Is the Wishing Jewel the Holy Grail We Seek?

Nicholas Roerich (1933), White Stone
(Sign of Chintamani or Horse of Happiness)

ཡིད་བཞིན་ནོར་བུའི་དགོས་པ་གང་ཡིན་ལྟོས༎

yid bzhin nor bu'i dgos pa gang yin ltos //

What use is a Wishgranting Jewel? Look into it!

— Padampa's Mahāmudropadeśavajraguhyagīti.

Dergé Tanjur - Tôh. no. 2440.

Today’s blog isn’t meant as much more than an alert for a new article that deserves notice. Not because I think it’s the answer to everything, just that it may be the most detailed and serious study yet of a very interesting problem in Eurasian cultural history. And not because I know the author. I have no idea who he is, except that his name is Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs, and he lives in Surrey in the UK. (Oh, wait, I think I found a photo and a website here.  Maybe he’s in the U.S., or somewhere else in the world? You know, it really is hard keeping up with those young people these days...)

His widely ranging article opens the latest (2011) issue of the well-known [Euro-]medievalist journal called Viator (issue no. 2 of vol. 42).

The title is, and I can’t emphasize this boldly enough, The Wish-Granting Jewel: Exploring the Buddhist Origins of the Holy Grail.

Here is the official abstract:

“It is argued that the specific portrayal of the Holy Grail as a miraculous gemstone, first found in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, was ultimately inspired by the concept of the cintāmani or “wish-granting jewel” in the literature of India. Traditions regarding this object were popular in Buddhist folklore and parallels with the Grail literature are drawn from Japan, Indonesia, Śrī Lankā, and especially Tibet. Lha Thothori Nyentsen, king of Tibet, is identified as a plausible model for Titurel, the Fisher King. Parallels drawn from the legendary biography and the extant allegorical writings of Padmasambhava, a Gnostic, alchemist and warrior-monk revered as the principal founder of Tibetan Buddhism, extend to the entire core narrative of Parzival’s quest. It is suggested that these traditions reached medieval literati as a part of the astronomical, astrological, and alchemical corpus that was conveyed from India to Baghdād by Kanaka, translated into Arabic by Māshā’allāh, and rendered into Hebrew by Abraham ibn ‘Ezra.”

If your academic library has kept its JSTOR subscriptions up to date, go there and find it. If not, you may need to take your photocopy card with you, or use the interlibrary loan. When you’ve read it, come back here and put up your comments. I’ll do the same. Is this what we’ve been looking for? Have we reached the end of our quest? Will light come flooding into the most obscure corners of our world?

•

•  •

Don Croner’s blog about the three-ball motif in Ottoman carpets possibly being the Triratna is here. (I wonder if the Triratna, representing the Three Jewels — Buddha, Dharma and Saṅgha — might have gotten crossed somewhere along the way with the Wishgranting Jewel or Cintamāṇi? Not that I don’t empathize with and even share in the confusion, but one very simple thing ought to be clear, or made clear. The Wishgranting Jewel is a single jewel. The Triratna is the Three Jewels, represented by, well, three jewels. The Roerichs in the early ’30’s had a campaign to make the triple ball into a symbol to mark and protect cultural monuments in order to prevent their destruction in war. A most excellent idea that hasn’t gotten all that much attention, really, although if humanity would just grow up, learn from past mistakes, and abandon this other form of child sacrifice altogether, that would make even more sense. If it interests you, by all means look here. What, you may be asking, do the triple balls have to do with the Triratna? The three balls were standing for art, science and religion in the Roerichian system, the last I heard.

I must say, though, a Wishgranting Jewel isn’t just any old jewel. It is to be found only with extreme difficulty (remember that long and rambling sea captains’ blog?), and once found must be treated in very special ways. Otherwise it isn’t going to grant much of anything. It has to be ritually bathed, attached to the tip of a Victory Banner (Gyeltsen) and honored with incense and offerings. Then a solemn aspiration prayer (monlam) has to be made. Most or all of these elements are to be found wherever and whenever the Cintamāṇi appears, which is, to say the least, in very few places and seldom. For a typical story, look here, at p. 34 and following. As long as you have this entire scenario straight in your mind, I will allow you go to on and say that either one or all three of the Three Jewels are (metaphorically speaking!) a Wishfulfilling Gem. No problem. Just p-l-e-a-s-e don’t rush into it too quickly.

