Crazy Wisdom’s Tenuous Tibetan Background

Agathon, mad saint of Mt. Athos, 1925

“The job of an artist, the work of an artist, is not to do with what we know. The artist is like a fool, like an idiot, going on a journey to discover something.”   

 — Anish Kapoor 

ཡེ་ཤེས་འཆོལ་བ།  YE SHES ’CHOL BA  

We hear it often repeated that the just-given  Tibetan phrase underlies Trungpa Chögyam’s “Crazy Wisdom.” Do a Schmoogle search for it as well as its English version, and you’ll find plentiful references. I say it would better be translated as Full Knowledge libertinism, or Enlightened Awareness profligacy. It’s as if the post-Enlightenment knowledge, or Full Knowledge, accomplished by the Buddha were to go on to fall into disorder or disarray, or just get wasted. Traditional Tibetan texts know nothing of this term. This may be proven by all who will search through the extremely extensive TBRC/BDRC database. The reason for its absence? It was made up as a plausible ‘back translation’ of English “Crazy Wisdom,” in a move to lend it authority and authenticity.*

(*For further details about where and how far Trungpa went with it, see David DiValerio's book The Holy Madmen of Tibet, p. 239 ff.) 

It is interesting to note what appears to be one independent 20th-century witness to the phrase (and the one and only instance that a TBRC database search turns up) in the works of Dongag Chöki Gyatso (མདོ་སྔགས་ཆོས་ཀྱི་རྒྱ་མཚོ་ 1903-1957). Examined more closely, the context cannot be made to support Trungpa’s usage, and so we may safely dismiss it as a “false positive.” 

Padampa Sangyé never used the term, not surprising at all since nobody did before the 20th century. Still, even some of the most highly esteemed Tibetan and Tibetan-style teachers of our day go on to speak of it as traditional, occasionally naming Padampa as an instance of it, even though it has the distinctive scent of a newly reinvented modern reincarnation of what was once significantly different. One may be inclined to insist that there is crazy wisdom, and then something else called crazy wisdom. But with the proviso that there really is no Tibetan term behind it, what would be the point of pressing the matter further?

For those true believers out there who still insist on buying it, I’d like to unload my collection of Tibetan Singing Bowls. I see little sense in ringing them anymore, and I like to think I can spot an opportunity when one bites my nose.

But not so fast...

I have a brief answer to those who adamantly oppose the contemporary employment by spiritual mentors or psychological counselors of any counterintuitive methods regardless of their potential effectiveness. I wonder if they are ready to say that medical practitioners should give up surgery. Think about it. Surgery is no doubt harmful in its own way and need it be said very invasive, violating our personal space so much more than gentle herbal elixirs and ointments do. It can take us a great deal of time to recover from the physical and emotional traumas. And as is well known surgery far too often results in serious injuries of its own, even death. So let’s take surgery out of the hands of the physicians.* Perhaps we could go further, and take therapeutic massage away from them as well. It may not cut into us, but it sure does hurt, and in precisely the place where it hurts they press far too hard, and it takes too much time to recover.** Oh, and not to mention shock treatments, even if they are those supposedly more precisely targeted 21st-century types of electroconvulsive therapies we’ve been hearing about. Do the benefits justify the pain, the temporary loss of autonomy and time, not to mention the healing process that comes after the trauma of treatment? I hope I'm following the logic rightly. I think I am. Are the physicians necessarily abusing their power every time they cut us, press into us, or shock us? Should we forbid them their most effective means of treatment? 

Relax, I’m not getting doctrinaire here: if any person we meet in the street, even if that person is a surgeon, tries to attack us with a sharp weapon we would be right to dodge their blows and call for backup. On the other hand, I’ve never heard of a man on the operating table snatching the scalpel from his physician’s hand and shouting, “You stop right there! Don’t you dare cut me or I’ll have you arrested for assault with a deadly weapon.” No. We submit to the doctor because we know it’s needed. 

If we’re in fact content with our lot as puppets or slaves to the impulsive or habitual thoughts that drive us to do badly and feel badly, no problem. If drugs are sufficient to deaden us to them, no problem either. Either way Buddhism has diminished and lost much of its necessity. Just give up the struggle and take the drugs, it’s your choice, isn’t it. Well, isn’t it?

(*In the histories of Tibetan medicine it is said that during the imperial period Tibetans did just that. They removed surgery from the medical toolbox on account of one single mortality. **I confess to speaking with a degree of hypocrisy here, since I also do my best to rely on herbal extractions and ointments, avoiding as far as humanly possible the poisons and blood lettings offered by modern medicine... at the same time I much appreciate the relief that results from the pain inflicted during massage treatments. I can’t explain myself to myself, sometimes... Well, not in a way I find entirely coherent, or applicable to every occasion. I’ve said my piece.)

 

A couple of things to read

“Iurodivye [юродивый]: Fools for Christ,” a blog posting at CityDesert (January 16, 2014).

Pasang Yontan Arya, “External Therapies in Tibetan Medicine: The Four Tantras, Contemporary Practice and a Preliminary History of Surgery,” Chapter 4 of: Theresia Hofer, ed., Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine, Rubin Museum of Art (New York 2014), pp. 32-89. 

My note: Although cataract surgery has its own history in Tibet and there are literary traces that other types of surgery were done here and there in more recent centuries, in general surgical procedures were abandoned in around the year 800 CE because of the death of Emperor Mune Tsenpo’s mother following heart surgery. On these points, see page 85 and following.

Levi Asher, “When Hippies Battle: the Great W.S. Merwin/Allen Ginsberg Beef of 1975,” posted here on November 17, 2005. An interesting recounting of events on the night of The Party. A few of the readers’ comments are more revealing than the essay itself.

