Locating a Tertön Prayer in Terma History

"Magic and Mystery in a Tibetan Woodblock Print" could’ve been the title. There are some mysteries here begging for clarification ... your clarification, and for the magic, well, with a little patience you will see some soon enough. Once again, this not a report of my success, more like an account of a long continuing struggle likely to continue far into the future. It has a long back story, in fact a little too long, so for now I’ll stick to a few small bits of that semi-personal history.

Notice the weird gter snyon in the transcribed title. I hope it wasn't me.

In the early ’80’s I was one of the catalogers of the Berthold Laufer* collection of Tibetan manuscripts and woodblock prints kept by the Chicago Field Museum in Chicago. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. One of the very few photocopies of texts that somehow remained in my possession, even if it was misplaced for a few decades, was a very interesting Tertön Prayer. Over the years I often felt its loss and doubted I’d ever see it again. Forgive me if I don’t go into the sad and painful circumstances that led to its recovery. Instead let’s go inspect this manuscript and its intriguing features, beginning where it begins, with the title. This is going to be a kind of show and tell, with a lot of show and not so much tell.

(*That’s him staring out at you from the frontispiece.)

The title of the Tertön Prayer

As you could observe by glancing above, the first mystery is in the title itself, right in the middle, where two syllables are impossible to read with any assurance of making sense.*

(*and the form of the genitive ending right after those two syllables is impossible if the preceding syllable ends in a vowel, as it seems to do here... this detail forces us to think and think again about how to read through the letters, letters a little further obscured by what looks like a near-horizontal smear near the bottom.)

Just for curiosity’s sake, here is an unofficial printout, done back when daisy wheel printers were in style although I think this was done by a dot matrix tractor-feed printer, of the page that contains the extremely brief cataloging entry (click on it to enlarge).

Along with the photocopy of the Tibetan text I also recovered a typed transcription of the text, typed with my fingers, with some of my own added annotations (that bit of red I added just last year). Notice that “drang ma kyi” was my reading back then, in the early years of the ’80’s.

These are all four rectos of the text. At the moment I would like to draw your attention to the two syllables floating alone and outside the box of all four folios, the lower left hand corner (I know you don’t see anything like this on folio 4, but trust me, there’s one there, too). 

A close-up to show both the complete title and what looks like a marginal notation that reads khang lhu. Although a matter of great obscurity for most of us, there has all the same been a thin vein of discussion about this rare phenomenon of Tibetan woodblock printing, first named and identified by Helmut Eimer as something he called Schnitzerkolophonen, or carvers’ signatures.

This slide has a brief bibliography of everything I can come up with at the moment.

Another example from folio 2 recto. What follows is from folio 3 recto.

There is only one obstacle to identifying these things as carvers’ signatures, and that is that they hardly make any sense as representations of names — well, unless they are using a method of abbreviation that is both obscure and severe. For example, in the example immediately above, phag bkra, we could theorize that the phag with likely meaning pig is short for some sort of clan or place name acting as a specifier.* It could be short for something longer, let’s imagine a place name Phag-tshang that means Pig Pen. Then the bkra could be short for, say, Bkra-shis-rgyal-mtshan or some other such common given name. That is a nice theory. The main problem is it only seems to work nicely on this particular example, and not on any of the others.

(*Something like a last name in English, except that it always comes first.)

In our next slide I’ve charted out all four examples for your puzzlement and contemplation:

Helmut Eimer dates these kinds of marginal carver signatures somewhere in the 15^th or 16^th centuries and believes they are most likely to be found in Mang-yul Gung-thang prints, even if not entirely restricted to that place.

Marta Sernesi has said: 

"16^th century prints from South-Western Tibet (Mang yul Gung thang and La stod lHo) often carry the signatures of the scribes on the blocks, which are called ming thang or ming yig thang..."  (Go here, download the PDF, and then scroll down to page 344.)

If ming thang is the word for it, and I really have no reason for doubt, then it could mean no more than name field, serving a purpose somewhat like the cartouche in ancient Egypt.

Eimer accepts Franz-Karl Ehrhard’s suggestion that these name tags may have been placed where they are for the purpose of calculating work done and payments due, but he thinks religious merit was also involved. I think all this is correct.

So far we identified two mysteries: [1] The mangled title and [2] the presence of what look like carvers’ signatures, even if that idea seems to fall apart due to the difficulty in finding names in them. [3] Now a third mystery, and the one that has troubled me most of all: It looks like the better part of the colophon has been made to disappear. On close inspection, it is clear this alteration was entered into the blocks itself, and not just into our particular print. I would like to prevent you from imagining that some innocent child with a large magic marker accidentally effaced it. Just observe up close and you can see the grain in the black area indicating wood. Most likely the original words were gouged out and replaced with a wooden plug. This technical method, mostly used to make corrections in already-carved blocks, is another matter that has been documented by Helmut Eimer. The bonded plug, whether blank or carved with letters, would serve a necessary function, to preserve the structural integrity of the woodblock as a whole as it is made to undergo the stresses of the printing process. Wood has a tendency to split, as you may know.*

(*I think I can guess that they may have avoided giving this treatment to the first bit of the colophon because that would have involved gouging into the very center of the woodblock, along the wood grain, significantly increasing the chances of a serious split that would necessitate discarding and re-carving the entire block.)

