On the Edge of Myth and History: Za hor, its Place in the History of Early Indian Buddhist Tantra, and Dalai Lama V and the Genealogy of its Royal Family

Leonard van der Kuijp

Contributions on the Seventh Dalai Lama, the oracles and protectors of the Tibetan State, the Tibetan discovery of world geography, disputes on gter-ma (rediscovered spiritual treasures), trulkuship, the Amdo region, and longevity rituals.

This article examines the relationship between the practice and theory of medicine and Buddhism in premodern Tibet. It considers a polemical text composed by the 16th-17th-century Tibetan physician and tantric Buddhist expert Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen, intending to prove the Buddhist canonical status of the Four Medical Tantras, the foundational text of the Tibetan medical tradition. While presenting and analyzing Sokdokpa's polemical writing in the context of the broader debate over the Buddhist pedigree of the Four Tantras that took place during his time, this discussion situates Sokdokpa's reflections on the topic in terms of his broader career as both a practicing physician and a tantric Buddhist ritual and contemplative specialist. It suggests that by virtue of Sokdokpa's tightly interwoven activities in the spheres of medicine and Buddhism, his contribution to this debate gives voice to a sensibility in which empiricist, historicist, and Buddhist ritual and contemplative inflections intermingle in ways that resist easy disentanglement and classification. In this it argues that Sokdokpa's reflections form an important counterpoint to the perspectives considered thus far in the scholarly study of this debate. It also questions if Sokdokpa's style of argumentation might call for a recalibration of how scholars currently construe the roles of tantric Buddhist practice in the appeal by premodern Tibetan physicians to critical and probative criteria.

The five papers published in this volume were originally presented in a panel entitled The Bsam yas Debate: Challenges and Responses which was convened at the XVII th Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies in Vienna, August, 2014. The panel provided a forum for exploring traditional and contemporary responses to the influential Sino-Indian debate that was hosted by the Tibetan emperor Khri Srong lde btsan (Trisong Detsen) at Tibet's first monastery, Bsam yas, towards the end of the 8 th century in order to decide the future of Buddhism in his country. While many historical details of the debate remain obscure, it is now widely accepted that a debate did occur, most likely as a series of encounters spanning about a year, and that it was organized according to standard Indian Buddhist principles of formal debate that were well-known to Tibetans since early in the 8 th century, with the emperor presiding in the role of the arbiter or " witness " (Tib. dpang po, Skt. sākṣin). At issue was whether enlightenment is realized gradually through analytical meditation, as argued by the Indian participant Kamalaśīla, or all at once through contemplating the nature of mind, as proposed by his Chi-nese Chan (Zen) counterpart Heshang Moheyan. The account of the debate preserved in Tibetan chronicles and in the cultural memory of Tibetans has Kamalaśīla roundly defeating his opponent, thus securing Indian Buddhism as the official state religion and sanctioning the banishment of Chinese Chan practitioners and their suddenist teachings from Tibet. The reality must have been otherwise since Sino-Tibetan Chan communities are known to have existed in Tibet well into the tenth century CE. At any rate, the standard debate narrative soon assumed the status of a comprehensive founding myth (Bretfeld 2004: 15) within the Tibetan cultural memory, one that has since been used, in various rhetorical contexts, both to valorize a standard Indian Buddhist scholastic model of reason-guided gradualism and to ostracize as " non-Buddhist " (chos min) any non-gradual elements that were thought to advocate a Chinese Heshang view (hwa shang gyi lta ba) and style of meditation.

!"#$%&'!"()* !!"#$%&'()*+),-./0 Studies on Buddhist Myths: Texts, Pictures, Traditions and History +,- ./0 .12 ! Edited by WANG Bangwei, CHEN Jinhua, CHEN Ming 2010!"#$%&'()*+,-./*0+123#4 !" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 ---<8=*#>?@ABCDE ! "#$%&'()*+ !,-+ !./012!3!4567 89:7 !8;< =!>!?@ A!BCDE7 !FGHI=F ! JKLM!NOPQOQRSORQGSIFQH ! T=!U"V!W=!U4V!X=!U"#Y$%Y &'!Z=!ULNSP ! B[\*,D]^J_`abcdFGHIefGFPGPgh *Di\jk[l#mno)pqrs&'turv wx0yzv{|}~•€•v‚ƒ„"‚…†‡ˆ7 ‰Š‹Œ• !"#$%&'()* +,* -./01 2345 6785 65 95 : !"#$! !"# %&'(! $%& )*+,- !!"""#$%&'())#*+,#*-. .----/! /01234556789:;<=>!?@@@?6.A 0----1! BC! !! 2----3! /0DEFGHIJK!!!!!!!!!!! 4----5! "##$%###LM!!%&%' 2----6! ()*(+! *----7! ?@<6N?OP<QAA?@<6N?OP<RFG 8----9! "#$%!&'()')*+'*),+-.)/0$1,-/ :----;! 2(3,,4 #" !"#$%&'!"()* Contents in English Preface........................................................................................................................ I Institutions or Afiations of the Contributors ............................................................ I D!rst!ntikas and the Application of Story Telling in Buddhist Literature 4 4 .................................................................................................... Wang Bangwei 1 When Are Miracles Okay? The Story of Pindola and the Kevaddha Sutta Revisited 4 4 .................................................................................................... John S. Strong 13 Did the Buddhists Believe Their Narratives? Desultory Remarks on the Very Idea of Buddhist Mythology ............................................................... Peter Skilling 45 New Bodhisattvas and Tath!gatas ............................................... Charles Willemen 77 The Model of Buddhist Myth Seen in Zaoxiang Gongde Jing ............... Duan Qing 83 Uygur Buddhism and Indian Epic R!may!na ........................................Yang Fuxue 103 4 On the Edge of Myth and History: Za hor, its Place in the History of Early Indian Buddhist Tantra, and Dalai Lama V and the Genealogy of its Royal Family ................................................................................. Leonard W.J.van der Kuijp 114 Buddhap!la, Dam pa sangs rgyas and Bodhidharma ...................................... Sareji 165 Tales of the Nine-colored Deer in Buddhist Literature and Art ................ Liu Zhen 177 Names of Indian Gods and Goddesses in the Translations by Yijing: Cultural Cognizance and Selection of the Words .......................................... Chen Ming 193 Omen of Dream in Chinese Buddha’s Biographies ............................. Liang Liling 216 Further Remarks on Rsya"rnga and Monk Yueming ............................. Fan Muyou 231 4 4 4 4 !" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 Miraculous Stories about the Avatam"saka-s#tra in the Huayan exegetical tradition ......................................................................................................... Imre Hamar 238 Fact and Fiction: The Creation of the “Third Chan Patriarch” and His Legends ......................................................................................................... Jinhua Chen 249 Composite Compositions: Chinese Buddhist Mythology and its Asian Connections ..................................................................................................... James Robson 300 Xuanzang and the Great God Shensha: A Pictorial Reection of Esoteric Buddhism ................................................................................................................ Li Ling 317 Buddhist Stories in Laozi’s Biography: A Case of Hunyuan Shenji ........ Li Xiaorong 327 The Belief in Avalokite"vara as a Cakravarti-r!ja in Bai Nationality of Yunnan ............................................................................................................ Li Yuzhen 340 Supernatural Hallucination in Japanese Buddhist Biographies: A Case from Honch$ Shinsen Den ................................................................ Wang Xiaoping #" 357 Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 On the Edge of Myth and History: Za hor, its Place in the History of Early Indian Buddhist Tantra, and Dalai Lama V and the Genealogy of its Royal Family* 1 3452Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp From the perspective of an outsider, the traditional and pre-modern literatures of India and China Tibet, and we nd the same in other traditional and pre-modern literatures, contain narratives that consist of a happy blending of what appears to be myth and what appears to be factual history. They form tapestries in which, to such an outsider, ction and fact are interwoven so as to form tales that, given their obvious enduring hold, must have been as satisfying for and convincing to their authors as they must have been for their intended audience. A good segment of Buddhist tantric literature self-reexively identies itself and is thus consensually identied by the tradition as the “Word of the Buddha”, buddhavacana, of one sort or another. To all intents and purposes works that are part of this kind of literature belong to the genre of anonymous literature. When on occasion they come to speak of the origins of tantric Buddhism there is, again to the outsider, more myth than factual history at play, even if there are places where there is an obvious overlap, * An earlier version of this paper was presented on at the “Conference on Cross-Cultural Researches on Buddhist Mythology,” held on 30-31 July 2010 at Peking University. My thanks go out to Wang Bangwei, Chen Jinhua, and Chen Ming, for having organized such a memorable occasion. I also thank James Robson, Peter Skilling, and Charles Willemen for their interesting observations on the question of myth in the context of Buddhist Studies that prompted a few of my reections. This essay could not have been written without the treasure trove of tbrc.org. !!$" On the Edge of Myth and History where there is an admixture of sorts, where a general consensus can be reached that portions of the narrative are more likely to be historically true than others. That is to say, there is much in this literature where even if traditions and historicities at rst blush appear to be invented, a more close inspection may actually reveal that these contain kernels of what even we, from the perspectives of those who have not grown up in this literature’s cultural ambience and who have at the same time been aficted with the discursive habits that are part and parcel of modernity, might be willing to consider as fact or at least to have a plausible historicity. Fortunately for us, much of this afiction disappears when we take the word “myth” simply in the sense of “story”, rather than in the more value-ridden sense of a ctional account that some irrational individuals hold to be factual. Of course, it goes without saying that “rational” and “irrational” thinking is found in every civilization and there is of course much in traditional Indian and Tibetan Buddhist culture that is “rational” by any imaginable standards. Much depends on the tacit assumptions that are held dear. Assumptions of one kind or another that are entertained by one may be judged to be wholly irrational by another, even if the one who entertains these very assumptions may not agree, even if he or she is convinced that these are in fact wholly rational! In the early days of contact between Tibetan and Tibetan Buddhism on one hand and Europeans on the other, the reports of the latter are peppered with highhanded discussions of the curious superstitions of these “natives” and of the quaintness of their religion. Of undeniable interest, then, is that a Tibetan Buddhist lama accused a British missionary of Protestant Christianity that his Christian beliefs were completely irrational when they met and discussed their respective persuasions 2 around the year 1890 in the vicinity of Xining, Qinghai Province, PRC!6 The missionary, we can hardly doubt, must have had the very same impression about the Tibetan’s beliefs. Some of these so-called myths are concerned with the identification of the putative places in which Buddhist tantric traditions had their origin or which this 67See my forthcoming Tibetan Buddhism Meets Protestant Christianity. A Memorandum of a Conversation between M! yang Pandita and Cecil H. Polhill-Turner near Xining, Qinghai, in 1889-90. 4 4 !!%" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 tradition as a whole considered to be of special signicance for its inception and subsequent development, even if the geographical locations that are given of these places are not always consistent. Za hor was one such place where if a Buddhist tantric tradition did not have its inception, it was certainly a locale where such a tradition was found. In the rst part of the present paper, I make a stab at unraveling the mythologies associated with this mysterious land and its geographical location and in the process hopefully lay bare several aspects of its history. The mythology of the genealogy of its royal family became inextricably intertwined or, perhaps better, was made to intertwine, with the history of a very prominent Central Tibetan family in which Dalai Lama V Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho (1617-82) was born – recall that Dalai Lama V often refers to himself as “the Za hor monk” (za hor gyi ban dhe). The second part of this paper seeks to illuminate in some detail the ways in which this family, and in particular Dalai Lama V, appropriated the fragmentary “genealogies” of the royal house of Za hor from earlier, unsourced Tibetan accounts and placed them in what to the untrained eye must have appeared to be a seamless and coherent narrative. There were some Tibetan intellectuals who were charitably inclined publicly to hold that members of this family and later Dalai Lama V were right in making these connections, but there were also others who begged to disagree. I begin this brief study of Za hor and its place in the Indo-Tibetan imagination with a passage from a work that was translated in circa 800. The work in question is an exegesis of the Prajñ!p!ramit!naya%atapañc!%atik! by a certain Jñ!namitra, 3 which is only extant in an anonymous Tibetan rendition6 — his name is ye shes bshes gnyen in Tibetan and surely translates back into Sanskrit jñ!namitra. The identity of this author is uncertain, to say the least. True, he may have been the very same Jñ!namitra who was the author of the Prajñ!p!ramit!hrdayavy!khy! 4 and perhaps he is also the Jñ!namitra who penned a study of the Sapta%atakaprajñ!p!ramit!s#tra – although this work was translated into Tibetan it no longer 67The Tibetan Tripitaka, Taipei Edition, ed. A. Barber (Taipei: SMC Publishing Inc., 1991), vol. 30, no. 2653 [# 2647]; see also the recent remarks in R.M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism. A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 242-245. 4 !!&" On the Edge of Myth and History appears to be extant – and possibly even the Jñ!namitra who authored the Abhidh4 armasamuccayat&k!marmaprad&pa.6 Alternatively, we may have to go so far as to 4 consider four different individuals with one and the same name and, although this may be pushing it, why not? Dge ‘dun chos ‘phel (1903-1951) wrote in his review of the results of his 1933 expedition with R. S!nkrty!yana (1893-1963) in search 4 4 of Sanskrit manuscripts that while in Ri phug they found a manuscript of the Rnam bcas bsdu ba’i mdo, the name tag (kha byang) of which stated that it was written 5 by a Pandita *Jñ!namitra.8 Tibetan Rnam bcas bsdu ba’i mdo is an acceptable 4 4 rendition of Sanskrit S!karasamgrahas#tra, but then the author was not Jñ!namitra, 4 6 but rather Jñ!na"r#mitra (ca. 1100)!9 Whatever else the rst of these may have been responsible for, he writes in the prolegomenon to his commentary that a certain Prince Sha kra pu ti [*$akraputi ?or *$akrabh%ti], the son of King Indrabh%ti who was then king of the country of Za hor (za hor gyi yul), had arranged and extracted (bkod de bshams) the contents of what was to become the Prajñ!p!ramit!naya%atapañc!%atik! from a much larger treatise that was evidently titled Dpal dam pa 7 [*'r& parama/agra].: It is not altogether likely that the latter is a veiled reference 67For the rst, see The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 34, no. 3824 [# 3819] and D. Lopez, The Heart S#tra Explained: Indian and Tibetan Commentaries (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 9-10, 228 4 [Index]; the second is registered in the 824(?) Lhan dkar ma and 830(?) ’Phang thang ma catalogs, for which see, respectively, M. Lalou, “Les textes Bouddhiques au temps du roi Khri srong lde btsan,” Journal asiatique CCXLI (1953), 319, no. 7, and the Dkar chag ’phang thang ma / Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa, ed. Bod ljongs rten rdzas bshams mdzod khang (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2003), 4, 35. For the third and last, see my “Notes on Jñ!namitra’s Commentary on the Abhidharmasamuccaya,” which is scheduled for publication in The Yog!c!rabh#mi and the Yog!c!ras, ed. U.T. Kragh, Harvard Oriental Series. 87*Thog mar lha sa nas phebs thon mdzad pa’i tshul, Rgyal khams rig pas bskor ba’i gtam rgyud gser gyi thang ma, Gsung rtsom, vol. 1, ed. Hor khang Bsod nams dpal ’bar, Gangs can rig mdzod 10 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1994), 25. 