Secret Scriptures of Tibetan Esoteric Dharma Practices (Zangmi xiufa midian)

e second major collection, Secret Scriptures of Tibetan Esoteric Dharma Practices, brings together esoteric materials collected from to in Beijing from a variety of printing presses on China's east coast. ese materials were compiled by someone respectfully referred to as "forefather" Zhou Shujia, who in pointed understatement was said to have "attended to the esoteric tradition (mizong)." During the Cultural Revolution, when homes were being searched and books con scated, these texts were preemptively bundled up and taken to a branch of the government's inspection stations by his son. At the end of the Cultural Revolution, the latter was able to recover the impounded materials and later donated his collection to China's Buddhist Library (Zhongguo Fojiao tushuguan). ere, the layman Lü Tiegang catalogued them and published a booklist called the "Catalogue and Account of China's Buddhist Library's Manuscript Collection's Chinese Translations of Tibetan Buddhism." is list was published in the o cial Chinese Buddhist Association's journal Fayin (Sound of the Dharma) in , just a year a er Dorjé Chöpa's work was reprinted in Taiwan. e scholarly community in China apparently encouraged the reprinting of these rarely seen and important translations, for the bene t of Tibetologists, and as a result Lü had the collection published in this ve-volume set.

Rather than trying to summarize the contents of this vast and diverse body of work-ve volumes containing seventy-ve titles in , pages-it is perhaps more bene cial to highlight a few of the major institutions, teachers, and translators that seem to have played important roles in the Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist interactions recorded in its pages. e two major Beijing institutions involved in the initial publication of the individual texts were the Esoteric Treasury Institute ( to . e only other gure that deserves special mention is Walter Evans-Wentz ( -), whose English-language compilations of Tibetan texts served as the basis for ve translations in the collection.

e Esoteric Treasury Institute and Könchok Dorjé

We know very little about Beijing's Esoteric Treasury Institute, but the books published at the institute during the mid-twentieth century hold important clues to the institute's activities. e key gures associated with this institute were the Mongol Könchok Dorjé, the Ninth Paṇchen Lama, the Ngakchen Khutughtu, and Tang Xiangming. Most informative is a short inscription written across a photograph in the opening pages of one of the institute's illustrated works, which reads: "Mizhou fazang si ( e Dharma Treasury of Esoteric Dhāraṇī Monastery), named in brief: Mizang yuan; established in good order by the [Ninth] Paṇchen Lama." e headboard inscription over the altar is too poorly reproduced to make out clearly, but from a later occurrence of the Tibetan name of the institute, it is clear that it reads "Sangngak Chödzöling, " plainly a translation of Mizang yuan. Despite the poor quality of the photograph, we can make out what may be the Lentsa script version of the Kālacakra Tantra's symbol decorating the hangings over the altar. If this identi cation is correct, this photograph would probably date from the Beijing Kālacakra ceremony led by the Paṇchen Lama, with the participation of the Ngakchen Khutughtu. e presence of a photograph of the Ngakchen Khutughtu at the front of the book con rms this link with the Paṇchen Lama, though the Khutughtu also returned to Beijing just before the death of the Paṇchen Lama in . ree of the four dated works we have from the institute were written by the Mongol translator Könchok Dorjé. Of him, we know only these writings, which include the earliest text in the Secret Scriptures of Tibetan Esoteric Dharma Practices: a work of over one hundred pages devoted to the eleven-headed form of Avalokiteśvara.

is text, like most of Könchok Dorjé's own compositions, contains no Tibetan script whatsoever. His next publication, a "essentials of daily recitations, " included several translations as well as a text illustrating thirty-ve buddhas. Alone among his writings, in this work a few syllables of Tibetan script are interspersed throughout the text. e nal, version that bears his name is a massive ve-hundredpage work that opens with six pages of illustrations and a Yamāntaka text. e image of Tsongkhapa at the start of this publication con rms that Könchok Dorjé, like the Ninth Paṇchen Lama and the Ngakchen Khutughtu, adhered to the Gelukpa tradition. e appearance of the dated works at the Esoteric Treasury Institute from to provides the only indication of the time frame during which we know that the institute was active. We can therefore surmise that the other writings published by the institute, including four works consisting mostly of illustrations and their captions, were also produced during the same period. e terminal date of the only one of these illustrated works merits a detailed examination, in that the text either had no preface, or else the front matter was removed during the most recent editorial process. If the latter is the case, the material may have been removed due to political sensitivity, as it may have re ected positively on the Japanese occupation of Beijing, or at least not been critical of the occupying force.