  

The still-existing words of the colophon are difficult, yet possible, to make out in the Laufer print. About all the sense we can make here is “Thus, in those words, the purifier vidya-mantra[s?]...” This is hardly enough to make sense on its own, so we can wonder why it was allowed to remain when the remainder was elided.

Last year when I sent him an email asking him about his research on the carvers’ signatures, Helmut Eimer surprised me. No, really, he shocked the hell out of me when he told me how he had happened to run across a second copy of the Tertön Prayer in the form of a manuscript kept in Berlin. So, after looking it up in the catalog and getting more advice from the cataloger Karl-Heinz Everding, I e-mailed the librarians in Berlin to get a copy, and it didn’t take them very long. A significant part of the mystery could be largely solved.

Here in this next slide you can see the beginning, including the title, of the Berlin manuscript.

Here the last three lines of the verse, plus the final word of the first line, are the very words that were removed from the woodblock print.

“The composer of those words? The Vidyâmantradhâra

Pel Tashi Tobgyel Wangpoi De,

also called by another name Guru Ralpacan,

a wanderer with no established abode is who wrote it.”

You can check the translation for yourself in the next slide:

As much as we search for some, there is a yawning absence of substantial information on the life of the author. The main source seems to be the Anuyoga Empowerment lineage history by the 2nd Rinzin of Dorjedrak. To best of my knowledge there is no full biography dedicated to him, unfortunately. He was a layperson, a lay Ngakpa and not a monk, as we can see from this miniature that was and for all we know might still be kept in Paris:

I don’t have the time or ability to go into the political situation in Ü and Tsang provinces in the mid-to-late 16th century. I know a lot of people, among them I count some good friends, who have more expertise in that area than I could ever claim. Still, we have to say something about one important ruler named Zhingshakpa Tseten Dorje. An ordinary farmer, yet he had some family relationship with the Rinpungpa ruling family and gradually rose up through the ranks until 1548 when he took the headship of Samdruptse Palace. He went so far as having his own older brother murdered along the way, and turned against the very Rinpungpa rulers that had promoted him.

But what does that have to do with our prayer author? Well, Tashi Tobgyel, a descendent of the Tangut royal line, had a disagreement with his older brother, and Zhingshakpa's elder son took the side of that older brother against him. Because of this, Zhingshakpa had him exiled to Ü province, where he settled in the Chonggyé Valley.

Then a famous verbal exchange took place that is repeated almost every time Tashi Tobgyel is mentioned in the historical sources. Up to this point I’ve relied mainly on Shakabpa’s wellknown political history, but now I turn to what may be the ultimate source of this account in the Anuyoga Empowerment history, completed in 1681.

Zhingshagpa literally added insult to injury with his wickedly clever couplet punning on Tashi Tobgyel's name:    

Here is my rough translation:

“You who are supposed to be 'powerful' are just a powerless wanderer.

I banish you to the banks of Preta City [Yama's abode in the land of the dead].”

Tashi Tobgyal responded in kind:

“You who may be called "field" have all ten fields complete.

I toss you in the jaws of the head of the eclipse god Râhula.”

We have to admire the poetic skill behind these clever puns based on the names of their opponents. Yet this poetry competition had grievous consequences. Everybody believes Tashi Tobgyel’s magic caused the death of Zhingshakpa who before long died of an illness. Tashi Tobgyel may have already earned a reputation for magical powers. If you can imagine there is even an instance when for seven days he reversed the flow of the Brahmaputra River. When stories like that are told about a person it makes for quite the reputation.

As a refugee in Chonggyé Valley, Tashi Tobgyel married into the local ruling family, and into this very family the Fifth Dalai Lama eventually took birth. The Fifth was a great admirer of Tashi Tobgyel, a follower of some of his terma teachings including the cycle known as Karmaguru. Jake Dalton, in his book The Taming of the Demons (pp. 140-141) retells the remarkable story about a dream vision the Fifth Dalai Lama had in around 1642, as he was rising to power. In it, Tashi Tobgyel bestowed upon him empowerments of Karmaguru cycle and gave him a phurpa which he tucked into his sash. As you may know, this became a standard feature of The Great Fifth's iconography, just as you also see  in the icons of Tashi Tobgyel illustrated above, interestingly enough.

There is a lot more that has been said and will be said about all of this. I much recommend some relevant works by Samten Karmay and James Gentry. But let’s turn to the content of the Tertön Prayer and say a few words about that before we call it a day.

These are the three main sources that were written as commentaries, commentaries that took the Tertön Prayer as their root text, quoting the verses and then discussing the teaching lineages (in case of Fifth Dalai Lama’s work) or lives of the Tertöns named in it. The existence of these works demonstrates the enduring impact the prayer had on historical understandings about the Tertöns.

