par bshad pa legs bshad kyi rgya mtsho, Gsung 'bum, vol. 1, Mes po'i shul bzhag 29, ed. Rgyal mo 'brug pa (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2007), 260. Khrid brgya'i brgyud 'debs brjod bde brgyud pa'i mtshan sdom cung zad gsal bar bkod pa, Gdams ngag mdzod, ed. Kong sprul Blo gros mtha' yas, vol. 18 (Paro, 1981), 9. See his Rgyud bla ma’i ‘grel pa mdo dang sbyar ba nges pa’i don gyi snang ba, Bka' gdams gsung 'bum phyogs bsgrigs, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 20 (Chengdu: Si khron dpe skrun tshogs pa / Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2006), 23-446. BU26, 186-7. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub legs pa la nyes par mthong ba'i 'khrul shes skyes pa re re tsam yod pa 'dra bar gda' zhing / gzu bor [187] gnas pa re re tsam gis kyang phyogs re tsam blta ba ma gtogs pa / bstan bcos chen po rnams dang sbyar nas zhu thug tu mdzad nas lta ba grub pa mang po mi gda' zhing / de stobs kyis bdag gi yid kyang / rkang 'thung phreng ba yis // mtshan pa ['i] gsung rab chu gter che // rnam dpyod srub shing gis bsrubs pas // legs byas yongs 'du'i shing 'di 'khrungs // bstan pa'i mtho ris mdzes byed 'di // phrag dog las kyi sar skyes shing // rnam dpyod mngon shes bral ba'i mis // mthong bar nus pa ma yin no // snyam ste.. The context of your queries was my work on the way in which the precious Teaching of the Sugata/Buddha originated. Taking as my point of departure what is contained in many existing handwritten documents (phyag bris kyi yi ge) that were composed by greatly learned Tibetan lamas, I adopted as essential those well-phrased portions that were written by them and wrote out (sug bris) a history of Buddhism on the basis of the sutras, tantras and the treatises written by Indian scholars and spiritually realized ones. Although it was looked at earlier by a few (re re gnyis gnyis) who boasted of scholarship, they became crazed with the chang-beer of envy, their eyes being obscured with the pellicle of prejudice, and did not clearly see those aspects that were good and those that were bad; there were some in whom was born the mistaken cognition consisting of seeing the good as bad; and also a few upright ones, aside from having glanced at but a few aspects of the subject-matter, complained (zhu thug tu mdzad) to me in conjunction with great treatises, and had not many ?concrete opinions (lta ba grub pa). On that account, I thought to myself: This well-made wish-fulfilling tree of a text was born, 275 276 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines By having stirred with the twirling stick of my discernment, The grand ocean of Buddha's scripture, adorned With the garland of the mtha' drug tree.177 This ornament of the Teaching's firmament, Cannot be seen, By persons born in the soil of envious deeds, Bereft of discernment and insight. Hence, it is obvious that the Chos 'byung had not been well received as Bu ston, and we, might have expected, but unfortunately, he does not let us in on the identity of these critics. What may be important to consider is that this reply is so far the first that I have encountered in which an author tells his reader that he had sent copies of his just completed work to his colleagues for comments and criticism. And we can be sure that this was not the only instance of such a course of action taken by a Tibetan scholar. In all, Bu ston comments on the following points raised directly or indirectly by Rin chen ye shes' letter with which, as he writes, he was delighted and perhaps also flattered; the letter was clearly the result of a rather meticulous reading of his work: 1. The classification and characterization of the Sūtrasamuccaya attributed to Nāgārjuna and Śā ntideva's Śikṣamuccaya within Buddhist Mahāyāna literature as a whole.178 177 178 This expression preeminently refers to the six hermeneutic devices, three pairs, by means of which especially tantric texts, in Bu ston's case the Guhyasamājatantra in particular, are explicated; for Bu ston, see for example his Sgron gsal gyi rgya cher 'grel pa mtha' drug gsal ba'i bsdus don and Gsang 'dus 'grel pa sgron gsal gyi bshad sbyar mtha' drug rab tu gsal bar byed pa in BU9, 109-39 and 141-681; the latter is a commentary on Candrakīrti II's famous Pradīpoddyotana exegsis of the Guhyasamājatantra, whereas the former appears to be its topical outline (sa bcad). For some general remarks on these, see E. Steinkellner, "Remarks on Tantristic Hermeneutics," Proceedings of the Csoma de Körös Memorial Symposium, ed. L. Ligeti (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadò, 1978), 445-58, and M. Broido, "bshad thabs: Some Tibetan Methods of Explaining the Tantras," Contributions on Tibetan and Buddhist Religion and Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. E. Steinkellner and H. Tauscher, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 11 (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 1983), 15-45, and especially P. Arènes, "Herméneutique des Tantra : les 'Six extrêmes (ou possibilités alternatives)' (saṭkoṭi; mtha' drug). A propos d'un exemple de prégnance des modèles exégétiques des sūtra,"Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines 1 (2002), 4-44, and the literature cited therein. BU26, 187-92; see BU24, 672 [BUx, 29, Obermiller 1931: 53]. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 277 2. The intent of the five similes of Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra, I: 2.179 3. The interpretation of Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra, XVIII: 39a-b, in connection with the two types of accumulation (tshogs pa, sambhara) and the bodhisattva stages. 180 Problems of interpreting these can also be traced back to India or, more specifically, Kashmir, as witnessed in the canonical Sūtrālaṃkārādiślokadvayavyākhyāna by Parahitabhadra, one of Rngog Lo tsā ba Blo ldan shes rab's (ca.1059-ca.1109) masters. 4. On the defining and distinguishing features of the last two cycles in which the Buddha-Word was promulgated; an aside to Rin chen ye shes' letter (yi ge logs shig pa).181 5. The decline of Buddhism in which Rin chen ye shes alleged that Bu ston accepted the questionable oral tradition (zer sgros) concerning the view of Chos [kyi] bshes [gnyen] [*Dharmamitra].182 Immediately following this and possibly 179 180 181 182 BU26, BU26, BU26, BU26, 192-200; see BU24, 672 [BUx, 29-30, Obermiller 1931: 53]. 200-1; see BU24, 719 [BUx, 66, Obermiller 1931: 110]. 201-13; see BU24, 766-76 [BUx, 100-8, Obermiller 1932: 41-56]. 213-4; Bu-ston discusses the decline of Buddhism at BU24, 867-76 [BUx, 173-9, Obermiller 1932: 171-80], but I have failed to discern any reference to an oral tradition anent Chos bshes in this passage. To be sure, he refers to his Abhisamyālaṃkāraṭīkā where the account of Buddhism's decline parallels the one given by him in the way of a long quotation from the Candragarbhaparipcchā cited immediately before this reference. In his reply, Bu ston also indicates a calculation of the date of the Buddha's birth to an ox-year, which apparently some treatises on chronology associated with a Jo bo rje, a common nickname for Atiśa. However, an interlinear note reads here: "This claim was made by Jo bo chen po Tshul khrims, who appeared in Stod lung, Jo bo rje appears to be not Jo bo rje Atiśa." And he writes that this calculation was accepted by many Bka' gdams pa writers such as Mkhan chen Mchims pa [?Nam mkha' grags] and Bcom ldan ral gri. None of Nam mkha' grags' historical writings have been retrieved so far. Bu ston quite clearly writes, at BU24, 816 [BUx, 136, Obermiller 1932: 105], that a Jo bo Rje — Obermiller glosses it by "Atiśa" — calculated the year of the Buddha's birth to have been that of the wood-female-ox year. Other early writers who mention the tradition of Jo bo rje or Jo bo chen po rje in this context without explicitly associating him with Atiśa include Tshal pa [TSHAL, 6; TSHAL1, 4a], Yar lung pa [YAR, 13; YAR1, 15], and Mkhas grub, Dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i 'grel chen dri ma med pa'i 'od kyi rgya cher bshad pa de kho na nyid kyi snang bar byed pa, Collected Works [Lhasa xylograph], 141, and, lastly, the brief work on the chronology of the Buddha's life of 1440 by Byang bdag Rnam rgyal grags bzang (1395-1475) in his Thub pa'i dbang po'i bstan rtsis [or: Bstan rtsis yid bzhin gyi nor bu], undated Ngam ring xylograph in 20 folios, C.P.N. 004719(2), 5a; see also Macdonald, "Préambule à la lecture d'un Rgya-bod yig-chaṅ," 118-20, n. 55), Vostrikov (1970: 121-2). Aside from Bu ston, all the above references speak of "the system of Jo bo rje" or "Jo bo chen po rje", preserving thereby a measure of ambiguity. The earliest reference 278 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines in response to another query by Rin chen ye shes, Bu ston abruptly notes that his catalog does indeed include the Dpal rnyog pa med pa'i rgyud [Śri] under the rubric of the Mahāyogatantra-s.183 6. On the nature and authorship of the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṅgīti commentaries attributed to Avalokiteśvara and Dus 'khor ba.184 183 184 that I have come across is the one in the study of the chronological sections of the Kālacakratantra and its associated literature by Grwa phug pa — see Rtsis gzhung pad dkar zhal lung, ed. Yum pa, 7 —, which in turn is based on a chronological survey of 1340 by Dbus pa Blo gsal. His view is that Jo bo chen po Tshul khrims 'bar made a calculation in the earth-male-dragon year, in 1028, some three thousand one hundred and sixty-four years had passed since the passing of the Buddha, whereas Atiśa, that is, Jo bo chen po Rje, did the same in the iron-female-hare year, in 1040. However, other authors do not admit of this distinction. See, for instance, Dga' ldan Khri pa XIV's Bstan rtsis gsal ba'i sgron me, 11a ff. The C.P.N. houses an dbu can manuscript of a chronicle of the Kālacakra transmissions in thirty-five folios under catalog no. 002795(4) — the indigenous catalog number is phyi ra 131. The text is entitled the Dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i chos 'byung nor bu'i phreng ba and was written at an unspecified date, but not earlier than the middle of the sixteenth century, by a certain Ngag dbang rgyal sras lhag bsam dag pa. On fol. 32a, it attributes the identification of Jo bo Rje as Stod lungs pa Jo bo Tshul khrims dar to 'Gos Lo tsā ba. And, indeed, this is evidenced in 'Gos Lo tsā ba's own 1442-3 Rtsis la 'khrul pa sel ba [Pho brang Rgyal bzangs smon mkhar xylograph of 1466], 20b. Furthermore, Lo chen Chos dpal [*Dharmashrī] (1654-1717) makes a clearcut distinction between the two Jo bo-s in his Rtsis kyi man ngag nyin byed snang ba’i rnam ‘grel gser gyi shing rta (Lhasa: Xizang minzu chubanshe, 1983), 75; he writes: "Twelve years thereafter [after the chronological calculation of Lha Bla ma and his sons], Stod lung pa Jo bo Tshul khrims 'bar made a chronological calculation in the earth-dragon year [1028]." BU24, 989 [BUx, 265]. BU26, 214-5; I have not been able to find any reference to the former in the Chos 'byung. Bu ston's catalog lists a good number of Mañjuśrīnāmasaṅgiti commentaries and other works related to this text in accordance with their different tantric classifications in BU24, 1003-6 [BUx, 276-9] for those that have to do with the Yogatantra-s, and