e Tibetan postscript, however, remains and includes a long series of phrases useful for dating the work, given in descending order as points of reference as the events approach the present, and interesting for what they tell us of the cultural and political concerns that were most relevant to the Tibetan author. Not surprisingly, the rst reference is to the number of years since the Buddha's birth. Following this, the year is dated from the number of years that have elapsed since each of a series of major events: the Buddha teaching the Kālacakra root-tantra; his passing into nirvāṇa; the Muslims (kla klo) taking possession of Mecca-an interesting point of global reference; the appearance of the Kālacakra commentary; the birth of Tsongkhapa; and the ascension to the throne of the most recent ruler of Shambhala. At this point the method of dating changes and the reader is o ered a signi cant anomaly-the reign date of the Qing Emperor-thereby extending the dynasty's "rule" of China some twenty-seven years beyond the dynastic abdication in . e nal chronometric references return to standard methods for dating in Tibetan texts, listing the years since the deaths of the thirteenth Dalai Lama and Ninth Paṇchen Lama, and nally noting the Tibetan year: Earth Male Tiger. All these points indicate that the year of publication was . For all their variety, the events noted share one common feature: not that they are all Buddhist, as they are not, but that none recognizes the end of the Qing dynasty or the foundation of any new state in China. Instead, the reference to the Qing Emperor's reign date is shocking: "the thirtieth year of the Mañjughoṣa Great Emperor Xuantong" ('jam dbang gong ma chen po shon thong gyal sar bzhug gnas lo sum cu). Even the Japanese, when they installed Puyi, previously known as the Xuantong Emperor, as the "Chief Executive" of the puppet state Manchukuo in February of , described him as the former Xuantong Emperor. Useful as it might have been to their plans for the occupation of China, they no longer recognized his claim to the throne of the Qing empire. Yet this is exactly what the Tibetan strategy of dating his reign as continuous since succeeds in doing; the Tibetan author still acknowledges Puyi as the Qing Emperor. With the death of the Paṇchen Lama in , did such lamas as the Ngakchen Khutughtu feel some fragile hope for a future alliance of Buddhist Tibet and Buddhist Japan under the banner of the Mañjughoṣa Emperor? It is this that leads me to suspect that there may have formerly been a politically o ensive, Chinese-language preface that was omitted by the modern editors who failed to take note of the implications of the Tibetan-language postscript. In any event, certainly no alliance of the sort alluded to ever materialized, but the Japanese did have plans (and spies on the ground) for working with Tibetan Buddhists who might have been persuaded to envision a future within Japan's Asian empire.

is speculative excursus aside, I turn now to consider the contents of the four largely pictorial texts printed by the Esoteric Treasury Institute, presumably between and . e rst two, which are the longest and very similar, consist mainly of single, mostly tantric, gures on the front side of the folio (measuring roughly ve by nine inches), with bilingual captions including a number, and the name and color of the gure (as they were printed in black and white). On the reverse of each is, again in both Tibetan and Chinese, information on the gure as well as the associated mantra. According to the postscript to the second text, ve hundred and forty Chinese, Tibetan, and Mongolian monks and laity attended events at the Esoteric Treasury Institute in to receive initiations into the tantric cycles described in the book.

e third text, dedicated to Yamāntaka, is printed in Tibetan pecha format (unbound narrow horizontal leaves) with ve gures illustrated on each page and bilingual captions below. On the reverse, behind each gure in a vertical line are the syllables "Oṃ āḥ hūng swā hā." e end of the text includes illustrations of ritual paraphernalia, symbols, and circular dhāraṇī (zhou). e nal illustrated text returns to the vertical orientation typical of Chinese works and has only Chinese captions describing the gure depicted and no other textual content. e opening image is again Yamāntaka and the nal gures likewise depict paraphernalia and dhāraṇī similar to those found at the end of the third book. However, in this fourth text almost all the intervening pages are densely lled with four or ve detailed line drawings of Buddhist gures. As suggested by the lone postscript to the second text indicating how it was to be utilized, it seems that all of these works were meant to accompany other ritual or training manuals. ey appear to be aids rather than standalone guides to the practice of esoteric Tibetan Buddhism. e other consistent characteristic is the appearance of Tsongkhapa in the early pages of each text, indicating that the authors and users of these texts were adherents of the Geluk tradition. is is hardly surprising given the close association between this institute and the Ninth Paṇchen Lama and his envoy, the Ngakchen Khutughtu. Moreover, the Geluk tradition was still in power in Tibet at the time of these early Chinese publications, and it had had a long institutional presence in China proper, especially in Beijing.

