Slippage in Buddhist Geography, by Todd Gibson

Swat River, Pakistan - Wikicommons

“Slippage” in Buddhist Geography: 

Orissa, Bengal, Kashmir, and Nepal as Sacred Proxies

Todd Gibson

Note: Today’s blog is an original essay by Todd Gibson. It is extracted from a chapter of his forthcoming book Inner Asia and the Nyingmapa Tradition of Tibet: The Case of Shri Singha.

 

Abstract: The reconstruction of the history of Buddhism in India and Tibet is complicated by the often-haphazard approach to geography found in the Indic sources, and a changing understanding of Indian names in the Chinese material. It is becoming apparent, however, that the shifts in perception of what geographical terms referred to was not always due to a mere lack of adequate information; the article discusses four cases which demonstrate deliberate, ideologically-motivated relocation of sacred sites away from the Indian border areas in the wake of historical changes.

It has long been noticed that geographical accuracy was not a great concern for many Indian scholars of the past. In his masterly survey of esoteric Buddhism in India, Davidson notes (2002, p. 33) that “geographical terms are used in a hazy and imprecise manner” and “alternate names are encountered with alarming suddenness in epigraphs and literature”. As a result, “The problem of the relationship between designation and locale can be acute, especially in medieval Buddhist literature.” This relationship is even more tenuous in Indian accounts of the countries of the mleccha peoples, those which lay beyond the civilized area of Āryavārta.

Chinese sources dealing with Indian Buddhist history must also be used with caution. When Buddhism first began to appear in China, the Chinese had only the haziest geographical understanding of the Indian subcontinent. As a result, the names of Indian locales in Chinese sources altered over time, sometimes (but not always) reflecting an improved understanding of the facts on the ground. Another factor that must be taken into account in weighing geographical references in Chinese Buddhist accounts is the veneration of central India as the holy land of Buddhism, and the increasing desire to distinguish the Buddhism of India from that of the Inner Asian peoples who were China’s neighbors, and who had an often-troubled relationship with the Chinese.[1] These factors, however, do not tell the whole story; creative geography in the service of religious legitimation that is found in some sources (both Indian and Tibetan), is a factor that has not yet been well examined. This article treats four cases in which this factor contributed to several persistent but inaccurate identifications of sacred lands.

The first of these cases is the country of Odiyana.[2] The current scholarly consensus in the West is that the name (in Sanskrit: Uḍḍyāna, Uḍḍiyāna, Oḍḍiyāṇa, Uḍyāna,[3] etc.; in Tibetan: Urgyan, Orgyan), narrowly defined, is conterminous with the region of Swat in the north of present-day Pakistan, a valley west of the Indus and separated from the Indus valley by a single range of mountains. This identification, based first on the testimony of Chinese pilgrims such as Xuanzang,[4] was accepted by early scholars such as Aurel Stein and Giuseppe Tucci,[5] and has been supported by the vast number of Buddhist archaeological data that are still coming to light.[6] Their opinion been followed by the majority of Buddhologists since (dissenting opinions will be discussed below), and can be accepted with some important qualifications.

As is the case with so many toponyms in India and elsewhere, Uḍḍiyāna has not been an entity with fixed boundaries throughout its history. Upasak (1990, pp. 20- 24) has asserted that in the early Indic sources, it designated modern eastern Afghanistan while Kapiśa meant that country’s central region, and Bālhīka its north. He cites Ptolemy as indicating that the name included the whole region to the north and west of the realm of Gandhāra, centered on what is now Jalalabad, and including the Swat valley, but adds that by the fourth or fifth century, Uḍḍiyāna sometimes meant only the eastern part of this region, up to the Indus, while the land from the Kabul River to the Khyber Pass was called Nagarahāra. In considering references to Odiyana, particularly in Chinese sources, it is often necessary to distinguish between these meanings. 

While among Buddhologists, the view now seems to be that, when discussing Buddhist esoterism, Odiyana is indeed to be located in Swat, there have been attempts to claim that the Oḍḍiyāna of the Sanskrit Buddhist sources refers not to the Eastern Afghanistan or Swat regions, but rather the area of Orissa/Odishya (Oḍra) in eastern India. Among modern Indian scholars, this may even be the majority[7] view, but some Western commentators have also thought among similar lines. Huntington (1975, p. 8 n. 12), for example, claimed that “there is substantial indication in Tāranātha’s History of Buddhism in India . . . that the Uḍḍiyana of the 8th and 9th centuries would have been in the Orissan or the Orissan-Bengal border region.” He bases this evaluation on the idea that most of the mahāsiddhas mentioned in the History were supposedly active in this area.[8] On the other hand, Tāranātha closes his book (Chimpa and Chattopadhyaya, 1970, p. 351) by saying that he was not able to include an account of how Buddhism spread to Kashmir, Odiyana (Urgyan), Tokharistan, or South India, for lack of detailed source material. This seems to argue against a location in Orissa. In any case, Tāranātha composed his work in the 17th century, and some of his Indian sources may well have placed Uḍḍiyāna in east-central India.

In his translation of the “official” biography of the master Shan wu wei, the first of the recognized patriarchs of the main East Asian Buddhist tradition, Chou (1945, p. 252 n. 4), notes that the same Chinese logograph can be used to represent Odiyana and Orissa/ Odishya, and clearly this was one of the reasons for a confusion between the two.[9] A possible example of this confusion is found in the history of a major sutra, the Avataṃsaka, in China. The first complete translation of this sutra into Chinese was carried out in 420 by Buddhabhadra, a monk from Afghanistan,[10] who had obtained his copy from the king of Karghalik, just west of Khotan (Hamar, 2013, p. 85). Similarly, another Afghan monk, Prajñā, who hailed from Kapiśa,[11] brought and translated a late version of the Gaṇḍavyūha chapter of the Avataṃsaka to China. The mainstream tradition accepts that Prajñā received the scripture from the king of Orissa, but given the history of the earlier version and Prajñā’s own provenance, it seems more likely that he obtained the scripture from a ruler of Odiyana in the larger sense (i.e. the eastern Afghanistan or Swat area). As for Shan wu wei himself, Chou assumes — for no clear reason — that he was from Orissa, but given the documented association of Odiyana with esoteric currents in Buddhism from early times[12] the subject deserves a thorough revisiting.[13]

In the present case, it is likely that the perceived connection with Orissa is not only a matter of an honest misunderstanding taken up and repeated, but also reflects certain later Buddhists’ attempts to locate all milestones of Buddhist history, especially its esoteric aspects, well within the bounds of the Indian subcontinent. This assertion is borne out by other cases in the later Tibetan (and Chinese) Buddhist literature in which sites in Inner Asia and the northwestern border areas of the Indian subcontinent have evidently been “moved” to India proper. Particularly noticeable in this regard is the case of a country called Zahor. A certain king of Zahor, Indrabhūti (also sometimes known as Tsa, or Dza in the Tibetan tradition), is regarded by the Nyingmapas, the oldest Buddhist school in Tibet, as having transmitted the tantric literature known to them as Mahāyoga. This tradition usually locates Indrabhūti’s kingdom in Odiyana, but sometimes in Zahor.[14] An Indrabhūti also appears in the historical accounts of the newer Tibetan schools as the source of their so-called Yogatantra literature, including the fundamental tantra called the Compendium of Buddhas (Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha).[15] The confusion brought about by the Tibetan attempts to make a coherent whole out of a variety of conflicting accounts of this literature’s history has resulted in various versions, in which one or two Indrabhūtis are posited, and Odiyana is considered to be either the same as or different from Zahor.[16] A few scholars (Davidson, 2002, pp. 242-245; Karmay, 2009, pp. 76-93; Van der Kuijp, 2010) have attempted to deal with this tangle of material, but it is clear that the legend is so fraught with textual corruption and so tied up with issues of religious legitimation that a definitive description of the evolution of these traditions will probably never be had. Nevertheless, from the point of view of the present work, it is significant that the Nyingmapa almost invariably locate Zahor (whether identified with Odiyana or not) in the northwest,[17] while the newer Tibetan schools in general support the idea that Zahor was in eastern India, probably Bengal (Karmay, 2009, pp. 80- 81; van der Kuijp, 2010, p. 148, citing Drigung Paldzin). Karmay has concluded from this (ibid., p. 89) that “Just as the later Tibetan tradition made the first king of Tibet an Indian, in the same way it also desired to connect king Tsa /Dza with the land which gave birth to Buddhism.”