97*Thog mar lha sa nas phebs thon mdzad pa’i tshul, 20, lists a few titles of Jñ!na"rimitra’s works, but not this particular one; see also R. S!nkrty!yana, “Second Search of Sanskrit Palm-Leaf Mss. in Tibet,” Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society XXIV (1938), 144. :7The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 30, no. 2653 [# 2647], 503/7 [Ju, 273a]. A portion of Jñ!namitra’s prolegomenon was translated in Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History, 242-43, and was also discussed in Steven N. Weinberger, The Signicance of Yoga Tantra and the Compendium of Principles (Tattvasamgraha Tantra) within Tantric Buddhism in India and Tibet, unpublished University of Virginia dissertation, 2003, 253 ff. It is unclear whether it refers to the same text Jñ!namitra mentions a little farther down in his work as the Dpal dam pa phreng ba; see The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 30, no. 2653 [# 2647], 504/1 [Ju, 274a]. 4 4 4 4 4 !!'" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 to the as yet relatively little studied 'r& Param!dyatantra or, in Tibetan, Dpal mchog dang po’i rgyud, even if parama renders both dam pa and mchog. The Param!dyatantra is generally recognized as a performance-cary! tantra and is therefore conceptually as well as ritually at quite a remove from the Sarvabuddhas am!yogatantra and Guhyasam!jatantra to which Jñ!namitra refers by their titles at the beginning of his introductory remarks. These were probably already included in the class of the so-called great-mah! yogatantras at his time of writing. Whatever might have been the case, the prince in question had written a précis of this much larger work on behalf of his own two children and this précis was the Prajñ!p!ramit!naya%atapañc!%atik!. However, his unnamed son had been too young to receive the necessary sacraments that would go towards the lived understanding of the text, so that he first had to empower his daughter Go va de bi [*Govadev# = ? Gomadev#] with them, after which she passed them on to her younger brother when he had come of age. In connection with the name of Indrabh%ti’s son, Weinberger quite understandably proposed that *$akraputi should be changed to $akrabh%ti, a hint he acknowledges he owed to S. Hodge. But this particular suggestion is already found in, for example, Sh. Toganoo’s much earlier 8 integral study of the Prajñ!p!ramit!naya%atapañc!-%atik!.6 The Prajñ!p!ramit! naya%atapañc!%atik! is also titled Adhyardha%atik!prajñ!p!ramit!s#tra and Ardha%atik!prajñ!p!ramit!s#tra. Brief as it is, the text was translated a number of times into Chinese, and has been made available in “a very tentative [English, vdK] translation” 9 as well.8 Dated 693, the earliest Chinese rendition of this work as an independent text is attributed to Bodhiruci – the even earlier circa 660 translation lies embedded 67See the very large study of the text with the commentaries in Rishuky$ no kenky#, Toganoo Sh$un Zensh#, vol. V (K&yasan: K&yasan Daigaku Mikky& Bunka Kenky%jo / Ky&to: Rinsen Shoten, 1982), 33, 38; this work was rst published in 1935. 87E. Conze, tr., The Short Prajñ!p!ramit! Texts (London: Luzac & Company Ltd., 1973);VI; the translation may be found on pp. 184-95. Toganoo Shthe <=>?, Rishuky$ no kenky# @ABCDE, Toganoo Sh$un zensh# < = > ? F G, vol. V, ed. K&yasan Daigaku Mikky& Bunka Kenky%jo (K&yasan: K&yasan Daigaku Mikky& Bunka Kenky%jo; Ky&to: Rinsen Shoten, 1982-1989), 1-9, contains the fragmentary Sanskrit text of the Prajñ!p!ramit!naya%a-tapañc!%atik!. It now appears that a complete Sanskrit manuscript of this work has surfaced. !!(" On the Edge of Myth and History in the tenth chapter of Xuanzang’s HI (600/2-664) translation of a recension of the huge 'atas!hasrik!prajñ!p!ramit!-s#tra, and of the four other renditions of different manuscripts with different textual features, three are attributed to or came from the pens of *Vajrabodhi (ca. 671-741), Amoghavajra (705-774) and *D!nap!la 10 (ca. 1000).6 Candrak#rti (early 7thc.) cites the Prajñ!p!ramit!naya%atapañca%atik! in the twenty-fourth chapter of his Prasannapad! commentary on N!g!rjuna’s 11 (2ndc.) M#lamadhyamakak!rik!.8 In combination with the foregoing, this of course means that this text’s terminus ad quem coincides with Candrak#rti’s oruit and Xuanzang’s 629-645 stay in the subcontinent. All the Chinese translations and commentators assert that the text is a sutra, which, if it is a clip for buddhavacana, carries all the implied authority that is invested in this genre of Buddhist literature. Candrak#rti [and Haribhadra (ca. 800)] appear to share this idea as well. Further, as far as I can tell, no commentator other than Jñ!namitra’s suggests that it was distilled or extracted from another, more expansive work, and it is possible that this was his personal opinion, an opinion, we should be clear about, he neither substantiates nor provides evidence for in his work through a citation from the original source. However, what is clear is that he introduces the dharmadh!tu mandala of the Sarvatath!gatatattvasamgrahas#tra/tantra, the most fundamental tantra of the yogatantras, as the setting 4 in which the text was taught. The earliest reflexes of this most influential yogatantra go back to circa 700. However, more importantly if we lend credence to Jñ!namitra’s assessment of the Prajñ!p!ramit!naya%atapañca%atik!’s source, this would mean 67For the four independent translations, see Taish$ shinsh# daiz$ky$, ed. J. Takakusu and K. Watanabe, comp. G. Ono (Tokyo: Taish& Shinsh% Daiz&ky& Kank&kai, 1924-34), vol. 8, nos. 240-1, 243, 242; but see also the remarks in Y. Hatta, Index to the (rya-prajñ!-p!ra-mit!-naya-%ata-pañca%atik! (Ky&to: Heirakujishoten, 1971), xii-iii, who argued that the alleged translation by *Vajrabodhi (ca. 671-741) may be a case of a faulty attribution, and added a number of significant text-historical observations on its transmission. A study and translation of Amoghavajra’s commentary may be found in I. Astley-Kristensen, The Rishuky$: The Sino-Japanese Tantric Prajñ!p!ramit! in 150 Verses (Amoghavajra’s Version) (Tring: The Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1991). For Ji’s J [or: Kuiji’s K J] (632-82) and K%kai’s L M (779-835) takes on this work, see R. Abé, The Weaving of Mantra: K#kai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 247-60. 87Candrak&rti. Prasannapad! Madhymakavrtti, tr. J. May, Collection Jean Przyluski, T. II (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1959), 235, 239. 4 !!)" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 that the kind of tantric literary material on which it is based was probably prevalent in some circles as early as the end of the seventh century. To be sure, it is tempting, if not persuasive, to read *$akrabh%ti for *$akraputi as a parallel to Indrabh%ti, were it not for a few philological problems that would then have to be satisfactorily resolved. For one, all the xylographs of Jñ!namitra’s work have the same sha kra pu ti. In handwritten manuscripts, the subscribed ra can be easily mistaken for a subscribed ya, and the omission of the Tibetan marker that turns an a into its longer brother ! is by no means a rare phenomenon either. Other sources attest to slight variants of his name as well. For example, the names $!kyaputri (sh! kya pu tri ) and $!kyaputra (sh! kya pu tra), are found in recensions of* S%ryasim haprabha’s Guhyagarbhatantra commentary in the circa 980 4 translation by the Indian Prasvatala (sic) and the Tibetan Padma ru tshe, and thence in the Tibetan exegetical tradition of the Guhyagarbhatantra that goes back to Dam pa Bde bzhin gshegs pa (1122-92), alias Shes rab seng ge, the famous founder 12 of Kah thog monastery [1159] in Khams.6 No doubt using similar sources from 4 which Jñ!namitra drew his information,* S%ryasimhaprabha states that the notice 4 on Indrabhodhi (sic) and his son $!kyaputri occurs in a document from U rgyan [= Uddiy!na], and adds that the latter’s daughter (sras mo) was named Go ma de bi 4 4 (sic) [*Gomadev#]. It is not hard to account for the %!kya versus %akra variant, but I will not even try to account for pu tri, “daughter” which arguably is a very unlikely segment of the name of Indrabh%ti’s son, whereas the bh#ti versus bodhi variant of the father’s name is not altogether uncommon. While *S%ryasimhaprabha does 4 not mention Za hor at all, it is quite different with Dam pa’s text. At one point in his introductory remarks, we learn that there was a monastery at or on wild (drag shul can, *r!udra) Mount Malaya, which was apparently located in the immediate 67See, respectively, The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 67, no. 5765, 472/7-3/1 [Ya, 5b-6a] and vol. 71, no. 5845, 180/4 [Pa, 7b]. The text published in the Bka’ ma shin tu rgyas pa [Kah thog edition] or Snga ‘gyur bka’ ma, vols. 120, ed. ‘Jam dbyangs (Chengdu, 1999), vol. 65, pp. 5 ff. is identical to the latter. 4 !#*" On the Edge of Myth and History 13 vicinity of the land of Za hor.6 Twenty-eight years after the death of the historical Buddha, various Buddhas of the ten directions requested Vajrap!ni to teach King 4 Dza’ or King Indrabh%ti in Za hor (rgyal po dzah zhes kyang bya ba / [gloss: …za 4 hor yul du] indra bhu ti zhes kyang bya ba…). Then follow various details that are of no concern for this paper. A little later, the text suggests that King Dza’ was none other than the father of Indrabh%ti – “Dza’” is prexed by rgyal po, “king,” and “Indrabh%ti” by rgyal sras, “prince” (rgyal po’i sras, *r!japutra) or “son of the Victorious one” (< rgyal ba’i sras, *jinaputra = Bodhisattva) and does not stipulate any kind familial relation between $!kyaputra and either King Dza’ or Indrabh%ti. We then nd the observation that *$!kyaputra taught a certain Sim ha Upar!ja who in turn taught “a daughter” (sras mo) 4 Go ma. No hint is given as to whose daughter she may have been, but we are told that she taught Padma. This Padma is of course identied as none other than Padmasambhava, so that he would then have received the oral transmission of the Guhyagarbhatantra in circa 760. There is of course another tradition, one that is found in the tantric traditions of both the Old (rnying ma) and Modernist (gsar ma) schools. It links Vajrap!ni to Mount Malaya and connects the latter to Sri 4 Lanka. Thus, translated by $#lendrabodhi and Sna nam Ye shes sde in circa 800, the Old/Modernist Vajrap!nyabhi%ekhatantra implicitly links Mount Malaya to Sri 4 14 Lanka, and the same is done in the Old Mdo dgongs ‘dus.8 Such yogin&tantra-s as the Cakrasamvaratantra and the Vajrad!katantra consider Malaya to be one 4 4 of the major p&tha-pilgrimage sites, but, interestingly, not Pundar#ka (ca. 1030) in 4 4 4 his Vimalaprabh! commentary on Ya"as’ Laghuk!lacakratantra, who otherwise acknowledged the signicance of a substantial number of those sites that we also 67This very epithet for the mountain or mountain range is also found in the Mdo dgongs ‘dus, for which see The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 57, no. 4827, 89/1 [Ma, 309a]. But this work states that Mount Malaya is located in Sri Lanka; see The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 57, no. 4827, 3/3 [Ma, 9a], and also J.P. Dalton, The Uses of the Dgongs pa ‘dus pa’i mdo in the Development of the Rnying-ma School of Tibetan Buddhism (unpublished University of Michigan dissertation, 2002), 52-67. 87See, respectively, The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 17, no. 494 [#496], 453/5 [Da, 73a], and The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 57, no. 4827, 3/3 [Ma, 9a]. 4 4 4 !#!" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 15 encounter in the yogin&-tantric literature.6 Not altogether unexpected, we also have an echo of Sri Lanka’s yet to be fully ascertained role in the development of the Buddhist tantric tradition in Rta tshag Tshe dbang rgyal’s large 1446-7 history of the 16 Mar pa Bka’ brgyud school.8 To be sure, there is plenty of hard historical evidence, including Chinese Buddhist sources, that Sri Lanka was in fact a locus of Buddhist tantric tradition[s] in the latter part of the seventh and the eighth centuries. In this brief essay, I will as a matter of course not address the vexing questions that surround the “real” historicity of the perhaps as many as three different individuals called Indrabh%ti whom several Tibetan intellectual historians had isolated from the literary and oral legacies of late Indian Buddhism. Already Karma pa 5 Karma Pakshi (1204-1282), himself an erstwhile disciple and ordinandus of Kah thog monastery’s third abbot Byams pa ‘bum (1179-1252), had very 4 creatively used a triad of Indrabh%ti-s as a vehicle for his specific take on nontantric Buddhism, tantric Buddhism, and their inter-textuality and inter-spirituality 17 against the background of Old and Modernist tantric literature.9 In so doing, he effectively dissolved the individuality and identity of Indrabh%ti as such with the proposition that he was a tenth-stage Bodhisattva. Thus, collapsing all three into the numinous metaphysics of Vajradhara and Vajrap!ni, he linked each of these with 4 the introduction of tantric Buddhism in terms of them being manifestations of and indivisible from Vajradhara, the liminal source of the spiritual and ritual practices associated with its mysteries. In consonance with his wildly visionary and a-temporal conceits, he connected the Indrabh%ti triad to the three corpora (sku gsum, trik!ya) that in their various functions and modes of presence give shape to and indeed 67See, respectively, D.B. Gray, The Cakrasamvaratantra (The Discourse of 'r& Heruka) 'r&heruk!bhidh!na. A Study and Annotated Translation (New York: The American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia University in New York, 2007), 332-333, n. 25, The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 16, no. 370, 117/2 [Kha, 36b], and V.A. Wallace, The Inner K!lacakratantra. A Buddhist Tantric View of the Individual (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 78 ff. 87Lho rong chos ‘byung, ed. Gling dpon Padma skal bzang and Ma grong Mi ‘gyur rdo rje, Gangs can rig mdzod 26 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1994), 519. 97These Indrabh%ti-s form an integral part of the metaphysical basis of his quasi-autobiographical Nyid kyi rnam thar dus 3 dus med gcig tu rtogs shing rtsal chen po rdzogs pa’i gleng gzhi, The Autobiographical Writings of the Second Karma pa Karma Pak%i (Gangtok, 1978), 57-118. !##" On the Edge of Myth and History course through Buddhist history. His junior contemporary Dar ma rgyal mtshan (1227-1305), alias Bcom ldan [rig{s} pa’i] ral gri, even went so far as to suggest that the Indrabhüti who had authored the Jñ!nasiddhi had been an actual disciple of 18 the historical Buddha himself!6 Karma pa 5’s plastic ideas were taken up by his successor Karma pa ! Rang byung rdo rje (1284-1339) and Dpa’ bo 5 Gtsug lag ‘phreng ba (1504-1566) in their discussions of the origin and development of the Karma pa re-embodiment series, much of which goes back to the kind of material that Dge ‘dun ‘od and Smon lam bla ma, a certain Sgang Lo, and Spyan snga ba Gzhon nu byang chub had included in the biographies of their teacher Karma pa I 19 Dus gsum mkhyen pa (1110-1193), alias Chos kyi grags pa.8 This particular corpus of texts closes the hermeneutic circle when we learn from it that a certain Vajra"r# had been one of the Karma pa’s earlier re-embodiments in India and that this man was none other than a nephew of the same King Dza who is so closely tied to the very onset of Buddhist tantra! Indeed, Karma pa 5 also briey made this linkage 20 in his aforecited autobiographical vignette.9 In this connection, it should hardly be surprising that King Dza and Za hor should also nd a fairly prominent place 67See his 1261 chronicle of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Thub pa’i bstan pa rgyan gyi me tog, thirty-onefolio dbu med manuscript, Cultural Palace of Nationalities (Beijing), Nationalities Library, catalog no. 007114, 15a [= Bstan pa rgyan gyi me tog, twenty-eight-folio dbu med manuscript, Cultural Palace of Nationalities (Beijing), Nationalities Library, catalog no. 007916(10), 14a; *Thub pa’i bstan pa rgyan gi me tog, twentyfour folio dbu med manuscript, Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project, Reel no. L493/2, 11b]. The Sanskrit text of the Jñ!nasiddhi was published in Guhy!di-astasiddhisamgraha, Rare Buddhist Texts Series 1, ed. Samdhong Rinpoche and Vrajvallabh Dwiwedi (Sarnath: Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, 1987), 89-157; the Tibetan translation is found in The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 30, no. 2653 [# 2647]. 87See, respectively, Bla ma rin po che’i rnam thar pa’o // karma pa’i rnam thar, Collected Works, vol. Nga (Xining, 2006), 256-87, Chos ‘byung mkhas pa’i dga’ ston, Smad cha, ed. Rdo rje rgyal po (Beijing: 44 4 4 Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1986), 880-1, and Rje ‘gro ba’i mgon po rin po che’i rnam thar skyes rabs dang bcas pa rin chen phreng ba ‘bring po, the *Rnam thar gser gling ma, and the Dus gsum mkhyen pa’i rnam thar [or the Rnam thar re’u mig brgya rtsa brgyad pa], for which see Selected Writings of the First Zhwa nag Karma pa, vol. I (Gangtok, 1980), 1-45, 47-139, 139-204. The authors of the rst of the last three texts state that much of what they had written was based on what they had heard from Dus gsum mkhyen pa himself. An investigation of the relevant passages from all three will obviously provide excellent material for a case-study of the inception of the Karma pa re-embodiments. 97Nyid kyi rnam thar dus 3 dus med gcig tu rtogs shing rtsal chen po rdzogs pa’i gleng gzhi, 82. !