Birth and Childhood of Padampa

To judge from the impressive body of Padampa's sayings jotted down by his disciple Kunga and then topically reordered by Kunga's disciple Patsab in decades before and after the year 1100 CE,* Padampa never voiced any autographical narrative. Well, never in all seriousness, otherwise we might need to bring up "The Seven Wonders of the World," a topic I keep thinking to blog about.**

(*The history of the growth, the collection and arrangement, of the Zhijé Collection as a whole was subject for a paper given in 2013 with the long title, “A Tree Gives Testimony on its Own Growth Rings: Arboreal and Other Metaphors for the Underlying Spatio-Temporal Organization of the Zhijé Collection, a Post-1245 CE Manuscript as Far as I Know.” It was never published, although I may post it. **For sure, there are several dozen introductions to texts in the Zhijé Collection, evidently as told by Kunga, some possibly by Patsab, where eulogistic forewords often feature biographical elements, but those are not a subject for today despite their undoubted significance.)

We should speak of one other matter before getting started. I know many people have an emotional reaction to what they might see as historical revisionism. They understandably feel more comfortable with histories that simply add to what they already believe. More seriously, some others may see what I am doing as an unfair attack on the tradition. I have to say, I have for decades been and will always continue to be an admirer of Padampa in particular and the Tibetan forms of Buddhism and Bon overall. 

The tradition has in fact had its internal critics of this thing or that throughout history and I see myself now and then reenacting this critical vein despite myself. It is exercised out of love of truth and respect for bearers of truth and not from spite or mean spiritedness. I hope you will be able to sense this so I won't be made to defend myself unnecessarily along these lines. After all, as far as history is concerned, believers ought to believe in what is believable, and make this a priority, even a demand. Knowing the truth about this or that historical detail of a spiritual lineage can have little or no effect on the effectiveness of its teachings on matters such as prayer or meditation. This being true, at the same time there is no denying that historians in every field are coming to new conclusions about the past all the time, particularly when new manuscripts and artifacts come to light. The revision is not the real problem, it's the motivation we see or imagine lurking in the shadows.

For the sake of those who will not be reading further, for whatever reason, today's blog will stumble toward a conclusion while giving examples of how elements of human memory, moving in and out of oral and written contexts, get kaleidoscoped in the process. Seeing this can optimally result in a brightened contemporary understanding of the historical events the histories meant to convey. My borrowed metaphor is in truth too strong since the changes did not take place nearly so quickly or with all the intricately patterned detail, let alone symmetry, we expect when we look into a kaleidoscope. Let's say the metaphor is a bit over the top and leave it at that.

After putting together that corpus of eight early Zhijé histories I call “The Library,”* one of my first ideas was to examine the two histories of the Kam lineage, found far apart in Ladakh and Bhutan, to see if as seemed likely, they held text in common. Since my first efforts failed me, I went on to use a few online text comparison sites to make sure. I quickly found out that they have practically no common phraseology, and nothing that could be called a parallel passage. But as I hope you will soon see, they do have similarities in the information they contain, something not easily detected by the automated word crunchers. Why? Largely because the proper names are spelled differently, and because words appear in different order. Is it coincidence that these are the sorts of matters we intend to focus on like a laser today?

(*See Tibeto-logic's recent blog “More Than We Imagined: Early Zhijé Histories” for the list. For convenience I number these histories Z1 through Z8, in order of the dates of composition I have determined with more and less certainty for them.)

So let's start with those two brief Kam lineage histories, before looking at the So history and so on, and investigate a little what we can learn from them about Padampa's birth and parentage. Here you see the passage from the Matho manuscript of the Kam [Z2]:

dang po ni rgya gar lho phyogs byed da'i yul nas kan tsi ta zhes bya ba na / khang 'gro ma [~mkha' 'gro ma??] dang shind tu nye ba na / shing [m]khan [?] cig la bu cig btsas nas / bram ze mtshan [m]khan la bstan pas / 'di ni chos sbyor ba'i skal ba ldan ba yin no / zhes lung bstan to / 

Notes on the content: Byed-da in South India must be the be-ta of other sources. I think it just means 'coconut', a descriptive and not a proper name (more on this soon). I do not find "kan tsi ta" in BUDA, although "kan tsi," which I suppose to mean Kañci,* is there to be found (a more correct Tibetan transcription would be kanytsi, but in order to search in BUDA try "kany+tsi" quotemarks included). It may appear to be very near a place named Khang-'gro-ma (this sentence will get more attention later on). There a child was born to a carpenter, the mother is neglected and the parents are neither named nor identified by caste. He was shown to the Brahmin soothsayer and name-giver,** who prophesied, "This one has the good fortune of applying himself to religion."

(*A thriving city in northern Tamil Nadu today. **In Indian traditions the child's destiny and name are intertwined — the name might even be indicated through astrological calculations, but local customs do vary. A remarkable feature of Z2 is that his first naming is postponed until after his studies, when he is named as Paṇḍita Ajitanātha [pan byi ta myi 'pham 'gon po].)

And here is the passage from Bhutan's Kam history [Z5b]:

de la rje dam pa de sku gang du 'khrungs na / rgya gar rdo rje gdan gyi lho phyogs / be ta la zhes bya ba'i yul / grong khyer ka 'ji ta zhes bya ba / shin tu mkha' 'gro ma 'du ba der sku 'khrungs so //

rigs gang yin na / yab shing bzo' mkhan / yum bram ze'i rigs de gnyis kyi sras su sku 'khrungs / de yang skyes ma thog tu bram ze mkhan la mtshan bstan pas / 'di khyod rigs shing bzo' ba ma yin ste / chos byed pa'i rigs su 'ong pas / ming yang 'jig rten mgon po bya bar thogs cig zer skad //

To paraphrase the main information — Here the southern country is called Betala (Be-ta-la),* and the town Kañjita (Ka-'ji-ta).  It was very much a gathering for kandromas.** Here his father is a carpenter, while his mother is a woman of the Brahmin caste.  The Brahmin name-giver denies the child is of carpenter caste and predicts he will instead belong to the Dharma practicing class. It is for this reason he names him Lokanātha, 'Lord of the People.' 

(*The added 3rd syllable la may be explained by a copyist imagining a locative ending was part of the name. I must admit I had lingering doubts if the Tibetan word borrowing for 'coconut' might not have entered the picture only in modern times, but I recently noted an early usage of be-ta, in a context in which the meaning is not in doubt, in one of the Tanjur texts credited to Padampa [or his visions] that reassured me. And this vindicates my rejection of speculations about it being a proper name and somehow devolved from Vidarbha, a leap of faith I was never able to take. Vidarbha, a region where something like Marathi was spoken, has never been regarded as part of south India, has it? South of center, if Bihar is at the center, I suppose.  **Note the very awkward syntax of the adverbial immediately before the word for sky-goers, kandroma... We might think it is a kind of extremely extreme kandroma? We will try to think this through shortly.)

This denial of carpenter caste should be kept in mind.

Even if spellings are different, I believe both Kam histories give the country of his birth as the southern part of India that is, as a whole, given the name 'Coconut.'* with the specific town called Kanjita or Kantsita.  Both give him the childhood name Lokanātha.