Since you may have already thought to ask the question the answer is: No, this way of arranging the biographies of the Tertöns did not survive in Kongtrul’s famous Tertön Gyatsa of 1886. The somewhat earlier (early 19th century) history by Guru Tashi does in its brief section 4 of chapter 4 follow the Fifth Dalai Lama’s work. But he begins with a list of Tertöns that have prophecies in the Thang-yig texts, as he clearly believes these are the most significant and authentic Tertöns. Actually, Kongtrul has the same approach as Guru Tashi. He includes very many of the Tertöns mentioned in our prayer (I haven’t done a detailed comparison yet), but the original order has been abandoned. Clearly a lot of work needs to be done comparing the Tertön histories. So far Kongtrul’s is the only one that has been fully translated (partially by Eva Dargyay and then by Ramon Prats, and fully by Yeshe Gyamtso), and all others are most usually ignored, which is a shame... I hope one of our legendary young Tibetologists is listening to this.

Looking at the Tertön Prayer itself, what strikes us right away is that the first verse is devoted to a relatively unknown Tertön named Dorjebum (Rdo-rje-'bum) known for his medical terma. He is, in the Zab-bu-lung history explicitly stated to be the first of the Tertöns. The same history does slip Sangyé Lama (Sangs-rgyas-bla-ma) into the discussion, but I fail to find him in the prayer itself.  The Fifth Dalai Lama also mentions Sangyé Lama here, but says only that his lineages were not received. It may be due to Kongtrul that it is now common knowledge that Sangyé Lama must be called the first. As a rediscoverer, he may have himself been rediscovered, or at least revalidated, in the 19th century.

The Guru Tashi history has an argument that Dorjebum lived four generations before Yuthokpa, so dating Yuthokpa’s activities to around 1200, that would put him in about 1080 CE, so that’s about the best I can do at dating him.

Immediately after the doctor’s verse, verse 3 is about two women Tertöns, yet another somehow surprising feature. Why, we wonder, would physicians and women Tertöns take priority?  It is only in verses 4 and 5 that we get the names of the Tertöns of greatest renown (to us at least), Nyangral Nyima-özer and Guru Chöwang. 

Quote at the opening of the terma section of Fifth Dalai Lama's Thob-yig.     

Seeing how he starts with the ‘earliest’ Tertön you might expect him to follow a chronological arrangement, but this is not the case. The Fifth Dalai Lama opens the terma section with his assessment of the content which is if anything thematically, not chronologically, ordered:

gnyis pa zab pa gter ma'i skor la / thang yig tu gter ston phal cher gyi lung bstan mtshan smos rnams kyang lam tsam las go rim nges sbyar rang du mi 'dug pa dgos pa'i dbang gis gab dkrugs su mngon.

“In the Scroll Document (Thang-yig) the prophecies of most of the Tertöns name their names, but these are only roughly, not exactly arranged in any definite order, [this order being] clearly disrupted on account of [other] needs.”

chos 'byung rnams su yang dpyad bzod mi bzod sna tshogs snang la /   khri srong rnam sprul dpal bkra shis stobs rgyal gyis mdzad pa'i sprul sku gter ston grangs nges kyi gsol 'debs thugs rje'i nyin 'byed la snga phyi'i go rim ma mdzad par mtshan dang chos skye brgyud sogs gang 'tsham sde tshan du bsdoms par gnang ba'i go rim gyi dbang du byas te...

[I omitted a clause that seems to say "In the Dharma Histories there appear various [systems?] that may or may not hold up under close scrutiny."]  

“The work Compassion's Daymaker: Prayer of the Emanation Body Tertöns of Definite Number was composed by the emanation of Khri-srong by the name of Dpal Bkra-shis-stobs-rgyal. In it there is no chronological ordering, but the names [of the Tertöns] are combined in sets based on such things as name, Dharma teaching, birth and transmission lineage.”

I assume no one will find it the least bit surprising if the Dalai Lama’s characterization of the Tertön Prayer’s internal organizing principles is so exactly on mark.

Another interesting verse to think about is the verse no. 23 about the group of Tertöns with Lingpa (གླིང་པ་) in their names.  It contains eleven names and explicitly addresses itself to “the unmistakable 11 Lingpas” as a group. The Zab-bu-lung history adds a fifth line to verse 23 containing 3 added names and addresses itself to “the 14 Lingpa Tertöns.”

The commentary on verse 23 on the Lingpas takes up by far the greater part of the history, extending from p. 98 to 225. That means a little more than one third of the total length of the history. Actually, the history, at p. 217.1-2, has a mchan-note somehow explaining the addition: 

gter bton bkris [~bkra shis] grangs kyi dbang du byas na gling pa bcu gcig du gsungs 'dug na’ang / las 'phro gling pa phyi ma / zhig po gling pa / bde chen gling pa gsum po 'di gling chen brgyad kyi grangs la 'dug pa gling pa bzhi byas nas mnan pa yin.