Thomas Cattoi, “Pussy Riot and Chögyam Trungpa: Reinventing Crazy Wisdom for Post-Modernity,” Journal of Dharma Studies, vol. 3 (2020), pp. 59-70, online publication. Sadly, you might have to cross over a paywall to get to it. Why is open access such a pseudo-problem, and who says somebody has to fork over a lot of money in order to make things free? To be honest, now that I’ve managed to access it, I can’t tell you what its point is exactly. Is it that outrageous actions are disruptive? And that something good might possibly come of it? Don’t we know this? Don’t most of us make use of this practical wisdom from time to time?

Tom Clark, The Great Naropa Poetry Wars: With a Copious Collection of Germane Documents Assembled by the Author, Cadmus Editions (Santa Barbara 1980). About the now famous drinking party in which a well-known modern poet and his companion suffered serious humiliation at Trungpa’s command. You might be able to borrow it from archive.org if it isn’t checked out already. There is a still-growing body of literature on Trungpa Chögyam and the people who gathered around him. Academic theses are being written, including one with a thesis that Canadian military returning from Iraq would not have suffered from PTS syndrome if they had only been trained in Trungpa’s “Shambhala Warrior” program. Oh really... warning bells at so many levels. Anyway, I won’t attempt a full bibliography today.

Georg Feuerstein, Holy Madness: Spirituality, Crazy-Wise Teachers, and Enlightenment (Revised and Expanded Edition), Hohm Press (Prescott AZ 1996).  The title when first published in 1991 was Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of Crazy-Wisdom Adepts, Holy Fools, and Rascal Gurus. It may seem to be toned down a bit, which would have been good and probably also wise. At p. 344 (as you must know by now, the bit calling crazy wisdom a “straight translation” is off, and we’re left wondering if he meant to say that it was the Tibetan or the English that was first coined) he says:

“... the expression [crazy wisdom] was apparently coined by the late Lama Chögyam Trungpa, whose crazy-wise exploits are well known in Western Buddhist circles and beyond. “Crazy wisdom” is a straight translation of the Tibetan phrase yeshe cholwa. Trungpa’s coinage was adopted by at least two American-born teachers to characterize their own teaching style—Adi Da and Lee Lozowick. The expression is composed of two concepts that on first glance appear to be mutually exclusive...”

My note: I checked, and I see this passage was not part of the 1991 first edition. I confess I haven’t read the new one all the way through, but it seems this considerably expanded edition has further pressed on that no doubt on occasion difficult-to-define boundary between [1] what’s spontaneous enlightened activity that helps people and [2] what’s plain self-interested evil likely to hurt all concerned. Unlike some “Tibetan Buddhists” I know of, I think we would be right to err on the side of goodness and mercy. And, it may go without saying, it is better to share than to impose. In short, I think he widened his net far too far by including some of the figures he does include. And that goes for the author’s own guru, Da Love-Ananda (aka La Tidah, Adi Da, Bubba Free John etc.) who taught that giving yourself new names whenever you like is just plain fun and not confusing at all, as well as Gurdjieff and Crowley. I believe the last-mentioned is the same one famed for saying “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” Following this advice will indubitably show thyself as the total dick thou art. See if you can go to this review in Tricycle written by Stuart Smithers for similar sentiments expressed more nicely. But I have to say, the great virtue of Feuerstein’s book is to find some kind of method in the apparent madness of saints in the whole world, not just a small part of it.

Enrique Galván-Álvarez, “Translating the Translator: Identity and Revision in Trungpa Rinpoche's Buddhism(s),” IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship, vol. 2, no. 1 (Spring 2013), pp. 111-126. I found some very useful references in it.

Priscilla Hunt and Svitlana Kobets, Holy Foolishness in Russia: New Perspectives, Slavica Publishers (Bloomington 2011). This book includes one section, at pp. 41-148, that I regard as particularly valuable, a translation of A.M. Panchenko, “Laughter as Spectacle: Holy Foolishness in Old Russia.” There are remarkable parallels with the early sources on Padampa I’d like to talk about another time in some other blog.

Anish Kapoor, “Modi’s Government Fears Culture — and the Freedom of Spirit it Spreads,” The Wire (July 21, 2022).

D. Martin, “Crazy Wisdom in Moderation: Padampa Sangyé’s Use of Counterintuitive Methods in Dealing with Negative Mental States,” contained in: Yael Bentor and Meir Shahar, eds., Chinese and Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism, Brill (Leiden 2017), pp. 193-214.  For an addition and edition of a relevant Tibetan text, see this blog entry. Despite the well-known chapter of the Crazy of Tsang's Songs of Milarepa which dates quite late, there isn’t really any statement evincing a positive evaluation of madness or craziness per se in the certifiably early works associated with Padampa and the Zhijé school that I’ve been able to find (I’ll keep looking). What we do find are some rare and mostly soto voce discussions of counterintuitive methods (gya-log), methods that may not be crazy in the least, at least upon closer inspection.

John Riley Perks, The Mahâsiddha and His Idiot Servant, Crazy Heart Publishers (Putney VT 2004). You may want to read this book about serving as butler and personal attendant of a demanding master ahead of time to help you decide if this is the kind of thing you would like to volunteer for. Then again, this is not something for the prudish or faint of heart. So maybe just leave it alone. I was particularly bemused to read how, like Prince (now King) Charles, the Rinpoche had to have the toothpaste squeezed onto his toothbrush ahead of time, and just so. Oh, my... How disabled can an able-bodied person get?

Ed Sanders, “The Party: A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist Seminary,” Boulder Monthly (March 1979), pp. 24-39. A scan might be downloadable here. The author was a member of The Fugs, which says something. You might prefer the color scan, with inclusion of the interview with Allen Ginsberg, here (but no, it's not downloadable).

