More Than We Imagined: Early Zhijé Histories

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Z1—

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

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

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

—Z2—

Now for no. 2. Astounding but true, also found nested among the Matho fragments is a fairly complete untitled history of the Middle Transmission of the Kam (སྐམ་) lineage. Unlike most of the Matho fragments that are in truth fragments, this one is in a still-intact booklet format, just that both beginning and end are missing.

—Z3 & Z4— 

I will say little about 3 and 4 in my list. No. 3 is arguably only the longer of many equally early historical introductions in the Zhijé Collection (so perhaps it shouldn't be included at all), while no. 4 is the best known of the early Zhijé histories as its content is largely reproduced in the Blue Annals, long available in English translation.

—Z5—

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

—Z6—

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

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

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

 

—Z7—

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

(*On Nyedowas's medicine history, see this Tibetologic blog. The study

 by Brambilla on his Kālacakra history is not yet published.)

—Z8—

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

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

Postscripts

As you may have noticed in the opening slide, this is part of a presentation, since revised, meant for the International Association of Tibetan Studies meeting scheduled to take place in Kathmandu in late August 2026. Due to inter- and intra-miscommunications of Beijing and Kathmandu there was an episode of political ball fumbling resulting in the in-person conference getting cancelled and moved onto Zoom. The local Nepalese press and, later on, the international stories about the cancellation were in large part off the mark and were indeed part of the problem. Beijing did not demand the conference be cancelled. She was planning how best to make use of it to mainstream her false state narrative about Tibet and his history. For a discussion of all this, one that I believe to be largely correct, see Robbie Barnett's essay: "Cross-border Interference or Garbled Messaging: China, Nepal, and the Cancellation of the World's Largest Tibetan Studies Conference." Look here for it.

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

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

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