On the Composition and Printings
of the Deb gter sngon po
by ’Gos lo tsā ba gzhon nu dpal (1392-1481)1
Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp
Harvard University
Abstract: The present article seeks to place the famous Deb gter sngon po in the
context of fifteenth-century Tibetan intellectual history and the life of ’Gos lo tsā
ba, to whom it is attributed. The text as we have it was certainly not completed by
the time the latter passed away (1481). The article discusses some of its noteworthy
curiosities, including its chronologies and the place of the colophons, and also
gently suggests that it was likely compiled by ’Gos lo tsā ba’s disciples, albeit with
some oversight by their master.
When G. N. Roerich (1902-60) published his English translation of the Deb gter
sngon po in Calcutta in 1949, ’Gos lo tsā ba gzhon nu dpal’s (1392-1481) large
chronicle became an instant classic and an indispensable source for every student
of pre-sixteenth-century Tibetan Buddhism. A recent paper by Benjamin Bogin
and Hubert Decleer argued for the interesting hypothesis that this translation was
in fact co-authored by the ill-fated Dge ’dun chos ’phel (1903-52), who figures
only sporadically in the body of the translation and in the footnotes as Roerich’s
informant.2 Bogin and Decleer thus alleged that Dge ’dun chos ’phel’s “Sad Song”
1
This paper incorporates some of the bibliographical results obtained during my stay in Beijing from
October to December of 1992 and from July to September of 1993, made possible by a generous grant
from what was then the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic of China,
Washington, D.C. There I mainly worked in the China Nationalities Library of the Cultural Palace of
Nationalities. The manuscripts of texts used for this paper housed in this library are marked “C.P.N.”
I should hereby like to thank the anonymous referee for his or her remarks and corrections, especially
for the passage referred to in note 42, which I had overlooked.
2
“Who Was This ‘Evil Friend’ (‘the Dog,’ ‘the Fool,’ ‘the Tyrant’) in Gedün Chöphel’s Sad Song?,”
The Tibet Journal 22 (1997): 67-78. Also titled “Remembering Impermanence,” this “Sad Song” can
be found in Dge ’dun chos ’phel, Dge ’dun chos ’phel gyi gsung rtsom, ed. Hor khang bsod nams dpal
’bar, et al. (Lha sa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1990), 2:395-99. A French translation
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 2 (August 2006): 1-46.
www.thdl.org?id=T2714.
1550-6363/2006//T2714.
© 2006 by Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp, Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, and International Association of
Tibetan Studies. Distributed under the THDL Digital Text License.
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
2
was prompted by his feeling that, lead by ambition and arrogance, Roerich had
wronged him and had made him false promises. Whatever may have been the case,
Roerich does thank both Dge ’dun chos ’phel and Blo bzang mi ’gyur rdo rje in
his introduction, the former for his “very helpful guidance” while discussing “the
entire translation,” the latter for having traced “several quotations” in the canonical
literature.3 The introduction itself is dated 1946. Though the “Sad Song” analyzed
by Bogin and Decleer bears no date, it was written in Bengal, where Dge ’dun
chos ’phel was active in the mid-1940s. Of the more recent spate of full-fledged
Dge ’dun chos ’phel biographies by Rdo rje rgyal and the one jointly written by
Tshe ring dbang rgyal and Lcang zhabs pa ’gyur med tshe dbang, as well as Hor
gtsang ’jigs med’s study of aspects of his life,4 only the one authored by Du Yongbin
sheds some light on the context in which it might be placed, let alone understood,
although he does not stray far from Heather Stoddard’s earlier remarks.5
Aside from this English version, there is now also a Chinese translation of the
Deb gter sngon po. Its author, Guo Heqing, apparently completed his work without
relying on Roerich’s earlier rendition and under very trying circumstances.
Published only in 1985, when Guo was already well advanced in age, it
understandably suffers from a variety of problems and is not always reliable.6
Lastly, E. Gene Smith informed me that, though now sadly lost, he once owned a
microfilm of an extensively annotated copy of the Deb gter sngon po that had
belonged to the well-known savant Rig ’dzin tshe dbang nor bu (1698-1755). The
original manuscript is also no longer extant, as it perished in a fire after the
microfilm was made. A notice on some passages of the text with Rig ’dzin’s notes
of the poem is contained in H. Stoddard, Le mendiant de l’Amdo (Paris: Société d’Ethnologie, 1981),
198-200. An English version of a much revised text of Stoddard’s book will be published by Columbia
University Press.
3
G. Roerich, trans., The Blue Annals (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1979), xxi.
4
“’Dzam gling rig pa’i dpa’ bo rdo brag dge ’dun chos ’phel gyi byung ba brjod pa bden gtam rna
ba’i bcud len,” in Dge ’dun chos ’phel (Lanzhou: Kan su’u mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1997), 1-152; Dge
’dun chos ’phel (Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1999); and Drang bden gyis bslus pa’i
slong mo ba/ mdo smad pa dge ’dun chos ’phel gyi mi tshe dpyad brjod (Dharamsala: Youtse Publication,
1999). For other recent work on him, see T. Huber, “Colonial Archeology, International Missionary
Buddhism and the First Example of Modern Tibetan Literature,” Bauddhavidyāsudhākaraḥ: Studies
in Honur of Heinz Bechert on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. P. Kieffer-Pültz and J.-U. Hartmann,
Indica et Tibetica 30 (Swisttal-Odendorf: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 1997), 297-318, and I. Mengele,
Dge ’dun chos ’phel: A Biography of the 20th-Century Tibetan Scholar (Dharmasala: Library of Tibetan
Works and Archives, 1999). See further D. S. Lopez Jr., The Madman’s Middle Way: Reflections on
Reality of the Tibetan Monk Gendun Chopel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Lastly, a
collection of Chinese translations of some of his work is found in Gengdun qunpei wenji jingyao, trans.
Gesang qupi, ed. Zhou Jiwen (Beijing: Zhongguo zangxue chubanshe, 1996).
5
6
See his large Ershi shiji xizang qiseng (Beijing: Zhongguo zangxue chubanshe, 1999), 117-18.
See the poignant afterword in Guo Heqing, trans., Qingshi (Lha sa: Xizang renmin chubanshe,
1985), 717-18. Of interest is that Guo Heqing followed the Tibetan custom of adding a translator’s
colophon (’gyur byang) to his rendition, see Guo, Qingshi, 713.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
3
that are doubtlessly related to what we might have encountered in this manuscript
are found in an edition of his collected writings.7
Because the printing blocks for ’Gos lo tsā ba’s chronicle were first carved as
early as the 1480s, which enabled it to circulate more widely than if it had been
available only in handwritten copies alone, the Deb gter sngon po has done much
to shape how later generations of Tibetan and, ultimately, non-Tibetan scholars
have come to understand the development of Tibetan intellectual and religious
history from roughly the eleventh to the fifteenth century. And it continues to exert
this influence in the present day. A closer reading of this influential work, which
the aged ’Gos lo tsā ba may have begun in 1476, and its concluding portions reveals
the existence of a number of hitherto unnoticed peculiarities that warrant our
attention. This is not all. Other sources used for this paper, most importantly Zhwa
dmar IV Chos grags ye shes’s (1453-1524) retrospective of his master’s life that
was written in 1517, illuminate a number of other features surrounding its
composition that were previously thought to be unproblematic. Based in [?large]
part on Smon lam grags pa’s earlier biography of ’Gos lo tsā ba – he was one of
the master’s senior disciples and scribes – Zhwa dmar IV’s biographical study falls
into two distinct sections. The first is a very succinct survey of ’Gos lo tsā ba’s
life. The second revisits and highlights some of the events in his life noted earlier
by adding some interesting anecdotes and other information.8
Text-internal evidence in the form of a number of relative chronologies ’Gos
lo tsā ba calculated by taking the fire-male-monkey (me pho spre’u) year as his
point of departure makes it clear that he was at least working on several of the Deb
gter sngon po’s many sections (skabs) in what more or less corresponds to the year
1476 or, more precisely, to the period extending from January 27, 1476 to January
15/16, 1477.9 Given that he was plagued by ill-health and suffered from ocular
ailments – due to failing eyesight, he was during this time unable to finish his
translation of what is allegedly Sthiramati’s pañjikā-style Tattvārtha commentary
on Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya10 – it is extremely unlikely that he
7
Kaḥ thog Tshe-dbaṅ-nor-bu, 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, in The Collected Works (gsuṅ ’bum) of Kaḥ-thog
Rig-’dzin Chen-po Tshe-dbaṅ-nor-bu (Dalhousie, H.P.: Damchoe Sangpo 1973), 4:539-52.
8
The first ends and the second begins on 47b of Zhwa dmar IV, Dpal ldan bla ma dam pa mkhan
chen thams cad mkhyen pa don gyi slad du mtshan nas smos te gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam par thar pa
yon tan rin po che mchog tu rgyas pa’i ljon pa (ms., n.d.) [112 of Zhwa dmar IV, Dpal ldan bla ma
dam pa mkhan chen thams cad mkhyen pa don gyi slad du mtshan nas smos te gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam
par thar pa yon tan rin po che mchog tu rgyas pa’i ljon pa, edited by Ngag dbang nor bu (Beijing: Mi
rigs dpe skrun khang, 2004)]. For Zhwa dmar IV himself, see now F.-K. Ehrhard, Life and Travels of
Lo-chen Bsod-nams rgya-mtsho (Lumbini: Lumbini International Resarch Institute, 2002), 11-31.
9
Roerich, Blue Annals, 59, 67, 92, etc. The precise dates in this essay are calculated using 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).
10
For further details, see my “The Names of ’Gos Lo tsā ba Gzhon nu dpal (1392-1481),” published
in the E. Gene Smith Festschriftt, ed. R. Prats, on a CD. This will turn into a volume that is to be
published by the Amnye Machen Institute, India. A [?complete] Sanskrit palmleaf manuscript of the
Tattvārtha in one hundred and thirty-seven leaves seems to be extant and is registered in the Zhongguo
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
4
worked alone. This notwithstanding, the chronicle only once attests to the presence
of an assistant. The section dealing with the six treatises on Vajravārāhī ends in a
note identifying the scribe (yi ge pa), a certain Nyi shar bkra shis who was a native
of Dol.11 This remark appears to have led Roerich to affirm with perhaps undue
confidence, “We know that the text...was dictated by him..., hence the frequent
brevity of the sentences, and in some places a somewhat unfinished character of
the text, reminiscent of notes taken down during reading....”12 Let us first stipulate
that there is not one iota of evidence for the supposition that he had dictated this
work. Further, it is of course not necessary that it does, but if dictation suggests
paraphrase and thus implies the use of vernacular Tibetan, then evidence for the
first clause is wanting, for the text is by and large written in the classical idiom.
True enough, it does not infrequently contain colloquialisms, but their presence
doubtlessly has its origin, first, in the biographical and autobiographical literature
he and most probably some of his disciples were excerpting and, second, in his
own personal asides. To gain more informed insight into what we might call ’Gos
lo tsā ba’s “workshop” we must resort to the source-criticism of his treatise. But
this kind of work is still in its infancy. To date, Kurtis Schaeffer is the only scholar
I am aware of who has addressed this question through a careful comparison of
Zhang g.yu brag pa brtson ’grus grags pa’s (1123-93) biography of his teacher
Vairocanavajra with what ’Gos lo tsā ba had to say about the latter and how he
said it.13
Roerich renders the title Deb gter sngon po [or Deb ther sngon po, Deb ter
sngon po] – the short form is Deb sngon, and gter, ther, and ter are homophones
– as The Blue Annals, whereas Guo opted for Qingshi, The Blue History. Of course,
a more accurate rendition would be The Blue Book. The word deb gter / ther / ter,
meaning “book,” is ultimately of Persian or Greek origin, and entered the Tibetan
zangxue yanjiu zhongxin shouzangde fanwen beiye jing (Suowei jiaojuan) mulu / Krung go’i bod kyi
shes rig zhib ’jug lte gnas su nyar ba’i ta la’i lo ma’i bstan bcos (sbyin shog ’dril ma’i par) gyi dkar
chag mdor gsal (n.p.), 73, no. 99; my thanks go out to V. Wallace for so generously giving me a copy
of this valuable catalogue. For negative appreciations of his skills as a translator of Sanskrit, see G.
Tucci, Minor Buddhist Texts, Part One, Serie Orientale Roma 9 (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio
ed Estremo Oriente, 1956), 17-18, and M. Hahn, “Das Vanaratnastotra des Āditya,” in Suhṛllekhāḥ:
Festgabe für Helmut Eimer, ed. M. Hahn, et al., Indica et Tibetica 28 (Swisttal-Odendorf: Indica et
Tibetica Verlag, 1996), 40-42. For a more positive assessment, see the brief remarks in K.-D. Mathes,
ed., ’Gos Lo tsā ba Gzhon nu dpal’s Commentary on the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā, Nepal Research
Centre Publications no. 24 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003), xiv-xv. His first encounter with a
large number of Sanskrit manuscripts of a wide variety of texts took place when Vanaratna (1384-1468),
in the company of Chos ’khor sgang lo tsā ba manydzushrī and ’Bri khung lo tsā ba, had come to Rtses
thang in 1433, for which see Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 26a-b [Zhwa dmar
IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ed. 2004), 61-62].
11
’Gos lo tsā ba, Deb gter sngon po (ed. 1976), 349 [’Gos lo tsā ba, Deb ther sngon po (ed. 1984),
1:479]; Roerich, Blue Annals, 397; and Guo, Qingshi, 263. He recurs in the first printer’s colophon
(par byang) in ’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 968 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:1270]; Roerich,
Blue Annals, 1090; and Guo, Qingshi, 713, as a knower of graphs (yi ge’i rig byed pa). The fertile
tributary Dol Valley is located to the east of the vast Grwa Valley.
12
13
Roerich, Blue Annals, ii.
“The Religious Career of Vairocanavajra – A Twelfth-Century Indian Buddhist Master from
Dakṣiṇa Kośala,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 28 (2000), 369-72, 380-83.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
5
lexicon via Mongolian,14 when most of the Tibetan cultural area was under Mongol
rule (1240 to the 1350s). The orthographic instability indicated by the use of gter,
ther, and ter is by no means uncommon for loanwords we encounter in Tibetan
writing. Why some Tibetans should have chosen to use this word for book rather
than a bona fide word for the same from their own lexicon is a question whose
answer is still outstanding. Probably, the reasons are not altogether different from
the “oeuvre” / “writings” alternation the reader finds in this essay. It is a question
of style and perhaps also an attempt to capture a different kind of elegance. The
patina of the foreign is sometimes more attractive than the local. To be sure, the
perhaps more common Tibetan words for “book” are glegs bam, pod and po ti –
pod is a derivative of po ti, just as deb is derived from deb gter / ther / ter – or,
somewhat metaphorically, gsung, “statement.” As for the first and third, Chos dpal
dar dpyang states the following in the biography of his teacher, the well-known
Sanskritist Chag lo tsā ba II Chos rje dpal (1197-1264):
[He] said [that the term for “book”] is in the religious [classical] language
[Sanskrit], pustaka; in the vernacular language [?Prakrit, ?Apabhraṃśa, ?...], po
ti [< ?poṭhi]; in Tibetan, glegs bam. Though written in [regular] ink, [the books]
not being [written with] gold [ink], they [still] were glegs bam.15
Also meaning “book,” the expressions glegs bam gyi po ti and po ti glegs bam
are both attested in the apocryphal autobiography of King Srong btsan sgam po
(d. 649/50), which first surfaced in the middle of the eleventh century, and glegs
bam gyi po ti is found in the large ecclesiastic chronicle of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism
that Nyang ral nyi ma’i ’od zer (1124-92) wrote towards the end of his life.16 The
form glegs bam gyi po ti is somewhat counterintuitive. It may very well go back
to a wrong interpretation of the compound po ti glegs bam or glegs bam po ti, one
that is based on not having understood that glegs bam and po ti in the first stand
14
B. Laufer, “Loanwords in Tibetan,” Toung Pao 17 (1916), 481-82, no. 140.
15
chos skad du pusta ka ’phral skad du po ti/ bod skad du glegs bam/ gser gyi ma yin pa snag tshad
bris kyang glegs bam yin gsungs so//
G. Roerich, trans., Biography of Dharmasvāmin (Chag lo tsa ba Chos rje dpal): A Tibetan Monk
Pilgrim (Patna: K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute , 1959), 38, 102, and The Biography of Chag Lo tsā
ba Chos rje dpal (Dharmasvāmin), ed. Champa Thupten Zongtse (New Delhi: International Academy
of Indian Culture ,1981), 183. This makes the meaning of the statement “po ti and glegs bam” in Mkhas
pa lde’u’s circa late 1260s Rgya bod kyi chos ’byung rgyas pa, ed. Chab spel tshe brtan phun tshogs,
Gangs can rig mdzod 3 (Lha sa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1987), 167, a little obscure,
unless perhaps a glegs bam, as opposed to a po ti, was thought always to have two wooden boards
(glegs shing) that hold together the pages with straps (glegs thag). For some further considerations on
books, see, for example, Dge ’dun chos ’phel, Shing dang me tog sogs kyi ngos ’dzin dang ngos ji ltar
’phrod tshul, in Dge ’dun chos ’phel gyi gsung rtsom, ed. Hor khang bsod nams dpal ’bar, et al. (Lha
sa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1990), 1:243-6.
