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| ༄༅།།དངུལ་སྒོང་གི་བཤད་འབུམ་ལོ་རྒྱུས་བཞུགས་སོ།། |
Recently back from a spell in Rome, I have exciting news to tell you about something I found out about while I was there. Just a few days before departure I received a gift of an article attached to an email. On its first page, I noticed a title that to my mind could only mean it was a work of Padampa or a commentary on the same. And if it were in the last place in the world you would expect to find a work of his, it would have to be the Vatican Apostolic Library.
That same evening I typed the call number into the Google search box and Wallah! Presto! The first page of the text you see illustrated above was there in front of my eyes, undeniably appearing to exist. A miraculous but persistent materialization in digital form.
The article by Filibeck (details below) was about two texts related to missionaries among the very few Tibetan-language texts so far identified in the Vatican collection. Not about this one. This one has the front title-page title in cursive Tibetan script, Dngul-sgong-gi Bshad-'bum Lo-rgyus.* First of all, bshad-'bum literally means explanation collection, but what it really is is nothing but an uncommon pre-Mongol era word for commentary.** So this would be a commentary on the Silver Sphere, a work familiar to the world’s burgeoning numbers of Zhijé specialists as a text containing teachings by Padampa’s 54 Indian spiritual mentors. But then we also see the word history (lo-rgyus) there, making us think that a later text in the set may be indicated (it does indeed contain at least one fragment of a history even if its cover title is dkar-chag, or table of contents.)
(*This title was probably meant to cover the entire collection, although this is not at all obvious without looking further into its content. **The entire fifth volume of the published ZC is taken up by a bshad-’bum by Tenné. Another rare use is in the title of the 11th-century Indian teacher Smṛtijñānakīrti’s commentary on the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṅgīti with the title in Tibetan being ’Jam-dpal Mtshan-brjod-kyi Bshad-’bum.)
When the first folio first popped up on my screen, I was thrilled, even a little delirious, it’s true. But when I started to look into it my feelings of elation were tempered with dismay, as I started to notice there are missing folios. As it turns out quite a lot is missing. Even to describe what is there is complicated by the page numbering systems (both the pencilled-in Arabic numerals and the numbers given to the scans). Finally, I made a listing of the pages that may be seen there, ignoring the added numberings completely, typing out titles and colophons and even some bits of the text itself. I’ve appended this sketchy document below. Tibeto-logicians should find it useful for navigational purposes.
To make a general assessment, even if it may be too early for it, I’d say that there are pages from texts unknown to be extant anywhere else. And another matter I’m quite sure about is that all or most of it constitutes a kind of Selected Works of one of the three famous brothers of the Rog family, disciples of Tenné who sought out and put together both major and minor Zhijé teaching lineages (including Cutting practices) as well as Nyingma teachings. The most important and here relevant of the three is Rog Zhigpo (1171-1245), the same one who authored the main early Zhijé history.*
(*ཞིག་པོ་ཉི་སེང་ aka ཉི་མ་སེང་གེ aka རིན་ཆེན་ཤེས་རབ་. His untitled history of the early Zhijé lineage is found in ZC, vol. 4, pp. 324-432.)
The colophon of the initial text* mentions Gomchen Drak (བསྒོམ་ཆེན་བྲག་) as the place of composition. From other sources we know this was a retreat place for Rog Zhigpo between the years 1207 and 1228. It was also the place where his mentor Tenné died at a very advanced age, somewhere in his ’90’s (in 1217?).
(*On the recto of fol. 76[101].)
The root text behind this commentary is preserved in the Zhijé Collection, vol. 1, pp. 235-242 and elsewhere (see Schaeffer’s essay, pp. 27-28 for transcribed title and colophon). It has been Englished by both Harding and Molk (both listed below).
A commentary on the Silver Sphere is listed in the Drepung Catalog, p. 1008, in 64 folios, but there is no clear reason to believe it is the same as the one in the Vatican set. What the Vatican library does have is surely the ‘same’ as still another one listed in Drepung Catalog, on p. 1084: Zhig-po Nyi-seng (i.e. Rog Zhigpo), Thun-mong-gi Brgyud-pa Dngul-sgong-gi Bshad-’bum, a manuscript in 42 folios. On the page just before notice yet another commentarial text in 61 folios by Zhig-po Nyi-seng on the same root text listed as Dri-med Dngul-sgong-gi Sgom-'bum. By its title it would appear to be a Meditation Collection rather than an Explanation Collection!
One not so subtle difference between the root text and the Vatican set’s commentary is in their internal order. The Vatican begins with teachings of the ten women mentors,* while the root text has them at the end, after the men. Was this idea to put the women first regarded as a common courtesy, or is there more to it?
(*These ten women gurus of Padampa as well as the men were listed in an earlier Tibeto-logic blog, “Padampa Portrait - Part Two.”)
So, I suppose what it comes down to is this: We owe to the Vatican the one and only now available commentary on the Silver Sphere. Of course it is only partial, which is sad. The only hope we have today for a complete text of it lies in the Arhat Temple in Drepung.
References
I highly recommend going to this Vatican Library site to see the whole set:
https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.estr.or.171.