•  •  •

For more visual and verbal information about the three ball motif than you are likely to be willing or able to process, have the patience to download this PDF. I believe the author is Julie (Julianna) Lees, the owner of this presently-linked site full of really great photo albums (enter at your peril, since exiting may not be so easy once you get started admiring what you will find there).  And no... no, I know what you're thinking, but I don’t know this person either.

yid bzhin nor bu'i gter thob pas //

rmongs pa'i dbul ba sel bar byed // gsungs so // • //

When you've found your treasure of a Wishgranting Jewel,

make use of it to get rid of the poverty of confusion.

Padampa's Vajraḍākinīgīti 

(Dpal rdo rje mkha' 'gro ma'i mgur).  

Dergé Tanjur - Tôh. no. 2441.

If All the Land Were Paper...

Nicholas Roerich's Книга мудрости — Book of Wisdom

...and all the ocean ink.

I was amazed to discover for myself recently some older works of literature that weigh in on an interesting turn of phrase — an extended metaphor — used in the 12th century by the Tibetan Kagyü teacher Phagmodrupa. I translated it and published it once or twice some years ago.  It goes like this, following my old translation:

“The learned scholars cut away the veils [of words] with words and establish the objects of knowing...
Make forests into pens, oceans into ink, land into paper, and still there would be no
end to their writing. Yogins do not establish external objectivities;
they establish the mind. The mind established, its objects establish themselves.”

The search got underway in earnest when I read the following passage (put in lines of blank verse by myself) from Howard Schwartz's book Tree of Souls. The quote is quoted from a work called Akdamut Piyyut by Rabbi Meir ben Yitzhak Nehorai, composed in Worms, Germany in ca. 1100:

“If all the heavens were parchment,

if all the trees were pens,

if all the seas were ink, and

if every creature were a scribe,

they would not suffice to expound

the greatness of God.”

Or here is a rhyming and perhaps therefore more poetic version I found in a PDF on the internet (the original is in Aramaic). The English is said to be, in part at least, by Frederick M. Lehman*:

“Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above,

Would drain the ocean dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky.”

(*Linn, p. 960, and Köhler before him, attribute the identical verses to Isaac Watts [1674-1748], an inveterate rhymester, and very probably the most famous English-language Protestant Christian hymn writer of all time. I don’t have the wherewithal to solve this authorship problem at the moment. For all I know the story that Lehman copied it, or most of it, from a copy made from the wall of a mental institution after the death of the inmate who wrote it could be true.  Look here — a sectarian Christian message is to be expected — and go on wondering.  Or look on p. 57 of this PDF of an old 1876 book about hymn history, where it says that the lines, all eight of them, were by a “partially insane” person “at Cirencester, in 1779.”  Nothing about any writing on the wall here.)

It’s possible the saying goes back quite far in Jewish tradition (more on Islamic tradition in a moment), even as far back as the 1st century CE, with a quote I’ve taken from a book by Jacob Neusner, A Life of Yohanan Ben Zakkai (p. 46):

“If all the heavens were parchment, and all the trees pens,

and all the oceans ink, they would not suffice to write down

the wisdom which I have learned from my masters,

and I took away from them no more

than a fly takes from the sea when it bathes.”

So, too, says Neusner, his student Eliezer ben Hyrcanus said:

“If all the seas were ink, and all the reeds pens,

and all men scribes, they could not write down

all the Scripture and Mishnah I studied,

nor what I learned from the sages in the academy.

Yet I carried away from my teachers no more than does

a man who dips his finger in the sea,

and I gave away to my disciples no more than

a paintbrush takes from the tube.”

Neusner gives as one of the sources an article by Irving Linn very appropriately entitled, “If all the sky were parchment.” Linn consciously followed, and paid homage to, the earlier research of Reinhold Köhler, “Und wenn der Himmel wär Papier” Both of these works have been graciously made available on the internet.