16
See respectively, the Bka’ chems ka khol ma, ed. Smon lam rgya mtsho (Lanzhou: Kan su’u mi
rigs dpe skrun khang, 1988), 94, 98, and the Chos ’byung me tog snying po sbrang rtsi’i bcud, ed. Nyan
shul mkhyen rab ’od gsal, Gangs can rig mdzod 5 (Lha sa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang,
1988), 432. The anonymous referee drew attention to the entry in Btsan lha ngag dbang tshul khrims,
Brda bkrol gser gyi me long (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1997), 439. There glegs bam po ti is
equated with por tang according to an entry in ’Jigs med nam mkha’ rdo rje’s (1897-1956) Gangs can
bod kyi brda skad ming gzhi gsal bar ston pa’i bstan bcos, which is not accessible to me.
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
6
in an appositional relationship to one another. That is to say, glegs bam is an
explanatory gloss of the loanword po ti. The term be’u bum, a metaphor for a
booklet, is used relatively infrequently.17 It is for this reason that I quite consciously
refrain from retaining the title The Blue Annals in this brief paper. Perhaps willfully,
I will from now on refer to ’Gos lo tsā ba’s work as The Blue Book, even though
I very much doubt that this title will ever gain currency outside the present paper!
Analogous to the collections of Lam ’bras texts by Rje btsun grags pa rgyal mtshan
(1148-1216) called the Yellow Book (Pod ser ma) and Bla ma dam pa bsod nams
rgyal mtshan’s (1312-75) Black Book (Pod nag ma),18 as well as to Tshal pa kun
dga’ rdo rje’s (1309-64) Red Book (Deb ther dmar po), White Book (Deb ther dkar
po), and Multicolored Book (Deb ther khra bo), and the catalogue of his edition
of the Bka’ ’gyur, which is referred to as The Black Catalogue of the Tselpa
[Kangyur] (Tshal pa dkar nag),19 it is more than likely that the designation “blue”
(sngon po) was due to the color of the cloth in which the original manuscript was
wrapped. This custom should strike a familiar chord: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Blue
Book and Brown Book are so-called because they were bound in blue and brown
wrappers.
It is not the first time in the history of Tibetan literature that a nickname usurped
the place of a work’s actual title. A good example of this is of course Tsong kha
pa’s Lam rim chen mo. In the passage I provisionally designate “the author’s
colophon” (mdzad byang) – a problem associated with the place this colophon
occupies in the blockprinted text is discussed below – ’Gos lo tsā ba’s tract is in
17
P. Sørensen, “The Prolific Ascetic Lce sgom Shes rab rdo rje alias Lce sgom Zhig po: Allusive,
but Elusive,” Journal of the Nepal Research Centre 11 (1999), 188n25. Some of the elusiveness that
continues to surround Shes rab rdo rje (1124/5-1204/5) can be cleared up by a perusal of the relevant
folios of a manuscript of Rta tshag tshe dbang rgyal’s 1446-47 history of the Mar pa bka’ brgyud pa
traditions, for which see my “On the Fifteenth Century Lho rong chos ’byung by Rta tshag Tshe dbang
rgyal and Its Importance for Tibetan Political and Religious History,” in “Aspects of Tibetan History,”
ed. R. Vitali and T. Tsering, special issue, Lungta 14, (2000): 69, and the notices on four Lce sgom pa
namesakes in Grags pa rdo rje, Jo bo yab sras las ’phros pa’i skyes bu dam ’ga’ zhig[ g]i ’byon pa’i
tshul bstan rtsis (ms., n.d.), 8a-11b. Details about Jo bo yab sras las ’phros pa’i skyes bu dam ’ga’
zhig[ g]i ’byon pa’i tshul bstan rtsis and its author are found below.
18
This is explicitly stated in Ngor chen kun dga’ bzang po’s (1382-1456) and Gung ru shes rab bzang
po’s (1411-75) Lam ’bras bu dang bcas pa’i man ngag gi byung tshul gsung ngag rin po che bstan pa
rgyas pa’i nyi ’od, in the Sa skya pa’i bka’ bum [Sde dge print], comp. Bsod nams rgya mtsho, vol. 9
(Tokyo: Toyo Bunko, 1968), no. 37, 120/3 [ka, 242a], 121/2 [ka, 243b]. Gung ru completed Ngor
chen’s unfinished work.
19
For these, see Dung dkar blo bzang ’phrin las’s remarks on Tshal pa’s life and works in his annotated
edition of the Deb ther dmar po (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1983), 2, and Dalai Lama V
Ṅag-dbaṅ-blo-bzaṅ-rgya-mtsho, Zab pa dang rgya che ba’i dam pa’i chos kyi thob yig ganggā’i chu
rgyun, in Record of teachings received: The gsan-yig of the Fifth Dalai Lama
Ṅag-dbaṅ-blo-bzaṅ-rgya-mtsho (New Delhi: Nechung and Lhakhar, 1971), 4:295-389, 609-734. These
designations are absent from Tshal pa’s biography in K.-H. Everding, Der Gung thang dkar chag: Die
Geschichte der tibetischen Herrschergeschlechtes von Tshal Gung thang und der Tshal Bka’ brgyud
pa Schule, Monumenta Tibetica Historica, Abt. I, Bd. 5 (Bonn: VGH Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH,
2000), 126-31. Lastly, some of the earliest translations of the Śatasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitāsūtra also
have color-coded designations – for which see my forthcoming “Apropos of Daṃṣṭrāsena in the
Catalogue of Translated Scripture of Bu ston Rin chen grub’s Ecclesiastic History and Elsewhere” –
which would also point to the color of, and in other cases the designs on, the cloth in which its volumes
were wrapped.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
7
fact called The Stages of How Buddhism and Buddhists Emerged in Tibet (Bod kyi
yul du chos dang chos smra ba ji ltar byung ba’i rim pa). His own disciple the Las
chen kun dga’ rgyal mtshan’s 1496 history of the Bka’ gdams pa school refers to
it as The Great Annals Showing the Stages of How the Buddhist Religion Emerged
in the Snowy [Land] (Gangs can du chos lugs ji ltar byung ba’i rim pa ston pa’i
lo rgyus chen mo).20 Twenty-one years later, Zhwa dmar IV already calls it the
Deb gter sngon po in the two entries he has for it in his biography. Dated to the
mid-1470s, the first occurs in connection with ’Gos lo tsā ba’s earlier treatise on
chronology, on which see below; the second is dated 1478.21 Elsewhere, in an entry
for the year 1453, Zhwa dmar IV refers to a kind of prophecy the master had
received from perhaps either Vanaratna or Byang bdag rnam rgyal grags bzang
(1399-1475) to the effect that he would write a “large ecclesiastic chronicle” (chos
’byung chen po).22 One can therefore not rule out the possibility that ’Gos lo tsā
ba had harbored the intention of compiling and writing what was to become The
Blue Book for well over two decades before finally embarking on this project in
1476.
Parenthetically, another point worthy of note is that, though The Blue Book’s
actual title indicates that it was conceived as a comprehensive study of Tibet’s
various schools and traditions of Buddhism, ’Gos lo tsā ba pays rather scant
attention to the Sa skya pa school as a separate entity. This stands in some contrast
to the textual traditions and lines of transmission of the many doctrinal entities
that form part of the Rnying ma pa, Bka’ gdams pa, and Bka’ brgyud pa, all of
which receive detailed treatment. Of course, he mentions numerous Sa skya pa
scholars, but he does not once systematically delineate their multiple contributions.
Interestingly, The Blue Book shares this feature with the equally large chronicle
of Dpa’ bo II Gtsug lag phreng ba (1504-66). A disciple of inter alia Zhwa dmar
IV, Dpa’ bo II is of course unambiguously located within the Kaṃ tshang or Karma
sect of the Bka’ brgyud pa school, whereas ’Gos lo tsā ba’s doctrinal affiliation is
much more complex. It is probably best to characterize him as a non-partial scholar
in the sense that his training and scholarly interests led him to pursue textual studies
20
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 969 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:1272], and Las chen kun
dga’ rgyal mtshan, Bka’ gdams kyi rnam par thar pa bka’ gdams chos ’byung gsal ba’i sgron ma, 2:8.
21
Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 46b (de gter sngon po[sic]), 71b (deb gter
sngon po) [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ed. 2004), 110, 168]. It is already cited as
the Deb ther sngon po in Paṇ chen bsod nams grags pa’s (1478-1554) 1539 Deb ther dmar po gsar
ma, ed. G. Tucci, Serie Orientale Roma 24 (Rome: Istitituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente,
1971), 150, and ’Dul ’dzin mkhyen rab rgya mtsho’s 1557 Sangs rgyas bstan pa’i chos ’byung dris
lan nor bu’i phreng ba (Mkhyen-rab-rgya-mtsho, ’Dul-’dzin, Saṅs rgyas bstan pa’i chos ’byuṅ dris
lan nor bu’i phreṅ ba: A Study of the Historical and Doctrinal Development of Bu[d]dhism in India
and Tibet Written in 1557 in Response to Queries Put by H.H. the Eighth Rgyal-dbaṅ Karma-pa
[Gangtok: Dzongsar Chhentse Labrang, 1981], 266).
22
Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 36a [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam
thar (ed. 2004), 84]. My photocopy of the manuscript Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar is unfortunately
incomplete at this point, owing to an inadvertant omission of the second half of fols. 36a and 37a and
the first half of fols. 36b and 37b of the original manuscript’s long folios. The pseudo-title Large
Ecclesiastic Chronicle (Chos ’byung chen po) recurs in ’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 739 [’Gos lo,
Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:977]; Roerich, Blue Annals, 837; and Guo, Qingshi, 544.
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
8
that pertained especially to the Bka’ brgyud pa, Rnying ma pa, and Bka’ gdams
pa traditions. Indeed, he shares these features with a good number of other
fifteenth-century clerical associates of the Phag mo gru court at Sne’u gdong such
as, to name but two, Byams gling paṇ chen bsod nams rnam rgyal (1400-1475)
and Zhwa lu lo tsā ba chos skyong bzang po (1441-1528).
’Gos lo tsā ba’s interests in and earlier intensive studies of some of the writings
of Dol po pa shes rab rgyal mtshan (1294-1361) may have led the castellan-brothers
(rdzong dpon pa sku mched) ruling over Brag dmar me ba to invite him to Jo nang
Monastery in circa 1447.23 Jo nang bka’ bzhi pa – I do not know his name in
religion – having recently died, it is quite probable that their intention was to install
him as this institution’s abbot. But this was an honor he felt he had to refuse on
grounds that he wished to take advantage of the opportunities Vanaratna’s presence
provided for further study. Judging from his biography, his main teachers belonged
to the Bka’ gdams pa, Rnying ma pa, and Bka’ brgyud pa schools. And in spite of
his interests, we cannot really say that he had definite leanings towards ideas
associated with the Jo nang pa philosophical traditions. In vain do we look for
clear-cut evidence of this in his undated but fairly substantial study of the three
cycles of the teachings of the Buddha in which, beginning with the
Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra, his Pronouncements (bka’) were distinguished; or in his
1467 Dpal dus kyi ’khor lo’i rgyud kyi dka’ ’grel snying po’i don rab tu gsal ba’i
rgyan, a study of some difficult passages in Yaśas’ versified Laghukālacakratantra
and Puṇḍarīka’s Vimalaprabhā commentary; or in his large 1473 exegesis of the
Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā.24 Indeed, none of these tracts betrays an extensive
23
Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 33b [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam
thar (ed. 2004), 79].
24
See, firstly, his ’Khor lo gsum gyi rnam par bzhag pa chos kyi dbyings rgya mtsho’i rgyan rnam
par bkod pa, of which a ninety-two-folio handwritten dbu med manuscript is extant; its scribe was
Smon lam grags pa. The second is extant in a one hundred and ninety-nine-folio blockprint, with the
marginal notation ca. The scribe of the original manuscript was the author’s student Smon lam grags.
The printer’s colophon states that the printing blocks were carved in 1472 and that the operation was
financially supported by Ngag gi dbang po (1439-91), then Spyan mnga’ [read: Spyan snga] of Gdan
sa mthil. Bsod nams bzang po (1380-1416) was the scribe, the one who made the labeling of the
print[-ing blocks] (par gyi glegs bu yongs sgrub pa) was ’Brog mi rin chen rgyal mtshan, Bkra shis
rgyal mtshan was the carver of the blocks (brkos kyi ’du byed pa), and Bsam grub grags the proofreader,
or the pure-water jewel cleansing the mud of mistakes (nor ba’i rnyog pa dang byed chu ’dang gi nor
bu). The third is the undated, handwritten dbu med manuscript and the 1479 blockprint of his
Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā commentary, which were edited and published in Mathes, Commentary
(2003). Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 69b [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi
rnam thar (ed. 2004), 164], states that he finished it on the fifteenth day of the eighth month (September
6, 1473). However, in ’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 1:*4, Dung dkar rin po che maintained that he
wrote it in 1468. Not mentioned by Mathes is that the slightly incomplete but enormous dbu med
manuscript in six hundred and ninety-nine folios was filmed by him for the Nepal-German Manuscript
Preservation Project under Reel no. DD 3/3-4/1. True enough, Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam
thar (ms.), 7a[gong ma], 11a, 18a [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ed. 2004), 17, 27,
43], testify that he had studied Dol po pa’s Uttaratantra commentary, the Ri chos nges don rgya mtsho,
and his Kālacakra writings, and Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 9b [Zhwa dmar
IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ed. 2004), 23], relates that he had examined his [Kun mkhyen chen
po’s!] chronological calculation[s] (rtsis) as well. Touring the Tibetan midwest in 1418, he briefly
visited Jo nang, Brag ram, Bo dong, Bya rgod gshongs, and Spyi bo lhas pa; see Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon
nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 16a [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ed. 2004), 39]. Mathes,
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
9
debt to either the distinctive terminology or the theories that are associated with
Dol po pa and his immediate followers. That ’Gos lo tsā ba is on the whole laconic
when it comes to the Sa skya pa traditions may very well have been due to the fact
that the library resources to which he had easy access were singularly lean on
writings by its members. By comparison, the largest single unit of The Blue Book
by far – more than thirty percent of the text as a whole – is devoted to a meticulous
presentation of the Bka’ brgyud pa, and the second largest – more than ten percent
– to the Bka’ gdams pa. Nonetheless, something curious is going on here. His
personal connections notwithstanding, it is strange that he either did not have
available or chose to use only covertly the histories of the Bka’ brgyud pa by Spyan
snga nyer gnyis pa bsod nams rgyal mtshan (1386-1434)25 alias Kun bzang rtse pa
and Rta tshag tshe dbang rgyal, for he makes no explicit mention of either. And
this is all the more surprising when we bear in mind that the Las chen and Zhwa
dmar IV count the former, the erstwhile hierarch of Phag mo gru gdan sa mthil,
among ’Gos lo tsā ba’s teachers.26 The Blue Book’s biographical sketch of the
Spyan snga is completely quiet about his chronicle.27 We do know of course that
Dpa’ bo II made considerable use of Rta tshag’s treatise.
