Combining Sources of Holiness and Blessing

Swayambhunath, Nepal, taken in 2011
The Buddha Image shrines niched into its sides were being renovated

 

Combining the Cult of the Image with the Cult of the Chorten

I was reading Anne Marie Yasin’s essay “Sight Lines of Sanctity at Late Antique Martyria,” with its theme of how in fairly early centuries of Christian church architecture they were unsure how or how much to combine [1] the site associated with the act of the holy person, called the Martyrium (these were frequently octagonal structures, a subject for another time), with [2] the site of sacred rites, the altar.  The essay begins with an example in Milan in 386 CE, when Bishop Ambrose dug up the bodies of two local saints from their graves outside the city and relocated them inside the walls of the basilica he had just built. One solution was to place the Martyrium and altar in eyeshot of each other, so that anyone who came especially for one purpose could simply turn around to appreciate the other. Other solutions, and the ones that eventually took over, were either [1] to place the altar directly on top of the holy memorial, or [2] to place relics of the holy dead into the altar itself, perhaps in a special chamber beneath the table of the eucharistic mystery. Thereby the two foci of sanctity, the eucharist and relic, were entirely united, although we might wonder if perhaps the relic was in some sense subordinated to the sacrament. It was placed at a lower level, after all. But we might just as well say that the presence of the relic empowers or enhances the sacredness of the rite.

I was wondering if some such situation of indeterminacy might hold if we shift to another religious domain and look at the interesting combination of temple (devoted to image cult, primarily) with stûpa that we find most clearly in the famous temple-chorten of Gyantse and in the Jonang monument. In Gyantse and Jonang there are actually doors in the different levels of the chorten that may be entered, filled with images in 2 and 3 dimensions.  In the comparison, we may observe that the chorten would correspond to the reliquary or monument marking the holy site, and thereby resembling the Martyria. It may be obvious that the altar of early Christians doesn’t correspond with the Buddhist image in this equation, but that’s okay, because we’re thinking about how two domains of holiness might or might not be partially or entirely combined, and result in differing solutions. The special phenomenon in which the Chorten serves as temple — by displaying or housing within it painted or sculpted images — has taken various forms throughout the breadth of the Himalaya chain, with one remarkable example being the Great Chorten at Alchi, Ladakh, mentioned in another blog.

It’s as if different religions have their individual non-disclosure agreements (or covenants) when it comes to the holiness manifested by their high aspiration deities and saintly heros. These agreements had practical consequences for the ways religious activities, particularly lay devotional observances, would then be carried out. 

Of course, there are so many Caityas large and small in Nepal Valley that have images in open niches on their sides. But where do we find such combinations in India? I’m asking because I hadn’t thought about it before, so I don’t have much to say.* 

(*Since I once saw it in person, I can say there are some very well preserved images in niches on the sides of the Shariputra Stupa at Nalanda that must be quite old. I’m not sure the Bodhgaya temple formally qualifies as a stupa [it takes the shape of a Shikhara temple], but if it does then of course it has many images in a band of niches around its four-sided base. I’m momentarily thinking that the eyes on the square harmikas of the largest Caityas in Nepal are another expression of the Image/Stupa combination, and in fact most of these Nepalese structures do have image shrines around their bases where offerings are made just as if they were inside a temple.)

This made me wonder if Newars and Tibetans, either individually or in tandem, may have contributed their own solutions to the holiness combination issues presented by Buddhists during their long history.

Come to reflect on it — what I mean is, going on to muse about it instead of closing with the closure we expect of a conclusion — the Stupa and the Martyrium do have, each one within itself, a dual purpose. The Martyria proper may have been meant to commemorate the sites of holy beings’ actions of every kind, but that included the places of their birth and death and burial, and even (as you might suspect from the name) tombs for the “witnesses,” the martyrs (the original holy persons of Christianity).* The Stupa may have originally been a tomb structure adapted by the Buddha and the Buddhists for Buddhist funerary/reliquary purposes, but at the same time recall that the most popular set of eight is correlated with the sites of the main acts of the Buddha (including His death).** So it isn’t all that farfetched to suggest, as I once did, that pieces of biography can serve as relics.*** They could even be called relics of biography, why not? There does seem to be a degree of logic in the ways holy objects and actions are collected and located, and then go on to be recollected by those who venerate them.

(*The very first Christian shrine-like structure to be called a Martyrium — by Eusebius (265-339 CE) although he used a variant spelling — was the edicule built over the tomb (or site of the resurrection) of Jesus, originally built under Constantine with an octagonal shape. Octagons ought to feature in a blog of their own. Martyrium originally meant [a place of] testimony or witness. That’s why we have to loosen our contemporary assumption that it must always have to do with persons who died for their faith.) 

(**The Buddhist Stupa, unlike the Martyrium at least on the face of things, serves as a set of memory-sites for key doctrinal concepts; each structural element might be keyed to one of the 37 Wings of Awakening for example.)  

(***See the blog on the Antwerp relics.)

Dpal-'khor Chos-sde Monastery, Gyantse, 

Photograph taken in November 2005 by Mark Evans

A very short reading list

Yael Bentor, "On the Indian Origin of the Tibetan Practice of Depositing Relics and Dhâranîs in Stûpas and Images,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 115, no. 2 (1995), pp. 248-261.

Catherine M. Chin, “The Bishop’s Two Bodies: Ambrose and the Basilicas of Milan,” Church History, vol. 79, no. 3 (September 2010), pp. 531-555.

Juhyung Rhi, “Images, Relics and Jewels: The Assimilation of Images in the Buddhist Relic Cult of Gandhâra: Or Vice Versa,” Artibus Asiae, vol. 65, no. 2 (2005), pp. 169-211. The insertion of Dharma Relics or Dhâranîs into stone sculptures is demonstrated. The insertion of relics into Stûpas is not in question, they always served as reliquaries, but the insertion of bodily or contact relics into Images is still in question as far as Classical India is concerned; see Y. Bentor’s article listed above.