A third case of geographical confusion or dissimulation can be seen in the region referred to in the Chinese sources as Jibin. Many or most Buddhist scholars (and some secular historians) have traditionally regarded the word as referring to Kashmir (cf. Zurcher, 2012), because the Chinese word represents an early attempt at transliteration of that name. Kuwayama, however, has noted (2006, p. 110; see also Kuwayama, 2002, pp. 142-146) that “In ancient Chinese accounts and maps Jibin’s location shifted from place to place as the Chinese geographical knowledge changed over time.”[18] Kuwayama uses the travel accounts of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, as well as monastic biographies of fourth- and fifth-century figures to demonstrate that for them, Jibin referred to the general area of Gandhāra, the pilgrimage region where the Buddha’s begging bowl was kept; he shows that on the routes these pilgrims took to and from China, any visit to Kashmir would have represented an extensive detour. More recently, Falk (2022-23, esp. n. 36) has also taken up the question of the Chinese pilgrimage routes, and has asserted that for Faxian, Jibin referred very specifically to the area around Hadda in present-day Afghanistan.

Kuwayama (2006, p. 108) also says that “In the Gaoseng zhuan” — a sixth-century Chinese compilation of Buddhist biographies — “Jibin surpasses any other region of India as the goal of Buddhist pilgrimage, and most of the foreign monk-translators in fourth-to-fifth century China were closely associated with Jibin, whether or not they were natives of that area.” Many celebrated teachers and translators from Inner Asia were trained in the Jibin of this era. The first of these was Fotucheng, who afterwards went to China, arriving in Luoyang in 310. Although Kuwayama believes he was a native of Gandhāra, an earlier, more detailed treatment of his career concluded he was probably originally from Kucha, and only studied in the former region.[19] His impact on Buddhism in China was considerable; he was able to increase the acceptance of Buddhism among both the upper classes and the common people mostly through practical means like rainmaking, war magic, and medicine, at a time of “chaos and misery”, as Wright puts it. This acceptance meant Fotucheng was able to lay the foundation for a future state-supported Buddhism, besides passing on his knowledge to disciples, who came to China from as far away as India and Sogdiana to study with him (Wright, 1948, p. 367).

The next illustrious alumnus of Jibin’s Buddhist schools was the great translator Kumārajīva (344-413). Like Fotucheng, he was from Kucha, and was taken as a child to be educated in Gandhāra.[20] After a few years, he returned to Kucha, but was kidnapped by an army from China and taken to Liangchou, where he remained for almost twenty years. Upon the capture of that city by the Later Qin dynasty, however, Kumārajīva was taken to Changan. Since by that time he knew not only his native Kuchean language, but also Northwestern Prakrit, Sanskrit, Chinese, and possibly Agnean and Sogdian (Hansen, 2012, p. 56), he was put to work at the head of the bureau that was rendering Buddhist scriptures into Chinese, and became the most prolific translator before Xuanzang. His renderings of many sutras remain the preferred versions up to the present, and he trained many Chinese disciples who became famous in their own right. Two other translators from Gandhāra, Buddhayaśas and Bhīmarakṣa, went to China to aid Kumārajīva in his work.

In sum, while there are some Chinese materials in which Jibin does refer to Kashmir, the identity can no longer be taken for granted, particularly in a Buddhist context.

The fourth example of this phenomenon is so well known that there can be no controversy about it. The kingdom of Khotan, stronghold of Mahāyāna Buddhism for over five hundred years, was well known to Tibet from at least the beginnings of the imperial period under the name of “the Li Country” (Li Yul), which name is found among some of the oldest surviving writings in Tibetan. Tibet conquered Khotan between 665 and 670, and solidified their rule in 675. Khotan maintained close contact with the Dunhuang area before and during the Tibetan imperial period, and many later documents in Khotan Saka were found at Dunhuang. Until the coming of Islam to Khotan in 1006, the three areas had strong cultural connections, and the religious chronicles of Khotan were translated into Tibetan. Nevertheless, by the twelfth or thirteenth century, some Tibetans had begun writing as if Li Yul referred to Nepal (in effect, to the Kathmandu Valley) (Snellgrove, 1987, pp. 366, 417; first remarked on by Brough, 1948).[21] It is possible that the relationship with Khotan had gradually been forgotten in Tibet during the institutional chaos that followed the fall of the Tibetan empire, but it is also likely that when the Tibetans began to reassemble their memories of that time, some of them had a vested interest in associating the country with India rather than the north. 

It is well known that sacred sites can “migrate” as part of either the spread or the domestication of a religion; the reduplication of sacred Indic place names throughout Southeast Asia was at least meant to establish a connection with India, and probably also served to supply surrogate pilgrimage sites to those who could not make the journey to the subcontinent. Sacred places may be also moved in the popular imagination, even to unapproachable areas, when the situation on the ground precludes their existence in their former location; the mythic land of Shambhala is probably the best-known example. However, the converse seems to be true as well. As Grenet has shown in relation to Zoroastrianism,[22] a religion may move its sacred sites geographically “inward” in order to be in harmony with changes in the prevailing politico-religious situation. In point of fact, it can hardly be coincidence that three of the four areas discussed above were “relocated” to the single area in India (Bihar-Bengal-Orissa) where Buddhism was still prospering and perhaps even predominant in the ninth century and after, following the Brahmanic Hindu resurgence and Muslim conquests elsewhere (Sanderson, 2009, p. 80). The fourth area, Kashmir, was also able to maintain the Buddhistic aspects of its culture much longer than was Gandhāra. There was probably a felt imperative to situate the holy places of Buddhism, particularly Vajrayāna Buddhism, within the small remaining Buddhist heartland on the subcontinent, and this resulted in the imaginative shift seen in later Indian accounts, in which all important developments were traced back to this area. The Tibetans, who for a variety of reasons became more and more inclined to equate scriptural authenticity with Indian origin, were for the most part happy to fall in with this reading of history.

•

Notes

[1] Chinese Buddhists increasingly differentiated the people of India (fan) from those living to the west of China (hu), and only the former land was held by them to be the domain of true sages. For a treatment of this trend, see Yang, 1988.

[2] I use a phonetic representation of the name rather than the more customary Sanskrit because the earliest named people of the area, the Odis, were neither Sanskrit speakers nor culturally “Sanskritized.” Settlements in the Swat valley date back to the Chalcolithic period, obviously predating the Indo-European incursions to the Indian subcontinent. The Odis themselves first appear in the historical record as satraps of a Saka ruler. Pāṇini, who was himself from the area of modern Peshawar, knew the name as Urḍi or Aurḍayāni (Upasak, 1990, p. 20). As late as the composition of the Purāṇas and the great epic Mahābhārata, Odiyana and its northern and western neighbors were not considered part of Āryavārta (Bronkhorst, 2016, pp. 17-34, pp. 124-25). In sum, it is misleading to insist on the Sanskritized spelling.

[3] But now see Falk (2022, pp. 17-19), who rejects the reconstruction of the name as Uḍyāna.

[4] Xuanzang’s name for the region was previously reconstructed as Wu chang, but this too seems to have been a scholarly error; see Li (1996, p. 82).

[5] Tucci’s 1977 contribution was the first to point out the importance of this area in detail, and pioneered the ongoing work by the Italian, Pakistani, and Japanese archaeological expeditions that have contributed decisively to its study.

[6] Callieri (2006); Neelis (2011). Neelis (ibid., p. 245) speaks of the valley’s “especially rich archaeological, artistic, epigraphic, and literary heritage with seemingly innumerable remains of Buddhist stupas, monasteries, and rock carvings.” The earliest Buddhist site, Butkara I, dates back to the third century BCE.

[7] See Mohanti and Panigrahi (2016) for a typical presentation. As with most such claims, their assertions rely largely on very late Indian and Tibetan literary sources. Chandra (1980) even proposed Kanchipuram, in southern India, as an alternative. 

[8] While Orissa was without doubt a major Buddhist stronghold in the ninth century, Tāranātha’s evaluation of the Buddhism prevailing there at that time has been called into question (Kinnard, 1996, pp. 284-287). 