The title, The Blue Book, occurs on the title pages of both (interdependent)
blockprints, once in the “Apology” located between the section (skabs) on Rtses
thang Monastery – this section was also written in 1476 – and the one on the patron
of its first printing, Bkra shis dar rgyas legs pa’i rgyal po (d. 1499)28 and the history
of his (Bya) family; it recurs in the second printer’s colophon, written by Rta tshag
VI Ye shes blo bzang bstan pa’i mgon po (1716-1810).29 What I refer to as an
Commentary (2003), x, writes that a Lha khang[s] stengs taught him the Ri chos nges don rgya mtsho.
This cannot be, for “Lha khang steng” refers to a building! We ought to read of course “Lha khang
steng pa,” whose name in religion was apparently Sangs rgyas rin chen. The three treatises by ’Gos lo
tsā ba that are mentioned above contain virtually nothing that is explicitly derived from Dol po pa’s
signature ideas. However, in all fairness, the same thing can be paradoxically said of Dol po pa’s own
study of the Uttaratantra as well! But it is remarkable that the lengthy afterword of the commentary
in Mathes, Commentary (2003), 573-5, contains not one expression of debt to Dol po pa, but a
disagreement with Dol po pa is registered in Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 54a
[Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ed. 2004), 128]. For an overview of this work, see also
K.-D. Mathes, “’Gos Lo tsā ba Gzhon nu dpal’s Extensive Commentary on and Study of the
Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā,” in Religion and Secular Culture in Tibet: Tibetan Studies II, ed. H. Blezer
(Leiden: Brill, 2002), 79-95.
25
For this work, see my “On the Fifteenth Century Lho rong chos ’byung,” 59.
26
Las chen, Bka’ gdams chos ’byung, 2:4, and Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.),
23b [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ed. 2004), 55].
27
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 512-7 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:692-9]; Roerich, Blue
Annals, 589-94; and Guo, Qingshi, 383-86.
28
He was also the patron for the printing of his Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā commentary. Obliquely
identified in the translation of the colophon of the blockprint in Mathes, Commentary (2003), xiii n29,
Khrims khang lo tsā ba bsod nams rgya mtsho’i sde (1424-82), himself a disciple and friend of ’Gos
lo tsā ba, authored a large number of letters to him, for which see A Buddhist Correspondence: The
Letters of Lo chen Bsod nams rgya mtsho, ed. F.-K. Ehrhard, Lumbini International Research Institute,
Facsimile Edition Series 3 (Lumbini: Lumbini International Research Institute, 2002), xiv, xvii; see
also its companion volume in Ehrhard, Life and Travels, 79 ff.
29
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 962, 970 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:1263, 1273]; Roerich,
Blue Annals, 1084, 1093; and Guo, Qingshi, 708, 714.
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
10
“Apology”30 is actually a kind of afterword that begins with the line “Statement
in Reply to the Coming Talk(?)31 based on The Blue Book.”32 And it ends with the
statement (by no means uncontroversial, in one case the multiple dates given are
those found elsewhere in The Blue Book):
In sum, since these years [= datings] of the religious king Srong btsan sgam po
(569/629-50), Jo bo rje [Atiśa] (ca. 982-1054), ’Brom ston [rgyal ba’i ’byung
gnas] (1005-64), etc., and the master of the Teaching Rngog lo [tsā ba blo ldan
shes rab] (1059-1109) involve positions that are without error, please do place
[them] accordingly in your mind! 33
Neither Tibetan text of The Blue Book identifies this section as a “skabs” per
se, but it is surely marked as one when we consider the punctuations that separate
it from the preceding and succeeding texts in terms of the spacing used and the
deployment of the rin spungs shad marker. The heading’s use of zhal brda, honorific
for kha brda, and the use of thugs, honorific for sems, in the last line of this
pseudo-section, suggests that this piece was written for one who socially outranked
the author, or at least did so in his eyes. In his translation, Roerich used the first
person, “I,” in the sense that ’Gos lo tsā ba was responsible for it (Guo is generally
more careful in his insertion of personal pronouns when the Tibetan text has none).
Yet, Roerich had a fairly good reason for this, for the use of such non-honorific
verb forms as byas and bris does more than merely suggest that this passage should
not be considered as a metastatement on The Blue Book by a writer other than ’Gos
lo tsā ba. And therefore the fact that the title Deb sngon occurs in it supports the
contention that ’Gos lo tsā ba himself had used this name for his chronicle. It is
furthermore not altogether impossible that this “Apology” is related to the highly
critical reception of his earlier study of calendrical astronomy and Buddhist
chronology, the Rtsis la ’khrul pa sel ba. Written in 1443 and blockprinted in 1466
at the Phag mo gru palace of Pho brang rgyal bzang, this work in forty-nine folios
was as quickly as it was severely taken to task by, among others, Grwa phug pa
lhun grub rgya mtsho in his 1447 Pad dkar zhal lung analysis of Kālacakra
calendrical astronomy. ’Gos lo tsā ba argued there, for example, for the dates of
Rngog lo tsā ba that are given above,34 but these now turn out to be far from
unambiguous or uncontroversial when we compare them to the ones found in
several earlier (and a few later) literary sources. Zhwa dmar IV informs us that he
revised his Rtsis la ’khrul pa sel ba from 1472 to 1475 by adding astronomical
diagrams and chronological tables, and explicitly links this revision to The Blue
30
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 962-64 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:1263-65]; Roerich, Blue
Annals, 1084-86; and Guo, Qingshi, 708-10.
31
zhal brda phebs pa
32
deb sngon la brten pa’i zhal brda phebs pa de la lan du smras pa...
33
mdor na chos rgyal srong bstan sgam po’i lo/ jo bo rje ’brom sogs kyi lo/ brtan [read: bstan] pa’i
bdag po rngog gi lo ’di rams ’chug med kyi lugs yin pas de ltar thugs la bzhag par zhu/ /
34
See the Rtsis la ’khrul pa sel ba, 19a-b. Details on this work and its criticism can be found in a
facsimile edition of this work, accompanied by a detailed index and a lengthy introduction, that will
be published by the Lumbini International Research Institute.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
11
Book.35 During these years, ’Gos lo tsā ba also completed several other minor
works on chronological computation.36
Of course, the “Apology” did not deter later Tibetan historians from taking
issue with especially some of ’Gos lo tsā ba’s datings in The Blue Book. Their
disagreements with him took two forms, implicit and explicit. We have already
seen that the Las chen, a disciple of ’Gos lo tsā ba, was sufficiently familiar with
The Blue Book to list it as one of his master’s main writings. Though he does refer,
in his study of the Bka’ gdams pa school, to the information on several
fifteenth-century events he had received from his teacher orally,37 we observe that
at least once he takes direct issue with The Blue Book. The case in point has to do
with an unsettling controversy about the date of Po to ba rin chen gsal’s passing.
The Las chen writes:
So, the statement that after this spiritual friend was born in the fire-female-hare
[year, 1027, and] after he heeded the benefit of others for twenty-five years from
the age of fifty-five [= four], he passed away in Po to Monastery in the morning
of new moon’s day of the intermediate summer-month of the wood-female-hen
[year, 1105] at the age of seventy-nine [= eight] occurs in his biography,38 and
the Great Mchims [nam mkha’ grags, 1299-1375] claimed [that],39 as well as Se
spyil bu ba [?chos kyi rgyal mtshan, 1121-89]; The Blue Book claimed that after
he was born in the iron-sheep [year, 1031], he passed away in the wood-hen [year,
1105] at the age of seventy-five [= four];40 since it appears to have been stated
that, at the age of nineteen [= eighteen] in the earth-male-dragon [year, 1088],
Zhang shar ba pa [yon tan grags, 1070-1141] met [Po to ba] during the sixty-second
35
Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 69b, 70b-1a [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal
gyi rnam thar (ed. 2004), 164, 166].
36
These include the Rtsis kyi ljon pa’i rtsa ba tshol ba, three-folio Pho brang brag kha blockprint
wth the marginal notation “Ā,” and the Rtsis kyi nges pa’i don, three-folio blockprint of unspecified
provenance with the marginal notation “?pa.” Both were written in 1475 with the second explicitly in
connection with the earlier criticism of the Rtsis la ’khrul pa sel ba. See also below for other treatises
that he wrote around this time.
37
See, for example, Las chen, Bka’ gdams chos ’byung, 2:502 ff.
38
I do not know which biography the Las chen had in mind. In his sketch of Po to ba’s life, he makes
reference to an otherwise unknown (to me) biography in Las chen, Bka’ gdams chos ’byung, 2:26 as
well as to a “biography” (rnam thar gtsang ba) in Las chen, Bka’ gdams chos ’byung, 2:34.
39
This would seem to be a reference to the Pu to ba’i rnam thar [= Po to ba’i rnam thar], of which
a thirteen-folio, handwritten dbu can manuscript is found under C.P.N. Catalogue no. 002806(6). The
dates of 1027 to 1105 are confirmed in this brief study, as is the precise day of his passing, namely,
the new moon day of the intermediate summer-month.
40
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 235, 239-40 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:322, 328-9]; Roerich,
Blue Annals, 263, 268-9; and Guo, Qingshi, 175, 178.
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
12
[= first] year of the spiritual friend [= Po to ba], and attended on him for eighteen
years,41 [Po to ba’s dates] must be according to [those of] the former [scenario].42
A blockprint of an early seventeenth-century biography of Po to ba entitled Dge
ba’i bshes gnyen pu to ba rin chen gsal gi rnam thar sems dpa’ chen po’i spyod
pa nges bstan in nine folios has recently been recovered. Its author, Ngag dbang
rnam rgyal (1571-1626), the seventeenth abbot of Stag lung Monastery, follows
’Gos lo tsā ba in his dates, but does add that he passed away on full moon’s day
(gnam gang) of the intermediate winter-month (dgun zla ’bring po) of 1105 – the
difference in the month is most likely due to a recalibration of the date with the
use of a different calendar. It now turns out that this biography forms part of the
hitherto unknown autobiography of Ngag dbang rnam rgyal consisting of an
ensemble of eight sarga-sections – the blockprints of the other seven studies have
been equally recovered. Its general title is Rtogs pa brjod pa ngo mtshar tshangs
pa’i gaṇḍi and it was completed in 1608.43 Lastly, the substantial biography of Po
41
Something to this effect is not found in The Blue Book or in Mchims’s Shar ra ba’i rnam thar of
which a twelve-folio, handwritten dbu can manuscript is found under C.P.N. catalogue no. 002806 (7).
We do find this in Las chen, Bka’ gdams chos ’byung, 2:87, 89, as well as in Yongs ’dzin ye shes rgyal
mtshan’s (1713-93) much later 1787 study of the Lam rim tradition, the Lam rim bla ma brgyud pa’i
rnam thar, ed. Blo bzang tshe ring (Lha sa: Bod ljongs mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1990), 248.
42
de ltar dge ba’i bshes gnyen’di me mo yos la ’khrungs nas/ lnga bcu nga lnga nas lo nyi shu rtsa
lnga’i bar du gzhan don bskyangs nas/ bdun cu rtsa dgu pa shing mo bya’i dbyar zla ’bring po’i gnam
stong gi snga dro po to dgon par sku gshegs so zhes pa ni nyid kyi rnam thar las ’byung zhing / mchims
chen mo yang bzhed la/ se spyil bu ba’ang de bzhin du bzhed de/ deb sngon nas lcags lug la ’khrungs
nas don lnga pa shing bya la gshegs par bzhed de zhang shar ba pas rang lo bcu dgu pa sa pho ’brug/
dge bshes kyi re gnyis pa la mjal te lo bco brgyad bsten par bshad snang bas snga ma ltar dgos so//
Las chen, Bka’ gdams chos ’byung, 2:37; the passage is found on fol. 221 of the blockprint that was
scanned by the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (www.tbrc.org). This print derives from the printing
blocks that were prepared by Sde srid ’phrin las rgya mtsho in the 1660s for Dalai Lama V.
43
The eight sections are:
1. Khyim bdag chen po mgon med zas sbyin gyi rnam par thar pa rgyal ba la lhag par bya ba
byas pa’i gtam, fols. 9, marginal notation “ka”; biography of Anāthapiṇḍada.
2. Drang srong chen po dpa’ bo’i sde’i rnam par thar pa ye shes rdo rje grub pa’i gtam, fols.
8, marginal notation “kha”; biography of Vīrasena.
3. Biography of Po to ba, marginal notation “ga.”
4. Chos sku sangs rgyas yar byon gyi rnam thar brtul zhugs bzang po’i ngo mtshar brjod pa,
fols. 10, marginal notation “nga”; biography of Sangs rgyas yar byon (1203-72).
5. Kun mkhyen dmar ston pa chen po rin chen shākya’i rnam thar skyes bu dam pa’i ngang
tshul brjod pa, fols. 8, marginal notation “ca”; biography of Dmar ston rin chen shākya
(1291-?1365).
6. Rgyal dbang spyang lung pa chen po’i rnam par thar pa ngo mtshar rgya mtsho, fols. 9,
marginal notation “cha”; biography of Spyang lung pa gzhon nu blo gros (1372-1475).
7. Chos kyi rje mtsho skyes rdo rje’i rnam par thar pa rim gnyis zab mo dngos grub nges bstan,
fols. 7, marginal notation “ja”; biography of Mtsho skyes rdo rje (1479-1519).
8. Rgyal ba mchog gi sprul pa’i sku ngag dbang rnam rgyal bkra shis kyi rnam thar snyan
grags lha’i rnga chen, fols. 11, marginal notation “nya”; autobiography of Ngag dbang rnam
rgyal, which he completed in 1608 at the Pho brang chos rdzong chen po bi dzā ya prasthir(!).
