Ear Sleepers and Other Peoplers of an Earlier World

One of the myths we still find among our contemporaries (I almost said moderns) is this: that everybody in the past thought the world was flat — that is, before Columbus proved to them it wasn’t. We today are categorically superior thanks to our new knowledge that it’s spherical. Say it loud! We’re modern and proud!* Somehow or another this rough and rude version of scientific history has worked its way into so many people’s brains, it’s pathetic. A few more words on that before we get to the ears... 

(*During the last half of the 20th century, and probably still earlier, historians have been proclaiming this idea, that all pre-Columbians believed the earth was flat, a myth. But it is the nature of certain types of myths that the role they play in a culture is too important to abandon them. Besides, who would ever think to ask a historian about history? Their long involved answers would just provoke perplexity or put you to sleep, right?  But if you have a few minutes to spare and you think I’m talking nonsense about early knowledge of the spherical earth, go see the Stern piece listed below. Then come back.)

I was long eager to get my hands on a copy of McCrindle’s translation of the Christian Topography by Cosmas Indicopleustes, and when at last I did I read the whole thing through in about 20 sittings. You may remember Cosmas. He’s the one who in around the mid-6th century seemed to know a few secrets about the Bos grunniens, a creature known in common parlance as the yak. He calls it the Agriobous. We mentioned this earlier on, in Yaks, a Few Useful Bits.

Cosmas assumed very passionately that Christians had (or more accurately ought to have had) the same superior view of the world he had. Clearly, for Cosmas, it’s shaped like a shoe box, only it is divided into a lower compartment where we live, and a higher compartment where we might go, since Jesus made an opening that we can squeeze through if we do the right things. The altitude of our otherwise flat earth gets higher and higher the further north we go (as you go through the climes, you climb!), and the weather (the clime-ate) gets colder. Somewhere up there in the north is a mountain that the sun and moon revolve around. That’s why sometimes you see these celestial luminaries and, well, sometimes you just don’t. 

I’m afraid my respect for Cosmas went down a few notches every time I heard him blasting the pagans once again for thinking the world is round and for stubbornly refusing to face the undeniable fact it’s a shoe box. About the only thing that saves his book, really, are some brief passages based on his own travels. This Egyptian, who says a lot of interest for Ethiopian studies, I ought to add, made it all the way to Sri Lanka. Unfortunately he didn’t feel it was interesting enough to tell us more about what he saw on his travels, so obsessed was he by his cosmological arguments.

It was only a few years ago I heard His Holiness the Dalai Lama saying to an audience made up of both Tibetans and non-Tibetans that if Vasubandhu, the author of the Abhidharma Treasury, were alive today he would have written his book differently. I’m fairly convinced He meant primarily the 3rd chapter, the one with all that cosmology wrapped around a wee bit of geography. Much of what you find in that chapter is also in Maudgalyāyana’s much older text, the Lokaprajñapti, that may date from a century or two before the Common Era.

Very recently I discovered to my consternation that I wasn’t the first to see the similarities between Vasubandhu’s and Cosmas’ world systems. This had already been the subject of quite a long discussion by none other than the missionary Desideri of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, who was in Tibet at the beginning of the 18th century. I’d like to be able to claim that I’ve read Michael Sweet’s new complete translation of Desideri’s missionary account, but the fact is, although the book is sitting up there on its shelf, I first located the passage through Googlebooks. I will read the book, I promise. But for the moment let me go right to that interesting passage to give you a few tastes of it. It’s too much for me to type, and anyway, I think you ought to go to the book itself. By that I mean the printed one.

[p. 345]

“They [the Tibetans] say that our terraqueous world is not round in the form of a globe, but level, flat, and circular, and at the center of this circle they situate an extremely high and immense mountain called Rirap Chenpo...  Around this mt. or very close to it is the principal, largest, and noblest part of the earth that they call Dzambuling, that is, Asia...

“Dzambuling... is surrounded by seven immense circular seas. In the first of these seas are four vast islands, the first located to the north of dzambuling, the second to the south, the third to the west, anmd the fourth to the east...  They give out the fallacious belief that the seven seas differ from one another in taste and color...  They say that Dzambuling is where the most virtuous human beings are born...  

[p. 346]

“They do not maintain that sun, moon and stars move and rotate in the heavens but rather around Rirap Chenpo., and that it takes a period of 24 hours for the sun to make a complete rotation around it...  

“From the cosmology as described in the Tibetan's books, one is led to the obvious conclusion that the ancient people and pagans of Hindustan, from whom the Tibetans took most of their books, had adopted in its entirety, or nearly so, the system propounded and explained by the 5th-century Alexandrian author Cosmas the Egyptian.  He was also known as Cosmas Indicopleustes, since he had traveled around almost all of India when he was a merchant...  

[p. 347] 

“According to his system the world and the surface of the earth is a quadrangle, such that its longitude from east to west is twice as great as its latitude from north to south.  This is precisely what the Tibetans assert about Dzambuling.  He also holds that the earth so shaped is completely enclosed by high walls...

“In order to explain day, night, and eclipses, Cosmas says that in the extreme north of the quadrangular earth there is a very high and massive cone-shaped mountain around which the sun, moon, and stars revolve. When the sun is on the side facing us, it is visible and day, and when it turns around to the other side of the mountain it is night...”

There are similarities between the two geographies. This is especially so if we ignore the big difference in shape:  Cosmas has a square shoebox shape that is portrayed in an illustration that goes back to an old manuscript version that was recopied, evidently (that means it’s likely this and the other illustrations, even if recopied as we have them, look a lot like the ones Cosmas put in his book):

Depicting the sun in the west and the sun in the east,
circling the northern mountain. I suppose
India would be on your far right.
The dark area would be the seas
with Persian Gulf, etc.