Now compare the So lineage history preserved in Drametsé Monastery [Z5a]: 

yul lho phyogs tsa ra sing nga dad pa can gyi gling zhes bya ba mi rigs mi 'gra ba bzhi 'tshogs pa'i sa / skad rigs mi 'gra ba bzhi khrom pa'i gling / gyad stobs po che 'byung pa'i gnas / thugs rje chen pos byin gyis brlab pa'i sa / shin tu mkha' 'gro ma nye ba'i gnas der sku 'khrungs so //

rigs ni bram ze'i rigs / yab ded dpon brtson 'grus go cha / yum bram ze mo spe ra sa / de la sras gsum yod pa'i bar pa rje dam pa 'di yin skad /  [2r] de yang yum gyi lhums na bzhugs pa'i dus su / mi reng (?) dkar po mdung tsam ba cig byung nas / khyod las dpon sras cig btsa bas / des sems can ma [~mang?] phan thogs pa cig yong pa yin / de'i ming mi 'phan mgon po [~mi pham mgon po] bya bar thogs cig gsung skad / 

Here the father and mother are given names for what I think might be the very first time, and both would be of Brahmin caste.  The Father, a seacaptain, is named something like *Vīryavarman in back-translation, but the mother's name Spa-ra-sa presents more difficulties.* Her occupation isn't specified here, while her caste, given as Brahmin, could have been presumed on the basis of her husband's.

(*Perhaps it is Svarasa, with meaning of a pure plant extract. In the following, you see she is identified as an incense maker, and this may make the plant extract more plausible, although this can hardly be settled.  Post-1300 spellings for her name include Sa-ra-sa-ta, Ba-ra-sa-ha, Ra-sa-ha, Sam-ti-ra, Sa-ma-ti-ra, Sa-ma-ti, Sa-mā-dhi and Ya-ra-sa-ha. The Rgya Bod Yig-tshang even has this far outlier: Hangs-ni.)

This history adds new significant information that he had siblings. He was the middle of 3 children.  Here a figure in a dream while his mother was still pregnant (and not the Brahmin name-giver) is the one who awards him his first-given name Ajitanātha (and not Lokanātha).

The Ma lineage history from Drametse (Z5c) is quite abbreviated overall, so if it has fewer details here it isn't surprising. The surprise is that his mother is not only an incense maker by profession, but simultaneously of Brahmin caste. The father is here a Brahmin, and at the same time he is, as he would remain for all of the later biographies of Padampa, a sea captain (a "jewel taker").

The 'Gos-chung history (Z8), in its biography of Padampa, has him born of a shing-bzo-ba, a "woodworker," his mother a Brahmin.  Judging on the basis of the lineage supplied at the end, the author 'Gos-chung ought to himself belong to a Kam lineage. So we might think he would likely adhere to what the other, earlier Kam histories say. So just perhaps we could say that whenever we see a carpenter father, it must be a Kam lineage author. It remains to be sure if this is as true as it seems to be.

In the biography of Padampa found written into the margins of an India-made palmleaf manuscript of the Perfection of Wisdom the carpenter is not to be found, His father is a 'jewel taker,' a seafaring merchant. Unique to this curious text — it could have been scribed anywhere between 12th and 15th centuries — the father was not a Brahmin but a Kshatriya.* This text, one I only learned existed thanks to the kindness of friend Kano Kazuo, deserves close study in the future. Should it be necessary to point out that merchants of any kind ought to belong to the Vaishya caste?

(*The text says rje blon, in this context signifying he was both of Kshatriya caste and a governmental minister of some kind, possibly an ambassador.)

So, meandering down the mountainside path on our way to a few conclusions of variable strengths, let's think a bit about what we have seen so far about the caste, birthplace and parentage, meanwhile introducing a few new bits of evidence: 

Among all the now available biographical accounts of Padampa, there are only three largely unavailable and unrecognized histories of the Kam transmission that say he was from the city of Kanchi (Kāñcī), i.e. Kanchipuram of presentday northern Tamil Nadu. Practically all others— that means the commonly available ones that have so far been used by Tibetanists — agree his birthplace and childhood home was Tsa-ra-sing-ha, a place name never adequately accounted for (I will not go deeply into its perplexities today). For several decades past it was assumed by myself to be in a coastal region of presentday Andhra Pradesh. 

(*Of course it is our first instinct to identify the city of Kanchi as the famous city, but it appears that there is more than one place in Karnataka with a name that resemble it closely enough. I am just saying that the obvious solution may not turn out to be the correct one.)

At the same time there is a particular website that links Padampa and his maternal uncle Āryadeva with the cult of Ayyapa in Kerala.* However, I think there is at least one piece of very strong evidence that would lead us to locate his childhood language area in Karnataka instead.

To get to the evidence I now regard as most compelling we have to walk outside of The Library. We find it in a text revealed by Padampa and in its mid-12th century Tibetan commentary. (Full translations of these two texts are underway.) The root text is a quite cryptic set of over 300 one-liners or, in the unlikely case the word means something to you, monostiches. Here is text and translation of no. 162. Normally when we first encounter these koan-like brain stoppers of Padampa, it is wise to first reflect on the statement for some time before moving ahead to the commentary:

byis pa a ma mthong tshe pang du rgyug pas a lu bor //

byis pa: C bus pa. a ma: C 'a ma. pang: C spang. rgyug pas: C sgyugs pas. bor: C 'bor.

162. When a child sees its mother, it runs to her lap and leaves the alu behind.

This doesn't supply us with great clues about what the intended meaning of alu might be. It was and is a strange name for something outside Tibetan experience.

Number 81 in the commentary expands on this: 

'a mas bus pa brid pa la a lu byin pa de la chags / phyis 'a ma mthong ba'i tshe na a lu bor nas pang du rgyu[g].

When a mother wants to fool her child she gives it an alu, and it gets attached to it. Later on when it sees its real mother it leaves the alu behind and runs to her lap.

Now this alu obviously cannot be a word for 'potato,' since that New World tuber was not grown in the Himalayas before the end of the 18th century. It is equally plain in the context, even more so in the commentary, that alu serves as a mother-substitute, so we might imagine something like a pacifier. In consultation with David Shulman, I can say that the word for 'milk' in Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam is paalu. However, in Kannada it is haalu. 

I had questioned Google A.I. a few months before, and found that in south India there is a baby feeding device typically made of metal called olale. Sometimes colloquially called alu, it is mostly used nowadays for administering medicine. So it just might be used not only for the milk, but more relevant to the Padampa usage, for the instrument made to feed that milk to the baby, likely similar to the one you see here:

If, after further deliberations, this idea proves to be as correct as I am feeling sure it is right now, then his accurate use of the word alu testifies to Padampa's Karnataka origins, only adding support to a modern belief held by numerous Tibetan exiles living there. To my shame and regret, when I was visiting Bylakuppe several years ago, I failed to take the idea seriously. I didn't take up the offer to go there for myself, settled as I then was on the idea Padampa was a Telugu speaker from the opposite side of the subcontinent. People who know me well will know this would not be my first episode of misplaced skepticism. But still, the cave I would have been taken to was on a hill outside the city of Bettalapura, and it might just be, although I never heard it stated, that someone saw Be-ta (or Be-ta-la?) in that city name as proof enough.*

(*But the Padampa sources speak of a country (yul), and not a city, and likewise in certain biographies of Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava that tell of his activities in be-ta'i yul, where it is both paired and clearly distinguished from the country of Singgala [=the island of Sri Lanka]. So a little of my old skepticism remains with me.)