Suzannah Showler, “Crazy Wisdom: A Love Story.” Posted at Hazlitt (November 24, 2020). Whatever you might be thinking during the reading, admit this at least: the words and graphics are all snap and sparkle: https://hazlitt.net/longreads/crazy-wisdom-love-story.

Terje Sparby, “What Stands in the Way Becomes the Way: Dual and Non-Dual Approaches to Meditation Hindrances in Buddhist Traditions and Contemplative Science,” Religions, vol. 13 (2022), in 19 pages. Easily available online (just search for it), this brand new article indexes quite a range of Buddhist teachers’ ideas concerning useful ways to counteract obstacles, or how obstacles can be made to serve as stepping stones on the Path. I’m not convinced anything is gained by adopting the dualism of dual versus nondual, as is done here. But after all, as a dialectical tool of analysis it doesn’t get in the way all that much. Still, I do sense traces of Vedantic Advaita vs. Dvaita, and I don’t see Buddhists talking like that in any discussions about what is basic (as a dialectic to build upon). What does concern me is 21st-century youngsters finding ways to justify going about life with all the wickedness they can muster. That’s not a good direction.

Robert Woods, “Buddha-Gate Scandal and Cover-up at Naropa Revealed,” Tibetan Review, vol. 14, no. 7 (July 1979), pp. 17-18, 21.  You should be able to find it reproduced on this page belonging to Rob Hogendoorn.

Getty Images

Even more as if that weren’t enough

The editors of Inquiring Mind held an interview with the late Steven Goodman of the California Institute of Integral Studies, entitled “Wisdom Crazy” that could be worth your while. It ought to be here: 

https://www.inquiringmind.com/article/2102_12w_goodman/

There is also Trungpa Chogyam’s own book bearing the title, and ditto a rather recent film about his life where he literally rides off on a white horse at the end,* but you can find those on your own. If you are really crazy and seriously lacking in the requisite wisdom you may want to purchase a volume called Crazy Wisdom made up entirely of “curated” Wikipedia entries that you could have found on your own without forking over the bucks for it. It’s out there, believe you me. Oh, and there is the Wikipedia entry “Divine Madness.” It displays some of the problems we’ve grown to expect from authorship by a conglomerate. Just wait until AI takes it over and gloms the universe of knowables up even more.

(*If you can find a way to see the movie, fast forward just about three minutes into it to hear Trungpa’s own voice explain how crazy wisdom is a translation of ye-shes chol-ba, while the latter could, he says, be translated as ‘wisdom gone wild.’ He immediately goes on to recalque his creatively back-constructed [རང་བཟོ་] Tibetan as “craziness gone wisdom.” Fine and good, I suppose, even if not good English is made to translate something invented. Still, I think it could just as well have been translated as ‘erring [on the side of] Full Knowledge.’ That sounds perfectly workable even if hardly doable.)

Not one that’s been viewed by many, I could recommend a serious video entitled “Saints, Scholars, and Provocateurs: Chogyam Trungpa and Buddhism in the Twenty-First Century,” filmed at Harvard Divinity School on July 9, 2013. It’s here.

• Back in 1993, the 14th Dalai Lama termed crazy wisdom “new vocabulary,” and if you ask me His Holiness could not be more on the mark. For the reference, see Stefan Larsson, Crazy for Wisdom, Brill (Leiden 2012), p. 9. Oh, and read the book, too, if you can find the time.

• If you are pressed for time, see this video with the title “Dalai Lama on Chogyam Trungpa,” for statements by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama as well as Tenzin Palmo, the Jetsunma. You’ll likely recognize a number of other people in the audience, including Buddhist teachers of different nations and traditions. It took place 30 years ago, back in 1993. The continuation is here. But you might prefer the very long version of the same conversation, here.

• A note on that proper name: Chögyam Trungpa (1937 or 1940 to 1987) has behind it the original Tibetan spelling  དྲུང་པ་ཆོས་རྒྱམ་, Drung-pa Chos-rgyam, a slightly shortened version of Drung-pa Chos-kyi-rgya-mtsho. As a child he was a recognized as a reincarnated Lama associated with Zur-mang Monastery in eastern Tibet. He sometimes bears the fuller name Zur-mang Drung-pa Chos-kyi-rgya-mtsho, being the eleventh incarnate of Zur-mang monastery’s Drung-pa line. For a list of all twelve, look here.

§   §   §

The Shell of Fools (in which foolish hopes create an illusion of smooth sailing to an entirely imaginary destination)

Well, at least that is what I imagine this picture is about. It could just represent the appetites bottled up inside, or are they nurturing some hope to find freedom from their shell? I just don’t know, even if I do see sangsara or, to speak Blakean, the “world of generation” in it, both its possibilities and its discomforting* limitations:

An engraving with added hand coloring. Source: Johann Theodor de Bry (1561-1623), Emblemata saecularia, mira et iucunda varietate saeculi huius mores ita exprimentia (Frankfurt 1596).

(*Our contemporary self-help seminars and health clinics often make use of what would appear to be Buddhist-derived techniques, tucking a few pillows around the sore spots to make our stay in the clam-shell more tolerable, ‘dealing with the stresses of modern life,’ ‘healing relationships,’ ‘finding fulfillment in work,’ and the like. I would think that actual followers of the Buddha toss those palliative pillows out and get to work on reaching the other shore regardless of difficulties. Then they might begin to implement the union of wisdom and method that gives Bodhisattvas of the Great Vehicle their definition.)

§   §   §

Discussion: An Instant Response from Jan-Ulrich Sobisch:

Dear Dan,

I could comment on your “defence” of using counterintuitive methods based on your comparison with surgery, particularly your sentence “We submit to the doctor because we know it’s needed.”