BU24, 1033-4 [BUx, 300-1] for those that have to do with the Kālacakra cycles per se. No mention is made of such a work by Avalokiteśvara, but the Kālacakra-rubric of his catalog of the Zhwa lu bstan 'gyur registers in BU26, 423, a *Nāmasaṅgīti-abhisamaya written by Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. In his reply, Bu ston points out that, whatever text he may have had in mind, it contained many mistakes in the translation of alleged Sanskrit terms and in its exegesis, which flatly went in the face of other standard, non-controversial tantric texts. Moreover, he harshly avers that it was neiter written by an Indian, nor by a Tibetan scholar but rather by an "impertinent Tibetan fool" (bod mi blun po spyi [b]rtol can). The same applies, in his opinion, to the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṅgīti commentary that is ascribed to Dus 'khor ba [*Kālacakra(pāda)]. BU26, 423, enumerates three commentaries under the entry for the Kālacakra cycle that, in his view, "originally appear to be Tibetan texts," and the one ascribed to *Kālacakrapāda is among these. He concludes by saying that he had to include these in his catalog The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 279 In the course of his comments, Bu ston sometimes commends Rin chen ye shes for the acuity and perspicacity of his observations. At other times, however, he hardly pulls his punches when he criticizes him for some of his comments, and at one point we even find him apologetically begging his addressee for forebearance with his thunderous diction. Now the first point with which Rin chen ye shes apparently felt uncomfortable was Bu ston's categorization of certain texts under the last two of the three cycles in which the authoritative Buddha-Word was promulgated185 and, having done so, specifically with his seemingly categorical remarks about the nature of the Mdo btus (Sūtrasamuccaya) and the Bslab btus (Śikṣamuccaya). The Chos 'byung deals with these three cycles on two occasions; once in the first portion of the text, in the discussion of a typology of treatises, and once in the second portion, in the passage concerned with the eleventh Act of the Buddha. In connection with what Bu ston had written in the first of these, Rin chen ye shes had supposed that:186 bslab btus sam mdo btus ni byang sems kyi bslab pa nyams sus len tshul mdo sde sna tshogs las btus nas bstan pa yin gyi / bka' bar pa kho na'i spyod pa'i cha gsal byed yin pa'i nges pa med pa... The Bslab btus or/and Mdo btus are texts that demonstrate the way in which the training of a Bodhisattva is taken to heart on the basis of a summary from various sutras, but there is no certainty that they but clarify the practical aspect of only sutras belonging to the cycle of the intermediate authoritative word... Bu ston's lengthy and complex reply, though important for other reasons, especially doctrinal ones, need not detain us here, for it would carry us too far away from the subject of this paper. I should note, however, that he did write in his Chos 'byung, towards the end 185 186 by virtue of the fact that earlier catalogs had them as well ('on kyang de dag sngar ci rigs su chud gda' bas bcug bdog go //), which is puzzling because the text ascribed to Avalokiteśvara is not listed in the entire Chos 'byung! Finally, he makes a number of pronouncements on the authenticity of various Mañjuśrīnāmasaṅgīti commentaries in his reply to a certain Chos dpal mgon po, for which see BU26, 173. For the entire passage in which he judges treatises belonging to all three cycles to fall either on the philosophical or the practical side of things or both, see BU24, 669-76 [BUx, 27-32, Obermiller 1931: 49-57]. BU26, 187. 280 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines of his survey of treatises, which he assigns to the intermediate cycle, that the Bslab btus and the Mdo btus are texts that deal with aspects of spiritual praxis. But, as he points out in his reply (in good scholastic fashion), he did not say that they do so exclusively. At the very end of his reply to this particular query, he writes that various other Tibetan chronicles of Buddhism had also considered the Bslab btus in terms of (mainly) exemplifying spiritual praxis:187 des na...bslab btus la sogs pa yang spyod pa'i cha gtso che bar ston pa la dgongs nas bod kyi mkhas pa phwya gtsang dang / khro phu lo tsā ba dang / chag lo tsā ba dang / mkhan po mchims kyis mdzad pa'i chos 'byung la sogs par spyod phyogs su gsungs pa'i phyir spyod phyogs su mi 'gal le [read: lo] // Therefore...your reservations do not contradict my subsumption of these texts under the rubric of praxis because, intending that also the Bslab btus, etc., primarily demonstrate aspects of spiritual praxis, they were mentioned under the rubric of praxis in such texts as the chronicles (chos 'byung) written by the Tibetan scholars Phywa, Gtsang, Khro phu Lo tsā ba, Chag Lo tsā ba and Mkhan po Mchims. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the Chos 'byung is referred to only once in Sgra tshad pa's oeuvre, namely in an undated series of replies to a number of queries posed by a certain Rgyal ba Yon tan 'od. 188 The latter had sent an open letter to various central Tibetan 187 188 Mkhas grub considered these two plus Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra as texts of the intermediate cycle that give equal weight to matters of doctrine and praxis; see his Introduction to the Buddhist Tantric Systems, trs. F. Lessing and A. Wayman (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978), 92-3. This is also reproduced in an anonymous chronicle of Buddhism in India and Tibet, which is very much based on the work of Mkhas grub; see the Rgya gar du bstan pa dang bstan 'dzin ji ltar byon pa pa'i tshul (Gangtok, 1979), 168. See his Dris lan lung gi dgongs pa ma nor ba in BU28, 614. It is dated to the first day of the first half of the second month of the winter season of the iron-male-dog year, which would be either November 19 or December 19, 1370, depending on whether the second winter-month is to be equated with the eleventh or the twelfth month. The use of "winter season", a designation used in accordance with the calendar of the vinaya, is not surprising in view of the focus of Rgyal ba Yon tan 'od's queries. Bu ston points out in his huge commentary on Gunaprabha's Vinayasūtra that the winter season extends from the sixteenth day of the final autumn month to the fifteenth day of the first spring-month; see his 'Dul ba mdo'i rnam par 'byed pa 'dul ba rgya mtsho'i snying po rab tu gsal bar byed pa in BU21, 206; he completed this large treatise on the fifteenth day of the first The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 281 scholars anent the vinaya, in which he had asked inter alia: "Who had been the initiating abbot (upādhyāya) of Gtsang Rab gsal according to the view of Bu ston's Grand (chen mo) Chos 'byung?" Now, according to Bu ston,189 Gtsang Rab gsal was the first in the triumvirate of 'Dzad pa/Jad pa G.yel mi Gtsang Rab gsal, Bo dong pa G.yo Dge 'byung and Stod lung pa Dmar Shākya mu ni. These are traditionally held to have been responsible for the continuation of the vinaya pre- 189 spring-month, at the end of the fourth month of the winter season of the earth-male-monkey year, that is, on February 12 or March 17, 1356. For a more detailed analysis of the vinaya calender, we also have his Rdzogs dus go ba'i cho ga brjod pa in BU26, 257-263 — this title was oddly translated as "A method to know one's dying hour" in Kanakura (1953: 75), which was then dutifully reproduced in the Preface to BU26. Of course, the title renders An Explanation of the Method for Understanding the Time of Ordination, where I take rdzogs dus to be a short form for bsnyen par rdzogs pa'i dus. Bu ston's reply to a question posed to him by Tshal pa covers in part, and much more succinctly, the same territory; see below note 96. BU26, 263-5, which both Kanakura (1953: 75) and the Preface include in the Rdzogs dus go ba'i cho ga brjod, contains yet another little work on chronology, this time one which takes Abhidharmakośa as its point of departure; it, too, is not dated. See the 'Dul ba spyi'i rnam par gzhag pa 'dul ba rin po che'i mdzes rgyan, in BU21, 126. Bu ston completed this work on the tenth day of 'gro zhun month of a gser 'phyang year, that is, on July 27, 1357. It contains some precious information on the early Tibetan vinaya literature, a great deal of which has become available in the Bka' gdams gsung 'bum phyogs bsgrigs series. Thus an interlinear note at BU21, 127 suggests that he quoted from an "old document" in connection with the ordination of the "ten men from Dbus and Gtsang" by Bla chen Dgongs pa rab gsal, Grum Ye shes rgyal mtshan and Sgro Mañjushrī. On the same page, he himself notes that Gtsang nag pa had maintained that the last two should be Gtsang Rab gsal and G.yo Dge 'byung, and for further details he refers the reader to their biographies by none other than Gtsang nag pa! This is of course not the position he had taken in his Chos 'byung, for which see BU24, 896 [BUx, 194, Obermiller 1932: 202, Szerb 1990: 60]. Three interlinear notes at BU21, 128, identify the individuals behind Bu ston's uninformative "one [or: someone]" by a Zul, a Ne'u, and a Bar pa. The first most probably refers to Zul phu ba 'Dul 'dzin Brtson 'grus grags (1100-74), the author of an important biography of Atiśa and an expert in the vinaya literature. The second might be Ne'u Paṇḍita Grags pa smon lam blo gros, but I cannot even hazard a guess as to who Bar pa might be. The three held, respectively, that the disciple of Jinamitra was Dharmapāla whose disciple was a certain Bram ze 'Dul dzin — Bu ston comments: "This appears to be untrue." —, that Seng ge gdong can (*Siṃhamukhā) explained [the vinaya] to Dānaśīla, and thence in unbroken succession to Jinamitra, Lo tsā ba Klu'i rgyal mtshan, G.yo Dge 'byung etc. — none of this can be retrieved from history —, and lastly that even though Seng ge'i gdong pa can explained the vinaya to Mal po 'Dul 'dzin pa, there is no mistake of having shortened the lineage because the Arhat Seng ge'i gdong pa can lived for a long time." Finally, Paṇ chen Bsod nams grags pa appears to refer to Bu ston's work under an alternative title as the 'Dul ba'i chos 'byung; see his 1550 Dam pa'i chos 'dul ba'i chos 'byung dad pa'i 'bab stegs (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1973), 62 [= Collected Works, vol. 11 (Mundgod, 1982-90), 387]. 