The same complex imagery is used in al-Qur'an. Here below you can see it inscribed in Arabic on a stone inkpot. The words are from the Chapter of the Cave, verse 109:

10th Century Iran, from the Nasser D. Khalili Collection

“If the ocean were ink
(wherewith to write out)
The words of my Lord,
Sooner would the ocean be
Exhausted than would the words
Of my Lord, even if we
Added another ocean
Like it, for its aid.”

By now you’re probably convinced that the 12th-century Phagmodrupa must have heard it from Arab or Jewish immigrants or merchants in Central Asia, somewhere on the opposite banks of the Sambatyon. I rather somewhat doubt it, to tell the unvarnished truth.

Linn says that the earliest appearance in Hebrew was in the first half-century of the first millennium CE in the sayings of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai, founder of the academy at Jabneh. Things become a little murkier when you see Linn go on to say (on p. 954) that the Rabbi “introduces the mention of pens, and that these pens are made from trees,” a feature, he says, not found in the Indian examples...  Uh, oh! Then where do those pens come from? How, then, did they get to Tibet?

What Indian examples? you are probably thinking.

Linn — and Köhler (due to information supplied to him by Theodor Benfey) before him — found old Indian sources in stories about Krishna, in the Atthāna Jātaka (Jātaka of the Impossibilities), and in the Vāsavadattā by Subandhu. In the Krishna legend, the writing material is the earth, but in Subandhu’s poetic work, it’s the sky. And it’s true, at least in the versions I’ve seen so far, that the Indian sources don’t seem to do anything about the pens being made from trees, as we find in Jewish sources, in one of the two Quranic sources (chapter 31, verse 27) and in Phagmodrupa. Both Linn and Köhler seem to think that the image is of Indian origins, brought to Europe by the wandering Jews who, due to their wanderings, are the most likely intermediaries. At the moment, it’s my own mind that’s doing the wandering.

Anyway, it isn’t my job to solve all your puzzles for you, so if you’d kindly go off and try to solve this “Who dunnit first” mystery, I’ll be happy to listen to every theory you may care to come up with. Meanwhile, if you need me, I’ll be off at work on an upcoming blog about the Aristotelean categories, another clearly apparent case of still-underdemonstrated interdependence between far-flung corners of Eurasia. I hope you’ll be glad to hear that. I have my doubts.

- - -

Reinhold Köhler, “Und wenn der Himmel wär Papier,” contained in:  Kleinere Schriften (Berlin 1900), vol. 3, pp. 293-318. This was reprinted from Orient und Occident, vol. 2 (1863), pp. 546-559.

Irving Linn, “If All the Sky were Parchment,” Publication of the Modern Language Association (PMLA), vol. 52, no. 4 (Dec. 1938), pp. 951-970. 

D. Martin, “A Twelfth-Century Tibetan Classic of Mahāmudrā, The Path of Ultimate Profundity: The Great Seal Instructions of Zhang,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, vol. 15, no. 2 (1992), pp. 243-319, at p. 249, where the quote is found. The Tibetan text of it is in 'Jig-rten-mgon-po, Works, vol. 4, p. 404 (the earlier reference to p. 408 was mistaken).  

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Quiz:  Which Eurasian religions have been involved in the telling of this story?  Let's see... Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism...  Did I forget any?

- - -

Here's how the Tibetan reads, first in Wylie transliteration, and secondly, if all goes well, in unicode Tibetan script:


de yang mkhas pa paṇḍi ta rnams tshig gis bdar sha bcad nas //
shes pa'i yul 'di rnams gtan la 'bebs pa yin te // ... ...


rtsi shing nags tshal la smyug gu byas //
rgya mtsho chen po snag tshar byas //
sa chen po la shog bur byas shing bris kyang mi zad pa yin gsung //
rnal 'byor pa ku sa li ni //
phyi rol gyi yul gtan la mi 'bebs te //
yul sna tshogs rnams kyang rang gi sems kyi rnam 'phrul yin //
sems gtan la 'bebs pa yin //
sems gtan la phebs na yul gtan la rang phebs su 'ong ste /

དེ་ཡང་མཁས་པ་པཎྜི་ཏ་རྣམས་ཚིག་གིས་བདར་ཤ་བཅད་ནས།། 

ཤེས་པའི་ཡུལ་འདི་རྣམས་གཏན་ལ་འབེབས་པ་ཡིན་ཏེ།།  ... ...