[9] The confusion is not found only in Chinese sources. Sircar (1973, pp. 12- 13) has noted that in the Kālikā Purāṇa, Oḍra is inconsistently substituted for Oḍḍiyāna as one of the four major tantric seats, but he concludes that in relation to the Hindu tantric literature, the notion that the seat in question was actually located in Orissa is “unworthy of serious consideration.” Davidson (2002, pp. 206-211) also discusses the confusion and inconsistency surrounding the location of these seats.

[10] The usual reckoning has Buddhabhadra as Kashmiri, or just “Indian”, but Kuwayama (2002, p. 146; 2006, p. 109) shows that he was from Nagarahāra, specifically the area between Jalalabad and the Khyber Pass.

[11] Copp (2011, p. 360).

[12] As has been often noted, Xuanzang recorded the emphasis that the people of Swat laid on spell literature and meditation; see Li (1996, p. 83-84). 

[13] It should be taken into account that the attempts to connect this master with a later royal family of Orissa — the so-called Bhauma-kara dynasty — are based on a reconstruction of his Sanskrit name (Śubhakarasiṃha) that can in no way be considered equivalent to Shan wu wei (Chou, ibid., p. 251 n. 3). Furthermore, Shan wu wei’s official biography was written by at least two different people (Chou, ibid., pp. 250-251), and while the first half, dealing with his purported birth and career in India, contains the usual tropes of royal descent and miraculous but otherwise unknown teachers, the second begins with his travels towards China and is supported throughout by much historically verifiable information, including the rule of a Türkic khan in Odiyana (in the expanded sense) when he passed through. 

[14] The connection between Indrabhūti and Odiyana seems to date back at least to around 800 (van der Kuijp, 2010, p. 130).

[15] Karmay (2009, p. 80-82). There is a close relationship between a collection of these tantras, which were brought to China by the Sogdian master Amoghavajra, and the tantras of the Mahāyoga, though the two collections are not identical. This was first noticed by Eastman (1981), and the similarities have more recently been taken up and analyzed by Giebel (1995) and Almogi (2014). The East Asian tradition claims that Amoghavajra’s collection was originally taken from a legendary Iron Stupa that was in South India. That the tradition does not claim a provenance in the Orissa-Bengal area might be because the legend of the Iron Stupa was already established in China before the shift in Zahor’s supposed location came about. 

[16] According to Davidson (2002, p. 244), however, the Sakyapas, oldest of the “new” schools, have a tradition of three Indrabhūtis – all from Odiyana.

[17] The Fifth Dalai Lama, who came from a Nyingmapa background, nevertheless felt compelled to invent a convoluted history of his own Zahor ancestry so that he could trace it back to Bengal (van der Kuijp, 2010, pp. 147 ff.). An interesting sidelight to this question is the fact that the traditional Tibetan account of the creation of their alphabet claims that they took the letter za from Zahor (van der Kuijp, 2010, p. 137). While this is usually understood to mean that they took the form of the letter from the alphabet used in that region (which was not the case), it might mean instead that they had to find a way to indicate the voiced sibilant /z/ which is found in Tibetan words, but not in Indic; the /z/ was a native phoneme in Northwestern Prakrit, but only used in “Iranian names and loanwords” in Sanskrit (Salomon, 1990, p. 269). This would also obviously indicate a northwestern location for Zahor.

[18] See Kuwayama (2006, p. 110 n, 14) for a discussion of various reckonings on the question. Kuwayama (2002, pp. 193-199) had earlier used the testimony of later pilgrims, as well as Chinese historical materials, to demonstrate that during the Tang, Jibin came to mean the kingdom of Kapiśa in what is now central Afghanistan. 

[19] See Wright (1948, pp. 332-335) for a discussion. Wright errs, however, in following the then-current consensus that Jibin always referred to Kashmir. Some sources claim that Fotucheng was a native of Central India and a descendant of royalty, but the trope of the royal (or high-caste) descent of prominent Buddhist figures found in Chinese biographical literature is far too commonplace to be accepted at face value, and can be seen as part of the hu vs. fan dynamic mentioned above (note 2).

[20] While McRae (2004, p. 442) continues to place Kumārajīva’s studies in Kashmir, Hansen (2012, p. 66) correctly locates them in Gandhāra. As usual, there also exist accounts that make Kumārajīva the descendent of Indian royalty (Hansen, op. cit.).

[21] Tāranātha was one Tibetan who placed Li Yul south of the Himalayas (Chimpa and Chattopadhyaya, 1970, p. 60, n. 41; see also Brough, 1947-48, p. 338).

[22] Grenet (2015, esp. p. 26) demonstrated that while the sites described in the oldest Avestan literature as being created by Ahura Mazda are all located in southern Inner Asia, Afghanistan, or western Pakistan, the later Pahlavi literature moved them to the Iranian plateau.

SOURCES

Almogi, Orna (2014) “The Eighteen Mahāyoga Tantric Cycles: A Real Canon or the Mere Notion of One?” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 30, pp. 47-110.

Bronkhorst, Johannes (2016) How the Brahmins Won: From Alexander to the Guptas, Brill, Leiden.

Brough, John (1948) “Legends of Khotan and Nepal,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 12, pp. 333-339.

Callieri, Pierfrancisco (2006) “Buddhist Presence in the Urban Settlements of Swat, Second Century BCE to Fourth Century CE,” in Gandhāran Buddhism: Art Archaeology, Texts, ed. P. Brancaccio and K. Behrendt, UBC Press, Vancouver, pp. 47-82.

Chandra, Lokesh (1980) “Oḍḍīyāna: a New Interpretation,” in Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson, ed. Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi, Aris & Phillips, Warminster, pp. 73-78.

Chimpa, Lama and Alaka Chattopadhyaya (1970) History of Buddhism in India (by Tāranātha), Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla.

Chou, Yi-liang (1945) “Tantrism in China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 8, pp. 241-331; partially reprinted in Payne, 2006.

Copp, Paul (2011) “Prajñā” in Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, ed. Charles Orzech, Handbuch der Orientalistik series no. 24, Brill, Leiden, pp. 360-362.

Davidson, Ronald (2002) Indian Esoteric Buddhism, Columbia University Press, New York. 

Falk, Harry (2022-2023) “Faxian and Early Successors and Their Route from Dunhuang to Peshawar: In Search of the ‘Suspended Crossing’,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute n.s. vol. 31, pp.1 -48.

Giebel, Rolf W. (1995) “The Chin-kang-ting ching yü-ch’ieh shih-pa-hui chih kuei: an Annotated Translation,” Journal of Naritasan Institute for Buddhist Studies 18, pp. 106-199.

Grenet, Frantz (2015) “Zarathustra’s Time and Homeland: Geographical Perspectives” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism, ed. Michael Stausberg and Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, Wiley Blackwell, Chichester, pp. 21-30.

Hansen, Valerie (2012) Silk Road: A New History, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Hamar, Imre (2007) “The History of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: Shorter and Larger Texts” in Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayen Buddhism, ed. Imre Hamar, Harrassowitz Verlag, Weisbaden, pp. 151-178.

Huntington, John C. (1975) The Phur-pa, Tibetan Ritual Daggers, Artibus Asiae Publishers, Ascona (Switzerland).

Karmay, Samten (2009 [first published 1997]) The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet, vol. 1, Mandala Book Point, Kathmandu.

Kinnard Jacob N. (1996) “Re-evaluating the Eighth-Ninth Century Pala Milieu: Icono-Conservatism and the Persistence of Śākyamuni,” Journal of the International Association for Buddhist Studies 19.2, pp. 281-300.

Kuijp, Leonard W. J. van der (2010) “On the Edge of Myth and History: Za hor, its Place in the History of Early Indian Buddhist Tantra, and Dalai Lama V and the Genealogy of its Royal Family,” in Studies on Buddhist Myths: Texts, Pictures, Traditions, and History, ed. Bangwei Wang, Jinhua Chen, and Ming Chen, pp. 114-164.

Kuwayama, Shoshin (2002) Across the Hindukush of the First Millennium, Kyoto University Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto. 

—— (2006) “Pilgrimage Route Changes and the Decline of Gandhāra” in Gandhāran Buddhism: Art, Archaeology, Texts, ed. P. Brancaccio and K. Behrendt, UBD Press, Vancouver, pp. 107-134.