The Indian and Tibetan Buddhist cosmologies are in the round, at least, with most things coming in circles around other things. But if we limit ourselves to the land mass we live on being located to the south of the cosmic mountain — this being the conical mountain around which the sun and moon regularly circle (rather than around the whole spherical earth) — they are in these broad outlines very much the same.  Desideri is right about the generic similarity even if he messed up on a few other things.*  

(*Some are details, but his placing four continents in a circle arrayed around Jambu Island is mistaken; Jambu Island is the southern one among those four continents, and it’s triangular in shape, a not-so minor detail, and yet another difference, of which he is at first aware and then fails to notice:  For Buddhists the world is not square...  Well, a yellow square might be a symbol of the earth element, but that's the earth element, not the world.  The square you see in the chart just below is just Mount Meru seen from above.  We don’t live on it; we live in Jambu Island. Oh, and the cosmology of Vasubandhu is far older than the time of Cosmas, so the idea that the latter must have been copied by the former is totally untenable...)

Mt. Meru surrounded by the continents
(Jambu Island is in the south on your left)
See the “original” at HAR

Everything I’ve said so far is fairly beside the point, as it has so little to do with those Ear Sleepers. First a personal anecdote that might help bring things together (in my head, even if nobody else’s). Way back in nineteen hundred and ninety-two, I remember seeing a display in the lobby of the university library.  There were a bunch of oversized posters commemorating the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America by C.C. If you were around then, you will know that there was a lot of justifiable debate about how and in what way various people living in the U.S. would or could or ought to celebrate this occasion.

Standing in front of one of them, I let out an audible gasp. The western world was being berated for (once or now?) thinking that the other peoples in the world were a bunch of ludicrous monsters, people who sleep in their ears, ski on their feet, have eyes in their chests and all that jazz. A group of them was depicted there bigger than life. Clearly it was meaning to tell us that the western world is guilty of the grossest discrimination. Why the gasp? The ignorance took my breath away. The maker of this propaganda (oh, sorry, educational) show didn’t show the least awareness that these alien beings were imported as a group from India by the Greeks,* or that the Greeks passed them on to the medieval western world.

(*It looks like Megasthenes picked up the stories when he was in Pataliputra — that's Patna today — and they were extracted and reviewed later on by Strabo.)

India’s contributions are often neglected or belittled, to be sure, yet I’m not sure India will be all that eager to receive credit in this particular instance. Nevertheless the fact is you do find lists of these unusual peoples in the Indian epic literature, you find them in certain geographical passages in Indian Buddhist literature, and last but not least, you find them here and there in Tibetan literature, both translations and Tibetan compositions.

For a list that was transmitted to us in both Buddhist and Bon texts, look at Figure One, toward the end of the file attached below.  Near the end of Fig. 1, you will see (to translate the Tibetan of some of the ethnonyms): Noseless Flat-Faces, Huge Ears Covering Bodies, Winged Ones, Naked No Body Hair, Human Bodies Walking Hunched Over, and Eyes in Chests. The Eyes in Chests are, of course, the Blemmyes.  You noticed the Enotocoitae, I hope, although the Sciapods aren’t in evidence here for some unknown and probably unknowable reason.

The article (a rather technical one that I do not recommend to any but your most aberrantly Tibeto-logical of personalities) is one about the history of Tibetan geographic conceptions that I wrote and published a long time ago. It is now posted at Tibetological website, on its own page, here (tap on that word here to go there, or tap on the following, either way).

Tibet at the Center 
(Tibetological)

Enjoy yourself with that if you possibly can. If you need me I’ll be snuggling into my own capacious and comfortable ear. If it gets a little chilly, no need for a quilt, I’ll just pull the other one over me. Life is good.

Readings both amazing and necessary

Blo-bzang-yon-tan wrote a piece on a globe kept in Tibet.  There’s even a picture of this globe, which is supposed to have been at Labrang Monastery when Gendun Choephel was there. If you read contemporary Tibetan and your computer displays Tibetan unicode correctly, go study it at the Khabdha site and report back to us in the comments section, if you please. This essay goes quite a bit into the history of flat and globular earth theories, including, I see, the shoe box of Cosmas. I think sa'i go-la ('globe of the earth') is a 20th century expression, but go-la is a quite old borrowing from Sanskrit, where it has the same meaning. In my limited experience go-la is always applied to the sphere of the stars, and even then I don’t know if that usage in Tibetan goes further back than around 1700. As far as pre-Columbian Tibetan science is concerned, I think Stag-tshang Lo-tsâ-ba (1405-1477 or 1488) must have thought of the earth as globe-shaped, otherwise his idea about lunar phases being caused by the shadow of the earth wouldn’t make much sense...  Would it?

Cosmas Indicopleuthes, The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk, J.W. McCrindle, tr., Hakluyt Society (London 1897), written in circa 550 CE. If you think you could actually read it on the screen, go here. It’s free.

Carol Delaney, “Columbus’s Ultimate Goal: Jerusalem,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 48, no. 2 (April 2006), pp. 260-292. One of the chief aims of C.C.’s mission was to get enough gold to finance retaking the Holy Land from the Saracens. This is not exactly the story about him that is useful for inspiring young aspiring scientists to daydream about a future life as discoverer. See also Hamdani’s piece listed below.

J. Duncan M. Derrett, “A Blemmya in India,” Numen, vol. 49 (2002), pp. 460-474.

Ippolito Desideri, Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri, S.J., translated by Michael J. Sweet and edited by Leonard Zwilling, Wisdom (Boston 2010). Pages 346-348 are the most relevant for today. Here is a story about the book and its author, translator and editor.

Gendun Choephel (Dge-'dun-chos-'phel) wrote what has become for one sector of Tibetans a significant landmark on their path to the glories and wonders of modernization (and no doubt for some an excuse for rejecting everything of worth in their cultural past, that whole modernist polemic... you either buy the whole modern package or, well, you just don’t... we are familiar with the drill). To connect directly to the page of the Tibet Mirror in question, dated 1938, tap here. Click once on the newspaper page and it will be big enough to actually read it. I think it’s worth seeing even if you don’t want to read the Tibetan.