Interlude: Nyingma and Kagyü Translations, -

Given the tradition of imperial support for the Gelukpa tradition, there was a relatively strong showing of interest in other Tibetan Buddhist traditions over the next several years, especially in the Nyingma and the Kagyü. e most prominent gure from the non-Geluk traditions was the exiled Khampa lama, the Norlha Khutughtu (Ch. Nuona huofo), a Nyingmapa who, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, had been imprisoned by Tibet's Gelukpa government for cooperating with late Qing e orts to extend Chinese administrative control deep into Tibetan territory. Having escaped prison and arrived in China in , it took some years for the lama to become wellestablished in China, gaining renown rst in Sichuan province (by ) and in Nanjing by . His teaching career in China peaked in the early s, and the works he authored that are translated in the Secret Scriptures collection date from this time.

e rst set of his translated texts to appear in the collection is dedicated to Sitātapatrā (Tib. Gdugs dkar, Ch. Da bai san'gai fomu), the female Buddhist deity associated with a protective white parasol, illustrated in this case with three faces and six arms. As described by Ishihama Yumiko, this deity had been worshipped by the rulers of China in the Yuan and Qing dynasties, and the Norlha Khutughtu used at least one of the previously translated practice texts as the basis for his teachings. e origins of the Secret Scripture's set of Sitātapatrā texts can be found in the Nanjing Buddhist Lay Group (Fojiao jushilin), which invited the Norlha Khutughtu to transmit esoteric dhāraṇī (mizhou) in . In the preface, the translator Wu Runjiang states that the goal of the teachings was to make the Sitātapatrā dhāraṇī widely available so that beings in this age of the decline of the dharma might escape saṃsāric su ering. us he translated the dhāraṇī into the national (vernacular) speech (guoyin). As for the Tibetan portion of the text, the Norlha Khutughtu did not provide the Tibetan script of the dhāraṇī that is included in these texts. Instead, Zhong kanbu (Tib. mkhan po) of the Paṇchen Lama's Nanjing representative's o ce was asked to undertake this. e second short text devoted to Sitātapatrā in this collection recommends that dharma-assemblies be held to eliminate disaster and protect the country (xiaozai huguo). At the end of the text, the Norlha Khutughtu is recorded to have said that if good men and women would practice reciting this dhāraṇī with the correct mindset, in dharma-assemblies, whether conducted by a single person or many people, and lasting for one, seven, twenty-one or forty-nine days, then the country would be shielded from disaster.

is was a powerful promise, especially given the threats that China was then facing from Japan. e second set of collected texts associated with the Norlha Khutughtu was published in , but includes texts from and , all oriented around the same themes as the rst set: female Buddhist gures who had the ability to save the Chinese from catastrophe. In this case, the female gures were the various forms of Tārā. e Norlha Khutughtu rst gave teachings on Tārā in the winter of in Nanjing. e audience for the event initially numbered only six people, but by spring of they had persuaded the master to teach a larger audience. Over the summer, the lama went to Lu shan, the nearest mountain retreat where one could hope for cool breezes and escape Nanjing's sweltering summers. ere a Chinese monk and a layman invited him to give the same teaching to people. Laymen wrote out the text and the lama corrected it somehow, though no source indicates that he knew Chinese. As before, a member of the Paṇchen Lama's o ce sta , Zhong kanpo, wrote the Tibetan text. Presumably, the printed text could then be distributed at other teaching events. In one instance, in Nanjing in , the Nor-lha Khutughtu's teachings on the Tārā practice were occasioned by a dharma assembly convened to avert disaster and bene t the people of Guangdong.

To lend an air of secrecy and importance to this revealed "esoteric" text, it was said that in Kham and Central Tibet (Kang Zang) this text had not yet been transmitted, while in China (Zhongtu) a broad transmission of this dharma had also never before occurred. e rst distinctively Nyingma teaching, devoted to the tradition's progenitor, Padmasambhava, was also introduced in this second set of texts. In the introduction to this practice, readers are promised that making o erings to the image of Padmasambhava will generate unimaginable merit, which will clear away all future calamities and di culties, and produce boundless fruits of virtue and the like. A short biography of Padmasambhava included in this set is his earliest introduction to the Chinese in the history and culture of Sino-Tibetan Buddhist exchange that I have seen.

e Norlha Khutughtu le for the borderlands in to campaign against the Communist Red Army's Long March through Kham. He was captured and died in the custody of the Communists in , putting to an abrupt end his short but promising teaching and publishing career in China.