Li, Rongxin (1996)(trans. Xuanzang) The Great T’ang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions, Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research.

McRae, John R. (2004) “Kumārajīva” in Encyclopedia of Buddhism, ed. Robert Buswell, Macmillan Reference, New York pp. 442-43.

Mohanty, Bimalendu and Varish Panigrahi (2016) “Guru Padmasambhava of Odiyana (Odisha): The Founder of Lamaism in Tibet,” Journal of Bhutan Studies 34, pp. 80-86.

Neelis, Jason (2011) Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks, Brill, Leiden.

Payne, Richard C. (2006)(ed.) Tantric Buddhism in East Asia, Wisdom Publications, Somerville MA.

Sanderson, Alexis (2009) “The Śaiva Age: the Rise and Dominance of Saivism in the Early Medieval Period” in Genesis and Development of Tantrism, ed. Shingo Einoo, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, pp. 41-349.

Sircar, D.C. (1973) The Śākta Pīṭhas, Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi.

Snellgrove, David (1987) Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan Successors, 2 vols., Shambhala Publications, Boston.

Tucci, Giuseppe (1977) “On Swat. The Dards and Connected Problems,” East and West n.s. 27, pp. 9-85.

Wright, Arthur Frederick (1948) “Fo-tu-teng: A Biography,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 11, pp. 321- 371.

Yang, Jidong (1998) “Replacing hu with fan: A Change in the Chinese Perception of Buddhism during the Medieval Period,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 21.1, pp. 157-170.

Zurcher, Eric (2012) “Buddhism across Boundaries: the Foreign Input,” in Buddhism Across Boundaries: The Interplay of Indian, Chinese, and Central Asian Source Materials, ed. John MacCrae and Jan Nattier, Sino-Platonic Papers, pp. 1-25.

Padampa in the Vatican?

 

༄༅།།དངུལ་སྒོང་གི་བཤད་འབུམ་ལོ་རྒྱུས་བཞུགས་སོ།།

Recently back from a spell in Rome, I have exciting news to tell you about something I found out about while I was there. Just a few days before departure I received a gift of an article attached to an email. On its first page, I noticed a title that to my mind could only mean it was a work of Padampa or a commentary on the same. And if it were in the last place in the world you would expect to find a work of his, it would have to be the Vatican Apostolic Library.

That same evening I typed the call number into the Google search box and Wallah! Presto! The first page of the text you see illustrated above was there in front of my eyes, undeniably appearing to exist. A miraculous but persistent materialization in digital form.

The article by Filibeck (details below) was about two texts related to missionaries among the very few Tibetan-language texts so far identified in the Vatican collection. Not about this one. This one has the front title-page title in cursive Tibetan script, Dngul-sgong-gi Bshad-'bum Lo-rgyus.* First of all, bshad-'bum literally means explanation collection, but what it really is is nothing but an uncommon pre-Mongol era word for commentary.** So this would be a commentary on the Silver Sphere, a work familiar to the world’s burgeoning numbers of Zhijé specialists as a text containing teachings by Padampa’s 54 Indian spiritual mentors. But then we also see the word history (lo-rgyus) there, making us think that a later text in the set may be indicated (it does indeed contain at least one fragment of a history even if its cover title is dkar-chag, or table of contents.)

(*This title was probably meant to cover the entire collection, although this is not at all obvious without looking further into its content. **The entire fifth volume of the published ZC is taken up by a bshad-’bum by Tenné. Another rare use is in the title of the 11th-century Indian teacher Smṛtijñānakīrti’s commentary on the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṅgīti with the title in Tibetan being ’Jam-dpal Mtshan-brjod-kyi Bshad-’bum.)

When the first folio first popped up on my screen, I was thrilled, even a little delirious, it’s true. But when I started to look into it my feelings of elation were tempered with dismay, as I started to notice there are missing folios. As it turns out quite a lot is missing. Even to describe what is there is complicated by the page numbering systems (both the pencilled-in Arabic numerals and the numbers given to the scans). Finally, I made a listing of the pages that may be seen there, ignoring the added numberings completely, typing out titles and colophons and even some bits of the text itself. I’ve appended this sketchy document below. Tibeto-logicians should find it useful for navigational purposes.

To make a general assessment, even if it may be too early for it, I’d say that there are pages from texts unknown to be extant anywhere else. And another matter I’m quite sure about is that all or most of it constitutes a kind of Selected Works of one of the three famous brothers of the Rog family, disciples of Tenné who sought out and put together both major and minor Zhijé teaching lineages (including Cutting practices) as well as Nyingma teachings. The most important and here relevant of the three is Rog Zhigpo (1171-1245), the same one who authored the main early Zhijé history.*

(*ཞིག་པོ་ཉི་སེང་ aka ཉི་མ་སེང་གེ aka རིན་ཆེན་ཤེས་རབ་. His untitled history of the early Zhijé lineage is found in ZC, vol. 4, pp. 324-432.)

The colophon of the initial text* mentions Gomchen Drak (བསྒོམ་ཆེན་བྲག་) as the place of composition. From other sources we know this was a retreat place for Rog Zhigpo between the years 1207 and 1228. It was also the place where his mentor Tenné died at a very advanced age, somewhere in his ’90’s (in 1217?).

(*On the recto of fol. 76[101].)

The root text behind this commentary is preserved in the Zhijé Collection, vol. 1, pp. 235-242 and elsewhere (see Schaeffer’s essay, pp. 27-28 for transcribed title and colophon). It has been Englished by both Harding and Molk (both listed below).

A commentary on the Silver Sphere is listed in the Drepung Catalog, p. 1008, in 64 folios, but there is no clear reason to believe it is the same as the one in the Vatican set. What the Vatican library does have is surely the ‘same’ as still another one listed in Drepung Catalog, on p. 1084:  Zhig-po Nyi-seng (i.e. Rog Zhigpo), Thun-mong-gi Brgyud-pa Dngul-sgong-gi Bshad-’bum, a manuscript in 42 folios. On the page just before notice yet another commentarial text in 61 folios by Zhig-po Nyi-seng on the same root text listed as Dri-med Dngul-sgong-gi Sgom-'bum. By its title it would appear to be a Meditation Collection rather than an Explanation Collection!

One not so subtle difference between the root text and the Vatican set’s commentary is in their internal order. The Vatican begins with teachings of the ten women mentors,* while the root text has them at the end, after the men. Was this idea to put the women first regarded as a common courtesy, or is there more to it?

(*These ten women gurus of Padampa as well as the men were listed in an earlier Tibeto-logic blog, “Padampa Portrait - Part Two.”)

So, I suppose what it comes down to is this: We owe to the Vatican the one and only now available commentary on the Silver Sphere. Of course it is only partial, which is sad. The only hope we have today for a complete text of it lies in the Arhat Temple in Drepung.

But before saying arrivederci, let’s have a word about the history text in the Vatican set, the one that seems to be briefly referenced in the front title by the word lo-rgyus (see Sun’s essay). I believe if matters were looked into more closely, this fragmentary history that assigns itself a date corresponding to 1237 CE, places the date of death of Padampa in 1105 rather than the accepted orthodoxy 1117. That means it agrees with the chronology by Katog Rinzin (listed as no. 410 in the new edition of Tibetan Histories), making me more firm in my belief that it’s necessary to shift dates back in time if we are to make Padampa’s stay in Tingri come into line with the reign dates for King Tsedé. But that argument is still in the process of formation, so I’ll leave you with this for now. The issue of dating is something the Vatican set can possibly help us with. No doubt there is more to learn from it. Ciao for now!

References

I highly recommend going to this Vatican Library site to see the whole set:  

https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.estr.or.171.

A word to the wise, in their evident belief that the language is Hebrew or Arabic, the librarians make us scroll left rather than right to go to the next folio side. And if you haven’t mastered Tibetan cursive script, I’m sure that’s something you’ve vowed to work on, so now is your chance. And if you’ve already learned cursive but find the shorthand spellings mystifying, see this essay by Jörg Heimbel, posted at academia.edu just today.

Elena De Rossi Filibeck, “Texts from Tibet, a Land of Mission,” contained in: Maria Gabriella Critelli, ed., Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae XXVIII, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican City 2023), pp. 161-187. The Zhijé text receives its brief mention on p. 161 in footnote 1 as “an incomplete miscellany of historical and teaching texts called Dri med dngul sgong (Vat. estr.-or. 58).”