#+" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 21 in his own deliberations on the origins of Buddhist tantra.6 To be sure, these ideas and their etiology need further inquiry and reection. Fortunately, they do not have much to do with the more modest goal set for this paper. In Indic and thence in Tibetan literary sources, [a] King Indrabh%ti is thus 22 occasionally called Dza [or: Dza’]/Ja,8 and these same sources variously associate him with Uddiy!na, with Za hor, and even with both. An important case in point 4 4 where both are concerned is found in a quotation of a tantra in the unfinished analysis-cum-survey of tantric literature by Master Bsod nams rtse mo (1142-1185), the second patriarch of the Sa skya school. He cites there an unknown glossator of a passage that is ostensibly derived from the Dpal sdom pa’i rgyud phyi ma [*'r&sam4 varottaratantra], a rather mysterious work that has so far resisted identication. The 23 glossator had drawn the following conclusion9: de bas na sh!kya thub pa mya ngan las ’das nas lo nyi shu na shar lho’i mtshams za hor gyi yul au rgyan zhes bya bar rgyal po dza zhes bya ba’am / indra bh# ti zhes bya ba’i khang pa’i steng du gser gyi glegs bam la bai d#rya 4 zhu bas bris pa’i po ti dpag tu med pa babs so // de rgyal pos bltas pas shes te / bsgrubs pas grub thob bo [zhes zer ro] 24 Therefore, twenty years: after $!kyamuni’s passing, countless pothi4 67See, for example, Rgya mtsho mtha’ yas kyi skor, vol. 1 (Gangtok, 1978), 315 ff., 365, 376, and vol. 2, 76. For the Rgya mtsho mtha’ yas cycle and a related text, see M.T. Kapstein, The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism. Conversion, Contestation, and Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 97-106, and my “The Tibetan Expression ‘bod wooden door’ (bod shing sgo) and its probable Mongol Antecedent,” Xiyu lishi yuyan yanjiu jikan / Historical and Philological Studies of China’s Western Regions [Wang Yao Festschrift, ed. Shen Weirong (Beijing: Science Press)] 3 (2010): 124 ff. 87For King Dza and/or Ja, see my forthcoming “Further Remarks on *Kuk[k]u[ra]r!ja and King Dza/Ja, and the Beginnings of the Indian Buddhist Tantric Tradition,” which is a companion study of the present essay. 97For what follows, see Rgyud sde spyi’i rnam par gzhag pa [Sde dge xylograph], Sa skya bka’ ‘bum, comp. Bsod nams rgya mtsho, vol. 2 (Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, 1968), no. 1, 28/2-9/3 [= Mes po’i shul bzhag, vol. 6, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib ‘jug khang (Beijing: Krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2007), 111-7]. :7The Beijing text indicates that the handwritten manuscripts of Zhwa lu and Lu phu monasteries read here brgya nyi shu, “one hundred and twenty.” I am unable to locate Lu phu monastery. The actual passage from the Dpal sdom pa’i rgyud phyi ma and cognate texts is examined in some detail in my essay cited above in n. 21. !#$" On the Edge of Myth and History books written in molten lapis on tablets of gold fell atop the house of King Dza or (‘am) Indrabh%ti in Au rgyan [Uddiyana], the land of Za hor, in the 4 4 southeast. Since the king looked at it, he understood and attained spiritual realization through spiritual practice. The Tibetan word ‘am must of course be unequivocally translated by “or”, as C. 25 Oetke has argued in some detail,6 after which it must obey the various semantic permutations of “or” in the target language, so that we must ultimately make a decision whether it is used disjunctively or conjunctively. The question this passage therefore raises is whether it carries the implication that both king Dza and Indrabh%ti had homes in Au rgyan, or whether “king Dza” is simply another way of referring to Indra-bh%ti and vice versa, meaning that there was either one king who was called Dza or Indrabhüti, or that the title “king” distributes over both Dza and Indrabh%ti and that these were different individuals. Further, the phrase gser gyi glegs bam la bai d#rya zhu bas bris pa is hardly an uncommon Indic Buddhist trope 4 and, in fact, is of venerable vintage. Its original suvarnapattesu likhit! vil&nena 4 4 4 4 26 vaid#ryena is already inter alia found in the Astas!hasrik!prajñ!p!ramit!s#tra.8 4 4 4 4 We may add here that we encounter the very same conceit in the Bka’ chems ka khol ma, a treasure text that Ati"a (ca.982-ca.1054) allegedly retrieved in circa 1050, in connection with its account of how the rst Buddhist texts came to Tibet during the 27 reign of the legendary king Lha Tho tho re gnyan shel.9 We should add that this work states that Dza was a king of Magadha and, importantly, that the famous king A"oka (3rdc. BC) was this king’s “ancestor of yore” (sngon gyi mes po), but it does not mention Za hor or Uddiyana in either context. This very narrative was evidently 4 4 also partly adopted by the Old School historian Nyang ral Nyi ma’i ‘od zer (1124-92) 67See the incisive deliberations on ‘am in his Paraphrasenbeziehungen zwischen disjunktive und konjunktive Sätzen, Linguistische Arbeiten 108 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1981), 251 ff. 87Abhisamay!lam kar!lok! Prajñ!p!ramit!vy!khy! (Commentary of the Ast as!hasrik!prajñ!4 4 4 p!ramit!), The Work of Haribhadra together with the Text commented on, ed. U. Wogihara, Fascicle 7 (Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, 1935), 955 - see also E. Conze, tr., The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines & Its verse Summary (San Francisco: Four Seasons Foun-dation, 1983), 288-9. 97Bka’ chems ka khol ma, ed. Smon lam rgya mtsho (Lanzhou: Kan su’u mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1989), 94-95. !#%" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 in the ecclesiastic chronicle that he completed towards the end of his life, although he may have adopted it via the cognate narrative in the Mani bka’ ‘bum of which he 4 28 6 was after all the co-originator. Bsod nams rtse mo was not sympathetic to the glossator’s conclusions on several grounds. One of these was that, for him, governed by Indrabh%ti, Uddiyana 4 4 was located not in a southeastern, but rather in the western region. In support of his argument he cites a passage from what he calls the Gsang ba’i sgron ma zhes bya ba’i rnal ‘byor ma’i rgyud (*Guhyaprad&pan!mayogin&tantra). Again, I have not been able to identify a tantra with this particular title in the editions of the Tibetan Buddhist canon that are available to me. This notwithstanding, already Rje btsun Grags pa rgyal mtshan (1147-1216), the third patriarch of the Sa skya school and Bsod nams rtse mo’s younger brother, listed it among the Hevajratantra’s explanatory 29 tantras. 8 Bu ston Rin chen grub (1290-1364), by contrast, does not register this title in either his undated catalog of tantric literature or in the catalog that he 30 appended to his 1322-6 chronicle of Buddhism.9 The same holds for his analysis of the Hevajratantra textual corpus in his critical 1339 survey of tantric literature 67See, respectively, Bka’ chems ka khol ma, ed. Smon lam rgya mtsho, 91, and Chos ‘byung me tog snying po sbrang rtsi’i bcud, ed. Nyan shul Mkhyen rab ‘od gsal, Gangs can rigs mdzod 5 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1988), 95 [= R.O. Meisezahl, ed., Die große Geschichte des tibetischen Buddhismus nach alter Tradition (Sankt Augustin: VGH Wissenschaftsverlag, 1985), Tafel 70/2; Manuscript “ A” (Paro, 1979), 165; Manuscript “ B” (Paro, 1979), 107]. Nyang ral’s dates continue to be controversial in some quarters, but see the brief discussion in B.L. Phillips, Consummation and Compassion in medieval Tibet: The Mani bka’-‘bum chen-mo of Guru Chos-kyi Dbang-phyug (unpublished dissertation, University of Virginia, 2004), 114-115. My student D. Hirshberg’s forthcoming dissertation will shed important light on Nyang ral’s Lives and activities as a revealer of treasure texts (gter ston). 87See, respectively, Kyai rdo rje’i rgyud ‘bum gyi dkar chag [Sde dge xylograph], Sa skya bka’ ‘bum, comp. Bsod nams rgya mtsho, vol. 3 (Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, 1968), no. 25, 274/3 [= Mes po’i shul bzhag, 4 vol. 11, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib ‘jug khang (Beijing: Krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2007), 517]. 97See, respectively, Helmut Eimer, Der Tantra-Katalog der Bu ston im Vergleich mit der Ab-teilung Tantra der tibetischen Kanjur. Studie, Textausgabe, Konkordanzen und Indices, Indica et Tibetica 17 (Bonn: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 1989), 68-9, Bde bar gshegs pa’i bstan pa’i gsal byed chos kyi ‘byung gnas gsung rab rin po che’i mdzod, The Collected Works of Bu ston, part 24 (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1971), 987 [= ed. Rdo rje rgyal po (Beijing: Krung go’i bod kyi shes rig dpe skrun khang, 1988), 264]. !#&" On the Edge of Myth and History of the Kanjur where, however, he stipulates that the cognate Grub pa nges par bstan pa’i thig le, a title of an explanatory tantra that also occurs in Rje btsun’s list, 31 “was at present not available” (da lta ma rnyed do // ) to him.6 Lastly, the *Guhyaprad&pan!mayogin&tantra was also neither part of the Kanjur of Brag dkar theg 4 chen gling monastery in Glo bo Smon thang, present day Mustang, Nepal, for which Ngor chen Kun dga’ bzang po wrote a catalog in 1447, nor in the Kanjur of the Stog 32 Palace manuscript.8 I do not know what may have happened to this work and the same applies to the Grub pa nges par bstan pa’i thig le. Now an identical passage is found in the *'r&tattvaprad&pan!mamah!yogin&tan4 33 9 tra, a work the title of which is fairly similar to the *Guhyaprad&pan!mayogin&tantra. This citation is of some consequence and thus merits reproduction. Prefaced by Bsod nams rtse mo’s statement that he had heard the following “from my teacher”, the sources on which he bases his critique of the latter read as follows: dpal ye shes thig le’i rgyud las / ma ‘ongs pa’i dus su gsang ba’i rgyud skal pa dang ldan pa’i sems can la sus bshad pa byed / bka’ stsal pa / phyag na rdo rje mgon pos bshad pa byed do zhes bya ba dang / gsang ba’i sgron ma zhes bya ba rnal ‘byor ma’i rgyud las / gsang ba chen mo rgyud shes pa dang bshad pa ma ‘ongs pa na su byed / bka’ stsal ba / nub phyogs au rgyan gyi yul dpal rdo rje chen po’i gnas su / au rgyan gyi rgyal po indra bh# ti zhes bya bas shes pa dang bshad pa dang sems can la gsal bar byed do // gsol ba / rgyal po indra bh# ti des sa bcu’i dbang phyug lags sam / bka’ stsal ba / dpal ye shes thig le’i rgyud kyi rgyal po las gang zhig bstod pa / phyag na rdo rje ye shes kyi sku sa bcu’i dbang phyug de nyid sprul pa’i sku ste sa bcu’i 67See his Rgyud sde spyi’i rnam par gzhag pa rgyud sde rin po che’i mdzes rgyan, The Collected Works of Bu ston, part 15 (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1968), 440-454. 87See, respectively, H. Eimer, The Early Mustang Kanjur Catalogue, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 45 (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Bud-dhistische Studien Universität Wien, 1999), 27 ff., and T. Skorupski, A Catalogue of the Stog Palace Kanjur, Bibliographia Philologica Buddhica, Series Maior IV (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1985), 196 ff. 97The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 16, no. 423, 320/4 [Nga, 142b]; it is also cited in Dalton, The Uses of the Dgongs pa ‘dus pa’i mdo in the Development of the Rnying-ma School of Tibetan Buddhism, 54, n. 35. 4 !#'" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 dbang phyug go // zhes bshad do // 34 The *'r&jñ!natilakatantra states6: Who will in the future explain the secret tantra to fortunate sentient beings? The Lord said: “It will be explained by the protector Vajrap!ni.” 4 And the *Guhyaprad&pan!mayogin&tantra explains: Who will in the future understand and explain the very secret tantra? The Lord said: “King Indrabh%ti of Au rgyan [= Uddiy!na] in the west will understand and explain and clarify it to sentient beings.” Question: “Is King Indrabh%ti a lord of the tenth stage?” The Lord said: “He who is extolled in the *'r&jñ!natilakatantra, Vajrap!ni, the gnosis-embodiment, the very embodiment 4 35 of the lord of the tenth stage, is the Lord of the tenth stage.”8 The insertion of Vajrap!ni into the narrative is of course hardly irrelevant, 4 since he is often credited with the inception of Buddhist tantra. In connection with 67The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 16, no. 422, [Nga, 134b]; the text reads here slightly differently from Bsod nams rtse mo’s quotation: kyai bcom ldan ’das ma ’ongs pa’i dus su yang dag par gsang ba’i rgyud ’di skal pa dang ldan pa’i sems can rnams la sus ‘chad par’ gyur / bcom ldan ‘das kyis bka’ stsal ba / dpal phyag na rdo rje mgon pos bshad par byed do //. The passage is also quoted by Mnga’ ris Chos kyi rgyal po (1306-1386), alias Jo nang Phyogs las rnam rgyal, in his undated Dpal dus kyi ’khor lo’i rgyud ’grel bshad pa la ’jug pa’i yan lag rnam par bzhag pa ngo mtshar rtogs brjod, Jo nang dpe tshogs, vol. 21, ed. ‘Phrin las rgyal mtshan et al. 4 (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2008), 12, albeit with many more signicant differences, as will be evident from the following quotation: ye shes thig le’i rgyud las / ma ‘ongs pa’i dus su yang dag par gsang ba’i rgyud ‘di skal ba dang ldan pa’i sems can rnams las sus ‘chad par ‘gyur / bcom ldan ‘das kyis bka’ bstsal pa / phyag na rdo rje mgon pos bshad par byed do zhes pa dang / gsang ba sgron ma’i rgyud las gsang ba chen po’i rgyud ‘di ni / shes pa dang ni bshad pa su // bcom ldan ‘das kyis bka’ bstsal pa // byang phyogs su dpal ldan rdo rje chen po’i gnas u rgyan du rgyal po intra bhu ti zhes bya bas shes pa dang bshad pa dang / sems can la gsal bar byed do // lha mos gsol ba / kye bcom ldan ‘das / rgyal po intra bhu ti de sa du’i dbang phyug lags bka’ bstsol cig / bcom ldan ‘das kyis bka’ bstsal pa / dpal ye shes thig le’i rgyud kyi rgyal po las /gang zhig ngas bstan pa phyag na rdo rje’i rgyal po de nyid intra bhu ti sprul pa’i sku sa bcu’i dbang phyug ye shes kyi sku sa bcu bzhi’i dbang phyug go // zhes bshad pa dang / 87Karma Pakshi, Nyid kyi rnam thar dus 3 dus med gcig tu rtogs shing rtsal chen po rdzogs pa’i gleng gzhi, 60, cites a similar passage from what he calls the Dgongs pa lung bstan. Unfortunately, I have not been able to trace this citation. !#(" On the Edge of Myth and History him, it is worth mentioning that, in addition to what I noted above, the author of the Bka’ chems ka khol ma already made the assertion that Lha Tho tho re gnyan shel 36 was a re-embodiment of none other than Vajrap!ni!6 4 The entire passage of Rgyud sde spyi’i rnam par gzhag pa in which Bsod nams rtse mo rst rejects the opinions of others and then asserts his own view on the question of how the tantras were “gathered” and brought to light was reproduced and glossed much 37 later by Glo bo Mkhan chen Bsod nams lhun grub (1456-1532).8 Although this Sa skya pa scholar unfortunately devotes but one short sentence to the rst part, his remarks are by no means insignicant. In the rst place, he plainly states that some adherent of the “early translation” (snga ’gyur ba), that is, the Old School, had espoused this point of view. In addition, his quotation from what he also calls the *Guhyaprad&pan!mayogin&tantra 4 locates Uddiy!na not in the western, but in the northern region (byang phyogs), and this is 4 4 precisely what we nd, together with a number of other variant readings, in the canonical * 38 'r&tattvaprad&pan!mamah!yogin&tantra!9 The translator’s colophon of the latter as well 4 as the one affixed to the translation of the *'r&jñ!natilakatantra state that these were translated and edited by the Indian scholar Prajñ!"r#gupta (12thc.) and $r#prajñ!gupta – they are no doubt one and the same person - and that, at some later time, they were retranslated and edited in Sa skya. It is not known [to me] when this may have taken place. In his previously mentioned survey of the contents of tantric literature as a whole, Bu ston found fault with the *'r&tattvaprad&pan!mamah!yogin&tantra and openly expressed his 4 doubts whether in light of some of its phraseology this work really merited to be judged an 67Bka’ chems ka khol ma, ed. Smon lam rgya mtsho, 95; see also supra n. 26. 87Slob dpon bsod nams rtse mos mdzad pa’i rgyud sde spyi yi rnam par bzhag pa’i gsal byed nyi ma’i ‘od zer (Dehra Dun: Pal Ewam Chodan Ngorpa Centre, 1985), 78-81. For this work, see J. Kramer, A Noble Abbot from Mustang. Life and Works of Glo bo Mkhan chen (1456-1532), Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 68 (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universtät Wien, 2008), 182-184, no. 100. 97See above n. 13; the passage reads there rather differently: gsang ba chen po’i rgyud ‘di ni // shes pa dang bshad su // bcom ldan ‘das kyis bka’ stsal ba / byang phyogs su dpal rdo rje gnas au rgyan du rgyal po indra bh# ti zhes bya bas shes pa dang bshad pa dang / sems can la gsal bar byed do // lha mos gsol ba / kye bcom ldan ‘das rgyal po chen po indra bh# ti zhes bya ba des du’i a dbang phyug lags / bka’ stsol cig / bcom ldan ‘das kyis bka’ stsal ba / dpal ye shes thig le’i rgyud kyi rgyal po las gang zhig ngas bstan pa’i phyag na rdo rje’i rgyal po de nyid indra bh# ti sprul ba’i skus sa bcu’i dbang phyug ye shes kyi sku sa bcu bzhi’i dbang phyug go //. See also Mnga’ ris Chos kyi rgyal po’s quotation in n. 33. !