The convolute has no printing data. It seems to have been followed by an appendix of sorts. With
the telling marginal notation “ta,” this appendix could have been the Lo rgyus tshigs su bcad pa dad
pa’i ’dza’ bshes, a blockprint in fols. 8, which seems to be an autobiography of Ngag dbang chos kyi
nyi ma ’jigs med bzang po of the Stag lung pa sect. It was written in the wood-female-hare year when
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
13
to ba by Ye shes rgyal mtshan (1713-93) dates him from 1027 to 1105, but Mang
thos klu sgrub rgya mtsho (1523-96), on the other hand, offers 1043 as the year of
Po to ba’s birth in his 1587 study of Buddhist chronology.44
However, more often than not, the Las chen simply departs from many of The
Blue Book’s datings of early Bka’ gdams pa masters without explicitly saying that
he does so. Let us briefly look at two instructive examples of this. Firstly, the Las
chen writes at one point that Nag tsho lo tsā ba tshul khrims rgyal ba was thirty-one
[= thirty] years old in the water-male-horse year (1042) – this would place his year
of birth in 1012 – and that he left west Tibet for north India to invite Atiśa in 1038.45
’Gos lo tsā ba, on the other hand, has it that he was born in the iron-female-pig
year (1011), and that he was thirty-one in the water-male-horse year!46 The Sa skya
pa scholar Mang thos repeatedly has it that Atiśa arrived in Tibet in the
wood-male-horse year (1054), which thus pushes the generally accepted date
forward by one duodenary cycle.47 To be sure, we need to remind ourselves that
the earliest biographies and chronicles usually employed the duodenary rather than
the sexagenary cycle in their calendrical determinations. More than merely probable,
both years, water-male-horse and wood-male-horse, are therefore based on having
calculated and transferred the duodenary notation of “horse year” into a sexagenary
notation. That the wrong year of 1054 was Mang thos’s view and not merely a
later scribal error is borne out by the fact that, in the first passage, he expressly
says that this year occurred 3188 years after the Buddha’s nirvāṇa. According to
the so-called Sa skya pa position that he followed, the nirvāṇa had taken place in
2133 BCE! Secondly, the Las chen dates Zul phu ba brtson ’grus ’bar from 1101
to 1174 rather than from 1091 to 1165, the dates for him that we find in The Blue
Book.48 But these dates are problematic, for he says immediately thereafter that
Phya pa chos kyi seng ge was privy to a vision while witnessing Zul phu ba’s
cremation. We know with reasonable certainty that Phya pa passed away in 1169,49
the author was forty-four and printed in the same year at Yang dgon rdul bral byang chub kyi snying
po. Mtsho skyes rdo rje of number seven must of course be distinguished from his Stag lung pa namesake
who flourished from 1530 to 1590; for the latter, see Ngag dbang rnam rgyal’s 1609 study of the Stag
lung sect in the Stag lung chos ’byung, ed. Thar gling byams pa tshe ring, Gangs can rig mdzod 22
(Lha sa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1992), 665-9; see also P. Schwieger, “The
Lineage of the Noble House of Ga zi in East Tibet,” Kailash 28 (1996): 127.
44
See the Lam rim bla ma brgyud pa’i rnam thar, 224, 235, and Mang thos, Bstan rtsis gsal ba’i
nyin byed lhag bsam rab dkar, ed. Nor brang o rgyan, Gangs can rig mdzod 4 (Lha sa: Bod ljongs mi
dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1987), 95.
45
Las chen, Bka’ gdams chos ’byung, 1:141.
46
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 79, 220 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 1:118, 303]; Roerich, Blue
Annals, 88, 247; and Guo, Qingshi, 59, 164.
47
Mang thos, Lhag bsam rab dkar, 98, 100.
48
Las chen, Bka’ gdams chos ’byung, 2:395-6; and ’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 72-3 [’Gos lo,
Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 1:109]; and Roerich, Blue Annals, 80; and Guo, Qingshi, 54.
49
The exact date of his passing is first found in his disciple Slob dpon bsod nams rtse mo’s (1142-82)
Slob dpon phya pa la bstod pa, in Sa skya pa’i bka’ ’bum [1736 Sde dge print], vol. 2, comp. Bsod
nams rgya mtsho (Tokyo: Toyo Bunko, 1968), no. 5, 40/3 [ka, 80b]. Las chen, Bka’ gdams chos ’byung,
1:228, briefly discusses Phya pa in the context of the abbatial succession of Gsang phu sne’u thog
Monastery, but does not date him.
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
14
so that, if anything, ’Gos lo tsā ba’s dates for Zul phu ba are more plausible than
the Las chen’s. Later historians such as Mang thos, who apparently had no access
to Dpa’ bo II’s work, and Sum pa mkhan po ye shes dpal ’byor (1704-88), to name
but two, all criticized The Blue Book on various occasions.50 Dpa’ bo II was far
less inclined to outright criticism51 and this was doubtless due to the fact that his
connection with ’Gos lo tsā ba was a close one. All we really need to do is to recall
that he had been one of Zhwa dmar IV’s main students.
Unidentified til now, the scholar who signs himself as Paṇḍita Kīrtivajra, that
is, Paṇḍita grags pa rdo rje, in a brief study on chronological aspects of the Bka’
gdams pa school,52 was yet another of ’Gos lo tsā ba’s many disciples. Grags pa
rdo rje relates there that another one of his teachers was a certain ’Jam dbyangs
pradznya badzra, that is, Shes rab rdo rje (1394-1467).53 I believe it is virtually
certain that Grags pa rdo rje ought to be identified as Grags pa rdo rje dpal bzang
po (b. 1444), the author of an undated study of the history of the transmission of
Śākyaśrībhadra’s (1127-1225) vinaya tradition in Tibet that I had occasion to use
elewhere. For we learn in this work that one of the author’s teachers and ordaining
“abbot” was none other than this Shes rab rdo rje of Ri bo dge ’phel Monastery.54
The manuscript of Grags pa rdo rje’s little tract on religious chronology, a copy
of which I owe to the kind generosity of Tashi Tsering and Roberto Vitali, claims
our attention and interest. In the first place, it provides tangible evidence that either
’Gos lo tsā ba had changed his mind on (at least) one date when he was compiling
The Blue Book, or, less purposefully and without awareness, that he simply adopted
there a (different) date from the source he was using. For we read in The Blue Book
that the Bka’ gdams pa monastery of Snar thang was founded by Gtum ston blo
gros grags pa (1086-1166) in 1153.55 Grags pa rdo rje, who in this first of two
50
For Mang thos, see Mang thos, Lhag bsam rab dkar, 59, etc., and for Sum pa mkhan po, see the
remarks appended to the chronological tables of his 1748 Chos ’byung dpag bsam ljon bzang, ed. Dkon
mchog tshe brtan (Lanzhou: Kan su’u mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1992), 908-10 [= Collected works of
Sum-pa-Mkhan-po (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1975), 1:571-2].
51
As far as I can tell, but I may very well have missed one or two other references, Dpa’ bo II mentions
The Blue Book in Dpa’ bo II, Mkhas pa’i dga’ ston, 1:174, 505, 710-11, 730, and only at times in a
muted critical tone.
52
Grags pa rdo rje, Bstan rtsis. The manuscript containing Bstan rtsis falls into three parts: 1b-5a,
5a-12a, 12a-3a; these are all signed by “Paṇḍita Kīrtivajra” [= Grags pa rdo rje]. Part two begins with
a verse of homage to the eleventh-century Smṛtijñānakīrti, and details the textual transmissions that
issued from him. Parts one and two have a separate author’s colophon: ’di yang paṇḍi ta kīrtti badzra
sbyer// (sic). Devoted to the transmission lineage of Vaiśrāvaṇa, the colophon of part three reads: ...paṇ
chen kīrtti badzras bkod pa lags[ s]o//. R. Vitali used this manuscript in his Record of Tho.ling: A
Literary and Visual Reconstruction of the “Mother” Monastery in Gu.ge (Dharamsala: High Asia,
1999), 289.
53
Grags pa rdo rje, Bstan rtsis, 6b – see also Bstan rtsis, 7b: bdag gi bla ma mkhas grub chen po
shes rab rdo rje.
54
See the Mkhan [b]rgyud rnam gsum byon tshul gyi rnam thar, twenty-five-folio, handwritten dbu
med manuscript, C.P.N. catalogue no. 002775(6), 15b-6b.
55
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 252 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 1:344]; Roerich, Blue Annals,
282; and Guo, Qingshi, 187. The water-female-bird (chu mo bya) year is already found in Yar lung jo
bo shākya rin chen sde’s 1376 chronicle, for which see the Yar lung jo bo’i chos ’byung, ed. Dbyangs
can (Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1988), 115.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
15
certain references to the master respectfully calls him “Gzhon nu’i zhabs,” says
that (to his knowledge) he had instead dated its foundation to 1141(!), and contrasts
this with the year 1153 that had been given earlier by Mchims blo bzang grags pa,
himself the twelfth abbot of this institution.56 To be noted here is once again the
forward (or backward) shift of one duodenary cycle. This could mean that, possibly
in the tables that were appended to his earlier Rtsis la ’khrul pa sel ba, ’Gos lo tsā
ba had reconsidered this date. Calling him “Rje btsun gzhon nu’i zhabs” in the
second mention of his name, Grags pa rdo rje quotes him as having said, “When
the holy precious one [Pha dam pa sangs rgyas] went to the Sha ’ug pass of Gnyal,
the precepts he gave Rma sgom shes rab bla ma in Yar lung are known as the Rma
system.”57 The section on Zhi byed in The Blue Book devotes several pages on the
relationship of these two men. While it does not contain this quote, it does mention
that Pha dam pa spent some time in Sha ’ug.58 A little farther down in his work,
Grags pa rdo rje speaks of a “Dbang phyug lo gzhon nu dpal,” and says that he
was a disciple of both Byams gsar and A ra chos rje nyi ma rgyal mtshan [read: A
ro chos rje nyi ma rgyal mtshan], that he had a large following of some seven
hundred students in Chos ’khor gling, and that he “is at present an adherent of the
Jo nang pa philosophical position.”59 It is not possible that this Gzhon nu dpal
refers to ’Gos lo tsā ba. Though the latter had indeed studied at an institution called
Chos ’khor gling60 as a young man, neither Byams gsar nor Nyi ma rgyal mtshan
are mentioned by Zhwa dmar IV as having been his teachers. Could this Gzhon
nu dpal then have been a scholar associated with Lo Monastery in Bya yul?
The Blue Book begins anomalously. Following Indian Buddhist tradition, Tibetan
works customarily begin with a line, a verse, or a series of verses in which the
author pays homage to the Buddha, a Bodhisattva, one or more tutelary deities,
and/or his teacher[s]. Called the mchod par brjod pa, this preamble is then followed
by a statement in which the author states her or his intention for the pages that
follow. This is called the rtsom par dam bca’ ba. Derivative of Indian scholarly
practice and thus replicated in the earliest writings by Tibetans, these preliminary
conventions placed at the head of the actual body of a treatise as such were first
enshrined in the Tibetan literary canon by Sa skya paṇḍita kun dga’ rgyal mtshan
(1182-1251) in his uneven survey on the principles of scholarship, the Mkhas pa
rnams la ’jug pa’i sgo of the 1220s.61 Curiously, it is this second feature that is
absent for the text as a whole, for the brief statement of intent that immediately
follows the mchod par brjod pa only has to do with its first chapter. Come to think
56
Grags pa rdo rje, Bstan rtsis, 2a.
57
Grags pa rdo rje, Bstan rtsis, 6b: dam pa rin po che dmyal gyi sha ’ug la la byon pa’i tshe\u0F10
yar lung du sma sgom shes rab bla ma la gnang ba’i gdams pa rnam la rma lugs su grags pa yin....
58
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 773 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:1019]; Roerich, Blue Annals,
871; and Guo, Qingshi, 568.
59
Grags pa rdo rje, Bstan rtsis, 7a-b: da lta jo nang pa’i grub mtha’ ’dzin pa yin\u0F10 .
60
Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 6a [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam
thar (ed. 2004), 13].
61
See the text in the Sa skya pa’i bka’ ’bum [1736 Sde dge print], comp. Bsod nams rgya mtsho, vol.
5 (Tokyo: Toyo Bunko, 1968), no. 6, 82/1 ff. [tha, 165a ff.].
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
16
of it, the mchod par brjod pa of The Blue Book is also quite out of the ordinary,
for it is simply a reproduction of the canonical Trikāyastava that is attributed to
Nāgārjuna. I know of no other Tibetan treatise in which an author has used a
canonical tract in lieu or in favor of a more personal mchod par brjod pa of his or
her own. In combination, these two features of the very beginning of The Blue
Book may very well indicate that the original manuscript forming the basis of the
first blockprint was fragmentary and incomplete. That is to say, the text that we
have belonged to what we may call his Nachlass.
No handwritten manuscripts of The Blue Book have come down to us so far. I
believe we can safely discount the notion that an autograph may have existed when
we take into account ’Gos lo tsā ba’s ill health and the overwhelming evidence for
its corporate authorship. What we notice immediately about its blockprinted
witnesses is that the text is not divided into numbered chapters, but rather into
unnumbered sections. The later editors and publishers organized these under various
“chapter” headings, and it is by no means obvious that they reflect the intentions
of their author or authors. In spite of this lack of any really firm indicators of the
time frame in which it was compiled, there is no doubt that it was composed over
a period of several years. Though he was in ’Gos lo tsā ba’s company in 1476 and
1477, Zhwa dmar IV does not relate anything about having been personally involved
in The Blue Book’s production or how it was conceived. However, he does tell us
that it was completed in the earth-male-dog (sa pho khyi) year, and this is an echo
of the year given in what is putatively the author’s colophon,62 a year that Roerich
rightly identifies as corresponding to 1478. The colophon states that this was 850
years since the birth of King Srong btsan sgam po. And this would mean that the
king was born in 629, a year that does not square with an earlier statement in the
text where it says that he was born in 569 – this chronological discrepancy is of
course well-known and Roerich discussed it at some length in his introduction.
Inasmuch as he wrongly held that ’Gos lo tsā ba flourished in the fourteenth century,
Guo calculated the earth-male-dog year to be the equivalent of 1358, no less than
two full sexagenary cycles prior to the one that is indicated. Further, the colophon
relates that The Blue Book was compiled in the “religious citadel” (chos rdzong)
of Mngon par dga’ ba, located in the vicinity of the Kun tu bzang po grove (nags
khrod).63 Mngon par dga’ ba or Mngon dga’ is sometimes referred to as being “of
the East” (shar gyi). This might imply two things: there was a Mngon dga’ located
to the west of Sne’u gdong, the political center of the Phag mo gru dynasty; or this
Mngon dga’ was located to the east of Sne’u gdong. I am inclined to side with the
second alternative. Although it is called a “grove,” Kun tu bzang po was a religious
62
Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 71b [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam
thar (ed. 2004), 169]; ’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 969 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:1272];
Roerich, Blue Annals, 1092; and Guo, Qingshi, 714.
63
See Rta tshag tshe dbang rgyal, Lho rong chos ’byung, ed. Gling dpon pad ma skal bzang and ma
grong mi ’gyur rdo rje, Gangs can rig mdzod 26 (Lha sa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun
khang, 1994), 392, 397. Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 18b [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon
nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ed. 2004), 45], mentions a Kun bzang rdzong, which may refer to the same
structure.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
17
structure of which one could be an abbot. Indeed, it was the very place where Bsod
nams bzang po alias Sgo sel ba – he was associated with the Sgo sel [?chapel] of
his family’s Sne’u gdong palace – succeeded his recently deceased younger brother
Spyan snga dpal ldan bzang po (1383-1407) to the “lion’s throne” of its abbacy.
And upon his early death, he was in turn succeeded by his other younger brother
Spyan snga nyer gnyis pa. In this context, Kun tu bzang po grove is called an
“additional monastery” (yang dgon), which I take in the sense that it was another
religious institution that belonged to the Phag mo gru family in addition to Gdan
sa mthil and Rtses thang. Be this as it may, the year 1478 cannot be regarded as
evidence for The Blue Book’s “closure,” the reason being that the blockprint
contains a disproportionately long biographical sketch of Khrims khang lo tsā ba
that was included in its chapter on the history of the Kālacakra.64 This was
apparently done at the explicit request of one of his erstwhile patrons, namely the
ruler Bya bkra shis dar rgyas legs pa’i rgyal po, who is often styled, perhaps
somewhat anachronistically, a myriarch (khri dpon). And Zhwa dmar IV himself
was its likely source of inspiration, for his own large study of Khrims khang lo tsā
ba’s life, of which this sketch appears to be an extract, is dated to 1482.65 What all
of this means is that we must distinguish between the text as it may have issued
from the pens of ’Gos lo tsā ba and, more than likely, his scribes, and the one that
was ultimately blockprinted over which he could not have exercised any final
editorial control.