Among these collected volumes, the only Tibetan Buddhist texts that are obviously from the Kagyü tradition came to be translated into Chinese via a circuitous route; these texts were not translated directly from the Tibetan, nor F . e phonetic scheme adopted to transcribe Tibetan in connection with Norlha Khutughtu's teachings. From Secret Scriptures of Tibetan Esoteric Dharma Practices ( . ). did they originate in China. Instead, two texts devoted to principal practices of the Kagyü school, the Six Yogas (Ming xing dao liu chengjiu fa) and the Great Symbol practices (Da shou yin fa yao), as well as two shorter texts, were translated from English language translations made by Kazi Dawa Samdub (Ka zi Zla ba bsam sgrub, -) and edited by Walter Evans-Wentz, which were then published as Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines in . In all, ve of this work's seven "Books of Wisdom of the Great Path"-the second, third, fourth, sixth, and seventh-are preserved here, but it appears that they were all translated and issued together as part of a series at the time. ese ve were " e Nirvanic Path: e Yoga of the Great Symbol, " " e Path of Knowledge: e Yoga of the Six Doctrines, " " e Path of Transference: e Yoga of Consciousness-Transference, " " e Path of the Five Wisdoms: e Yoga of the Long Hûm, " and " e Path of the Transcendental Wisdom: e Yoga of the Voidness."

Although the impetus for translating Tibetan Buddhist texts into Chinese was clearly connected to modern ideas about Buddhism as a world religion, this is a dramatic instance of Chinese Buddhist involvement in the transnational circulation of Tibetan Buddhist works. Previously, it had been Chinese Buddhist works that were translated into English. At that point, Chinese had been the "source" language, but now the positions were being switched and Chinese became the "target" language. And the original Tibetan source then had to be approached indirectly through the unique translations of a Himalayan school-teacher of English and an American student of yoga and theosophy.

e Chinese translation was accomplished by a Chinese student of Tibetan esoterica, Zhang Miaoding, just a year a er the texts were rst made available in English. He correctly credits the rst text to Pema Karpo (Ch. Poma jia'erpo), whom he calls the twenty-fourth master of Tibet's Kagyü (Ch. Jiaju'er) tradition. But in what appears to be a misunderstanding of the English transliteration of the Tibetan translator's name, Lama Kazi Dawa Samdup is described as Tibet's Dawa Sangdu Gexi Lama. In Chinese, gexi typically transliterates Tibetan dge bshes, which is apparently how Zhang thought he should describe the translator.

is misconstrual transforms the lay boys-school teacher into a monastic lama trained in Central Tibet's highest institutions of Gelukpa learning.

Another work is attributed to a certain American, Mrs. Evans (Meiguo Aiwensi furen), and listed as the co-author with the Chinese layman, Wang Yantao. is illustrated text, variously titled the (Ch. Study of ) Five Hundred Buddha-images of the (Tib. Four Classes of the) Esoteric Tradition (Ch. Mizong wubai fo xiang kao; Tib. Gsang chen rgyud sde bzhi'i sku brnyan lnga brgya), is also included in the Secret Scriptures. Five hundred images are set twelve to the page with a Chinese caption added under the Tibetan name of each gure. On the reverse is a corresponding prayer or the mantra(s) associated with each gure written horizontally in Tibetan around a vertical string of Lentsa script letters reading "Oṃ āḥ hūng swā hā." e Chinese seals and Tibetan and Mongolian inscriptions of two prominent Gelukpa lamas (the Ngakchen/Anqin Khutughtu and the Changkya/Zhangjia guoshi) grace the front matter, and the inscriptions and opening images of Tsongkhapa with his two main disciples indicate that this text is of Gelukpa provenance. ese are almost certainly reproductions of Qing-period block carvings. As for the date of this text, I suspect it was around , when the Ngakchen Khutughtu was actively publishing in China.