I freely admit that claims on him by the four large south Indian language communities are likely to continue long into the future. I cannot vouch for the importance of this issue, having no cards in the game — well, not anymore — but right now I do believe Karnataka has the more robust evidence in its favor.

So, in order to close off this presentation with a few historiological points I believe all this leads into. This set of some of the earliest historical accounts known to Tibet's Phyi-dar era helps us to argue that historical statements they present tend to be tied to particular lineages. My best example of it: The Kam lineage, and it seems only the Kam lineage, evidently places Padampa's birthplace in Kanchipuram in northern Tamil Nadu and gives his father's profession as carpenter.

As these were largely oral lineages in their earliest phases — we have unambiguous statements about how their teachings were not recorded in written form at first — the historical accounts as we find them today are likely to bear certain marks of oral literature. One of these is the shifting of elements.* I see this in the birth accounts where the element "Brahmin," a caste identity that in the earliest account was only applied to the Brahmin soothsayer, gets attached first to the mother, and then to the father until finally, by the early 13th century we have a general statement about the family's caste status, not only as 100% Brahmin but as a particularly pure type of Brahmin. It is the standard-setting history by Rog Zhigpo (Z5) that first takes this last-mentioned step, listing four types of Brahmins of which the first and foremost is identified as the Brahmin subcaste of both of Padampa's parents.  This purest-of-pure Brahmin subcaste is there called  Gtsang-sgra-can, obviously meant to be Gtsang-sbra-can, used to translates Sanskrit Śrotriya. This seems to indicate the Tibetan author's unexpectedly refined knowledge of the Indian caste system. If so he overlooks the fact that the Śrotriya were Vaidikas, persons whose fulltime duties are rituals and Vedic studies. The Śrotriya would find their purity terminally compromised by engaging in any worldly occupation. We can detect in these earliest written histories a trend to solidify the Brahmin identities of the parents despite their non-Brahmin professional occupations. This is a sign these changes took place in Tibet where people were insecure in their knowledge of Indian caste.

(*Some might call it narrative drift. For modern Buddhist Studies perhaps the most famous example of a shifting or 'floating' narrative element occurs in accounts of the childhood of Siddhārtha. This means the Plowing Episode that sometimes takes place in His infancy and sometimes as a young man. The best discussions of this are in recent works of John Strong. For this and other references, see D. Martin, tr., The History of Buddhism in India and Tibet, Wisdom [2022], pp. 136-7.)

I should be fast to say that not one single text speaks of a father who is both Brahmin and carpenter. But yes, they might say the mother was both incense maker and Brahmin. Still, we can detect the virtual impossibility of an India-born person in those times being both a priestly Brahmin and a member of an occupational class such as carpenter, sea captain or incense maker. Tibetans recounting Padampa's birth story would not have seen or detected the absurdity of the very idea. So it was in Tibetan minds, not Indian, that these memory elements got shifted, jumbled, patched together and elaborated.

In the original account, as far as I feel able to divine what it must have been, the only Brahmin would have been the soothsayer and name-giver.

The incident of Padampa's first naming is another one of the wandering elements, it may be the Brahmin soothsayer who named him soon after birth, it may be a figure in his mother's dream who named him prior to his birth, or it may have been given to him after his childhood studies. And the name itself is not fixed, sometimes given as Ajitanātha, and sometimes Lokanātha.*

(*There is, as you may well object, the possibility he was called both in two acts of naming. I doubt this because no source on his childhood suggests there were two childhood naming events prior to his novice ordination. We should look into and think about this more.)

And we have seen the odd switching of elements in a single sentence about the birthplace that also involves a misreading of a cursive shorthand writing convention, reading skygoer (mkha'-'gro-ma) where trademart or bazaar (khrom, or khrom-pa for merchants or marketers) was more likely the intended word to begin with. The reasoning may be difficult to convey to those Tibetanists who haven't learned the book-cursive scripts with their shorthand writing practices.  If they had they might be able to see how khrom could have been read by a copyist as mkha'-'gro-ma.* The possibility for confusion was also enhanced by the presence of 'du-ba, 'gathering,' a verb often used in association with both marketers and skygoers. The way I read the underlying sentence, it is just commenting on how very crowded with all manner of people the market was in the place of his birth. But we can at the same time appreciate that having skygoers hovering about is the more romantic option.

(*It is at least true in later manuscripts that we sometimes notice the abbreviated writing mro [མྲོ་] for mkha'-'gro, although this is quite odd in dropping the first syllable's root letter, in this case “kh”, making it an exception to normal standards.)

So... I am not quite sure what to say here at the end point of today's blog. I suppose this: As historiographologists, analysts of historical writings, we should not be content with tracing changes introduced in the recopying of manuscripts. There is no denying we need the manuscriptology. But even then we have the added complexity of thinking about the oral memory that came before and at times between the texts sitting on the page or screen before us. (And some written texts, like the sutras on the Perfection of Wisdom were first set down in letters in order to support the continuity of a pre-existing oral recitation practice.) 

The problems orality opens up for us may be many but should not be avoided. True, they may not be readily attacked head on; we only even know they are there when we detect the results in the written texts. In Zhijé studies questions of orality only gain importance when we hear how the Middle Transmissions were initially passed on from mouth to ear and only written down, with much hesitation, in later generations.

I am not that academic who at the first blush of variation or contradiction in a text gets the impulse to forget there ever was a human past and throw out all the written evidence for it. There is so much of that going on in the academy these days it has become tediously normal. I do believe we get closer to the realia and realities of a historical figure or event by virtue of eliminating misguided certainties from the picture (tracing back the error, as I like to call it, tongue firmly in cheek). At this moment I cannot tell anyone with overweening certainty what Padampa's childhood was like, or even where exactly it took place, just offer a few robust suggestions. So many questions remain not asked and not answered. And just when we were thinking we have made a good start at answering some of them.

A couple of random texts

(For more bibliography, refer to the earlier blogs that were mentioned above.)

P.B. Desai, “Buddhist Antiquities in Karnataka,” Journal of Indian History, vol. 32 (1954), pp. 85-92. 

Google A.I. when I consulted it today knew of so few good sources on the history of Buddhism in Karnataka, I thought I would at least offer this one. There are whole books and dissertations on the subject that are easy to locate. It is usually said the earliest local traces of Buddhism are some minor Ashokan inscriptions. Buddhist presence continued through the first millennium CE, and recent epigraphical research indicates its presence into the 16th century. It isn't necessarily of crucial importance in my opinion, to decide if the childhood of Padampa took place in a Buddhist atmosphere or not. It seems likely his family had Buddhist affinities. That his maternal uncle had become a Buddhist monk would indicate this. See also the essay by Mallinson.

Rob Linrothe, “Siddha Stories in Stone: Nath Narratives at Shri Sailam,”  Orientations, vol. 37, no. 2 (March 2006), pp. 99-105. The same author shares on his website a few hundred photos of the stone friezes of siddhas.