Though there is no doubt that ’Gos lo tsā ba’s health was slowly faltering – he
was often carried around in a carrier (’do li, ḍolī) of sorts – the last two decades
of his long life were extraordinarily productive ones. With but a few serious
interruptions, he worked at an astonishingly fast pace on a wide variety of different
projects. Not only was he unrelenting in carrying out his duties as a teacher but,
especially during the years 1471 to 1481, he managed to write a large number of
commentarial treatises, tracts that included studies of the following canonical
writings:66
1. Pradīpoddyotana subtitled Snying po gsal sgron (1471)
2. Uttaratantra / Ratnagotravibhāga (1473)
3. Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa’i sgom rim (1474)
64
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 708-39 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:942-78]; Roerich, Blue
Annals, 805-37; and Guo, Qingshi, 528-44.
65
For his life, see Ehrhard, Life and Travels, 35-97, which is based on Zhwa dmar IV, Rje thams cad
mkhyen pa don gyi slad lo tsa ba chen po’i rnam par thar pa ngo mtshar rgya mtsho, handwritten dbu
can manuscript, C.P.N. catalogue no. 003259(5). Ehrhard writes, on page 96n55, that Karma ’phrin
las pa I (1456-1539) was the one who summarized his life for the final edition of The Blue Book, though
he does not say what kind of sources he might have used for his précis. This may very well be true.
Obviously a play on a part of Khrims khang lo tsā ba’s name in religion, Rje thams cad mkhyen pa don
gyi slad lo tsa ba chen po’i rnam par thar pa ngo mtshar rgya mtsho’s subtitle is Ocean of Wonder[s].
And it is echoed in the last line of the seventh part of his biography in The Blue Book, for which see
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 736 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:974-75].
66
Most of what follows is based on Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 46a-7a, and
69b-73b [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ed. 2004), 109-11, 164-72].
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
18
4. Thal ba’i rgyud (1474)
5. People’s Dohā (1475)
6. Guṇāparyantastotra (1475)
7. Lokātītastava (1475)
8. Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra (1475-?6)
9. Abhisamayālaṃkāra subtitled Dpag bsam gyi snye ma (1478)
10.Madhyamakāvatāra (1478-79)
11.Bodhicāryāvatāra (1478-9)
12.Atiśa’s Dvayasatyāvatāra (1479-80)
13.Atiśa’s Bodhipathapradīpa (1479-80)
14.Atiśa’s Madhyamakopadeśa (1479-80)
15.King’s Dohā (1480-81)
16.Queen’s Dohā (1480-81)
17.Tattvopadeśa (1480-81)
In addition, he also wrote:
18.Diagrams (sa ris) for the Rtsis la ’khrul pa sel ba (1475)67
19.’Jig rten dang ’jig rten las ’das pa’i lam gyi rten rnam par bkod pa rab
tu gsal ba’i sgron ma (1478-79)
20.Rten ’brel sgra sgrub (1478)
Zhwa dmar IV stipulates that ’Gos lo tsā ba composed numbers 9 and 19 at his
request and numbers 15 to 17 at the behest of his disciple and secretary Smon lam
grags pa. In 1473, ’Gos lo tsā ba suffered so severely from ocular problems that
he basically had to compose his massive Uttaratantravyākhyā from memory, an
intellectual feat that falls well beyond the pale of the ordinary. If this were not
serious enough, he was also visited by a life-threatening illness in the fall of 1474
from which, however, he seems to have made a rather decent recovery. Zhwa dmar
IV records that his recovery was due to the positive ritual activity Khrims khang
lo tsā ba had undertaken on behalf of his teacher.68 The prospect of dying becomes
ever more real the older one gets, but its inexorableness can to some degree be
mitigated by the occurrence of positive omens of better things to come, and thus
perhaps even temporarily postponed. An auspicious dream ’Gos lo tsā ba had just
after the New Year of the fire-male-monkey (me pho spre’u) year (January 27,
1476) led him to conclude that he would be able to live an active life for some
years to come. So, when Zhwa dmar IV expressed before him the wish that he live
up to one hundred years so that he could continue to learn from him, the aged
master replied that he would indeed be able to study under his guidance for a few
more years.69 In the company of a few select disciples, ’Gos lo tsā ba went into
67
See also above note 36.
68
Zhwa dmar IV, Ngo mtshar rgya mtsho, 101b-2a.
69
Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 47a-b [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam
thar (ed. 2004), 111]: bdag gis lo [ ]brgya’i bar du bzhugs par gsol ba btab pa’i dus su/ lo grangs de
ga tsam khas longs dka’ yang/ lo ’ga’ zhig gi bar du chos gsan pa’i bzhed pa sgrub par byed ces zhal
gyis bzhes pa ltar/ dgung [s] lo dgu bcu’i bar du bzhugs nas [47b]kho bo’i ’dod chos rags pa grub par
mdzad do//.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
19
partial retreat in Mngon dga’ from mid-October of 1476 to March/April of 1477.70
The regimen he imposed upon himself and his students, some of whom were already
respected teachers in their own right, during these months was far from being a
walk in the park. Indeed, its severity comes somewhat as a surprise in view of his
old age and physical frailty. The retreat began with an intense study of the
Laghukālacakratantra together with the annotations (mchan) to the Vimalaprabhā
written by Bu ston rin chen grub (1290-1364) and ’Jam dbyangs chos kyi mgon
po,71 and the “grand commentary” of the Chos rje bla ma. Unless the term bla ma
implies that he was ’Gos lo tsā ba’s or Zhwa dmar IV’s teacher, I suspect that Chos
rje bla ma might be the Sa skya pa scholar Bla ma dam pa bsod nams rgyal mtshan,72
but this is admittedly but a slightly educated guess. The teaching regimen ’Gos lo
tsā ba maintained during the retreat embraced a wide variety of other treatises
ranging from other tantric texts to the writings of Mkhan chen las kyi rdo rje
(1326-1401) alias Lho brag grub chen and his disciple Tsong kha pa, and a number
of sūtras.
It was during this time that The Blue Book was begun. The hectic pace of these
months notwithstanding, he was sufficiently restored and refreshed upon the
conclusion of this teaching marathon to remark that he felt much better and more
healthy than before, and that his newly found vigor was due to the energies of his
earnest students.73 Khrims khang lo tsā ba – Zhwa dmar IV refers to him here and
elsewhere as “Rje lo chen” – did not attend these sessions as he was preoccupied
with construction projects at his newly acquired see of Byams gling Monastery in
70
Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 70b-1b [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi
rnam thar (ed. 2004), 166-67]. To be more precise, the site of his retreat is called Rgyal chen brag mgo
of the Mngon par dga’ ba chos rdzong.
71
The very little that is known about this master in astrology and the calendar is summarized in Tshul
khrims rgyal mtshan (1933-2002), Dpal dus kyi ’khor lo ji ltar dar tshul brgyud pa’i lo rgyus dang
bcas pa, skar nag rtsis kyi lo rgyus skor, ed. Byams pa ’phrin las (Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun
khang, 1998), 1:158. He succeeded G.yag sde paṇ chen brtson ’grus dar rgyas (1299-1378) to the
abbatial throne of E waṃ Monastery the latter had founded in 1358. One of his main disciples, Rkyang
chen shākyashrī (1369-1448) was an important Kālacakra master of ’Gos lo tsā ba; see here also Zhwa
dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 4b ff [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ed.
2004), 13 ff].
72
Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 12b [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam
thar (ed. 2004), 30], also mentions a “Chos rje bla ma” without giving his name in religion. Tshul
khrims rgyal mtshan alludes to this event in his Dpal dus kyi ’khor lo, 244, where he has “Dpal ldan
bla ma” rather than “Chos rje bla ma.” The following four Kālacakra commentators are enumerated
in Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 18a [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam
thar (ed. 2004), 43-4]: Kun mkhyen chen po jo mo nang ba [= Dol po pa], Chos rje bla ma dam pa [=
Bla ma dam pa bsod nams rgyal mtshan], Lo chen byang chub rtse mo (1303-81), and Chos rje phyogs
pa [= Phyogs las rnam rgyal (1306-86) alias Mnga’ ris chos kyi rgyal po]. Lha khang steng pa sangs
rgyas rin chen apparently used their writings when teaching the Kālacakra cycle. For some of Bla ma
dam pa’s Kālacakra-related writings, see my “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), 139-41.
73
Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam thar (ms.), 71b [Zhwa dmar IV, Gzhon nu dpal gyi rnam
thar (ed. 2004), 169]: sku nyams kyang sngar bas bzang ba/ sku khams shin tu dangs pa/ bzhes stobs
kyang shin tu che ba byung ba rnams dpon slob rnam par dag pa’i stobs las byung ba yin no zhes/.
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
20
the Grwa Valley. According to Zhwa dmar IV,74 he and Chos rje nam pa [= Nam
mkha’ blo gros, 1403-77] briefly met ’Gos lo tsā ba in late 1475 or early 1476 for
some teachings, at which time the aged master presented them with an edition of
what is said to have been a complete copy of his collected writings (bka’ ’bum
tshang ma). In light of the eleven or so of his writings that could not have been
included in this edition at this time, the expression “collected writings” is arguably
a trifle premature. Perhaps Zhwa dmar IV’s use of it conveys the possible sense
of urgency ’Gos lo tsā ba may have felt, thinking that his end was not all that far
off and that this collection of his writings represented the sum total of what he was
to write in his life. They met again sometime in 1477 and 1478, as well as in fall
of 1479. Khrims khang lo tsā ba was visited by ’Gos lo tsā ba in a dream he had
in the second lunar month (February 11 to March 12) of 1480. Having been
transported in his immediate presence, his old Tibetan mentor taught him his
Abhisamayālaṃkāra commentary and then changed into the shape of Vanaratna,
the Indian teacher they had in common. They met for the last time during the third
lunar month (March 31 to April 29/30) of 1481 when Khrims khang lo tsā ba had
come to see him in Bsam gtan gling in Rtses thang (?or in Dol). Again, this was
not a mere courtesy visit and he had not come with empty hands. Out of friendship,
and hopefully a pleasant sense of obligation, the almost ninety-year-old ’Gos lo
tsā ba gave him the supreme empowerment[?s] (mchog dbang) of Kālacakra and
explanations of the allied Bde mchog stod ’grel [= Laghutantrapiṇḍārthavivaraṇa
/ Laghutantraṭīkā by Vajrapāṇi]. I have no idea how he was able to manage all
this at his age. But Khrims khang lo tsā ba also had things to do in Bsam gtan gling.
“To me,” Zhwa dmar IV writes, “[Khrims khang lo tsā ba] gave the textual
transmission (lung) for the Pronouncement of Cakrasaṃvara-equal-to-the-sky, a
bit (?togs) of the collected writings of ’Gro mgon rin po che [= Phag mo gru pa
rdo rje rgyal po, 1110-70 or Zhang g.yu brag pa], [and] the large
Jñānavajrasamuccaya.”75 Word reached him in the eleventh month of that year
that ’Gos lo tsā ba’s health was declining. And in spite of prayers and entreaties
from afar by Khrims khang lo tsā ba and his monks, the old Sanskritist and scholar
passed away on the twenty-eighth day of the eleventh lunar month (December 19)
of 1481; later, in the middle of 1482, both Khrims khang lo tsā ba and Zhwa dmar
IV consecrated the stūpa in Brag kha that contained his remains.76 Khrims khang
lo tsā ba followed him some ten months later, as he passed away on the seventh
day of the ninth lunar month (September 21/23) of 1482.77
As a rule and no doubt in part following Indian practice, the identification of
the author of a text and, when given, the provision of such other details as the
person(s) who requested him or her to write it, the place and time of its composition,
74
What follows is culled from Zhwa dmar IV, Ngo mtshar rgya mtsho, 105b, 115b-6a, 117a.
75
Zhwa dmar IV, Ngo mtshar rgya mtsho, 119b: der bdag la bde mchog nam mkha’ dang mnyam
pa’i bka’ dang/ ’gro mgon rin po che’i bka’ ’bum thogs shig/ ye shes rdo rje kun las btus che ba rnams
kyi lung stsal/. I read togs for thogs at the suggestion of Rgya sprul drung rams rin po che.
76
Dpa’ bo II, Mkhas pa’i dga’ ston, 2:1125-26.
77
Zhwa dmar IV, Ngo mtshar rgya mtsho, 128b.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
21
and the identity of the scribe(s) are given in the colophon that is placed at the end
of the text. Though this is usually called the author’s colophon, it is not always
obvious or even the case that the person who wrote it was in fact the author himself.
There are plenty of occasions that such colophons were not actually written by the
author. Therefore, what are called author’s colophons are sometimes authorially
somewhat ambiguous. When a work is blockprinted, the author’s colophon is as
a rule followed by a printer’s colophon. When for whatever reason certain changes
are effected in the printing blocks, such as carving new ones when the originals
had been damaged or lost in a fire, then this new circumstance would more often
than not be identified in subsequent post-printer’s colophons. A print from an
additional printing block that functions as a supplement to the original number of
blocks would then give the relevant information. A diachronic study of these
different colophons, their structural features, and the particular signatures of the
different printeries are important desiderata in the field. We already meet with the
sequence of an author’s colophon being followed by a printer’s colophon at the
end of what is so far the oldest extant print of a Tibetan text, namely, the December
16, 1284, Dadu print of Sa skya paṇḍita’s celebrated Tshad ma rigs pa’i gter gyi
rang gi ’grel pa.78 Space permitting, a printer’s colophon could be carved on the
same block where the text (including the author’s colophon) ends, but it seems
only if it were brief and to the point. However, irrespective of its length, the printer’s
colophon is frequently carved onto new blocks, thereby effectively distinguishing
it from the main body of the work. These colophons can sometimes, as for example
in the case of the 1538-39 Gung thang print of the Bka’ gdams glegs bam collection
or the Tsum print of the Skyes bu gsum gyi lam rim rgyas pa by ?Bo dong paṇ
chen ’jigs med grags pa (1375-1452) alias Phyogs las rnam rgyal, extend over a
good number of folios (or printing blocks) and may even include a brief history
of the way in which the carved textual corpus was handed down until it came to
be printed and a listing of those who had been involved in its production, its
patron(s), carver(s), and editor(s).79 In these cases, colophons serve as important
and often unique historical sources. They can also be followed by a brief prayer
composed for the occasion by one or another notable scholar and man of religion
to promote the carved text’s dissemination and to give it his official imprimatur.
If there are anomalies with the way in which The Blue Book opens its narratives
in general, with its section footers as well as with what I have called its “Apology,”
then the same holds for the location of the author’s and printer’s colophon within
78
See my “Two Mongol Xylographs (hor par ma) of the Tibetan Text of Sa skya Paṇḍita’s Work
on Buddhist Logic and Epistemology,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies
16 (1993), 279-98. The Tibetans learned the art of woodblock printing from China. By contrast, Indian
Sanskrit texts were printed much later.
79
See F.-K. Ehrhard, Early Buddhist Block Prints from Mang yul Gung thang (Lumbini: Lumbini
International Research Institute, 2000), 118-29, 148-61. I believe J. Bacot, “Titres et colophons
d’ouvrages non-canoniques tibétains – textes et traduction,” Bulletin de l’École Française
d’Extrême-Orient XLIV (1947-50), 275-337, was among the very first publications to provide detailed
accounts of colophons. See now also J. I. Cabezon, “Authorship and Literary Production in Classical
Buddhist Tibet,” in Changing Minds: Contributions to the Study of Buddhism in Tibet in Honor of
Jeffrey Hopkins, ed. G. Newland (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2001), 233-63.
