A Gift of Tibet’s History for Qubilai Khan

 

Orgyanpa, detail

What kind of royal history is this? Represented to posterity as a gift to the Khan, we get the feeling it was produced without much enthusiasm, and definitely without much literary style. I don’t believe it is stated clearly anywhere, but it could be that the Khan commanded him to write it. That would help explain why it is so dry, largely lists of names in kingly or other types of lineages. But in those rare spots where it does manage to supply a little narrative it tends to say something remarkable.

You can gain a general impression of the content of this work by glancing at the list of English subtitles that I inserted into my transcription of the text:

• A. Royal Lineages of India.
• B. Tibetan Royal Lineages.
• C. Their Deeds Relative to Holy Dharma.
• D. Emperor Songtsan the Wise.
• E. Successors to Songtsan the Wise.
• F. Seven Landfalls, Nos. 2-7.
• G. Age of Divided Dominions.
• H. The Revival of Buddha Dharma.
• I. Chronological Discussion.
• J. Other Highland and Lowland Vinaya Lineages.
• K. Nyingma Tantras.
• L. Highland Vinaya Again.
• M. The Works of Panditas and Translators.
• N. The Kadampa School.
• O. On the Mongol Impact.
• P. Colophon and Dedication Verse.

Let’s point out a few of the highlights and leave it at that. One thing is of considerable interest for the history of Old Tantra transmissions. We find this in section F, a treatment of the seven chronologically ordered entries of Indian Vajrayâna Buddhism into Tibet. This historical schema was put together by Rongzompa in the early- to mid-11th century, and I believe it was Rongzompa who first applied the term I translate as ‘landfalls.’ However, Rongzompa’s work on the subject only survives in so far as it was copied or followed by others (see Germano’s essay). So here we have useful additional evidence. It answers the very important question of how Tibetan Buddhism turned out to be so tantric.

Moving on to a different context, one of the things that most horrified me was what it has to say about the suppression of Bon religion in western Tibet in the time of the Chidar, or Second Spread. This needs some close comparison with testimonies from a couple of other sources, so I will bookmark it for a future blog of its own.

There are a few references to earlier histories that ought to be mentioned.  The author, or the mchan-note writer if that is someone other than the author (and that’s a possibility), makes one clear reference (at fol. 7v) to what would have been a manuscript hot off the press, so to speak: the history book, dating to 1261, by Chomdan Reldri and its not well accepted idea that there was such a thing as an Intermediate Spreading of the Dharma (Bar-dar). This 1261 work, like our 1278 royal history, hasn’t yet appeared in press.*

(*To find out more about it, first download the 2020 revised version of Tibetan Histories, then scroll down to entry no. 87.)

He also demonstrates (at fol. 5r) that he knows of the historical text on the royal tombs that very likely dates to Tibet’s imperial era, the Extra Small Secret, Tomb Generations (Gsang-ba Yang-chung / Bang-so’i Rabs). This particular history represents the “half” in the 6½ histories we’ve discussed in a recent blog.

I stumbled on an odd statement about one of the early 10th-century monks of Amdo region that made things click in my mind. It serves to confirm something that came up during those long years spent translating the long Deyu history. Orgyanpa says, “Drum Sherab Monlam received the [esoteric Dzogchen] precepts of Aro.”* This is a further piece of evidence associating the transmission of this strain of Dzogchen, its lineage continuing straight through the era of Divided Dominions, with the earliest monks of the Second Spread. This connection is unexpected and, perhaps needless to say, not well known. Okay, but then neither is the associated Turkish connection expected or well known. Two Uighur Turks are listed one after the other in the Aro Dzogchen transmission as seen in an appendix to the Deyu translation (p. 784). The first of the two, Yazi Böntön (ཡ་ཟི་བོན་སྟོན་), is often listed as monastic ordinand of Gongpa Rabsel (དགོངས་པ་རབ་གསལ་), while the Yazi part of his name, meaningless in Tibetan, could indicate something in local Turkic dialect, likely a word meaning ‘scribe’ (I do think this merits careful consideration). Yazi’s disciple Drugu Logjung (དྲུ་གུ་གློགས་འབྱུང་) has a name indicating that he was a Drugu, a Turk.