རྩི་ཤིང་ནགས་ཚལ་ལ་སྨྱུག་གུ་བྱས།། རྒྱ་མཚོ་ཆེན་པོ་སྣག་ཚར་བྱས།། 

ས་ཆེན་པོ་ལ་ཤོག་བུར་བྱས་ཤིང་བྲིས་ཀྱང་མི་ཟད་པ་ཡིན་གསུང་།། 

རྣལ་འབྱོར་པ་ཀུ་ས་ལི་ནི།། 

ཕྱི་རོལ་གྱི་ཡུལ་གཏན་ལ་མི་འབེབས་ཏེ།། 

ཡུལ་སྣ་ཚོགས་རྣམས་ཀྱང་རང་གི་སེམས་ཀྱི་རྣམ་འཕྲུལ་ཡིན།། 

སེམས་གཏན་ལ་འབེབས་པ་ཡིན།། 

སེམས་གཏན་ལ་ཕེབས་ན་ཡུལ་གཏན་ལ་རང་ཕེབས་སུ་འོང་སྟེ།

- - -

I had a huge jolt of déjà vu the first time I set eyes on this painting by Nicholas Roerich (a friend sent it to me as a postcard), since I had already seen something very much like it in a dream of my earliest childhood. Only the giant book of my dream was more like floating in space than located anywhere. And the point of it seemed to be that it was written in an alphabet that I didn’t understand, or even recognize... at least not yet. Roerich, with his wife Helena, was co-founder in 1920 of something called Agni Yoga.

Nicholas Roerich's, Book of Doves

On the Book of the Doves, look at this video 
featuring Armenologist James Russell

"A great book fell from heaven..."

“It is He Who has sent down on you this (glorious) Book.”

— al-Qur'an, book 3, verse 7. 

KEEP reading in THE COMMENTS!

New Old Histories

Two ragdung players at Tharlam Monastery, Bodhanath 2011; it is said the ragdung was invented for the ceremonial welcoming of Jowo Jé Atiśa into Tibet in 1042 CE - the name rag-dung means brass conch.

I doubt anyone remembers, but I once seriously blogged about an old history that all of a sudden became available some years ago. That was the Dge-ye history,  and the Dge-ye history is in fact one of those numbered among the hundreds of historical and biographical works that we will be seeing in facsimile editions and computer-font paperback reprints over the next year or two from the editorial house of Dpal-brtsegs in Lhasa. All these books, I believe, come from the Drepung Monastery libraries,* that until a few years ago were completely closed off from everyone, it seemed. But then a huge 2-volume catalog was published (Drepung Catalog), and since then some select titles from this ocean of texts have been getting reprinted in one form or another.

(* I should clarify that in the introduction to the small paperback Table of Contents that accompanies the History Set, you find a statement that 50% are from the libraries of Drepung, 30% from other Tibetan monasteries, 10% from private individuals, and a further 10% from foreign libraries.)

The History Set (I’ll just call it “HS” - bibliographical information below) I’m talking about is published in traditional pecha format, but on nice smooth white paper, and thankfully not the brown grocery bag quality paper so much used in Tibet in recent years (sorry to complain about it, but the lack of contrast is really very hard on your eyes when you try reading it for long periods).

I may tell you about more of the important new-old histories another time, but for the moment I will limit myself to the content of volume 19. Perhaps the most exciting new old history, in my book, would be the Kālacakra history by Chag Lo “the Third.”  