282 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines cepts and, hence, for the initial preservation of institutionalized Buddhism, after it had been virtually obliterated from Central Tibet during the era of emperor U 'dum btsan in part undoubtedly because of the excessive zeal with which Khri srong lde btsan and especially emperor alias Ral pa can, took measures firmly to install the foreign creed that was Buddhism. The reply given by Sgra tshad pa is that, while it is true that the Chos 'byung itself is unclear on this issue, it is fairly commonplace (grags tshod) to hold that Dānaśīla, who had come to Tibet in the reign of Ral pa can, was their initiating abbot. However, he does add that others had identified Gtsang Rab gsal's abbot as belonging to the abbot-lineage (mkhan brgyud) of Jinamitra or, alternatively, that he stood in the lineage of Śāntarakṣita, via his ordinand Dba'/Sba Rakṣita [= Sba Ratna], whence the precepts were passed to Li Ye shes rin chen and thence to an unnamed mkhan bu of the latter. Bu ston reverts to a brief survey of several opinions held about the various vinaya tranmissions that issued from Dgongs pa rab gsal, specifically the ten men from Dbus and Gtsang at the end of the Chos 'byung's discussion of the same.190 While he does not specify the identity of the individual behind his "someone" (kha cig) who held the first of these, the second one is derived from a testatory document (bka' chems kyi yi ge), the third from Bcom ldan ral gri — see above under no. 7 —, the fourth from a claim made by presumably G.yo Dge 'byung and others, and the last again from "someone". I must add that Bu ston's general survey of the vinaya, its literature and principal exponents, equally fails to specify the particulars of Gtsang Rab gsal's vinaya background, and merely has it that his associate G.yo Dge 'byung was given his monk's vows by Li Ye shes rin chen. To be sure, the question posed by Rgyal ba Yon tan 'od was not in the least a trivial one, inasmuch as, in the first place, this was a major line of transmission of the vinaya precepts in Tibet and because, indeed, the authenticity and, ultimately, the spiritual efficacy of such a line of transmission depends exclusively on its putative uninterruptedness and, therefore, on the possibility to trace it back to the time of the historical Buddha himself. To my knowledge, though I stand to be corrected when the early vinaya treatises of the Bka' gdams pa tradition have been scrutinized, the earliest sources do not appear to shed any significant light on this issue. While the triumvirate is mentioned by Bsod nams rtse mo, Nyang ral, *Lde'u Jo sras, Mkhas pa Lde'u and Ne'u Paṇḍita, they specify neither the vinaya tradition(s) to which they belonged, nor the mkhan po–s in question. The first available source, and I am sure there are earlier ones, to 190 BU24, 903-4 [BUx, 199-200, Obermiller 1932: 211-2, Szerb 1980: 81-3]. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 283 have done this is a version of Tshal pa's chronicle where they are first placed in the lineage of Śāntarakṣita along the following line:191 Śāntarakṣita ↓ Sba Ratna ↓ Li Sangs rgyas ye shes ↓ Ka 'Od mchog grags ↓  ↓ ↓ ↓ ❘G.yo Dge 'byung [read: ni] Gtsang Rab gsal Dmar Shākya mu ne Another scenario mentioned in this text is a lineage of transmission that went through Śāntarakṣita as well, but which passed to G.yo Dge 'byung via Kamalaśīla. As far as the tradition for explaining (bshad brgyud) the vinaya is concerned, Tshal pa notes that it was obtained by them from Cog ro Klu'i rgyal mtshan who, in turn, had received it from Dānaśīla and Jinamitra. Indeed, this issue was never really resolved and the position taken by most was generally either to ignore it, or to follow the above scenario. 'Gos Lo tsā ba bemoans the lack of precise data on the early Tibetan vinaya traditions, and this is of some significance inasmuch as he was among the most widely read of all of Tibet's historians.192 191 192 TSHAL, 56-8; this passage is not found in TSHAL1 and thus may be an interpolation in the text. Yar lung Jo bo's text also has it; see YAR, 182 ff. [YAR1, 173 ff.]. 'GOS, 61, 962 [Roerich 1979: 67, 1084-5]. In the first reference we read that he based himself on "what had been written by the chief (dpon) Bi ci" which, too, says nothing about the mkhan po-s of either three men. Another early source on a similar subject is Rje btsun Grags pa rgyal mtshan's Rgya bod kyi sde pa'i g.yes mdo, in SSBB4, no. 129, 296/4/2-298/3/3, which deals with the vinaya communities that were established in the Tibetan cultural area subsequent to the Bla chen. For a study of a late biography of Dgongs pa rab gsal, see C.A. Watson, "The Second Propagation of Buddhism from Eastern Tibet According to the 'Short Biography of Dgongs pa rab gsal' by the Third Thukvan Blo-bzang chos-kyi nyi-ma (1757-1802)," Central Asiatic Journal XXII (1978), 263-85, which owing to the availability of many new sources is now of course dated. A more critical biographical survey is given in the late Tshe brtan Zhabs drung 'Jigs med rigs pa'i blo gros, "Bla chen dgongs pa rab gsal gyi rnam par thar pa mdo tsam brjod pa thub bstan khang bzang mdzes pa'i tog," Gsung rtsom, vol. 4 (Xining: Mtsho 284 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines To date, some three histories of the transmission of the vinaya in Tibet have been published, the first two of which belong to the first half of the sixteenth century. They are chapter three of the third section of Dpa' bo II's history and the aforementioned monograph of Paṇ chen Bsod nams grags pa. The study of the latter adds very little that is not found in the other earlier sources, and the same thing must be said of the third and last history of the vinaya by Ye shes rgyal mtshan.193 As for Dpa' bo II, he was primarily concerned with establishing a credible historical basis for the disciple Bla chen Dgongs pa rab gsal, whose activities became a nexus for the proliferation of various vinaya traditions, and also has very little to say about these three.194 No doubt owing to Bu ston's prestige as a scholar and diplomat — towards the end of his life, he often functioned in the latter capacity in connection with the divisive power struggles that went on among the various Central Tibetan myriarchies and within Sa skya herself — the Chos 'byung was very quickly propelled into prominence, and was already known as the "Chos 'byung of the one from Zhwa lu" by 193 194 sngon mi rigs chubanshe, 1992), 489-513, and now also Gur mgon tshe ring, "Bla chen Dgongs pa rab gsal gyi 'khrungs gzhis skor la bskyar du dpyad pa," Krung go'i bod rig pa 1 (2015), 49-57, which, however, does not add much substantive to what has been published previously on him, and N. Willock, "Thu'u bkwan's Literary Adaptations of the Life of Dgongs pa rab gsal," Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines [Trails of the Tibetan Tradition, Papers for E. Sperling, ed. R. Vitali] no. 31 (Février, 2015), 577-91. See his Rgyal ba'i bstan pa nang mdzod dam pa'i chos 'dul ba'i byung tshul brjod pa rgyal bstan rin po che'i gsal byed nyin mor byed pa'i snang ba, Collected Works, vol. 6 (New Delhi: The Tibet House, 1975), 1-307, which was written in 1789. DPA'1, 464-9 [DPA', 467-71] cites three scenarios all of which are intent on only Dgongs pa rab gsal and do not in the least enter into a discussion of the background of these three men who were his preceptors. The three accounts to which it refers are the ones given by the apparently no longer extant Lo rgyus chen mo of Khu ston Brtson 'grus g.yung drung (1011-1075) at DPA'1, 464-5 [DPA', 467-8], the one by 'Gos Lo tsā ba at DPA'1 465-8 [DPA', 468-70], which he states that it appears to have been based on a document written by a Dpon Bi ci, and by the chronicle on early Tibet allegedly by Bla ma dam pa Bsod nam rgyal mtshan (1312-75) in DPA'1, 468-9 [DPA', 470-1]. He does not comment on the first two, but he takes to task the last one for reasons with which one cannot readily disagree — the passage in question is found in the Rgyal rabs gsal ba'i me long (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2002), 240-3 [Sørenson, Tibetan Buddhist Historiography. The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies, 444-51]. After the preliminary remarks on these three sources, Dpa' bo II affirms the position taken by both Bu ston and Karma pa III Rang 'byung rdo rje (1284-1339). For another discussion of these and related issues, see Kaḥ thog Rig 'dzin's Rgyal ba'i bstan pa rin po che byang phyogs su 'byung ba'i rtsa lag bod rje lha btsan po'i gdung rabs tshig nyung don gsal yid kyi me long, Bod kyi lo rgyus deb ther khag lnga, Gangs can rig mdzod 9 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1990), 77 ff. [= Collected Works, Smad cha (vol. 3) (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2006), 56 ff.]. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 285 the end of the first half of the fourteenth century. In fact, it is quoted by Tshal pa, possibly by Bla ma dam pa Bsod nams rgyal mtshan, and by Yar lung Jo bo on several occasions, not least because at least the last two had been his disciples,195 and, as I pointed out earlier, Gnyag phu ba Bsod nams bzang po (1341-1433) even wrote a summary of it in 1378.196 I believe we can assume that Tshal pa, too, considered himself a disciple of Bu ston, although he did ask him for advice on a chronological matter in a letter that is addressed to Tshal pa chen po Dge [ba'i] blo [gros] that is contained in Bu ston's miscellaneous writings.197 Of course, Dge ba'i blo gros is Tshal pa's name in religion which he received upon his ordination after Ta'i si tu Byang chub rgyal mtshan (1302-64) had forced him to relinquish his position as myriarch (khri dpon) of Tshal myriarchy (khri skor) in the 1350s. The reply to Tshal pa's query is undated, but Bu ston does refer to information passed to him the previous year (na ning) by the Kashmirian scholar Sumanaśrī. Bu ston apparently met the latter in 1357,198 so that this reply would have been drafted sometime in 1358. Yar lung Jo bo refers to the text as the "Great Chos 'byung."199 We gather from a passage in his chronicle that Yar lung Jo bo seems to have been a student of Bu ston for, after mentioning the Chos 'byung of "...the all-knowing Bu ston," he refers to "a statement made by my all-knowing lama" regarding the inacceptability of postulating an intermediate phase of the development of Buddhism in Tibet. Of course, Bu ston had many more disciples who were to become in195 196 197 198 199 For Tshal pa, see TSHAL, 33 [TSHAL1, 15b]. TSHAL1 indicates that this reference is an interlineary note by placing a "(" bracket, if only at the beginning. The passage is found in Szerb (1990: 3-4). For possibly Bla ma dam pa, see Rgyal rabs gsal ba'i me long, 11, 54-5 [= Sørenson, Tibetan Buddhist Historiography. The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies, 57, 138]; for Yar lung Jo bo, see below. See my "Some Remarks on the Textual Transmission and Text of Bu ston Rin chen grub's Chos 'byung, a Chronicle of Buddhism in India and Tibet," 112. BU26, 256-7; both Kanakura (1953: 75, no. 1500-16) and the table of contents of the larger work in BU26 state that his reply covers BU26, 253-7, but this is not the case, for BU26, 256, reads: "A summary reply to what was asked by Dkon mchog dpal, the abbot of Chu mig ring mo in Gtsang." The first is listed in Sgra tshad pa's Bka' 'bum gyi dkar chag rin chen lde mig, at BU28, 331, as Tshal pa chen po dge blos ‘dul ba’i dus tshigs ngos ‘dzin dris lan, and for reasons that remain unknown, the second reply addressed to Dkon mchog dpal is not. Hence, BU26, 253-7, contains two little texts in all. Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 149). For what follows, see YAR, 39, 89, 184 [YAR 1, 41, 89, 174]. The first and the last refer, respectively, to the text of Szerb (1990: 2-3, 55-56). None of these are direct quotations, however. An interlinear note in YAR, 16, suggests that the passage of the Mahākaruṇapuṇḍarikasūtra is taken from the Chos 'byung chen mo [of Bu ston]; YAR1, 18, does not countenance it as a note, and includes it in the main body of the text. The passage in question is found in BU24, 819 [BUx, 139, Obermiller 1932: 109]. 