A word to the wise, in their evident belief that the language is Hebrew or Arabic, the librarians make us scroll left rather than right to go to the next folio side. And if you haven’t mastered Tibetan cursive script, I’m sure that’s something you’ve vowed to work on, so now is your chance. And if you’ve already learned cursive but find the shorthand spellings mystifying, see this essay by Jörg Heimbel, posted at academia.edu just today.
Elena De Rossi Filibeck, “Texts from Tibet, a Land of Mission,” contained in: Maria Gabriella Critelli, ed., Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae XXVIII, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican City 2023), pp. 161-187. The Zhijé text receives its brief mention on p. 161 in footnote 1 as “an incomplete miscellany of historical and teaching texts called Dri med dngul sgong (Vat. estr.-or. 58).”
Sarah Harding, tr., Zhije: The Pacification of Suffering, Snow Lion (Boulder 2019). The root text behind the commentary, “The Pure Silver Egg of the Stainless Path,” is translated into English on pp. 31-40. For easy access to the Tibetan, go here, but be patient while it downloads. Look also here, especially for the useful English introduction to the “Egg Trilogy.”
David Molk, with Lama Tsering Wangdu Rinpoche, Lion of Siddhas: The Life and Teaching of Padampa Sangye, Snow Lion (Ithaca 2008). The root text behind the commentary, “The Stainless Path of the Silver Egg of Speech” is translated into English on pp. 314-320.
Kurtis Schaeffer, “Crystal Orbs and Arcane Treasuries: Tibetan Anthologies of Buddhist Tantric Songs from the Tradition of Pha Dam pa sangs rgyas,” Acta Orientalia [Oslo], vol. 68 (2007), pp. 5-73.
Sun Penghao, “Notes on the Tibetan Lexeme lo rgyus: Other than ‘History’,” contained in: Kurtis R. Schaeffer et al., eds., Histories of Tibet: Essays in Honor of Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp, Wisdom (New York 2023), pp. 421-433.
Zhijé Collection (ZC) — The root text of the Silver Sphere is in vol. 1, pp. 235-242. This collection is by far the most important available resource on Padampa and his Zhijé teachings (originally a four-volume manuscript, it was published in five). TBRC (Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center) makes it available in PDFs, which is wonderful, but they have it under the name “Zhi byed snga bar phyi gsum gyi skor.” This incorrectly made up title states that it includes the early (snga) and middle (bar) transmission texts of the Zhijé, when in fact its content is limited to the Later Transmission (phyi) alone.* Some day they will listen to me and correct this old mistake rather than allow it to continue generating confusion.
- To get to the Zhijé Collection, try this link, or if that doesn’t work, try this one — https://library.bdrc.io/ — and type “W23911” in their search box.
In the future, if a Tibetan title for the collection is needed, I think it ought to reflect the title that is actually there on the manuscript. Although difficult to read in the reprint edition, it is more legible in the microfilm that was made independently by the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project. What we find there is this: Dam chos snying po zhi byed las / rgyud phyi snyan rgyud zab khyad ma bzhugs // glang skor bzim chung phyag pe'o [~glang 'khor gzims chung phyag dpe'o]. If a short title is needed, I recommend Zab-khyad-ma, which means [the manuscript primarily, but possibly also the transmission it represents called] Exceptionally Profound. Use the English if you prefer.
(*This means primarily the one transmitted by Kunga, although there were three other disciples of Padampa who held transmissions that are also called “later” and that once had smaller text collections that have not surfaced yet. We know they existed in earlier times, as their length is sometimes quantified.)
Notes on the Vatican Padampa Set
A word on pagination: I give both folio numbers [the 2nd in square brackets] when there are two on the same folio. These aren’t entirely sure. There are problems with the pencilled numbers supplied to the folios (not to mention the numbers used to label the scans), so rather than use them I try to rigorously follow the dual-page-number system written in the margins of the folios, while ignoring the others. The higher numbers in square brackets ought to be the continuous “running” numbers. If you are interested in pursuing the pagination studies, this page ought to prove useful. I put solid bullets (•) whenever a new text begins. I put actual title-page titles (they are few) in bold.
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| 1 egg = 250 kilos of chocolate |
Postscript (July 9, 2024):
I only recently received in an email from Elena De Rossi-Filibeck of Rome the following information:“The Padampa text DigiVatLib number Vat.estr.or.171 is part of a donation from an Austrian or German gentleman who purchased the text in Bhutan in 1989. In the last folio there are the following words: ‘Sutra gekauft 1989 in Bhutan, Herbert Jemen 1989’.”I will have to accept this on faith as so far I was unable to actually see any German inscription on the manuscript scan.I believe this is the best we can do on the question of its recent provenance for the time being. It was a modern donation to the Vatican Library by one named Herbert Jemen, who purchased it in Bhutan in 1989. I admit I was a little disappointed by this information, since I had been wondering if it may have once belonged to Cardinal Stefano Borgia, the famous book collector of the 19th century, given his strong interest in manuscripts in every language. This is not the case, as it turns out.About the identity of Herbert Jemen, I haven’t any idea. I don’t recognize the surname, and could find nothing on the internet. It is a common way of writing the country name Yemen in German and some other languages.
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