(*Grum She[s]-rab-smon-lam gyis / A-ro'i gdam ngag brnyes / Note that Grum in his name is often replaced with Grum-shing, which is in turn evidently just a shortened version of Grum Shing-slag-can. Grum is usually taken as a clan name, but it is possible the syllable Drum is hiding there, and that could be a borrowing from an Indic word meaning ‘tree,’ Shing-slag-can signifies that he wore a cloak of wood [barkcloth?].  He was not part of the very first group of central Tibetan men to visit the northeast in order to receive ordination vows, but he did belong to the second group that arrived soon after. See footnote 2481 in the long Deyu translation. For sure, Phying-slag-can also occurs, and this would mean ‘having a felt cloak.’ But misspellings of the name abound, and the easiest or more sensible reading, as we know, is not always the most valid, more likely the contrary)

But the part bound to most excite the world at large is the section “O” with its invented subtitle On the Mongol Impact. If you will permit it, I will hack out a quick translation without expending a lot of labor on quibbles, justifications, arguments, footnotes etc.

•

O. On the Mongol Impact.

ston pa'i dam chos rnam gnyis te lung dang rtogs pa'i bdag nyid do // de 'dzin byed pa smra byed dang / sgrub par byed pa kho na yin / ces 'byung pas /  deng sang bod kha ba can gyis yul du sangs rgyas kyis stan pa rin po che dar ro //

‘The holy Dharma of the Teacher is twofold, characterized by scriptural learning and practical realization. That means exclusively the memorizing or reciting of it, and the accomplishment of the practices.’* Even so nowadays in the country of snowy Tibet the precious Teachings of Buddha have spread.  

(*See Gold’s essay, p. 172, for an alternative translation of the verse along with much valuable commentary. Something like this verse occurs in many canonical texts, but our most sure Indic source is in the root verses included in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharma­kośa commentary­.)

de yang dbus rtsang mi drug gi smad nas [13r] dar la / rin chen bzang po dang / jo bo rje stod nas dar zhing / gzhan lo yan [~span?] phal cher gyis dkyil nas dar ro //

Indeed, the Six Men of Ü and Tsang have spread them from the lowlands, Rinchenzangpo and Atiśa from the highlands, and besides those the Tibetan translators and Indian paṇḍitas have for most part spread them from the center.

dus phyis bod kha ba can gyis yul du stan pa dar ba'i dus su / 'dzam bu gling gis byang phyogs ge gsar [~ge sar] gyis yul du / rgyal po dzi gir gan zhes bya ba bsku 'khrungs te / 'dzam bu gling gis yul phal cher bshig cing / rgyal po phal pran [~bran?] ltar byas pa'i dus / bod kha ba can gyis yul du yang dmag des / yul dang stan pa la gnod pa 'byung pa'i dus su [~la?] bab pa'i tshe / skye ba 1 gis thogs pa'i byang chub sems dpa' / shes bya rig pa'i gnas thams cad la mkhyen pa'i ye shes kyis snang ba rgyas pa / saskya'i lo tsha ba zhes yongs su drags pa de / thugs rje'i rba rlabs cher g.yos te / ji gir gan gyi gdung rgyud kyis rgyal rgyud thams cad chos la bkod cing / yul dir [~'dir?] sangs rgyas kyis stan pa rin po che bzhago //

In later times, as the Teachings were spreading to the country of snowy Tibet, in the country of Gesar in the northern part of Jambu Island a king named Dzi-gir Gan (i.e. Chinggis Khan) took birth and went on to destroy in large part the countries of Jambu Island, its kings largely reduced to slavery. The time came when the country of snowy Tibet itself suffered harm to both country and Teachings by that same army. It was then that the one who achieved Bodhisattvahood in one lifetime and had developed the light of Enlightened Wisdom that is knowledgeable in all the subjects of learning about knowables, the one widely renowned as the Translator of Sakya, exceedingly moved by the waves of compassion, placed all of Ji-gir Gan’s (i.e. Chinggis Khan’s) royal descendants in the way of Dharma and established the Teachings of Buddha in this country.

de'i gdan sar lo tsha ba chen po de nyid kyis bcung gis rigs pas / rgyal ba’i bka’ dang stan chos thams cad kyis tshig don la smra ba’i spobs pa tshigsal [~tshig gsal] zhing / rigs par smra ba / bsod nams kyis dpal du mas rgyan pa / nges par sa thob pa’i byang chub sems dpa’ chen po a rgya’i [i.e., 'phags pa’i] mtshan can des kyang gong ma’i rjes su rgyal rgyud rnams chos la bkod pas / bstan pa rin po che dar cing rgyas par gyur to //