286 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines fluential in one way or another. In fact, most of the men who are now primarily known as disciples of Dol po pa had been students of Bu ston prior to them going over to Dol po pa. Finally, I may note here that, according to his record of teachings received, Tsong kha pa received the transmission of the Chos 'byung from Lama Chos kyi dpal [ba].200 At least two disciples of Bu ston had "Chos kyi dpal" as part of their names, and both had been teachers of Tsong kha pa. These were Lo tsā ba Drung Chos kyi dpal bzang po and 'Jam dbyangs Chos kyi dpal ba (1316-97), the first of whom was especially known for his vinaya studies, the second for his expertise in the Kālacakratantra.201 Blo gsal bstan skyong cites Tsong kha pa's biography of the Phag mo gru scion and yogi Grags pa byang chub (1356-86), where he is referred to as Mkhan chen Dharma shrī bhadra, that is, Chos kyi dpal bzang po.202 Given that Tsong kha pa refers to him Chos kyi dpal, I assume that he had received the oral transmission of the Chos 'byung, and other writings of Bu ston, from the one whose name is prefixed by 'Jam dbyangs. 'Gos Lo tsā ba, Dpa' bo II, Paṇ chen Bsod nams grags pa and Dalai Lama V, to name but a few important historians, made signal use of the Chos 'byung, and especially the second quite frequently reverts to the text, albeit often in a critical fashion, in his discussion of the political and religious history of the Tibetan empire. A final word: The primary importance of the Chos 'byung arguably resides in its elaborate exposition of Buddhist hermeneutics that comprises the first part, the catalog of translated scripture, and the various notices and short biographies of a number of Indian Buddhist intellectual glitterati for which, as we now become increasingly familiar with the contributions of the early Bka' gdams pa masters, he will have used a number of earlier accounts. These were areas in which Bu ston the historian excelled. Quite disappointing, on the other hand, is his survey of Buddhism in Tibet, which to all intents and purposes is a rather anemic account that tells us very little indeed and contrasts quite sharply with the elaborate history of the period in Dpa' bo II's treatise or even with the relevant sections of the chronicles of Nyang ral, Lde'u Jo sras, and Mkhas pa Lde'u. It is still quite surprising that despite his exposure to Rnying ma thought and practice as a youth, he resisted citing any works, let alone having a 200 201 202 See the Rje rin po che blo bzang grags pa'i dpal gyi gsan yig, Collected Works [Bkra shis lhun po xylograph], vol. 1 (New Delhi, 1976), 240. ZHWA, 71-3, 80-4. See the Byang chub sems dpa' chen po grags pa byang chub dpal bzang po'i rtogs pa brjod pa'i snyan dngags byin rlabs kyi lhun po, Collected Works [Bkra shis lhun po xylograph], vol. 2 (New Delhi, 1976), 305. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 287 discussion, of the Rnying ma tradition in the main body of his Chos 'byung. The same holds for the Chos 'byung's catalog with its famous disclaimer in which he justifies his exclusion of Rnying ma literature with a quotation from Haribhadra's Abhisamayālaṃkārālokā concerning the question of what amounts to "the word of the Buddha" (buddhavacana) and another verse, the origin of which, if it is a quotation, I have not been able to identify.203 This passage of the Chos 'byung also drew the attention of Sog bzlog pa who quotes it in his attempt to show that Bu ston did not really deny or negate (dgag) the Rnying ma tradition.204 In support of his tenuous and somewhat unconvincing argument, he cites one of Bu ston's two studies of tantric literature of 1339 in which Bu ston had spoken somewhat positively of the [Rnying ma] Phur pa/bu (Kilāya) practice — this practice was part of the Sa skya school's legacy as well — as well as a reply to a certain 'Dul 'dzin Rnal 'byor pa Byang chub seng ge who had, at one time, posed the question as to what limits are there when giving someone tantric initiations and empowerments who is not entirely qualified to receive them. Sog bzlog pa evidently was of the opinion that Bu ston was its author, but he may very well have been wrong. In the first place, no such response is neither found in the Lhasa Zhol xylograph edition of Bu ston's collected works, nor in the manuscript edition of the same, which, to be sure, are the only editions of his collected oeuvre that are now available to us, nor, perhaps more importantly, in the catalogs of the various editions of his writings. On the other hand, the very same queries of this Byang chub seng ge and this very same work is found in all the available editions of the oeuvre of Rje btsun Grags pa rgyal mtshan, the third patriarch of the Sa skya pa school.205 The key-passage in connection with tantric practice runs as 203 204 205 BU24, 990 [BUx, 266, BUzh, 160a]; it is partly translated in Roerich (1979: 102, n. 1). For the first, see Wogihara Unrai's edition of the Sanskrit text of the Abhisamayālaṃkārāloka Prajñāpāramitāvyākhyā, Part One (Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, 1932-35), 402. See the Gsang sngags snga 'gyur la bod du rtsod pa snga phyir byung ba rnams kyi lan du brjod pa nges pa don gyi 'brug sgra, 489-93 [= ed. Padma tshul khrims, 231-5]. See, respectively, the Rnal 'byor byang chub seng ge'i zhu ba and Rnal 'byor byang chub seng ge'i dris lan, Sa skya gong ma lnga'i gsung 'bum dpe bsdur ma las grags pa rgyal mtshan gyi gsung pod gnyis pa, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 2, Mes po'i shul bzhag 11 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2007), 526-7 and 527-35. The quotation that follows is taken from p. 530. The second part of this work is cited in toto in Zhwa dmar IV's 1508 response to a query by a certain scholar from Zangs chen by the name of Skal bzang chos kyi rgya mtsho'i sde, who had asked him about the connection between Nāropa (d. 1040) and Mar pa Lo tsā ba Chos kyi blo gros, for which see his Zangs chen mkhan po skal bzang ba'i dris lan, Collected Works, ed. Yangs can dgon ris med dpe rnying myur skyob khang, vol. 6 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2009), 471-6. I intend to return to the latter on a separate occasion. 288 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines follows: yang gsang sngags snga 'gyur rnying ma ba [read: pa] 'ga' zhig gis spyod pas [read: pa'i?]gsang ba phyogs thams cad du sgrogs pa la nyes pa med par byed pa 'di yang rang gi gzhung dang yang 'gal bas 'di yang dag pa ma yin te / gsang ba snying po las / dbang rnams bskur bar ma byas zhing // bla ma mnyes par ma byas par // mnyan pa la sogs brtson pa ni // 'bras bu med cing brlag par 'gyur // zhes gsungs la / de la sogs pa snga 'gyur gyi bka' dang bstan bcos du ma las ma smin pa la gsang ba mi bsgrags par gsung so // Further, since the fact that some Rnying ma pa, the school of the early translation of secret spells, act with impunity when proclaiming in all directions the secrets of practice, too, runs counter to their own textual tradition, this is not correct; it is said in the Guhyagarbhatantra that: When one has not been given the empowerments and, When one has not pleased the *guru-teacher, Making efforts to listen [= study], etc., Will be fruitless and harmful. and it is said in many Pronouncements (bka') and treatises of the old translations' school such as that one that one should not proclaim what is secret to one who is spiritually immature. With significant differences, the Guhyagarbhatantra verse is found in the twenty-first chapter of the text:206 slob dpon mnyes par ma byas shing // dbang rnams thob par ma byas par // nyan pa la sogs rtsom paa rnams // 206 See the searchable Bka' 'gyur [dpe sdur ma], ed. Krung go'i bod rig pa zhib 'jug lte gnas kyi bka' bstan dpe sdur khang, vol. 102 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2006), 583 [= tbrc.org W1PD96682.102]. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 289 'bras bu med cing brlag par 'gyur // a The Yongle and Peking xylographs have the variant reading brtsom pa'i. When one has not pleased the *acārya-teacher and, When one has not obtained the empowerments, Those embarking on hearing [= studying], etc. Will be without result and will be harmed. It is not entirely clear to me how this verse supports his argument and this is hardly the tantra's fault! Rong zom Chos kyi bzang po (11th c.) was the first to defend the Guhyagarbhatantra against its unnamed critics,207 but it remained one of the controversial Rnying ma pa tantras par excellence, even if Śāyakaśrī's discovery of a Sanskrit manuscript of this work in Bsam yas monastery should have dispelled part of the critique that was leveled against the authenticity of its Tibetan text, namely that there was no original Sanskrit text that corresponded to the Tibetan translation[s]. The fact of the existence of its Sanskrit counterpart was again underscored by Bcom ldan ral gri more than half a century later, and then again in the fourteenth century by G.yung ston Rdo rje dpal (1287-1365) and 'Bri gung Lo tsā ba Nor bu dpal ye shes (1313-87), alias Maṇikaśrījñāna. Nonetheless, this did not prevent later critics of the literary and doctrinal foundations of the Rnying ma pa to continue casting their aspersions on its doctrinal integrity. Even if this part of the reply to Byang chub seng ge were indeed penned by Bu ston, one has to wonder why Sog bzlog pa thought that this remark could be used in support of a contention that Bu ston was not inclined to be anti-Rnying ma pa. What is more, that virtual identical verses are found in several non-Rnying ma pa tantras as well208 would indicate that the sentiment expressed by the Guhyagarbhatantra verse was by no means Rnying ma pa-specific. The fact that the author, if he were Bu ston, quotes from 207 208 See Dorji Wangchuk, "An Eleventh-century Defence of the Authenticity of the Guhyagarbha Tantra," The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism, ed. H. Eimer et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 265-91. Virtual identical verses are found in the Mkha' 'gro ma thams cad kyi thugs gnyis su med pa'i ye shes bsam gyis mi khyab pa phag mo mngon par 'byung ba'i rgyud and the Dpal nyi ma'i 'khor lo'i rgyud kyi rgyal po; see the Bka' 'gyur [dpe sdur ma], ed. Krung go'i bod rig pa zhib 'jug lte gnas kyi bka' bstan dpe sdur khang, vol. 79 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2006), 195: slob dpon mnyes par ma byas shing // dbang rnams thob par ma byas na // nyan pa la sogs rtsom pa ni // 'bras bu med cing brlag par 'gyur //; 671: bla ma mnyes par ma byas shing // dbang rnams thob par ma byas par // nyan pa la sogs byed pa ni // 'bras bu med cing brlag par 'gyur // [= tbrc.org W1PD96682.79]. 