I have trouble with the arithmetic, although I understand that the unknown person who wrote this mchan-note is offering an apology for increasing the number likely meant to justify it.  My solution is to fix the number 4 and assume in its stead 14 was intended. I assume that “Gter-bton Bkra-shis” is intended as a short name of the prayer author, and offer this quick translation:

“If we go by the number in Tertön Tashi, he clearly states there are 11 Lingpa.  Yet this triad of Las-’phro-gling-pa the Later, Zhig-po-gling-pa, and Bde-chen-gling-pa is present in the enumeration of the Eight Great Ling, so they have been added bringing the number of Lingpa up to 14.”

But enough about those interesting questions, since our time is flying and we need to get tickets for far destinations. So if you have the time and if you would like to see the complete text of the prayer with a concordance to the commentarial works, here is the web page where before you know it you can see it all:

Click here to go there 
(file updated on 4th of October 2019)

Conclusion? Maybe one located at the end of time?

At the very least, despite a number of avenues of research and argument left open, we may say, obvious as that may be by now, that the Laufer xylograph supplies an example of the motivated defacement of printing blocks. In the defacement of the title we find the motive of expressing disagreement with the idea that there might be a determinate number of Tertöns. In the blocking off of most of the colophon we see an equally deliberate attempt to erase memory of the author. At the same time, it appears that the prayer, those modifications having been made, was regarded as worthy of being printed over and over again from those woodblocks on account of its valuable content.

Both the block carving and the defacement very likely took place in the Tsang region rather late in the 16th century or early in the 17th. The presence of carvers’ signatures alone suggests Tsang during those times. And of course the fact that the author was a very controversial figure suggests motives most likely to be found in Tsang after the author’s exile to Chonggyé valley in 1579. I suppose I may be reading too much into it, but I think the last line in the prayer’s colophon suggests he had already gone into exile when it was written:  “a wanderer with no established abode.” As a landed aristocrat by background, he would hardly make this statement lightly.

Oh, and one more thing: One of the great remaining mysteries in the bibliography of Tibetan histories is the fact that Tashi Tobgyel composed a history of the Old Translation Nyingma school at the request of a Kagyüpa, the Fifth Drukchen Rinpoche (1593-1641). A lengthy criticism of that history by Sogdogpa has been published,* but the history itself is nowhere to be found.  Now why do you think that might be? Is it possible an entire history book got lost in the same politico-magical controversies that brought about the woodblock defacement?

(*I’ve been corrected on this particular point. See the comment section below. The author is named even if not yet definitely identified, but it isn’t Sogdogpa, despite being published as part of Sogdogpa’s works..  —Oct 15, 2019.) 

Coda

This always happens to me. I was thinking I was done, but perhaps a few words about the need and significance of this kind of study are in order. So far the field of Tibetan Studies has more or less been operating under the impression that the history by Kongtrul has everything we need to know about the lives of the Tertöns.* I would like to encourage more investigation of early accounts of collectivities of treasure revealers that would then go on to go outside the history book genres a little in order to encompass collective prophecies, too, not just collective Tertön prayers. 

Among other things we may need to contemplate why some earlier histories disappeared, not just the one just mentioned, but another specifically about Tertöns by G.yung-ston Rdo-rje-dpal (1284-1365).** And of course, it needs saying that the Bon school must be brought into our future conclusion-making processes, as they have a rich literature of Tertön histories, prayers and prophecies of their own. It’s even possible that followers of Bon got their terma traditions underway before the Nyingma did. 

I guess collective prophecies of Tertöns whether Bon or Nyingma emerged in the 14th century while the Mongols were loosening their grip on Eurasia, even if a lot of individual prophecies existed before that time. I’m not sure what I just said is correct, but somebody needs to put their neck out and make these kinds of hypotheses so they can be proven or disproven. That way the field of study would be making better progress.

(*A remarkably early and brilliant exception is the article by Janet Gyatso listed in the bibliographical listing below.  **It is mentioned in the Guru Tashi history, the 5-volume pothi edition, vol. 4, p. 107.)

§   §   §

Some publications:

Please notice that just a few references are supplied here. There is no idea to supply coverage of the field of Tertön studies. There have been quite a few significant studies recently, and we’ll be sure to mention them some other time.

Eva M. Dargyay, The Rise of Esoteric Buddhism in Tibet, Motilal Banarsidass (Delhi 1979), the 2nd revised edition.

Janet Gyatso, “Guru Chos-dbang's Gter 'byung chen mo, an Early Survey of the Treasure Tradition and Its Strategies in discussing Bon Treasure,” contained in: Per Kvaerne, ed., Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Fagernes 1992, The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture (Oslo 1994), pp. 275-287.

Yeshe Gyamtsho, tr., Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Taye, The Hundred Tertöns: A Garland of Beryl, Brief Accounts of Profound Terma and the Siddhas Who Have Revealed It, KTD Publications (Woodstock 2011). See especially the entry "Karma Guru" on pp. 243-244. 

Ramon Prats, Contributo allo studio biografico dei primi Gter-ston, Istituto Universitario Orientale (Napoli 1982).

