No Jewel (as such) Fell in Tibet

Near Oberndorf in Tirol, August 2008

I just finished reading the very thing I recommended in the last blog, the article entitled, “The Wish-Granting Jewel: Exploring the Buddhist Origins of the Holy Grail.”

I must say, I still do much recommend it overall. That India’s story of the Wish-Granting Jewel is not only older than, but could well have informed, through intermediaries, the Western European Grail stories appears to be likely. Yet beyond that I’m not eager to accept guesswork scenarios that may be deemed to somehow plausibly account for the transmission, and I don’t think our author expects us to do anything more than entertain the possibilities. I would be very surprised if he did. However, in one key point it seems to me — from a Tibeto-logical perspective mind you — to fall flat. If you will bear with me for a few minutes you will see [1] that in earliest sources on the event of the items falling on the roof of Lha Totori’s palace (look here), there is not even a mention of the Wish-granting Jewel.  [2] In later sources, that *do* make use of the term Wish-granting Jewel, it is still the case that it was not a jewel, as such, that fell from the sky.

Verily I tell you, I am not the expert to be telling you about this, but in the Eschenbach (he's dated to decades surrounding 1200 CE) version of the Grail legend, what we today usually imagine as a chalice (perhaps one with a relic of the blood of Jesus crucified, or in any case an object with strong Eucharistic symbolism, not to mention its association with all those medieval tales of knightly chivalry and valor) was a jewel, not a cup. I’m only saying this as a favor to people who haven’t read the article yet... so they’ll have an idea about what I’m going on and on about.

I’m not going to put my dear friends and readers through a gruelingly obsessive survey of every single word in every single historical work. One reason is, well, I don’t have to. Stein and Sørensen have already supplied very nearly all of the more important sources for all those willing to look into them. Since Stein, although less thorough than Sørensen in supplying references, draws upon the material in greater detail, I will refer you to those pages in his Tibetica Antiqua (bibliographical details below for all who demand them).

What we learn from Stein’s listing is that the earliest use of the Wish-granting Jewel word (here given as Sanskrit in Tibetan transcription, “Tshindhama-ṇi”) is in the famous history of 1373 that is in fact the one translated by Sørensen.  This source doesn’t say exactly what it means by Cintāmaṇi. But even here it most definitely isn’t a jewel per se, but a tsatsa mold. True, people often stumble badly over the odd word that is used here for ‘mold,’ which is [b]skol-phor. Stein in translation reads as bolus, but looking back at the original French version we read bol. Checking the closest handy dictionary, I see that the ‘English’ (here meaning Latin, of course, but ultimately Greek) translation of French bol as bolus might have fallen upon the wrong choice of meaning. The French can mean both a ball of nutritive substances (like a pill) similar to bolus, but it may also mean a bowl or basin. I believe Stein intended the latter, mainly because I think it is nearer to the truth. I myself feel quite certain about the meaning of the word, because I’ve encountered it once in the Zhijé Collection and several times in the works of the 12th-century Kagyü teacher Zhang Yudragpa, as for instance in the following sentence:

skor phor la ri mo myed na 'byi 'byi tsha tshar myi 'gyur.

I don’t know any other way to translate this than this: 

“If there is no design in the mold (skor-phor), the ball ('byi-'byi) will not turn into a tsatsa.”

— See Zhijé Collection, vol. 2, p. 270.

Perhaps better than any long-winded explanation, this picture ought to tell you what the mold would have likely looked like:

Two tsatsa molds, called tsapar in modern Tibetan

What fell from the sky was (apparently) a dhāraṇī in chapter 12 (or chapter 14, depending on the version; it is absent from the shortest version) of the Golden Light Scripture (Suvarṇaprabhāsa Sūtra). However, it is also possible that the mold was intended to make clay moldings of an image of the particular form of Avalokiteśvara called Cintāmaṇi. It depends on which account you are reading. If I had time and energy to go into this in more depth, I would definitely want to study the chapters devoted to this form of Avalokiteśvara in the Mani Kambum (Ma-ṇi Bka'-'bum) collection.