Do we? If we did, that would be a good point to make. However, do we know? Or isn’t it more that we trust that the doctor knows what he (or she) does and that the science behind it is solid?

Now it is an analogy! People go to the Rinpoche and trust that what he does is based on great wisdom and skill. The problem, however, is: Do we have a solid basis for forming that trust, or is this trust built on something like projection?

The science behind surgery can be checked, but how to check projection?

Another important aspect in the immediate context of this is “charisma.” I understand it here as “attribution of outstanding knowledge and skill by so-and-so on so-and-so.” Now, if you watch (in youtube) the ‘documentary’ “Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche” (Shambhala), you can see how charisma is built. There is for example the story of the servant who “personally saw” how the Rinpoche, after apparently being too drunk to teach, suddenly became totally sober in the elevator. Did he really see it? We have to trust him that he did. Or does he retell a story of someone else, having appropriated it to himself long ago? Or has he built himself a memory (a process of which we hear so much in recent years – and at least I can say of myself that in hindsight, I can see how many times I did that myself). In other words, has he told the story so often that the filling of the logical gaps became something that felt like a memory to him? 

Or we can see the super successful therapist talking about her sexual encounters with the Rinpoche (when she was a young and, of course, stunningly beautiful woman), which were, of course, liberating her, so that now, she is enabled (ennobled?) to pass on the wisdom, which made her a great success in the scene.

And so on. In short, I doubt that the analogy is solid. Or that it provides what you may have thought it provides.

BTW, while I believe that Feuerstein’s book is mostly worthless (I did read most of it!), I am quite impressed by DiValerio’s book. In short, my argument here would be that it is useless to talk, write or think about the possible intentions of Tricksters, Fools, Madmen, or Saints, simply because we cannot know (and not because we cannot fathom!), but it is much more useful to investigate the social or socio-historical aspect of these people and things: How did they fit into the situation that they found themselves in?

I hope this was interesting to you.

Best wishes,

jan

Words New and Old: An Unknown Glossary

I ought to warn you, already decades ago I submitted a paper about Tables of Contents as a Tibetan literary genre. It was finally published, but I still get push-back for it from people who think they know me and assume I must be joking. I just have to assert my sincerity and go on telling things as I have learned to see them. 

The spectrum of Tibetan literary genres is distinct from what we know in the modern Anglophone world. Things were divided up differently. There is no one-to-one correspondence to be found. Really, if you think about it, there never was a Tibetan novel, not until quite recently, just as the Anglos never had a namthar. Anyway, what does ‘literary’ mean? Is there such a thing as a minor literary genre? A sub-genre? If we’re going to go on splitting things up and then analyze why it was done... We’ll never finish work for the day if we have to answer all those types of questions.

So here we are delving into a different Tibetan genre we’ll call Old-New Glossaries. The title above already tells you the one we’ll talk about is unknown, but Laufer had heard about it, so others probably did, too, I just haven’t found evidence. Its poetic title is The Shining of Seven Horses. In case the metaphor doesn’t work on you, and we have to accept that possibility, the whole phrase could be reduced down to Sunshine. What? Were you not fully aware that the sun is the object that is drawn along by seven horses in Indian mythology? The title tells us the book will shine a light on obscure matters, something all compositions ought to do, ideally.

The book can very well be called a glossary or a vocabulary, although it doesn’t suit the definition of a dictionary. Its scope is much smaller. Its author intends to explain old and obsolete words to his contemporaries by using understandable contemporary language. 

You might be thinking such a work would tell us what “Old Tibetan” words mean. Well, okay, it can and sometimes does happen that you find help with a puzzling word you encountered in a Dunhuang document of the 8th-11th centuries by consulting this type of glossary. That would be unusual. 

Sparing you the arguments and details, the fact is that what are here meant by old words are items of vocabulary that were used in the pre-Mongol Second Spread era (or roughly 11th into 13th centuries) and later fell out of use. Sometimes in art studies they call this same period the Kadampa period, although I prefer to call it early Tibet as a fuzzy way of distinguishing it from the Old Tibetan imperial era. The century and a half in between (mid-9th through end of 10th) we can call the post-imperial era or period of fragmentation.

A somehow distinct emphasis in these works is on differences in terms used in old and new Tibetan translations of scriptures and treatises. Unlike Chinese Buddhists who saved everything in their canon collections, Tibetans simply abandoned earlier translations along with their vocabulary choices and replaced them with new ones to suit new standards. Their efforts were not entirely successful, so old translation terms still survive here and there, so there was at least this one reasonable use for Old-New Glossaries.*

(*I think the earliest examples, like the one by Dbus-pa Blo-gsal, were more strictly done in order to show how old terms had been, or ought to be, replaced by new ones. I don’t say this with complete assurance, it’s just an impression. Later examples were more likely to include old terms from non-canonical sources as well.)

Oddly enough, although no other mentions can be traced in the worldwide web,* Berthold Laufer did mention the Shining of Seven Horses (Seven Horses for short) in his famous and still useful essay, “Bird Divination among the Tibetans,” published way back in 1914, at p. 65, where he says that the 1899 Tibetan-Latin-French dictionary of Father Desgodins made use of it as one of its sources. I hope you’re taking all this in, taking notes if necessary.

(*Believe me when I tell you this Laufer reference was not located through any internet search, I found it in my own notes to Tibskrit. The link to Tibskrit is in the sidebar to your right.)

 

The title (click on it to enlarge)

What this tells us is that the Seven Horses manuscript scanned and posted by BDRC is our nearly unique evidence for the existence of this work. The only other mention of it is as a source of the Desgodins dictionary. This dictionary was very beautifully printed, but not well circulated to say the least. I couldn’t immediately find mention of our title in the front matter of the dictionary, but Laufer corresponded directly with the missionary and could have learned about it in that way rather than from the printed page. Apart from my mother, I know of no other person today who actually writes in handwriting, putting the paper in an envelope, and attaching postage stamps. You may have to take my word when I say it was once a very common method of communication. But enough distraction, let’s spare a few words about the author, as much as we can given the resources at our disposal today.