༓་་་༓་་་༓

A quick climb out on a limb:

This final note is likely to seem trivial and nitpicking to more casual investigators than yourselves, but one of the loose ends still remains to be tied in: How is it possible that the woodblock could have once been carved with the actual title grangs nges kyi  and through manipulation of the already-carved letters made to look like what we have in the Laufer example, that might be read something like brang ma kyi. Thinking it through everywhere but Tuesday, I venture a solution. Although abbreviations are rare in headed script (dbu-can) texts, especially woodblock printed ones, it is possible that not enough space was left for the title when the carving was done. Well, okay, this brings up another question: Why wasn’t the normal practice followed to begin with? That is to say, Why wasn't the title featured prominently by being left floating alone in the middle of the recto of the first folio? I suggest this might have been done, but that something troublesome happened to the woodblock for the title page, so instead of carving a complete new block, they decided to crowd the title into the blank space, blank space as is often found at the beginning of texts on the folio 1 verso side. I know this must sound rather what-if-ish, but even if the explanation is reaching too far in your opinion it still may be that an abbreviated way of writing was used, so that instead of carving grangs nges kyi, or གྲངས་ངེས་ཀྱི་, the carver carved grang[s ng]es kyi, or གྲངེས་ཀྱི་ instead. So imagine གྲངེས་ཀྱི་ in raised wooden letters, and how you could take a couple of swipes with a sharp knife-point to obliterate a ligature here and a ligature there and end up with something that looks like བྲང་མ་ཀྱི་. Hmmm. I’m still thinking about it. Have some better idea?

A true friend would tell me if I’m overthinking it. Anyone the least bit familiar with the story of Lobsang Tuesday Rampa will already be apprised of the danger of climbing out on a limb for any reason. Wood can split, after all.


Appendix (October 3, 2019):

This also always happens to me. I don't think there is any reason for me to feel guilty for not finding it before, since the TBRC catalogers misread the cursive title, making it not very searchable. Anyway, just a few days after posting I found yet another manuscript version of the text that forces me to update my edition (linked above). You can see all the details in the slide that follows. Have a great year, and write if anything comes to mind. We're all friends here, and we can admit when we overlook things or make mistakes.

October 19, 2019

I noticed a few days ago that, according to the native statistics supplied by Blogger.com, Tibeto-logic has passed the one million mark in page views. Among those in-large-part accidental visitors are no doubt some people like yourselves who actually read the thing. This counting began in the year 2010, so that means the preceding years are unaccounted for.  The first Tibeto-logic blog is dated to August 2006, as you may see on the sidebar over to your right. I never thought quantification counted for much, so this is neither here nor there.  I do get tired sometimes, but don't think I will stop until I lose my typing ability or run out of things to say, whichever comes first. I do want to encourage more competition, so if you are thinking to start a Tibet blog just drop me a line and I'll do my best to help you get started. Typing ability is the most important thing, but writing ability comes in a close second. The rest is easy.

I would like to single out and thank Small Person, and the late E.S. in particular for their moral support and encouragement along the way. If not for them I might have given this up a long time ago, even before everyone except us moved to the fast-food outlets like Facebook and Twitter, never to be heard from again. Don’t you dislike crowds? Especially when the crowds get bossy and judgmental at every opportunity as they are doing on so-called social media. When you visit Tibeto-logic, you’re entering a boss-free zone. I hope you can feel a sense of relative freedom from social constraints and judginess. I know I do.

Letter Switching Codes of the Fifth Dalai Lama

Edward Brumgnach, The Lost Symbol: Magic Squares, Masonic Cipher

Years ago, a friend passed along to me color xeroxes of a 2-folio text in Tibetan, part of a very large set he had cataloged in an article of his. I’ll give you the reference to it later on.

It was laying on top of a pile for months, ever since I had taken it out of the file cupboard and wasn't sure what file to return it to. It starts with a little bit of geography, listing names of the nine islands of India. I’m sure that’s why he gave it to me, because he knew I had an interest in these kinds of geographic schemes. But that subject barely takes up two and a half lines, while all the rest has the Tibetan alphabet laid out in curious patterns. I hadn’t given it much attention, the place names were more compelling. But where to file it, under “Geography” or “Alphabet”?

It was only after watching the video that you see above, with its fascinating explanation not only of magic squares, but also an old Masonic letter substitution code. If you don’t see the video up above, just try searching the internet for “pigpen cipher.”  It is a lot more fascinating than you may imagine, and it requires no more than minimal math. Just a few days after watching the video, I happened to be straightening out my room when I picked up the pages thinking I would try again to put the text in a logical place. No sooner did I have my hands on them and have a glance at the title — Rgya gar gling phran gyi ming dang krugs yig le tshan yod [keyletter on title page: HA] — than I knew exactly what the text was about.* The term [d]krugs yig in the title means disturbed letters, or more to the point, letters whose order has been mixed around.

(*The text forms a tiny section of a very lengthy collection revolving around the 17th-century sealed visionary teachings of the Great Fifth. It's listed as no. 29 on p. 56 in Uspensky’s article.)