Layman Sun Jingfeng and the Collected Translations of Tibetan Esoterica Series

Sun Jingfeng was the most proli c Chinese Buddhist translator of Tibetan texts. Sun's twenty-one translations, though generally short, are notable for their frequent inclusion of complete Tibetan language texts as appendices. Fi een of his translations include or incorporate a Tibetan text, ve others use Tibetan script for the mantras, and only one is completely devoid of Tibetan letters. Sixteen of Sun's works were part of the Collected Translations of Tibetan Esoterica (Zangmi congshu) issued by the Tibetan Esoteric Practice and Study Association Printery (Zangmi xuixue hui shiyin). As for the dates of his translation activity, his earliest work is from , and his last was published in . He seems to have been attracted to Tibetan Buddhism by , when the Paṇchen Lama was in Nanjing, as indicated by his awareness of the Paṇchen Lama's teaching on the six-syllable mantra (Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ) there. Another in uence may have been the Mongol Vajra-Guru (Jingang shangshi) Bao Kanbu (Tib. Dkon mchog mkhan po, i.e. Gu shri Dkon mchog rdo rje), who was invited to Shanghai to teach in . Also present in Shanghai at that time was Tupten Nyima, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher who transmitted nearly a third of the texts Sun translated. On the basis of this rather limited evidence, we may tentatively conclude that Sun was introduced to Tibetan Buddhism in Nanjing and Shanghai, a er which he probably studied Tibetan language for some years before he was su ciently pro cient to translate texts. e learned Lozang Zangpo was another of Sun's major teachers, transmitting almost one quarter ( ve) of the texts that Sun translated. Sun seems to have traveled widely in central and north China to attend teachings and nd publishers for his materials, ranging from Beijing, where the Yonghegong's Jasagh Lama taught, to Shandong, Kaifeng, and Shanghai.

In assessing his work, it is necessary to consider both his early translations and the later ones found in the Collected Translations of Tibetan Esoterica series. His early work is distinguished by his attention to the importance of the Tibetan script and its pronunciation and his careful explication of these. Otherwise, it deals with the same fundamental practices of Tibetan Buddhism described by Dorjé Chöpa and Zhang Xinruo. His rst two texts date to , with the longer of the two, the Precious Treasury of Esoterica (Ch. Micheng bao zang; Tib. Bsang sngag [sic, Gsang sngags] ren [sic, rin] chen gter bzang) opening with a summary explanation of the Tibetan alphabet, with Chinese transliteration to assist the reader's pronunciation. Endnotes explain the consonants, vowels, as well as which letters can serve as pre xes, post xes, and so forth, covering the variant spellings and pronunciations of Tibetan syllables. is is followed by prayers for blessings, taking refuge, and making maṇḍala-o erings (with an illustration of the world according to Indo-Tibetan Buddhist conceptions), dhāraṇī, and other ritual texts associated with Avalokiteśvara, including one taught by the fourth Paṇchen Lama.

Another text dated

, Tibetan Esoteric Essentials of Worship and Praise (Zangmi lizan fayao), was clearly used to introduce novices to basic Gelukpa practice. Each Tibetan passage and its Chinese transliteration is followed by a second transliteration into Roman script, to clarify the proper pronunciation of the Tibetan text. Sometimes this format is extended to include a short Chinese explanation of the translation. For instance, the previously described Gelukpa "Creed" (dmigs brtse) here is called Tsongkhapa's heart dhāraṇī (xinzhou), and the text explains that Tsongkhapa is a manifestation (huashen) of Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, and Vajrapāṇi's compassion, wisdom, and strength, respectively.

Like other translators, Sun was concerned with the correct pronunciation of mantras and was troubled by the di culty of transliterating these into Chinese, with its many local dialects. is is apparent, for example, in Sun's third and much longer translated work, Collected Tibetan Esoteric Dharma (Zangmi fa hui), where the use of Tibetan script is limited to writing mantras, with Chinese transcriptions added to clarify the pronunciation. In this text, however, Tibetan letters are introduced for their value in reproducing Sanskrit sounds, and a guide to the relevant letter combinations is included. Sun's strategy was to use Tibetan letters to indicate the original Sanskrit, and then students could check with their Tibetan teacher for the correct pronunciation.