This history appeared in the bibliography Tibetan Histories, published by Serindia (London 1997, now out of print, apparently), like this:

-133-

late 1400’s

Chag Lo Rin-chen-chos-rgyal, Dus-’khor Chos-’byung Dpag-bsam Snye-ma.  A history of Kâlacakra Tantra. Ref.: MHTL, no. 12258.  Mdo-smad Chos-’byung:  “Chag Lo Gsum-pa Rin-chen-chos-rgyal-gyi Dus-’khor Chos-’byung.” In Mkhas-pa’i Dga’-ston (Lokesh Chandra’s edition, part 3, p. 842), we read:  “Chag Lo Gsum-pa’i Dus-’khor Chos-’byung” (compare Helmut Hoffmann, “Kâlacakra Studies I: Addenda et Corrigenda,” Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 15 [1971], pp. 298-301). This refers to a history of Kâlacakra by “a/the third Chag Lo.”  Evidently we are to understand by this that he should not be confused with, and probably dates from a later time than, the two famous Chag Translators: Chag Lo Dgra-bcom (1153-1216) and Chag Lo Chos-rje-dpal (1197-1264), the former being the uncle of the latter.  We may at least surmise from all of this that our history has to date from somewhere between the 13th and early 16th centuries. It seems most likely that our author is the Rin-chen-chos-rgyal (b. 1447) who became abbot of Rte’u-ra in 1460 (Blue Annals, p. 1060). This Rte’u-ra Monastery had served as the headquarters for both of the famous teachers named Chag Lo (and it does make sense, then, that one of the members of the abbatial succession would be called a ‘third Chag Lo’)...  

(For even more information about this history, see the online Addenda, scrolling down to entry no. 133. But wait, now it is 2020, and I insert this note to assure you that you need to go here, not there.)

Congratulations to Dpal-brtsegs for a great job of producing these books, and thank you for making it possible to read hitherto unavailable historical texts that are bound to be found fantastically fascinating for persons of Tibeto-logical interests.

(I have a general policy not to put up links to commercial enterprises, but with book suppliers this is sometimes difficult, and anyway, in this particular case I would be neglecting to point you in the direction of some very important information, in fact two PDFs that tell you the content of the first 60 volumes of the set. Look here. And prepare yourself to be amazed at what you will find. And forgive me for violating my principles...  What?  Again?)

~ ~ ~

Drepung Catalog:  Dpal-brtsegs Bod-yig Dpe-rnying Zhib-’jug-khang, ’Bras-spungs Dgon-du Bzhugs-su Gsol-ba’i Dpe-rnying Dkar-chag, Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Beijing 2004), in 2 volumes (pagination continuous).  

HS  —  Dpal-brtsegs Bod-yig Dpe-rnying Zhib-’jug Khang, ed., Bod-kyi Lo-rgyus Rnam-thar Phyogs-bsgrigs (‘Collection of Tibetan Histories and Biographies’), Mtsho-sngon Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Xining 2011), 30 volumes published so far, with another 60 or more said to be forthcoming.  The HS of the abbreviation just stands for “history set.”

 § § §

Vol. 19 (dza):

1 - Chag Lo Rin-chen-chos-rgyal, Dus-’khor Chos-’byung Dpag-bsam Snye-ma.  HS, vol. 19 (dza), pp. 1-458. Notice how, strangely enough, at fol. 106 (meaning page 212) the xylographic printing gives way to manuscript cursive (on line 4) and the text continues on the next folio marked 123 (this and all remaining pages are in cursive). I made a chapter outline (found below), which ought to give a general idea about what is to be found in this history. The colophon doesn’t mention a date of composition, although it does give a problematic date for the carving of the woodblocks. I'm quite sure that the composition must date to somewhere in the vicinity of 1500 CE, since the author’s dates are usually given at 1447 CE, and the colophon mentions a behester (bskul-pa-po) by the name of Skal-bzang-chos-kyi-rgya-mtsho'i-sde. The latter is well known as author in 1494 of a biography of the Buddha that was behested by whom? Well, believe it or not!  None other than our history writer Chag Lo the Third.*  

(*For dating arguments, see Franz-Karl Ehrhard's article in The Birth of the Buddha, Lumbini International Research Institute, Lumbini 2010, pp. 358-360.)