That same great Translator in his headquarters had a younger man in his family by the name of Argya (Ārya, i.e. Phagspa), a great Bodhisattva who had definitively attained the [three pure] Levels, adorned with the glory of his merit, his rational speech and clear words, his ability to expound eloquently upon all the words and contents of the Victor’s teachings (the Kanjur) and the [Indian Buddhist] Treatises (the Tanjur). The royal lineages in the following of the emperor he also established in the Dharma, making the precious Teachings grow and flourish.

gzhan bstan pa la nyan cing / gzhan stan pa la nyan cing bsgom pa’i blo can 'gas kyang / rgyal rgyud rnams chos la bkod pas stan pa la phan par gyur to //

There were still others who had studied and meditated upon the Teachings who established the royal lineages in the Dharma and benefitted the Teachings.

gzhan stod kyi mgon 3 gyis rgyud las / rgyal po rtsan phyug [13v] lde chibs kha lhor bsgyur bas / gangs ti se nas chu gang gha'i 'gram gyis ri brags kyis rgyal mkhams btul te sangs rgyas kyis bstan pa daro //

Then there was one among the successors of the Three Lords of the highlands (i.e., Ngari or western Tibet), a king named Rtsan-phyug-lde, who steered his noble horse toward the south and subdued the kingdom[s] in the mountainous area all the way from the Glacier Mountain Tise to the banks of the Ganges, spreading the Teachings of Buddha.

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I hope that captures the gist of it well enough, and that some sharp young Tibetanist will find how to make it perfect. A few comments: Last things first, the king of a part of western Tibet who conquered the realms between Mt. Kailash and the Ganges was not immediately known to me, so I needed to look him up. I find he has to be the same as Btsan-phyug-lde, a king of Gugé-Purang. We have no specific dates for him, just that he moved down from Gugé to Yatsé in what is now Nepal in around the middle of the 12th century, and he is known in some local Nepal Sanskrit sources by the name Câpilla (see Tucci’s book as well as Vitali’s, and look here if you want to see where Yatsé was located on the map.). 

It cannot be an accident that Orgyanpa mentions those Gugé kings in a book sent to a Khan even while fully knowing that that same Khan was considering a military move into Nepal (and probably the whole of South Asia beyond Nepal). Still, one wonders how useful or relevant this information would be for that purpose. It dangles alone between unrelated subjects, as if it were placed there for some odd reason. I suppose it was.

There is not very much to be found in Tibetan writings that expresses the terror and anguish the Mongol invasions inflicted on local populations. We could say that people in a life-or-death situation lack the leisure to sit down and portray their feelings. But a disciple and biographer of the famous Yanggönpa by the name of Channgawa spares a paragraph on the subject, ending with the words, 

“Just hearing the name Mongol (Hor) or Tartars (Sogs-po [!]; i.e. Sog-po) made them unable to stand on their feet. All the people felt afraid and terrified as if they had been delivered into the hands of the karma-enforcing Lord of Death.”* 

(*See the longer passage translated in Higgins’ new book, p. 37. The translation ‘Tartars’ is very surely not exactly on the mark. In earlier sources, Hor would have definitely meant Uighur Turks, while Sog-po would have meant Sogdians, although after the Mongol advent its meaning is a bit of a problem, it depends on who is talking.)

The Mongols had achieved such awesome power and reputation for violence in the world, there is even today a common acknowledgement that Sakya Paṇḍita, the very same person we just heard called “Translator of Sakya,” was displaying the great wisdom he was indeed known for when he advised Tibetans not to resist them. On the Tibetan side, the idea developed that something good could be derived from this deadly situation if Mongols, who were settling down to rule over various civilian populations in Eurasia, could be coached or coaxed (without coercion!) into taking refuge in the philosophico-religio-ethical civilizational project Buddhism offers. They had some degree of immediate success with Hülegü and subsequent Ilkhanids in Iran and with Qubilai Khan in China, although we can in retrospect perceive that their efforts only bore great fruit much later on when most of Mongolia became Tibetan-style Buddhist. 