#)" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 39 authentic (yang dag) tantra.6 It is perhaps not insignicant that neither Ngor chen nor Glo 40 bo Mkhan chen followed him in casting aspersions on this work’s textual integrity.8 A connection between a king Indrabhüti and U rgyan is of course well attested elsewhere. For one, he is mentioned in $!kyamitra’s autobiographical note at the outset of his Ko%al!lamk!ra commentary on a recension of the Sarvatath!gata4 tattvasamgrahas#tra/tantra. Rendered into Tibetan in circa 800, this particular 4 $!kyamitra places U rgyan in the north and relates that he himself had attended on [an] Indrabh%ti - he characterizes him as the “exponent of the tantra’s very intent” (rgyud don de nyid ’dzin), the “tantra” being of course the Sarvatath!gatatattvasamgrahas#tra/tantra. He also describes U rgyan as a/the “source of enlightenment4 qualities” (yon tan ’byung gnas, gunodaya), an epithet that Indic Buddhist authors 41 frequently used when describing this locale.9 Coupled with Jñ!namitra’s assertion that there was a king Indrabh%ti of Za hor, this would inevitably mean that, in the late seventh or early eighth century, there were either two kings called Indrabh%ti, one living in Za hor and the other in U rgyan, or that “Za hor” and “U rgyan” can [more or less] refer to one and the same place, or that one or the other writer had made an error in locating the king in Za hor or in U rgyan, or that, nally and more generally, we have to reckon with some sort of a contamination of our sources. It is virtually certain that, in a South Asian Buddhist context, the location of any place was determined by taking Magadha or, more accurately, Bodhgay!/ Vajr!sana, the locale, now in Bih!r State, where the historical Buddha attained his enlightenment, as the center of the world or at least as the center from which 67Rgyud sde spyi’i rnam par gzhag pa rgyud sde rin po che’i mdzes rgyan, 453-4. 87See, respectively, Eimer, The Early Mustang Kanjur Catalogue, 28-9, and Slob dpon bsod nams rtse mos mdzad pa’i rgyud sde spyi yi rnam par bzhag pa’i gsal byed nyi ma’i ‘od zer, 62. 97The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 28, no. 2507 [#2503], 434/2 [Yi, 2a]; see also Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism. A Social History, 160. This is the very same epithet that Buddha"r#jñ!na later applied to Uddiy!na in his Dvikramatattvabh!van!mukh!gama, for which see The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 27, no. 1855 [#1853], 1/2 [Di, 2a]. It is also used in other contexts. For example, writing in Trikatuka monastery during the reign of king Dharmap!la (r. ca. 775-ca. 812), Haribhadra, one of Buddha"r#jñ!na’s teachers, used sarvagunodaya as an epithet for this monastery in his Abhisamay!lamkar!lok! Prajñ!p!ramit!vy!khy! (Commentary of the Astas!hasrik!prajñ!p!ramit!), The Work of Haribhadra together with the Text commented on, ed. U. Wogihara, Fascicle 7, 994. 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 44 !+*" On the Edge of Myth and History issued the directions of the compass. In fact, this is explicitly stated in the large commentary on the 'atas!hasrik!prajñ!-p!ramit!s#tra that the Tibetan tradition 42 often attributed to a certain Mche ba’i sde [*Damstr!sena].6 The implicit overlap 4 4 4 of Za hor and Udd iy!na is of course hardly unproblematic. But Udd iy!na’s 4 4 4 4 putative location in the southeast, as the *'r&sam varottaratantra suggests, is not 4 entirely without merit when we recall the arguments put forth by L. Chandra – a few of these need to be reconsidered -, and the sources he marshals, for identifying 43 Uddiy!na/Oddiy!na with Kañc# in south India.8 But what has become transparent 4 4 4 4 from the foregoing and what will be made more clear from what is to follow is that the various assertions about the locations of Za hor and Uddiyana confront us with a 4 4 redoubtable complex of interpretive challenges that are by no means easy to resolve. And whatever else they may evoke, they do point to what is perhaps an obvious state of affairs, namely, that the toponyms in question were not always consistently used geographic indicators and that, indeed, they may very well designate more than one place. Aside from this kind of indeterminacy, we must also consider the obvious possibility, even if this is perhaps unlikely, that not all authors may have used the same point of reference, that is, Bodhgay!/Vajr!sana, when they made their decisions about what is located in the east, what is located in the west, etc. The fact that much of the literary legacy of Tibetan scholarship, whether the huge corpus of translated literature or the even larger corpus of native treatises, is fraught with what often appear to be virtually insurmountable text-critical and text-historical problems, as was indicated in the variant readings that impugn the integrity of the brief passage of Bsod nams rtse mo’s work that was considered above, simply 67The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 33, no. 3812 [#3807], 466/2-560/3 and vol. 34, 1-72/6 [Na-Pa]. For Damstr!sena and his oeuvre, see my forthcoming “Apropos of Damstr!sena and His Oeuvre in the Catalog of Translated Scripture of Bu ston Rin chen grub’s (1290-1364) Ecclesiastic History and Elsewhere.” 87See his “Oddiy!na: a New Interpretation” of 1977, which is now reprinted in Cultural Horizons of India, vol. 3, ed. T. Chandrika (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 4 4 44 4 4 44 4 1993), 146-164; see also the very succinct deliberations in S. Hodge, tr., The Mah!vairocanan!bhisambodhi Tantra with Buddhaguhya’s Commentary (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 539-540, n. 10. However, the evidence suggests that we do not have to take a yes or no position on the issue, for there seems to be no good reason not to consider the possibility that there were two places in the large subcontinent that had an identical or a very similar name. 4 !+!" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 compounds the already staggering problems. 44 Tibetan za hor has been connected to Persian shahr, “town, city, walled city.”6 If this is found to be acceptable, and this is a big IF, then it would probably have been derived from an intermediary like %ahar, which, of course, is itself a loanword. The history of when this %ahar embedded itself in the vernaculars of the Indian subcontinent is uncertain. I am unaware of any manuscript of a Sanskrit Buddhist text 45 in which this toponym occurs.8 The word hor has a long history in Tibetan and is one of those ethnonyms whose referent has changed over time, from Uyghur to Mongol to Eastern Mongol, etc. It also occurs in various compound expressions where, to be sure, it has prima facie nothing to do with its usage as an ethnonym in, for example, hor kong, “lacuna”, and “hor yod ”. The latter expression is courtesy of my learned colleague Toh Hoong-Teik, who drew my attention to the relevant entry in Btsan lha Ngag dbang tshul khrims ne dictionary in which it is related that this rarity occurs in a collection of teachings of early Bka’ gdams pa masters, the Legs par bshad pa bka’ gdams rin po che’i gsung gi gces btus nor bu’i bang mdzod, which the nineteenth century Don grub rgyal mtshan, alias Ye shes don grub bstan pa’i rgyal mtshan, 46 compiled in Lha ldan [= Lhasa] at an unknown year.9 Btsan lha cites the following from a list of difcult words with their explanations that is appended to one of the two 47 editions of this Bka’ gdams pa chresthomathy that have been published so far:: hor yod ni hor khong ngam bar stong / hor yod means lacuna or interval. 67The putative Persian origin of za hor was, for example, put forth in A. Chattopadhyaya, At&%a and Tibet (Calcutta: Indian Studies Past and Present, 1967), 62-3. For shahr > %ahar, see also D.C. Sircar, Indian Epigraphical Glossary (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1966), 285. 87Dung dkar Blo bzang ’phrin las, Dung dkar tshig mdzod chen mo, ed. ’Khrud ma thar et al. (Beijing: Krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2002), 1801, suggests inter alia that za hor is connected to the town of Tsam pa [*Campa] in connection with the capital town of the king of Anga [*Anga] as found in the introductory mise-en-scène section (gleng gzhi, *nid!na) of the canonical ’Dul ba lung: (grong khyer tsam pa ni yul am [read: ang] ga’i rgyal po’i rgyal sa gnas yul yin…). I have not found Za hor mentioned in the Vinaya section of the Kanjur. 97Brda dkrol gser gyi me long (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1997), 1017. :7Bka’ gdams gces btus kyi dka’ ming, Legs par bshad pa bka’ gdams rin po che’i gsung gi gces btus nor bu’i bang mdzod (Bir, 1985), 587. 4 !+#" On the Edge of Myth and History Apparently, the expression za hor also occurs in za hor ku shu, whereby ku shu 48 means “apple”.6 As is known, $!ntaraksita (ca.725-ca.775) played a key-role in the introduction 4 of Indian Buddhism in Tibet. In part the oldest available Tibetan sources to narrate what had transpired in Central Tibet during the second half of the ninth century and how institutionalized Buddhism was introduced into Tibet as a state religion, the Sba bzhed corpus uniformly states that he was the son of an unnamed king 49 of Za hor.8 And while they do not add any details about this kingdom’s location, they do mention it in conjunction with the Kathmandu Valley (bal po); one version of the text even explicitly distinguishes Za hor from “India” (rgya gar). This becomes standard practise in the later literature. The colophon of $!ntaraks ita’s 4 th joint translation of Dign!ga’s (6 c.) Hetucakra—this work is often wrongly called 50 Hetucakradamaru, but Hetucakra seems to be the only veriable part of its title9— 4 with a Dharm!loka/!"oka simply refers to him as a scholar from Za hor without, however, stipulating his royal descent. The colophons of his other joint translations and own writings in the Sde dge xylograph of the Tanjur do not always follow suit, and, indeed, not one single colophon of his writings identies him as a prince. On occasion, he is referred to as 'c!rya Bodhisattva. Thus, of some interest is of course the brief passage in the Bka’ yang dag pa’i tshad ma las mdor bsdus pa that, though no doubt of an aged vintage, is perhaps not entirely unproblematically attributed to 67This entry is found in The New Tibetan-English Dictionary of Modern Tibetan, ed. M.C. Goldstein et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). I have not seen this compound expression in the various Tibetan texts on materia medica that are accessible to me. 87Une chronique ancienne de bSam-yas: sBa-bzhed, ed. R.A. Stein, 7, 12 (Paris: Publications de l’ In-stitut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1961); Sba bzhed, ed. Mgon po rgyal mtshan, 8, 12 (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1982); Dba’ bzhed. The Royal Narrative Concerning the Bringing of the Buddha’s Doctrine to Tibet, tr. Pasang Wangdu and H. Diemberger, 41, 43 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000); and the four narratives in Rba bzhed, ed. Bde skyid, 10, 14; 90, 98; 169, 172; 245, 246 (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2009). 97See my forthcoming “The Wheel of Reason: A Little Study of Early Buddhist Logic that is Attributed to Dign!ga and Several of its Tibetan Interpreters.” !++" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 51 emperor Khri srong lde btsan (ca.742-ca.800)6 in both the Lhan dkar ma and the 52 ‘Phang thang ma.8 There the author states the following that the author had studied with “a monk from Za hor, a Mahayana exponent, born in the land of Kha ga sa ra na with the name Dharma"!ntighosa, called 'c!rya Bodhisattva, learned in all the 4 scriptures…” (za hor gyi bhiksu theg pa chen po pa yul kha ga sa ra nar skyes pa dar ma sh!nti gho sa zhes bya ba’i ’jig rten gyis ! tsa rya bo dhi sa twa zhes btags pa gsung rab 53 thams cad la mkhas…).9 Dar ma rgyal mtshan does not mention Dharma"!ntighosa 4 67For these dates, see the recent arguments in B. Dotson, “‘Emperor’ Mu rug btsan and the ’Phang thang ma Catalogue,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 3 (2007), 25 pp., http://www. thlib.org?tid=T1217. It is perhaps not unfruitful to point out that the dates the extant witness of the text of the Zangs gling ma biography of Padmasambhava that was “recovered” by Nyang ral offers are exactly the same dates for the main events in the life of Khri srong lde btsan Nyang ral has given in his [later] chronicle. 87Dkar chag ’phang thang ma /Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa, ed. Bod ljongs rten rdzas bshams mdzod khang, 47. On p. 58, it lists a Bka’ yang dag pa’i tshad ma mdor bstan pa in one bam po of unspecied authorship. In connection with the doctrinal name rdzogs chen, Karma pa VII Mi bskyod rdo rje (1507-1554) states that the phrase yongs su rdzogs pa in the Bka’ yang dag pa’i tshad ma las mdor bsdus pa’s mtshan nyid gsum gyi yongs grub la yongs su rdzogs pa might be interpreted as yet another early reference to Rdzogs chen, the origins of which designation were controversial in some Tibetan intellectual quarters, for he argues that yongs su can be interpreted as chen po; see his Gsang sngags snga ‘gyur las’ phros pa’i brgal lan rtsod pa med pa’i ston pa dang bstan pa’i byung ba brjod pa drang po’i sa bon, Bka’ brgyud pa’i brgal lan dang dris lan phyogs bsgrigs, comp. Dam chos zla ba (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2009), 57. This work was written in response to a piece of 1540 or possibly 1552 - in any event not the year shing pho byi (1504/1564), as is stated in the text! - that had incriminatingly circulated in Central Tibet under his name, but with which he had absolutely nothing to do. 97The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 52, no. 4357 [# 4352], 398/4 [Tso, 174a]. Attributed to $!kyamuni 4 (sic), a manuscript of a Bka’ yang dag pa’i tshad ma in seventeen folios is registered in ‘Bras spungs dgon du bzhugs su gsol ba’i dpe rnying dkar chag, Stod cha [1], comp. Karma bde legs et al. (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2004), 814, no. 09089. For the canonical text, see G. Tucci, Minor Buddhist Texts, parts I & II (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986), 432-435, 461-462 – this was rst published in 1958 -, and also the note anent this particular passage in A. Macdonald, “Une lecture des P.T. 1286, 1287, 1038, 1047 et 1290. Essai sur la formation et l’emploi des mythes politiques dans la religion royale de Srong btsan sgam po,” Études tibétaines dédiées à la mémoire de Marcelle Lalou, ed. A. Macdonald, 367 (Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1971). See further P. Schwabland, A General Exposition of Valid Cognition: The Initial Chapter of Bcom ldan ral gri’s Introduction to Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Epistemology (unpublished MA Thesis, University of Washington, 1994), 30-2. Dol po pa Shes rab rgyal mtshan (1292-1361) wrote a Bka’ yang dag kun gyi gnad bzung ba. This epitome of his views on Buddhist theory and practice is found in his Collected Works, vol. 6, ed. ‘Dzam thang (Chengdu, ?1999), 617-21. For another work with Bka’ yang dag pa’i tshad ma in its title that is attributed to N!rop! (d. 1040), see Shen Weirong, “Studies on Chinese Texts of the Yogic Practices of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism Found in Khara Khoto of Tangut Xia [1]: Quintessential Instruction on the Illusory Body of Dream” , Cahiers d’Extrême Asie 15 (2005), 218-222. !+$" On the Edge of Myth and History in his 1261 chronicle of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. But it is different in the rubric of titles of treatises on speculative logic (rtog ge) that he enumerates in his circa 1275 catalog of translated scripture [and much else besides]. For there he lists some seven 54 treatises under a scholar by this name; these are the following6: 1. Bka ’yang dag pa’i tshad ma’i yon tan bkod pa or Tshad ma’i yon tan bkod pa; eight chapters 2. Dbang phyug ’jig pa; sixty-nine %lokas 3. Spyi tha mi dad dgag pa; twenty-one %lokas 4. [?Spyi] tha dad pa dgag pa; forty-two %lokas 5. Gzhan sel ba grub pa; seventy %lokas 6. Bdag med grub pa; ?seventy, ?thirteen %lokas 55 7. Sgra la dgag pa bsdus pa; basic text plus commentary8 The ‘Phang thang ma catalog lists nos. 2-4, 6 in its rubric of the same, whereas no 56 writings attributed to him are registered in the Lhan dkar ma.9 We should further recall that Ati"a’s earliest biography by his Tibetan disciple Nag tsho Lo ts! ba Tshul khrims rgyal ba (1011/2-ca.1070) states that his place of birth was a large city in a country (yul) called Za hor which, he remarks, is located 57 in Bang ga la [Bengal], to the east of Vajr!sana.: In fact, we are told that he was a son of the king of Za hor – elsewhere we learn that his father’s name was Dge ba’i dpal [*Kaly!n a"r#] and that his mother was Dpal ’od [*$r#prabh!] - and 4 this would link him to $!ntaraksita, but only if, in the mean time, the reign had 4 not fallen to another family and both assertions can be shown to have historical 67K.R. Schaeffer and L.W.J. van der Kuijp, An Early Tibetan Survey of Buddhist Literature. The Bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi ‘od of Bcom ldan ral gri, Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 64 (Cambridge: Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, 2009), 190-191. 87Dar ma rgyal mtshan cites from this work in his Sgra yi bstan bcos rgyan gyi me tog ngag gi dbang phyug grub pa, Collected Works, vol. Nya [= 8], ed. Khams sprul Bsod nams don grub (Lhasa, 2006), 49 ff., and elsewhere. 97Dkar chag ‘phang thang ma / Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa, ed. Bod ljongs rten rdzas bshams mdzod khang, 44, 43. :7See H. Eimer, Testimonia for the Bstod-pa brgyad-cu-pa. An Early Hymn Praising D&pamkara%r&jñ!na (Ati%a), Lumbini Studies in Buddhist Literature1 (Lumbini: Lumbini Interna-tional Research Institute, 2003), 20. 4 !+%" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 integrity. Indeed, so far, additional corroborating evidence for either is wanting. Other sources are even more specific and add that Candragarbha, alias Ati"a, was actually born in Za hor in the town of Vikramapuri that would apparently now lie within present-day sprawling Dacca, Bangaladesh. The biographies of Shes rab bzang po [*Prajñ!bhadra], alias Tilopa, the main teacher of N!ropa (?