Abbas Hamdani, “Columbus and the Recovery of Jerusalem,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 99, no. 1 (January 1979), pp. 39‑48, at p. 43.

My note: Columbus took with him on his first voyage a Jewish convert to Christianity by the name Luis de Torres to act as an Arabic interpreter. Upon arrival in Cuba, which Columbus thought was China, he sent Luis into the interior thinking he would locate the court of the Mongol Khan and be able to communicate with him. Columbus' explorations grew out of a medieval Christian crusading mentality, and this fact or facet of his character is now generally ignored in favor of the (secular) scientific discovery ideal that we would like to inculcate in our children.

Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, tr. Stephan A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach and Oliver Berghof, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge 2010).  Isidore (ca. 560-636 CE) believed the earth was a wheel-shaped disk, which makes him more like a Buddhist than Cosmas was. For his cosmology, see XIV.ii, and for the Panotians of Scythia, “who have such huge ears that they cover all the body,” see XI.iii.19.

Matthew T. Kapstein, “Just Where on Jambudvîpa Are We? New Geographical Knowledge and Old Cosmological Schemes in Eighteenth-Century Tibet,” contained in: Sheldon Pollock, ed., Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500-1800, Duke University Press (Durham 2011), pp. 336-364.

Bacil F. Kirtley, “The Ear-Sleepers: Some Permutations of a Traveler’s Tale,” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 76, no. 399 (April 1963), pp. 119-130. The story is surprisingly widespread all the way to the southern tip of South America, but this author still thinks it most likely that the place it was first recorded, India, must have been the place from which it spread. There are dissenting voices who hold that New World peoples had ideas about their other peoples that were in fact similar, but not borrowed. Then there are those like Mason who see this as evidence of the European monologue, Europeans projecting their own accustomed models of alterity on to the subjectivities of other peoples in the absence of any real or significant communication with them...

Berthold Laufer, “Columbus and Cathay, and the Meaning of America to the Orientalist,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 51, no. 2  (June 1931), pp. 87-103.

From p. 96:  “Pigafetta who accompanied Magalhaens on the first voyage round the world records a story told him by an old pilot from Maluco: The inhabitants of an island named Aruchete are not more than a cubit high, and have ears as long as their bodies, so that when they lie down one ear serves them for a mattress, and with the other they cover themselves. This is also an old Indo-Hellenistic creation going back to the days of the Mahâbhârata (Karnapravarana, Lambakarna, etc.) and reflected in the Enotocoitai of Ctesias and Megasthenes. As early as the first century B. C. the Long-ears (Tan-erh) also appear in Chinese accounts; their ears are so long that they have to pick them up and carry them over their arms.”

Peter Mason, “Seduction from Afar: Europe’s Inner Indians,” Anthropos, vol. 82 (1987), pp. 581-601.

Craig J. Reynolds, “Buddhist Cosmography in Thai History, with Special Reference to Nineteenth-Century Culture Change,” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 35, no. 2 (February 1976), pp. 203-220.

[p. 219]  “The task of rethinking Buddhist cosmography in Siam was accomplished smoothly compared with a similar process underway in Japan, where Buddhists were sometimes hostile to the propositions of Western science. For Siamese Buddhists, the centering of the universe around Mt. Meru never assumed the importance it did for Japanese Buddhists, some of whom defended Buddhist cosmography as late as i88o, fearing that Christianity would undermine Buddhist teaching.”

David P. Stern, “The Round Earth and Christopher Columbus.”  Go there here. It seems the author works* for the Goddard Space Flight Center, and NASA. Here is his homepage, if you are an avid Flat Earther and would like to argue with him directly. (*Wait, now I see he’s retired.)

Strabo's Geography, Book XV, may be read here.

Vesna Wallace, “Cosmology, Astronomy and Astrology: A Bibliography.” If you’d like to look into these subjects in Buddhist sources and need some pointers, this is a much recommended bibliographical essay by a professor at Oxford.  Go here. Have a look here while you’re at it.

Rudolph Wittkower, Allegory and the Migration of Symbols, Thames and Hudson (New York 1977).  A classic study in the field of art history, the relevant chapters are 3, “Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters,” and 4, “Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East.”

T.V. Wylie, “Was Christopher Columbus from Shambhala?”  Bulletin of the Institute of China Border Area Studies (Taipei), vol. 1 (July 1970), pp. 24‑34. The answer, I suppose, is “Yes.”

Zhang Zhishan, “Columbus and China,” Monumenta Serica, vol. 41 (1993), pp. 177-187.  First appearance of the name of Columbus in a Chinese-language work (one composed by Giulio Aleni) is dated to 1623, where his name in Chinese sounds like Gelong. Later sources call him Kelun, Kelunbo, and in more recent times Gelunbo.  

A Map of 1660, showing the world
according to Tycho Brahe,
Harmonia Microcosmica

- ~ -

"Columbus ('Kho-lom-'bog) he was of the school of thought of those who considered the realm of the world to be rounded or globular. He is the one who was the first to arrive from Yo-rob to the land of A-ri in the year 1492. He put together four rationales for the world being round, and these were checked and tested by the wise. Twelve years after this a man named A-mi-ri-kha made a map of A-ri and named the country after himself so that even now it's called the land of A-mir-kha. A-mer-kha became independent in 1776, and from then until the present year 1980, 204 years have passed. A bell that was rung on the day she got her independence (rang-btsan) is to be seen even today on display in Phi-lâ-tal-phi-ya."