Sarah Harding, tr., Zhije: The Pacification of Suffering, Snow Lion (Boulder 2019). The root text behind the commentary, “The Pure Silver Egg of the Stainless Path,” is translated into English on pp. 31-40. For easy access to the Tibetan, go here, but be patient while it downloads. Look also here, especially for the useful English introduction to the “Egg Trilogy.”

David Molk, with Lama Tsering Wangdu Rinpoche, Lion of Siddhas: The Life and Teaching of Padampa Sangye, Snow Lion (Ithaca 2008). The root text behind the commentary, “The Stainless Path of the Silver Egg of Speech” is translated into English on pp. 314-320.

Kurtis Schaeffer, “Crystal Orbs and Arcane Treasuries: Tibetan Anthologies of Buddhist Tantric Songs from the Tradition of Pha Dam pa sangs rgyas,” Acta Orientalia [Oslo], vol. 68 (2007), pp. 5-73.

Sun Penghao, “Notes on the Tibetan Lexeme lo rgyus: Other than ‘History’,” contained in: Kurtis R. Schaeffer et al., eds., Histories of Tibet: Essays in Honor of Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp, Wisdom (New York 2023), pp. 421-433.

Zhijé Collection (ZC)  — The root text of the Silver Sphere is in vol. 1, pp. 235-242. This collection is by far the most important available resource on Padampa and his Zhijé teachings (originally a four-volume manuscript, it was published in five). TBRC (Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center) makes it available in PDFs, which is wonderful, but they have it under the name “Zhi byed snga bar phyi gsum gyi skor.” This incorrectly made up title states that it includes the early (snga) and middle (bar) transmission texts of the Zhijé, when in fact its content is limited to the Later Transmission (phyi) alone.* Some day they will listen to me and correct this old mistake rather than allow it to continue generating confusion. 

• To get to the Zhijé Collection, try this link, or if that doesn’t work, try this one — https://library.bdrc.io/ — and type “W23911” in their search box. 

In the future, if a Tibetan title for the collection is needed, I think it ought to reflect the title that is actually there on the manuscript. Although difficult to read in the reprint edition, it is more legible in the microfilm that was made independently by the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project. What we find there is this: Dam chos snying po zhi byed las / rgyud phyi snyan rgyud zab khyad ma bzhugs // glang skor bzim chung phyag pe'o [~glang 'khor gzims chung phyag dpe'o]. If a short title is needed, I recommend Zab-khyad-ma, which means [the manuscript primarily, but possibly also the transmission it represents called] Exceptionally Profound. Use the English if you prefer.

(*This means primarily the one transmitted by Kunga, although there were three other disciples of Padampa who held transmissions that are also called “later” and that once had smaller text collections that have not surfaced yet. We know they existed in earlier times, as their length is sometimes quantified.)

On the present condition of the manuscript, see this posting: https://tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-zhije-collection-suffers.html.

+  +  +

Notes on the Vatican Padampa Set

A word on pagination: I give both folio numbers [the 2nd in square brackets] when there are two on the same folio. These aren’t entirely sure. There are problems with the pencilled numbers supplied to the folios (not to mention the numbers used to label the scans), so rather than use them I try to rigorously follow the dual-page-number system written in the margins of the folios, while ignoring the others. The higher numbers in square brackets ought to be the continuous “running” numbers. If you are interested in pursuing the pagination studies, this page ought to prove useful. I put solid bullets (•) whenever a new text begins. I put actual title-page titles (they are few) in bold.

1[28]  Dngul sgong gi bshad 'bum lo rgyus.

2[29]

3[30]

5[32]

17[42]

73[96?]

74[97]

75[100]

76[101]  Colophon:  dri med dngul sgong gyi 'bum / bsgom chen brag du bkod pa // rdzogs s.ho // Ends with a statement of proofing completed, and then what is likely a statement of book ownership:  cha dpon dpe (rtsa dbon dpe? tsa pho ra dpe?).  Verso blank, but with Vatican call number "stamp" that literally looks like a postage stamp.  

•

New Text (initial folio not there!):

2[113?] line 2  dang po lam sbyang bya pha rol tu phyin pa yin pas lam myi nor bar kyang / 'phags pa sdud pa las...

3[115?]

4[116]

18[130]

20[132]

21[133]

22[134?]

23[135]

24[136]

26[138a] a final fol. of a text. Colophon at verso line 1  blo dman rin seng bdag gis yi ger bkod //  // ... ... [line 3] khrid kyi gsung sgros / blo ma rig mun sel gyi yi ge'o...

•

Now there is a new title, very much a Five Paths (ལམ་ལྔ་) and Pâramitâ (ཤེར་ཕྱིན་) text to begin with, although mantra & Mahâmudrâ (ཕྱག་ཆེན་) come in later on.

27[138b]  Title-page title: Khrid kyi dpe'.  verso [line 1]: bla ma byang chub sems dpa' ding ri ba chen po'i chos 'di...  [line 4] ...mying dri med thigs pa phyag bzhes kyi chos skor du btags...

28[139]

31[142]

32[143]

33[144?]

34[145]

35[146]

36[147?]

37[148]

38[149]

39[150]

40[151]

41[152]

42[153]

43[154]

44[155]  Verso begins: dus gsum bde gshegs rgyal ba’i yum mchog dang...  [line 2] dmar byang lam gyi snying po bsdus pa’i gnad // thugs kyi bcud phyung rin chen phreng ba ’di // bla ma’i bka’ las rab rtogs gsal ba don / mi brjed gzungs su cung zad yi ger bri //  ...  Note the name of Byang chub sems dpa' Kun dga’.

45[156]  recto line 3:  gsum pa mtshan ni / phyag rgya chen po dri med tigs pa phyag bzhes kyi chos skor ro.

46[155!]

47[158]

48[159]

49[155!]

50[158!]

51[159]

52[160]

53[161]

54[162]

55[163]

56[164]

57[165]

58[166]

59[167]

60[168]

61[169]

62[170]

63[171]

64[172]

65[173]

66[174]

67[175]

•

Note:  The text is not continuous, so no reason to think the next two unpaginated (or cut off pagination) folios belong to the text that came before!

1st unmarked fol.  The fol. no. is cut off in the scan only it seems, same with the following folio with the colophon.

2nd unmarked fol. (a final fol. of some text).  Ending with no colophonic information except an added note on the place where it was scribed [line 5]:  chos 'di nyams su len pa la rtags rig pa dangs pa la yang char ba yin bas / tshe 'di'i rtog pas ma dkrugs par mdzod //  yon rdzas tshogs pa las 'byung bas / chos phyogs su dka' 'jen grub tshad du thong gsol / yid ches mtsham sbyor ma log pa la skye bar 'dug cig / bla ma la mos gus chen po gyis / sa lam sngags kyis gcod pa yin gsung bas / sgyu rtsal dang ldan gyi snying po la rem pa thon cig // grub pa thob nas yong cig ang //  // [different hand:] zhus de dag par bgyis so //  // iti.  The verso has, in the same dbu-can writing:  // gdan sa rin po che / rnam grol dgon par bris //  I couldn’t immediately identify this Rnam grol Monastery.

•

New text, apparently, with only one set of p. nos. rather than the usual two.

13(?)  Begins:  sgom chen de ro zas ro gos kyis ’tsho yang...

•

New text (Dkar chag), in fact  historical chronology.