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
22
the blockprinted text. It is indeed quite odd that the author’s colophon80 of the
blockprints of The Blue Book is placed after the first printer’s colophon and before
the other printer’s colophon(s).81 We have already seen that what I have called the
author’s colophon was a very slight piece. In fact, given its curious position, it was
most likely not written by ’Gos lo tsā ba at all. Thus, it is probably inaccurate or
simply wrong to call it an “author’s colophon.” Within the text of The Blue Book
we have one indication that the process of the carving of the blocks was staggered.
We read uniquely at the end of the section on the history of the Kālacakra in the
New Delhi edition that it was “realized as a print in the Chos rgyal lhun po
Palace.”82 Chos rgyal lhun po was of course the name of the residence of the Bya
family in Dol.
The first printer’s colophon is designed to do double duty. It does not merely
provide us with details of the carving of its printing blocks as such. As a preamble
to the particulars of the origin of the blockprint, it also provides us with a history
of the family of its principal patron. We learn there that Khrims khang lo tsā ba
had been instrumental in finding the necessary means to begin getting The Blue
Book blockprinted, and he had done so at the behest of Spyan snga ngag gi dbang
phyug grags pa [or Spyan snga ngag gi dbang po grags pa] alias Spyan snga tshes
nyi pa, who functioned as the Spyan snga hierarch of Gdan sa mthil from 1454 to
1458 and from 1473 to 1481. He had assumed rule of Sne’u gdong in 1481, which
he more or less maintained until his passing. In 1493, Zhwa dmar IV himself was
elected or elevated to the Spyan snga hierarch and was, according to Dpa’ bo II
and no doubt with the support of the powerful Rin spungs pa ruler Don yod rdo
rje (d. 1512), “...the head of the two systems [spiritual and secular] of the Phag mo
gru government.”83 To my knowledge, he was the first Spyan snga hierarch who
was not born in the Rlangs family. Erecting a prosopocentric slum by inserting a
host of first-person pronouns where there are none in the Tibetan text, Roerich
confidently assumed that ’Gos lo tsā ba had written the printer’s colophon and
states that he had requested his patron Bkra shis dar rgyas legs pa’i rgyal po to
organize and release the initial funds for this project in the iron-female-ox (lcags
mo glang) year. According to the different calendars of D. Schuh’s “Tabellen,”
this year began either on December 31, 1480, or January 1 or 30, 1481, and ended
on January 18 or 19, 1482.84 This means that the colophon’s iron-female-ox year
might even indicate that the project was begun when ’Gos lo tsā ba was still alive.
80
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 969 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:1271-72]; Roerich, Blue
Annals, 1091-92; and Guo, Qingshi, 713-14. Roerich’s translation is here quite misleading.
81
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 968-69, 970 [’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:1270-71, 1273-74];
Roerich, Blue Annals, 1090-91, 93; and Guo, Qingshi, 712-13, 713-14. Guo does not translate the
second printer’s colophon.
82
// pho brang chos rgyal lhun por par du bsgrubs//
’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1976), 741; Roerich, Blue Annals, 838; and Guo, Qingshi, 545. It is lacking
in ’Gos lo, Deb sngon (ed. 1984), 2:979.
83
Dpa’ bo II, Mkhas pa’i dga’ ston, 2:1135.
84
Schuh, Kalenderrechnung, *116*.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
23
But there is nothing elsewhere in the sources that would substantiate the scenario
of him having such close connections with the ruling house of Bya. Initially,
however, the cost of getting the pages of the manuscript ready for carving (par yig
rnams) – par yig seems to be an abbreviation of par gzhi’i yi ge [= par rtsa] – was
subvented by Lady Rdo rje bde ma (d. 1490/1), the wife of Rgyal ba shes rab85
and his younger brother Rin chen bzang po (d. 1475/6), the rulers of the principality
of Yar rgyab that included the Grwa Valley. Chos kyi rgyal mtshan and Dge legs
dpal mgon, both erstwhile students of ’Gos lo tsā ba, were involved in editing and
proofreading (zhus shing dag par byed pa) the manuscript, and Shar dwags po pa
dpal phyogs thams cad las rnam par rgyal ba’i lha was evidently responsible for
overseeing the entire project.86 There is no question that the latter must be identified
as the very precocious Karma ’phrin las pa I, who was to become one of the major
scholars of his generation during the first half of the sixteenth century.87 One of
his aliases is Dwags po paṇ chen III, which we find used in the colophon of a
blockprint of his 1511 biography of his uncle Bkra shis rnam rgyal (1398-1458)
alias Dwags po paṇ chen I;88 Dwags po paṇ chen II, too, was his uncle, who is
better known as Zur mkhar ba mnyam nyid rdo rje (1398-1458), the great physician.
His future in the Kaṃ tshang sect of the Bka’ brgyud pa school was sealed when
the Karma pa hierarch Zhwa nag VI Chos grags rgya mtsho (1454-1506) gave him
the name “Karma ’phrin las pa” and appointed him abbot of Chos ’khor lhun po
in, it seems, the 1480s.89
The second printer’s colophon is found in the last folio of the New Delhi reprint
and in the penultimate folio of the Chengdu reprint of the The Blue Book. It contains
a notice to the effect that some of the original blocks had been lost during the
85
Rgyal ba shes rab was the father of his more famous son, the scholar Gong dkar ba kun dga’ rnam
rgyal (1432-96).
86
The difficult phrase rkyen du ’phrod pa’i ched du bya ba ched thang du sbyar defies literal
translation as is evidenced in Roerich’s and Guo’s attempts to come to terms with it.
87
A sketch of his life is found in Dpa’ bo II, Mkhas pa’i dga’ ston, 2:1162-64.
88
See the Kun mkhyen bkra shis rnam rgyal gyi rnam par thar po ngo mtshar gyi rgya mtsho,
fifty-one-folio blockprint, C.P.N. catalogue no. 002655(5), 50a-b. The printer’s colophon of this
biography of the second abbot of ’Phan po na len dra Monastery (from 1442 to 1458) is entirely
uninformative. It has a marginal notation ka which suggests that it may have formed an edition of Bkra
shis rnam rgyal’s collected writings. Karma ’phrin las pa I himself was an extremely versatile and fairly
prolific author – his oeuvre amounted to more than ten volumes – and, of course, he exerted an enormous
influence on the intellectual development of Zhwa nag VII Mi bskyod rdo rje (1507-54); for studies
of some of his writings, see lastly H. V. Guenther, Ecstatic Spontaneity: Saraha’s Three Cycles of
Dohā, Nanzan Studies in Asian Religions 4 (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1993), passim, and
J.-U. Sobisch, Three-Vow Theories in Tibetan Buddhism: A Comparative Study of Major Traditions
from the Twelfth through Nineteenth Centuries, Contributions to Tibetan Studies 1 (Wiesbaden: Dr.
Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2002), 217-71. Unpublished but sighted are his: Chos ’brel dang rab gnas
bsngo ba thor bu in twenty-one folios, Rdzogs rim rlung sems gnyis med kyi khrid yig zhal shog dang
bcas pa’i zin bris in twenty-three folios, Sgyu ma gsum [b]rgyud kyi man ngag dmar khrid in eight
folios, and the Dpal ldan bla ma dam pa ngag gi dbang po grags pa dpal bzang po’i rnam par thar pa
yid phrog lha’i rnga chen in one hundred and thirteen folios. The subject of the latter is a trifle
ambiguous. It is either the life-story of the erstwhile Spyan snga ngag gi dbang po or of his virtual
namesake, the extraordinary twelfth abbot of Stag lung Monastery, whose dates are 1418 to 1496.
89
Dpa’ bo II, Mkhas pa’i dga’ ston, 2:1076, 1106.
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
24
troubles of the Nepal-Tibetan war of 1792, and that these were carved anew under
the aegis of Rta tshag VI. We learn there that the original blocks had been housed
in Yangs pa can Monastery, which, having been founded in 1503, was for close
to three hundred years the see of the Zhwa dmar line of reembodiments. Zhwa
dmar X Chos grub rgya mtsho’s (1742-92) association with the wrong side of the
said war and his death or suicide led the Lhasa government effectively to prohibit
this line from manifesting itself again – an inquiry into the metaphysical
presuppositions and the mechanism of such a prohibition would be an interesting
undertaking. The line was not officially “reinstated” until the formal recognition
of Mi pham smra ba’i go cha, the present Zhwa dmar incarnation, who was born
in 1952. Among the other consequences of the war and the role Zhwa dmar X
played in it were the conversion of Yangs pa can into a Dge lugs pa monastery
and the transfer of The Blue Book’s printing blocks to Dga’ ldan brtan bzhugs chos
’khor, better known as Kun bde gling. This was the newly (1792) established
residence (bla brang) of Rta tshag VI in Lhasa, from which he later served as
regent (rgyal tshab) during the minority of Dalai Lama IX Lungtok Gyatso (Da
lai bla ma sku phreng dgu pa lung rtogs rgya mtsho, 1805-15). This is the edition
that was reprinted in New Delhi.90 Later, a new set of printing blocks were carved
for it at Dga’ ldan chos ’khor gling Monastery in A mchog, in distant (from Lhasa)
A mdo. This formed the basis of the edition of the text that was printed in Chengdu.
Summing up, the results of this brief inquiry into the history of the text(s) of
The Blue Book are admittedly pretty meager. In the first place, given the problems
’Gos lo tsā ba had with his health and eyes, it is virtually certain that he did not
work on it alone. Rather, he most likely supervised a team of his disciples as they
were compiling it by way of excerpting what must have been a very large collection
of biographical sources in particular. The evidence suggests that the lion’s share
of this undertaking was probably carried out between late 1476 and early 1477.
Secondly, he himself appears to have given the nickname The Blue Book to the
original piece, a name that evidently stuck. And thirdly, it was never completed
and its final shape, including the mchod par brjod pa and the various inserts, was
the result of the editorial efforts of at least two individuals: Khrims khang lo tsā
ba and the still very young Karma ’phrin las pa I. For now, we cannot rule out the
possibility that Zhwa dmar IV had an editorial stake in it as well. In other words,
then, the text of The Blue Book as we have it postdates ’Gos lo tsā ba’s passing by
more than a year, and the carving of its printing blocks was not completed until
the beginning of 1483 at the earliest. In short, then, the text was very much a group
effort.
90
Lobsang Shastri, Catalogue of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (Manuscript Section),
vol. 2, Historical Works (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, 1990), no. 151, 129-30,
lists a four hundred and eighty-six folio blockprint of The Blue Book, which the author identifies as
the Pho brang chos rgyal lhun po print. This is not so. The print in question is identical to the one
published in New Delhi.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
25
Glossary
Note: Glossary entries are organized in Tibetan alphabetical order. All entries
list the following information in this order: THDL Extended Wylie transliteration
of the term, THDL Phonetic rendering of the term, English translation, Sanskrit
and/or Chinese equivalent, dates when applicable, and type.
Ka
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
kam tshang
Kamtsang
Organization
karma
Karma
Organization
karma pa
Karmapa
Lineage
karma ’phrin las pa
Karma Trinlepa
karma ’phrin las pa
sku phreng dang po
Karma Trinlepa
Kutreng Dangpo
kun mkhyen chen po
Künkhyen Chenpo
Person
kun mkhyen chen po
jo mo nang ba
Künkhyen Chenpo
Jomo Nangwa
Person
kun tu bzang po
Küntu Zangpo
Monastery
kun bde gling
Kündé Ling
Monastery
kun bzang rtse pa
Künzang Tsepa
Person
kun bzang rdzong
Künzang Dzong
Place
krung go’i bod kyi
shes rig zhib ’jug lte
gnas su nyar ba’i ta
la’i lo ma’i bstan bcos
(sbyin shog ’dril ma’i
par) gyi dkar chag
mdor gsal
Trunggö Bökyi Sherik
Zhipjuk Tenesu
Nyarwé Talé Lomé
Tenchö (Jinshok
Drilmé Par) gyi
Karchak Dor Sel
Text
bka’
Ka
bka’ ’gyur
Kangyur
Textual
Collection
bka’ brgyud pa
Kagyüpa
Organization
bka’ chems ka khol
ma
Kachem Kakhölma
Text
bka’ gdams kyi rnam
par thar pa bka’
gdams chos ’byung
gsal ba’i sgron ma
Kadamkyi Nampar
Tarpa Kadam
Chönjung Selwé
Drönma
Text
Person
Karma Trinlepa I
1456-1539 Author; Person
Pronouncement
Term
bka’ gdams glegs bam Kadam Lekbam
bka’ gdams pa
Text
Kadampa
bka’ ’bum tshang ma kambum tsangma
bkra shis rgyal
mtshan
Trashi Gyeltsen
bkra shis dar rgyas
legs pa’i rgyal po
Trashi Dargyé Lekpé
Gyelpo
Type
Organization
collected writings
Term
Person
d. 1499
Person
bkra shis rnam rgyal Trashi Namgyel
1398-1458 Person
rkyang chen
shākyashrī
1369-1448 Person
Kyangchen
Shakyashri
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
skabs
kap
skar nag rtsis kyi lo
rgyus skor
Kar Nak Tsikyi Logyü
Kor
26
section
Term
Text
skyes bu gsum gyi lam Kyebu Sumgyi
Lamrim Gyepa
rim rgyas pa
brkos kyi ’du byed pa kökyi dujepa
Text
carver of the blocks
Term
Kha
Wylie
Phonetics
kha brda
khada
khri dpon
tripön
khrims khang lo tsā
ba
Trimkhang Lotsawa
khrims khang lo tsā
ba bsod nams rgya
mtsho’i sde
Trimkhang Lotsawa
Sönam Gyatsö De
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Term
myriarch
Term
Person
1424-82
mkhan [b]rgyud rnam Khengyü Namsum
gsum byon tshul gyi Jöntsülgyi Namtar
rnam thar
Person
Text
mkhan chen las kyi
rdo rje
Khenchen Lekyi
Dorjé
mkhas pa lde’u rgya
bod kyi chos ’byung
rgyas pa
Khepa Deu Gya
Bökyi Chönjung
Gyepa
Text
mkhas pa rnams la
’jug pa’i sgo
Khepa Namla Jukpé
Go
Text
1326-1401 Person
mkhas pa’i dga’ ston Khepé Gatön
Text
Ga
Wylie
Phonetics
Gangchendu Chöluk
gangs can du chos
lugs ji tar byung ba’i Jitar Jungwé Rimpa
Tönpé Logyü Chenmo
rim pa ston pa’i lo
rgyus chen mo
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
The Great Annals
Showing the Stages
of How the
Buddhist Religion
Emerged in the
Snowy [Land]
Type
Text
gangs can rig mdzod Gangchen Rikdzö
Series
gung thang
Gungtang
Place
gung ru
Gungru
Person
gung ru shes rab
bzang po
Gungru Sherap
Zangpo
Author
gong dkar ba kun
dga’ rnam rgyal
Gongkarwa Künga
Namgyel
grags pa rdo rje
Drakpa Dorjé
1432-96
Person
Author; Person
grags pa rdo rje dpal Drakpa Dorjé
Pelzangpo
bzang po
b. 1444
Author; Person
grwa
Dra
Place
grwa phug pa lhun
grub rgya mtsho
Drapukpa Lhündrup
Gyatso
Person
glegs thag
lektak
strap
Term
glegs bam
lekbam
book
Term
glegs bam gyi po ti
lekbamgyi poti
book
Term
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
27
glegs bam po ti
lekbam poti
book
Term
glegs shing
lekshing
two wooden boards
Term
dga’ ldan chos ’khor Ganden Chökhor Ling
gling
Monastery
dga’ ldan brtan
bzhugs chos ’khor
Ganden Tenzhuk
Chökhor
Monastery
dgun zla ’bring po
günda dringpo
dge ’dun chos ’phel
Gendün Chömpel
dge ’dun chos ’phel
Gendün Chömpel
Text
dge ’dun chos ’phel
gyi gsung rtsom
Gendün Chömpelgyi
Sungtsom
Text
dge lugs pa
Gelukpa
Organization
dge legs dpal mgon
Gelek Pelgön
Person
’gos lo tsā ba
Gö Lotsawa
’gos lo tsā ba gzhon
nu dpal
Gö Lotsawa Zhönnu
Pel
’gyur byang
gyurjang
intermediate
winter-month
Term
1903-52
Author; Person
Person
1392-1481 Author; Person
translator’s
colophon
Term
’gro mgon rin po che Drogön Rinpoché
Person
rgya sprul drung rams Gyatrül Drungram
Rinpoché
rin po che
Person
rgyal chen brag mgo Gyelchen Drakgo
Place
rgyal ba shes rab
Gyelwa Sherap
rgyal tshab
gyeltsap
sgo sel
Gosel
Place
sgo sel ba
Goselwa
Person
Person
regent
Term
Nga
Wylie
Phonetics
ngag gi dbang po
Ngakgi Wangpo
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
1439-91
ngag dbang chos kyi
nyi ma ’jigs med
bzang po
Ngawang Chökyi
Nyima Jikmé Zangpo
Person
ngag dbang rnam
rgyal
Ngawang Namgyel
ngor chen
Ngorchen
Person
ngor chen kun dga’
bzang po
Ngorchen Künga
Zangpo
Author
mnga’ ris chos kyi
rgyal po
Ngari Chökyi Gyelpo
Person
mngon dga’
Gönga
Place
mngon par dga’ ba
Gönpar Gawa
Place
mngon par dga’ ba
chos rdzong
Ngönpar Gawa
Chödzong
Place
rngog lo [tsā ba blo
ldan shes rab]
Ngok Lo[tsawa Loden
Sherap]
rngog lo tsā ba
Ngok Lotsawa
sngon po
ngönpo
Person
1571-1626 Author; Person
1005-64
Person
Person
blue
Term
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
28
Ca
Wylie
Phonetics
lcags mo glang
chakmo lang
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Term
lcang zhabs pa ’gyur Changzhappa Gyurmé
Tsewang
med tshe dbang
Person
lcang zhabs pa ’gyur Chang Zhappa
Gyurmé Tsewang
med tshe dbang
Author
lce sgom pa
Person
Chegompa
Cha
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Chak Lotsawa
Chak Lotsawa II
chag lo tsā ba sku
phreng gnyis pa chos Kutreng Nyipa Chöjé Chöje Pel
Pel
rje dpal
chu mo bya
chumo ja
Dates
Type
1197-1264 Person
water-female-bird
Term
chos kyi rgyal mtshan Chökyi Gyeltsen
Person
chos ’khor gling
Chökhor Ling
Monastery
chos ’khor sgang lo
tsā ba manydzushrī
Chökhor Gang
Lotsawa Mendzushri
Person
chos ’khor lhun po
Chökhor Lhünpo
Monastery
chos rgyal lhun po
Chögyel Lhünpo
Place
chos rje nam pa
Chöjé Nampa
Person
chos rje phyogs pa
Chöjé Chokpa
Person
chos rje bla ma
Chöjé Lama
Person
chos rje bla ma dam
pa
Chöjé Lama Dampa
Person
chos dpal dar dpyang Chöpel Darchang
Person
chos ’byung chen po
chönjung chenpo
chos ’byung dpag
bsam ljon bzang
Chönjung Paksam
Jönzang
Text
chos ’byung me tog Chönjung Metok
snying po sbrang rtsi’i Nyingpo Drangtsi
Chü
bcud
Text
large ecclesiastic
chronicle
Term
chos rdzong
chödzong
religious citadel
Term
mchan
chen
annotation
Term
mchims
Chim
mchims [nam mkha’
grags]
Chim [Lozang
Drakpa]
mchog dbang
chokwang
mchod par brjod pa
chöpar jöpa
Person
1299-1375 Person
supreme
empowerment
Term
Term
Ja
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
jo nang
Jonang
Place
jo nang
Jonang
Monastery
jo nang bka’ bzhi pa
Jonang Kazhipa
Person
jo nang pa
Jonangpa
Organization
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
jo bo rje
San. Atiśa
Jowo Jé
29
c.