Jeremy Russell, The Eight Places of Buddhist Pilgrimage, Mahayana Publications (New Delhi 1981).

Tadeusz Skorupski, “Two Eulogies of the Eight Great Caityas,” contained in:  Idem., The Buddhist Forum: Volume VI, The Institute of Buddhist Studies (Tring 2001), pp. 37-55. Translation of Aṣṭamahāsthānacaityastotra (Gnas Chen-po Brgyad-kyi Mchod-rten-la Bstod-pa), Tôh. no. 1134. Dergé Tanjur, vol. KA, folio 82r.3 82v.3, this Tibetan translation done by Tilaka and Pa-tshab Nyi-ma-grags. The relics of the Blessed One were divided between eight places. These eight went on to form the basic map of holy places still visited by Buddhist pilgrims in India and Nepal today.

Ann Marie Yasin, “Sight Lines of Sanctity at Late Antique Martyria,” contained in: Bonna D. Wescoat and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds., Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge 2012), pp. 248-280.

Websites

https://thewonderhouse.co.uk/category/projects/hotung-gallery.  Notice in particular how what is surely one of the oldest existing Buddha Images is found enshrined on the outermost layer of a reliquary known as the Bimaran Casket, that had in its turn been entirely enclosed within a Stûpa. This reliquary was never meant to be seen, although today it is prominently displayed in the British Museum.

Perhaps you’ll find of interest this video about a very large Stûpa/Temple only now approaching completion in Bendigo, Australia.

What Happened to Armenia’s Famous Tibetan Bell? A Guest Blog by Simon Maghakyan

• This is a guest blog written by Simon Maghakyan, University of Colorado Denver lecturer in international relations and independent researcher of heritage crime. He is best known for his groundbreaking exposé of the covert 1997-2006 erasure of an estimated 28,000 medieval Armenian monuments in post-Soviet Nakhichevan. 

• Since 2006, several past Tibeto-logic blog entries, more recently one entitled That Tibetan Bell in Armenia Once More, tried to learn more about a large bell with Tibetan letters on it once there to be seen in the bell towers of Etchmiadzin Cathedral. That’s about 2,700 miles from Lhasa. Apart from various speculations we have been unable to say much about what happened to it in recent times, and no one has been able to tell us where it is. To our amazement, a piece of the mystery has now been solved.

 °

 

In April 2003, as a 16-year-old, I was permitted to do the unthinkable: explore the bells of the Armenian Church’s headquarters, the Holy See of Etchmiadzin, in my teenage quest for a medieval Tibetan bell. This meant climbing on the roof of the world’s most sacred Armenian structure, which made me feel guilty. Alas, despite relentless searches and interviews, I did not find the bell. But I eventually found the only living person who knew what had happened to it.

 

There were numerous eyewitness mentions of the Tibetan bell throughout history, mostly in the 19th century, and as late as the 1920s. Since books were of no help (an otherwise respected and detailed encyclopedia of toponyms published in 1988 made a reference to the bell in the present tense), I had to interview potential eyewitnesses to the bell’s disappearance. 

 

I found a perfect source, the now late architect Varazdat Harutyunyan, one of the folks in charge of the Holy See’s major renovations in the 1950s. He told me that he oversaw the restoration of the bell tower. The prominent architect and historian insisted, however, that there was no Tibetan bell in the 1950s at Etchmiadzin. “That’s not something I would have forgotten,” he told me. 

 

So the Tibetan bell disappeared between the 1920s and 1950s. Apparently there was only one man alive who knew the story, a retired monk at Etchmiadzin: now late Archbishop Husik Santuryan. He used to curate the Holy See. I finally met him after insisting to his successor to talk to elders, since all of my searches were proving to be fruitless. 

 

Archbishop Santuryan told me that after he arrived at Etchmiadzin in 1951, he befriended a custodian named Yegho Bidza [Old man Elisha], who prided himself as having been the horse-keeper for the epic Catholicos Khrimyan Hayrik. Apparently Yegho Bidza had witnessed what happened to the Tibetan bell. According to Yegho Bidza, passed to me through Archbishop Santuryan, in 1938 the Soviet authorities decided to convert Etchmiadzin into a museum after the “death” of the Armenian Catholicos. 

 

What followed was a double looting of the Cathedral by Soviet officials and some unethical monks. The looting and desecration included the carving of “STALIN” on a stone inside Etchmiadzin, which was later reversed. The head of the operation was a Soviet official first named Levon, whom “God soon punished” for shining his shoes with the holy myrrh inside the Cathedral. In order to silence the Holy See, its bells were taken down [not sure how many or if any were returned] after a Soviet apparatchik produced a document claiming local complaints of “noise nuisance.”

The bells, including the Tibetan one, were placed on a donkey cart and hauled away. Some items were in later years retrieved through auction, including a large carpet in the Cathedral. But the Tibetan bell was never heard of again.

 

Some of the elders I interviewed suggested that the Tibetan bell might be at other churches throughout Armenia or at Armenia’s history museum and its branches. I inspected several churches myself, with no traces of the Tibetan bell. A researcher at the history museum spent a week, as per my request, looking for the bell in their inventory; she didn’t find it either. I even got into a verbal fight with China’s cultural attaché at Beijing’s Embassy in Armenia, who refused to help me in translating the Tibetan inscription preserved in sketches.  

 

It is not out of the question that Armenia’s famous Tibetan bell may still exist. But it certainly left Holy Etchmiadzin in the late 1930s on a donkey cart.

❋

 

The Realm of Dharmas, Chapter Two: Appearances & Becoming

 — CHAPTER TWO —

APPEARANCES AND BECOMING DAWN AS BUDDHAFIELD

[Now that the nature of the Realm has been determined to be the basis for dawning, the reason why the Realm and its appearances are totally self-dawned as Buddhafield will be explained in detail.  