'kho lom 'bog de ni 'jig rten gyi khams zlum po'am ril ril yin pa'i srol byed yin / de nyid yo rob nas 1492 lor a ri'i sar thog mar sleb mkhan yang red / de nyid 'jig rten khams zlum po yin pa'i rigs pa bzhi bkod 'dug / mkhas rnams brtags dpyad gnang / de las lo 12  'jug a mi ri kha / zer ba'i mi gcig gis a ri'i sa khra bzo bzung lung par rang gi ming btags pas / da lta'i bar a mir kha'i yul lung zhes zer / a mer kha'i lung pa 1776 rang btsan byung nas da lta 1980 bar lo 204 song / rang btsan thob pa'i nyin dung ba'i dril bu phi lā tal phi ya'i 'grems ston khang la da lta'ang yod.  

— Sgo-mang Dge-bshes Ngag-dbang-nyi-ma (1907-1990), Works, vol. 6, pp. 573‑574.  

- ~ -

Note:  If any of this inspires or provokes discussion, please do leave a comment. I'm all ears. Really. Even if it’s only to say you despise me for what I’ve written, it will be so much better than all those spam postings I’ve been getting lately. They always have compliments about the blog, but with back-links to web pages selling Italian leather handbags, trips to Tibet and such. I delete them, of course, but being targeted by them makes me a little sad and wastes my time.

Oh, another thing. If the Sciapods are missing from the Tibetan lists there could be a reason for that, and all this time I’ve been laboring under a false etymology for their name. Isidore (XI.iii.23) says, “The race of Sciopodes are said to live in Ethiopia; they have only one leg, and are wonderfully speedy. The Greeks call them skiopodes (shade-footed ones) because when it is hot they lie on their backs on the ground and are shaded by the great size of their feet.” It seems there was some mental juggling and fumbling going on between the people of the antipodes (with feet facing the opposite direction as ours... Isidore found the idea highly unlikely - IX.ii.133), and people who had feet with the toes facing backward, and the shade footed ones who lived in a place so hot we can’t go there and find out more about it. In maps that came after Isidore, lands of people with wide feet were starting to get their own continent in the unknown zone south of sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps the Asians* weren’t yet familiar with this place either. And like (some of) you, I was imagining how they might have been gliding over the snowy hills in their bare feet.

(*“Asia is named after a certain woman who, among the ancients, had an empire in the east. It lies in a third sector of the globe, bounded in the east by the rising sun, in the south by the Ocean, in the west by the Mediterranean, in the north by Lake Moeotis [i.e., the Sea of Azov] and the river Tanais [i.e. the Don]. It has many provinces and regions, whose names and locations I will briefly explain, beginning with Paradise.”  XIV.iii.1.  What a nice place to begin.)

1,200-year-old Perfection of Wisdom Uncovered in Drepung

Half of a title page, manuscript of the 100,000 Verse Perfection of Wisdom,
dated ca. 1400, Schøyen Collection, ms. 2371

A few years ago, or well, to speak truly even today, if I were to say in front of a group of Tibetanists that manuscripts were preserved in Central Tibetan monasteries that are older than the Dunhuang documents (well, older than the bulk of them), they would have rolled their eyes, glanced at me askance, then looked away as if waiting to hear what the next joke might be. Today the joke is on them.

One day I hope I may be forgiven for missing the original paper presented at Königswinter on the Rhine back in 2006, seeing the number of parallel sessions that so ineluctably complicate the life of the 21st-century Tibetologist. As part of Panel 22, entitled “Old Treasuries, New Discoveries: Sharing Materials Which Have Recently Come to Light,” held on Tuesday, August 29th, at 16:30 according to the program, was the paper in question, the one I didn’t make it to hear, given by Kawa Sherab Sangpo of Lhasa, with a title that could be translated ‘Introduction to the Lambum that was the High Aspiration of Emperor Tridesongtsen.’*

(*Tridesongtsen (Khri-lde-srong-btsan), was the regnal name (the name more of the reign than of the personal person) of the Emperor better known as Senaleg (Sad-na-legs). His reign is usually made to span the years between 799 and 815 CE.  High aspiration generally means a holy object that was made under the instigation and patronage of some respected person although there are examples of images inscribed with the name of a western Tibetan king Nāgarāja that were clearly modelled in Kashmir, and only subsequently taken, as the inscriptions tell us, as the high aspiration of that king.)

I want to emphasize that all the credit for making known the discovery must go to the just-named Kawa Sherab Sangpo, a person I have seen but never spoken to. I am not even the first person to make known his discovery on the English-language blogo-sphere. Credit for that must go to Sam at Early Tibet blog (look here). Let me quote Sam’s blog:

“Manuscripts of the Perfection of Wisdom sutras produced here [in Dunhuang] have been discovered recently in monastic libraries Central Tibet. How do we know they came from Dunhuang? Because they are signed by the same scribes, Chinese scribes, seen in the colophons of the manuscripts found in Dunhuang itself.”

Today my only job (and I think it is job enough) is to report on some, not nearly all, of the information supplied in the Tibetan-language report by Kawa Sherab Sangpo (kindly sent to me by Hildegard Diemberger of Cambridge).  Afterward, I’d like to append a section that was written by myself over 20 years ago as part of my doctoral dissertation. I copy this without any more than cosmetic changes because it can demonstrate to a skeptical world that Lambums* have a history in Tibetan history, that it isn’t something someone dreamed up just yesterday.**

(*Bla-’bum is just a short way of calling imperial period — and largely done under imperial  patronage — manuscripts of the 100,000-Verse Perfection of Wisdom Sûtra. At least for now we can go with this definition rather that fiddle with the different meanings and associations of the syllable bla, although here it probably just means high or sublime. **And by the way, it does give an example of blood writing.)

Kawa first tells a little history of the translations of the 100,000 (or the Mother, the Yum, as Tibetans, and we, too, will call it for short).  He says there were six distinct translations into Tibetan, starting with the Memorized Translation done by Lang Khampa Gocha (Rlangs Khams-pa-go-cha). I will not repeat this part, since it largely corresponds to the information you will find in the appendix.  I want to go directly to the discovery itself.