Person
982-1054
Jowo Yapsé Letröpé
jo bo yab sras las
’phros pa’i skyes bu Kyebu Dam Gazhikgi
Jönpé Tsül Tentsi
dam ’ga’ zhig[ g]i
’byon pa’i tshul bstan
rtsis
Text
’jam dbyangs chos kyi Jamyang Chökyi
Ngönpo
mgon po
Person
’jam dbyangs
pradznya badzra
Jamyang Pradznya
Badzra
Person
’jig rten dang ’jig rten
las ’das pa’i lam gyi
rten rnam par bkod pa
rab tu gsal ba’i sgron
ma
Jikten dang Jiktenlé
Depé Lamgyi Ten
Nampar Köpa Raptu
Selwé Drönma
Text
rje thams cad mkhyen
pa don gyi slad lo tsa
ba chen po’i rnam par
thar pa ngo mtshar
rgya mtsho
Jé Tamché Khyenpa
Döngyi Lé Lotsawa
Chenpö Nampar
Tarpa Ngotsar Gyatso
Text
rje btsun grags pa
rgyal mtshan
Jetsün Drakpa
Gyeltsen
rje btsun gzhon nu’i
zhabs
Jetsün Zhönnü Zhap
Person
rje lo chen
Jé Lochen
Person
1148-1216 Person
Nya
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
nyang ral nyi ma’i ’od Nyangrel Nyimé Özer
zer
Dates
Type
1124-92
Author; Person
nyi ma rgyal mtshan
Nyima Gyeltsen
Person
nyi shar bkra shis
Nyishar Trashi
Person
gnyal
Nyel
Place
rnying ma pa
Nyingmapa
Organization
snying po gsal sgron Nyingpo Seldrön
Text
Ta
Wylie
Phonetics
ter
ter
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
togs
tok
gtum ston blo gros
grags pa
Tumtön Lodrö Drakpa
gter
ter
Term
rta tshag
Tatsak
Person
rta tshag sku phreng
drug pa
Tatsak Kutreng
Drukpa
Person
rta tshag sku phreng
drug pa ye shes blo
bzang bstan pa’i
mgon po
Tatsak Kutreng
Tatsak VI Yeshé
Drukpa Yeshé Lozang Lozang Tenpé
Tenpé Gönpo
Gönpo
rta tshag tshe dbang
rgyal
Tatsak Tsewang Gyel
Term
Term
1086-1166 Person
1716-1810 Person
Author; Person
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
30
rten ’brel sgra sgrub Tendrel Dradrup
Text
rtogs pa brjod pa ngo Tokpa Jöpa Ngotsar
mtshar tshangs pa’i Tsangpé Gendi
gaṇḍi
Text
stag sgo
Takgo
Place
stag lung
Taklung
Monastery
stag lung
Taklung
Lineage
stag lung chos ’byung Taklung Chönjung
Text
stag lung pa
Taklungpa
Organization
bstan rtsis gsal ba’i
nyin byed lhag bsam
rab dkar
Tentsi Selwé Nyinjé
Lhaksam Rapkar
Text
Tha
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
thal ba’i rgyud
Telwé Gyü
Text
thugs
tuk
Term
ther
ter
Term
Da
Wylie
Phonetics
da lai bla ma sku
phreng dgu pa lung
rtogs rgya mtsho
Dalai Lama Kutreng Dalai Lama IX
Gupa Lungtok Gyatso Lungtok Gyatso
English
da lai bla ma sku
phreng lnga pa
Dalai Lama Kutreng
Ngapa
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
1805-15
Person
Dalai Lama V
Author; Person
dung dkar rin po che Dungkar Rinpoché
Person
deb
dep
deb sngon
Depngön
deb ter
depter
deb ter sngon po
Depter Ngönpo
deb gter
depter
deb gter sngon po
Depter Ngönpo
deb ther
depter
book
Term
deb ther dkar po
Depter Karpo
White Book
Text
deb ther khra bo
Depter Trawo
Multicolored Book
Text
deb ther sngon po
Depter Ngönpo
deb ther dmar po
Depter Marpo
book
Term
Text
book
Term
Text
book
Term
Text
Text
Red Book
Text
deb ther dmar po gsar Depter Marpo Sarma
ma
Text
don yod rdo rje
Dönyö Dorjé
dol
Döl
dol po pa
Dölpopa
dol po pa shes rab
rgyal mtshan
Dölpopa Sherap
Gyeltsen
dwags po paṇ chen
sku phreng gnyis pa
Dakpo Penchen
Kutreng Nyipa
Dakpo Penchen II
Person
dwags po paṇ chen
sku phreng dang po
Dakpo Penchen
Kutreng Dangpo
Dakpo Penchen I
Person
d. 1512
Person
Place
Person
1294-1361 Person
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
31
dwags po paṇ chen
ske phreng gsum pa
Dakpo Penchen
Kutreng Sumpa
drang bden gyis bslus
pa’i slong mo ba/ mdo
smad pa dge ’dun
chos ’phel gyi mi tshe
dpyad brjod
Drangdengyi Lüpé
Longmowa, Domepa
Gendün Chömpelgyi
Mitse Chejö
Text
gdan sa mthil
Densatil
Monastery
Dakpo Penchen III
Person
bde mchog stod ’grel Dechok Tödrel
Text
’dul ’dzin mkhyen rab Dündzin Khyenrap
Gyatso
rgya mtsho
Author
’do li
doli
rdo rje rgyal
Dorjé Gyel
rdo rje bde ma
Dorjé Dema
sde dge
Degé
Place
sde srid ’phrin las
rgya mtsho
Desi Trinlé Gyatso
Person
brda bkrol gser gyi
me long
Datröl Sergyi Melong
Text
carrier
San. ḍolī
Term
Author; Person
d. 1490/1 Person
Na
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Naktso Lotsawa
nag tsho lo tsā ba
tshul khrims rgyal ba Tsültrim Gyelwa
nags khrod
naktrö
nam mkha’ blo gros
Namkha Lodrö
Type
Person
grove
Term
1403-77
Person
norwé nyokpa dangjé the pure-water
nor ba’i rnyog pa
jewel cleansing the
dang byed chu ’dang chudanggi norbu
mud of mistakes
gi nor bu
Term
gnam gang
namgang
full moon’s day
Term
rnam thar gtsang ba
namtar tsangwa
biography
Term
snar thang
Nartang
Monastery
sne’u gdong
Neudong
Place
Pa
Wylie
Phonetics
pad dkar zhal lung
Pekar Zhellung
English
Text
paṇ chen bsod nams
grags pa
Penchen Sönam
Drakpa
Author
paṇḍita grags pa rdo Pendita Drakpa Dorjé
rje
Sanskrit/Chinese
San. Paṇḍita
Kīrtivajra
Dates
Type
Person
par gyi glegs bu yongs pargyi lekbu
yongdruppa
sgrub pa
one who made the
labeling of the
print[-ing blocks]
Term
par byang
parjang
printer’s colophon
Term
par rtsa
partsa
Term
par gzhi’i yi ge
parzhi yige
Term
par yig
paryik
par yig rnams
paryik nam
Term
pages of the
manuscript ready
for carving
Term
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
32
pu to ba’i rnam thar
Putowé Namtar
po ti
poti
book
Term
po ti glegs bam
poti lekbam
book
Term
po to
Poto
Monastery
po to ba
Potowa
Person
Text
po to ba rin chen gsal Potowa Rinchen Sel
Person
po to ba’i rnam thar
Potowé Namtar
pod
pö
book
Term
pod nag ma
Pö Nakma
Black Book
Text
pod ser ma
Pö Serma
Yellow Book
Text
dpag bsam gyi snye
ma
Paksamgyi Nyema
Text
dpa’ bo sku phreng
gnyis pa
Pawo Kutreng Nyipa Pawo II
Person
dpa’ bo sku phreng
gnyis pa gtsug lag
phreng ba
Pawo Kutreng Nyipa Pawo II Tsuklak
Tsuklak Trengwa
Trengwa
Text
1504-66
Author; Person
dpal dus kyi ’khor lo Pel Dükyi Khorlo Jitar
Dartsül Gyüpé Logyü
ji ltar dar tshul
brgyud pa’i lo rgyus dang Chepa
dang bcas pa
Text
dpal dus kyi ’khor lo’i
rgyud kyi dka’ ’grel
snying po’i don rab tu
gsal ba’i rgyan
Pel Dükyi Khorlö
Gyükyi Kadrel
Nyingpö Dön Raptu
Selwé Gyen
Text
dpal ldan bla ma dam
pa mkhan chen thams
cad mkhyen pa don
gyi slad du mtshan
nas smos te gzhon nu
dpal gyi rnam par
thar pa yon tan rin po
che mchog tu rgyas
pa’i ljon pa
Penden Lama Dampa
Khenchen Tamché
Khyenpa Döngyi
Ledu Tsenné Mö te
Zhönnu Pelgyi
Nampar Tarpa Yönten
Rinpoché Choktu
Gyepé Jönpa
Text
spyang lung pa gzhon Changlungpa Zhönnu
Lodrö
nu blo gros
1372-1475 Person
spyan mnga’
Chennga
Lineage
spyan snga
Chennga
Lineage
spyan snga ngag gi
dbang po
Chennga Ngakgi
Wangpo
Person
spyan snga ngag gi
dbang po grags pa
Chennga Ngakgi
Wangpo Drakpa
Person
Chennga Ngakgi
spyan snga ngag gi
dbang phyug grags pa Wangchuk Drakpa
Person
spyan snga nyer gnyis Chennga Nyer Nyipa
pa
Person
spyan snga nyer gnyis Chennga Nyer Nyipa
pa bsod nams rgyal Sönam Gyeltsen
mtshan
1386-1434 Person
spyan snga dpal ldan Chennga Penden
Zangpo
bzang po
1383-1407 Person
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
33
spyan snga tshes nyi
pa
Chennga Tsé Nyipa
Person
spyi bo lhas pa
Chiwo Lhepa
Place
Pha
Wylie
Phonetics
pha dam pa
Padampa
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Person
pha dam pa sangs
rgyas
Padampa Sanggyé
Person
phag mo gru
Pakmodru
Clan
phag mo gru gdan sa Pakmodru Densatil
mthil
phag mo gru pa rdo
rje rgyal po
Type
Monastery
Pakmo Druppa Dorjé
Gyelpo
1110-70
Person
Podrang Gyelzang
pho brang rgyal
bzang[s] smon mkhar Mönkhar
Place
pho brang chos rgyal Podrang Chögyel
Lhünpo
lhun po
Place
Podrang Chödzong
pho brang chos
rdzong chen po bi dzā Chenpo Bidzaya
Prastir
ya prasthir
Place
Podrang Chödzong
pho brang chos
rdzong chen po bi dzā Chenpo Bidzaya
Prastir
ya prasthir
Place
phya pa
Person
Chapa
phya pa chos kyi seng Chapa Chökyi Senggé
ge
Person
phyogs las rnam rgyal Choklé Namgyel
Person
phyogs las rnam rgyal Choklé Namgyel
’phan po na len dra
1306-86
Penpo Nalendra
Person
Monastery
Ba
Wylie
Phonetics
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
Butön Khache Dzepé
Chönjung Rinpoché
Dzölé, Rikpa Dzinpa
Tsewang Norbü
Nyebar Tüpao
English
beubum
bo dong
Bodong
bo dong paṇ chen
’jigs med grags pa
Bodong Penchen
Jikmé Drakpa
Bökyi Yüldu Chö
bod kyi yul du chos
dang chos smra ba ji dang Chömawa Jitar
ltar byung ba’i rim pa Jungwé Rimpa
Dates
Type
Text
bu ston rin chen grub Butön Rinchendrup
be’u bum
Sanskrit/Chinese
1290-1364 Person
booklet
Term
Place
1375-1452 Person
The Stages of How
Buddhism and
Buddhists Emerged
in Tibet
Text
bya
Ja
Clan
bya bkra shis dar
rgyas legs pa’i rgyal
po
Ja Trashi Dargyé
Lekpé Gyelpo
Person
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
bya rgod gshongs
Jargö Shong
bya yul
Jayül
byang bdag rnam
rgyal grags bzang
Jangdak Namgyel
Drakzang
byams gling
Jamling
34
Place
Place
1399-1475 Person
Monastery
byams gling paṇ chen Jamling Penchen
bsod nams rnam rgyal Sönam Namgyel
1400-1475 Person
byams gsar
Jamsar
Person
byas
jé
Term
brag dmar me ba
Drakmar Mewa
Place
brag ram
Drakram
Place
bris
dri
bla brang
labrang
bla ma
lama
bla ma dam pa
Lama Dampa
bla ma dam pa bsod
nams rgyal mtshan
Lama Dampa Sönam
Gyeltsen
blo bzang mi ’gyur
rdo rje
Lozang Mingyur
Dorjé
Term
residence
Term
Term
Person
1312-75
Person
Person
dbang phyug lo gzhon Wangchuk Lo
Zhönnupel
nu dpal
Person
dbu can
uchen
Term
dbu med
umé
Term
’bri khung lo tsā ba
Drikhung Lotsawa
Person
’brog mi rin chen
rgyal mtshan
Drokmi Rinchen
Gyeltsen
Person
’brom
Drom
Person
’brom ston [rgyal ba’i Dromtön [Gyelwé
Jungné]
’byung gnas]
1005-64
Person
Dates
Type
Ma
Wylie
Phonetics
mang thos
Mangtö
mang thos klu sgrub
rgya mtsho
Mangtö Ludrup
Gyatso
mang thos klu sgrub
rgya mtsho
mang thos klu sgrub
rgya mtsho
Author
mar pa bka’ brgyud
pa
Marpa Kagyüpa
Organization
mi pham smra ba’i go Mipam Mawé Gocha
cha
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Person
1523-96