James Mallinson, “Kālavañcana in the Konkan: How a Vajrayāna Haṭhayoga Tradition Cheated Buddhism’s Death in India,’Religions [online journal] (2019), in 33 pages. The presence of 10th-century images of divine forms of Buddhas, as well as shared Nath-Buddhist Mahâsiddhas well known in early Zhije, strongly suggests that the Karnataka childhood needs more and more of the kind of careful research and thinking we find in this remarkable essay.

Emilie van Opstall, “Stories in Motion: The Kaleidoscope as Metaphor in Comparative Studies of The Book of Sindbad the Philosopher/The Seven Sages of Rome,” Medieval Worlds, vol. 24 (2026), pp. 4-24.  

The main relevance here is the metaphor of the kaleidoscope, in which the colored 'beads' of remembered elements may be shuffled and reflected in mirrors of new contexts, including new cultural contexts where revised arrangements might be required to make a story fitting for a fresh audience...  This isn't exactly what I see going on in the early Padampa childhood accounts, except in a rather general way. There, too, relatively flexible, extemporaneous orality and literary revisions appear to take turns to produce the transformations we can detect in comparing surviving texts.

 

Richard Shaw, “Srisailam: Centre of the Siddhas,” South Asian Studies, vol. 13 (1997), pp. 161-178.  

On the prakara, the long stone wall with thousands of carvings that include Siddhas, this being the main subject of this article. I should also point to a work by Rob Linrothe on Srisailam. At this point in time my thinking is that Padampa could have known about Srisailam without actually living there, as it had broad regional importance (and this fame and familiarity effectively reduces its value as evidence for geolocating Padampa's place of birth). The dating of the stone carvings is another issue that requires re-examination if we are to go anywhere of significance. Some or all of them made date as late as the 15th century.

George W. Spencer, “Religious Networks and Royal Influence in Eleventh Century South India,” Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient, vol. 12, no. 1 (January 1969), pp. 42-56. On religio-political situation of South India in Padampa's time.

•

The frontispiece 

has two details — the central figure, being Padampa, and the center bottom — of a wonderful painting of the Later Transmission lineage. It includes the teachers before Padampa and the students who came after, along with several divinized forms of the Enlightened One. The Full Pot at the bottom indicates the wealth and depths of the sources the entire lineage grew out of. The tendrils of the vine that grows out of it rise up to frame all the figures depicted in it. 

For a 2011 Tibeto-logic blog on this particular painting, see “A Padampa Portrait Painting: The Middle.” Notice the double Vajra underlying the Full Pot, just like the one that underlies the mandala as well as the universe is cosmogony.  This underlines the weightier symbolism of the Full Pot. It isn't just a cornucopia or wealth symbol. It is source of all that is, whatever that is.*

(*The artistic motif of the inhabited vine, more commonly seen in early Tibetan thangkas, has its own roots in history going back to Gandhara, Palmyra and beyond. For reference, see Tadashi Tanabe's essay “Peopled Vine Scroll in Gandharan Sculpture.” Download more books on Gandharan art here. **The classic essay on the subject of the Full Pot is this one: Sergiu Al-George & Arion Rosu, “Pūrṇa ghaṭa  et le symbolisme du vase dans l'Inde,” Arts Asiatiques, vol. 4, no. 4 (1957), pp. 243-254.)

•

PS: I've been asked with good reason to explain why any of this makes any difference. Well, to stick with the caste issue, if Brahmin-hood were to be taken away from Padampa it would have definite impact on other narratives, as for instance the ones connecting him with the sacramental medicine known as "Seven Times Reborn as Brahmin." I will have to save the reasoning for later, but this association doesn't emerge until the first half of the 13th century. Another issue I haven't addressed yet is the absence in these earliest accounts of some well-known narratives about Padampa's life and childhood continually told until our day. Like the one about his mother's abortion attempt. As they say, there are some stories that are just too good not to tell.

•

PPS: I almost forgot my promise to show that passage about Padampa's own use of the word be-ta with meaning of coconut. It doesn't seem to be much use replaying the discussion in Laufer's Loanwords with its citations of Jäschke and Das dictionaries. We know Tibetan be-ta means coconut (or perhaps more accurately coconut palm) in modern Tibetan vocabulary. It is true it looks as if it were a loan from some north Indian language, but we are in no better position to figure this one out than Laufer was. We will be satisfied if it was a word for coconut that was known to Padampa, and this we can know thanks to a brief passage in ZCK I noticed recently.

be ta'i lo 'bras dus gcig 'char /

The leaves and fruits of the coconut palm appear at the same time.*

It is exactly true what it says, coconut trees put out fruits and leaves simultaneously. Of course the statement hides deeper intentions that are yet to be clarified, someday. But after talking with friend Alexander Zorin, I think it possible we might need to give up the idea that be-ta would have to mean coconut. It may refer to yet another fruit or its tree, since many tropical fruit tries could be said to produce leaves and fruits simultaneously. For present, since we do know that in recent Tibetan sources it does mean coconut, we will leave it at that for now and wait for A.Z. to sort out the plant identification problem.

(*ZCK — ZCK is my invented abbreviation for a one-volume manuscript set entitled Zhi-byed-kyi Chos-skor. It is unpublished, although posted by BDRC as a downloadable PDF (just place “W3CN25705” in the search box at the BDRC site). In today’s blog we only make use of its section with keyletter NA and the floating title Nub-phyogs-su Gyes-pa Brda' Phran Brgya dang Brgyad-cu, with the exact passage at folio 5 recto. The text appears to be unique to ZCK, no other copy has yet appeared. The colophon informs us it was pronounced by Padampa and set down in writing by Kunga. It is one of four compilations of Padampa's metaphorical/ symbolic expressions (some including interpretative keys) that I have been working on in recent times. This reminds me I should be working on them now instead of spending so much time patching this blog together.)

The Oldest History of the Kadampa School?

Dromtönpa
©Israel Museum, photographed by Eli Posner

It is not from want of desire that I have reneged on my duty to post once a month as I too boldly promised twenty years ago. Lately I have been feeling the strain and am doing all I can to make my work space more “ergonomic,” I believe this has helped reduce the deep pain in my shoulder a little, so here we go. This is only a test.*

(*Today’s blog is offered in honor of Helmut Eimer, master of academic research on Atisha, always critical and always helpful to me with research questions, and for this I believe calling him a friend is fully justified. Thanks are owed to José Cabezón for useful information used here.)

If most peoples’ interests could only be made to align nicely with those of us who try our best to read Tibetan literature in the original language, many recent manuscript finds would be making headlines in the mainline news sites of the worldwide web. We tried to survey some of the most interesting ca. 1200 CE textual caches a few years ago. Limiting ourselves to the Matho cache alone, we can find more than enough amazing material to keep us busy and entertained right up until the grim reaper makes his move or until the turn of the coming century, whichever comes first.