First, the receptive centre of Great Spreading is described as sky-like.]

The naturally-arrived-at from beginningless time nature of the Realm

knows no  in  or  out  side . . .

spreads pervasively in all . . .

knows no confining borders . . .

beyond upper and lower limits . . .

neither spacious nor constricting . . .

Awareness sky-like pure.

It is identical to the receptive centre of non-diffusive thought and imagination.

˚

[Showing that, from the Realm of Awareness-Void,  the appropriate shapes of sangsara/nirvana-Void arise.]

The projections born of the unborn Realm

are altogether unpredictable and in no way belittleable.

“This” does not denote them.  They have no thingness, no labels.

In the nature that sky-like spreads out in all directions,

the unborn and naturally-arrived-at lacks

sooner and later, start and end.

˚

[Such a naturally-arrived-at is taught to be the meaning behind “beyond coming and going.”]

The substance of all sangsara/nirvana is Bodhicitta —

unproduced, unborn, unpredictable and naturally-arrived-at.

It didn’t come from anything.  It hasn’t gone anywhere.

It doesn’t care about sooner or later.

The Bodhicitta receptive centre

Lacks coming and going, spreads pervasively in all.

˚

In the beginningless, endless, middleless Dharma Proper-Suchness

(nature spread-out-to-the-limit and pure as sky)

there is no start or end           (It is beyond the sphere of sooner & later).

It lacks starting and stopping (It has no thingness, no labels).

It lacks coming and going          (“This” does not denote it).

Without pushing or striving

it is devoid of business dharmas.

With no center or particular orientation,

the ground of Suchness           (an unthinkable, uninterrupted flow)

is a level receptive centre.

˚

[Teaching that the pure Realm nature of that is the precise meaning behind “Great Levelness.”]

Since all is the nature of level Dharma Proper,

There is not one that does not abide

in that level receptive centre.

One levelled, all levelled.  Bodhicitta’s continuity

is equal to the unborn sky.  It is spread out to the limits of spaciousness,

this because the levelness continuity suffers no interruption.

˚

[Because the whole of the Great Levelness is a single continuity in the Vajra Realm Buddhafield which does not transform or transport the Dharma Proper, Total Awareness is shown to have a Vajra Heart CITADEL.]

CITADEL which spreads pervasively in all,

undirected, naturally-arrived-at;

CITADEL of the spacious, total receptive centre

with no above, below or in between;

CITADEL of unborn Dharmabody

with room for all, without prejudice;

CITADEL of the Secret Jewel,

naturally-arrived-at, changeless;

CITADEL of total sangsara/nirvana, 

appearances/becoming

complete on a single beam.

˚

[That Awareness itself is a King who not only arranges his perfect kingdom in harmony with the dharmas, but builds the Palace of Self-engendered Essence on the grounds of the Dharma Proper Realm.]

On the grounds spreading out undirectedly, pervasively in all

is the fort of Bodhicitta without preferences for sangsara or nirvana.

Naturally high is its pinnacle,

vast Dharma Proper receptive centre.

Its centre is spacious,

the four directions of unmade nature.

Extreeemely wide is its entrance gate,

no struggling up in stages required.

˚

[The ornaments and arrangement of that Palace.]

There, ornamented with an arrangement of naturally-arrived-at riches,

sits the self-engendered Full Knowledge King on his throne.

All the special powers of Full Knowledge appearing as 

evasions and invasions

are turned into Ministers to rule the realm.

Self-established meditation is the faithful Queen who,

together with the self-dawning Buddhathought Children and Servants,

is coiled in the Great Comfort receptive centre, self-luminous and 

undistracted.

˚

[So the Realm (which is behind the words “untransformed and untransported”) is uncompromisingly presented as the reliable objective sphere of Awareness.]

From that uncommunicable, uncompromising continuity

he wields power over all appearances/becoming and material/vital.

Most vast is his Kingdom of the spacious Realm of Dharmas.

[Awareness, Bodhicitta, Ultimate Truth, self-engendered Full Knowledge and Dharmabody are equivalent terms.]

˚

[The significance of that is pointed out by showing that it is coiled in a single receptive centre of Comfort in the Dharma Proper Bodhicitta.]

While dwelling in that objective realm,

all is Dharmabody.

The self-engendered Full Knowledge is unmade,

never compromised in its singularity.

Totally achieved, beyond pushing and striving, it

is combined in a cornerless drop,

coiled into a receptive centre

unbreached, undifferentiated.

[The pure substance of Awareness is totally at rest in the single drop of Dharmabody.]

˚

[It is now shown how, in that substance of Awareness which is Bodhicitta, all dharmas are of a single taste.]

The dwellings of the six types of beings and even the Buddhafields

do not exist in differentiation.  As in the Dharma Proper sky continuity

(the self-luminous Bodhicitta) there is a single taste,

so,   in the Awareness continuity,   sangsara and nirvana

are comprehended in one fell swoop.

[Just as different types of dreams form a single continuity while sleeping, so all the dharmas are of a single taste in the Awareness continuity.  Their roots merge in Bodhicitta.]

˚

[Since all  dharmas are completed in that continuity, even the nirvanic dharmas are at rest in the unsought Great Naturally-arrived-at.]

In this Realm of Dharmas TREASURY

(the origin of absolutely everything)

there was no searching in the past

(It is totally naturally-arrived-at),

So,   in the all-embracing vastness of the object-lacking,

changeless Dharmabody,

The Perfect Assets of appearances—inner/outer,

material/vital—are completed.

The Emanation dawns itself like a reflection thereof.

Because no dharma is not completed as an

ornament of the Three Bodies,

they all appear as a play of Body, Speech and Mind.

It may be impossible to number all the Buddhafields and Tathagatas

but, the Mind Proper emerged from themselves is

receptive centre of the Three Bodies.