Person
Person
me pho spre’u
mepo treu
dmar ston rin chen
shākya
Martön Rinchen
Shakya
rma
Ma
Name
rma sgom shes rab
bla ma
Magom Sherap Lama
Person
smon lam grags pa
Mönlam Drakpa
Person
Term
1291-?1365 Person
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
35
Tsa
Wylie
Phonetics
tsong kha pa
Tsongkhapa
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Person
btsan lha ngag dbang Tsenlha Ngawang
Tsültrim
tshul khrims
Author
[b]tsum
Tsum
Place
rtsis
tsi
rtsis la ’khrul pa sel
ba
Tsila Trülpa Selwa
Text
rtses thang
Tsetang
Place
rtses thang
Tsetang
Monastery
rtsom par dam bca’
ba
tsompar damchawa
Term
chronological
calculation
Term
Tsha
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Tsema Rigpé Tergyi
tshad ma rigs pa’i
gter gyi rang gi ’grel Ranggi Drelpa
pa
tshal pa
Text
Tselpa
Person
tshal pa kun dga’ rdo Tselpa Künga Dorjé
rje
tshal pa dkar nag
Tselpa Karnak
tshul khrims rgyal
mtshan
Tsültrim Gyeltsen
Type
1309-64
The Black
Catalogue of the
Tshal pa [Kangyur]
Person
Text
Author
tshe ring dbang rgyal Tsering Wanggyel
Author; Person
[tshong ’dus] brag
kha
[Tsongdü] Drakkha
Place
mtsho skyes rdo rje
Tsokyé Dorjé
1479-1519 Person
Dza
Wylie
Phonetics
English
mdzad byang
dzejang
the author’s
colophon
’dzam gling rig pa’i
dpa’ bo rdo brag dge
’dun chos ’phel gyi
byung ba brjod pa
bden gtam rna ba’i
bcud len
Dzamling Rikpé Pawo
Dodrak Gendün
Chömpelgyi Jungwa
Jöpa Dentam Nawé
Chülen
rdzong dpon pa sku
mched
dzong pönpa kuché
castellan-brothers
Wylie
Phonetics
English
zhang g.yu brag pa
Zhang Yudrakpa
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Term
Text
Term
Zha
Zhang Yudrakpa
zhang g.yu brag pa
brtson ’grus grags pa Tsöndrü Drakpa
zhang shar ba pa
Zhang Sharbapa
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Person
1123-93
Person
Person
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
zhang shar ba pa [yon Zhang Sharbapa
[Yönten Drak]
tan grags]
36
1070-1141 Person
zhal brda
zhelda
Term
zhal brda phebs pa
zhelda peppa
Term
zhi byed
Zhijé
Lineage
zhus shing dag par
byed pa
zhü shing dakpar jepa editing and
proofreading
Term
zhwa nag sku phreng Zhanak Kutreng
Drukpa Chödrak
drug pa chos grags
Gyatso
rgya mtsho
Zhanak VI Chödrak
Gyatso
1454-1506 Person
zhwa nag sku phreng Zhanak Kutreng
Dünpa Mikyö Dorjé
bdun pa mi bskyod
rdo rje
Zhanak VII Mikyö
Dorjé
1507-54
zhwa dmar
Zhamar
Person
Lineage
zhwa dmar sku phreng Zhamar Kutreng
Chupa
bcu pa
Zhamar X
zhwa dmar sku phreng Zhamar Kutreng
bcu pa chos grub rgya Chupa Chödrup
Gyatso
mtsho
Zhamar X Chödrup
Gyatso
zhwa dmar sku phreng Zhamar Kutreng
Zhipa
bzhi pa
Zhamar IV
Person
1742-92
Person
Person
Zhamar IV Chödrak
zhwa dmar sku phreng Zhamar Kutreng
bzhi pa chos grags ye Zhipa Chödrak Yeshé Yeshé
shes
1453-1524 Author; Person
zhwa lu lo tsā ba chos Zhalu Lotsawa
Chökyong Zangpo
skyong bzang po
1441-1528 Person
gzhon nu dpal
Zhönnupel
Person
gzhon nu’i zhabs
Zhönnü Zhap
Person
Za
Wylie
Phonetics
English
zab pa dang rgya che
ba’i dam pa’i chos kyi
thob yig ganggā’i chu
rgyun
Zappa dang
Gyachewé Dampé
Chökyi Topyik
Ganggé Chu Gyün
Record of
Teachings Received
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Text
zur mkhar ba mnyam Zurkharwa Nyamnyi
Dorjé
nyid rdo rje
1398-1458 Person
zul phu ba
Zülpuwa
Person
zul phu ba brtson
’grus ’bar
Zülpuwa Tsöndrü Bar
Person
Ya
Wylie
Phonetics
English
yang dgon
yanggön
additional
monastery
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Term
yang dgon rdul bral Yanggön Düldrel
byang chub kyi snying Jangchupkyi Nyingpo
po
Monastery
yangs pa can
Yangpachen
Monastery
yar rgyab
Yargyap
Place
yar lung
Yarlung
Place
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
37
yar lung jo bo shākya Yarlung Jowo Shakya
Rinchen Dé
rin chen sde
Author
yar lung jo bo’i chos Yarlung Jowö
Chönjong
’byung
Text
yi ge pa
yigepa
scribe
Term
yi ge’i rig byed pa
yigé rikjepa
knower of graphs
Term
ye shes rgyal mtshan Yeshé Gyeltsen
1713-93
Yongdzin Yeshé
yongs ’dzin ye shes
rgyal mtshan lam rim Gyeltsen Lamrim
Lama Gyüpé Namtar
bla ma brgyud pa’i
rnam thar
Person
Text
Yakdé Penchen
g.yag sde paṇ chen
brtson ’grus dar rgyas Tsöndrü Dargyé
1299-1378 Person
Ra
Wylie
Phonetics
[rang byung bdud
rtsi’i rgyun can]
mngon par dga’ ba
[Rangjung Dütsi
Gyünchen] Gönpar
Gawa
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Place
ri chos nges don rgya Richö Ngedön Gyatso
mtsho
Text
ri bo dge ’phel
Riwo Gempel
Monastery
rig ’dzin
Rindzin
Person
rig ’dzin tshe dbang
nor bu
Rindzin Tsewang
Norbu
1698-1755 Author; Person
rin chen bzang po
Rinchen Zangpo
d. 1475/6 Person
rin spungs
Rinpung
Place
rin spungs pa
Rinpungpa
Clan
La
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
rlangs
Lang
Clan
lam ’bras
Lamdré
Doxographical
Category
lam ’bras bu dang
bcas pa’i man ngag gi
byung tshul gsung
ngag rin po che bstan
pa rgyas pa’i nyi ’od
Lam Drebu dang
Chepé Menngakgi
Jungtsül Sungngak
Rinpoché Tenpa
Gyepé Nyi’ö
Text
lam rim chen mo
Lamrim Chenmo
Text
las chen
Lechen
Person
las chen kun dga’
rgyal mtshan
Lechen Künga
Gyeltsen
Author; Person
lung
lung
lo
Lo
Monastery
lo rgyus tshigs su
bcad pa dad pa’i
’dza’ bshes
Logyü Tsiksu Chepa
Depé Dzashé
Text
lo chen byang chub
rtse mo
Lochen Jangchup
Tsemo
textual transmission
Type
Term
1303-81
Person
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
38
Sha
Wylie
Phonetics
sha ’ug
Sha Uk
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Place
sha ’ug [stag sgo]
Sha Uk [Takgo]
Place
shad
shé
shar gyi
Shargyi
shar dwags po pa
dpal phyogs thams
cad las rnam par
rgyal ba’i lha
Shar Dakpopa
Pelchok Tamchelé
Nampar Gyelwé Lha
Person
shing dang me tog
sogs kyi ngos ’dzin
dang ngos ji ltar
’phrod tshul
Shing dang Metok
Sokkyi Ngöndzin
dang Ngö Jitar Trötsül
Text
Term
of the East
Term
shes rab kyi pha rol tu Sherapkyi Paröltu
phyin pa’i sgom rim Chinpé Gomrim
Text
shes rab rdo rje
Sherap Dorjé
1394-1467 Person
shes rab rdo rje
Sherap Dorjé
1124/5-1204/5 Person
Sa
Wylie
Phonetics
sa skya pa
Sakyapa
sa skya paṇḍita
Sakya Pendita
sa skya paṇḍita kun
dga’ rgyal mtshan
Sakya Pendita Künga
Gyeltsen
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Organization
Person
1182-1251 Person
sa skya pa’i bka’ bum Sakyapé Kabum
sa pho khyi
sa po khyi
sa ris
sari
Type
Textual
Collection
Term
diagram
Term
sangs rgyas bstan pa’i Sanggyé Tenpé
chos ’byung dris lan Chönjung Drilen
Norbü Trengwa
nor bu’i phreng ba
Text
sangs rgyas yar byon Sanggyé Yarjön
1203-72
sangs rgyas rin chen Sanggyé Rinchen
1339-1424 Person
sum pa mkhan po
Sumpa Khenpo
sum pa mkhan po ye
shes dpal ’byor
Sumpa Khenpo Yeshé
Penjor
se spyil bu ba
Se Chilbuwa
Author; Person
1704-88
Person
Person
se spyil bu ba [?chos Se Chilbuwa
[?Chökyi Gyeltsan]
kyi rgyal mtshan]
sems
Person
1121-89
sem
Person
Term
srong btsan sgam po Songtsen Gampo
d. 649/50 Person
slob dpon phya pa la Loppön Chapa Latöpa
bstod pa
Text
slob dpon bsod nams Loppön Sönam
Tsemo
rtse mo
Author
gsang phu sne’u thog Sangpu Neutok
gsung
sung
bsam grub grags
Samdrup Drak
Monastery
statement
Term
Person
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
bsam gtan gling
Samten Ling
bsod nams bzang po
Sönam Zangpo
39
Monastery
1380-1416 Person
Ha
Wylie
Phonetics
hor gtsang ’jigs med
Hortsang Jikmé
Author; Person
lha khang steng
Lhakhang Teng
Place
lha khang steng pa
Lhakhang Tengpa
Person
Lhakhang Tengpa
lha khang steng pa
sangs rgyas rin chen Sanggyé Rinchen
Person
lha khang[s] stengs
Lhakhang Teng
lha sa
Lhasa
lho brag grub chen
Lhodrak Drupchen
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Person
Lhasa
Place
Person
lho rong chos ’byung Lhorong Chönjung
Text
A
Wylie
Phonetics
a mchog
Amchok
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Place
a mdo
Amdo
Place
a ra chos rje nyi ma
rgyal mtshan
Ara Chöjé Nyima
Gyeltsen
Person
a ro chos rje nyi ma
rgyal mtshan
Aro Chöjé Nyima
Gyeltsen
Person
e wam
Ewam
Evam
Phonetics
English
Monastery
Non-Tibetan
Wylie
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
San.
Abhidharmakośabhāsya
Text
San.
Abhisamayālaṃkāra
Text
San.
Anāthapiṇḍada
Person
San. Atiśa
Person
San.
Bodhicāryāvatāra
Text
San.
Bodhipathapradīpa
Text
San. Buddha
Deity
San.
Dvayasatyāvatāra
Text
San.
Guṇāparyantastotra
Text
San.
Jñānavajrasamuccaya
Text
San. Kālacakra
Term
San.
Laghukālacakratantra
Text
San.
Laghutantrapiṇḍārthavivaraṇa
Text
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
40
San.
Laghutantraṭīkā
Text
San. Lokātītastava
Text
San.
Madhyamakāvatāra
Text
San.
Madhyamakopadeśa
Text
San.
Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra
Text
San. pañjikā
Term
San. poṭhi
Term
San.
Pradīpoddyotana
Text
San. Puṇḍarīka
Person
San. pustaka
Term
San.
Ratnagotravibhāga
Text
San.
Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā
Text
San. sarga
San.
Śākyaśrībhadra
Term
1127-1225 Person
San. Smṛtijñānakīrti
Person
San. Sthiramati
Person
San. Tattvārtha
Text
San. Tattvopadeśa
Text
San. Uttaratantra
Text
San.
Uttaratantravyākhyā
Text
San.
Vairocanavajra
Person
San. Vaiśrāvaṇa
Person
San. Vajrapāṇi
Deity
San. Vajravārāhī
San. Vanaratna
Deity
1384-1468 Person
San. Vasubandhu
Person
San. Vimalaprabhā
Text
San. Vimalaprahhā
Text
San. vinaya
Term
San. Vīrasena
Person
San. Yaśas
Person
Chi. Beijing
Place
Chi. Chengdu
Place
Chi. Du Yongbin
Person
Chi. Ershi shiji
xizang qiseng
Text
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
41
Chi. Gengdun
qunpei wenji
jingyao
Text
Chi. Guo Heqing
Person
Chi. Lanzhou
Place
Chi. Qingshi
Text
Chi. Zhongguo
zangxue yanjiu
zhongxin
shouzangde fanwen
beiye jing (Suo wei
jiaojuan) mulu
Text
van der Kuijp: On the Composition and Printings of the Deb gter sngon po
42
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