The author had for some recent years been traveling about in Central Tibet in search of rare manuscripts. He spent the period from July 2002 through the end of 2004 making lists of texts kept at Drepung Monastery's rich libraries, which resulted in a huge published 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.)

It was sometime in June 2003 when he was able to find a volume of the Lambum made by the Dharma King Senaleg.  It was marked with the keyletter GA, meaning it was the third volume of the set. In October of that year the KHA volume, the second volume of the set, was also found. In truth, the collection of books where they were found had often been explored in recent years by various researchers, but since these volumes were undecorated and they were not written in letters of silver and gold, they had been overlooked.

The first and main thing that marks these as belonging to a Lambum is an inscription added to the top of the first leaf.  There are some small problems in reading it, so in lieu of a proper study I will just give the gist of what it says.  It begins: “These four sacred volumes, the high aspiration of the glorious divine Emperor Khri-lde-srong-btsan (Senaleg)...”  It continues by saying that these are very great in their blessings, having emerged unburnt from the ashes of the fire that burned Karchung Temple.  

Let me insert here the information that Karchung Temple is  well known as an imperial period foundation. It even had a monolith (a ‘long stone’ or rdo-ring as Tibetans call them) that was since then misplaced, inscribed with an edict of Senaleg urging the preservation of Buddhist shrines built by himself and by his predecessors.

(*Located quite close to Lhasa, but on the opposite side of the river Kyichu, it has been studied by Hugh Richardson in his book A Corpus of Early Tibetan Inscriptions, pp. 72-83. Already when Tucci and Richardson visited the site, there was little left of the temple except for foundations of four chortens that formed part of its complex of buildings. And of course the inscribed monolith. I wonder what became of it. Victor Chan's Tibet Handbook says on p. 489: “The doring has now disappeared, but some accounts claim that fragments are in Lhasa.”)

The next part of the words inscribed on the top leaf of the Lambum is likely to go down hard with some of my readers. I’m thinking of one of you in particular who is very likely in immanent danger of choking on his green tea. It says, “Later on it was checked against one correct example in the monastery of Lding,* and a committee of three** did the checking twice. The letter combinations they did not complete fixing. The translation is that of the Reg-gzigs, so please be careful.”***

(*It is hard to know what is meant by the Lding Monastery, although I find most likely that it means Lding-po-che Monastery in Grwa-nang, one of the valleys formed by south tributaries of the Tsangpo River not too far from Mindroling.)  (**I’m not at all sure of this translation of sum-thug, although I found it in a similar context in the colophon to a canonical work, Tohoku no. 1675, in case someone would like to check it.)  (***There are signs of fire damage on the physical manuscript itself. In fact, the front and back pages probably had to be replaced due to fire damage. The meaning of the Reg-gzigs [Reg-zig] should be clarified further on in today’s blog.) 

Our author comments on this part (at page 63 of his article), saying that the manuscript itself appears to have been in some parts fixed to accord with later spelling standards. His comment is worthy of note, “In the past we Tibetans had a tradition of fixing things with a view to making them nice and polished regardless of their value for researching the original, in accordance with the proverb, ‘If the temple caretaker is good at cleaning, gold images turn to brass’ ”.* But he quickly adds that the changes appear to have been few and minor, and assures us that the text remains overall a trustworthy reflection of its original condition. In any case, it is still marked by many of the characteristics of Old Tibetan manuscripts like those from Dunhuang.**

(*dkon gnyer byi dor mkhas na gser sku rag la gtong ba'i dpe. In fact, this proverb is very well attested in my Bible when it comes to Tibetan proverbs, the book by Christoph Cüppers and Per Sørensen, A Collection of Tibetan Proverbs and Sayings, Franz Steiner Verlag [Stuttgart 1998], p. 5, no. 104.)  (**I imagine, or at least I hope, that the editorial process did not include scratching or gouging out text and writing in corrections [as did happen in the age before Tipex], but was limited to patching and replacing the parts of the text missing due to fire damage.  I can’t speak for you, but I find fascinating that one of the spellings used in this manuscript that mark it as very likely Old Tibetan is the spelling nam-ka in place of the now ubiquitous spelling nam-mkha' meaning sky. You can go to the OTDO and search in vain (via the search box, of course) in the Old Tibetan texts for nam-mkha', but you will find plenty of examples of nam-ka and nam-kha. In this it resembles the word for light rays, 'od-zer, which is always spelled 'od-gzer in O.T. See the very recent discussion about this at Dorji's blog Philologia Tibetica, dated June 10, 2012.)

As Sam mentioned in the quote supplied above, there are quite a few places where the names of the scribes and editorial correctors are given. In one place is found “Scribed by Khong G.yu-legs. Edited by Dam-tsong. Further edited by Sgron-ma. Tertiary editing by Seng-ge-sde.” Although some of these are very likely Tibetan, some other names elsewhere look very much like Chinese, like Ji-kyin-sum and Je'u-hing-cin. I haven’t had the wherewithal to check if any of these scribe names are also used in Dunhuang manuscripts, but since Sam says it, it must be so.*

(*There is no shortage of manuscripts of the Tibetan-language Mother that were found in Dunhuang, and now kept in London and Paris. The rarely seen catalogue of Lalou would be a great place to find them, since she indexed scribe names. Well, the Poussin catalogue of the Stein Collection has listings of them, too. Perhaps I will look into this some more and get back with you.)