The name of the author as it appears in the colophon

I couldn’t immediately explain why BDRC lists the author’s name as Kun-bzang-padma-blo-ldan, while the small cursive letters in the colophon actually read dge-kyongs [~ dge-skyong] Padma-blo-ldan. The dge-skyong, or virtue keeping epithet may imply that the person named is a monastic, but it isn’t in any sense a proper part of the name, just an epithet. So the only author’s name we have here in the manuscript is Padma-blo-ldan, a person not very easily identified.

Still we can know things of significance about the author without peering anywhere outside the colophon itself (see the discussion at the head of the Reference list, below). What is sure is that he was a Nyingma belonging to the 17th century. Even if less sure, he likely lived and worked in Kham in Eastern Tibet.

Maybe another time someone will go into the content of this under-utilized work in detail and tell us how well it corresponds with previous works of its genre. A good text for comparison would be the most famous one, known by the short poetic title Li shi'i gur khang by the translator Skyogs-ston. It could help with a number of discussions and arguments we might want to have or make. For now, to close with, I would like to look briefly at something near the end. This might supply enough of a taste of it for now.

After the ending of chapter 30, after the end of the alphabetic series, on folio 17 verso, there is a special section on borrowings from non-Tibetan languages, starting with the most obvious group, borrowings from Sanskrit (or more broadly Indic) language. The reason for going into this is this: Tibetans might very well encounter words that they don’t immediately understand and rush to the conclusion that they are Old Vocabulary terms, when in fact they are borrowings. 

While that motive is surely there, we may also see, mainly in this Indic section, that certain terms underwent local adaptations within Tibet often making them difficult to recognize as borrowings. I call this process “Tibetanization.” Mostly well known examples are given, like Indic pustaka meaning book, evolving into po-ti in Tibet. Another example is Tibetan form bram-ze for Sanskrit brahmaṇa, or, as we say in English, brahmin, meaning the priestly caste.* 

(*Yes, it is true what you may be thinking, we may well imagine Prakritic or colloquializing forms intervening, so at least some of the change could have already taken place in India, no doubt.)

I see a lot of drama in the Tibetanization of the Indian woman saint’s name Lakṣmīṅkarā — Legs-smin-kā-ra — since the first two syllables are transformed into meaningful Tibetan syllables that could be translated well ripened. Our author sees all these things as mistakes Tibetans have made in Sanskrit, rather than seeing the ways they had fun with Sanskrit. I hope you’re having fun, but let’s move ahead to the next bit about Chinese borrowings. 

Here he says that there are instances in which people want to take Chinese borrowed words as being Old Terms. Examples of more-or-less direct borrowings he gives are grum-tse [seating mat], cog-tse [table] and zing-zan [zang-zing as a term for food or meat?]. But also there are calques from Chinese terms like gser-zhal and gser-yig.* All of these items come together with added small-letter explanations in red ink, even if not all are easily read. Gser-zhal [‘gold face’] is glossed as face of the king. Gser-yig [‘gold letter’] is bang-chen-pa [‘one with great messages’], usually understood to mean an imperial envoy. 

(*My impression is these two calques only entered Tibetan usage during the early days of Yuan Mongolian influence.)

But then it’s the next thing that most interests me (fol. 18v.2). We all of a sudden switch from language borrowings and calques to terminology of a different religion. What exact religion might be here intended by Bon we will return to again and again in some other place. The line reads like this (with the glosses in parentheses, all red letters given here in red font):

gnam (mchod rnam legs pa la) gshegs (li shi na ’ang) lor bon po’i brda.

Let me do my best to unpack this rather than straight-up translating.  It’s telling us there is such a thing as Bonpo vocabulary, with one example being gnam gshegs, meaning passing [to] heaven, glossed as being in the sense or context of finely made offerings. Then the second gloss says, just before the syllable lor that must mean as reported, “as also in the Clove, the Li shi.”*

(*This could provoke lots of discussion, not least of all because the expression[s] given aren’t really special Bon terminology in the sense that only Bonpos would understand them, and, less relevant here yet a truth that needs telling, the fact is that Bon writings have carried very many early Tibetan terms into modern times when everyone else had practically forgotten them in around the 13th century.)

This mention of Clove or Li shi is meant as a clue to have a look at the Clove Canopy of Skyogs-ston. The Clove Canopy does in truth end its vocabulary listings in much the same manner as the Seven Horses, by discussing clusters of items that might be misconstrued as Old Terms. The latter work doesn’t just reproduce what’s in the former, but appears for most part to supplement it. Significantly for us right now, it does have a discussion of passing [to] heaven [p. 22]:

kha cig bon po'i brdar yod de / legs pa la gnam mchod pa dang / mi shi ba la gnam du gshegs pa dang / bsod nams che ba la gnam gyis bskos pa zhes pa dang / dbang che ba la gnam sa'i bdag ces pa sogs shin tu mang zhing...

In some cases we have words of the Bonpos. For something that is quite fine, they say sky offering (gnam mchod-pa), and for a person who has died they say he has gone to heaven (gnam-du gshegs-pa). For someone of superior merits, they say he is sky appointed (gnam gyis bskos-pa), and for someone of superior power, they say lord of sky and earth (gnam sa'i bdag).