Sun himself relied on the Vajra-guru Tupten Nyima for this third work. Tupten Nyima taught the material at Kaifeng's Henan Buddhist Study Society (Henan Foxue she) sometime before its June publication in Chinese translation. Although few speci cs of this event are described in the text, the preface and back matter reveal some noteworthy details, especially interesting given that our knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism in Kaifeng is extremely limited. First, the preface was written by a Chinese monk who brie y recounts the history of the transmission of Tibetan Buddhism to China, noting the role of Pakpa in the Yuan dynasty, and the imperial court's reception of Tibetan Buddhist teachings and initiations in the Ming and Qing dynasties. He also recognizes that the common people (ping min) had no access to these treasures until the present time, when Chinese could study abroad in Tibet and return to their ancestral country to transmit the results of their learning (liuxueyu Xizang; xue cheng, fan chuan zuguo). Finally, he celebrates the presence in China of the Paṇchen Lama, as well as other great and virtuous Tibetans and Mongols who were actively teaching and holding rituals in China.

e back matter reveals that this Chinese master was not alone in his support for Tibetan Buddhism in Kaifeng, although he was the only monk involved. e nal page lists his donations and those of some forty individuals who sponsored the printing of the teachings in translation, namely, as the book examined here, the Collected Tibetan Esoteric Dharma. e amounts collected were modest, from as much as ve yuan from the master to as little as a single jiao from a lay Buddhist, but together they amassed around one hundred yuan. To put this into perspective, ten yuan was sucient for basic living expenses for a month at this time, and one hundred yuan a month was considered a very generous salary. e back-matter also mentions a second book to follow in the series, but it has not been preserved in the Secret Scriptures, if indeed it was ever published.

Sun's greatest publication success was the Collected Translations of Tibetan Esoterica (Zangmi congyi), a series that included at least thirty volumes. Only sixteen of these are preserved in the recent assemblage of reprints under the Secret Scriptures, but these su ce to give us some idea of the scope of this corpus. e earliest extant text, the third in the series, dates to , and the latest, the twenty-eighth, dates to the fall of ; for some reason the thirtieth was printed out of order in . Nine of the extant texts were published in a single year, , while another four are undated. is series consistently incorporates Tibetan script, usually at length. Twelve of these works have complete Tibetan language texts, o en with subscribed transliteration or translation in Chinese (and sometimes Roman letters). Four of the works use Tibetan script only for the mantras and dhāraṇī, which are then followed by Chinese transliteration. Most of these translations are based on teachings transmitted from Sun's Tibetan Buddhist teachers, but some are based on earlier translations from the Tang dynasty, with the addition of mantras written in Tibetan script, probably as correctives to the earlier translations. By examining Sun's e orts we realize that, as was true for the Chinese monk who wrote the preface to his earlier translation, the central concern was esoteric Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism, especially because of its ability to preserve the original Sanskrit sounds, was considered crucial for linking past Indian and Chinese Buddhist practice to modern Chinese Buddhist practice.

Master Guankong: Lamrim Teachings and Activities at the Bodhi Study Association

Shortly a er Sun started publishing his translations, the Chinese monk Guankong, who had studied abroad in Kham and Central Tibet, began to publish numerous texts that have since been reprinted in the Secret Scriptures collection. Guankong graduated from Taixu's short-lived Wuchang Academy, probably by . us, like Fazun, he was introduced in his formative years to Taixu's aspiration to unite Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism. Given his close association with Fazun, who published a Chinese translation of Tsongkhapa's Great Sequential Path to Enlightenment (Byang chub lam rim chen mo, Ch. Puti dao cidi guang lun), it is no surprise that Guankong's rst recorded lecture a er returning from Tibet was dedicated to this central teaching of the Gelukpa school. e preface to his Notes on " e Practice of the Sequential Path to Enlightenment" (Puti dao cidi xiufa biji) describes the origins and spread of these teachings in modern China. e preface rst sketches the story of how his teacher Dayong founded the Beijing Tibetan language school, the school's relocation to Ganzi (Tib. Dkar mdzes), and Dayong's e orts to gain access to Central Tibet. Dayong apparently sent a letter to the Dalai Lama requesting permission to enter Tibetan territory (qing ru jing). However, according to the preface, because at the end of the Qing dynasty "the court had not been courteous to the Dalai Lama and the Sichuan army resident in Tibet had acted harshly and unreasonably, therefore the Tibetan people had lost con dence [in the court and the Chinese, as represented by the Sichuan army]." Permission to enter was not granted. As a result, the Chinese monks were stuck in Kham, where Fazun began to study the Lamrim genre of texts. e preface celebrates this circumstance as the moment when China proper gained access to these teachings. For his notes on the Lamrim teachings, Guankong used Fazun's translation of e Practice of the Sequential Path to Enlightenment by Geshé Tendzin Pelgyé (Ch. Shanhui Chijiao zengguang) as the basis for his lectures to the North China Lay Group (Ch. Hua bei jushilin) in the winter of . is work, like Guankong's other translations, was printed in at the Beijing Central Institute for the Carving of Scriptures (Ch. Zhongyang kejing yuan).