The Tibetan systems don’t work the same way as the Masonic code, and I haven’t ever before tried to tackle the systems used in the text, not before this moment. They are like charts that come with no instructions on how they are supposed to work. Let’s just look at the last one, the four disturbed (bzhi krugs) where we see that the 30 consonants of the Tibetan alphabet are written out in the usual order, divided up into sets of 4, as is often done anyway, with a pair of consonants left over at the end. The second line reverses the order within each set, so we get something like this:

ཀ་ཁ་ག་ང་། ཅ་ཆ་ཇ་ཉ། ཏ་ཐ་ད་ན། པ་ཕ་བ་མ། ཙ་ཚ་ཛ་ཝ། ཞ་ཟ་འ་ཡ། ར་ལ་ཤ་ས། ཧ་ཨ།།

ང་ག་ཁ་ཀ། ཉ་ཇ་ཆ་ཅ། ན་ད་ཐ་ཏ། མ་བ་ཕ་བ། ཝ་ཛ་ཚ་ཙ། ཡ་འ་ཟ་ཞ། ས་ཤ་ལ་ར། ་ཨ་ཧ།།

For my readers who may not be literate (in the literal sense of the word literate) in the Tibetan language, I put the same in Wylie transcription:

ka kha ga nga / ca cha ja nya / ta tha da na / pa pha ba ma / tsa tsha dza wa / ra la sha sa / ha a //

nga ga kha ka / nya ja cha ca / na da tha ta / ma ba pha pa / wa dza tsha tsa / sa sha ra la / a ha //

My suspicion is that wherever a letter ka is used in a word one would replace it with nga, and so forth and so on. This can lead to some odd letter combinations in practice. It seems to me I’ve noticed some of these in certain sections of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s record of teachings received. I'll have to go back and look for that. Meanwhile, using TBRC’s internal search facility, I found that there is a modern article on the subject of [d]krugs yig. I haven't had a chance to study that either, but I’ll supply the complete reference down below in case you might be interested to check it out.

A couple of bibliographical references and a geographical note:

Vladimir Uspensky, “The Illustrated Manuscript of the Fifth Dalai Lama's Secret Visionary Autobiography Preserved in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies,” Manuscripta Orientalia, vol. 2, no. 1 (March 1996), pp. 54-65.

Bstan-pa'i-sgron-me, Bod-yig-gi 'Bri-srol Bye-brag Dkrugs-yig Skor Rags-tsam Bkod-pa, contained in:  Bod-kyi Rtsom-rig Sgyu-rtsal, vol. 98 in the general series or vol. no. 6 for the year 1996, pp. 61-68.

Here is a list of the nine Isles of India, according to the text in the Fifth Dalai Lama’s magical grimoire: In the east, the Isle of Shambhala. In the south, Bheta [‘Coconut’] Isle. In the west, Orgyan. In the north, Kashmir Isle. In the southeast, the Isle of Khang-bu. In the southwest, Copper Isle. In the northwest, Air Isle. In the northeast, the Isle of Kamaru. In the center, the Diamond Seat. Each of these has five different languages. I hope you can make out the text, and if there is need for it practice your Tibetan letter reading, in the photo that follows down below. Maybe if you tap on it it will expand a bit, we’ll see.

§  §  §

I did check the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Record of Teachings Received, and found an example of what is, I suppose, a type of encodement, but not of the kind that features in text number HA of our St. Petersburg manuscript. See for example vol. 3, fol. 61, where the text is 'encoded' in such a way one suspects it was purposefully designed to impede reading and to thwart digital searching, as if he knew what we would worry about in the 21st century. Here is a sample of this type of encoding in Wylie transcription:  

zur chen ng  /  ag dbang  /   phun tshogs /   mkhas grub khra tshang  /   pa chen po /   des bdag za hor bande la'o /   /   drag po'i skor gyi brgyud pa ni /   chos sku snang  /   ba mtha' yas /   long  /  s sku padma dbang  /   chen /   sprul sku padma 'byung  /   gnas man sng  /  ar bzhin no /   /

No letters have been switched here, just the punctuation marks are in all the wrong places, even in the middle of syllables.

What? You haven't learned the alphabet? Go directly to this video and sing it at the top of your lungs along with the kids. You get not only the alphabet, but some basics of the Tibetan spelling system along with it. 

Jg zpv xbou up lopx ipx Tijgufe Bmqibcfu Dpeft xpsl, uijt qbhf ibt b iboez boe tjnqmf fyqmbobujpo, bt xfmm bt bo fodpefs cpy tp zpv dbo dsfbuf tfdsfu nfttbhft mjlf uif pof zpv ibwf cffo efdpejoh.  

l nqrz wr vrph ri brx wklv pljkw orrn olnh wkh zbolh wudqvolwhudwlrq vbvwhp. 

Read the PS if you must:

Well, I hardly had a chance to click the "publish" button in Blogger before I received the access I needed to that article by Bstan-pa’i-sgron-me.

Now I can tell you that it has similarly named systems of encodement, but is not identical to those of the Great Fifth.

The article says that as a general rule the consonants serving as root letter, prescript, postscript, or super-postscript are the ones that get changed.  The vowels and the subscripts (subscribed 'y', 'r' and 'l') are left as is, unchanged.

Then it describes the (A) five systems of switching forward (གོ་རིམ་ལྟར་) and (B) the five systems of switching backward (གོ་རིམ་ལྡོག་པ་).