-1040), inconsistently associate him with Za hor as well. For example, the biography that Karma pa III included in his study of the lives of his Bka’ brgyud pa forebears has it that Dznya ko, the place in which Tilopa was born, was located in Za hor, in 58 eastern India.6 This datum is absent from the précis of Tilopa’s biography that we nd in Rta tshag’s sprawling chronicle, but his narrative does have a passage that 59 has Tilopa look for [a] N!g!rjuna in the south of the Indian subcontinent.8 En route, he met the ascetic Matangi who told him inter alia about “Ha ri ko la [= ?Harikela], 4 a large town of Za hor in Bangala in the eas” (shar phyogs bha ga la’i rgyud ha ri ko la za hor gyi grong khyer chen po) that had previously a King U ma ke sa ra associated with it. Finally, the Old School tantra ‘Bras bu chen po lnga bral ba (*?), mentions Za hor as an area where a “large cremation ground” (dur khrod chen po) was located and that, hence, it was very well suited for esoteric ritual and meditative 60 practices.9 It is thus clear that whatever else it may designate geographically, Za hor was also regarded as a larger area in which a town could be located. Nyang ral mentions Za hor in his list of countries and areas that includes India, China, etc., alleges that it had its own Buddhist literature that, along with texts written in the languages of U rgyan, Kashmir, Khotan, India and China, was translated into Tibetan, and relates furthermore that the prolific translator ‘Gos Lo ts! ba Bsod nams rtse mo (11thc.), alias Khug pa Lhas btsas, had requested teachings from inter alia “one with prescience from India” (rgya gar mngon shes can) and someone from “Za hor who has a queen” (za hor btsun mo can), where once again what 67Bka’ brgyud gser phreng, Collected Works, vol. Nga (Xining, 2006), 9, 11. 87Lho rong chos ‘byung, ed. Gling dpon Padma skal bzang and Ma grong Mi ‘gyur rdo rje, 12. 97 The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol 20, no. 839 [# 841(4)], 150/1 [Ga, 211a]. 4 !+&" On the Edge of Myth and History 61 stands out is the implicit distinction made between Rgya gar and Za hor. 6 The only time the edition of the Bka’ chems kha khol ma that I use for this essay mentions Za hor is in connection with Thon mi (7thc.), the putative inventor of the Tibetan writing system, who is there said to have adopted the Tibetan graph 62 (yi ge) ‘za’ from Za hor.8 Nyang ral has an interesting and imaginative take on its background while perhaps suggesting at the same time that Za hor was a 63 place to which one could still travel.9 But then so was apparently Sambhala/ 67Chos ‘byung me tog snying po sbrang rtsi’i bcud, ed. Nyan shul Mkhyen rab ‘od gsal, 85, 333, 475 [= Meisezahl, ed., Die große Geschichte des tibetischen Buddhismus nach alter Tradition, Tafel 64/1, 241/3, 347/1; Manuscript “A”, 149, 533, missing; Manuscript“ B”, 95, 389, 502]. I must confess that the expressions rgya gar mngon shes can and za hor btsun mo can at rst puzzled me. They recur in Bu ston’s Dpal gsang ba ‘dus pa’i rgyud ‘grel gyi bshad thabs kyi yan lag gsang ba’i sgo ‘byed, The Collected Works of Bu ston, part 9 (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1967), 76, in connection with, respectively, V#ryabhadra, a co-translator of Rin chen bzang po, and one who was either called Dev!karacandra? or $!ntideva. Indeed, the colophon of a relevant Guhysam!ja work attributed to the latter states, in The Tibetan Tripitaka, vol. 26, no. 1826 [#1824], 80/4 [Ngi, 279b], that he was a great scholar of Za hor, who had co-translated it with ‘Gos Lo ts! ba [Khug pa Lhas btsas]. 87Bka’ chems ka khol ma, ed. Smon lam rgya mtsho, 107. Of little more than sheer bibliographical interest is the recent imaginative biography of Thon mi in Rang sgra, Thon mi sambhota (Xining: Mtsho 4 4 sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1999). For a study of two quatrains that allegedly issued from Thon mi’s chisel, see the commentary Tshe tan Zhabs drung ‘Jigs med rig pa’i blo gros’ (1910-85), alias Ngag dbang dbyangs ldan rig pa’i ‘dod ‘jo, had written for his student ‘Jam dbyangs grags pa in his Slob dpon thon mi’ i rtsom phud kyi sbyor ‘god mdud rgya ‘grol ba’i mtheb mdzub, Collected Works, vol. 4 (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2007), 365-8. Tshe tan monastery is located close to the more famous and more ancient monastery of Dan tig, for which see S. van Schaik, “Amdo Notes II: The Hidden Valley and its Name” in earlyTibet.org. Schaik suggests the following origin for [Mount] Dan tik: Skt. dandaka > Ch. tante N O> Tib. dan tik. It is probably not necessary to postulate a Chinese intermediary. For example, common Tibetan reexes of Sanskrit t&k!, “commentary” , are tik, tik, or t&k. On the other hand, it does not hurt that in the Tang period, in Early and Late Middle Chinese, the characterO was pronounced something like d(k and t k. that is, in any event with a voiceless velar plosive; see, for example, E.G. Pulleyblank, Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1991), 304. For the variants of tshe brtan, se tan, and se dan instead of tshe tan, see Tshe tan Zhabs drung, Mdo smad grub pa’i gnas chen dan tig shel gyi rib bo le lags dang bcas pa’i dkar chag don ldan ngag gi rgyud mngas, Collected Works, vol. 3 (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2007), 355. 97Chos ‘byung me tog snying po sbrang rtsi’i bcud, 173 [= ed. Meisezahl, ed., Die große Ge-schichte des tibetischen Buddhismus nach alter Tradition, Tafel 123-4/3; Manuscript “A,” 259-60; Manuscript “B,” 195-196]. 4 4 4 4 4 !+'" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 Shambhala! Later, in the versified Padma bka’ thang, the lengthy treasuretext study of Padmasambhava’s life that U rgyan gling pa (1323-?) retrieved from its place of concealment in 1352, Za hor is first said to be found in the southeast of India and then, taking measure from Mount Grdhrak%ta in what is 4 4 4 now Bih!r State, the text has it that it lies to or in the northeast of U rgyan, and later on distinguishes Rgya gar, “India,” from Rgya nag, “China” and Za hor.6 Further, a fifteenth century Tibetan text divides the Indian subcontinent into nine “isles” (gling), whereby it locates Vajr!sana at the center and Za hor and U rgyan, two of the eight remaining “isles”, in respectively the northwest and the west.8 Now the Padma bka’ thang turned out to become one of the most influential narratives of Padmasambhava’s life and one encounters its imprint in all the subsequent biographies of this thaumaturge, including especially Sangs rgyas gling pa’s (1340-1396) still by and large unstudied, cognate prosetext, the O rgyan gu ru padma ‘byung gnas kyi rnam thar rgyas pa gser gyi phreng ba thar lam gsal byed - its short title is Bka’ thang gser phreng -which is also in quite large measure indebted to it. 9 This should not be altogether surprising, since Ye shes mtsho rgyal was the source of inspiration for both 67Padma bka’ thang [based on the Sde dge xylograph] (Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1988), 88, 235-7, 347 [= Le dict de Padma. Padma Thang yig, tr. G.-Ch. Tous-saint (Paris: Librairie Ernest Leroux, 1933), 64, 162-4, 235]. The printing blocks for the Sde dge xylograph of the Padma bka’ thang, that is, O rgyan gu ru padma ‘byung gnas kyi skyes rabs rnam par thar pa rgyas par bkod pa padma bka’i thang yig, were prepared by Kun dga’ ‘phrin las rgya mtsho’i sde at the behest of Dpal ldan chos skyong (1710-1769). It is a “corrected” edition of the earlier Dga’ ldan phun tshogs gling xylograph from the 1675 printing blocks. 87See E.G. Smith, Among Tibetan Texts. History and Literature of the Himalayan Plateau, ed. K.R. Schaeffer (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001), 220, ad Don dam smra ba’i seng ge, A 15th Century Tibetan Compendium of Knowledge, the Bshad mdzod yid bzin nor bu, ed. L. Chandra (New Delhi: Jayyed Press, 1969), 186. 97Ed. Don grub phun tshogs (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 2007). Not very informative, the original printer’s colophon relates on, p. 485-488, that the original printing blocks were based on the xylograph edition from the Bhutanese Spung thang pa blocks. The Dga’ ldan pho brang in Lhasa had these new printing blocks prepared and these were, or perhaps still are, housed in Ngo mtshar lhun grub zil gnon rje ‘bum, a temple (lha khang) that I am unable to identify. !+(" On the Edge of Myth and History texts. What is perhaps surprising is that there is not that much of an overlap between these two and the earliest biography of Padmasambhava, Nyang ral’s Zangs gling ma! As will become apparent below, the Padma bka’ thang was by far the more popular of the three and it is extant in a substantial number of xylographs from different printing blocks, never mind the countless manuscript witnesses that we no doubt would find throughout the Tibetan Buddhist world in private collections! Given that the Padma bka’ thang is still due its textual criticism and that all that we currently have are quite late, overtly edited recensions, not to mention the fact that several Tibetan intellectuals were also well aware that in the course of its transmission the text had become quite contaminated 6 and that, indeed, a comparative study of the Lives of Padmasambhava is still outstanding,8 it is not possible to place too much reliance on the narratives of the text’s extant witnesses. The same must be said of the primary witness of the famous Zangs gling ma biography of Padmasambhava, the very rst of its kind, which dates from as late as the nineteenth century! And the same needs also to be said about Sangs rgyas gling pa’s work. At the outset of the Padma bka’ thang, Padmasambhava is said to have had five consorts, two of whom grew in stature that well exceeded life, namely, Ye shes mtsho rgyal and Mandarava [= Mand!rava], so-called after the beautiful coral tree, the Erythrina stricta 67This is already quite clearly indicated in the long printer’s colophon, for which see the Padma bka’ thang, 712-20. To my knowledge, Dpa’ bo II is among the earliest scholars unambiguously to cast aspersions on the textual integrity of the Thang yig corpus of Padmasambhava biographies that is known to him; see his Chos ‘byung mkhas pa’i dga’ ston, Stod cha, ed. Rdo rje rgyal po, 598. Other correctives to this corpus may be found in the writings that I cite below in n. 75. 87A beginning was made long ago in A.M. Blondeau, “Analysis of the Biographies of Padmasambhava According to Tibetan Tradition: Classification of Sources” , Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson, ed. M. Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi, 45-52 (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1980). Much relevant information can also be gleaned from her reports in Annuaire de l’EPHE Ve section, tome 86 (1977-1978), 87-88, etc. !+)" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 69 or the Erythrina variagata.6 The authorship of both the Zangs gling ma and the Padma bka’ thang, is not unproblematic, inasmuch as they are attributed to Ye shes mtsho rgyal alone. Nyang ral retrieved the first from its place of concealment and U rgyan gling pa did the same for the second. Both women are quite well represented in the Padma bka’ thang and play important roles while, by contrast, they only make very minor cameo appearances in the Zangs gling ma. Something of signicance must have happened in the interval that separated the Zang gling ma from the Padma bka’ thang, but it is far from clear to me what that might have been. Mand!rava’s father, we are told, was King Gtsug lag 67For Ye shes mtsho rgyal, see most recently J. Gyatso, “A Partial Genealogy of the Life-story of Ye shes mtsho rgyal” , Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (2006), 27 pp., http://www.thlib. org?tid=T1217, and for Mand!rava, see The Lives and Liberation of Princess Mandarava. The Indian Consort of Padmasambhava, tr. Lama Chonam and Sangye Khandro (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1998). Needless to say, there are many problems connected with the historicity of these two ladies, not the least of which is that neither are mentioned by name in Nyang ral’s chronicle, unless we sub-scribe to the proposition, as is done in many later texts, that Mkhar chen bza’ Mtsho rgyal, one of Emperor Khri srong lde btsan’s ve wives, was none other than Ye shes mtsho rgyal – it is possible that the ye shes, “gnosis,” prex points to the notion that she was a gnosis-d!kin& (ye shes kyi mkha’ ‘gro ma). Gyatso [p. 5, n. 17] suggests that Nyang ral asserted in “his autobiographical material” that he was the re-embodiment of Khri srong lde btsan and that his wife Jo ‘bum (ca.1150-ca.1220) was Ye shes mtsho rgyal. She cites Mnga’ bdag Lhun grub ‘od zer, Bka’ brgyad bde gshegs ‘dus pa’i gter ston / myang sprul sku nyi ma ‘od zer rnam thar gsal ba’i me long, Bka’ brgyad bde gshegs ‘dus pa’i chos skor, vol. 2 (Paro, 1979-80), 343-6, where the passage in question contains a prophecy and visitations of Padmasambhava and Ye shes mtsho rgyal. The prophecy suggests that Jo ‘bum was a re-embodiment of Ye shes mtsho rgyal, but the passage to which reference is made says nothing about Nyang ral being a re-embodiment of Khri srong lde btsan. To be sure, this item is noted severally in the text; see, for example, pp. 270, 325, 349. Jo ‘bum was the grand daughter of the famous Grub chen Yu mo and the sister of Nam mkha’ rgyal mtshan (ca.1160-ca.1230), alias Se mo che ba, for whom see Byang sems 4 Rgyal ba ye shes’ (1257-1320) Dpal ldan dus kyi ‘khor lo jo nang pa’i lugs kyi bla ma brgyud pa’i rnam thar, ed. Bstan ‘dzin phun tshogs (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2004), 32-50. The Zangs gling ma has Padmasambhava prophesy that Khri srong lde btsan will be reborn in a dragon-year. Nyang ral was born in 1124, which happened to be a dragon-year! Thus, the marriage of Khri srong lde btsan with Mkhar chen bza’ Mtsho rgyal is recapitulated by the matrimonial relationship of Nyang ral with Jo ‘bum. Apropos of Mnga’ bdag Lhun grub ‘od zer’s biography of Nyang ral, it also quotes the Rnam thar chen mo of Padmasambhava, on p. 210, and the Gter ‘byung chen mo, on p. 343. The rst is most likely Nyang ral’s Zangs gling ma or U rgyan gling pa’s Padma bka’ thang and the second is most probably the study of the Gter ma tradition in toto that was written by Gu ru Chos kyi dbang phyug (1212-70), whose name gures, for example, on pp. 245, 271; for this work, see also the remarks in J. Gyatso, “Guru Chosdbang’s gTer ‘byung chen mo: An Early Survey of the Treasure Tradition and Its Strategies in Discussing Bon Treasure,” Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, ed. P. Kvaerne, vol. 1, 275-287 (Oslo: The Institute for Comparative Studies in Human Culture, 1992). !$*" On the Edge of Myth and History ‘dzin – there seems to be little point in converting, as is often done, his name into its putative Sanskrit original form, *Ar"adhara, for there is no guarantee that he had a Sanskrit name and, in any event, “Zahorian” must have been different from Sanskrit! U rgyan gling pa devotes considerable space to both and indeed the Padma bka’ thang’s 70 chapters forty-one to forty-three even have the name Za hor in their titles.6 Apparently, Nyang ral’s treasure-text (gter ma) the Bka’ brgyad bde gshegs ‘dus pa’i rtsa rgyud contains a prophecy to the effect that Mtsho skyes rdo rje [*Saroruhavajra] was an earlier re-embodiment of Padmasambhava and that he had been a teacher of Gtsug lag 71 ‘dzin, King of Za hor.8 Gtsug lag ‘dzin gures prominently in the various narratives concerning Za hor and we will briey return to him shortly. The author of the Zangs gling ma does not develop any family history of the royal house of Za hor, although she/he does mention that Mand!rava’s father was king Gtsug lag ‘dzin and that Padmasambhava had converted the royal family and indeed the entire 72 kingdom of Za hor to the teachings of the Buddha.9 While the text does as a matter of course deal with the fundamental roles $!ntaraksita played in the construction of Bsam 4 yas monastery and the establishment of institutionalized and state-sponsored Buddhism in Tibet, it does not stipulate that he was of royal descent, let alone that he was in one way or another related to Gtsug lag ‘dzin and Mand!rava. In light of other sources, this is of course quite unexpected and presents us for this reason with yet another curious situation. Things are a great deal different in Nyang ral’s own post-Zangs gling ma ecclesiastic history in which he has included in places much that is very similar to or 67Padma bka’ thang, 235 ff. [= Le dict de Padma. Padma Thang yig, tr. G.-Ch. Toussaint, 162 ff.]. Sangs rgyas gling pa does the same, for which see O rgyan gu ru padma ‘byung gnas kyi rnam thar rgyas pa gser gyi phreng ba thar lam gsal byed, 152-64. For the connection among Padmasambhava, Mand!rava, and a lake Za hor Mtsho padma can in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, which is of a late vintage, see T. Huber, The Holy Land Reborn: Pilgrimage & the Tibetan Reinvention of Buddhist India (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 239-240. 87Bka’ brgyad bde gshegs ‘dus pa’i gter ston / myang sprul sku nyi ma ‘od zer rnam thar gsal ba’i me long, 205. I have not been able to locate this prophecy in the various published versions of this tantra. And so far, I have not come across one single Indian Buddhist work in which it is stated that an identiable individual x was a re-embodiment of another identiable individually. 97(?)Ye shes mtsho rgyal, Slob dpon padma’i rnam thar zangs gling ma, ed. Thub bstan nyi ma (Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1989), 21-3 [= The Lotus-Born. The Life Story of Padmasambhava, tr. E. Pema Kunsang, ed. M. Binder-Schmidt (Boston: Shambhala, 1993), 45-46]. !