Without reading this passage from the Clove Canopy, I fear we would never be able to see the point of the corresponding passage in the Seven Horses. True enough. But let me make the point I want to make here in connection with some arguments in a recent blog entry with the title “Nam, an Ancient Word for Sky.” Both the Clove Canopy and the Seven Horses can come to our aid,* seeing that these expressions making use of the concept of gnam. In the minds of these glossary writers, gnam belongs to a non-Buddhist “Bon” context that would likely feel alien or archaic to your typical Tibetan Buddhist reader of their times.

(*Along with still other sources like the well known quote, falsely attributed to the Nel-pa history, about how Bonpos “like the sky.” See the discussion under “Nel-pa” in the list below.)

 

Reference list

For more on Tibetan-language lexical tools, see our July 16, 2015 blog “Lexical Euphoria: Good News on Dictionaries.”

In the list you can see below, I’ve included several works known to me that belong to the genre of Old-New Glossaries. I had no idea to make a complete list. One way you can look for still more examples is to do a search at BDRC/BUDA, where you can even find their subject heading for it together with its own independent listing (try this link). Alternatively, do a more general search of BDRC using the terms “gsar rnying brda” or “brda gsar rnying” or “brda’ rnying.” You can try the same in a worldwide web search, but make sure to include the double quote marks when you do.

Before typing up the bibliographical list, let me give the details for the Seven Horses:

The full title-page title is: Bod yul gyi skad gsar rnying gi rnam par bzhag pa rta bdun snang ba [zhes bya ba bzhugs so legs so ngo mtshar mchog lags]. A Sanskrit title is also given in Tibetan script. The title page verso has a slightly variant title: Bod yul gyi skad gsar rnying gi rnam par dbye ba rta bdun snang ba [zhes bya ba].

It can be found here at this page.

But it can also be found here at this page.

Both manuscripts end on the verso of folio 19, even if the number of folios is stated differently. They are for all purposes identical. BDRC gives its author’s ID as P5081, along with three forms of his name: [1]  Kun-bzang-padma-blo-ldan. [2] Stag-ras-pa. [3] Stag-ras-pa Kun-bzang-padma-blo-ldan. Thanks to Google and its help finding the article by Cantwell (q.v.), I could find a mention of one by the full name (no. 3), as author of a biography of Bdud-’dul-rdo-rje. BDRC is as correct as it can be about the date of the work. It must be 17th century because it names the author’s teacher as Padma-blo-gros, holder of the treasure lineages of Bdud-’dul-rdo-rje and Mi-’gyur-rdo-rje. The former is the very well known tertön by that name who lived from 1615-1672. The latter, a still more famous tertön, lived from 1645-1667. Both were particularly active in Khams, and had their early main followers there.

The author’s teacher is identifiable as Stag-bla Padma-ma-ti (aka Padma-blo-gros), whose dates are 1591 to 1637. The author held this teacher’s lineages from both of the just-mentioned tertöns. The person who actually requested that the work be written is given as the fully ordained monk Blo-gros-nyi-ma, also known as the Yogin Tshul-khrims-rgyal-mtshan, and further described as my own root Lama. I haven’t been able to make a definitive identification of the root Lama yet. What we can know is that the author belonged to the 17th century and a Nyingma milieu, and even if it isn't so sure, he likely lived and worked in the eastern parts of the plateau we normally know as Khams. In any case our single available manuscript was scanned in Khams, in a particular monastery within the modern county called Kardze.

 

° ° °

A-lag-sha Ngag-dbang-bstan-dar (1754-1840), Gangs can gyi brda' gsar rnying las brtsams pa'i brda' yig blo gsal mgrin rgyan. A 52-folio woodblock print listed as part of the collection of the Oriental Institute, St. Petersburg, nos. B6744/27, B8922/4. It is also findable in his Collected Works, vol. 2 [KHA] (New Delhi 1971).

A-myes-zhabs Ngag-dbang-kun-dga’-bsod-nams (1597-1659), Gsar rnying brda'i rnam dbye legs par bshad pa gsung rab kun la lta ba'i sgron me. The text is available (see BDRC).

Blo-bzang-bsam-’grub (1820-1882), Dpe chos rin chen spungs pa'i btus ming shes rab kyi mig gsal byed kyi sgron me. Woodblock print in 28 folios. Vocabulary from the Dpe chos, an early Kadampa work. The author’s name is given in the colophon as Sngags-rams-pa Chos-rje Lcam-sring-skyabs. Its poetic title could be translated, Lamp that Lights Up the Eye of Insight. A distinct New-Old Glossary by this same Mongolian author, Gangs can bod kyi brda gsar rnying las brtsams pa'i brda yig blo gsal mgul rgyan, in 66 folios, is listed in Materials for a History of Tibetan Literature, no. 10164. I have no idea about its present availability.

Blo-gros-rgya-mtsho and Bkra-shis-dngos-grub, Brda rnying tshig mdzod gsar bsgrigs, Bod ljongs mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Lhasa 2011), in 381 small-format pages. This is a modern-day compilation of various works of the Old-New Glossaries genre. I’ve always found the Btsan-lha dictionary more useful.

Btsan-lha Ngag-dbang-tshul-khrims, Brda dkrol gser gyi me long, Mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Beijing 1997). The great virtue of this dictionary is that it combines a large number of early Old-New Glossaries (along with still other lexicographical genres). It lists their titles at the end of the volume, at pp. 1040-1063. Although the author is surely quite advanced in age by now, I understand he has been working on a much expanded version, something students of early Tibet would be right to anticipate. Meanwhile the 1997 edition has gotten more and more difficult to find.