2 - Dpal Dus-kyi-’khor-lo'i Spyi-bshad Mkhas-pa’i Mgul-rgyan [p. 459, with marginal notation ka, as if it were the first part of some set].  HS, vol. 19 (dza), pp. 459-573.  Here is the complete overly-brief colophon from p. 573:  dpal khang lo tsa'i skye ba mkhas mchog gzhan phan dbang po'i sdes mdzad pa'o. This says it was composed by a supreme scholar Gzhan-phan-dbang-po’i-sde, a rebirth of Dpal-khang Lo-tsa-ba (the well-known lexicographer). I’m hoping to learn more about this author, who probably flourished in about the same time as Chag Lo III, or possibly a little later.    

§  §  §

A chapter outline of Chag Lo III's history:

Ch. 1:  Sangs rgyas kyis gsungs pa.  How it was spoken by the Buddha.  1-41.

Ch. 2:  Sa bcu'i byang chub sems dpas bka' bsdus shing 'grel pas bkral ba.  How the Bodhisattvas of the ten Grounds gathered the Word and commentated on it with their commentaries.  41-63.

Ch. 3:  Grub chen rnams kyis thugs nyams su bzhes shing paṇ chen rnams kyis 'bel gtam gyis gtan la phab pa.  How the accomplished ones took the practices to heart and the panditas established the teachings with their fine compositions.  63-102.

Ch. 4:  Lo tsā bas bod skad du bsgyur ba.  How the translators translated it into Tibetan.  102-107.

Ch. 5:  No chapter title given.  The seven schools of Kālacakra transmission in Tibet.

1. Gyi-jo School.  107.

2. 'Bro School.  107.

3. Rwa School.  263.

4. Tsa-mi School.  347.

5. Paṇ-chen Śākyaśrī School.  404.

-. Chag School.  412 (?).

7. Śābara School.  427.

Pechas in Wrappings

P.S.  In case anyone missed it who shouldn’t have, another vitally important source of new old histories is this recent one:

Per K. Sørensen and Sonam Dolma, Rare Texts from Tibet: Seven Sources for the Ecclesiastic History of Medieval Tibet, Lumbini International Research Institute (Lumbini 2007).

§  §  §

Postscript:

In case you wonder why this book is supposed to be all that important. I would say there are a lot of reasons, the main one being the coverage it gives for some of the less well-known transmission lineages of the Kâlacakra. Just as a teaser for some of you real history freaks out there, I recommend having a look at page 60 (line 3) which tells us there was a king of Ta-zhig named Mer-mu-le-hab in the time of Sad-na-legs. Chag Lo then adds that this information can be known from the inscribed stone (the rdo-ring) located at the tomb of Sad-na-legs. Skeptics can have a look for themselves, but the inscribed stone at Sad-na-legs’ tomb has been silted over during the intervening centuries, and the lower lines could only be read after much digging and then only with difficulty. Hugh Richardson in his book A Corpus of Early Tibetan Inscriptions (pp. 84-91) did his best, but lines 30-46 are in large part missing, a word here and there, so few of them that Richardson didn’t even attempt a translation.  Among those scattered words we may see mention of Turks (Dru-gu) and Upper (Western) Uigurs (Stod Hor). In the clearly now-existing words, it tells us that Sad-na-legs “extended his powerful commands and his dominions to the four quarters and the eight directions.” It is usually the case that the western quarter is represented by the Persians (for whom Ta-zhig is the form used in Old Tibetan texts, with the later spelling being Stag-gzig[s]). I don’t want to pound too vigorously on this point. After all, I haven't identified who this Mer-mu-le-hab might be. What I can tell you is that it is quite possible, nay likely, that having this history at the disposal of historians might help them to fill out a missing detail or two in an early 9th century inscription that serves as one of the primary sources for early Tibetan history. Enough said... for now.*

(*Well, I seem to be having one whale of a time putting in a last word so I can get this thing posted and be done with it. But perhaps needlessly said there is more to this story. Richardson, in his original article on this particular rdo-ring (JRAS 1969, possible to locate in JSTOR), gives a passage from the Rgyal-po Bka'-thang that supplies the names of two Ta-zhig kings, La-mer-mu and Hab-gdal... Those two names have a distinct similarity to our one name! Some have suggested this La-mer-mu might be 'Amr ibn Muslim, while others think it could be al-Mahmun, a 9th-century Abbasid caliph... Well, at least the reign dates of al-Maʾmūn, 813-833, puts him right in the correct time frame to be in some kind of contact with Sad-na-legs. Hab-gdal sure looks like Hephthalites to me, won’t you agree?)