[In this way, all dharmas are shown to be of the nature of the Three Bodies:  1) the Great Total Void, the Dharmabody;  2) the self-manifesting Perfect Assets Body;  3) the Emanation Body which dawns unimpededly as various things and as the faithful guides of sentient beings who stay in the Pure Fields as well.]

˚

[So, in the Realm of Bodhicitta the fields of the six classes of beings dawn as appearance and integrate into a single, undiffusive drop.]

The nature of sangsara (even the communities of the six classes of beings)

is mere reflection dawning from the Realm of Dharmas continuity.

There may be all kinds of appearances—birth, death, comfort, discomfort—

but, like phantom spectacles in this Mind Proper receptive centre,

there is no basis—for their appearances, their being, or their non-being.

Mere fleeting accidents, like clouds happen to the sky,

their natures beyond extremes, without being or non-being,

they are comprehended in the undiffusive drop continuity in one fell swoop.

˚

 

[All these (fleeting accidents) are, as a Great Levelness, gathered into the Vajra Realm.]

The nature of Mind Proper, of Bodhicitta,

being sky-like pure, lacks birth/death…lacks comfort/discomfort.

Disentangled from sangsara/nirvana dharmas,

it has no preference for material objects.

“This” does not denote it.  This most spacious sky receptive centre

is uncompounded, naturally-arrived-at, unchanging, untransported.

Buddhaized in the Sheer Luminosity Vajra Heart,

absolutely everything is a self-engendered Field of Comfort,

nothing but the continuity of Supreme Bodhi

naturally smooth.

 

§   §   §

For Chapter One, look here.

— Continue to Chapter Three

Another Death in the Family

 

Foreground: Takeuchi Tsuguhito (lft.) and Elliot Sperling (rt.)
on board a boat in Bergen (Norway), 2016

Just this morning I heard the very unwanted news that my old friend Tsugu* had, very early this morning, died after a few years of illness. I don’t want to say much right now except to convey the news, since many of you knew him and will need to find your own ways to grieve. I hadn’t heard from Tsugu since an email of January 6, when he told me he was no longer capable of doing productive work, which already gave cause for sadness. Tsugu is known to everyone in Tibetan studies, particularly for his studies of the very challenging Old Tibetan documents from Dunhuang. The documents he studied included written contracts and inscribed woodslips, the most difficult of all the difficult texts surviving from that period, not only to decipher, but to understand as part of a living context. I will just append an incomplete and preliminary list of his publications below, knowing full well that his students will produce a complete and perfect bibliography in his memory before long. Anyway, it is the human being, not the scholarly researcher, we will miss the most.

(*His fellow students in Indiana nicknamed him Tsugu out of friendship and affection, without intending any disrespect.)

TAKEUCHI TSUGUHITO (1951-2021)

& Maho Iuchi, Tibetan Texts fom Khara-khoto in the Stein Collection of the British Library, "Studies in Old Tibetan Texts from Central Asia" series no. 2, The Toyo Bunko (Tokyo 2016).

& Yasuhiko Nagano, Sumie Ueda. “Preliminary Analysis of the Old Zhangzhung Language and Manuscripts.”  IN: Y. Nagano & R. LaPolla, eds., New Research on Zhangzhung and Related Himalayan Languages, National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka 2001), pp. 45-96.

& Ai Nishida, “Present Stage of Deciphering Old Zhangzhung.” Senri Ethnological Studies, vol. 75 (2009), pp. 151-165.

“A Group of Old Tibetan Letters Written under Kuei-i-chün: A Preliminary Study for the Classification of Old Tibetan Letters.”  Acta Orientalia Hungarica, vol. 44 (1990), pp. 175-190.

“A Passage from the Shih Chi in the Old Tibetan Chronicle.”  IN: Barbara Nimri Aziz and Matthew Kapstein, eds., Soundings in Tibetan Civilization, Manohar (New Delhi 1985), pp. 135-146.

“A Preliminary Study of Old Tibetan Letters Unearthed from Tun-huang & Chinese Turkestan.”  IN: Z. Yamaguchi, ed., Buddhism & Society in Tibet, Shunjû-sha (Tokyo 1986), pp. 563-602.

A Study of the Old Tibetan Contracts, PhD dissertation, Indiana University (Bloomington 1994), in 371 pages.  University Microfilms no. AAT 9418843.

“Chibetto-no Kotowaza” [Proverbs in Tibet]. IN: T. Shibata et al., eds., Sekai Kotowaza Daijiten (Tokyo 1995), pp. 277-287.

“Chûô-ajia shutsudo Ko-chibeto-go kachiku baibai-monjo” [The Old Tibetan Contracts for Cattle Sales].  Studies on the Inner Asian Languages [Kobe], vol. 5 (date?), pp. 33-67.

“Formation and Transformation of Old Tibetan.” Journal of the Research Institute of Foreign Studies [Kobe City University of Foreign Studies], vol. 49 (2012), pp. 3-18.

“Glegs tshas: Writing Boards of Chinese Scribes in Tibetan-Ruled Dunhuang.” IN: Brandon Dotson, Kazushi Iwao and Tsuguhito Takeuchi, eds., Scribes, Texts, and Rituals in Early Tibet and Dunhuang, Reichert Verlag (Wiesbaden 2012), pp. 101-109, 150-153.

“Kh. Tib. (Kozlov 4): Contracts for the Borrowing of Barley.” Manuscripta Orientalia, vol. 1, no. 1 (1995), pp. 49-52.

“'Lead' and 'Face': On the Formation of Honorific Vocabulary in Tibetan” [in Japanese].  Kokubun Gakkaishi, Kyoto University of Education (1991).

“Military Administration and Military Duties in Tibetan-Ruled Central Asia.” IN: Alex McKay, Tibet and Her Neighbours: A History, Edition Hansjörg Mayer (London 2013), pp. 43-54.  Woodslips, rationing cards.