So, surprising as it is for us to hear, when Orgyanpa says that Chinggis Khan destroyed* the better part of the world, he was conscious of addressing the Mongols, to whom this accomplishment was a matter of pride, and would not be heard as a criticism. And if that last sentence made no sense to you, I invite you to read Sun Penghao’s dissertation. By the year 1278, when Orgyanpa’s book was written, Tibetan Buddhist leaders like Orgyanpa had fairly perfected the art of talking to Mongols in their own language, so to speak. By seeming to give them what they wanted, they were given the opportunity to offer them what they actually needed.

(*The tone of the verb here used, bshig (or 'jig in present tense), may be difficult to capture with an English word, but it does mean to destroy in the sense of reducing to ruins or dissolving solid objects. Words like decimated or annihilated come to mind, but I don’t believe their tone fits the larger context.)

 

From a manuscript of Qazmini’s
13th-c. CE Wonders of Creation

Literature Listing

For a 

complete transcription of the text, 

look here. I do not supply any photo of the manuscript itself, hoping that a facsimile (one better than my poor scan of an old xerox received from LK) will appear in a more appropriate place. I like to imagine the original gift to Qubilai would have been magnificently scribed in gold ink on dark purple paper. However, what we have right now is anything but magnificent, badly spelled and penned with a clumsy hand.

We’ve spoken about Orgyanpa in 

an earlier blog.

If you are looking for a brief biography, try 

this one by Alexander Gardner 

at Treasury of Lives website.

•

Cho Wonhee, “Negotiated Privilege: Strategic Tax Exemptions Policies for Religious Groups and the Mongol-Yuan Dynasty in 13th-Century China,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 63 (2020), pp. 1-37. Tax and drafted work exemptions were not automatically granted to religious institutions by the Mongol rulers, certain strings were attached. One of them involved a requirement to pray for the long lives of the rulers. From the conclusion (p. 26): “...religious groups were not simply passive recipients of imperial policy; aware of what the Mongols expected from them, they actively navigated, challenged and negotiated to expand their privileges.”

Choi Soyoung, “From Brutes to Bodhisattvas: The Mongols in Tibetan Sources,” contained in: Timothy May and Michael Hope, eds., The Mongol World, Routledge (London 2022), pp. 799-813. The same author’s 2018 doctoral dissertation is on this subject.

Deyu — Anonymous, A History of Buddhism in India and Tibet: An Expanded Version of the Dharma’s Origins Made by the Learned Scholar Deyu, tr. by Dan Martin, The Library of Tibetan Classics series no. 32, Wisdom Publications (Somerville 2022).

David Germano, “The Seven Descents and the Early History of Rnying-ma Transmissions,” contained in: Helmut Eimer & David Germano, eds., The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism, Brill (Leiden 2002), pp. 225-263.

Jonathan C. Gold, “Sa-skya Paṇḍita’s Buddhist Argument for Linguistic Study,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, vol. 33 (2005), pp. 151-184.

David Higgins, Heartfelt Advice: Yang dgon pa’s Song of the Seven Direct Introductions with Commentary by ’Ba’ ra ba Rgyal mtshan dpal bzang, International Institute for Buddhist Studies (Tokyo 2022). This book is made available online as a free download.

Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp, “Some Remarks on the Textual Transmission and Text of Bu-ston Rin-chen-grub’s Chos-’byung, a Chronicle of Buddhism in India and Tibet,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, vol. 26 (April 2013), pp. 115-193, at p. 182. Available online.

———, “Tibetan Historiography,” contained in: Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, ed. José Cabezón and Roger Jackson, eds., Snow Lion (Ithaca 1996), pp. 39-56, but you can also read it online. At p. 43 is what is most likely the first modern mentioning of the existence of Orgyanpa’s history book. It includes discussion of its 1278 CE date and the reason it was written, “as part of his attempt... to dissuade the Mongol emperor from invading Nepal.” Also pointed out: Orgyanpa’s history was known to the chronologist Mang-thos Klu-sgrub-rgya-mtsho (1523-1596), in the work we have listed below. He also told of the recent discovery of the 13-folio manuscript, and announced, in a footnote, a forthcoming edition and translation, something that never came about.

———, “U rgyan pa Rin chen dpal (1230-1309), Part Two: For Emperor Qubilai? His Garland of Tales about Rivers,” contained in: Christoph Cüppers, ed., The Relationship between Religion and State (chos srid zung ’brel) in Traditional Tibet, LIRI (Lumbini 2004), pp. 299-339, at pp. 319-320. The riverine geographical text is, together with the royal history, part of a set of gifts delivered to Qubilai Khan. I’ve heard that Part Three of L. van der Kuijp’s study of the riverine geography is forthcoming, even if Part One is not.