That the pre-1200 Matho cache might contain the beginning page of a history of the Kadampa teachers of the Stages of the Path is news so exciting that enthusiasm swells my chest and tries to pop open my skull. After all, it is generally believed that no such history was ever written during the entire era of Kadam flourishing (late 11th to early in the 15th centuries). The first Kadam histories were written in the 15th century when the Gelug School was on the rise. It is as if they were written in retrospect on behalf a monastic tradition that couldn't be bothered to write histories of itself.*

(*Of course much turns around the question of what constitutes a Tibetan historical genre, but I follow what has been said about this in the introduction to Tibetan Histories, its 2020 [2nd] edition available here.)

Yet so far as I know nobody on our planet has written about the fragment in question, v349. One likely reason it has been avoided so far is the script. Most Matho fragments are in early styles of cursive script, some more difficult than the others. The small percentage of non-Tibetan students who have mastered cursive will still struggle with these specific ways of writing it. In fact, everyone will have problems here and there making out the readings, they often require double-checking and rethinking. 

This script situation helps justify providing the transcription—you will see it soon enough—that was made through the pairing of two pairs of eyes. One pair belongs to a talented young scholar from Tsang Arig by the name of Pentsok W. Rtsang, while the other belongs to myself. The idea is that four eyes can better read through the difficulties than two can. Even while we decided to preserve some of its peculiar spelling practices, we have striven to put forward a text that can be (relatively speaking) readily understood. [I have inserted now and then my square-bracketed ways of reading terms and names that may otherwise remain too opaque.] Since the photographs are instantly available on the internet (just tap here and find volume 349), you may consult it with ease in cases of doubt. We see no reason to go into piddling discussions about ambiguous readings, missing ligatures and what not.

Much of what is in this early source is unique to it, or in cases of parallel accounts appears to supply significantly different information. This is just the kind of tinder that kindles the fire of historical investigation. But hey, I didn't start the fire, and don't intend to do so now. I will just note that the story of the expulsion of a monk for having alcoholic beverages is quite different here. It usually happens in Bodhgaya, and not as you find here. The Five Questions presented to Atisha by the ruler of western Tibet is a matter of particular interest, and José Cabezón will soon publish an essay on that very topic that I haven't read but do look forward to. The fragment ends soon after the first meeting of Atisha with Dromtön (in 1044?), but it presumably would have continued with a few 12th-century teachers of the Stages of the Path. I will not give everything away and spoil its surprises, and in fact I decided not to give any Englished version today, so for now my work is done. 

Matho fragment v349 

[Recto of an isolated folio labelled "1" (scan image 1)]

Note on transcription: I sometimes insert in square brackets my own emended readings in cases when I believe it might be helpful. However, easily recognized and systemic "misspellings" are left as is. The paragraphing is my own. There is no title supplied (in early times titles were rare, and title pages practically nonexistent), although there is a statement about the subject to be covered, immediately after the homage statement, 'We bow to the Lamas.' As it promises, 'We shall relate a mere corner of the history of the Stages of the Path teachings that are held in common.' 

For the original transcription by Pentsok, look here assuming the link will take you there.

 

࿓ // ! // bla ma rnams la phyag 'tshal lo // 

thun mong lam gyi rim pa'i // lo rgyus zur tsam brjod par bya // 

de la slob dpon thogs myed kyis 'gon po byams pa la sgrubs pas // lo bcu gnyis nas zhal [m]thong nas byis pa'i rdzu 'phrul gyi stobs gyis dgas ldan [~dga' ldan] du phyin nas // 'gon po byams pa la lha'i drod skad cig byams pa'i chos lnga gsan mngon par rtogs pa rgyan gyi snyan rgyud kyi gdams ngag 'di yang mnyan nas // de nas mi yul du byon tsam na mi lo bcu gnyis song ngo // 

slob dpon thogs myed kyis // slob dpon dbyig gnyen la bshad // 

des slob dpon glog ros stan pa la / des 'phags pa grol ba'i sde [Ārya Vimuktisena] de la / des so so rnam grol sde [Pudgala Vimuktisena] la / des mchog gi sde [Prasena] la / des [']dul ba'i sde [Vinītasena] la / des rnams par snang mdzad bzang po [Vairocanabhadra] la / des gseng ge bzang po [Haribhadra] la / des rin cen bzang po [~rin chen bzang po, Ratnabhadra] la / des bzang po'i mdo la / des gser gling pa [Suvarṇadvīpin] la bshad / de yan cod [~yan chod] sa la gnas pa 'phags pa'i gang zag yin [/] des jo bo rje la bshad / jo bo sbyor lam pa yin gsung[s] / 

Note: I couldn't identify Glog-ros-stan-pa, but José Cabezón suggested it would likely be Blo-gros-brtan-pa (Sthiramati), and this appears to be the correct solution. Of interest here is its statement that, while all the members of the lineage leading up to Jowo Jé were saints with direct vision of the truth, the Jowo himself was a person belonging to the prior and preliminary Stage of Application.

jos 'bi kra ma la shi lar phal rtsen pa'i sde bar [~phal chen pa'i sde par] rab tu byung nas yod pa la / jo bo la pan byi ta (paˆ∂ita) mtshan gsum par ming thogs skad / rab tu byung nas nyes byas phra zhing phra bas kyang ma gos pas gnas [b]rtan 'dul ba 'dzin pa bya bar ming thogs / phyi rig pa dang nang rig pa dang gso ba rig pa dang bzo rig dang / rig pa'i gnas lnga la [m]khas pas pan byi ta chen por yang ming thogs so // gsang sngags kyi rgyud sde bzhi shes yi dam lha'i zhal [m]thong pas rnal 'byor pa chen por yang ming thogs so // 

gnas de na jo bo'i bla ma rta dbyangs chung ngun bya ba gcig yod pas / khong la gangs sngags [~gsang sngags] kyi rdzas cig la chang dgos nas chang gcig khyer nas yong bas / btsun pa kun gyis tshor nas / dge 'dun gros byas pas rta dbyangs chung ngun skrod par byas nas 'gan de chol pa [g]sungs [~srungs? ~rungs?] pas / bla ma na re ra kri ta 'gan de sung ba ci yin gsung [/] 

jo bos drang por bshad pa khong na re [/] bla mas chang kher [~khyer] nas song zer nas de skrod pa'i 'gan de sungs pa [~rungs pa?] yin byas pas / bla ma na re 'o ra kri ta nga la dge 'dun gyis chad pa'i las byar mi rung [/] dge 'dun thugs tsham [~tshal?] na nga rgya sgo la 'gror mi rung bas / lcag ri [~lcags ri] la skras tshugs gcig gsung nas skras [r]tsugs [~gtsug] nas gshegs so // 

jo bos kyang sting nas 'brengs nas phyin / bla mas chu bo 'gang ga la 'ding pa bting nas de'i khar bzhugs nas spyi bo nas rta skad rtser re re bzhud do // 

jo bos grub thob tu [m]khyen nas chu la [b]rgal nas bla ma'i zhal nas 'o ra kri ta de nas tshur ma 'ong gsung ngo // 

jo bos bla ma la zhus pa bla ma lags ngan bu la 'gro sa ni ngan song gsum las med na ci tsug dgyi zhus pas / bla ma'i zhal nas khyod khyod rang gyis [~gi] yul mtha' 'khob du spyugs la sems can gyi don gyis gsung ngo // 

jo bos / log nas thang khob [~mtha' 'khob] bod yul du 'gro ba la bod la phan thogs sam mi thogs / jo mo sgron ma la gsol pa btab pas / jo mo sgron ma'i zhal nas khyod kyis thogs gsung ngo // 

da bod yul du 'gro dgos rno nas yod pa la mnga' ris nas lha bla ma byang chung 'od bya bas / lo tsa ba nag tsho tshul khrims rgyal ba dang / rgya rtsen seng [~brtson seng?] [g]nyis la [g]ser mang po [b]skur nas / khyed [g]nyis kyis pan byi ta [m]khas pa gcig spyan drong la shog gsung bas // khong [g]nyis kyis gsan nas rgya gar du phyin nas da lta pan byi ta su che dris pas / jo bo che zer nas jo bo la khong [g]nyis kyis gser mang po phul nas bod yul du gshegs par zhu ba phul lo gnang ngo [//] jo bos dpe ca [~dpe cha] yang cha cas [~cha chas] su byas nas rgya rtson seng [~rgya brtson seng] sngun la btang bas lam bar du gshi' 'o [~shi'o] // 