“Old Tibetan Buddhist Texts from the Post-Tibetan Imperial Period (mid-9 C. to late 10 C.).” IN: Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, ed., Old Tibetan Studies Dedicated to the Memory of R.E. Emmerick, Brill (Leiden 2012), pp. 205-214.

Old Tibetan Contracts from Central Asia, Daizo Shuppan (Tokyo 1995).

“Old Tibetan Loan Contracts.”  Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, vol. 51 (1993), pp. 25-83.

Old Tibetan Manuscripts from East Turkestan in the Stein Collection of the British Library, Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, Toyo Bunko (Tokyo 1997-1998), in 3 vols.

“Old Tibetan Rock Inscriptions near Alchi.” Journal of the Research Institute of Foreign Studies [Kobe City University of Foreign Studies], vol. 49 (2012), pp. 29-70.

“On the Old Tibetan Sale Contracts.” IN: Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 5th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Narita 1989, Naritasan Shinshoji (Narita 1992), pp. 773-792.

“On the Old Tibetan Word Lho-bal.”  Proceedings of the 31st CISHAAN (Tokyo 1984), vol. 2, pp. 986-987.

“On the Tibetan Texts in the Otani Collection.” IN: A. Haneda, ed., Documents et Archives provenant de L'asie centrale (Kyoto 1990), pp. 203-214.

Preface.  IN: T. Takeuchi et al., Current Issues and Progress in Tibetan Studies, Research Institute of Foreign Studies (Kobe 2013), p. 1.

“Preliminary Report on the Tibetan Texts in the Otani Collection.” IN: A. Wezler et al., eds., Proceedings of the XXXII Intenational Congress for Asian and North African Studies (ZDMG: Suppl. 9) (1992) pp. ?

“Sociolinguistic Implications of the Use of Tibetan in East Turkestan from the End of Tibetan Domination through the Tangut Period (9th-12th c.).” IN: Desmond Durken-Meisterernst et al., eds., Turfan Revisited: First Century of Research into the Arts and Cultures of the Silk Road, Dietrich Reimer Verlag (Berlin 2004), pp. 341-348.

“Split Ergativity Patterns in Transitive and Intransitive Sentences in Tibetan: A Reconsideration.” IN: Y. Nishi et al., eds., New Horizons in Tibeto-Burman Morphosyntax (Osaka 1995), pp. 277-288.

“The Function of Auxiliary Verbs in Tibetan Predicates and Their Historical Development.” IN: Roberto Vitali et al., eds., Trails of the Tibetan Tradition, Papers for Elliot Sperling, Amnye Machen Institute (McLeod Ganj 2014), pp. 401-415.

“The Old Zhangzhung Manuscript Stein Or 8212/188.” IN: Christopher I. Beckwith, ed., Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages, Brill (Leiden 2002), pp. 1-11.

“The Tibetans and Uighurs in Pei-t'ing, An-hsi (Kucha), and Hsi-chou (790-860 A.D.).”  Kinki Daigaku Kyōyōbu Kenkyū Kiyō, vol. 17, no. 3 (1986), pp. 51-68.

“Three Old Tibetan Contracts in the Hedin Collection.”  Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 57, pt. 3 (1994), pp. 576-587.

“Tibetan Military System and Its Activities from Khotan to Lop-nor.” IN: Susan Whitfield, ed., The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith, The British Library (London 2004), pp. 50-56, plus illustrations.

“Tonkô-Torukisutan shutsudo Chibetto go tengami bunsho no kenkyû josetsu [0014]” [A Preliminary Study of Old Tibetan Letters Unearthed from Tun-huang and Chinese Turkestan]. IN: Zuiho Yamaguchi, ed., Buddhism and Society in Tibet [Chibetto no Bukkyô to shakai] (Tokyo 1986), pp. 563-602.

“Tshan: Subordinate Administrative Units of the Thousand-Districts in the Tibetan Empire.” 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. 848-862.

“Tshar, srang & tshan: Administrative Units in Tibetan-Ruled Khotan.” Journal of Inner Asian Art & Archaeology, vol. 3 (2008), pp. 145-148.

 

Padampa Studies in the Last Decade

 

These last years have seen some interesting and important new publications in Padampa and Zhijé studies. Included in the list are some fresh new translations of the Tingri Hundred and the Tingri Eighty. No matter which it is, Hundred or Eighty, this is the one composition Padampa is most famous for even if it is one he didn’t compose.* If anything is neglected here it wasn’t by design, so let me know what’s missing, I’ll gladly add it. 

I never imagined any Padampa work could ever appear in Catalan, or that a newly found Tangut-language version of his life would be subject of a study in Chinese, but there you go. And what about that Russian article on a Padampa text in Oirat-Mongolian language found in the National Museum of Tuva? What, you never read Tuva or Bust? Sometimes you have to go quite far to demonstrate how much you’ve embraced inclusiveness.

But if you ask me to choose the two publications during the last decade that have done the most for Zhijé and Padampa studies, I answer without hesitation, [1] the 13-volume publication of 2012-2013 and [2] the new translations by Sarah Harding. Looking at the entire list, it might appear that our present-day Padampa is shifting more toward a vision of him as a prophet of things to come and an expert in some kind of divination. That could be an illusion, like so many of our mental images turn out to be. Well, once we’ve developed the ability to see through them.

(*The Tingri Thirteen is the only one that is at all likely to be his, even if hardly anyone recognizes that this is so at this moment in time. Padampa created the form of these couplets and initiated the creation of all the future examples. Look here if you want to know about the monkey and rhino recensions. My own translation of the Tingri Hundred is so far published only here on the internet. I haven't tried to cover internet postings in my list, so with one or two exceptions these are all hard copies consulted in print format.)