290 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines this tantra is perhaps indicative of a positive attitude towards it. Yet, perhaps more telling is the fact that Bu ston nowehere lists the Tibetan translation of the Guhyagarbhatantra in his oeuvre. G.yung ston had apparently presented him with a Sanskrit manuscript of this work and a request that he translate it [anew], which was accompanied with a gift, a so-called "golden flower" (gser gyi me tog), as an incentive towards the fulfillment of his request. Bu ston is not known to have followed up on this. And of course Sog bzlog pa does not forget to mention the presence of the titles of several Rnying ma pa religious texts in Rje btsun's and his great-nephew 'Phags pa's catalogs of tantric literature209 which, again, are quite absent from Bu ston's cognate work! There is, however, a serious problem with Byang chub seng ge and these two works, his queries and the reply. For one, he is not mentioned in the incomplete listing of Rje btsun's closest students that A mes zhabs has added to his biography of Rje btsun in his work on Sa skya monastery. What is more, these two tracts are neither registered in Ngor chen's record of teaching received nor in his separate catalog of Rje btsun's oeuvre, nor in the edition of Rje btsun's writings that is listed in the record of teachings that were received by Dalai Lama V and in which he has done a lot of weeding by comparing the respective entries of Rje btsun's writings in earlier gsan yig-treatises!210 And finally, A mes zhabs' own 1644 records of the teachings he had received anent the writings of the five Sa skya pa patriarchs from Mkhan chen Ngag dbang chos grags (1572-1641) and from his elder relative Mthu stobs dbang phyug (1588-1637) also 209 210 See, respectively, the somewhat mistitled Kye rdor rgyud 'bum gyi dkar chag, Sa skya gong ma lnga'i gsung 'bum dpe bsdur ma las grags pa rgyal mtshan gyi gsung pod gnyis pa, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 2, Mes po'i shul bzhag 11 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2007), 522, and the Rgyud sde'i dkar chag, Sa skya gong ma lnga'i gsung 'bum dpe bsdur ma las 'gro mgon chos rgyal 'phags pa'i gsung pod gsum pa, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 3, Mes po'i shul bzhag 21 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2007), 510. See, respectively, his Sa skya'i gdung rabs ngo mtshar bang mdzod, ed. Rdo rje rgyal po (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1986), 83-4, NGOR, 59/3-61/4, and the Rje btsun sa skya pa'i bka' 'bum gyi dkar chag, Collected Works, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang, vol. 7, E vaṃ bka' 'bum 7/20, Mes po'i shul bzhag 138 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun kang, 2010), 310-3, and the Dam pa'i chos kyi gsan yig gangā'i chu rgyun of 1670, for which see the Lhasa xylograph of his Collected Works, vol. Kha (Gangtok: Sikkim Research Institute, 1991-5), 107-118 [= Collected Works, ed. Ser gtsug nang bstan dpe rnying 'tshol bsdu phyogs sgrig khang, vol. 2 (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig dpe skrun khang, 2009), 73-81]. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 291 do not register these two little tracts.211 We thus have a bit of a problem that awaits a solution! The fact that Bu ston perfunctorily mentions Padmasambhava as a magus and thaumaturge in his discussion of the era of Khri srong lde btsan, stands in sharp contrast with the Padmasambhava who was to become one of Tibet's principal culture heroes, and is again symptomatic of his surprisingly strong sectarian bias.212 He continued this sectarian resistance in his catalog of the Zhwa lu Tanjur and, again, this also stands in such stark contrast with the two Tanjur catalogs that were compiled by his senior contemporary Karma pa III, both of which list a good sampling of Rnying ma pa-specific works.213 But it was Bu ston's catalogs of his Chos 'byung, of a collection of tantric literature (rgyud 'bum),214 and of the Zhwa lu Tanjur that set the tone for the later Tanjur collections for which the first printing blocks were carved as late as the eighteenth century and probably for most, but definitely not for all, manuscript Tanjurs as well. The same holds for his surveys of tantric literature which, again, stands in such obvious contrast to the ones by the Rnying ma pa philosopher Klong chen pa or the Bka' brgyud pa writer 'Ba' ra ba Rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po (1310-91), whose oeuvre has yet to receive the attention it assuredly deserves!215 211 212 213 214 215 See his Mkhan chen 'jam pa'i dbyangs ngag dbang chos grags pas rjes su bzung ba'i tshul gyi sarga and Rigs ldan 'jam pa'i dbyangs grub mchog mthu stobs dbang phyug mched kyis rjes su bzung ba'i tshul gyi sarga, Collected Works, ed. Si khron bod yig dpe rnying myur skyob 'tshal sgrig khang, vol. 2 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 2012), 142-5 and 171-5. BU24, 884-5 [BUx, 185-7, Obermiller 1932: 189-90]. Padmasambhava makes there a sudden appearance as a magus and thaumaturge, and then makes an equally sudden disappearance. See, respectively, Rje rang byung rdo rje'i thugs dam bstan 'gyur gyi dkar chag, Collected Works, vol. Nga (Lhasa, 2006), 545-548 – the texts listed are characterized as "the meditation objects of Chos rje Rang byung rdo rje" (chos rje rang byung rdo rje'i thugs dam), and Bstan bcos 'gyur ro 'tshal gyi dkar chag, Collected Works, vol. Nga (Lhasa, 2006), 652-657, which follows the rubric of the bla med/niruttara yogatantras, but precedes the one for the yogatantras. See H. Eimer, Der Tantra-Katalog des Bu ston im Vergleich mit der Abteilung Tantra des tibetischen Kanjur, Indica et Tibetica 17 (Bonn: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 1989). See, respectively, the Grub mtha' rin po che'i mdzod, 326-9, 338-9, 341, 343-4, 344-5, 369-72 [= Barron, tr., The Precious Treasury of Philosophical Systems, 276-9, 293-4, 296-7, 299-300, 301-2, 333-6] and several of 'Ba' ra ba's writings in, for example, his Collected Works, vols. 3 and 4 (Dehradun, 1970). 292 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines Appendix One The Gsan yig of Bu ston Contained in BU26, 1-142, and consisting of 71 folios, Bu ston's record of the teachings and works he had studied is a rather important document not only in terms of being a serious supplement to the all too often laconic descriptions of his intellectual development by his biographers, but also because it provides valuable bibliographical information on some key writings of the thirteenth century.216 Generally speaking, compared to the fourteenth century, we are relatively better off in terms of the actual published corpus of Tibetan works that date from the preceding centuries. Unfortunately, however, this is still not saying very much, as we still very much grope in the dark where the bibliographic specifics of thirteenth century Tibetan literature are concerned. The Lhasa xylograph of this record is entitled Bla ma dam pa rnams kyis rjes su bzung ba'i tshul bka' drin rjes su dran par byed pa. Ye shes rgyal mtshan's catalog lists it as part of volume Za [= 22] of the edition of his oeuvre to which he had access and suggests that it comprised 75 folios.217 Undated, it was doubtlessly written during the last years of his life, insofar as it mentions the Kashmirian paṇḍita Sumanaśrī whom he met in 1357.218 The text itself is divided into twenty-five sections that correspond to an enumeration of his twenty-five teachers, apparently organized in a chronological order, and some of these sections are further subdivided in accordance with the particular texts or textual cycles studied. It is not just a bare listing of various lineages of transmission, however. Sometimes, Bu ston explicitly signals the translations used in the course of his studies and also makes remarks on other textual details. 219 Judging from the Tibetan sources he cites in the Chos 216 217 218 219 An almost complete survey of this work is now also available on-line from D. Martin's wondrously fecund pen; see his Tiblical. YE, 367. For Sumanaśrī, see also Sgra tshad pa in BU28, 563. Another non-Tibetan with whom he had studied was Vibhūtidāpa, who figures as number 17 of the listing below. He is also mentioned in his biography by Sgra tshad pa, where Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 89, n. 2) suggests that we read "Vibhūtipāda", and thereby provides a basis for identifying him with Vibhūticandra, a prominent member of Śākyaśrī's entourage. However, it is obvious that this cannot be the case for chronological reasons. See, for instance, BU26, 95, where Bu ston comments on the various Guhyasamājatantra exegeses. At BU26, 120, he informs his readers of a rumor that a large commentary on Buddhagupta's Yogāvātara was extant in the eastern part of India. Although Buddhagupta refers to this work in his *Bhoṭasvāmidāsalekha — see The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 293 'byung and elsewhere, we can be certain that this record only itemizes a very incomplete set of texts he had studied. It, too, contains a number of interlinear annotations of unknown origin, and at least two of these were assuredly entered well after Bu ston's death.220 The text lets itself be outlined as follows: 1. Rin po che Khro phu ba 2. Tshul khrims bzang po 3. Bla ma Yang rtse pa Rin chen seng ge 220 2-3 3-8 8-31 a. bde mchog gi skabs b. bde chen ral gcig gi skor rnams 1. chos skor 2. smin par byed pa dbang gi skor 3. bskyed pa'i rim pa'i skor 4. rdzogs rim gyi skor 5. de dag gi bstan srung chos skyong gi skor 6. ral gcig gi yum gyi skor 8-10 10-15 11-15 11 11 12-13 13-14 14-15 c. gshin rje gshed kyi skabs d. phyag na rdo rje gos sngon can gyi skabs e. sgrol ma'i skabs f. phag mo'i skabs g. ngan song sbyong ba'i skabs h. rdo rje rnam 'joms kyi skabs i. tshe dpag med kyi skabs 15-17 17-19 19-20 20-21 21-22 22 22-23 S. Dietz, Die buddhistische Briefliteratur Indiens, Asiatische Forschungen Band 84 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1984), 365, n. 26 — it does not seem to be extant. Apropos of Buddhagupta's lekha, R.A. Stein, "Tibetica Antiqua, I: Les deux vocabulaires des traductions indo-tibétaine et sino-tibétaine dans les manuscripts des Touen-Houang," Bulletin de l'École Française d'extrême orient (1981), 257-8, n. 64, states that: "ce texte doit être <apocryphe> (vers 850 ou après)." He has it in his "Tibetica Antiqua, IV: La tradition relative au début du bouddhisme au Tibet," Bulletin de l'École Française d'extrême orient LXXV (1986), 185, n. 39, that it was written “entre 850 et 1000(?)", and that Bu ston reproduced it in toto in his large work on the Yogatantra literature; see his Rnal 'byor rgyud kyi rgya mtshor 'jug pa'i gru gzings, BU11, 136-8, a work that he completed on the fifteenth day of the month mgo can (= mgo, *mārgaśīrṣa), that is, probably on November 14, 1342. A somewhat annotated version of Buddhagupta's work was also published in the Legs rtsom snying bsdus, ed. Phur kho (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1991), 135-145. Two obvious cases in point are the passages in BU26, 83 and 99, where reference is made, respectively, to an autograph of Bu ston's spiritual son (thugs sras), that is, Sgra tshad pa, and to the passage in Ngor chen's record of teachings received in NGOR, 47/1/2-3. The anonymous author of the latter gloss disagrees with Ngor chen's assessment. 294 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines j. [de rnams] na ro pa'i skabs k. phyag rgya chen po'i skabs l. 