°

Verso of an isolated folio labelled "1" (scan image 2)

nag tsho tshul khrims rgyal ba dang jo bo gnyis kyis 'ongs nas me pa la'i yul gyi mang dang gi gnas [b]rtan 'on ba la spyod pa [b]sdus pa'i sgron ma bshad do // 

de nas tho li[ng] du phyin nas bla ma byang chub 'od dang phrad pa dang / lha bla ma byang chub 'od kyis jo bo la dri ba lnga dris pa ni [/] jo bo lags / nged bod la la na re / theg pa che chung nya [~gnyis? ~gsum?] dang po nas yod zer la / la la na re / de ma nges [/] theg pa chung ngu la yang [~mang?] chen po'i blo skye zer / de gang bden pa lags zhus pas [/] 

jo bo'i zhal nas 'o bod kyi pan bi tas chos bsams nas 'dug gyis ngas de la lan gcig phyi [~phyin?] nas bya'is gsung zhing des 'gre yang dri ba de nged bod la la na re / bsgom dgos la / la la na re / sgom mi dgos rtogs pas chog zer [/] de gang bden zhus / 

mang [~yang] nged bod la la na re / thabs shes rab zung du 'brel dgos zer / la la na re / mi dgos ma [~ya?] res chog zer de gang bden / 

bo de sa ta'i bsdom pa'i rten du so sor thar pa'i sdom pa dgos zer la mi dgos zer [/] de gang bden / 

yang nged bod la tshangs par spyod gsang ba shes rab kyi dbang skur gnang zer / la la na re / ma gnang zer [/] de gang bden / de'i lan du byang chung lam gyi sgrol ma [~sgron ma] gsungs so // 

 

de yang dang po theg pa gcig pa'i lan ni / chung ngu 'bring dang mchog 'gyur ba'i skyes bu gsum du shes par bya zhes gsungs so // 

sgom dgos pa'i lan ni / de ltar de nyid goms byas nas / rims kyi drod sogs thob 'gyurd te / rab dga' la sogs thob gyur nas / sangs rgyas byang chung yun mi ring zhes gsungs so // 

thabs shes rab zung du 'brel dgos pa'i lan ni / thabs dang bral ba'i shes rab dang / shes rab bral ba'i thabs dag kyang / gang tshe chi ba [~'chi ba, mchi ba?] zhes gsungs pa / des na nyi ba [~gnyis ga] byang mi [~chi? ~ci?] bya zhes gsungs so // 

bo de sa ta'i sdom pa'i rten du so sor thard pa'i sdom pa dgos pa'i lan ni / so so thard pa ris bdun gyi thog tu sdom pa dang ldan la / bo de sa ta'i sdom pa'i skal ba yod kyis gzhan du myin zhes gsungs so // 

tshangs par spyod pa la gsang ba shes rab kyi dbang gnang pa'i lan ni / gsang ba shes rab dbang skur ni tshangs par spyod par blang mi blang [~bya?] zhes gsungs so // 

dus de tsam na dge bshes ston pa khams na yo ga stod 'grel gsung gyin yod pa la / khams pa'i tshong pa kun na re / stod mnga' ris na jo bo ti pang ka ra bya ba'i pan byi ta chen po gcig byon nas 'dug go zer / dge bshes ston pa dad pa dung skyes nas dpe cha kun mi la byin nas byang lam nas mar byin no // 

de'i dus su jo bo'i zhal nas nga'i ku su li pa gla ba [~zla ba] gsum nas yong gnyis nas yong gcig nas yong tha ma sang yang yong gsung ngo // 

phyis de 'ongs nas phrad ma thag tu gcig la gcig zings kyis 'jus [~'dzus?] so // 

dge bshes ston pas jo bo dang phrad nas ma grongs yan chad du rtsi mar gyi mar me la bzhugs su gcug pa myin pa mun pa la bzhugs su ma gcug go / 

de nas dge bshes ston pas dbus su [g]shegs par zhu phul nas gnang nas mar byon no // mar byon pa'i lam ka'i gnas 'gon thams cad la sngun la bang chen [b]tang nas / sang khyed kyi gnas su pan byi ta chen po gcig 'ong bas khyed sna len [~sne len?] byed dgos byas so // gnas 'gon thams cad kyis sna len byas so // de'i dus su zhabs thog byas tsad la yon tan sna re ma byung pa med gsung ngo // 

dge bshes ston pa dang jo bo gnyis lam bar du nyal tsa na bar du yol bas bcad nas nyal ba la 'or gcig jo bo'i zhal nas ku su li pa gsung nas 'bod pa la / ci dgyi zhus pas nga la da lta rgya gar na slob ma gcig dril bu sil zhing gsol ba 'debs kyi 'dug gsung ngo / des jo bo la mngon par shes pa gsum yod par shes pa yin gsung ngo / 

(Note: The three superknowledges Atisha is credited with are famously found in the Thirty Verses of Praise by Dromtön, verses 17-19; English in Chattopadhyaya's book, p. 374.)

de nas myang stod du yon ston chos kyi dbang phyug la chos bshad pas / 

(The passage below the final line appears to define the three clairvoyances mentioned directly above it, even in the absence of a connecting line: 

gzhan gyi sems dang / lha'i rna ba dang / rdzu 'phrul yul dang.)

[continuation missing]

Bibliographical notes

On the Four Caches, look here. 

For the Matho (མ་སྤྲོ་) cache in Ladakh (ལ་དྭགས་):

There is quite a lot of literature on historical works about the Kadampas in German, English and Japanese by such scholars as Helmut Eimer, Ulrike Roesler, and Maho Iuchi, among others. There is even a very large new volume about Kadam history in Tibetan language. All of these things would have been typed into a long bibliographical list if only I had the energy.

An interesting matter for thought is this: Today the one and only standard account of the lives of the teachers who transmited the teachings on the Stages of the Path is this one —

Tshe-mchog-gling Yongs-’dzin Ye-shes-rgyal-mtshan (1713-1793), Byang-chub Lam-gyi Rim-pa’i Bla-ma Brgyud-pa’i Rnam-par Thar-pa Rgyal-bstan Mdzes-pa’i Rgyan Mchog Phul-byung Nor-bu’i Phreng-ba (1787). 