Mang-thos Klu-sgrub-rgya-mtsho (1523-1596), Bstan-rtsis Gsal-ba’i Nyin-byed and Tha-snyad Rig-gnas Lnga’i Byung-tshul Blo-gsal Mgrin-rgyan, Bod-yig Dpe Rnying Dpe-skrun-khang (Lhasa 1987).

Page 65 reads as follows: “de yang chu mo glang la Dpal-'khor-btsan 'khrungs // khong gi slob dpon Cang A-po yin zhes Grub-thob U-rgyan-pa’i Rgyal-po Rabs Phreng las bshad.” Our manuscript reads differently (7v): “sras khri Dpal-’khor-rtsan gyis rgyal sa bzung / ’phrul gyis blon po spyang A-pho zhes bya bas blon po byaso.” Notice the very significant difference between the clever (?) teacher A-po and the clever prodigious minister A-pho.

Orgyanpa’s work is cited, if not quoted, again on p. 68: “Rgyal-po Rabs Phreng las / Bla-chen gyis / Khams kyi Sog-po mi drug la sdom pa phog / de'i nang tshan btsun chen Sher-'byung gis Grum la / des Klu-mes sogs la phog zer.” But here there is a problem, since this can at best be a paraphrase of information found here and there in our ms. of Orgyanpa’s work, certainly not a direct quote. This problem could use some closer scrutiny. I suppose it might be a sign our available ms. is not a complete one.

Jampa Samten & Dan Martin, “Letters for the Khans: Six Tibetan Epistles of Togdugpa Addressed to the Mongol Rulers Hulegu and Khubilai, as well as to the Tibetan Lama Pagpa,” contained in: Roberto Vitali et al., eds., Trails of the Tibetan Tradition: Papers for Elliot Sperling, Amnye Machen Institute (Dharamshala 2014), pp. 297-332.

Sun Penghao, The Birth of an Etiquette Story: Tibetan Narrative of O rgyan pa, Qubilai, and the Yuan Government, doctoral dissertation, Harvard University (2023), posted online. The circumstances of Orgyanpa's composition are discussed at pp. 25, 42 et passim. On p. 26 (last lines of note 64), he points to previous mentions of it in Leonard van der Kuijp's work published in 1996 (listed above).

Giuseppe Tucci, Preliminary Report on Two Scientific Expeditions in Nepal, Serie Orientale Roma series no. 10, Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (Rome 1956). For identifying the Gugé king named  Btsan-phyug-lde, see pp. 28, 53, 66, 69, 70, 107 (these page numbers were not found through Google, and neither were they found through the book’s own index!) Download a free PDF or some such format by going here.

Roberto Vitali, The Kingdoms of Gu.ge Pu.hrang, Tho.ling gtsug.lag.khang (Dharamsala 1996). For identifying the Gugé king named  Btsan-phyug-lde (Vitali, too, places him in mid-12th century) see pp. 121, 139, 361-363, 417, 462, 465-467, 452, 480, 529, 693, 778 (page numbers located through the book’s own index).

Orgyanpa as central figure and Kâlacakra
teacher in a Derge Parkhang Xylograph

Postscript (June 9, 2023)

An excursus on the Turkish connection:  Well, it may be abundantly clear that finding Turkish words and names in our Tibetan sources is like taking a walk in the woods and tripping on a horse egg. But we’ve noticed some of these in an earlier blog.  

I would say the name elements Yazi (ཡ་ཟི་ “scribe”) and Muzi (མུ་ཟི་) are likely Turkish in origin. Yazi is in Turkish with several meanings (one of the being a personal name!), but is likely to mean “scribe.” The noun muzi does indeed occur in Tibetan dictionaries as a word for sulfur, although we have to wonder if it, too, is a borrowing.  

Then what about the name Kazi that we find in the name of Kazi Dawa Samdup (ཀ་ཟི་ཟླ་བ་དོན་གྲུབ་) the Tibetan translator that Evans-Wentz (of Book of the Dead fame) assisted by upgrading his English and adding footnotes, introductions and so on? At the moment I can’t really tell you if Kazi is Turkish, but it is surely a widespread bureaucratic term. Just dig out your Hobson-Jobson and have a look at its entry for “Cazee, Kajee,” where a sketch history of its usage is offered. It may best be explained as the Arabic word kaḍi for judge. Under the British in India, Kazi was a normal word for native judges who acted in a subordinate capacity to English judges. Although Kazi Dawa Samdup worked as a school teacher, as far as I know, it is entirely possible that one of his forbearers was a judge. It seems kazi had a local meaning in Sikkim that I’m not entirely clear about.