Cathy Cantwell, “Reincarnation and Personal Identity in the Lives of Tibetan Masters: Linking the Revelations of Three Lamas of the Dudjom Tradition,” a 32-page essay, apparently only available as a draft on the internet at this URL. On its 19th unnumbered page, you can see a very rare instance of a mention of our author, only here he is author of a biographical work on Bdud-’dul-rdo-rje:

“A much longer list of the previous incarnations of Düdül Dorje is given in a namthar (rnam thar, ‘hagiography’) compiled by Takrepa Künzang Pema Loden (Stag ras pa kun bzang padma blo ldan, 1997), apparently a direct student of Düdül Dorjeʼs.” 

Chos-ldan-rgya-mtsho, Brda gsar rnying gi rnam gzhag legs par ston pa'i reg gzigs gsar bu'i nyer mkho. Listed in Btsan-lha, no. 1052, but I suspect confusion with the work by Rje-drung Lhun-grub-blo-ldan, q.v.

Co-ne Grags-pa-bshad-sgrub (1675-1748), Snyan ngag mngon brjod brda gsar rnying gi rnam gzhag mdor bsdus blo gsal yid 'phrog. A woodblock print in 12 folios. Signed “shākya'i dge slong bshad sgrub ming can.” Composed at G.yar khral. Oriental Institute, St. Petersburg, nos. B5660/2, B8487/23. See Leonard van der Kuijp's article about bam po in Journal of Tibetology, at p. 120, where he comments that this work cannot be found in its author’s collected works.

Dalai Lama VII Skal-bzang-rgya-mtsho (1708-1757), Tā go shrī dge slong shes rab rgya mtsho'i dogs sel dris lan dang brda gsar rnying gi brda chad 'ga' zhig gi dris lan. Listed in Btsan-lha’s dictionary, p. 1052. Answers to inquiries about archaic vocabulary items.

Dbus-pa Blo-gsal (ca. 1265-1355), Brda gsar rnying gi rnam par dbye ba.  For the Otani University manuscript, click here. This is the same one used in the studies by Mimaki, q.v. Other editions have since become available, just search for them in BDRC.

Auguste Desgodins (1826-1913), Dictionnaire thibétain-latin-francais par les missionnaires du Thibet, Imprimerie de la Société des Missions Étrangères (Hong Kong 1899). Look here, although I was unable to make the .tif files open on my computer. Perhaps you will have better luck? You might also try here. As I said, there doesn’t seem to be any direct mention of the Seven Horses in this publication, but either it or another book like it is alluded to on p. vi: “nous indiquons par (A. = R. ancien égale récent), les mots qui ne se trouvent guère que dans la langue sacrée ancienne...” Oh, and notice that the Bibliothèque Nationale de France has this interesting page about Desgodins with lists of his publications and letters. Their own Gallica website offers what appears to be a superior scan of the dictionary, click here to get started (the download button is findable on the right side of the window; it is very slow, but worth the wait).

Dngul-chu Ngag-dbang-rdo-rje (1720-1803), Brda gsar rnying gi khyad par bstan pa gsar bu'i blo gros skyed byed. A work in 6 folios. This has been published a number of times in various formats, just do a search for it at BDRC.

Gnya’-gong Dkon-mchog-tshe-brtan, Bod kyi brda rnying yig cha rtsa chen bdams bsgrigs rnams kyi tshig don kun nas khrol bar byas pa rab gsal me long, Kan su’u mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Lanzhou 2001). This work is unlike the others, [1] in the first place because it studies a number of works, listing their vocabulary items separately, and [2] because it intends to explain the old terminology to be found in Dunhuang documents (documents unknown to post-imperial Tibet up until the 20th century) along with stele inscriptions of imperial times (inscriptions in large part available, and to some degree known to and studied by Tibetans in past centuries).

Kun-bzang-rdo-rje, ed., Chos skad brda gsar rnying gi rnam gzhag sbrang rtsi'i bum pa, Rdzong kha gong 'phel lhan tshogs (Thimphu 2011), in 159 pages.

Berthold Laufer, “Bird Divination among the Tibetans (Notes on Document Pelliot No. 3530, with a Study of Tibetan Phonology of the Ninth Century),” T'oung Pao, series 2, vol. 15 (2014), pp. 1-110. As part of a very useful discussion of Old-New Glossaries, he has these words on p. 65:

“There is, further, a work under the title Bod yul-gyi skad gsar rñiṅ-gi rnam-par dbye-ba rta bdun snaṅ-ba, which has been carefully utilized in the “Dictionaire thibétain-latin-français par les Missionnaires catholiques du Thibet” (Hongkong, 1899).” (The footnote attached to this passage is also of considerable interest.)

Berthold Laufer, “Loan-Words in Tibetan,’ contained in: Hartmut Walravens, ed., Sino-Tibetan Studies: Selected Papers on the Art, Folklore History, Linguistics and Prehistory of Sciences in China and Tibet, Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi 1987), vol. 2, pp. 483-643 [originally published in 1916], at pp. 523-524, or pp. 443-444 in the original 1916 publication. 

After posting the blog, but on the very same day, I noticed Laufer, back in 1916, made a translation of the passage about Chinese loanwords from the Clove Canopy that I had translated on the basis of the shorter corresponding passage in Seven Horses, so it’s interesting to compare them, even if I won’t do that here and now.

Mimaki Katsumi, “dBus pa blo gsal no "Shin Kyu Goi Shu" — Kôtei bon Shokô [The brDa gsar rñiṅ gi rnam par dbye ba of dBus pa blo gsal — A First Attempt at a Critical Edition],” contained in: Asian Languages and General Linguistics: Festschrift for Prof. Tatsuo Nishida on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday (Tokyo 1990), pp. 17-54. This contains a critical text edition in Roman transcription (with numbers inserted so that one may first locate words in Mimaki's alphabetic index, and then locate them in the critical text edition).