The five systems of switching forward are:  (A1) 2-switching.  Here the letter is replaced by the next letter in the alphabet.  (A2) 3-switching. Here the letter is replaced by the 3rd letter that follows it in the alphabet.  (A3) 4-switching. Here the letter is replaced by the 4th letter that follows it in the alphabet. (A4) 13-switching. Here the 13th following letter is used to replace it.  (A5) 15-switching. Here the 15th letter us the one used to make the replacement.

And then, if you have time for it, we have B1 through B5, which are quite similar to A1 through A5, except that you go searching for the replacement letter backward through the alphabet instead of forward.

It gives examples for all ten types, but I'll limit myself right now to the forward 3-switching (A2):

ཏཔྱཀ་ཨ་ཇཐ་སྴ་ཚོ་ཀཛུཀ་སཀ་ཞཏོཏ་ཟཅོཞི་ཏབས།

See if you can figure out how that would correspond to this perfect line of Tibetan verse in praise of Sarasvati, the goddess/bodhisattva of learning, literature and music.

དབྱངས་ཅན་ལྷ་མོ་གཙུག་ལག་འདོད་འཇོའི་དཔལ།

Unlike the Fifth Dalai Lama’s system, the order of letters in the subsets of consonants are not reversed. But you know, it is in the nature of encodement systems that they require added complications if you want the result to be less crackable. The professor in the video, if you managed to watch far into it, explains some still more amazing complications that might be introduced for that enhanced sense of assurance that greater information security might bring.

ཕངྲ་ལིར་ཕཐེ་ཤེཁར།།

Read the PPS if you must:

Another odd thought occurred to me. If you did as I suggested and watched the lecture video, you would know that magic squares could be added in to make a further complication in the Masonic code. The magic square is of course very well known in Tibet as it is in China. You especially see it in astrological charts like this one, on the stomach shell of the turtle.

Do you see at the very center of the chart the nine numbers inside the checkerboard?

But you know, the 9-fold checker square board is also the ordinary arrangement of the divination cloth, is often associated with planets and so forth.

Thinking about how the 9-island geography of India might belong together with the disturbed letters leads me to a disturbing thought. Might this 9-fold arrangement also have something to do with the encodement system? Is it a numeric way of complicating the system? I'm trying to imagine how this might work. Any idea?

What’s This, a PPPS? (October 11, 2024)

I’ve only today learned that while the Fifth Dalai Lama with encodements in Lhasa, something similar was happening at the court of the Doge of Venice, where a knowledge of codes could be the skill that wins you that secret-ary job you've been hoping for. I haven’t read it yet, but evidently the place to turn is this article by Ioanna Iordanou, “The Professionalization of Cryptology in Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Enterprise & Society, vol. 19, no. 4 (December 2018), pp. 979-1013. I’ll let you know what I find out.

History Blah Blah

My theory is a theory against theory—although I am well aware of the painful irony of the fact that a profoundly theoretical book is needed for the rejection of theory.

— Frank Ankersmit as cited by Hadfield, p. 218.[1]

It’s been said that human beings are storytellers. But more to the point, we are story dwellers. We live inside stories passed down from earlier generations, and it is of these that much of human culture consists. It is perhaps as true among people who are not especially literate, as it is among those literate people who give not one fig about the conscious pursuit of historical truths. They are all victims. We all are. We should wake up to what we keep doing to ourselves, even as with feigned innocence we complain about what is happening to us, as we descend into opioid addictions of our own doing. What pain? Pain you say?

Our historical curiosity has its own rules and its own justifications that have little to do with romanticism and progressivism. It doesn’t care so much for historical restoration — the past doesn’t have to ‘come back alive’ for us or prove its profitability. And it shouldn’t force the past to serve as a measuring stick against our own times, always coming out to our advantage. In other words, we do not need to keep serving up histories that bear the heavy footprint of modernism.

So who are we, and who do we think we represent, when we try to write history? It’s been said that different occupations take different trajectories over the course of a lifetime.[2] Basketball players reach their peaks early on, and soon must think about other ways to occupy their many declining years. No need to mention professional boxers. But one occupation is practically unique in the sense that, at least until one or more of those diseases that used to be called senility takes over, its practitioners peak out at an age somewhere in their 50’s. Just consider how many dates, names, facts and impressions might have to be jumbled in your head before you would be able to say with any sense of finality something about, I don’t know, um... Patronage of ballet in New York City during the Great Depression.

Suppose you were required to explain to an audience of reasonably informed people why it was that the North American ballet companies emerged precisely during a time of severe economic crisis. Most of us would not know where to start, but a historian who has done the background studies into the economic, social, cultural and educational conditions, a historian at least virtually familiar with the physical layout of the city and its major institutions, etc., would likely have something pointed to say. I can’t be sure, since I know and care very little about ballet or about the history of New York City, being not especially fond of the former and fairly indifferent about the latter, except when I find myself there.