Tibetan history knows yet another two-syllable name element with second syllable “zi” - the clan name Gazi (ག་ཟི་), the hereditary lineage that headed the Taglung and Kham Riwoche monasteries.

I wonder if this, too, may be of foreign origin, and Old Turkish is the first possibility that comes to mind. To be sure, in later Turkish gazi means a victorious warrior or general, in modern Turkish a war veteran... but it may also be a late borrowing from Arabic.  In Ottoman times, if not in earlier centuries, there was such a lot of vocabulary exchange between Turkish, Arabic and Persian.

Peter Schwieger wrote an article about the Ga-zi clan in the 1996 Kailash. I’ll go find out the publishing details and let you know.

Here you go, found it!  “The Lineage of the Noble House of Ga-zi in East Tibet,” Kailash, vol. 18, nos. 3-4 (1996), pp. 115-132. You can download an instant pdf version of it here.

Horse Eggs and Unicorns

རྟ་ཡི་སྒོ་ང་། Egg of Horse

I’ll admit my ability to think stopped cold when my eyes fell on this object in a Bhutanese museum back in 2015. It threw me for a loop. I’m still curious about it, as I think anyone ought to be. I don’t think we should dismiss miraculous or anomalous objects until we’ve heard the whole story. I’m as skeptical as the next guy, and unwilling to play the sucker or the fool gladly, but the predisposition to dismiss miracles with alacrity can sometimes look more like fear than rationality, fear our accustomed categories might come into question. It’s the pangolin problem all over again, and those lizards don’t lay eggs.

I wish I could tell you what it is even now. It surely seems like it is made of stone. It might be a fossilized egg of some kind, one that has over the millennia lost much of its outer shell. That's what I saw then, and that’s what I see now. Certainly the words written in clear Dharma Language (ཆོས་སྐད་) on its surface predisposes me to think it is what it says it is, and since I can find no other interesting way to think about it, I prefer to leave my thinking in a state of suspension. Suspense is better than foregone conclusions, at least it is a lot more exciting.

If you would like to look into this a little more, assuming you aren’t ready to pay the high price of entry to Bhutan in order to physically enter the museum, you can go right now to the website of The National Museum of Bhutan for free, and even take a virtual tour of the building online. 

Here is what it says about the egg: 

“It is alleged that a horse gave birth to this oval-shaped object at Lhadrag village in Trasgiyangtse in 1928. The horse belonged to a merchant named Tsongpen Wangdue,* later on he is said to have become very rich owing to his possession of this object.”

(*ཚོང་དཔོན་དབང་འདུས་ — “merchant” is what the first two syllables mean.)

The definitive dating given here doesn’t exactly jive with the 19th-century dating in the published catalog I brought home in my suitcase. Its full bibliographical details are these:

Khenpo Phuntsok Tashi and Ariana Maki, eds., Artful Contemplation: Collections from the National Museum of Bhutan, The National Museum of Bhutan (Paro 2014). The authors are Singye Samdrup, Kinley Gyeltshen, Tashi Namgay and Ariana Maki. 

The color illustrations are quite good, printed on stiff photographic paper. Its photo of the Horse Egg, much better than what you see above, may be seen on p. 110. Here the egg is assigned to the 19th century, a gift of the Royal Grandmother. It also suggest that eggs and hoof-prints made in stone sometimes if quite rarely found in Bhutan, come from a special horned horse. It even explicitly refers to this horned horse as a ‘unicorn.’ I understand some young girls these days are particularly fond of unicorns, and even believe in them, so I won’t get all judgmental about the possibility they might be real. I try to respect other people’s beliefs.

And in my defense, imagining all the constitutionally unbelieving out there hot to string me up and flay me with their kind of science, I have to say: In recent years there have been press accounts assuring us that unicorns once roamed the earth, even if they didn’t look exactly as we imagine them. But they were done in by climate change, as we all will be quicker than you think.

