The King's Choice to his Ministers
In this episode, Khri Srong lde brtsan seeks to persuade his ministers to build bSam yas Monastery by presenting it as the least extravagant of his proposed constructions in Tibet. While MBNT follows sBa bzhed S again, MTN's version is closer to those of sBa bzhed G and P. However, MTN places the episode earlier in Khri Srong lde brtsan's life, before Padmasambhava arrives in Tibet.
The sBa bzhed tradition (S: 29.13-30.2; G: 36.5-13; P: 334.2-9) positions this episode after Padmasambhava has left Tibet; the master has begun to bind the chthonic deities to protect the Dharma but also turned many ministers against him by using unorthodox methods. The land is more conducive to erect bSam yas monastery on, but the local clan leaders of Tibet are perhaps even less willing to support Buddhist building projects than the local chthonic forces are. So Khri Srong lde brtsan gives them the choice of what edifice to construct in Tibet; involving them in the process while making all the alternatives to bSam yas untenable. The choices, as recorded in sBa bzhed G and P, include:
Covering Has po ri in copper, so that all the nail heads show on the inside; or hiding the gTsang po [river] inside a copper tube and making it [reach] as far as 'Chong (P: Phyong); or digging a well 991 fathoms deep into Ka chu plain.
sBa bzhed S omits several elements of this list, and MBNT agrees with its reading:
Covering Khas po ri in copper; or hiding the gTsang po [river] inside a copper tube; or digging a well 990 fathoms deep into Ka chu plain. MBNT positions this narrative after Padmasambhava leaves Tibet, following sBa bzhed S. MTN appears to correspond to sBa bzhed G or P when it says that ‘option four was to cover Has po ri with copper, so that the heads of all the nails showed.' The latter part of this choice is absent in sBa bzhed S and MBNT. However, the sBa bzhed's order of options is different; while MTN also omits some choices and adds others in their place. Unlike sBa bzhed S and MBNT, MTN situates this episode before Padmasambhava's arrival in Tibet.
It is now possible to see a pattern of shared readings and divergence among our texts. It accords with the sBa bzhed stemma at the end of Chapter One. sBa bzhed G and P are linked by some common ancestor (sBa bzhed 2), which constitutes an extension of the dBa' bzhed's core narrative (sBa bzhed 1). sBa bzhed S's truncated narrative on Khri Srong lde brtsan suggests a further recension (sBa bzhed 3), perhaps redacted when the zhabs btags section was added to the end of it. MBNT follows this recension closely, which may date this redaction to before the fifteenth century (if the Sakya rin chen named in the colophon names is MBNT's compiler rather than merely the owner of the text). MTN could be either following sBa bzhed 2 or 3, or some other history loosely based on those recensions. MTN's novel re-ordering of the episodes suggests the latter.
The Episodes that are unique to the Me tog snying po:
The Poetic Descriptions of bSam yas
MTN contains a number of unique sections. Their free-flowing narratives resemble Nyang ral's writing style, displayed in ZL3 and the corresponding passages in the rest of MTN. The most arresting and poetic of these creations concerns the construction of bSam yas Monastery.
The dBa' bzhed (16b7-17a6) also contains a brief description of bSam yas. sBa bzhed G (43.10-53.17) and P (340.15-49.17) contain a wealth of extra detail. sBa bzhed S (35.6-45.9) includes most of this information, but has lost some in the course of its redaction. MBNT appears to follow S at first, but contains its own details later on.
MTN again follows a different order of events. Some of this earlier detail (e.g. MTNd 287-93) agrees with the sBa bzhed tradition. However, the subsequent lengthy prose and poetry description of bSam yas (MTNd 204-302) appears to be Nyang ral's own invention or based on a source differing from the sBa bzhed tradition. Nyang ral must have been familiar with the layout of bSam yas; he would not have needed to base his description on any literary source. It is perhaps not History that he writes here, but a description of the monastery as it stood in his day.
Padmasambhava in the Form of Garuda
MTN includes an arresting poem on naga-subjugation in its bSam yas section, which is not featured in the sBa bzhed tradition. Here, Padmasambhava takes the form of a mythical Garuda bird (Khyung), using this bird's natural predator-prey relationship with snakes to symbolise overcoming subterranean forces. It reads:
The king and ministers went into the presence of the master. In the great cave of mChims phu They saw a frightening great Garuda incarnation (sprul pa’i sku).
It shone with plumes the colour of purified gold, And its whole body was a fire of sharp diamonds (rdo rje). [Each] leading feather was like a brandished sword,
The tips like a turned razor. It had a glowing-iron beak, bones and talons,
As if from a blacksmith's forge. Its eyes, the sun and moon, were bulging and blinking.
The king of nagas, Mal gro gZi chen, And his minister Nag po gLong rdol, both
Were seized by the waist in its claw and subdued with its foot. It forced their mouth open, lifted and shook their waists.
Bringing their two palms together [in obeisance], They bowed their serpent heads before the Garuda’s.
The Garuda’s great fire being lit, the rocky canopy crackled.
Padmasambhava frightens the king with his display, but the transformation is necessary in order to tame the ground for building bSam yas. This poem is unique to MTN. The episode is not contained in the sBa bzhed tradition, therefore the compiler of MBNT does not include it in his/her narrative. MBNT does not contain the two episodes added to MTN, because it follows the sBa bzhed tradition and not MTN. MBNT also includes many episodes found in sBa bzhed S but not covered in MTN. Generally, MBNT remains faithful to the ancestor of sBa bzhed S, which would suggest it just ignored MTN in its description of Khri Srong lde brtsan.
Conclusion
It is clear that MBNT follows sBa bzhed 3, an ancestor of sBa bzhed S that resembles sBa bzhed 1 less than sBa bzhed 2 does. As such, MBNT is a useful source for identifying transmissional or even redactional changes in sBa bzhed S against sBa bzhed 3 because MBNT quotes sBa bzhed 3 in the fourteenth century and then follows its own transmissional line after that. Hitherto, it was very difficult to know how much of sBa bzhed S had been
affected by much later redaction or transmission. The dBa' bzhed now shows that sBa bzhed S is based on sBa bzhed 3, a redaction of sBa bzhed 2 (the ancestor of sBa bzhed G and P). MBNT's witness indicates that the redaction of sBa bzhed 3 took place between the twelfth and fourteenth century. I included MBNT in this chapter to judge its attribution to Nyang ral. It seems to lack any influence from ZL or MTN. Whether or not Sakya rin chen
compiled it or merely owned this copy, its quotation of sBa bzhed 3 dates it to the thirteenth, or more likely late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. It thus falls outside my eighth to twelfth-century field of investigation. For that reason I shall leave aside in-depth analysis of its narrative (and sBa bzhed 3 on which it depends).
The case of MTN is more complex, raising a number of difficult questions. Are the nine episodes Nyang ral's, or later, interpolations? Do they constitute twelfth-century, or subsequent, depictions of Khri Srong lde brtsan? All versions of MTN appear to contain the same episodes as each
other, but may nevertheless all stem from a later recension. I shall omit any discussion of these nine episodes from Chapters Four to Six. The seven episodes that resemble sBa bzhed narratives may not be Nyang ral's own interpolations; the two that appear unique to MTN do not really furnish us
with depictions of Khri Srong lde brtsan. Instead, they contain further descriptions of bSam yas and Padmasambhava. So MTN offers nothing to the depiction of Khri Srong lde brtsan that is not already present in either the sBa bzhed or ZL. In the chapters that follow I draw on the depictions of Khri Srong lde brtsan in the imperial and Dunhuang sources, the dBa' bzhed, sBa bzhed G and P and ZLh.