1[25]  Title-page title:  Dkar chag.  Verso:  thams cad mkhyen pa la phyag 'tshal lo // skal pa bzang po 'di la 'dzam bu'i gling du / sangs rgyas stong tham pa byon par gsungs pa las / drug sngar gshegs pa'i shul / tshe lo brgya pa'i gsham / shing po byi pa'i lo la ston pa yang dag par rdzogs pa'i sangs rgyas shag kya thub pa sku bltam ste / dgung lo bcu' dgu' la khab bzhes / nyi shu rtsa gsum pa la rab tu gshegs / rtsa lnga nas dka' thub la bzhugs / sum bcu' rtsa lnga la mngon par rdzogs par sangs rgyas nas / chos kyi 'khor lo rim pa gsum du bskor te / brgyad bcu' rsa gnyis shing mo bya'i lo la sku mya ngan las 'das te / shul du bstan pa lnga stong gnas par gsungs pa la / me mo bya'i lo 'di la brtsis pas / sangs rgyas mya ngan las 'das pa'i nub mo / 'phags pa dgra bcom pa tshe 'phel [mchan-note sde snod 'dzin pa xxx zer ro/] zhes bya b de sku 'khrungs / khong la sangs rgyas kyis byin gyis brlabs pa tshes lo lnga brgya thub cing / sangs rgyas kyi bstan pa dar bar mdzad do //

de gnyis tshe lo dgu' bcu' ru kha ral ba'i dus yin no //  // slob dpon klu grub sku 'das pa'i nub mo / 'phags pa thogs med sku 'khrungs te / khong yang bcud len gyi grub pa thob pas tshe lo lnga brgya thub cing / sangs rgyas kyi bstan pa dar ba ru [~rgyu?] mdzad // thogs med sku gshegs pa'i nub mo / bram ze a rya de ba sku 'khrungs nas / khong yang 

2[26] bcud len grub pa tshe lo lnga brgya thub ste / sangs rgyas kyi bstan pa yang dar ba'i dus / tshe lo ni sangs rgyas ru kha ral pa'i dus yin no //  //  a rya de ba 'das pa'i nub mo / slob dpon pad ma sku 'khrungs ste / khong gis tshe la dbang ba'i rig pa 'dzin thob pas tshe lo yang stong tham pa thub /  de'i bar ni tshe lo bdun bcu' ru kha ral pa'i dus yin no //   drug bcu' kha ral pa'i dus su /  slob dpon pad ma lho nub tu bzhud pa'i nub mo /  dam pa rin po che sku 'khrungs te / bcud len grub pas tshe lo lnga brgya' thub par lung bstan nas / mkha' 'gro ma rnams kyis 'gro ba'i don la bdun bcu' tham pa phyi ru bsgyur ba las / gsum gyis ma longs pa na sku gshegs te / shing mo bya'i lo / ston zla 'bring po / skar ma mon gre'i zla ba'i / tshes bzhi'i nam gung la gshegs nas / me mo bya'i lo 'di ru / lo brgya dang sum bcu ' so gsum yong ba yin no // [Since Padampa's death in Wood Female Bird year, or 1105, until now, the year of Fire Female Bird, 133 years have passed, meaning 1237!]   bla ma byang chub sems dpa' lcags mo yos bu'i lo pa / lo sum bcu' so bdun pa dam pa dang 'byal te / lo bcwa' brgyad bstan nas lnga bcu'i nga lnga lon pa'i dus su / dam pa sku gshegs nas / shul du lo bdun bzhugs te / drug bcu' rtsa gnyis pa la mkha' spyod du gshegs //   gshegs nas me mo bya'i lo 'di ru / l brgya' dang nyi shu rtsa drug du 'gro ba yin no // // [Since the death of Kun dga' in 1124, 126 years have gone by until the present Fire Female Hen year, which would again have to be 1237]  de'i slob ma pa tshab tshul khrims 'bar ni / sa mo bya'i lo pa yin pas lo bcu' gnyis pa la rab tu byung nas slob gnyer mdzad / sum bcu' so bdun shing mo bya'i lo la bla ma byang chub sems dpa' dang 'byal [~mjal] nas /  [verso]  lo gsum bsten ste bzhi bcu la mar la byon nas / zhe gsum nas sgrub pa mdag char lo bcwa' lnga mdzad //  nga brgyad pa la bton nas chos gsungs // brgyad bcu' brgya lnga pa chu mo bya'i lo sku gshegs / gshegs nas me mo bya'i lo 'di ru / lo brgyad bcu' brgya lnga song ba yin no //  

de'i slob ma dpal rgyal bsten ne [~rten ne] ni /  me mo lug gi lo la / lo nyi shu rtsa gnyis pa la bla ma pa tshab dang 'byal nas lo ngas bsten //  nyi shu drug nas sum bcu' so lnga tshun chad bsgrub pa mdag char mdzad //  so drug nas gsang spyod rgyal 'khams skor zhing sgrub pa mdzad // lnga bcu' lon nas gsang spyod bshig nas gdams pa'i snod ldan btsal // drug bcu lon nas bya ba btang nas sprang spyod bskyangs / bdun bcu' rtsa gcig lon tshe gra ru byon nas gdams pa gsungs // brgyad bcu' lon tshe thugs dgongs rdzogs te dge 'tshor mdzad // [here and in following part of the line there are tiny mchan notes that ought to be read at better resolution]  ban rgan sgom yang de'i dus na grongs // de nas dgung lo dgu' bcu' rta gcig me mo glang gi lo la / dbyar zla ra ba'i sa ra sa gas nya ba'i ti su dgu' [??] / srod thun dang po gza' skar tshang ba'i dus / sgra 'od sa g.yos dang bcas nas bla ma gshegs / tshes gsum gyi nyin mo pur bzhu' bas bar snang 'ja'is khyengs // rten yang thug med byon pa thams cad nges shes skyes // bla ma gshegs nas me mo bya lo 'dir / lo ngo nyi shu rtsa gcig lon pa yin no //  //  de'i slob ma sprang ban gnyoms chung bdag /  skal par tshogs bsags las su rgyud sbyangs nas // dal 'byor lus thob dam pa'i ... [Next p. marked "20"]

•

New text (also bio-historical in nature).

[20] This page has a section-ending colophon that tells us what we have is the very end of a biography of Rje-btsun Chen-po (i.e., Rten-ne).  The next section is discussing why it had to be a one-to-one transmission (discussion continuing on the back).

[21]  At line 3 ends the discussion about the one-to-one transmission.  Then, at line 4 begins the fourth and final general topic of the Lo-rgyus, an account of Rten-ne (here again called Rje-btsun Chen-po).  This topic is in its turn divided into four subtopics...

•

New text (no marginal page no. is given).  I believe this is just a test scan and might be ignored, just like the one with the color chart.  

PS (March 27, 2024)

Oddly, it only now occurred to me that on a day shortly before Easter I posted a blog about a Silver Egg (Harding argues in favor of Egg where I translate Sphere) in the Vatican. Just goes to prove once more that everything is already entirely interrelated, right?

1 egg = 250 kilos of chocolate

Postscript (July 9, 2024):

I only recently received in an email from Elena De Rossi-Filibeck of Rome the following information:  

“The Padampa text DigiVatLib number Vat.estr.or.171 is part of a donation from an Austrian or German gentleman who purchased the text in Bhutan in 1989. In the last folio there are the following words: ‘Sutra gekauft 1989 in Bhutan, Herbert Jemen 1989’.”

I will have to accept this on faith as so far I was unable to actually see any German inscription on the manuscript scan.

I believe this is the best we can do on the question of its recent provenance for the time being. It was a modern donation to the Vatican Library by one named Herbert Jemen, who purchased it in Bhutan in 1989.  I admit I was a little disappointed by this information, since I had been wondering if it may have once belonged to Cardinal Stefano Borgia, the famous book collector of the 19th century, given his strong interest in manuscripts in every language. This is not the case, as it turns out.

About the identity of Herbert Jemen, I haven’t any idea. I don’t recognize the surname, and could find nothing on the internet. It is a common way of writing the country name Yemen in German and some other languages.

Recovered Connections 1 - The Four Caches

Let’s not make this about me, but I’d like to lead into the subject lightly by telling a story that does involve myself. I believe it may help explain my enthusiasm for the subject.

When it came time to make a formal proposal for my doctoral dissertation back in the mid-80’s, I couldn’t make up my mind whether to be a modernist or a medievalist.  One idea I had was to study Kongtrul and the Nonpartisan or Non-sectarian Rimé movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After a lot of thought, I decided to leave the modern world behind, and concentrate on a Bonpo teacher by the name of Shenchen Luga, who revealed Treasure texts in 1017 CE.  It was a few years later on that I decided I ought to take a step back and look at the world surrounding him, to learn more about the period of Tibetan history prior to the advent of the Mongols on the world’s stage. Although I have often stepped outside the boundaries, the fact is I still largely occupy myself with this time in Tibetan history.