$!" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 even identical with passages from [the nineteenth century xylograph of] the Zangs gling ma. Discussing there the genesis of the Buddhist tantric traditions, Nyang ral cites the Dpal ‘khor lo sdom pa’i rgyud phyi ma [*'r&samvarottaratantra] and the Mdo sde 4 gdams ngag ‘bogs pa’i rgyal po (*?), after which he develops a edgeling genealogy of 73 the royal family of Za hor. This genealogy can be sketched out as follows6: [1] King D!"aratha [2] King A"oka, ancestor of King Dza 1. King Dza He was born in Pra dha mu nya, in the country of Za hor and studied with his father’s disciple Upar!ja, who was a king of Za hor. Nyang ral himself had a personal connection with Za hor. Writing not earlier 74 than the 1350s,8 Mnga’ bdag Lhun grub ‘od zer included in the fth chapter of his 75 biography of Nyang ral a narrative account of his subject’s many re-embodiments,9 and one of these, the twelfth, took place in the Za horian town of Dpal (Skt. $r#) [for 76 the Tibetan text, see the Appendix].: 67Chos ‘byung me tog snying po sbrang rtsi’i bcud, ed. Nyan shul Mkhyen rab ‘od gsal, 89, 92-3 [= Meisezahl, ed., Die große Geschichte des tibetischen Buddhismus nach alter Tradition. Rnying ma’i chos ‘byung chen mo, Tafel 64/3-70/2; Manuscript“ A”, 152-165; Manuscript“ B”, 97-107]. 87My rough dating of this biography is based on the fact that it quotes a passage from U rgyan gling pa’s Padma bka’ thang and Rgyal po bka’ yi thang yig on pp. 272-3, so that this work cannot be earlier than the second half of the fourteenth century when U rgyan gling pa “recovered” these works. The cited passage in the latter is found in Rgyal po bka ‘yi thang yig, Bka’ thang sde lnga, ed. Rdo rje rgyal po (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1986), 209. 97My student D. Hirshberg, “Karmic Foreshadowing on the Path of Fruition: Narrative Devices in the Biographies of Nyang ral Nyi ma ‘od zer,” Bulletin of Tibetology 45 (2009), 53-78, has examined several of his biographies, and additional results will become available upon the completion of his doctoral dissertation. Gu ru Chos kyi dbang phyug considered himself to be Nyang ral’s re-embodiment. As a consequence, Za hor also gures in his life stories; see below n. 74. :7Bka’ brgyad bde gshegs ‘dus pa’i gter ston / myang sprul sku nyi ma ‘od zer rnam thar gsal ba’i me long, 310-313. This section is adapted from Nyang ral’s biography by his youngest son Mnga’ bdag Nam mkha’ dpal and successor to the abbacy of Smra’o lcog monastery, which by and large was written in the rst person and therefore may have been dictated by Nyang ral himself; see also Phillips, Consummation and Compassion in medieval Tibet: The Man i bka’-’bum chen-mo of Guru Chos-kyi Dbang-phyug, 131-133. The very same narrative is found in Ghu ru chos dbang gi[s] rnam [m]thar bka’ rgya brgyad ma, The Autobiography and Instructions of Gu ru Chos kyi dbang phyug, vol. 1 (Paro, 1979), 93-95, where it represents the Gu ru’s eleventh [not the twelfth!] re-embodiment. 4 !$#" On the Edge of Myth and History Never mind such other aspects of the Padma bka’ thang as the difculties one encounters when it comes to interpreting many a passage, including its numerous prophecies, its text as such as well as its transmission are suffused by controversies; the same holds for other texts belonging to this particular genre of biographical literature. Such Tibetan literati and religious virtuosi as Dpa’bo II, Sog bzlog pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan (1552-1624) and Rtse le Sna tshogs rang grol (1608-1677+), 77 to name but a few, made note of these in various ways and at various lengths.6 Taking a profound interest in U rgyan gling pa’s Padma bka’ thang for reasons that were as much personal as they were political, Dalai Lama V refers in his autobiography to a series of objections that Rme ru ba Brag sgo Rab ‘byams pa Phun tshogs rnam 78 rgyal had raised anent the text.8 A.M. Blondeau has studied these and Rtse le’s 79 work in ne detail.9 Brag sgo Rab ‘byams pa was their contemporary and, aside from the monastery at Rme ru, appears to have been associated with the Dge lugs pa monastery of Ra ba stod as well. Lastly, it appears that a version – there were probably more – of the Padma bka’ thang circulated in Tibet with glosses attached to it. If the phrase “U rgyan gling pa’s Gter ma’i thang yig” is to be interpreted as his Padma bka’ thang, then Dalai lama V cites such a work, the Gter ma’i thang yig tshig sna ring ba, in his 1654 biography of Ngag gi dbang po (1580-1639), his 80 probable uncle and the founder of Rdo rje drag monastery [in 1632].: Ngag gi dbang po’s mother was Za hor Yid ‘dzin dbang mo, who was probably the sister of Dalai 67See, respectively, above n. 65, the Slob dpon sans rgyas gnyis pa padma ‘byung gnas kyi rnam par thar pa yid kyi mun sel (Rewalsar, Distt. Mandi, H.P.: Sherab Gyaltsen and Shedrup Tenzin, 1985) of 1606, and the undated Slob dpon rin po che padma’i rnam thar chen mo las brtsams te dri ba’i lan nges don gsal byed, Collected Works, vol. Ga (Gangtok, 1979), 397-491. This undated work was occasioned by questions that were raised by a certain Bla ma Rme ru ba chen po. Questions seven and eight relate to the Padma bka’ thang’s section on Za hor and these occur mixed up on pp. 437-41 of the above edition of Rtse le’s text, which are dealt with in A.M. Blondeau, “Une polémique sur l’authenticité des Bka’-thang au 17e siècle,” Silver on Lapis. Tibetan Literary Culture and History, ed. C.I. Beckwith (Bloomington: The Tibet Society, 1987), 141-2. 87Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i rnam thar, vol. 2 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1989), 264-5. 97“Une polémique sur l’authenticité des Bka’-thang au 17e siècle,” 125-63. :7Byang pa rig ‘dzin chen po ngag gi dbang po’i rnam par thar pa ngo mtshar bkod pa, Collected Works, vol. 8 (Dharamsala, 2007), 690. This biography is essential reading for unraveling the extremely complicated background of the civil war that pitched the Gtsang pa Sde srid against various principalities and ‘Bras spungs monastery in particular. !$+" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 Lama V’s father Hor Bdud ‘dul rab brtan. Ngag gi dbang po’s father was of course the great treasure-revealer Bkra shis stobs rgyal dbang po’i sde (1550/6-1603), the lord of Byang principality and, as the highly inuential Mnga’ ris Pan chen Padma 4 dbang rgyal rdo rje (1487-1542) himself had apparently prophesied, the latter’s 81 subsequent reembodiment.6 U rgyan gling pa’s author’s colophon (mdzad byang) and the Dalai Lama V’s colophon – Dalai Lama V uses here Rdo rje thogs med rtsal as one of the several names he was given when he was initiated into the more esoteric Old school ritual and meditative practices - contain much that is of signicance to our present 82 concerns.8 U rgyan gling pa, for one, writes that the text was originally written by Ye shes mtsho rgyal – he styles her as a/the re-embodiment of the pan-Indian goddess Sarasvat# -, after which she concealed it as one would a precious treasure. He himself retrieved it from the heart of the Great Visnu [?R!hula], the guardian 4 4 of the entrance to the Padma shel cave on the face of Shel gyi brag rdzong padma brtsegs in the Yar klung valley on the auspicious eighth day of the fourth lunar month [April 21 or 22] of the water-dragon year [1352]. In its retrieval, he was aided by a certain Hor ba/pa Sgom Sh! ka [or: Sh!k = Sh!kya], who hailed from or was associated with Kun dga’ ra ba in Gzhu; Gzhu is located in what is now Snye mo rdzong. Finally, we are told that the original manuscript, a yellow scroll, was immaculate and written in accordance with letters that followed the way in which Sanskrit was written (yi ge sam skri ta’i lugs su ‘dug pa las ma dag pa tshig gcig kyang med par phab yod ) – I am not quite sure what exactly is meant with the latter statement in connection with Sanskrit. The first part of Dalai Lama V’s printer’s colophon of the Dga’ ldan phun tshogs gling xylograph, the printing blocks for which were carved in 1675 ostensibly at the behest of Grong smad Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho (1653-1705), is in effect a commentary on some of the remarks that U rgyan gling pa had made in 67Byang pa rig ‘dzin chen po ngag gi dbang po’i rnam par thar pa ngo mtshar bkod pa, 701-2. 87What follows is taken from the Dalai Lama V’s autobiography, Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i rnam thar, vol. 2 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1989), 510, and Padma bka’ thang, 711-2 [= Le dict de Padma. Padma Thang yig, tr. G.-Ch. Toussaint, 482] and Padma bka’ thang, 712-20. !$$" On the Edge of Myth and History his colophon. The text of this colophon is reiterated in the colophons of the later Sde dge xylograph. There he rst points out that U rgyan gling pa himself was the re-embodiment (sku’i skye ba) of the Za horian king Gtsug lag ‘dzin and that his assistant in the manuscript’s retrieval was Hor Sgom Sh!kya. The Dga’ ldan phun tshogs gling xylograph reads that he belonged to the Sa ho ra royal family (sa ho ra’i rgyal brgyud), whereas the later Sde dge xylograph has ho ra instead of sa ho ra 83 and links the s[a] with the previous skyes bu,6 which now becomes skyes bus! Both are most likely contaminations, even if they may point to Sa hor instead of Za hor – for this distinction see below. Dalai Lama V continues by pointing out that an earlier xylograph that was based on the printing blocks which had been prepared at the order of Za hor Mi dbang [Tshe dbang] Bsod nams stobs kyi rgyal po was far from satisfactory and contained many problematic readings – his son Hor Ngag gi dbang po bsod nams grags pa ‘jig rten dga’ ba’i rgyan was recognized as Za hor 84 Gtsug lag ‘dzin’s re-embodiment.8 This print would be the Dpal ri xylograph of the Padma bka’ thang. Jointly founded by this nobleman [and ancestor of Dalai Lama V] and the treasure-revealer ‘Phreng po Shes rab ‘od zer (1518-1584), Dpal ri was a Rnying ma institution that was located in ‘Phyong [also ‘Phyongs] rgyas and thus in reasonable proximity to Dalai Lama V’s place of birth. An or the editor of this xylograph was a certain Pan chen Ri zangs tog pa. Ri zangs tog pa is obviously 4 a nickname, but I do not know the identity of the person behind it. Dalai Lama V also notes another earlier xylograph of the text, one that was based on the printing 67We come across this reading in the O rgyan gu ru padma ‘byung gnas kyi skyes rabs rnam par thar pa rgyas par bkod pa padma bka’i thang yig (New Delhi: Chos spyod par skrun khang), 542. The colophon of this work has a somewhat different text from the one that we find in the Dga’ ldan phun tshogs gling xylograph. On the other hand, the phrase is entirely absent from fol. 292a of the Sku ‘bum Byams pa gling xylograph [?of 2001]. The latter is in turn based on the text of the Dga’ ldan phun tshogs gling xylograph. 87Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i rnam thar, vol. 1, 35, and see also Byang pa rig ‘dzin chen po ngag gi dbang po’i rnam par thar pa ngo mtshar bkod pa, 712, 790, where he gures in the lists of disciples of Bkra shis stobs rgyal dbang po’i sde and Ngag gi dbang po. In the latter, Dalai Lama V prexes his name by Sde pa ‘Phyong rgyas pa, suggesting that he was governor of ‘Phyong rgyas at the time, and mentions him as the rst of the Za hor brothers [and their sons] who had studied with Ngag gi dbang po. These included Hor Lha’i dbang phyug, his son, Dalai Lama V’s father, and Dalai Lama V himself. For Dalai Lama V’s studies with Ngag gi dbang po, see Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i rnam thar, vol. 1, 44. !$%" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 blocks that had been carved in E, in Gtsang, by descendants of U rgyan gling pa, and suggests that its readings were equally problematic. Being what he was he could not refrain from taking a shot at those who had in one way or another criticized the text of the Padma bka’ thang; a gloss helpfully identies those whom he apparently intended: Dpa’ bo II, Rtag brtan sprul sku Kun dga’ snying po rgyal mtshan 85 (1575-1634), alias T!ran!tha,6 Gnyug Rab ‘byams pa, and Brag sgo Rab ‘byams pa. In short, then, the resultant text of the Dga’ ldan phun tshogs gling xylograph was an edition that was based on these earlier xylographs in which orthographic and other alleged mistakes had [allegedly] been weeded out and in which the narratives were even changed to conform to such earlier Padmasambhava biographies as the Zangs gling ma. The Padma bka ‘thang also includes “signs of the times” (dus rtags) of Gter ston Rdo rje gro lod and Mchog sprul Legs ldan rdo rje and this also had an inuence on the preparation of the newly edited text of the Dga’ ldan phun 86 tshogs gling xylograph.8 These changes no doubt created quite an editorial distance between the xylographed text of the Padma bka’ thang and the original version, that is, the version that was recovered by U rgyan gling pa [or that had come from his pen!]. And, as I wrote earlier, the Padma bka’ thang is one of those seminal Tibetan works that, if we really wish to gain a deeper insight into its narrative structure, rst needs to be critically edited and compared with other cognate works. This would be a major undertaking! The “Hor ba” or “Hor pa” that is prexed to the name of U rgyan gling pa’s assistant 87 might mean Mongol or it could be a short form for Za hor.9 I am not sure what to do with it or how it should be interpreted. The rst alternative is a bit difcult to 67The glossator and/or Dalai Lama V probably had in mind Kun dga’ snying po’s Slob dpon pad ma’i rnam thar rgya gar lugs yi ches gsum ldan of 1610; see Collected Works [‘Dzam thang print], vol. 20 (199?), 55-89. C. De Falco published a translation of this work as The Life of Padmasambhava by Taranatha (Merigar: Shang Shung Edizione, 2003), which I have not seen. 87Gter ston Rdo rje gro lod and Legs ldan rdo rje are severally mentioned in Byang pa rig ‘dzin chen po ngag gi dbang po’i rnam par thar pa ngo mtshar bkod pa, 685-7. 97We nd this in a gloss in Pan chen Bsod nams grags pa’s (1478-1554) 1538 chronicle, for which see G. Tucci, ed. and tr., Deb t’er dmar po gsar ma. Tibetan chronicles by Bsod nams grags pa, vol. I, Serie Orientale Roma XXIV (Roma: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1971), 236. 4 !$&" On the Edge of Myth and History envisage, especially in view of the fact that U rgyan gling pa’s Bka’ thang sde lnga contains a number of very hard-hitting anti-Mongol prophesies that probably would not have sat well with someone of Mongol origins. On the other hand, the other alternative, namely, that “Hor” refers to Za hor, is unlikely, if only because a Sgom Sh!k does not gure in the genealogies that are available for the Tibetan family that, rightly or wrongly, traces its line of descent back to the allegedly Indic Za hor! This family - Dalai Lama V was its most illustrious scion - rose to prominence when several of its members were afliated with or became major supporters of Ta’i si tu Byang chub rgyal mtshan’s (1302-1364) quest to deliver Central Tibet from Sa skya and Mongol rule. It is now well known that Dalai Lama V took great pains to trace his patrilinear ancestry (rigs rus) to Za hor and therefore to integrate the prestige that had in the meantime accrued to this in some respects mythical royal house with the house of ‘Phyong rgyas Stag rtse into which he was born. The impressive pedigree that he stitched together from various sources, rst in his 1643 chronicle and then later, and in much greater detail, in his autobiography, no doubt including the information in some of the other literary sources that I signaled above, runs up 88 to the fourteenth century in the following manner [“x” means “married to”]6: 1. D!"aratha 2. A"oka 3. Dza, alias Byang chub dbang po [*Indrabodhi] x? 4. Indrabh%ti x ? [two children] 5a. a daughter Go ma de w# and a son 5b. Sha kra pu ta x ? 6. Gtsug lag ‘dzin x ? [ three children] 7a. Dharmar!ja x ? 7b. $!ntaraksita 4 7c. Manda ra va 67What follows is taken from the Dalai Lama V’s Bod kyi deb ther dpyid kyi rgyal mo’i glu dbyangs (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1991), 163-4 - see also G. Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, vol. II (Kyoto: Rinsen Book Co., 1980), 643-4 - and Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i rnam thar, vol. 1, 21-25. I usually retain the orthography given in these texts. !$'" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 [sons of Dharmar!ja] 8a. Dharmap!la 8b. $!kyadeva 8c. Mah!deva It is obvious that this genealogy is flawed, for, surely, there were more than six generations that separated A"oka from $!ntaraksita! Dalai Lama V pauses for a 4 moment with Dharmap!la to write that old documents of his family’s history (gdung rabs yig tshang rnying pa tsho) had suggested that he had come to Tibet from the subcontinent and that the Za hor region seems to have had a facility for meditation (sgom grwa) that had been the original residence of the deity Pe har (pe har gnas pa’i sgom grwa’ang za hor gyi yul du yod pa ‘dra). It is still unclear where this particular place ought to be located with some precision or what is exactly meant by sgom grwa. Dalai Lama V then paraphrases a passage from Sog bzlog pa’s 1605 defense of a number of the Old school’s doctrinal entities. This work was in the main written in reaction to the criticisms ‘Bri gung Dpal ‘dzin (ca. 1400) had levelled against these. ‘Bri gung Dpal ‘dzin had stated at one point that, according to an unspecied annals of the Sman bla (sman bla’i lo rgyus), that is, of the Buddha 89 90 as Healer,6 Za hor was located in East India.8 Sog bzlog pa’s reaction caused Dalai Lama V quite a bit of grief and irritation; he wrote: za hor zhes pa ‘i tshig ‘di nyid // sman bla’i lo rgyus la yod kyang // rgya gar rgya nag ma phyes bar // 67It is impossible to determine what may have been intended with this title. There is of course a ritual complex around the Buddha as healer, the Bhai!ajyaguru, that $!ntaraksita introduced to Khri srong lde btsan’s court. Mchims Nam mkha’ grags (1210-1289) wrote a brief study of this ritual which he prefaced 4 with a prolegomenon about its inception and actual practice at the various courts; see De 4n gshegs pa brgyad ‘khor dang bcas pa la gsol ba gdab pa, Bka’ gdams gsung ‘bum phyogs bsgrigs, vol. 47, ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib ‘jug khang (Chengdu: Si khron dpe skrun tshogs pa/Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2006), 364-372. But Mchims merely states that $!ntaraksita hailed from Za hor in eastern India [p. 368]! 