This monumental work in two volumes is known to have replaced at least one earlier and currently unavailable work on the subject written in the previous century or two. It may be that our Matho fragment represents the original behind them all. For more details on the genre, consult with Tibetan Histories (nos. 295, 462, 539, 1215 & 1218).

It is interesting to consider that a search of BDRC only pulled up one rather close match to the account of the Five Questions, and that is in the perhaps 13th-century Kagyu history by Rdo-rje-mdzes-'od, Bka’-brgyud-kyi Rnam-thar Chen-mo Rin-po-che’i Gter-mdzod Dgos-’dod ’Byung-gnas, “a collection of lives of the successive masters in the transmission lineage of the ’Bri-gung Bka’-brgyud-pa tradition in the Nepal Tibet borderlands,” D. Tsondu Senghe (Bir 1985), in 526 pp. at p, 270 & ff. (this publication said to be “reproduced from a rare manuscript from Limi Dzing Pegyeling”). There is no way to be sure just yet, but is it possible this early Kagyu writer had use of the text the Matho fragment belonged to? We can still ask the question even if we don't at the moment have the ability to answer it.

°

The frontispiece 

is a detail of the central figure of a thangka in the permanent collection of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, no. B68.0239. The name label (not seen here) reads: ’brom rje dge bsnyen chos ’phel la na [mo], or, འབྲོམ་རྗེ་དགེ་བསྙེན་ཆོས་འཕེལ་ལ་ན་མོ།  This indicates that he was a Buddhist layman with the given name Chömpel. This is not his usual name, but a scriptural passage in the Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka Sūtra that contains the name Layman Chömpel is believed to prophesy his future existence. While very early texts often call Dromtön by the epithet Geshé Tönpa (Dge-bshes Ston-pa), his usual given name is Gyelwai Jungné (Rgyal-ba'i-'byung-gnas). 

A note on founderhood

It is more or less the norm to regard the first Tibetan member in an Indic lineage to be the one who founded that lineage. It seems unfair when Indians are not regarded as founders even when they were residing in Tibet. But I am not sure if identifying someone as a founder is such an interesting issue. After all, founders of these lineages had no idea they were founding anything. They were just teaching Buddhist Dharma. Dromtön was not the only disciple of Atisha, but he stood out because of his large role in founding Reting Monastery in 1056. It was only by the year 1075 or so Tibetans became conscious that there was such a school as the Kadam that had a founder (see the English of the Blue Annals, p. 269). Padampa, when in Tingri during the last two decades of the 11th century, was well aware of the Kadam as something that existed in Central Tibet (this confirms the statement in the Blue Annals). He had critical words for them, but more on that another time. Of interest is a relevant passage from the Golden Rosary of Lives of Narthang that basically says all the monastics and laypeople who came to take refuge at Nyetang [while Atisha still lived] were called Refuge Takers (Skyabs-'gro-ba), and only later on came to be known as Kadampas (Bka'-gdams-pa).

སྤྱིར་བན་སྐྱ་ཐམས་ཅད་སྐྱབས་འགྲོ་ལ་གཉེ་ཐང་དུ་སྐྱབས་འགྲོ་བ་ཞེས་གྲགས་བཀའ་གདམས་པར་ཕྱི་ནས་གྲགས་པ་ཡིན་གསུང་། 

A note on some names of Atisha

On another matter, here I have used "Atisha" as the name by which he is best known to an international audience. There has been a decades-long discussion about how Atisha should be properly spelled and interpreted, initiated by Helmut Eimer who concluded "Atiśa" (with no length mark on the "i") is correct. After long years of hesitation, the international scholarly community began to follow his lead in leaving off the length mark. Recently there has been a move that I basically agree with (even while I make no demands) to start spelling his name in the form it likely was originally, which is something like Adhesha (some early Tibetan texts spell it A-dhe-sha or the like). I have been keeping some notes about this in Tibskrit. I will just copy it here, with the intent to provoke further thinking, not to settle the issue:

Kano Kazuo* has a discussion of what might possibly be the more original form of his name, Adhīśa, actually attested in Tibetan script form as A-dhe-sha, or [just possibly] A-rhe-sha). Jo-bo A-dhe-sha is attested in NTSP,** section NGA, fol. 76r.6 (and it's used in an Indian episode to refer to Atiśa). I later noticed more occurrences in the Snar thang gser phreng (digitally typed version) at fol. 132v: ston pas a dhe sha khu ston gyis mi gtong bas thabs legs kyis bgyi 'tshal (other instances on fol. 135r, 147v, 149r, 156v). But I have wondered if this is possibly not meant as a proper name at all, but just the Sanskrit ādeśa, like upadeśa a word for deeply spiritual instructions. On the other hand Adhīśa, 'Supreme Lord,' is still today a possible boy's name in India that often appears in the form of Adheesh. I was also thinking that Adhīśa could be the very thing that was calqued in the Tibetan form Jo-bo Rje. Well, yes, that would make the combination "Jo-bo Rje A-ti-sha" oddly redundant, wouldn't it?

(*Kano Kazuo, "The Transmission of Sanskrit Manuscripts from India to Tibet: The Case of a Manuscript Collection in the Possession of Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna (980-1054)," contained in: Carmen Meinert, ed., Transfer of Buddhism Across Central Asian Networks (7th to 13th Centuries), Brill (Leiden 2016), pp. 82-117, at p. 83. **Mchims Nam-mkha'-grags (1210-1285), Snar thang gser 'phreng [a descriptive rather than an actual title], a manuscript supplied at TBRC no. W2CZ7888.)

More Than We Imagined: Early Zhijé Histories

 

I know this must look like a shallow dip into deep and cloudy waters. Perhaps it is just that. I woke up one morning with an odd idea. I thought of constructing a list that would form the basis for a small library of Zhijé lineage histories prior to around 1300 CE. Given that time restraint, I eventually narrowed in on about eight items. In line with the larger Tibetan Histories bibliography, they were placed in chronological order by date of composition.* I have to say, it was a lot of work. I began to wonder, why put all that effort into making a list not guaranteed to be useful or inspiring to all that many of us on our blue planet? 

Oh, well. There won't be any grand conclusions about the historical significance of these history books in today's blog. But yes, I do plan to use them as a basis for another one about Padampa's birthplace and childhood, just not quite yet. It shouldn't be too surprising if looking at the earliest histories makes us reconsider what the later ones have been telling us. But more on that later, since my ideas are still in the testing phase.**

(*I suppose my initial impulse came out of a need to integrate them into Tibetan Histories in a future edition. The 2020 expanded 2nd edition is here for free download. **Oh, and not to forget, I need to write down why I now believe the date of Padampa's death must be moved back by 12 years, from the 1117 you see everywhere to 1105 CE. Not as trivial a move as it may seem.)

 

To be short and concise, I will refer to the list and the histories listed in it as a single entity with capitals: "The Library."

Before getting too serious about the histories in The Library, a very rapid review with the help of a slide I've shown before. It outlines the Middle and Later Lineages that descended from Padampa. 