 

§   §   §

Okay, here’s the list. I insert comments only when I think I can clarify the content in a general way. Since the 13-volume set doesn’t have an author exactly, I’ll list it first —

Zhi-byed Snga Phyi Bar Gsum-gyi Chos-skor Phyogs-bsgrigs / ཞི་བྱེད་སྔ་ཕྱི་བར་གསུམ་གྱི་ཆོས་སྐོར་ཕྱོགས་བསྒྲིགས་, alternative title: Dam-chos Sdug-bsngal Zhi-byed Rtsa-ba'i Chos-sde dang / Yan-lag Bdud-gyi Gcod-yul / དམ་ཆོས་སྡུག་བསྔལ་ཞི་བྱེད་རྩ་བའི་ཆོས་སྡེ་དང་། ཡན་ལག་བདུད་ཀྱི་གཅོད་ཡུལ་, Ding-ri Glang-skor Gtsug-lag-khang / དིང་རི་གླང་སྐོར་གཙུག་ལག་ཁང་ (Kathmandu 2012-2013), in 13 vols. 

For more on this, look here. And for a title list, you might need to look here. It does contain some unique titles never before published, such as the guidebook to Tingri Langkhor that Barbara N. Aziz studied years ago, you have to look for them. Most important for future researchers, the text is done using computerized Tibetan script, so it is entirely possible to do Online Character Recognition that will make it simple to search through the entire set with a single click. Some things should never be so easy. Hear my inner Luddite talking?

Matthew Akester, “Ting-ri Langkor (Ding ri Gla/Glang ’khor/skor),” contained in: Idem., Jamyang Khyentsé Wangpo’s Guide to Central Tibet, Serindia (Chicago 2016), pp. 668-671.

Especially recommended if you wonder about the history and current state of Tingri Langkhor (དིང་རི་གླང་འཁོར་), the place where Padampa taught during his final sojourn in Tibet, with much on the holy objects and relics that we expect to find emphasized in a pilgrimage guidebook.

Evgeniĭ Vladimirovich Bembeev, “Oĭratskaia rukopisʹ «Shastra pod nazvaniem “Zolotye chetki khrabrosti”, sochinennaia nastavnikom Padamboĭ» iz fonda Natsionalʹnogo muzeia Tuvy” [The Shastra titled ‘A Golden Rosary of Courage’ Composed by Teacher Padamba: An Oirat Manuscript from the National Museum of Tuva], The New Research of Tuva, no. 4 (2019), pp. 53-61. Try this link.

I wish I could tell you more about what this text is, but really, I could use your help here, I’m mystified. If as it seems it is a prophetic text, it could prove interesting, especially as it concerns religious corruption and deceit by rulers, things we know all too well. But wait one minute, I can’t believe myself for finding it considering all the odds, but the very “same” text found in Tuva has been translated into English from its Tibetan original in Sarah Harding’s new book listed below, on p. 537 or thereabout. Sarah prefaces her translation commenting that this text seems to pop out of nowhere, “leaving no paper trail,” unmentioned in Kongtrul’s lists, perhaps explainable if it was added into the Treasury of Precious Instructions (གདམས་ངག་མཛོད་) by someone else. Oddly enough TBRC doesn’t seem to know of even one copy of this title outside of the Treasury of Precious Instructions. Now we know of one, in Oirat.

José Cabezón, The Buddha's Doctrine and the Nine Vehicles: Rog Bande Sherab's Lamp of the Teachings, Oxford University Press (Oxford 2013). 

Translation of an important Nyingma text by one of the three Rog brothers, important for the Zhijé school in the early 13th century, when earlier lineages were consolidated.

Francesc Navarro i Fàbrega, tr., Un Mahâsiddha Indi al Tibet: Vida i ensenyaments de Padampa Sanguie, Editorial Dipankara (Sabadell 2011).

Catalan translation of the Tingri Eighty. Tibetan text is provided in Tibetan script.

_____, tr., Un Mahâsiddha Indio en el Tíbet: Vida y enseñanzas de Padampa Sanguie, Editorial Dipankara (Sabadell 2011). 

Spanish translation of the Tingri Eighty. Tibetan text is provided in Tibetan script.

Carla Gianotti, “Female Buddhist Adepts in the Tibetan Tradition: The Twenty-four Jo Mo, Disciples of Pha Dam Pa Sangs Rgyas,” Journal of Dharma Studies, vol. 2 (2019), pp. 15-29. Look here.

_____, Jo mo. Donne e realizzazione spirituale in Tibet, Ubaldini Editore (Rome 2020).

This contains an Italian translation of Kunga's collective biography of twenty-four women disciples of Padampa. The title that appears in the Zhijé Collection version reads: Jo-mo Nyi-shu-rtsa-bzhi’i Zhu-lan Lo-rgyus dang bcas-pa. 

_____, “The Lives of the Twenty-Four Jo-mos of the Buddhist Tradition: Identity and Religious Status,” contained in: Karma Lekshe Tsomo, ed., Contemporary Buddhist Women: Contemplation, Cultural Exchange, and Social Action, University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong 2017), pp. 238-244.

_____, “La verità del fuoco. Le ventiquattro jo mo della tradizione tibetana e l'insegnamento di Pha Dam pa sangs rgyas,” a paper given at the first meeting of the Associazione Italiana di Studi Tibetani e Himalayani (Procida 2017).

Sarah Harding, “Pha Dampa Sangye and the Alphabet Goddess: A Preliminary Study of the Sources of the Zhije Tradition.” This was an internet publication at tsadra.org, and I'm not sure if it is still there, need to check. 

Oh, here it is.

_____, Zhije, the Pacification of Suffering (=The Treasury of Precious Instructions: Essential Teachings of the Eight Practice Lineages of Tibet Volume 13), Snow Lion (Boulder 2019), a hardback book in 668 pages.

This includes so much, so much there is no hope of encapsulating it in a brief statement. For now, notice at least that it does include new translations of the Tingri Eighty and the Thirty Aspirations. Most remarkable are the texts for empowerment rituals never before noticed in any publication in any language other than Tibetan that I know of.