87What follows [and what I tacitly edited] is taken from Gsang sngags snga ‘gyur la bod du rtsod pa snga phyir byung ba rnams kyi lan du brjod pa nges pa don gyi ‘brug sgra, Collected Writings, vol. 1 (New Delhi, 1975), 272-274 [= (Dalhousie, 1982), 14; ed. Padma tshul khrims (Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1998), 13-14]. 4 !$(" On the Edge of Myth and History rgya gar shar phyogs su bsam pa // bodhi sa tva’i dgongs pa min // Although this very expression “Za hor” is present in the annals of the Sman bla, without having distinguished between India and China, to have considered it to be the eastern area of India, was not the Bodhisattva’s [= ?$!ntaraksita’s] intention. 4 ‘di ni ba ta hor gyi yul // bye brag za hor zhes bya ba // rgyal po gnas pa’i sgom grwa yin // This is the meditation facility where the Rgyal po [= Pe har] resided, which is called Za hor, a part of, the land of the Ba ta Hor. sngon tshe blon po ‘gar gyi dus // yul de’i gyad gnyis rgya nag gis // phyir bsnyegs btang ba blon po des // thabs kyis khrid nas bod du sleb // Earlier, during the era of minister ‘Gar [= Mgar] (7th c.), two strong men of that land, having been sent by China, to pursue him, arrived in Tibet, having been led by subterfuge by the minister. de gnyis brgyud pa ‘phyong rgyas kyi // stag rtse’i za hor rgyud ‘di yin // The descendants of those two, !$)" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 Are the Za hor family of Stag rtse of ‘Phyong rgyas. sa hor zhes bya ba’i yul // rgya gar shar te mkhan po dang // jo bo gnyis ka’i ‘khrungs yul yin // sgra de bod kyis zur chag pas // za hor zer te dag pa min // 91 The land called Sa hor,6 eastern India, is the birth place of the abbot [$!ntaraksita] and 4 Jo bo [Ati"a]. Due to having been contaminated by Tibetan, the expression, being pronounced as “Za hor,” is not accurate. Thus Sog bzlog pa states that the ‘Phyong rgyas Stag rtse family did not have lofty eastern Indian, but rather had Ba ta [or: Bhata] Hor origins, yet another one of his 4 assertions that must have really rubbed the family and in particular Dalai Lama V the wrong way. Of course, a distant pedigree that points to the Indian subcontinent, the Buddhist “holy land,” would carry with it a great deal of prestige and is as such by far preferable to one that is associated with a possibly Uyghur, Turkic, or Mongol one. Initially the protector-deity of the Pe har dkor mdzod gling temple of Bsam yas monastery, Pe har or Pe dkar to whom Sog bzlog pa refers looms larger than life in Tibetan religious and political history, especially from the era of the Dalai Lamas onward. Dalai Lama V had him transferred from Bsam yas to the monastery of Gnas chung, located quite close to ‘Bras spungs monastery, where he 67Dpa’ bo II, Chos ‘byung mkhas pa’i dga’ ston, Stod cha, ed. Rdo rje rgyal po, 510, distinguishes between Sa hor and Za hor at the very beginning of his study of those Indic pand ita-informants and their 4 4 Tibetan lo ts! ba counterparts who were responsible for the translations contained in the Tibetan Buddhist canon. Unfortunately, he does not expatiate on this distinction. On the other hand, writing in 1775, Pan chen Lama VI Blo bzang dpal ldan ye shes (1738-1780) explicitly makes no distinction between Sa hor and Za hor; see his Grub pa’i gnas chen po shambha la’i rnam bshad ‘phags yul gyi rtogs brjod dang bcas pa ngo mtshar bye ba’i ‘byung gnas, Collected Works, vol. 10 [= Nya] (New Delhi, 1975-1978), 38; Za hor and its royal house are also noted on pp. 51 and 53 of this work. 4 !%*" On the Edge of Myth and History would inhabit the most important oracle who was placed in the service of the Dga’ 92 ldan pho brang government that had been established by Dalai Lama V himself.6 His relocation was of course not a coincidence, since ‘Bras spungs was the Dalai Lama’s home monastery. A deity belonging to the rgyal po class, his origins are not altogether clear. It is unlikely that he was of Tibetan vintage. But what is clear 93 is that he occasioned heated debate in a number of different places.8 Sog bzlog pa is quite adamant that Padmasambhava had caused him to be brought to Tibet and relates an account in which, not unexpectedly, Vai"ravana, as the divinity who lords 4 over the northern region, played an important role. As a matter of course, Za hor figures prominently in these debates. In a long passage, Dalai Lama V uses both and Sog bzlog pa’s remark as an occasion to set things straight, at any rate to relate what he thought or wanted himself and his audience to believe were the facts. Now more than sixty years ago, Tucci gave a paraphrase-cum-rendition of a good portion 67Sde srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho (1653-1705), Dalai Lama V’s right-hand man from 1679 to 1682 wrote a brief study of the oracle, for which see his as yet unpublished Gnas chung pe har lcog gi dkar chag sa gsum g.yo ba’i nga ro of 1682, but which is available at tbrc.org. 87For important observations on this still insufficiently understood deity, see R. de NebeskyWojkowitz, Oracles and demons of Tibet. The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities (Kathmandu: Tiwari’s Pilgrims Book House, 1993), 93-133, R.A. Stein Recherches sur l’épopée et le barde au Tibet (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), 284-291, index p. 610, and S.R. Karmay, “The Man and the Ox: A Ritual for Offering the Glud,” The Arrow and the Spindle. Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet (Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point, 1998), 359-364, and the sources that are cited therein. However, not mentioned there is the extensive narrative on this deity in Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje’s (1697-after 1746) 1734 Dam can bstan srung rgya mtsho’i rnam par thar pa cha shas tsam brjod pa sngon med legs bshad (Thimphu, 1976), 369-88 [= ed. ‘Phrin las rgyal mtshan et al. (= ed. Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2003), 302-366]. As he points out on pp. 378, 384 [= ed. Beijing, 309, 314], the key sources for his own narrative on Pe har are the twentieth chapter of the Shel phreng dkar po’i rgyud and the Padma bka’ thang, and he indicates that these differ on the locale where Pe har was subdued (btul). Suffice it to say that he also makes his appearance in several other places of Sle lung pa’s exceedingly interesting work. See also D. Martin, “The Star King and the Four Children of Pehar: Popular Religious Movements of 11th to 12th Century Tibet,” Acta Orientalia Hungarica XLIX (1996), 171-95, as well as Dge ‘dun rgya mtsho, “Bsam yas dbugs khang las ‘phros pa’i gtam,” Lho kha’i lo rgyus rig gnas dpyad gzhi’i rgyu cha bsdams bsgrigs, ed. Lho kha’i lo rgyus rig gnas dpyad gzhi’i rgyu cha bsdams bsgrigs rtsom sgrig u yon lha khang (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 2006), 55-61, and the very useful summary of the current state of research in Lin Shen-yu, “Pe har: A Historical Survey,” Revue d’Études Tibétaines 19 (2010), 5-26. For various artistic representations of Pe har, see the thangka paintings reproduced in himalayanart.org. !%!" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 of this fascinating account, but he has often quite misread and quite mistranslated the text, and the translation of the same passage by Chen Qingying .PQ, Ma 94 Lianlong RST, and Ma Lin RU is much better.6 A propos of Dharmap!la, Dalai Lama V writes without further explanation that Bengal and China had entertained close commercial ties—he is here on reasonably sound historical footing, although he does not tell us whence he had 95 this information8—and he uses this to explain how it was that Dharmap!la, the nephew of $!ntaraks ita, had gone to China and ended up staying at the said 4 meditation facility of the Bhat a Hor. This is the beginning of a rather confused 4 narrative in which he becomes enmeshed in impossible chronological problems. The genealogical web that he chose to weave on behalf of his family and, of course, of himself was of a kind from which even his closest supporters would have an impossible time to extricate him. This was not lost on later Tibetan historians. Not even the sacred character of the institution of the Dalai Lama was a sufcient disincentive for criticizing its founder and perhaps most signicant exponent. Thus, his fellow Dge lugs pa scholar Sum pa Mkhan po Ye shes dpal ‘byor (1704-1788) obviously paraphrases a portion of Dalai Lama V’s narrative in his chronicle of 1748 after which he goes on to observe that it is a grounds for doubt (som nyi’i gzhi 67See, respectively, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, vol. II, 734-35, anent Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i rnam thar, vol. 1, 22-4, and Wushi Dalai Lama zhuan V W X Y Z [ \, vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhongguo zangxue chubanshe, 2006), 21-23. The problems with Tucci’s rendition begin with the first sentence: he misreads rgya nag for rgya gar and he has rnying ma’i rtsod instead rnying ma’i rtsod bzlog, the abbreviated title of Sog bzlog pa’s text to which Dalai Lama V refers. As Dalai Lama V remarks, three items accompanied Dharmap!la to Central Tibet from the meditation facility, namely, a turquoise self-generated statue of the Buddha, a small purple leather [?the skin of a rhinoceros] mask of Pe har (bse ‘bag smug chung), and a crystal lion (shel gyi seng ge). The latter two are also noted in ‘Brug chen IV Padma dkar po’s (1527-1592) autobiography, for which see Sems dpa’ chen po padma dkar po’i rnam thar thugs rje chen po’i zlos gar, Collected Works, vol. 3 (Darjeeling: Kargyud sungrab nyamso khang, 1973), 545. Padma dkar po writes that Khri srong lde btsan and Padmasambhava had these two items brought to Tibet from the country of the Ba ta Hor with some difculty. Stein, Recherches sur l’épopée et le barde au Tibet, 120, remarks that Dalai Lama V “critique violemment cette tradition” in his chronicle, but this is not the case; see the relevant passages in his Bod kyi deb ther dpyid kyi rgyal mo’i glu dbyangs, 65, 164. 87See T. Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and University of Hawai’i Press, 2003), 183 ff. !%#" On the Edge of Myth and History 96 yin).6 To be sure, Sum pa Mkhan po has nothing to say about the Bha t a Hor or 4 their ethnicity, but unlike the nineteenth century historian Rag ra Sprul sku Ngag dbang bstan pa’i rgyal mtshan, who had no problem in accepting Dalai Lama V’s delineation of 97 the origins of his patriline,8 Sum pa Mkhan po, I think, rightly questions its veracity as such, and does so independent of the tale of Dharmap!la and Pe har. In fact, he writes in the said passage of his chronicle that “some Tibetans” used the following triplet of similes in connection with the importance of knowing one’s ancestry: skye brgyud ma shes pa nags kyi spre’u dang ‘dra rang gi cho ‘brang ma shes na g.yu ‘brug zol ma dang ‘dra pha mes kyi gi yig tshang ma shes na mon ngo/ do phrug yal por dang ‘dra / Not knowing one’s family’s male ancestors, one is like a monkey of a dense forest; if one were not to know one’s matriline, one is like a false turquoise dragon[?]; if one were not to know the archival documents of one’s ancestors, one is like a lost Mon boy. With perhaps a tinge of Amdo nationalism, Sum pa Mkhan po states that it is difcult to maintain that the origin stories of some familes of Dbus and Gtsang are reliable: they are like the lying talk of old layfolk (‘jig rten pa’i rgan po dag gin gag sgros rdzun ma)! He may very well have had Dalai Lama V in mind. While the latter did not use this passage, or anything resembling it in his own autobiography, he does quote something similar in his chronicle—he states it is taken from the Rlangs kyi 98 po ti bse ru—in connection with the history of the Rlangs family; the passage reads9: 67His deliberations are found in ‘Phags yul rgya nag chen po bod dang sog yul du dam pa’i chos ‘byung tshul dpag bsam ljon bzang, Collected Works, vol. 1, repr. L. Chandra (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1975), 224 [= ed. Dkon mchog tshe brtan (Lanzhou: Kan su’u mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1992), 339-340]. 87Rgyal rabs chos ‘byung shel dkar me long mkhas pa’i mgul rgyan [= Rag ra chos ‘byung], Bod kyi lo rgyus deb ther khag lnga, ed. Ldan lhan Sangs rgyas chos ‘phel et al., Gangs can rig mdzod 9 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1990), 242 ff. 97See his Bod kyi deb ther dpyid kyi rgyal mo’i glu dbyangs, 117 [= Z. Ahmed, tr., A History of Tibet by Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, Fifth Dalai Lama of Tibet (Bloomington: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, Indiana University, 1995), 118]; I have as yet not been able to locate this passage in Rlangs po ti bse ru rgyas pa, ed. Chab spel Tshe brtan phun tshogs and Nor brang O rgyan, Gangs can rig mdzod 1 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1986). !%+" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 lar skyes pa’i mis rang gi skye brgyud ma shes na nags khung gi spre’u dang ‘dra / mi rang gi cho ‘brang ma shes na g.yu ‘brug zol ma dang ‘dra / yab mes kyi che ge’i yig tshang ma shes na / mon phrug yal por dang ‘dra / And it is important to underscore here that Sum pa Mkhan po makes his statement in direct response to Dalai Lama V’s chronicle and not to his autobiography! Then, with some condence, he uses virtually the same passage, one that he says is based on an “ancient Tibetan saying” (gna’ dus kyi bod gtam), in his own autobiography 99 of 1776; there we read6: rang gi skyes brgyud ma shes na nags kyi spre’u dang ‘dra cho ‘brang ma shes na g.yu ‘brug zol ma dang ‘dra…/ R.A. Stein collected several details about the Bhata Hor from a variety of 4 100 Tibetan sources and pointed out that they were located somewhat north of Ganzhou8 or present-day Zhangye, Gansu province, where they live as the Sunan Yugur (or: $i/era Uyghur) - it is well to recall that hor was the ethnonym the Tibetans had given the Uyghur during the imperial period. Brag dkar Dkon mchog bstan pa rab rgyas (1800-1869) also indulges in a few asides on them in his large 1865 study of 101 Buddhism in Amdo.9 There he suggests that their meditation facility was destroyed by the so-called Bka’ ma log pa Tibetans – this ethnic group was much later considered to consist of the descendants of soldiers of the garrisons that had been 67See Mkhan po erdeni pan ditar grags pa’i spyod tshul brjod pa sgra ‘dzin bcud len, Collected Works, vol. 8, repr. L. Chandra (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1975), 388 [= Pandita 4 4 4 4 sum pa ye shes dpal ‘byor mchog gi spyod tshul brjod pa sgra ‘dzin bcud len, ed. ‘Khrud ma thar and Bsod nams (Beijing: Krung go’i bod kyi shes rig dpe skrun khang, 2001), 24]. It is cited in Erdenibayar, “Sumpa Khenpo Ishibaljur: A Great Figure in Mongolian and Tibetan Cultures,” The Mongolian-Tibet Interface. Opening New Research Terrains in Inner Asia, ed. U.E. Bulag and H.G.M. Diemberger (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2007), 304. 87Recherches sur l’épopée et le barde au Tibet, 120-1. 97See Mdo smad chos ‘byung (Lanzhou: Kan su’u mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1982), 16, 149, 224 [= Anduo zhengjiao shi ]^_`a, tr. Wu Jun bc et al. (Lanzhou: Gansu minzu chubanshe, 1989), 21-22, 144, 214-5]. For the latter monumental work, see now the important observations in G. Tuttle, “Challenging Central Tibet’s Dominance of History: The Oceanic Book, a Nineteenth Century Politico-religious Geographic History,” which is forthcoming in Mapping the Modern in Tibet, ed. G. Tuttle, Beiträge zur Zentralasienforschung, Bd. 24 (Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH, 2011), 139-76. !%$" On the Edge of Myth and History placed along the Sino-Tibetan frontier during the era of Khri srong lde btsan and his son Khri lde srong btsan (d. 815). We do not know when exactly the Qalqa Mongol scholar Blo bzang rta dbyangs (1867-1937) completed his distinguished work in which he chronicled among other things the rise and spread of Buddhism among the Mongols in general and among the Qalqa, in particular, but I suspect that he probably did so around the years 1922-1923. In any event, he wrote the following at the beginning of his survey 102 of the rise and spread of Buddhism in the Tibetan areas6: …hor zhes pa ni / glang ru lung bstan gyi mdo ma gtogs gsung rab gzhan tshor ma byung la / sog po’i dag yig tu za hor la sha ra’i gwo la bsgyur ‘dug pas bha ta hor ni rgya gar gyi za hor dang rigs gcig pa e yin snyam mo // 103 …aside from the Go%rngavy!karanas#tra,8 the term hor did not occur in other 4 4 4 canonical scripture, and since za hor is translated in Sog po spellers (dag yig) 104 as sha ra’i gwo [= ?Šira)ol9, ?$ara Uyghur, ?