My point here is that it wasn’t until a century and a half after Eschenbach* that an account of something that has to do (somehow) with the Wish-granting Jewel was said to have fallen from the sky in Tibet. Therefore it will be very hard for us to hold on to the idea that Eschenbach's account would have been inspired by the Tibetan story. Argument over.

(*This statement has to be modified since it proves incorrect; see the comment section below.  October 20, 2011.)

But just to tidy up and tie one loose end, I should say that I’m not 100% sure that there is absolutely *no* Tibetan account that could be correctly translated as saying that a Cintāmaṇi, among other things, descended on the Yambu Lakhang in the Yarlung Valley in very early times. However, van der Sluijs gives (on his p. 6, note 35) only one source supporting this, and I know of none.  I think I can demonstrate that this is not an especially good source for founding any arguments. It appears to be based primarily* on the English translation of Emil Schlagintweit’s book Buddhism in Tibet... (1863, p. 64, where we find the word “gem”), in its turn based on Isaac J. Schmidt’s translation (1829) of the Mongolian-language history by “Ssanang Ssetsen” (for the bibliography, look here). At the moment, I don’t see the profit in pursuing this particular paper trail further, especially if you consider what can happen to translations that go from Tibetan to Mongolian to German to English.

(*Well, he also gives as a source the better-known English translation of the Kun-bzang Bla-ma'i Zhal-lung, which says, at p. 341, that the object in question was "...an image called the Cintamani, representing the body of the Buddhas..."  If you do go to the book [or Googlebook], have a peek at the footnote, which has something amusing and informative to say about how Tibetan scholars differ on what this object really was...)

To wind this down to a close, since I’m nearly out of typing energy, not to mention the mental focus, I’ll just say that our quest for the Grail in Tibet leads to this dead end, or perhaps into thin air.  No jewel fell from the sky onto a Tibetan palace. Even if it had, it wouldn’t have done so soon enough to inspire Eschenbach. Lha Totori is not Titurel. If you believe this conclusion is grievously unacceptable, I hereby challenge you to prove me wrong by coming up with a datable Tibetan source that would demonstrate otherwise. You’ll find me mounted on my trusty steed by the banks of the Tsangpo, lance drawn and ready, not to mention my lustrous shield.

§   §   §

Written resources

Hugh Richardson, "The Dharma that Came Down from Heaven" — A Tun-huang Fragment, contained as chapter 10 in: High Peaks, Pure Earth: Collected Writings on Tibetan History and Culture, ed. by Michael Aris, Serindia (London 1998), pp. 74-81. Translation of a Dunhuang text entitled "Gnam babs kyi dar ma."

Per K. Sørensen, Tibetan Buddhist Historiography, The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies: An Annotated Translation of the XIVth Century Tibetan Chronicle rGyal-rabs gsal-ba'i me-long, Harrassowitz Verlag (Wiesbaden 1994), pp. 137-8 (note 356), 150, 534-5.

Rolf A. Stein, Tibetica Antiqua IV: The Tradition Relative to the Debut of Buddhism in Tibet, contained in:  Rolf Stein's Tibetica Antiqua: With Additional Materials, tr. by Arthur McKeown, Brill (Leiden 2010), pp. 191-230, with the main listing, the one made use of in this blog, found on pp. 220-224. This was originally published in French, under the title "Tibetica Antiqua IV. La tradition relative au début du Bouddhisme au Tibet," Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême Orient, vol. 75 (1986), pp. 169-196. You may be able to access the French version at Persée website (try pressing here).

An example of a clay tsatsa (tsha-tsha)

P.S. The story of the books (etc.) falling on the roof of Lha Totori’s palace was prefigured by the falling of books (the Mahåyoga tantras), in India, on the roof of King IndrabhËti (in Tibetan sources often called “King Dza”).

P.S.S.  One significant point I thought I could make in the blog, basing myself on Stein's essay, got overturned in the comments section, so you had better go ahead and read the comments this time, by which I mean particularly the one from our old and true friend Sam from Early Tibet blog. I’m still a little sore from the well-landed lance blow to my left shoulder, but I think I’ll recover in time for the next jousting season. The main thesis, that no jewel as such fell in Tibet, remains unaffected, as stable as Mount Meru.