Lozang Jamspal and David Kittay, eds. & trs., Pha Dam-pa Sangs-rgyas-kyi Zhal-gdams Ding-ri Brgya-rtsa-ma (Pha Dampa Sangs rgyas’s One Hundred Spiritual Instructions to the Dingri People), Ladakhi Ratnashridipika / La-dwags Rin-chen Dpal-gyi Sgron-ma (Leh 2011). 

Translation of the Tingri Hundred. Each couplet is given in Tibetan script immediately followed by its English translation. Appended to it is a reproduction of a verse praise in honor of the late E. Gene Smith composed by Prof. 'Bum-skyabs with the title Bod-brgyud Nang-bstan Gsung-rab Dar-spel-gyi Phyogs-la Mdzad-rjes Bla-na-mtho-ba'i Sku-zhabs 'Jam-dbyangs-rnam-rgyal Mchog-la Rjes-dran-du Phul-ba Bcos-min Sems-kyi 'Bod-sgra / བོད་བརྒྱུད་ནང་བསྟན་གསུང་རབ་དར་སྤེལ་གྱི་ཕྱོགས་ལ་མཛད་རྗེས་བླ་ན་མཐོ་བའི་སྐུ་ཞབས་འཇམ་དབྱངས་རྣམ་རྒྱལ་མཆོག་ལ་རྗེས་དྲན་དུ་ཕུལ་བ་བཅོས་མིན་སེམས་ཀྱི་འབོད་སྒྲ་ You may have to travel to Ladakh to find a copy of this small book, but I chose the easier path and wrote to the authors. 

Matthew Kapstein, tr., “The Advice of an Indian Yogin,” contained in K. Schaeffer, M. Kapstein & G. Tuttle, eds., Sources of Tibetan Tradition, Columbia University Press (New York 2013), pp. 234-242.

Translation of the Tingri Hundred. Based on the Lhasa xylograph with the exact title Pha Rje-btsun Dam-pa Sangs-rgyas-kyi Zhal-gdams Ding-ri Brgya-rtsa-ma / ཕ་རྗེ་བཙུན་དམ་པ་སངས་རྒྱས་ཀྱི་ཞལ་གདམས་དིང་རི་བརྒྱ་རྩ་མ་

Mkhas-grub Khyung-po Rnal-’byor, et al., Zhi-byed dang Shangs-pa’i Chos-skor, Dpal-brtsegs Bod-yig Dpe-rnying Zhib-’jug-khang, Bod-ljongs Mi-dmangs Dpe-skrun-khang (Lhasa 2010) / 

Several texts of Zhijé in a conveniently small volume, although the texts it contains were already widely available.

Dan Martin, “Crazy Wisdom in Moderation: Padampa Sangyé’s Use of Counterintuitive Methods in Dealing with Negative Mental States,” contained in: Yael Bentor and Meir Shahar, eds., Chinese and Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism, Brill (Leiden 2017), pp. 193-214.

_____, “Divinations Padampa Did or Did Not Do, or Did or Did Not Write,” contained in: Petra Maurer, Donatella Rossi and Rolf Scheuermann, eds., Glimpses of Tibetan Divination, Past and Present, Brill (Leiden 2020), pp. 73-88.

_____, “Ritual Indigenization as a Debated Issue in Tibetan Buddhism (11th to Early 13th Centuries),” contained in: Henk Blezer and Mark Teeuwen, Challenging Paradigms: Buddhism and Nativism, Framing Identity Discourse in Buddhist Environments, Brill (Leiden 2013), pp. 159-194. 

This includes a peculiar episode from the Zhijé Collection in which the South Indian Padampa performs a local Tibetan divination ritual for the benefit of a woman who was one of his Tingrian meditation students.

_____, “Yak Snot: Padampa’s Animal Metaphors and the Question of Indian-ness (Theirs and His),” contained in: Hanna Havnevik & Charles Ramble, eds., From Bhakti to Bon: Festschrift for Per Kvaerne, The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, Novus Forlag (Oslo 2015), pp. 337-349.

David Molk with Lama Tsering Wangdu Rinpoche, trs., Lion of Siddhas: The Life and Teachings of Padampa Sangye, Snow Lion (Ithaca 2008). A brief review by Michelle Sorensen appeared in Religious Studies Review, vol. 35, no. 1 (March 2009), p. 78.

This doesn’t quite belong to the last decade like the others listed here, but I include it here anyway because it is such an important translation of a large number of texts not previously Englished. The translators made use of a manuscript that sometimes has significantly different readings, but it seems, based on statements found in Weber’s thesis (see below), that it no longer exists. The autobiography of Tsering Wangdu Rinpoche has been translated by Joshua Waldman and Lama Jinpa and published in 2008 under the title Hundred Thousand Rays of the Sun (I recommend an internet search for the title).

Monika Lorås Rønning, The Path of Machig Labdron: gCod, its History, Philosophy, and Contemporary Practice in Central Tibet, Master’s thesis, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, Oslo University (Oslo 2005). For an abstract only, look here.

Saerje (Gsar-brje), “Buddhapāla → Dam pa sangs rgyas ← Bodhidharma” [in Chinese], contained in: Wang Bangwei, Chen Jinhua and Chen Ming, eds., Studies on Buddhist Myths: Texts, Pictures, Traditions and History, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Cross-cultural Researches on Buddhist Mythology, Zhongxi Book Company (Shanghai 2013), pp. 165–176.

_____, “The Studies on the Narrative Inscriptions of Master Dharma Cave in Yunnan Province” [in Chinese with some Tibetan], contained in Wang Song, ed., Engaged Buddhism: The History and Reality of Asia, Proceedings of the 2015 Chong Sheng International Forum, Religious Culture Publishing House (Beijing 2016), pp. 97–127. See if this finds it for you.