Guankong's remaining translations were also published in the watershed year of , all by the center most actively involved with Tibetan Buddhism in Beijing from to : the Bodhi Study Association (Puti xuehui). ese works were all translations of the Ngakchen Khutughtu's teachings, which had presumably taken place in Beijing. It may even be that the North China Lay Group was renamed the Bodhi Study Association sometime in . I suggest this because the description of the North China Lay Group's long-term interest in the Lamrim teachings in the above-mentioned preface would provide a logical connection between Guankong and the Ngakchen Khutughtu's presence, rst at the North China Lay Group and later at the Bodhi Study Association. Moreover, the preface's narrative recounts that the elder Hu Zihu, a layman who had, since , consistently funded Tibetan Buddhist activities in and around Beijing and supported the monks studying abroad in Tibet, invited one of the returned monks, Master Nenghai, to teach the Lamrim to the North China Lay Group in . e Lay Group was later happy to receive the Ngakchen Khutughtu, who was living in Beijing in , and hear his teachings on the importance of developing bodhicitta. Guankong seems to have been following in the Ngakchen Khutughtu's footsteps when he too gave teachings on the Sequential Path to Enlightenment.

We can further pursue the narrative of Guankong and the Ngakchen Khutughtu's activities by piecing together their collaborative work, all published in . For instance, Guankong translated the Ngakchen Khutughtu's brief commentary on Tsongkhapa's Praise for the Sequential Path to Enlightenment (Puti dao cidi she song luejie), a commentary that elaborated on Fazun's Chinese translation of the root text, which the audience could follow while the Ngakchen Khutughtu's explanation was translated by Guankong.

e Ngakchen Khutughtu and Guankong also collaborated on practice oriented-texts dedicated to Green Tārā, the eleven-headed manifestation of Avalokiteśvara, the Medicine Buddha, White Mañjuśrī, and the sixarmed Mahākāla, to name a few. ese texts may also serve as an indicator of some of the concerns of the laity a liated with the Bodhi Study Association, the publisher of these texts.

Tang Xiangming: From Esoteric Treasury Institute to the Bodhi Study Association

Tang Xiangming was the other proli c lay Buddhist translator of this period, and he worked with both of Beijing's esoteric centers, though most of his translations seem to have been published by the Bodhi Study Association. As with Guankong, many of his works are devoted to particular bodhisattvas, such as Mañjuśrī, Avalokiteśvara, and Tārā. Presumably, in these later texts, he was building on the basic knowledge of Tibetan Buddhist practice already introduced by Dorjé Chöpa, Sun Jingfeng, and the Esoteric Treasury Institute. With the exception of one short undated text on taking refuge, his works do not describe basic practices. is text is also unusual for Tang's work, as it is a bilingual edition in Tibetan-formatted (narrow horizontal) pages, with Chinese transcriptions below the Tibetan text. For the most part, Tang's translations either have no Tibetan at all, or use Tibetan only for the mantras associated with the texts.

Tang also collaborated with the Ngakchen Khutughtu in producing two undated translations that were published by the Esoteric Treasury Institute, probably during the last years during which it was still most active, or , when the Ngakchen Khutughtu was in China. We can surmise that these translations pre-date Guankong's arrival in Beijing, because a er that time the Ngakchen Khutughtu would have been able to rely on this welltrained monastic translator, as their publication record shows he did. Once the Ngakchen Khutughtu ceased to need Tang, the latter was free to work with the seventh Changkya/Zhangjia Khutughtu, Lozang Pelden Tenpé Drönmé ( -), and together they completed at least two translations. Tang's datable works commence in and continue until , with almost one translation a year. Many of his translations deal with a typical assortment of Buddhist gures: Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, and Yamāntaka, and more unusual, he translated two texts dealing with Kurukullā (Ch. Gulugule/ Guluguli, Tib. Ku ru ku lu), goddess of wealth, said to be associated with Red Tārā. His last dated work is a text praising the twenty one Tārās, originally written by the rst Dalai Lama. Earlier I argued that making Tibetan script accessible to the Chinese marked an indigenization of Tibetan Buddhism in China, but I think that the complete absence of Tibetan in these later texts may indicate a further stage of development and a new and more deep-rooted level of indigenization. It is possible that translators such as Tang felt that they and their readers had such a thorough understanding of Tibetan Buddhism that they had gone beyond the simple need to reproduce Tibetan script and phonetics.