I believe it was in 1987, passing through Paris on our way to Kathmandu, that we stopped by Rue d’President Wilson to visit two illustrious professors, Samten Karmay and Anne-Marie Blondeau.  Madame Blondeau gave me a small lecture about medieval manuscripts being like organisms that grow and change over time, and how those of us who study 11th-12th century Tibet need our own equivalent of the Dunhuang cave cache in order to better know those times without seeing through later filters.

It was only in recent months that it occurred to me that we have not only one, but four and possibly even more caches that may more or less perfectly fill the need Madame Blondeau expressed so nicely.

Let me show you one of the several stages in my thinking about the subject of the four caches. The Matho fragments became available only October of last year, but the Gatang texts have been known since 2006. I knew of the Gatang cache thanks to their facsimile publication along with several important studies. If you read Tibetan look at line 4 beneath the arrow and you’ll see that the author Pematashi mentions a cache of 11th- to 12th-century texts found in 2011 in Tholing. He notes that, in both the Gathang and the Tholing caches, quite a few of the texts are in the form of  side-sewn booklets he calls “Ltebs-zur-ma.” As this was written well before the Matho fragments became known, it is all the more remarkable that the same is true of them. A large percentage of the Matho are in fact side-sewn booklets.

But there was one more small step in the slow progress of my enlightenment when I realized that a book with facsimiles that I already had (thanks to a scan given to me by one of the editors), was a set of Khyunglung manuscripts. I had written a blog about one of the texts, but hadn’t paid the others much attention.  Although as I guess I’ll discuss soon, the Khyunglung manuscripts may have been closed later in the 13th century — as much as a century after the others — it occurred to me that it could make a great deal of sense to think of all four caches at once.  So, even though I will concentrate in the end primarily on the Matho, we will briefly but slowly work our way through the others one at a time. 

You could say that I want to promote three basic ideas or theses, and if one or another is only partially proven we’ll consider the effort repaid.

1. The 21st century availability of these manuscript caches is a significant transformative event. It’s comparable to the Dunhuang caches, only with a cutoff date two centuries later than the Dunhuang.  

2.  We don’t understand the post-imperial but pre-Mongol era of Tibetan religious history as well as we think we do.  Views are going to change.

 3. More specifically the subject of my next blog:  The religious movements, schools of sects of that time emerged in an interactive and interconnected way, much more than assumed.

We may not always be aware of it, but the field of Tibetan Studies in our still-new century is facing a number of dangers and transformations. Among them: Even while prospects open ahead of us we face the danger of lost opportunities. During my times I have witnessed quite a few attempts, some successful, in pushing us in different directions. But regardless of the direction the crowd decides to take it always involves some significant questions and approaches being abandoned, approaches that could have yielded interesting results on their own.

I would be happy if only I could finally succeed in nearly convincing you that these 21st century discoveries will be recognized as a significantly transformative event for Tibetan studies, almost if not quite on the level of the Dunhuang cave cache with their closure date two centuries later. Slowly but surely these texts are going to persuade us that we do not know the post-imperial pre-Mongol period as well as we think we do. And along those lines but more narrowly, I’d like to supply enough evidence so you will agree with me that the religious movements, schools or sects coming into life, or coming back into life, in those times when they had their new beginnings were a lot more interactive and connected to each other than we have been thinking.

To the best of my present knowledge three of the caches were closed within their chortens in around 1200 CE, while the fourth was deposited late in the 12th century. Still, nearly all the texts date before 1200.  Some of them may have been scribed as early as two centuries before that time, in some few cases quite possibly earlier still.

I will go on and introduce them one at a time, in order, starting from the east and proceeding west, following the course of the sun across the sky.  There’s  

1. The Gtam-shul Dga'-thang chorten cache published in 2007, 
2. The Khyunglung/Sutlej chorten texts found in 2008,  
3. The Tholing find of 2011, and 
4. The Matho chorten fragments found in 2014 now posted at BDRC.  

So, as you can see by moving in space from east to west, they are also chronologically arranged according to find dates. We might consider the possibility of adding Tabo manuscripts as a fifth item, although these were preserved in the temple, and not in a chorten, and the dating of each individual manuscript is more of a problem as the collection remained opened for one whole millennium. At the very least some Tabo texts can be made a part of our arguments. I’m entirely open to other ideas about what might be added.*

(*A fantastic book that only now reached publication constrains us to consider two more caches of early texts, those in ’On Ke-ru in south-central and Phu-ri in Gnya’-lam southwestern Tibet. See Matthew T. Kapstein, ed., Tibetan Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Cornell University Press [Ithaca 2024], vol. 1, p. 22, note 6, noting also in the same volume p. 122, notes 22 and 30.)

There are lots of codicological and paleographical aspects we might touch on here and there, but there are good scholars among you prepared to do a lot better work on this than I can. So I would encourage them to go to work. My aims today are different, not being much concerned with the physical volume and so-called materiality. I want to know what these fragments can tell us about the world they inhabited, and particularly the spiritual worlds they inhabited, the religio-spiritual traditions both exoteric and esoteric.

But first, I need to consider objections that may have already occurred to you involving contemporary issues of cultural property and unprovenanced artifacts. We should set these issues aside for the time being, because they could really take over and leave time for nothing else. But, well, we have to say a little at least.

Put simply, chorten desecration does happen and it’s a real problem. However, in the case of the Gatang, the texts were found during the course of very necessary repairs.  

The Matho texts were found during the de-construction of the chorten or chortens, but this was done under the orders of the locally most highly regarded religious leader, a Rinpoche, specifically Luding Khan Rinpoche. 

The other two caches are not so clear to me, but even if the chortens may have been damaged by looters (this is never clarified), the texts were found onsite after the fact by people with motives of preserving and protecting the monuments.  

None of the four caches I will discuss are supplied to us by the looters (the looters thought they might find items of more value than bits of paper and bark).  I think that fairly resolves one ethical qualm even if not entirely, and leave the rest for future discussion.

This map is supplied to give general idea of the site location of Gatang, just to the north of the eastern part of the northern border that divides Bhutan from Tibet.

Here you see the premier publication that reproduces all four texts found in Gatang Chorten.

Looking at Samten Karmay’s essay (I’ll give the reference in a moment), he tells us how books were found inside a large and quite old chorten during its restoration in 2007. The person in charge of the restoration and the one who actually found the manuscripts was Langru Norbu Tsering (Glang-ru Nor-bu-tshe-ring). He co-authored the book you see here with the wellknown scholar Patsab Pasang Wangdü (Pa-tshab Pa-sangs-dbang-’dus).

If this chorten was indeed built as a kind of tomb memorial for the Nyingma Tertön Nyangral Nyima Özer, its closing ought to date from somewhere around 1200.*

(*His death date is sometimes placed before, and sometimes after, that year. For more on him see this book: Daniel A. Hirschberg, Remembering the Lotus-Born: Padmasambhava in the History of Tibet’s Golden Age, Wisdom [Somerville 2016].)

This is just to provide a visual example of a page from one of the Gatang texts.  Look where the arrow is pointing to see one of the real oddities of these early texts. They could actually split syllables between lines, something unimaginable in later texts.  When I first saw it I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Now I’d like to place before your eyes some of the most significant writings about the Gatang texts so you can study them for yourself if you find the interest. John Bellezza has studied all the texts with the exception of the medical text.

There is one monographic study (see just above), along with a shorter article, by a woman scholar Chagmo Tso (Lcags-mo-mtsho). She says the cache, found in 2006 during reconstruction, included not only the four texts, but also divine images and thangka paintings. She thinks the texts date between mid-eighth to end of ninth centuries. She says (p. 254, point no. 3) the Bon texts were found within the Vessel (Bum-pa), demonstrating that the Bum-pa-che was originally a Bon monument. The words “Rgya-gar Chos-kyi Skad” were added at the beginning marking them as texts originally in an Indian Buddhist language, in order to protect these in fact Bon texts from destruction in the time of Trisongdetsen. Orthography and commonalities of place names (with names of regional lords) convince her the Gathang cache is contemporary to and just as good as Dunhuang.

I can’t follow some of these reasonings, which could be my problem. If you ask me she is a little too confident about the documents themselves dating back to imperial times, as in every way equivalent to Dunhuang documents. But she does add much to the discussion, and there is a lot to learn from this book, especially on matters of codicology. It deserves a closer reading than I’ve been able to give it.

Here you see a few more publications on the Gatang.