For present purposes we can limit ourselves to the three major Middle Transmissions, leaving aside the three minor ones. And we can ignore all but the Kunga lineage of the Later Transmission. That means just four transmissions — the Ma, So, Kam and Kunga — make up the subject matter of The Library in its entirely. 

So, here you see the first four in The Library made up of eight items. A few words about each one and our time is over.

—Z1—

I justify putting the women's history, a collective biography of Padampa's woman disciples, as number one simply because it is the first discrete titled historical text that appears in the entire Zhijé corpus known to me. Indeed it is to be counted among the dozen earliest Phyi-dar (roughly post-1000 CE) Tibetan history-genre texts we know of. Composed by Kunga, its composition ought to predate his death in 1124. It exists in a Matho Monastery fragment (more on Matho in a minute) scribed before 1200. It comes down to us in basically two versions, one that combines precepts with biographical information, and another with biographies only. Our oldest datable textual witness, the fragment in Matho, belongs to the former group, combining biographical information with precepts.

Here I display before your eyes a sample of the Matho fragment without saying more for now, just in order to impress on you the somewhat mind blowing fact that we do have a pre-1200 manuscript. For more, I can send you back to a recent blog on the subject.*

(*See “Women Disciples of Padampa: Very Early Ladakhi Zhijé Fragments from Matho,” June 06, 2024.)

—Z2—

Now for no. 2. Astounding but true, also found nested among the Matho fragments is a fairly complete untitled history of the Middle Transmission's Kam (སྐམ་) lineage. Unlike most of the Matho fragments that are in truth fragments, this one is in a still-intact booklet format, just that both beginning and end are missing. As it is a Matho text, its scribing and therefore necessarily its composition were both prior to 1200.

—Z3 & Z4— 

I will say little about 3 and 4 in my list. No. 3, dating to late in the 12th century, is arguably only the longer of many historical forewords, both earlier and equally early, in the Zhijé Collection (so perhaps I should not have included it at all), while no. 4 is the best known of the early Zhijé histories as its content is largely copied into the Blue Annals, long available in English translation.

—Z5—

So I will move ahead to my number 5, the set of Middle Zhijé histories preserved in eastern Bhutan at Drametsé Monastery. Although there are three distinct and quite short texts, I have bunched them all together under the same number in The Library, distinguishing them by adding letters a, b and c if needed.

The rough date of composition of all three of these small Middle Lineage histories is surely early 13th century, perhaps even the first quarter of the 13th century. I have written a blog essay about the Ma (རྨ་) lineage history, so will not discuss its provenance and authorship again here.*

(*Middle Zhijé in Four Matho Fragments, posted July 27, 2025.)

 

I will just say I think it possible the Drametsé manuscript as a whole was directly scribed in the pre- or early-Mongol era, and is not a somewhat later copy. It is difficult at this point to be state firmly.

It looks like this in the photographs taken at Drametsé Monastery by the team of Karma Phuntsok under the British Library sponsored Endangered Archives Project (try this link).

—Z6—

No. 6 in The Library is something quite unknown to Tibetology and Tibetan tradition alike. It suddenly came to my attention during the winter months of 2024 when I had the good fortune to be enabled to spend some winter weeks in Rome looking at the Tucci Tibetan collection in the reading room of the IsIAO.*

Just two days before my departure, Elena de Rossi Filibeck gave me an offprint of an article she had published. There, in a footnote on its first page, was a title I immediately recognized as a work of Padampa. For an entire day I thought I ‘discovered’ it, but this turned out to be untrue, as Elena had already done a complete catalog on this manuscript set that she then freely and generously shared with me. This manuscript set, too, has been subject of a Tibetologic blog.** 

(*If you wish to explore the Giuseppe Tucci collection, your constant companion will be Elena de Rossi Filibeck, Catalogue of the Tucci Tibetan Fund in the Library of IsIAO, in 2 volumes. The fresh new book by Michela Clemente promises to answer the questions we have about how Tucci got his books: In Search for the Provenance of the Books of the Tucci Tibetan Collection. **See “Padampa in the Vatican?” March 22, 2024.) 

 

—Z7—

Just briefly, I would like to say that the 1277 history by Nyedowa (1268-1328), no. 7, is of a respectable length, and written by an author of not just this, but two other intriguing histories, one on the history of medicine,* and another on the Kālacakra Tantra.

(*On Nyedowas's medicine history, see this Tibetologic blog. The study by Brambilla on his Kālacakra history is not yet published.)

—Z8—

I suppose the biographies authored by Chu-sgom-pa ought to be dated to around 1300 with question mark. The composer has no known dates and a problematic identity; I doubt he has to do with the 'Chus-pa sub-lineage that anyway preceded Zhigpo. This is brief and contains only minimal sketches on Padampa and so on, so I leave it aside for the time being.

I continued the listing with more of the still not well enough known, unavailable or undatable materials. Our set of eight isn't set in stone. I even went on to list some newly available histories that were composed after 1300. I will not describe any of these other texts today. I imagine you may find more interesting some reflections instigated by this early body of historical literature. Next time, my friends, next time.

Postscripts

As you may have noticed in the opening slide, this is part of a presentation, since revised, originally meant for the International Association for Tibetan Studies meeting that had been scheduled to take place in Kathmandu in late August 2026. Due to inter- and intra-miscommunications of Beijing and Kathmandu there was an episode of political ball fumbling resulting in the in-person conference getting cancelled and moved onto Zoom. The local Nepalese press and, later on, the international news stories about the cancellation were in large part off the mark and were indeed part of the problem. No, Beijing did not demand the conference be cancelled. She was planning how best to leverage the IATS — the world's only truly international conference on Tibet — in the interest of mainstreaming her false state narrative about Tibet and his history. For a discussion of all this, one that I believe to be largely correct in its assessments, see Robbie Barnett's essay: "Cross-border Interference or Garbled Messaging: China, Nepal, and the Cancellation of the World's Largest Tibetan Studies Conference." Look here for it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I intend to put up the full texts of The Library eventually. It nears completion, and as soon as it is in shape to share I will link to it here. With OCR busy doing so much to make Tibetan texts searchable in some degree, it is still just a fact that so many pre-Mongol-era Tibetan works, particularly those we now have in cursive manuscripts, are not yet searchable. That means transcribing them is something Human Skilled Intelligence* is needed to do, either from scratch or by skillfully correcting the substandard job OCR makes of it.** Besides, good transcriptions can then be put to use as "training data" so in the future the not-so-super intelligence we will continue to understand as being artificial can possibly get a little better at doing what it does. Even with all our credible doubts, might this massive accumulation of knowledge bring something beneficial to living sentient beings? Is that naive?

(*I didn't invent the HSI concept, but I hesitate to advertise it by giving out links until I know more about it. It appears to be free, but there is the ever present danger of monetization. Everywhere, that is, except here in Tibeto-logic blog with its general rule that nothing unfree will be put on offer.)

(**That its output is substandard everyone has to know, including the experts tasked with developing Tibetan cursive OCR. Take as witness the recent Zoom presentation by Rachael M. Griffiths, “From Manuscript to Searchable Text: A Computational Pipeline for Unlocking the Pagan Tibet Corpus.”*** Among its conclusions is this one: Human effort and expertise cannot be replaced.)

(***I supply the full title here so you can search for it, as it may soon be posted online.)