$ara guo d], are the Bhata Hor of the same ethnicity as the Za hor of India? Blo bzang rta dbyangs’ statement is most probably correct as far as scriptural sources are concerned. To be sure, hor does occur in at least two Dunhuang manuscripts that are of fairly old vintage, and there the meaning is unequivocally 67Byang phyogs chen po hor gyi rgyal khams kyi rtogs brjod kyi bstan bcos chen po ngo mtshar gser gyi deb ther [las bod gangs can nas rgyal bstan bar dar byung tshul], Collected Works, vol. 2 (New Delhi, 1975-6), 138 {= The Golden Annals of Lamaism, repr. L. Chandra (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1964), 59b [plate 38/4]}. He completed another work on the genealogies of various Chinese, Tibetan, and Mongol imperial-royal families—originally written in Mongolian he translated it into Tibetan— as a kind of an appendix to his earlier chronicle in the re-hare year of the sixteenth sexagenary cycle, that is, in, more or less, 1927; see his Chen po hor gyi yul gru’i sngon rabs kyi brjed byang sh!stra’i zur rgyan du sog yig las bod skad du bsgyur te bkod pa, Collected Works, vol. 2 (New Delhi, 1975-1976), 489. 87For the sutra, see F.W. Thomas, Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents concerning Chinese Turkestan, Part 1: Literary Texts (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1935), 24, 28. But this is not quite true. The term hor also occurs in the canonical Li yul lung bstan pa, for which see F.W. Thomas, Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents concerning Chinese Turkestan, Part 1: Literary Texts, 78, as well as in the noncanonical manuscript of the Li yul chos kyi lo rgyus, for which see R.E. Emmerick, Tibetan Texts concerning Khotan (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 85, l. 63. 97Stein, Recherches sur l’épopée et le barde au Tibet, 121. !%%" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 105 “Uyghur”.6 On the fifteenth day of the tenth luni-solar month [November 23] of 1923, not long after Blo bzang rta dbyangs had completed his work, Ngag gi dbang 106 po8 sent him eight questions about some of his remarks that he believed to be worthy of rethinking. The fth of these had to do with the passage about the Bhata 4 Hor that he had left, perhaps purposively, ambiguous, and Ngag gi dbang po raised 107 the following concern9: bha ta hor gyi yul zhes pa // 4 bod stod byang du yod pa de // rling gyi dgrar ‘thab hor la zer // hor ni sog rigs gtan nas min // bod rigs yin te lho byang khyad // ma gtogs skad dang dbyibs sogs‘ dra // sngon dus sog rnams hor yul brgyud // bod du ‘byor tshe hor gyi ming // btags pa yin nam dpyad pa’i gnas // The so-called land of the Bhata hor, 4 is located north of upper [= north-western] Tibet. 108 Called the Hor who battled as the enemy of Rling [= Gling Ge sar],: the Hor were never of Sog po ethnicity. Being of Tibetan ethnicity, aside from the distinction between southern and northern Hor, 67See, for example, T. Moriyasu, “La nouvelle interprétation des mots Hor et Ho-yo-hor dans le manuscrit Pelliot tibétain 1283,” Acta Orientalia Hungarica XXXIV (1980), 171-84, and in Pelliot tibétain 1290 for which, see, for example, E. Haarh, The Yar lung Dynasty (Kopenhagen: G.E.C. Gad’s Forlag, 1969), 240-4, and Macdonald, “Une lecture des P.T. 1286, 1287, 1038, 1047 et 1290. Essai sur la formation et l’ emploi des mythes politiques dans la religion royale de Srong btsan sgam po,” 317-28. 87He is mentioned as a debate partner (mtshan zhabs) of the thirteenth Dalai Lama, so that he may be identied as the highly inuential Stag brag Pandita Ngag dbang gsung rab mthu stobs (1874-1952), who was the Dalai Lama’s mtshan zhabs in 1926. 97Mtshan zhabs mkhan chen gyis chos ‘byung las brtsams te bka’ dri gnang ba’i bka’ shog, Collected Works, vol. 2 (New Delhi, 1975-1976), 549. :7For Ge sar and the Bhata Hor, see Stein, Recherches sur l’épopée et le barde au Tibet, 120-1, 257-258; see now also the important remarks in Chab ‘gag Rta mgrin, Sgrung dpyad snying gi legs skyes. A Collection of Essays on the Gesar Epic (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2002), 34-57. 4 4 !%&" 4 On the Edge of Myth and History they are similar in speech, physical appearance, etc. Were they called Hor when, in early times, the Sog po arrived in Tibet via Hor country? This is an area for inquiry. Blo bzang rta dbyangs explained what he meant in his reply to Ngag gi dbang po’s queries that he drafted on the twelfth day of the third luni-solar month [May 16], 1924, in the monastery of Bkra shis chos ‘byor gling, across from Dpal Ri dge 109 rgyas.6 Ngag gi dbang po’s query is a bit muddled and we need not detain ourselves with the long passage that Blo bzang rta dbyangs wrote in response to it, since it does not solve much of anything. What to do about this conundrum? Truth be told, there is unfortunately really not all that much that can be done about it at this point. We left Dalai Lama V’s genealogy of his family with Dharmap!la, the uncle of $!ntaraksita, and we now continue his genealogy up to the fourteenth century: 4 [Dharmap!la x Pho yong Bza’ ] 9a. Dpal gyi rdo rje 9b. Rin cen rdo rje [Dpal gyi rdo rje x Pa tshab bza’ Ma zhig Jo mo] 10a. Rdo rje grags pa 10b. Rin cen grags pa 10c. Chos kyi grags pa [Rdo rje grags pa had two sons] 11. Zla grags pa 12. Dag [?read: Grags] pa’i seng ge 13a. Sh!kya blo gros 13b. Yon tan seng ge 13c. Grags pa ye shes 67Mtshan zhabs mkhan chen gyi dogs lan tshangs pa’i drang thig, Collected Works, vol. 2 (New Delhi, 1975-1976), 563-5. !%'" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 110 [Hor Sh!kya blo gros had two sons]6 14a. Rdo rje gsal ba 15a. Yes shes rdo rje x ? 16. no name is given 14b. Rdo rje rin cen [or: Rin cen rdo rje] x Jo mo Mchims mo 15a. Rdo rje grags 15b. Rdo rje ‘bar x ? 16 Hor Da dar x ? 17a. Hor Bkra shis ‘bum 17b. Mkhan chen Tshul dar ba [Hor Bkra shis ‘bum x ?] 18a. Hor Gzhon nu bzang po 111 18b. Bkra shis bsam pa8 It is with Rdo rje rin cen and his two sons that we learn that Mnga’ bdag Dpal ‘khor btsan (d. 910) had given the Hor pa sar estate to this family for services rendered. We are also told by Dalai Lama V that Sh!kya blo gros was a contemporary of ‘Od srung[s] (d. ca. 893), the son of Glang dar ma (d. 842) and the father of Mnga’ bdag Dpal ‘khor btsan. We nd ourselves two generations later in the second half of the thirteenth century with Hor Da dar – this is a very strange name -, allegedly coming to the attention of Qubilai Qa)an (1215-1294)! Obviously, once again the chronology has very serious aws. Further, the absence of Ati"a, and a $!ntideva, in the genealogy is of course not necessarily startling. The only viable explanation that I can think of, and it may very well be the explanation, is that Dalai Lala V was only concerned with delineating what in his opinion was that branch of the Za hor royal family that was rst transplanted to China and then to the area of Tibet, and not the other lines that continued in the Indian subcontinent until, well, who knows. Each of the three different versions of Ta’i si tu’s autobiography that have been published to 67To be noted is that suddenly, out of the blue, and without any explanation, Dalai Lama V prexes Sh!kya blo gros’ name by ‘Hor’! 87For the remaining genealogy of this family, see Appendix Two. !%(" On the Edge of Myth and History date do not once use the term “Za hor” [or: “Sa hor”] and, what is more, they do not even prex their names by just “Hor”! [Mkhan chen] Tshul dar ba was an erstwhile disciple of Spyan snga Grags pa shes rab (1310-1370), alias Bcu gnyis pa, Ta’i si tu’s younger brother, and the cleric who had given Ta’i si tu his initial vows. The sons of his elder brother [Hor] Bkra shis ‘bum dar also served the great Ta’i si tu, the 112 founder of the Phag mo gru dynasty.6 And it was owing to their loyal service to him and the services other members of the family had given to the later Phag mo gru rulers that the Za hor family was ultimately granted the ‘Phyong rgyas Stag rtse estates. But let us rest assured that the “Hor” and even “Za hor” prexes to the names of several members of this family are attested in the literature that predates Dalai Lama V by, at a minimum, well over a hundred years, so that we can absolutely certain that this tradition was not his invention. For example, in an entry for the beginning of the year 1501, in connection with the life of Karma pa VII Chos grags rgya mtsho (1454-1506), Dpa’ bo II speaks of the “Stag rtse person of the royal family of Za 113 hor” (za hor gyi rgyal brgyud stag rtse ba).8 We have seen that already during the heyday of the Tibetan empire, the elusive land of Za hor was reputed to have played a signicant role in the formation and development of Buddhist tantra. Various mythologies grew up around this place in the Indian subcontinent as well as in Tibet, tales that had hardened with the passage of time and were then taken to represent in toto historical fact. One of these “facts” was no doubt the genealogy that Dalai Lama V provided for his family. Was he therefore a latter-day mythographer of the likes of Euhemerus (330B.C.-260 B.C.)? Did he indeed himself believe in the genealogy he presented in his autobiography? The answer is: “Most probably.” Was this genealogy that he rst presented in his 1643 chronicle of use to his political ambitions? The answer to this question must 67Mkhan po Tshul dar and Gzhon nu bzang po are mentioned in Lha rigs rlangs kyi rnam thar (New Delhi, 1974), 448 ff. [= Rlangs po ti bse ru rgyas pa, ed. Chab spel Tshe brtan phun tshogs and Nor brang O rgyan, Gangs can rig mdzod 1 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1986), 205 ff.; = Ta si tu byang chub rgyal mtshan gyi bka’ chems, ed. Chos ‘dzoms (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1989), 109 ff.]. 87Chos ‘byung mkhas pa’i dga’ ston, Smad cha, ed. Rdo rje rgyal po, 1101. !%)" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 be a resounding “Yes.” True, Dalai Lama V was a very complex and highly gifted individual, and it is well nigh impossible to secondguess him. But I believe that in view of his other activities by which means he sought to legitimize himself in the eyes of his Tibetan and non-Tibetan audiences – the countless Avalokite"vara empowerments he gave, the building of the palace on Mount Potala in Lhasa, his various printing projects, etc. -, it is not in the least counterintuitive to place the account of his patriline in a similar context. But, let me emphasize once again, he was not the author of its invention! It is also incumbent upon us to ask ourselves the question: Whence did the Tibetans get their information on Za hor? Or better still: Whence did U rgyan gling pa get his information for the land of Za hor that he narrates in his Padma bka’ thang? Or, was it after all Ye shes mtsho rgyal, who had relayed this information? And, if so, why is Mand!rava, a Za hor princess, such a silent bystander in these narratives? Or even better still: Whence did Nyang ral and his biographers get their information? These and other outstanding questions will require further sustained inquiry and, hopefully, the recovery of additional Tibetan writings that have till now remained unknown or inaccessible will facilitate such future inquiries. To be sure, Za hor also played an as yet barely explored role in the history of Tibetan art and, in a similar vein, Sde srid Sangs 114 rgyas rgya mtsho associates it with a special kind of stupa.6 And, finally, it appears that Za hor had a minor part in the formation of the Tibetan medical 115 traditions. But this is a story that is reserved for another occasion.8 67For some remarks on Za hor in Tibetan Buddhist art, see Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, vol. I, 377 ff. and his “A Tibetan Classication of Buddhist Images, According to Their Style,” Artibus Asiae 22 (1959), 184, n. 23, and The Vaid #rya g.ya sel of Sde srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho, vol. 2 (New Delhi, 1971), 712. 87See my “Za hor and its Contribution to Tibetan Medicine, Part One: Some Names, Places, and Texts,” Zangxue xuekan effg (Journal of Tibetology) 6 (2010), 21-50, and “Za hor and its Contribution to Tibetan medicine, Part Two: the Medical Instructions of the King of Za hor,” which will be published in Zangxue xuekan / Journal of Tibetology 9 (2013). 4 !&*" On the Edge of Myth and History APPENDIX ONE 116 NYANG RAL’S EARLIER RE-EMBODIMENT IN ZA HOR6 bcu gnyis pa / za hor dpal gyi grong khyer du / rgyal po rad na sa ‘dzin bya ba cho[s ]skyong ba dang / yum btsun mo me tog gzung gnyis kyi bu’i ming ni shri ri bya bar skyes ba’i tshe na / yab rgyal por do rje gdan du mchod pa skyal ba'i ched du bla ma’i mchod gnas / dge slong lnga brgya dang / grub thob bcu gsum / gzhan sman pa dang / gra pa thams cad khrid de / glang po che la rgyal bu bla mchod dang bcas pa phyibs / shing rta drug cu la kho bo’i rdzas bkal / dus mchod zla ba cig tu bgyis pa’i tshe na / nam mkha’ la sgra byung te / chos skyong pa’i rgyal po bya rgod phung po’i ri la song shig dang bya ba byas pa yin no // khur bor ba yin / bden pa mthong pa yin no //ces bya ba grags nas su dus de nyid du byin pas / bya rgod phung po’i ri la bya ngang pa’i rgyal po zhig snang ba dang / yang na[m] mkha’ las chos rgyal chen po ngang pa lha’i bya la chibs cig / dag la ldan du ston pa la byin cig // ces grags pa dang / yab rgyal po ngang pa la chibs nas / bka’ ches su gsungs pa / kye kye sras blon yon [311] mchod rnams // thub pa chen po’i bka’ bzhin du // pha rol phyin drug spyad pa’i mthus // sgyu ma’i phung po ma dor yang // dga’ ldan lha yi yul du ‘gro // chos kyi sgrin ma ‘deg[s ]su ‘gro // ces mkha’ la gsheg[s ]s so // de nas yul du ‘ongs te / bdag rgyal sar ‘don pa’i cho ga yang bgyis te / blon ‘bangs thams cad sbyin pa’i pha rol tu phyin pa la bskul / de bzhin du / tshul khrims dang / bzod pa dang / brtson ‘grus dang / bsam gtan dang / shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa la bskul te / chos kyi rnga chen po 67See above. !&!" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 brdungs so // gtsug lag chen po stong bzheng[s ]so // dkon mchog gsum gyi ba dan chen po ‘phyar ro // de’i tshe bdag gi btsun mo sin dhu dpal ‘phreng ma bya ba cig yod pa las rgyal bu mdog dkar la skra dmar ba cig bltams te / mtshan mkhan la dris pas / bram ze’i zhal nas kyang / rgyal bu skra dmar la lus dkar ba ‘di yang / lus dkar ba ni ‘khor ba’i skyon gyis ma gos pa’i rtags / skra dmar ba ni pad ma’i rigs yin te / de nges par spyan ras gzigs kyi sprul pa zhig yin du rung bas / rim ‘gro dang blo sbyong gi cho ga la [312] rems cig / ming yang thugs rje dbang phyug tu thogs cig zer nas de bzhin du bgyis so // de nas rgyal po btsas pa‘i dga’ ston chen po byas pa’i tshogs gral du yang / pha rol tu phyin pa drug la bskul bas / rgyal po bse’u ma skyes pa de’i zhal nas / thun mongs sbyin pa legs mod kyang // chags pa med na pha rol phyin // tshul khrims bsrung ba legs mod kyi // dri ma dang bral na pha rol tu phyin // bzod pa sgom pa legs mod kyi // khong khro med na pha rol phyin // bsam gtan sgom pa legs mod kyi // g.yo ba med na pha rol phyin // brtson ‘grus rtsom pa mchig yin te // rgyun chad med na pha rol phyin // shes byed chos shes legs mod kyi // shes bya shes pas pha rol phyin // pha rol phyin drug legs mod kyi // ‘du shes rnam dag pha rol phyin // ces grags pas / de la bla mchod pan tri tas re mos sgro ba btsugs kyang ma 4 thub nas / lo drug lon tsam na chos spyi dang rang gi mtshan nyid thams cad smra ba la mkhas par gyur to // mtshan yang smra ba’i seng ger btag[s ]so // de nas rgyal po la rgyal sa gtad de / bdag gi thugs rje chen po ‘chi med rnga smra’i rgyal po sgrubs pas [313] ‘jam dpal zhal mthong ste / ’jam dpal sgyu 'phrul dra ba bam po !&#" On the Edge of Myth and History bco brgyad pa gsungs / de kho na nyid kyi man ngag gsungs pas / rang bzhin gyi chos thams cad la mkhas par ‘gyur te / za hor bde ba la bkod pa dran no // APPENDIX TWO DALAI LAMA V’S PATRILINE (CONTINUED) This continues the patriline of Dalai Lama V that was begun in the main body 117 of this essay.6 [Bkra shis bsam pa x ?] 19a. Gzhon nu rgyal mtshan 19b. Kun dga’ dpal bzang 19c. Nam mkha’ rin chen 19d. Drung Dbang rin chen [Kun dga’ dpal bzang x ?] 20a. Drung chen Dpal ‘byor bzang po 20b. Bsod nams dpal ldan 20c. Sangs rgyas skyabs 20d. Dkon mchog rin chen [Drung Dpal ‘byor bzang po and Nang so Dkon mchog rin chen x Dpal ‘dzom skyid, daughter of Drung dpon She ba] 21a. Hor Rdo rje tshe brtan x ? 22a. Hor Tshe dbang rnam rgyal 22b. Hor Rin chen rgyal mchog x ? 23a. Hor Bsod nams mgon po 23b. Hor Tshe dbang bkra shis 23c. Hor Rin chen tshe brtan 67Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i rnam thar, vol. 1, 28-37. !&+" Studies on Buddhist Myths !"#"$"%"&"'!'()*+),-./0 [The three brothers x Khri lcam Don yod sgrol ma, daughter of Bya Bkra shis dar rgyas (?-1499)] 24a. Hor Tshe dbang bsod nams dar rgyas 24b. Mi dbang Don grub rdo rje [] 25a. Hor Tshe dbang bsod nams stobs rgyas 25b. Tshe dbang bsod nams bstan ‘dzin 25c. Karma ngag dbang grag pa [The three brothers x Lha lcam Kun grub rgyal mo, the daughter of Sa skyong Lha rgya ri ba Mi dbang Byams pa rab brtan] 26a. Dpal Ngag gi dbang po bsod nams grags pa ‘jig rten dga’ ba’i rgyan 26b. Dmag dpon Lha’i dbang phyug 26c. ? 26d. ? 26e. ? [The two brothers x Dpon Sa bdag smyon ma, the daughter of the Yar rgyab Dpon chen] 27a. Hor Bdud ‘dul rab brtan x Khri lcam Kun dga’ lha mdzes [daughter of the House of Sna dkar rtse] 28a. Dalai Lama V !&$"

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On the Edge of Myth and History: Za hor, its Place in the History of Early Indian Buddhist Tantra, and Dalai Lama V and the Genealogy of its Royal Family

On the Edge of Myth and History: Za hor, its Place in the History of Early Indian Buddhist Tantra, and Dalai Lama V and the Genealogy of its Royal Family

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