Mimaki Katsumi, “Index to Two brDa gsar rñiṅ Treatises: The Works of dBus pa blo gsal and lCaṅ skya Rol pa'i rdo rje,” contained in a special issue of the Bulletin of the Narita Institute for Buddhist Studies (Naritasan Bukkyôkenkyûjo kiyô), vol. 15, no. 2 (1992), pp. 479-503.

Mimaki Katsumi, “Two Minor Works Ascribed to dBus pa Blo gsal,” contained in S. Ihara and Z. Yamaguchi, eds., Tibetan Studies, Naritasan Shinshoji (Narita 1992), vol. 2, pp. 591-598. Discussion about an existing text, at Otani University, of his Brda gsar rnying gi rnam par dbye ba, as well as his Rtags kyi 'jug pa'i 'grel pa.

Nel-pa Paṇḍi-ta, Sngon gyi gtam me tog gi phreng ba, "a 13th century source on the history of Tibetan kings and rulers by Ne'u Paṇḍi-ta Grags-pa-smon-lam-blo-gros, with other rare historical texts from the library of Burmiok Athing," T.D. Densapa, LTWA (Dharamsala 1985).

Nel-pa is at times credited with the statement that Bonpos “like the sky” (gnam-la dga'). However, this one edition of the text I have at hand reads, at p. 14 line 1:  gnam las babs par smra ba ni / bon pos lhad bcug par yin no. “This saying that they [the books, etc.] fell [onto the palace roof of the Tibetan Emperor Lha Tho-tho-ri Gnyan-btsan] from the sky is to be explained as an interpolation by the Bonpos.” I should go check the German of Helga Uebach’s translation and see how she understood it. Here it is on her p. 87: “Das Gerede des Vom-Himmel-Kommens ist eine Verfälschung seitens der Bon-po.” I suppose “falsification” suits the tone of it well enough. Just try doing a Googlebook search for “gnam la dga’” and you will see there is a problem of quote attribution by earlier writings in both Tibetan and English that needs fixing. Right now I think those words like the sky were first pronounced much later on, in the mid-16th century history the Scholars’ Feast, but I’ll put that difficult discussion on hold for another time, another blog. Finding the truth of the matter is one thing, but tracing back the sources of error can be even more laborious and challenging (and somehow revealing on occasion).

Ngag-dbang-chos-dar, Brda gsar rnying, Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Xining 1980), in 217 pp. A modern work, based on the Gangs can gyi brda gsar rnying las brtsams pa'i brda yig blo gsal mgrin rgyan by A-lag-sha Ngag-dbang-bstan-dar, q.v.

Rje-drung Lhun-grub-blo-ldan (19th century), Brda' gsar rnying gi rnam gzhag legs par ston pa gsar bu'i nyer mkho, Pleasure of Elegant Sayings Press (Sarnath 1966), in 118 pp. For a scan of a beautiful woodblock print in 37 folios, click here. The statement naming the author is found in the woodblock’s colophon at folio 36 recto, line 5. Perhaps this has to do with the similarly titled text by Chos-ldan-rgya-mtsho, q.v.

Rnam-rgyal-tshe-ring, Bod yig brda rnying tshig mdzod, Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang (Beijing 2001), in 678 pages. A Tibetan-Tibetan-Chinese dictionary, the preface is written in Chinese. It doesn’t seem to state what its sources were, but you do notice an uncommonly strong emphasis on Old Tibetan words from Dunhuang documents.

Ulrike Roesler, “Der dPe chos rin chen spuṅs pa'i btus miṅ — eine Quelle zur tibetisch mongolischen Lexographie und Schriftkunde,” contained in: D. Dimitrov, U. Roesler and R. Steiner, eds., Śikhisamuccayah: Indian and Tibetan Studies, Collectanea Marpurgensia Indologica et Tibetica, Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien (Vienna 2002), pp. 151-173. This is a study of the work by Blo-bzang-bsam-’grub, listed above.

Skyogs-ston Lo-tsā-ba Rin-chen-bkra-shis (student of Zha-lu Lo-tsā-ba), Brda gsar rnying gi rnam gzhag li shi'i gur khang (=Bod kyi skad las gsar rnying gi brda'i khyad par ston pa legs par bshad pa li shi'i gur khang), ed. by Mgon-po-rgyal-mtshan, Mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Beijing 1981, 1982). It must have been written in 1476 (the preface wrongly states 1136, and still other dates have been put forward). This is by far the most-mentioned work of the genre, and has been republished numerous times. The advantage of this edition is that it first gives the text in its original form, then once again with the vocabulary items rearranged in Tibetan alphabetic order. If you would prefer a searchable unicode version of it, click here.

Sman-rgyal Sangs-rgyas-rin-chen, Gsar rnying brda'i legs bshad bai ḍūrya yi gur khang gi don gsal nyi ma. Listed in Btsan-lha, p. 1062.

Manfred Taube, “Zu einigen Texten der tibetischen Brda'-gsar-rñiṅ-Literatur,” Asienwissenschaftliche Beitrage (Berlin 1978), pp. 160-201. This isn’t available to me at the moment.

Zhabs-drung Chos-rje Ngag-dbang-tshe-ring (=Wa-ghin-da, fl. 1840), Brda gsar rnying gi rnam bzhag. Listed in Materials for a History of Tibetan Literature, no. 6618.

Zhe-chen Padma-dri-med-legs-pa'i-blo-gros (1901?-1960), Brda gsar rnying gi bye brag rtogs byed. Listed in Btsan-lha, p. 1052.

§  §  §

PS (December 31, 2023, Happy New Year!):

I just found that Padma-blo-ldan's glossary called the Light of Seven Horses, exists in the form of an 18-folio manuscript posted this year in the digital scan version of Nebesky-Wojkowitz’s Tibetan collection.  Just go to this URL

https://hav.univie.ac.at/collections/nebesky/node/573/

and see it for yourself.