'jam dbyangs kyi skabs m. no special entry n. man ngag brgya rtsa 'bring po'i skor o. no special entry 23-24 24 24-25 25-26 26-29 29-31 4. Bla ma Rnam snang pa Yon tan rgya mtsho 31-32 5. Mkhan chen Rin chen seng ge 32 6. Slob dpon chen po Tshad ma'i skyes bu Bsod nams mgon221 a. lung mdo sde'i sde snod skabs b. lung 'dul ba sde snod kyi skabs c. lung ma mo'i skabs te / sde snod gsum gyi skabs d. dbu ma'i skabs e. rigs pa dbu tshad gnyis kyi skabs f. man ngag brgya rtsa'i rnam grangs / man ngag gi skabs 7. Slob dpon Don grub dpal 8. Bla ma Brag ston Bsod nams rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po 9. Mkhan po Bka' bzhi pa Dkon mchog gzhon nu 10. Bla ma 'Jam dbyangs skya bo Nam mkha' dpal 11. Ti shrī chen po Kun dga' blo gros rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po 12. Mkhan chen Bka' bzhi pa Grags pa gzhon nu 13. Mkhan chen Bsod nams grags pa 32-36 36-37 37-38 38 38-39 41-54 54 54-55 55-56 56 56-57 57-58 58-60 a. theg pa thun mong pa bstan pa'i snying po 'dul ba'i skabs b. theg pa chen po mtshan nyid kyi dam pa'i chos kyi snying po'i skabs 58-59 c. theg pa chen po gsang sngags kyi lam nyams su blang ba'i skabs 59-60 14. Mkhan chen Thar pa Lo tsā ba Nyi ma rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po a. dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i skabs b. dgyes rdor gyi skabs c. bde mchog gi skabs d. gdan bzhi'i skabs 221 60-67 60-62 62-63 63-64 64 For some notes on him, see my "Fourteenth Century Tibetan Cultural History VI: The Transmission of Indian Buddhist pramāṇavāda According to Early Tibetan gsan yig-s," Asiatische Studien / Études Asiatiques XLIX (1995), 936-7. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub e. gshin rje gshed kyi skabs f. rdo rje theg pa sngags kyi skabs g. no special entry 15. Bla ma dam pa Dpal ldan seng ge a. lam skor dgu'i skabs b. kye rdo rje'i skabs c. bde mchog gi skabs d. no separate entry 16. Bla ma dam pa Rdo rje rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po 17. Rnal 'byor gyi dbang phyug Vibhutidapa 18. Mkhas btsun Gzhon nu grub 19. Slob dpon Bkra shis bzang po 20. Grub pa brnyes pa'i dbang phyug Mnga' ris pa Sangs rgyas ye shes 21. Dpal ldan bla ma dam pa Kun mkhyen 'Phags pa 'od yon tan rgya mtsho a. dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i skabs222 b. gsang 'dus 'phags lugs kyi skor c. dpal gsang ba 'dus pa [ye shes zhabs kyi lugs] kyi skor d. gshin rje gshed kyi skor / de ltar pha rgyud kyi skor e. bde mchog gi skor f. kye rdo rje'i skabs g. ma rgyud kyi skabs h. sgrol ma'i skabs i. rnal 'byor bla med kyi skor j. yo ga smad lugs kyi skor k. yo ga stod lugs kyi skor l. rnal 'byor rgyud kyi skor m. spyod rgyud kyi skor n. gtsug tor gyi skor o. tshe dpag med kyi skor p. rnam 'joms kyi skor q. rta mgrin gyi skor r. gzungs sna tshogs kyi skor s. mi g.yo ba'i skor t. sgrol ma dang gnas brtan bcu drug gi skor u. sgrub thabs brgya rtsa'i skor v. kha 'bar gtor chen sogs kyi skor 222 This section contains a great deal more besides Kālacakratantra literature. 295 64 64-66 66-67 67-83 67-69 69-70 70-74 74-83 83-85 85 85-86 86 86-87 87-140 87-93 93-100 101 101-102 102-107 107-111 111-114 114-118 118-119 119-123 123-125 125-129 129 129-131 131-132 132-133 133-135 135-137 137 137-138 138 138-139 296 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines w. mdo sna tshogs kyi skor [x. chab gtor di pad ma] 22. Bla ma Ti shrī Kun dga' rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po 23. 'Jam pa'i dbyangs Don yod rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po 24. 'Gro ba'i bla ma Bsod nams rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po 25. Kha che'i paṇḍi ta Sumanaśrī 139 139-140 140 140 140-141 141-142 From this tabulation, we can conclude that his five main teachers were: 1. Thar pa Lo tsā ba Nyi ma rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po 2. Dpal ldan seng ge 3. Yang rtse pa Rin chen seng ge 4. Tshad ma'i skyes bu Bsod nams mgon 5. 'Phags pa 'od yon tan rgya mtsho I cannot go into the details of the doctrinal consequences that are involved with Bu ston's connections with these five men. Needless to say, this is something that will have to be done upon a consideration of his philosophical points of view, both esoteric and exoteric, and an examination of their writings, or fragments thereof, as they may become available. Needless to say, these are not the concern of the present paper. It is perhaps somewhat surprising that Sgra tshad pa's biography of Bu ston, instead of noting 'Phags pa 'od yon tan rgya mtsho by his full name, simply refers to him by his epithet of "Lama 'Phags pa", despite the fact that Bu ston devotes a little less than half of his record to a survey of the teachings he had received from him, and that, as we can infer from this fact, he must have had a profound effect on his spiritual development.223 Maybe "Lama 'Phags pa" was 223 The preliminaries to and his meeting with Bu ston are given in Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 97-9, 109). There are a number of differences between this account and the longer version in 'Gos Lo tsā ba's 'GOS, 370-2 [Roerich 1979: 422-5], from which we can infer that the latter must have working from another source, possibly a study of his life. Actually, a brief synopsis of his life story together with a quasi record of teachings he received is found in Bu ston's history of the Guhyasamāja cycle, in BU9, 83-99. Roerich (1979: 424-5, n. 5), quotes from another work of Bu ston concerning the practice of the Guhyasamāja, namely his undated Rim lnga'i dmar khrid in BU10, 65-6, in which he relates a telling account of 'Phags pa 'od's attitude toward these arcane teachings and something remarkably autobiographical as well. Bu ston does specify, however, that due to the persistent insistence of Bla ma dam pa he finally acquiesced to write these teachings down for him. Unfortunately, the available biographies of Bla ma dam pa do not shed any concrete light on when he might have requested this work from him. DKAR, 219, registers the printing blocks for two of 'Phags pa 'od's writings on Bde mchog/ Cakrasaṃvara that were located in Shab stod Lhun po rtse; these are his The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 297 sufficiently unambiguous to everyone in the fourteenth century and that caused Sgra tshad pa to feel secure in the knowledge that he would not be confounded with 'Phags pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan, who is also on occasion referred to as "Lama 'Phags pa". * Appendix Two Some Handwritten Editions of Bu ston's Collected Writings and Xylographs of Individual Texts Quoting from Ngor chen Kun dga' bzang po's biography by Gu ge Paṇ chen Grags pa rgyal mtshan (1415-86), Seyfort Ruegg notes that Ngor chen had received the authority (lung) for reading an edition of Bu ston's collected writings that "consisted of thirty volumes." The passage in question reads:224 …sgra'i ṭik chen ma gtogs chos rje bu ston gyi bka' 'bum pu sti sum cu tsam gyi lung yongs su rdzogs par gsan no // …from Bkra shis rin chen he heard at the age of circa twenty-seven the entire textual transmission of some thirty volumes of Chos rje Bu ston's collected writings with the exception of the grand commentary on Sanskrit grammar. The "grand commentary" (sgra'i ṭik chen) is most certainly Bu ston's extensive exegesis of Durgasiṃha's Kātantravṛtti that he may have completed around the mid 1340s.225 In the concluding remarks, Bu ston gives a poignant indication of the social and political realities of the times in which he wrote this work, that is, of a Tibet that was still under Mongol occupation. He apologizes for any problems that his learned colleagues may encounter in his work and, asking for forbearance, writes that these are owed to his own feeble intellect and the feelings of insecurity and unrest that were caused by "the Mongol harm" (hor gyi gnod pas). It is curious that this transmission is not registered in the entries of Ngor chen's own record of the teachings that he had received from 224 225 Bde mchog lha drug cu rtsa gnyis kyi sgrub thabs 'dod 'jo and the Dkyil 'khor du dbang bskur ba'i cho ga 'dod 'jo. It is not known whether they are still extant. Seyfort Ruegg (1966: 41-2, n. 3). BU25; see also P.C. Verhagen, A History of Sanskrit Grammatical Literature in Tibet, Volume Two. Assimilation into Indigenous Scholarship (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 81-9. 298 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines Bkra shis rin chen.226 Ngor chen's biography stipulates that Bkra shis rin chen was a master affiliated with Zhwa lu, but does not indicate where he had studied with him.227 Describing Ngor Evaṃ chos ldan monastery, Kaḥ thog Si tu writes in his travelog that its Thar rtse Bla brang had an edition of Bu ston's collected oeuvre in an unspecfied number of volumes.228 Kaḥ thog Si tu visited Ngor monastery towards the end of 1919, making it perhaps unlikely that this collection would refer to the Lhasa xylograph of Bu ston's oeuvre. Moreover, A mes zhabs states in his biography of Mus chen Sangs rgyas rgyal mtshan (1542-1618) that Shar chen Ye shes rgyal mtshan (?-1406)229 had also "erected" (bzhengs) an edition of Bu ston's oeuvre in an unspecified number of volumes.230 Like the vast majority of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, Ngor monastery was reduced to rubble during the "Cultural Revolution" and her treasures and artifacts are irretrievably lost if they were not pilfered by one or other Chinese or Tibetan Red Guard to end up in a private collection of a PRC art collector or in the art market of Hong Kong. There also existed other early editions of his complete writings in Stag lung monastery and, presumably, in Dpal 'khor chos sde in Rgyal mkhar rtse. The former was apparently executed at the behest of Stag lung Lo tsā ba Shākya bzang po (1322-1404), who himself had been a disciple of Bu ston.231 The latter was prepared in 1432 by Nang chen Rab 'byor bzang po, the younger half-brother of Rgyal mkhar rtse's governor Si tu Rab brtan kun bzang 'phags (1389-1442), and was probably motivated by the fact that he was a collateral nephew of Grub chen Kun dga' blo gros who, as we have seen, was after all considered to be a re-embodiment of Bu ston himself.232 Fi- 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 NGOR, 102/3-107/4. See the Rdo rje 'chang kun dga' bzang po'i rnam par thar pa legs bshad chu bo 'dus pa'i rgya mtsho, Sa skya Lam 'bras Literature Series, vol. 1 (Dehra Dun, 1983), 507. An Account of a Pilgrimage to Central Tibet During the Years 1918-1920, 427 [Kaḥ thog si tu'i dbus gtsang gnas yig, 310]. Shar chen was of course also one of Ngor chen's main teachers as indicated in NGOR, 45/3-65/4. See his Mkhyen brtse nus pa'i mnga bdag rgyal ba sras dang slob mar bcas pa'i spyi gzugs dam pa dus gsum sgrib med du gzigs pa'i rje btsun mus pa chen po sangs rgyas rgyal mtshan gyi rnam par thar pa byin rlabs kyi char 'bebs ngo mtshar sarga gsum pa (Dehra Dun: Sakya Centre, 1974), 491. As registered in Stag lung pa Ngag dbang rnam rgyal (1571-1626), Chos 'byung ngo mtshar rgya mtsho, vol. 1 (Tashijong, 1972), 484 [= ed. Thar gling Byams pa tshe ring, Gangs can rig mdzod, vol. 22 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1992), 343]. Bu ston officiated as "abbot" during his ordination in 1345. Wrongly attributed to Bo dong Paṇ chen, see Si tu's biography in Dharma rā dza'i rnam thar dad pa'i lo thog rgyas byed dngos grub kyi char 'bebs (Dharamsala: Library The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 299 nally, as related by Rin chen dpal in his