To continue with information from Samten Karmay’s essay... This bundle of manuscripts contains three ritual texts and one medical. Evidently the chorten is associated with the death of Nyangral Nyima Özer and dates from that time. That means the texts were likely closed inside at the very beginning of the 13th century. Karmay believes the mss. themselves are pre-11th century. Toni Huber says 11th-12th century. My opinion?  I think late 10th-11th c. is a safe enough guess.*

(*They were scribed for ritual use, and enclosed in the chorten only after the practices they advocated were no longer in use locally; that’s just my opinion, likely they were at least a century old already when they were placed inside.)

Toni Huber’s article is on the Rnel-dri text (the same one illustrated in slide 5), and the same text features in his book Source of Life (2020), vol. 2, pp. 40-49. The rite is primarily concerned with “the post-mortem status of deceased foetuses or miscarried infants and in some cases their mothers, and how this impacts upon the living.”

So, to reiterate: The book by Chagmo Tso tells us and shows in a photograph precisely where inside the chorten these Bon texts were found. This single bundle of manuscripts contained three ritual texts and one medical. Evidently the chorten is associated with the death of Nyangrel Nyima Özer and this gives us a date for the sealing of the texts within it. That means all the texts would have to be twelfth century or earlier, and this is generally confirmed by their actual content.

Now for Khyunglung in the upper Sutlej River valley.  At this moment I will not dwell on the interesting questions that have grown up around this place called Khyung-Bird Valley and its Silver Castle, just to say that it has a pivotal importance in numerous arguments being made in our day about the importance of Bon and Zhangzhung in Tibetan history. And archeologists have played a significant part in these discussions. But this is too unconnected to the matters of concern at the moment to go through all of that here.

(*It is true that the first reproduction in the facsimile edition is surely Bon. It is the only self-evidently Bon text in any of the four caches, with its mentions of Lord Shenrab. The three Gatang texts are not so self-evidently Bon, and could be described as ‘village rites.’)

 

Here you see the 2021 publication with facsimiles of the Khyunglung texts.

Here is the link to a blog that I wrote over four years ago: “Stone Inscription from the 8th-Century Rule of Trisongdetsen Suddenly Shows Up.” The title is slightly off according to my present understanding, as it leads you to expect an inscription carved in stone, while what we have is at best a paper copy of a stone inscription. The earliest reports about it were very confused and confusing and the main studies have yet to appear in print. It is still supposed by many to be a paper copy of a long stone (rdo-ring) inscription, and more specifically the long stone that once stood at the imperial period temple Tradumtsé (Pra-dum-tse). I won’t discuss this complex matter, although it is significant that an official edict type of document from imperial times was preserved with the other mostly Buddhist texts (the first item in the facsimile edition is in fact a Bon text). One modern writer has judged the edict to be a forgery, even if a forgery made during imperial times. All very interesting but not on topic. I will send you to the blog if you want to find out more. It is appended with numerous updates and possible leads for further study.

Apart from the imperial edict, another most interesting thing I noticed in the Khyunglung cache is germane to our subject, so I’d like to delve into it a little with the idea to do more on it in the future if I can. I had at first thought it might be a Zhijé text containing words of Padampa.  From what I can see,  the ordering of elements is not the same as the translated version, which could have relevance for the history of the text. Even before knowing about the Khyunglung fragments, I had noticed text parallels and similar metaphoric usages in the Zhijé  Collection, indicating common sources or cross-fertilization. Perhaps the metaphor of the turtle in the bronze basin would provide a sufficient example for the present. As I was planning a blog on this very subject, I’ll put my evidence in an appendix down below for the entertainment of the diehard Tibetologists among you. 

This is just to show an icon of Zurchungpa and his dates. He was significant for the Mahayoga lineages of the Nyingma school, and a celebrity in his time and place.

Here is a sample page.

Note: That word kha-rje on line 5 might be calqued with honor or merit. It is hardly used after the Mongol advent. It’s spelled variously (in one spelling it might seem to mean something like “king in the castle”). A cultural concept that is difficult to translate exactly, although I suggest honor as one good option. It seems to carry with it the senses of strength and integrity, but also having what is one's due, social standing, merit etc.  Notice, too, on line 6: Dam pa’i zhal nas. This is what made me think it might be a Padampa text.

Now for the Toling cache. I won’t say much about it because, to the best of my knowledge, with one unique exception its texts have not been made public.

We already noticed in Pema Tashi’s one-volume book on codicology (Bod-yig Gna’-dpe'i Rnam-bshad [2013], p. 15), he says booklet format Tibetan texts were found in a chorten near the Golden Temple of Tholing, dating to 11th-12th centuries. Other sources inform us the finding happened in the year 2011.

Unfortunately, the content of the Tholing Chorten cache is not sufficiently known to allow it to figure into our research aims of the moment, as I can say nothing about which Tibetan schools are represented in it.

I know of one and only one publication of the Tholing Chorten texts. In 2017, David Pritzker completed his D.Phil. at Oxford with a dissertation on a very old top-bound booklet from Tholing containing a mid-to-late 12th-century Tibetan history that was otherwise unknown. The same author has published several brief essays on this same subject, and I also noticed this rather recent publication listed somewhere in case you would like to try and locate it where I couldn’t:

Khyungdak Dhartsa’s (’Dar-tsha Khyung-bdag) research article “Mtho-lding Dgon-par Bzhugs-pa’i Rgyal-rabs Zla-rigs-ma Ngos-sbyor Mdor-bsdus,” Tibetology of China, issue no. 4 for the year 2013.

This illustrates a sample page from the history text booklet, top-bound rather than side-bound. To see the entire text, go to BUDA and type this number into its search box: W4CN12077.

Now at long last we’ve arrived at the Matho cache where we will remain for what remains of this blog. It would be a journey of nearly 900 miles if you could travel directly between Number 1, Tamshul near Bhutan, and Number 4, Matho in Ladakh. Rest assured no such direct route exists. Your trip will be much, much longer.

The old Matho chortens, including the King’s Chorten said to be source of the texts (or at least most of them), were disassembled following the wishes of the widely respected religious leader Luding Khan Rinpoche in the spring of 2014.

Why were the texts originally placed there? Helmut Tauscher believes it likely they were brought from nearby Nyar-ma Monastery. This makes sense and there is nothing to argue against it.

It was a library regarded as sacred, but it had over the centuries suffered from accident, neglect or partial destruction. There are indications of presumably accidental fire, but other natural or human causes could explain it. Water and mold damage are sometimes evident. It is difficult to know how much of the deterioration of the text occurred before, and how much after, their enclosure in the chorten[s].

An often asked question, Is it like a geniza?  In Judaism, a geniza is created because the very letters of the script need to be disposed of in a respectful way. But in Tibet fragments of texts are placed inside chortens so that the chorten can benefit from the added holiness. The distinction is not so subtle, and might be taken as a difference in motive. The genizah texts are respectfully disposed of when they are no longer of practical use, while the Tibetan texts are, in addition, made part of the shrine where they remain as a contributing cause for its holiness. Although I won’t pursue this here, I believe in both cases it may be understood that, in a sense, a funeral is taking place.

Just about everything you need to study Matho fragments is freely available on the worldwide web.  Just go the links seen above. The one with the star is most highly recommended.

I’ve put together in one list some interesting writings about Matho Monastery in general, although for our purposes the article by Helmut Tauscher with the star next to it is the only one that really requires attention. You see that others are mainly concerned with local protective spirits and possession rituals.

Here is an interesting photo I found in an Instagram post online. The fragments we find reproduced for us in BDRC are not that small, and it seems that the tiniest paper or birchbark fragments have not been included. In BDRC there are only larger pieces.

A Google search led me to this Facebook page for the Matho Museum, where I saw the remarkable statement you see in slide 22 with an arrow I’ve added to call attention to it. Just imagine storing old manuscripts in a bag. Think how that may in itself be productive of small fragments. I’ve stopped thinking.

•To be continued•

Just click on this: Continued here. 

Appendix: The Turtle in the Bronze Basin

Do you ever even imagine that effort itself could in some circumstances prove to be an insurmountable impediment to progress? Counterintuitive insight at its best! I am now convinced the metaphor of the turtle in the bronze basin will be subject of a forthcoming blog. At least I will try and try again. Wait for the future, as I suppose we have all been doing without complete success.