Our author concludes that what we have here is a particular Lambum inscribed during the early-9th-century reign of Senaleg known as the Sbug-’bum, containing within it a version of the Mother translated in the late 8th century. He adduces further reasons for believing in its genuineness, including a literary reference to a fire-damaged Mother manuscript from Karchung.**

(*I’m not sure what Sbug-’bum means, are you? Sbug might mean a tunnel, a pipe or a pouch.)  (**This text was itself found in Drepung; I could succeed in locating its title listing in the Drepung catalog, at page 1648, in case anyone would like to check it.  Kawa gives the title as Shes-rab-kyi Pha-rol-tu Phyin-pa Stong-phrag-brgya-pa-yi Chad-’jug Nyer-mkho Sgron-me, and dates it to the 13th century.  I don’t recognize the author with his name given in Sanskritic or Tibskrit form as “Bikṣhu Maṃgā-la Purṇe,” although I think we may safely translate it back into Tibetan as Dge-slong Bkra-shis-phun-tshogs. This last, by the way, is an example of what I would call a re-Tibetanization of a Sanskritization. You can call it what you want.)

So even while I will never regard myself as an expert in this area, I do hope someone will take inspiration to look closely at the available evidence, as well as evidence that is bound to emerge in the future (the article assures us chances are high that the two missing volumes of the set will eventually show up.) Kawa Sherab Sangpo is to be congratulated for making his discovery known, and also for supplying very impressive evidence-based arguments that are bound to serve as  solid basis for discussion in the future, or at least would be if they were only better known. I’ve done my part, for now. Still I do strongly suggest that future Lambum research take advantage of the astounding wealth of text-critical information found in the 1424 CE work of Rongtön.*  Meanwhile we may say that, as far as books are concerned, Dunhuang’s monopoly on old is a thing of the past.**  And this holds true even if the Lambum of Senaleg was scribed in Dunhuang. The battlefields of history are strewn with such small ironies.

(*I used a separate pecha publication of it for my dissertation, but I don’t seem to have any kind of copy at hand at the moment. Meanwhile, there has been a new publication of Rong-ston’s works that makes it more widely available. Here are the details for the pecha:  Rong-ston Shes-bya-kun-rig (1367-1449), Shes-rab-kyi Pha-rol-tu Phyin-pa Stong-phrag-brgya-pa'i 'Grel-pa, Luding Labrang [Manduwala 1985].)  (**A final footnote and I’ll try to keep it short and sweet. The initial Tibetan conquest of Dunhuang has been dated to 781 (Fujieda) or 787 (Demiéville) or 788 CE (Imaeda), although recently Horlemann has argued for pushing the date back to somewhere between  755 and 777. The occupation ended in 848. Scribing of Tibetan books continued after that date, and in fact lately there seems to be an emerging consensus that most of the Tibetan material of Dunhuang dates to the post-occupation period.)

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The essential sources:

Kawa Sherab Sangpo (Ska-ba Shes-rab-bzang-po), ed. in chief, Bod-khul-gyi Chos-sde Grags-can Khag-gi Dpe-rnying Dkar-chag, Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Beijing 2010). Look at p. 77 for more on Lambum discoveries.

Kawa Sherab Sangpo (Ska-ba Shes-rab-bzang-po), Btsan-po Khri-srong-lde-btsan-gyi [i.e., Khri-lde-srong-btsan-gyi] Thugs-dam Bla-'bum Skor Ngo-sprod Zhu-ba, Krung-go'i Bod Rig-pa, 2nd issue for the year 2009, pp. 55-61. I found this reference at the Bya-ra database, and haven’t seen the precise publication in person, although I’m sure it’s essentially identical to, or the same as, the next-listed title.

Kawa Sherab Sangpo (Ska-ba Shes-rab-bzang-po), Btsan-po Khri-lde-srong-btsan-gyi Thugs-dam Bla-'bum Skor Ngo-sprod Zhu-ba, contained in: Hildegard Diemberger and Karma Phuntsho, eds., Ancient Treasures, New Discoveries, Beiträge zur Zentralasienforschung, series vol. 19, International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Halle 2009), pp. 55-72.

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Appendix

Source: D. Martin, The Emergence of Bon and the Tibetan Polemical Tradition, dissertation, Indiana University (Bloomington 1991), pp. 87-93:

One of the greatest Sa‑skya‑pa intellectuals, Rong‑ston Shes‑bya‑kun‑rig (1367-1449), a Bonpo until age eighteen and reputed author of an anti-Chos polemic discussed elsewhere in these pages, composed, in 1424, a commentary on the Hundred Thousand Prajñāpāramitā entitled, Shes‑rab‑kyi Pha‑rol‑tu Phyin‑pa Stong‑phrag Brgya‑pa'i 'Grel‑pa. It is prefaced by a history of the introduction of the 'Bum (Tibetans know the Hundred Thousand also as the Yum, or 'Mother') into Tibet along with its subsequent translations and revisions. The reading involves some difficulties which could not always be resolved with much certainty, but I believe the content, due to its relevance for present arguments, warrants a provisional translation attempt.[i] Rong‑ston briefly outlines the origins of the Sūtra:

The most extensive version in one hundred million verses exists in the gandharva realm. The extensive version in ten million verses exists in the land of Indra. The extensive version in one hundred thousand verses was brought from the nāga realm of Nāgārjuna.

As for its transmission to Tibet, Emperor Khri‑srong‑lde‑brtsan[ii] wanted to bring the sūtra to Tibet, so he gave much gold to Khams‑pa Go‑cha[iii] and sent him to India for that purpose. This was called the Memorized Translation (Thugs 'Gyur) because he [Khams‑pa Go‑cha] memorized the [Indian] text [rather than bringing the text itself] and brought it out in Tibetan. As a memorial (dge‑ba) to the queen, [the king had the translation] written with [his] own blood using goatsmilk as binder. This [text] was called the Red Abridgement[iv] in four parts. Later it was taken to Lhasa and became worn [old?]. It is said to be [contained] in the brick chorten near 'Phrul‑snang temple. Note: There are many recensions of this now in Central Tibet.