biography of Rin chen phun tshogs chos kyi rgyal po (1509-57), this seventeenth abbot of 'Bri gung monastery consecrated (rab gnas) a ?new manuscript edition of Bu ston's collected writings.233 Four catalogs of the Lhasa xylograph of Bu ston's collected writings have been published to date. The first two are the comprehensive, albeit not always accurate, ones that were published by Kanakura and De Rossi Filibeck, to which I have already had occasion to refer severally.234 The third is the bare listing compiled by a consortium of Tibetan scholars, which is useful for quick reference and the fourth is provided in Stein's translation of a portion of the Chos 'byung.235 In addition, we now have in all five indigenous catalogs for various "editions" of his oeuvre: one by Bu ston himself, two by Sgra tshad pa, and one each by Ye shes rgyal mtshan and the Klong rdol Lama. I. The Catalog of Bu ston236 This catalog of his oeuvre, the first of its kind, was very probably compiled not long before he passed away, although there is sufficient evidence that the text, as we have it now, did not flow from Bu ston's pen alone. It is not registered in his biographies and is oddly incomplete. In addition, inasmuch as Bu ston fails to record the number of volumes, it may also not be based on an actual autograph edition of his collected oeuvre. The catalog commences with his Chos 'byung and, oddly, two catalogs of the Tanjur, the first of which is the one that was undoubtedly compiled by Bu ston himself. The second, however, is subtitled Yid bzhin gyi nor bu'i za ma tog, which therefore very much resembles the title of the one that was wrongly attributed to Sgra tshad pa.237 At the end of the text, there are two notes on the lack of comprehensiveness of the included items, the first one of which was most likely written by Bu ston himself. Even though no 233 234 235 236 237 of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1978), 461-2 [= Rab brtan kun bzang 'phags kyi rnam thar (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1987), 227]. Rin chen dpal, Rje btsun rin chen phun tshogs kyi rnam thar smad cha dad pa'i gdung ba sel byed (Bir: The Bir Tibetan Society, 1985), 286. Kanakura (1953: 1-78) and De Rossi Filibeck (1994: 15-46). See, respectively, the "Bu ston Lo tsā ba Rin chen grub kyi gsung 'bum dkar chag," Bod ljongs zhib 'jug 1 (1983), 122-36, and Stein (2013: 397-410) where the titles are translated into English. It should be reiterated that Stein's English renditions of these do not always meet with agreeable success. BU26, 645-56. BU28, 343-574. For this catalog, see my "Fourteenth Century Tibetan Cultural History 1: Ta'i si tu Byang chub rgyal mtshan as a Man of Religion," Indo-Iranian Journal 37 (1994), 139-49. 300 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines reasons are given for it, it observes that the following texts were not included in the present catalog (da dkar chag la ma thebs pa la): 1. Dpal gsang 'dus rdzogs rim rim lnga'i dmar khrid kyi man ngag yid bzhin nor bu rin po che'i za ma tog 2. Gdan bzhi'i stang stabs bco brgyad 3. Nag po pa la dgos pa'i zin bris 4. Dpal mchog gi rdo rje sgrub pa 5. Sems nyid ngal bso'i [read: gso'i]rtsa ba tshigs bcad re re'i steng du rgyud sde'i lung sbyar ba But no reasons for their absence are given. Evidently not written by Bu ston himself, the second note and the last passage of the catalog adds additional literary pieces that were not included in the catalog. II. The Catalogs of Sgra tshad pa A. Catalog One238 This catalog bears the title Bka' 'bum gyi dkar chag rin chen lde mig — rin chen is a possible allusion to Bu ston's name —, and is dated to the fifteenth day of the final spring lunar month, that is, probably May 22, 1364; its scribe was a certain Dpal [m]chog don grub. It was therefore compiled shortly before Bu ston's passing, which took place on July 1 of that year, and may predate Bu ston's own catalog. The edition of his writings on which this work is based evidently comprised twenty-seven volumes, since the volumes are "numbered" from Ka to Sha. B. Catalog Two239 This work has virtually the very same arrangement of texts found in Bu ston's own catalog. However, not only is this listing more complete, but it also departs several times from the titles found in it. Unlike Sgra tshad pa's other catalog, this one is undated, has no distinguishing marks that would otherwise allow for an approximate dating, and does not furnish any indication of the number of volumes. At the very outset it includes the Sbyor ba brgya pa'i mchan bu in the rubric of "medicine" (gso ba rig pa), which is omitted in the main body 238 239 BU28, 319-32. See BU28, 333-41. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 301 of Bu ston's catalog. Nothing in either catalog suggests that these were based on editions of Bu ston's oeuvre that Sgra tshad pa himself had compiled or had caused to have prepared. His biography by his disciple So ston does mention a set of thirty-three volumes, and it appears that this is the same collection concerning which So ston states that it was a reliable [and critical] edition of the texts, and that its editors (zhu dag pa) were scholars.240 After its consecration, which was accompanied by many wondrous signs, the collection was placed in Bu ston's private quarters (gzim khang) in Ri phug. This would possibly be the very same edition mentioned by Mang thos and Stag sgang Ngag dbang blo gros, alias Gu ru Bkra shis, who, too, refers to a thirty-three volume edition in his enormous history of the Rnying ma school written between 1807 and 1813.241 240 241 See Thugs sras lo tstsha ba chen po rin chen rnam par rgyal ba'i rnam par thar pa, 37a [= Ibid., 441]. See, respectively, MANG, 177, and Bstan pa'i snying po gsang chen snga 'gyur nges don zab mo'i chos kyi 'byung ba gsal bar byed pa'i legs bshad mkhas pa dga' byed ngo mtshar gtam gyi rol mtsho, vol. 4 (Paro, 1979), 444 [= Gu bkra'i chos 'byung, ed. Rdo rje rgyal po (Beijing: Krung go'i bod kyi shes rig dpe skrun khang, 1990), 973; Rnying ma'i chos 'byung, ed. O rgyan chos phel, vol. 2 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1992), 745] where, however, no indication is given concerning the whereabouts of this set. We should mention here that O rgyan chos phel wrongly identified the author of this work as Nyi sprul drug pa Thub bstan 'od gsal bstan pa'i nyi ma, alias O rgyan mchog grub; the "Nyi" in nyi sprul drug pa, the "sixth re-embodiment of Nyi" refers here to Gter ston chen po Nyi ma grags pa (1647-1710). This man was responsible for writing the verses at the occasion of Thub bstan ngag dbang rnam rgyal and Grub chen Zla ba rdo rje bzang po committing the text to the printing blocks from 1923 to 1931. We might add that the texts of Rdo rje rgyal po and O rgyan chos phel are explicitly based on this xylograph edition from Sring rdzong 'od gsal sgrub sde. As signalled in Martin, "A Brief Political History of Tibet by Gu ru Bkra shis," 330, two of Gu ru bkra shis' masters were Padma theg mchog bstan pa'i rgyal mtshan (1712-?), a reembodiment of Gter ston Nyi ma grags pa, and Rdzogs chen Dbon Rin po che. The latter may be identified as Dbon 'Gyur med padma kun grol rnam rgyal (1706-73/4), who was born in the "nephew-line" (dbon brgyud) of Grub dbang Nam mkha' 'od gsal. As is registered in vol. 4, 463 [= ed. Rdo rje rgyal po, 981; O rgyan chos phel, 759], another one of Gu ru Bkra shis' masters was Tshe dbang kun khyab, who must be identified as 'Be Lo Karma Tshe dbang kun khyab, alias Zur mang Tshe dbang kun khyab, one of Si tu Paṇ chen Chos kyi 'byung gnas' (1699/1700-74) more illustrious disciples. 302 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines III. The Catalog of Yongs 'dzin Ye shes rgyal mtshan242 Like Sgra tshad pa's first catalog, Ye shes rgyal mtshan's catalog is also based on a manuscript "edition" of Bu ston's writings in twenty-seven volumes that was housed in Bkra shis bsam gtan gling, the main monastery in Skyid grong, which he himself had founded in 1756.243 It is to his credit that he had the foresight to include the number of folios of each text — this may facilitate the precise identification of one of the many sets of handwritten manuscripts editions of Bu ston's collected oeuvre in the C.P.N. —, and he notes that the manuscript copy of the Chos 'byung consisted of 190 folios, meaning that that it was written on somewhat oversized paper with probably more than the usual number of lines per folio. Of particular interest is his survey of several different collections of Bu ston's writings appended to the actual catalog itself. He writes:244 thams cad mkhyen pa bu ston rin po che'i gsung rtsom 'di rnams la glegs bam gyi grangs sna tshogs snang ste / bu ston thams cad mkhyen pa rang nyid kyis sku tshe de la bstan pa la bya ba mdzad phyir dpyad pa gsum gyis rnam par dag pa'i gsung rtsom 'di ltar yod kyi dkar chag cig zhing gshegs khar mdzad pa'dug kyang / de la glegs bam gyi grangs 'di tsam byed ma gsungs / thugs sras zha lu'i gdan sa pa dang / sbyin bdag chen mo sku zhang yon mchod rnams kyis gsung rtsom gang yod khyon gcig tu bsdoms pa la glegs bam nyi shu rtsa drug tu byas / zang 242 243 244 See YE, 352-75. The biography of Ye shes rgyal mtshan by Dalai Lama VIII 'Jam dpal rgya mtsho (1758-1804) does not register it in the entries for the year 1779; see the Dpal ldan bla ma dam pa rigs dang dkyil 'khor rgya mtsho'i mnga' bdag 'drin gsum ldan yongs 'dzin paṇ ḍi ta chen po rje btsun ye shes rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po'i sku gsung thugs kyi rtogs par brjod pa thub bstan padmo 'byed pa'i nyin byed (New Delhi, 1969), 189-92. For a sketch of Ye shes rgyal mtshan's life, the foundation of this monastery and its archive, see D. Schuh, Das Archiv des Klosters bKra-šis-bsam-gtan-gliṅ von sKyid-groṅ, 1. Teil, Urkunden zur Klosterordunung, grundlegenede Rechtsdokumente und demographisch bedeutsame Dokumente, Findbücher, Monumenta Tibetica Historica, Abteilung III, Band 6 (Bonn: VGH Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH, 1988), 17-29. For the history of Bkra shis bsam gtan gling as such, Schuh used the notes in his biography by his disciple Dalai Lama VIII, but not Ye shes rgyal mtshan's own chronicle of the monastery, which he wrote in 1768; for the latter, see the Bkra shis bsam gtan gling gi bka' bstan rin po che'i dkar chag thub bstan gsal byed, Collected Works, vol. 16 (New Delhi: The Tibet House, 1974), 504-25. That said, through his incisive and unprecedented study of the relevant Tibetan archival material, Schuh was able to assess much of this monastery's social history and at the same time shed light on important aspects of Tibetan demographic history. YE, 368. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 303 zang ne ring gi gtsug lag khang na bu ston thams cad mkhyen pa'i gsung gang yod tshar gcig bzhugs pa la pod rer shog grangs sum brgya re byas pa'i glegs bam sum cu bzhugs / bkra shis bsam gtan gling du bu ston rin po che'i gsung rtsom gang yod tshar gcig bzhugs pa 'di la pod re la shog bu mda' tshad ma lnga brgya re byas pa'i glegs bam nyi shu rtsa gnyis bzhugs / Thus, it appears that at least three different sets in various numbers of volumes were extant in Gtsang, the first of which was the one in Zhwa lu in twenty-six (?sic) volumes that had been compiled by Sgra tshad pa under the patronage of Zhwa lu myriarchy's ruler, Sku zhang Kun dga' don grub. The temple of Zang zang Ne ring also had one in thirty volumes with each volume comprising 300 folios245 and a third set in twenty-two volumes with 500 folios per volume was housed in Bkra shis bsam gtan gling. IV. The Catalog of the Klong rdol Lama246 Klong rdol Lama lists a collection of Bu ston's oeuvre in seventeen volumes that was housed at Zhwa lu monastery, whereby the first 245 246 This place may perhaps be identified as the monastery of Ne rings founded by Bde legs rgyal mtshan (1215-81) in 1259; see 'GOS, 600 [Roerich 1979: 688]. Klong rdol Lama's biography was written by Rta tshag Rje drung Ye shes blo bzang bstan pa'i mgon po (?-1810); see the Rje btsun bla ma dam pa kun spangs sems dpa' chen po grub pa'i dbang phyug ngag dbang blo bzang dpal bzang po'i rnam thar mos gus rin chen 'dren pa'i shing rta rgyal sras spyod pa'i rgyan (New Delhi, 1970). It was penned over a period of two years, from 1795 to 1797, and the author held the title of "Regent" from 1791 to 1810, for which see L. Petech, "The Dalai-lamas and regents of Tibet: a chronological study," Selected Papers on Asian History, Serie Orientale Roma LX (Roma: Istituto Italiano Per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1988), 139-40. The only occasions where the Chos 'byung is registered in the biography are on pp. 42 and 134. In the first entry, we read that the young Klong rdol Lama had studied it with 'Jam dpal chos mchog of Ri phug — he is probably the same as 'Jam mgon Dpal ldan chos mchog who figures briefly in ZHWA, 433-4 — at the age of thirty; the second one has it that he once again read this work at an advanced age under 'Jam dbyangs bzhad pa'i rdo rje II Dkon mchog 'jigs med dbang po (1728-91) in 1785 in the course of one of the latter's trips to Central Tibet from his see of Bkra shis 'khyil in Amdo. This meeting is also noted in the biography of Dkon mchog 'jigs med dbang po for which, see Gung thang Dkon mchog bstan pa'i sgron me's (1762-1823) Dus gsum rgyal ba'i spyi gzugs rje btsun dkon mchog 'jigs med dbang po'i zhal snga nas kyi rnam par thar pa rgyal sras rgya mtsho'i 'jug ngogs, The Collected Works of Dkon mchog 'jigs med dbang po, vol. 1 (New Delhi, 1971) 365, 374, 407. The Klong rdol Lama's catalog of Bu ston's collected works is not mentioned in the biography per se, although it does refer to the larger catalog in which it is listed on pp.193 ff. 304 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines volume consists of his Chos 'byung and his catalog of translated scripture, which the Klong rdol Lama lists as a separate treatise with the title Bod du bka' dang bstan bcos 'gyur ro cog gi dkar chag chen mo.247 Pace the regretted J. Szerb, the Klong rdol Lama's phrase "complete oeuvre” (gsung 'bum tshang ma) does of course not necessarily indicate that he was describing a printed edition of Bu ston's collected works.248 Lastly, with the exception of the Sde dge printing blocks indicated above in n. 109, I should like to draw attention to a select number of additional printing blocks for some of Bu ston’s writings that were or are, whatever may presently be the case, available in a variety of different places. The following list, admittedly most likely desperately incomplete, may serve to form an initial idea of the "sociology" and geographical distribution of those parts of his oeuvre. 1. Rgyud sde spyi'i rnam bzhag bsdus pa, 108 folios, located in A mchog Dga' ldan chos 'khor gling, Amdo.249 2. Phar phyin gyi 'grel pa lung gi snye ma, 501 folios, the next two are located in Bde chen lhun grub gling, Aginsk.250 3. Las brgya rtsa gcig gi rnam bshad cho ga'i gsal byed, ?180 folios. 4. Dus 'khor bshad thabs yan lag nges pa'i don gyi snye ma, 77 folios, located in Sne'u gdong rtse tshogs.251 5. Dus 'khor chos 'byung, 48 folios, the next six are located in Zhwa lu.252 6. Bde mchog chos 'byung, 52 folios. 7. Dus 'khor mngon rtogs, 27 folios. 8. Phyag rdor 'chi bdag 'joms pa'i dkyil 'khor cho ga, 23 folios. 9. 'Dul ba'i 'grel pa, 252 folios. 10. 'Dul ba'i las chog gi 'grel pa 102 folios. 11. Las chog, 97 folios, located in Bkra shis lhun po.253 12. De bzhin gshegs pa'i snying po'i rgyan, 74 folios, located in 'Bras spungs.254  247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 KLONG, 1289 [= MHTL, no.136174]. Szerb (1990: XIV, n. 24). Meisezahl, "Der Katalog der Klosterdruckerei A mchog dga' ldan chos 'khor gling in Ch'ing hai (Nordwest-China)," 316, 327, no.115; see BU14, 843-1013. G. Bethlenfalvy, "A Tibetan Catalogue of the Blocks of the Lamaist Printing House in Aginsk," Acta Orientalia Hungarica XXV (1972), 59, no.125, 60, no.175; see, respectively, BU18, and BU21, 731-980. DKAR, 210; BU18, DKAR, 219; BU18, DKAR, 224; BU21, 731-980. Eimer (1992-3: 30, no. 246); BU20, 1-78. The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 305 Bibliographical Abbreviations BU Bu ston Rin chen grub. The Collected Works of Bu ston [and Sgra tshad pa] (Lhasa xylograph). 1965-71. Parts 1-28. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture. BU24 Ibid. [Bde bar gshegs pa'i bstan pa'i gsal byed]Chos kyi 'byung gnas gsung rab rin po che'i mdzod. Pp. 633-1056. BUm Ibid. [Bde bar gshegs pa'i bstan pa'i gsal byed] Chos kyi 'byung gnas gsung rab rin po che'i mdzod. 2011. Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs. Ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib 'jug khang. Vol. Ti [= 39]. Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang. dbu med manuscript. tbrc.org W1PD45496. Pp. 853-1042. BUx Ibid. Bu ston chos 'byung [allegedly based on the Sde dge xylograph]. 1988. Ed. Rdo rje rgyal po. Beijing: Krung go'i bod kyi rig shes dpe skrun khang. BUzh Ibid., Zhwa lu xylograph. Fols. 190. BYA Bya btang Padma gar dbang. Zab chos sbas pa mig 'byed kyi chos bskor las pan che sha wa dbang phyug gi snyan rgyud rdo rje sum gyi bla ma rgyud pa'i rnam thar dad pa'i rnga chen. dbu chen manuscript. Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project Reel no. L 451/6; Running no. L 4703, fols. ?. DKAR Gangs can gyi ljongs su bka' dang bstan bcos sogs kyi glegs bam spar gzhi ji ltar yod pa rnam nas dkar chag spar thor phyogs tsam du bkod pa phan bde'i pad tshal 'byed pa'i nyin byed. 1970. Three Karchacks. New Delhi. 169-243. DPA' Dpa' bo Gtsug lag phreng ba. 1986. Chos 'byung mkhas pa'i dga' ston. 2 vols. Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang. DPA'1, 2 Ibid. Xylograph. 1980. 2 vols. New Delhi. 'GOS 'Gos Lo tsā ba Gzhon nu dpal. 1976. Deb gter sngon po/The Blue Annals. Repr. L. Chandra. New Delhi: In- 306 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines ternational Academy of Indian Culture. KLONG Klong rdol bla ma Ngag dbang blo bzang. 1973. Bka' gdams pa dang dge lugs bla ma rag[s] rim gyi gsung 'bum mtshan tho. Collected Works of Longdol Lama. Part 2. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture. Pp. 1289-96. MANG Mang thos Klu sgrub rgya mtsho. 1987. Ed. Nor brang O rgyan. Bstan rtsis gsal ba'i nyin byed. Gangs can rig mdzod 4. Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi rigs dpe skrun khang. Pp. 29-280. MHTL Materials for a History of Tibetan Literature. 1963. Ed. L. Chandra. Part 3. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture. NGOR Ngor chen Kun dga' bzang po. 1968. Thob yig rgya mtsho. SSBB9, no. 36. 44/4-108/2. SKYO Skyo ston Smon lam tshul khrims. Mchims nams mkha' grags pa'i rnam thar. dbu chen manuscript. tbrc.org W2CZ7888. Folios 50. SSBB Sa skya pa'i bka' 'bum. 1968-69. Vols. 1-15. Comp. Bsod nams rgya mtsho. Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko. TSHAL Tshal pa Kun dga' rdo rje. 1981. Deb ther dmar po. Ed. and ann. Dung dkar Blo bzang 'phrin las. Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang. TSHAL1 Ibid. Deb ther dmar po. 1961. Gangtok: Namgyal Institute of Tibetology. YAR Yar lung Jo bo Shākya rin chen sde. 1988. Yar lung jo bo'i chos 'byung. Ed. Dbyangs can [lha mo]. Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang. YAR1 Ibid. 1988. Yar lung chos 'byung. Ed. Ngag dbang. Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang. YE Yongs 'dzin Ye shes rgyal mtshan. 1975. Thams cad mkhyen pa bu ston rin chen grub kyi gsung 'bum gyi dkar chag bstan pa rin po che'i mdzes rgyan phul byung gser gyi The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub 307 phreng ba. Collected Works. Vol. 5. New Delhi. Pp. 262-375. ZHWA Ri phug Sprul sku Blo gsal bstan skyong. 1971. Dpal ldan zhwa lu pa'i bstan pa la bka' drin che ba'i skyes bu dam pa rnams kyi rnam thar lo rgyus ngo mtshar dad pa'i 'jug ngogs [History of Zhwa lu]. Leh. Other References Eimer, H. 1992-3. "Der Katalog des Großen Druckhauses von 'Bras spungs aus dem Jahre 1920." Studies in Central & East Asian Religions 5/6, 1-44. Guo Heqing, tr. 1986. Fojiaoshi dabaozang lun. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe. Kanakura, Yensho et al. 1953. A Catalog of the Tohuko University Collection of Tibetan Works on Buddhism, vol. II. Sendai. van der Kuijp, L.W.J. 1994. "The Lives of Śākyaśrībhadra (?-?1225)." Journal of the American Oriental Society 114, 599-616. Obermiller, E., tr. 1931-1932. History of Buddhism (Chos ḥbyung) by Bu ston. Parts I and II. Heidelberg: H. Winter Verlag. Pu, Wencheng, tr. 2007. Budun fojiao shi. Lanzhou: Gansu minzu chubanshe. Roerich, G. tr. 1979. The Blue Annals. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. De Rossi Filibeck, E. 1994. Catalog of the Tucci Tibetan Fund in the Library of IsMEO. Vol. 1. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. Schuh, D. 1981. Tibetische Handschriften und Blockdrucke (Sammlung Waddell der Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz). Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland. Band XI.8. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. Seyfort Ruegg, D. tr. 1966. The life of Bu ston Rin po che. With the Tibetan Text of the Bu ston rnam thar. Serie Orientale Roma 308 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines XXXIV. Roma: Istituto Italiano Per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. Stein, L., tr. 2013. [with Ngawang Zangpo]. Butön's History of Buddhism in India and Its Spread in Tibet. A Treasury of Priceless Scripture. Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications. Szerb, J., ed. 1990. Bu ston's History of Buddhism in Tibet. Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgechichte Asiens. Nr. 5. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Vostrikov, A. 1970. Tibetan Historical Literature. Tr. H.C. Gupta. Indian Studies Past and Present. Soviet Indology Series No.4. Calcutta. Yamaguchi, Zuihō. 1970. Catalog of the Toyo Bunko Collection of Tibetan Works on History. Classified Catalog of the Toyo Bunko Collection of Tibetan Works. Vol. 1. Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko. 

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"The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub and the Date and Sources of His Chos 'byung, a Chronicle of Buddhism in India and Tibet," Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines 35 (2016), 203-308

"The Lives of Bu ston Rin chen grub and the Date and Sources of His Chos 'byung, a Chronicle of Buddhism in India and Tibet," Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines 35 (2016), 203-308

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