§  §  §

Source:  B.A. Litvinsky, et al., eds., History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Volume III: The Crossroads of Civilizations, A.D. 250 to 750, Motilal Banarsidass (Delhi 1999), p. 382:

“The memory of the taxes paid by the Arabs has also been preserved in the Tibetan historical tradition according to which two Ta-zig (=Arab) kings, La-mer-mu and Hab-gdal, ‘having taken kindly to Tibetan command, paid punctually without fail their gems and wealth'.  (Thomas 1935: I 273)  La-mer-mu may be an abridged form of the name ‘Amr b. Muslim, while Hab-gdal may have preserved the memory of ‘Abdallah b. al-Zubair.  The latter evidence may also illustrate the successful resistance of the Gandharan population against the Arab conquest. However, the struggle was not decided here but in the far north at Talas, where the Arabs and Türks won a decisive victory over the Chinese army in 751."

I have to say that this paragraph is a little confusing, since it would seem something was settled in 751 over matters that had to do with the reign of Sad-na-legs in the early decades of the 9th century.  Let's see what Thomas actually published in the work just cited, which is indeed a translated excerpt from the Rgyal-po Bka'-thang, chapter 7:

“In the west the Ta-zig kings there established, king La-mer-mu and Hab-gdal, having taken kindly to Tibetan command, paid punctually without fail their gems and wealth and five-loads of medicaments and acceptable provisions. Under Tibetan sway they made their state to flourish : the orders issued to themselves they heard with respect.”

I left off Thomas’ footnotes, but here's the relevant note on the names (his note 6):  “La-mer-mu and Hab-gdal. Hab-gdal represents, perhaps, the Hephthalite kingdom of the Pamir (supra, p. 150-1), though it might be = ‘Abdu 'llah. La-mer-mu presents difficulty. It can scarcely denote Hârûn al-Rashîd : can it possibly be a corruption of Mâwarâ-un-nahr, which in the form [Stag-gzig-] Mu-wer[-gyi-rgyal-po] we find elsewhere as a designation of the Musalman power ? See Klaproth, Sprache und Schrift der Uigur, p. 34.”

Here's the same passage as it occurs in that popular edition of the Bka'-thang Sde-lnga published by Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang in 1986 (1990 reprint), p. 118:

nub phyogs ta zig rgyal po bzhugs pa yang //

rgyal po la mer mu dang hab gdal gyis //

bod kyi bka' la gces par bzung nas ni //

rin cen nor dang sman gyi lnga dos dang //

kha zas gces pa dus las ma yol phul //

bod kyi mnga' 'og chab srid dam par mdzad //

rang gi bka' bstsal gang yin gus pas nyan //

 ནུབ་ཕྱོགས་ཏ་ཟིག་རྒྱལ་པོ་བཞུགས་པ་ཡང་༎

 རྒྱལ་པོ་ལ་མེར་མུ་དང་ཧབ་གདལ་གྱིས༎

 བོད་ཀྱི་བཀའ་ལ་གཅེས་པར་བཟུང་ནས་ནི༎

 རིན་ཅེན་ནོར་དང་སྨན་གྱི་ལྔ་དོས་དང་༎

 ཁ་ཟས་གཅེས་པ་དུས་ལས་མ་ཡོལ་ཕུལ༎

 བོད་ཀྱི་མངའ་འོག་ཆབ་སྲིད་དམ་པར་མཛད༎

 རང་གི་བཀའ་བསྩལ་གང་ཡིན་གུས་པས་ཉན༎

Thomas’ translation isn’t easily faulted for inaccuracy as far as I can see, and the idea that the rulers in Merv were for awhile in a tribute-bearing relationship with Lhasa in the early decades of the 9th century isn’t particularly implausible.  Is it?