Neldjorma Seunam Ouangmo [Rnal-’byor-ma Bsod-nams-dbang-mo], Testament Spirituel. Les cent préceptes de Ding-Ri Dernières recommandations de Pa Dampa Sangyé, en appendice Les Trente Souhaits, Editions Yogi Ling (Evaux-les-Bains 1997). 

I add this, even if it lies outside the time parameters, just because it should be noticed more. With the Tibetan and French on facing pages it includes not only the Tingri Hundred, but also the Thirty Aspirations.

Alexander K. Smith, lDe’u ’phrul, the Manifestation of Knowledge: Ethnophilological Studies in Tibetan Divination with Particular Emphasis upon a Common Form of Bon Lithomancy, doctoral thesis, École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris 2017). 

This and the next listing share interesting information on the pebble divination teachings given to Padampa by the Bon teacher Khro-tshang ’Brug-lha. The possibility to download a PDF of it is here.

_____, “Prognostic Structure & the Use of Trumps in Tibetan Pebble Divination,” Magic, Ritual & Witchcraft, vol. 12 (Summer 2015), pp. 1-21. 

Michelle Sorensen, Making the Old New Again and Again: Legitimation and Innovation in the Tibetan Buddhist Chöd Tradition, PhD dissertation, Columbia University (New York 2013). I think it is available here, not sure.

_____, “Padampa Sanggye,” Treasury of Lives, accessed March 10, 2021.

Sun Bojun, “A Textual Research on Chos-kyi-seng-ge, the Xixia State Preceptor,” Journal of Chinese Writing Systems, vol. 1, no. 9 (2018), pp. 1-9. 

At p. 5 there is a paragraph on Padampa's Tangut connections. Here Padampa is referred to by a name that corresponds to Tibetan Nag-chung. Sun Bojun has written, too, about the newly discovered Tangut text with biographical information on Padampa (a part of a Chinese version had been known before). It may be available on the internet if you belong to a subscribing institution.

Sun Penghao, “Four Texts Related to Pha dam pa sangs rgyas in the Chinese Translation of the Tangut Kingdom of Xia,” contained in: Shen Weirong, ed., History through Textual Criticism: Tibetan Buddhism in Central Eurasia and China Proper (Beijing 2012), pp. 85-97.

_____, “Pha dam pa Sangs rgyas in Tangut Xia: Notes on Khara Khoto Chinese Manuscript TK329,” contained in: Tsuguhito Takeuchi, et al., Current Issues and Progress in Tibetan Studies, Research Institute of Foreign Studies (Kobe 2013), pp. 505-521. Try this link.

Khenchen Thrangu, Advice from a Yogi: An Explanation of a Tibetan Classic on What Is Most Important, tr. by the Thrangu Dharmakara Collaborative, Shambhala (Boston 2015). 

A new translation of the Tingri Hundred with teachings in the form of commentary by Thrangu Rinpoche. His longer Tibetan name is Khra-’gu Rin-po-che IX Karma-blo-gros-lung-rigs-smra-ba’i-seng-ge (b. 1933).

Kenchen Thrangu, “On What Is Most Important: Kenchen Thrangu on the Liberatory Verses of the Tibetan Yogi Padampa Sangye,” Tricycle Magazine (Fall 2015). This is an extract from the book.

Trulzhik Rinpoche (’Khrul-zhig Rin-po-che, Kyabje Zhadeu Trulzhik Rinpoche), and Lama Sangye, The Seed of Faith: The History of the Sacred Inner Relics of Dingri Langkor in the Upper Mountain-Pass Region of Tibet, Dingri Langkor Tsuglag Khang (Kathmandu 2014), in 63 pages with color plates. 

I have only seen this listed in an online book catalog. I've never actually seen it. I suppose it’s in English. I imagine it’s just a translation of the pilgrim guide sponsored and studied by Barbara N. Aziz years ago: “The Work of Pha dam pa Sangs rgyas as Revealed in Ding ri Folklore,” contained in: Michael Aris & Aung San Suu Kyi, eds., Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson, Aris & Phillips, Ltd. (Warminster 1980), pp. 21-29 and Idem., “Indian Philosopher as Tibetan Folk Hero: Legend of Langkor: A New Source Material on Phadampa Sangye,” Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 23, nos. 12 (1979), pp. 19-37. The original Tibetan of this same pilgrim guide was to my knowledge first made public in a modern print publication in the 13-volume collection listed at the beginning of our list, at vol. 2 (KHA), pp. 803-821, where it has the title Bod-yul La-stod Ding-ri Glang-skor-gyi Nang-rten Byin-can Khag-gi Lo-rgyus Dad-pa'i Sa-bon (བོད་ཡུལ་ལ་སྟོད་དིང་རི་གླང་སྐོར་གྱི་ནང་རྟེན་བྱིན་ཅན་ཁག་གི་ལོ་རྒྱུས་དད་པའི་ས་བོན་). I was of the impression its true author was a nun, one named Ani Ngawang, something that may have gotten lost in the shuffle, as does happen sometimes.

Julika Maria Weber, Translation and Contextualization of Pha dam pa Sangs rgyas’s Three Cycles of Mahâmudrâ Signs, Master of Arts thesis, supervisor Klaus-Dieter Mathes, Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Universität Wien (Vienna 2020).

This thesis features in English translation three texts that represent the core of the questions-and-answers section (Padampa’s answers to Kunga’s questions) of the Zhijé Collection. The three together are often called Phyag-rgya-chen-po Brda’i Skor Gsum or Brda’i Zhus-lan Skor Gsum. They are: 1. Pointing Out the Purity of the Body as Signs, 2. Pointing Out Enlightened Verbal Expressions as Signs, and 3. Pointing Out the Realization of the Mind as Signs. You might find an abstract here. David Molk published a translation in his 2008 book, pp. 177-192 (only two titles are given, but all three texts are represented there, and what is more, evidently made use of a manuscript that ordered the paragraphs differently), and I also made a translation that I haven’t yet given to anyone.