Still, the Emperor did not have confidence in [the authenticity of] the Memorized Translation, so he commanded Nyang Iṇḍa‑a‑ro and Sbas Manydzu‑shri to bring [an Indian text] from India. They brought back an Indian text and translated it. [This translation] was called the Authorized Hundred Thousand (Bca' 'Bum). They used indigo goatsmilk binder and this manuscript was called the Blue Abridgement (Ra Gzigs Sngon‑po).[v] (A four-part manuscript, it is said to be [preserved] at Samye.) This [manuscript book] was not held together with a sash, but fastened with metal pegs. Hence it was called Having Iron Pegs.[vi]

Even this was not [yet] an extensive translation. So later prince Mu‑tig‑btsan‑po made a resolution [to have one made]. Then Pa‑gor Bai‑ro‑tsa‑na [Vairocana], who had reached the eighth Bodhisattva Level, compared the Indian text with the Having Iron Pegs and did an extensive revision. After he had, for the most part, established the text, he produced a six part manuscript [translation] more extensive than the previous ones. From the name of the binding boards it was called 'Snowy (Kha‑ba‑can) for the Royal Resolution.[vii] This is the Middle [length] High Translation (Bla 'Gyur 'Bring‑po). To the side of the place where it was kept there was a bat's nest. Hence it was called Having Bats (Pha‑wang‑can). This was not true of the original Indian manuscript; it is kept even now at Samye. Rngog Lo also did his translation after looking at the Having Iron Pegs.

Still later, Emperor Ral‑pa‑can invited many [Indian] teachers and they accomplished many great revisions of scriptures and commentaries. These Indians, as well as Tibetan teachers (including Dpal‑rtsegs and others) produced, among other [translations], the most extensive translation which was called Great High Translation. It also was in six parts.[viii] It was named Having Leather Meat Container (Sha‑sgro‑can) because of [the appearance of] its cloth wrapper. Later on, Rngog Lo[ix] would use the Indian manuscript introduced [to Tibet] by Ka [Ka‑ba Dpal‑rtsegs] and Cog [Cog‑ro Klu'i‑rgyal‑mtshan] for his own translation or revision.[x]

Thus Rong‑ston gives evidence for five different historical-textual levels in the Tibetan translations of the Hundred Thousand Prajñāpāramitā culminating in the version of Rngog Lo‑tsā‑ba.[xi] The older levels were preserved in specific manuscripts kept in specified places. He lists no less than sixty-five locations for ancient texts including an 'excavated text' (gter‑ma) at Khra‑'brug.[xii] He then supplies us with means for distinguishing between these various levels of translation both through textual means and by the numbers of chapters contained in particular parts. While this textual study by the great Tibetan scholastic should not be ignored by contemporary Buddhist text scholars, my reasons for citing it are more historical than text-critical. We may see from Rong‑ston's evidence that the early translations could be concealed in chortens and so forth.[xiii] They could then be excavated. The early translations were quite different from each other, but just how different remains to be seen only after a painstaking and detailed study of both the texts and Rong‑ston's study of them. 

---

[i]For another version of the following information, see CRYSTAL MIRROR, vol. 5, pp. 157-158. The parenthetical material in the following translation is by the author Rong‑ston, or indicates Tibetan words or forms used by him. Material in square brackets has been added by myself for clarification.

[ii]SANGPO, Bod‑kyi Rgyal‑rabs (p. 487), cites a Sher Phyin commentary by Tsong‑kha‑pa who in turn cites the no longer extant scripture catalog of 'Phang‑thang to the effect that an extensive commentary on the Hundred Thousand was "written by the King," meaning Khri‑srong‑lde‑brtsan. [See also CONZE, Prajñāpāramitā, p. 34.] This deserves more investigation since, if proved authentic, it would demonstrate a considerable interest in religion on the part of the Emperor, even if the commentary was 'ghosted'. Some of the Emperor's other works are listed in SANGPO (op. cit.). It seems hardly credible that the Emperor actually composed such a necessarily lengthy work by his own hand. More likely he would have served as director or encourager in its production.

The Phang‑thang catalog was a listing of the scriptures and commentaries in the library of the pillarless temple (ka med‑kyi gtsug‑lag‑khang) with the numbers of verses and volumes in each text (see SANGPO, pp. 519-520). For more Tun‑huang documentary evidence for the importance of Chos, or Buddhism (nang‑gi Chos, Sangs‑rgyas‑kyi Chos) in the time of Khri‑srong‑lde‑brtsan, see SANGPO (p. 437). The Phang‑thang 'Mansion' (Khang‑mo‑che) was located in the Yarlung Valley (SANGPO, p. 425). Since it is said that the palace of 'Phang‑thang was swept away in a flood in the time of Khri‑srong‑lde‑brtsan (as stated in 'GOS, Deb‑ther Sngon‑po, pp. 68-9), then the catalog must date from his time (although it could have been rebuilt). It is said that the 'Phang‑thang catalog was compiled in the time of Sad‑na‑legs, and that a third catalog, that of Mchims‑phu library, once existed (see CRYSTAL MIRROR, vol. 7, p. 321).

The Rgya‑cher Bshad‑pa commentary attributed to Khri‑srong‑lde‑brtsan would seem to be the one now included in the Tanjur as the work of Daṃṣṭrasena (CONZE, Prajñāpāramitā, p. 33). A commentary on the Hundred Thousand is mentioned, along with the Bka' Yang‑dag‑pa'i Tshad‑ma (on which see STEIN, 'Un mention'), as written by the king based on instructions from Śāntarakṣita (see GU‑RU BKRA‑SHIS, Bstan‑pa'i Snying‑po, vol. 1, p. 444.2 and YAR‑LUNG JO‑BO, Chos‑'byung, p. 62). DPA'‑BO, Mkhas‑pa'i Dga'‑ston [1986], p. 401, says,

Although the catalog 'Phang‑thang‑ma speaks of a great commentary on the Hundred Thousand Mother in seventy‑eight fascicles as being made by Khri‑srong, since Allknowing Bu[‑ston] tells us that the catalogues Mchims‑phu‑ma and Ldan‑dkar‑ma both describe it as an Indian text, it is the Hundred Thousand commentary by Daṃṣṭrasena [that is being referred to].