Elasmotherium sibiricum

Read me

Gobran Mohamed, “2nd-Century Statue of Buddha Found in Ancient Egyptian Seaport,” Arab News, posted online (April 27, 2023). https://arab.news/bt2pd.

Pavel Kosintsev, Kieren J. Mitchell, Thibaut Devièse, Johannes van der Plicht, Margot Kuitems, Ekaterina Petrova, Alexei Tikhonov, Thomas Higham, Daniel Comeskey, Chris Turney, Alan Cooper, Thijs van Kolfschoten, Anthony J. Stuart and Adrian M. Lister, “Evolution and Extinction of the Giant Rhinoceros Elasmotherium sibiricum Sheds Light on Late Quaternary Megafaunal Extinctions,” Nature, Ecology & Evolution (November 26, 2018). These scientists seem unaware if this extinct creature had any egg laying capabilities. I did my best to find out, and this seems to be the one and only literary source that inspired all those newspaper people. However, their newspaper stories started coming out in 2016, so ‘Houston, we have a problem’!

Christopher Parker, “Archaeologists Unearth Buddha Statue in Ancient Egyptian Port City — The new find sheds light on the rich trade relationship between Rome and India,” Smithsonian Magazine (May 1, 2023). Next thing we know those über-skeptics will be telling us that a 2nd century made-in-Egypt Buddha image isn’t possible either. Maybe they never heard of those Brahmi inscriptions in the Ḥoq Cave in Socotra. And have they never heard of the Helgö Buddha? It, too, was excavated extremely far from Siddhârtha's home, in fact, on an island inside Sweden, on July 17th, 1956. This Swedish Buddha is in a style characteristic of the Swat Valley in northern Afghanistan in around the 8th century or so. None of those newspaper stories coming out in recent weeks about the Berenike Buddha have noticed, but the style of the rays in the halo are just like those often found in Mithra images (you don't seem to see it in early South Asian Buddhas, not like this). I'd like to know more about the Sanskrit inscription found with the Buddha.

Marga Reimer, “Could There Have Been Unicorns?” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 5, no. 1 (1997), pp. 35-51. If you follow the careful reasoning here, the prospects are not good.

Richard Salomon, “Epigraphic Remains of Indian Traders in Egypt,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 111, no. 4 (1991), pp. 731-736.

Ingo Strauch, “Buddhism in the West? Buddhist Indian Sailors on Socotra (Yemen) and the Role of Trade Contacts in the Spread of Buddhism,” contained in: Birgit Kellner, ed., Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality, De Gruyter (Berlin 2019), pp. 15-51.

Francesca Tagliatesta, “Iconography of the Unicorn from India to the Italian Middle Ages,” East & West, vol. 57, nos. 1-4 (December 2007), pp. 175-191.  

Helgö Buddha on a Swedish Postage Stamp

Note: There is a Tibetan word rwa-gcig-pa (or, with feminine ending, rwa-gcig-ma) corresponding to the Sanskrit ekaśṛṅga. It could mean unicorn, I suppose, but in my experience it has always meant rhinoceros. The far more often encountered word bse-ru means rhinoceros and corresponds to Sanskrit khaḍga, or khaḍgaviṣāṇa.

 

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PS (May 12, 2023)

Bear with me as I change track, but it may be that the Bhutanese stone egg is a “horse bezoar.”  Bonhams sold one, five-&-a-half inches in diameter, for US 1,410. Go look what they have to say about it. 

Yet another horse bezoar in a Taiwan collection looks even more like the one from Bhutan.

A Traditional Chinese Medicine site also depicts one, but with a cross section so you can see its interior structure.

The usual Tibetan word for bezoars in general is gi-wang, with other spellings including 'gi-wam. A Tibetan-Tibetan medical dictionary explains it as a borrowing from Chinese ghi’u. Does Chinese in fact have a word like that? The English bezoar most likely had its ultimate origins in a Persian word that means “poison antidote.” A primary usage in early European medicine is just that.

The 17th-century Tibetan medical training charts depict three types of bezoars, those from elephant, cattle and pig. See Yuri Parfionovitch, Fernand Meyer, and Gyurme Dorje, Tibetan Medical Paintings, Harry N. Abrams (New York 1992), vol. 1, p. 64, row D, items 3-5 (vol. 2, p. 220, items 38-40).

Before you entirely make up your mind, I advise a Google image search for “enteroliths in horses” just to see what pops up before your eyes.