Still I am getting on in years, and although I’m not satisfied that I’ve made any progress worth remarking, I have to admit to myself that this is probably as good as I’ll ever get at the kind of history I’ve been working on. And, this being an important point, I have not been working on the history of American ballet, so I wonder why you would come to me with this kind of question. Why did you ask me, anyway?

I said what I just said because I want to convince you, as if you needed this convincing, that if you have an arcane historical question, you shouldn’t pop it to the person who just happened to get ticketed to the seat across from you on the weekend train out of Boston. No, you should ask a historian, and not just any historian either. Take the trouble to find a historian who does history in the specific area, time period and subject. It doesn’t especially matter what theories of history that historian may be favoring; what does matter is how familiar she is with the sources.* 

(*I hesitate to suggest it, but I’m trying to be honest with you. You’ll probably want to take the answer you receive to yet another historian of the same specific area, time period and subject for a second opinion.)

Of course the guy on the train looks alright, is likable enough, and seems quite sure of himself. But there are a number of reasons why you shouldn’t trust him. If lifelong historians make mistakes, which they do of course, then how much more so amateurs? Ordinary people tend to commit various fallacies that historians are more likely to see through. One is the "great founder" idea. According to this the founder of a religion, philosophical movement, artistic trend, factory, school or whatever has the creative powers of an omniscient deity, knowing ahead of time about the future courses the created thing will take. Most people fail to notice that the founder-ship role is most often retrospectively awarded by people with strong stakes in the very thing that was supposedly founded. Experienced historians nowadays are unlikely to trust the explanatory power of founding moments. Instead they will find the actual (and generally multiple) sources of human institutions in larger socio-cultural forces outside the control of their reputed ‘founders’ and look more carefully at the lives of their earlier and latter followers. Give credit where credit is due.

There are other common fallacies in the failure to recognize implications of the well-known fact that history is written by winners. This is one among many reasons that you have to be critical of your sources in ways that inexperienced historians often are not. You have to constantly ask yourself which voices are missing. Triumphalist historians, and there are many such burrowing within our nation states, hardly ever state clearly, “Warning! What you are about to read would have been contradicted by our opponents, the losers, if we hadn't tossed their words on the bonfire so they would never be heard from again.” Perhaps the federal governments could recommend adding such warning labels in the future, now that our coffee cups warn us in very large letters that coffee can, despite all contrary possibilities, be hot. Now what will we go on to do with that knowledge? Why this need to have our needs met?

A brief apology, since I haven’t blogged much this year, the reason being that I've been working too hard on an introduction to a history book I’ve been translating for most of this decade. What you see here is a result of one basic yet harsh principle of literary self-editing called “Kill your darlings!” That means... If it’s just spinning wheels, grandstanding, or spouting blah blah, and doesn't help your plot, be merciful to your readers and mercilessly put it down, even if you lavished a lot of love and care on it. Especially if you did. I offer one of the larger scraps that fell on the editing room floor, dished up with a little added seasoning. If you don’t enjoy it it won’t matter much, and if you feel a little cheated I’ll understand.

§   §   §

Here’s some of the things U.S. citizens know, or don’t know, about Washington. Let’s see, who among the founders of things is seen as fallible or having human foibles?

          •  •  •

• The photos, the one up front entitled Artifice and the one closer to the end called Nature, were taken in Paris about a month ago.

---

[1] Andrew Hadfield, “History / Historiography,” Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, vol. 15 (2007), pp. 217-239, at p. 218.

[2] Arthur C. Brooks, “Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think,” The Atlantic (July 2019). I don't want you to think I recommend reading anything as well written and depressing as this is — the writer even goes so far as to recommend Buddhist-style corpse meditations, with a hat tip to Tibetan bar-do ideas — but if you must, go ahead and look here. I cannot guarantee free access, only wish you good luck. Soon Tibeto-logic may be the only thing you get for free on the entire worldwide web. The Wheel of (Fabulous Personal) Fortune people are planning a total WWW takeover in the very near future, and we really must be doing our best to resist.

§  §  §

A final bite of cut verbiage:  For some what they take to be historical actuality has to be shrink-wrapped by the texts. This can be carried out to such absurd degrees that nothing is permitted to exist in the world that is not supported directly by a text (or on rare occasions artifact). To master the text is to master history. Because texts are intelligible the past is knowable.

There is another way of conceiving texts, to see them as sources of signs that there was life out in the world as well as inside the writer at the time of their inscribing. Taking texts as divination devices allowing access to occasional illuminating signs of life allows us to think about the world back then as a much bigger and much less controllable place. It's a space of many possibilities beyond those we can directly see in any text.

The doing of history itself can be for historians an object of awe and wonder, something that can overpower us, render our usual ways of making sense senseless. In certain moments it can be awakening in that way, not allowing itself to be kept in its place, let alone serving as personal assistant to our present needs and desires.

§§§

“In order for a part of the past to be touched by the present instant, there must be no continuity between them.”*

*Michael Taussig tells us he was shocked when he read these words of Walter Benjamin. See Taussig's essay “Unpacking my Library: An Experiment in the Technique of Awakening,” in Critical Inquiry, vol. 46 (2020), pp. 421-435. I, too, am shocked.