Conclusion

Lay support for Tibetan Buddhism did not immediately disappear from China's cities with the rise of Communist control, but within two decades Chinese translations of Tibetan Buddhist texts had been supplanted by Tibetan translations of Chinese state policy documents. I have no evidence that the lay translators I have discussed continued to use their talents in service of the state, but some of the monks, both Chinese and Tibetan, who had been involved in teaching and translating in Republican China did so. Fazun, Nenghai, and one of his disciples, Longguo, as well as the lama that the Norlha Khutughtu introduced to China, Gangkar Trülku, lled important roles in state institutions, though only Longguo was actually employed as a translator for the People's Liberation Army. In addition to gures such as Gangkar, Fazun, and Nenghai, who are discussed elsewhere in this volume, discovering what happened to the lay translators and the less well known lamas with whom they worked presents an important future research project. Although many questions remain unanswered, this chapter has shed new light on several unheralded Chinese Buddhist translators, especially laymen, and the Tibetan Buddhist teachers and institutions that supported their work. In the early years, translations were typically the product of a special kind of team-a teacher and his devoted disciple, such as Dorjé Chöpa and Zhang Xinruo or the Norlha Khutughtu and Wu Runjiang. Once these teachers faded from the scene so too did their translators. Over time though, a more substantial base of translators and institutions that could support them developed. Based on current records, though this may simply be an artifact of where the collector of the texts lived, Beijing seems to have been the principal center for this activity, with important work also occurring in Chongqing, Shanghai, and Kaifeng. e three main translators I have highlighted here-Sun Jingfeng, Guankong, and Tang Xiangming-all worked with a variety of teachers, texts, and institutions in their e orts to expand Chinese access to Tibetan Buddhist teachings. e role of Mongols, such as Gushri Könchok Dorjé and the Changkya Khutughtu should also not be overlooked. e very relationship between Tibetan Buddhism and Beijing was set in place during the Qing dynasty, when Mongol monks lled the imperial capital's monasteries, and they remind us that the customary association of Mongols as teachers of Tibetan Buddhism to outsiders remained in force well into the twentieth century. , herea er referred to as Dharma Ocean. is book is catalogued under the title Misheng fahai at Yale University, where I rst located the text. ere are several variants in the spelling of the Tibetan author's name. First, his name is given as Duojue jueda gexi, a pinyin transliteration of the incorrect characters used in the reprint edition, under which this book is catalogued. e second and third spellings are romanizations of the Chinese and Tibetan versions of his name-Duojie jueba and Rdo rje bcod pa, respectively-as found in the reprint of the original edition. e correct spelling of his Tibetan name is Rdo rje gcod pa. However, the true author of the Dharma Ocean was probably his Chinese disciple, Zhang Xinruo, as the author of the preface notes that though the master had lived many years in China, he was "still not very highly skilled in the Chinese spoken language" (bu shen xian hanyu). Assuming this is true, it is likely that Rdo rje gcod pa's Chinese literary skills were not much better. is text was reprinted again in . e other collection is Zhou Shao-liang -./, Lü Tiegang 012, eds., Zangmi xiufa midian 3)4+56 (Secret Scriptures of Tibetan Esoteric Dharma Practices), vols. (Beijing: Huaxia chubanshe, [ -]), herea er referred to as Secret Scriptures. ( is text was reprinted again in .) Lü Tiegang rst published a catalogue and account of these collected materials in the Chinese Buddhist Association's journal Fayin (Sound of the Dharma) in . e rst mention of either of these texts that I am aware of, in any language, is Huang Hao's fourpage review of the latter collection: Huang Hao 78, "Sanshi niandai Zhongguo Zangmi yanjiu-Zangmi xiufa midian ping jie"!9:;<=>3)?@-3)4+ 56AB ("Chinese research on Tibetan esoterica in the s-critique and introduction to Secret Scriptures of Tibetan Esoteric Dharma Practices"), Minzu yanjiu hui xun CD?@EF [Newsletter on Ethnic Studies] n. (March, ): -. One more recent on-line article by Shunzo Onoda, "A Pending Task for the New