[iii]This Khams‑pa Go‑cha is also important in the story of the first transmission of the 'Bum into Tibet as told in O‑RGYAN‑GLING‑PA, Bka'‑thang Sde Lnga, pp. 752‑754 (chapter 15 of the "Lo Paṇ Bka'i Thang‑yig"). He is listed among the first thirteen Tibetan Buddhist monks in LDE'U, Chos‑'byung, p. 358.

[iv]Ra Gzigs Dmar‑po. I read 'Gzi' for 'Gzigs', which might be translated 'Red Splendid Goat'. The thirteenth century history by LDE'U (Chos‑'byung, p. 362) also tells the story of Ra Gzigs Dmar‑po, but places it, interestingly enough, in the reign of the later Emperor Ral‑pa‑can. A modern account ('BROG‑MI, "Gzhung‑chen Bka' Pod", p. 103) tells that the ink for this manuscript, called Reg‑zig Dmar‑po, was made from Khri‑srong‑lde‑brtsan's 'vermillion blood' (mtshal) and the milk of a white goat. Reg‑zig is an Old Tibetan word for zin‑bris, 'summary' or 'abridged presentation' (See BLANG, p. 301.3). Thus it seems that the "Ra Gzigs" represents a later attempt to etymologize an obsolete term, and I have chosen my translation accordingly. The reading Reg‑zig is also found in ZHU‑CHEN, Chos‑'byung, p. 103.2; and KONG‑SPRUL, Shes‑bya Kun Khyab, vol. 1, p. 450.

[v]According to 'BROG‑MI, "Gzhung‑chen Pod Lnga" (p. 104), the ink for this manuscript was made from the Emperor's 'burnt hair indigo' mixed with the milk of a white goat. (KONG‑SPRUL, Shes‑bya Kun Khyab, vol. 1, p. 450, agrees.)

[vi]The text has Lcags Thur‑can. It may be that this bears some relation to the word khyung‑thur‑can, used in literary contexts to refer to armor or helmet. (CHANG, Dictionary, p. 266.) The word thur‑ma may mean 'peg, rod, awl, spoon' (among other meanings; ibid., p. 1177). We find mentioned a Lcags Phur‑can handed on to a younger son while the elder son received the abbacy of Smra‑bo‑lcog (an early Nyingma monastery belonging to the descendents of Nyang‑ral Nyi‑ma‑'od‑zer) from their father, Gsang‑bdag Bdud‑'dul. Nothing in the context tells us that Lcags Phur‑can is the name of a Sher Phyin manuscript, although I am at a loss to explain it otherwise. See GU‑RU BKRA‑SHIS, Bstan‑pa'i Snying‑po, vol. 3, p. 409.4.

[vii]Thugs‑dam is a multi‑purpose high honorific word which covers all sorts of high intentions, resolutions and aspirations. One of Khri‑srong‑lde‑brtsan's 'resolutions' was to build Samye. The word is also used in the Old Tibetan text cited in an earlier note. SOG‑BZLOG‑PA, Bka'‑thang Yid‑kyi Mun Sel, p. 88.3, is a bit confusing, but he seems to call the twelve volume (poṭhi) version translated by Vairocana the Rgyal‑po'i Bla 'Bum Sha‑sgro‑can (compare the name of the version made under Ral‑pa‑can, according to Rong‑ston). 'BROG‑MI, "Gzhung‑chen Bka' Pod" (p. 104) agrees, saying that this manuscript translation, which exists at Mchims‑phu, was known as Sha‑sgro‑can, i.e., the name of the manuscript that Rong‑ston attributes to the time of Ral‑pa‑can. KONG‑SPRUL, Shes‑bya Kun Khyab, vol. 1, p. 451, also calls the manuscript translation made by Vairocana the 'Bum Sha‑sgro‑can, but adds that it exists "even now" (i.e., in about 1864) at Mchims‑phu.

[viii]According to 'BROG‑MI, ibid., p. 104, this translation was in sixteen parts.

[ix]'BROG‑MI, ibid., p. 105, says that Rngog Lo Blo‑ldan‑shes‑rab based his revision on a [Sanskrit] text found at Pham‑thing (modern Pharping?) in Nepal.

[x]Text in RONG‑STON, Shes‑rab‑kyi, pp. 5.1 ff. Check for comparison also MKHYEN‑RAB‑RGYA‑MTSHO, History [A], p. 194.2 ff, for history of Prajñāpāramitā translations. DZA-YA, Thob-yig, vol. 4, pp. 404 ff. are also of interest.

[xi]Note the statement to this effect in RONG‑STON, Shes‑rab‑kyi, p. 9.4.

[xii]RONG‑STON, Shes‑rab‑kyi, p. 8.6. The imperial period temple at Khra‑'brug was a common site for textual excavations.

[xiii]For example, in the funerary chorten of 'Jig‑rten‑mgon‑po (as mentioned in a previous note), a Hundred Thousand text, along with Vinaya texts which Atiśa had brought from India, and many relics, among them 'Jig‑rten‑mgon‑po's own skull and brain (see KÖNCHOG GYALTSEN, Prayer Flags, p. 43) were enclosed. We might note also that most guides to the sacred objects at Samye Monastery mention the existence of Hundred Thousand manuscripts from the imperial period at the Aryapalo Ling Temple. 

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Postscript:  Since writing the above words, the ’Phang-thang-ma catalog has appeared in print and has even been subject of a major study by Georgios Halkias.  (Tap HERE if you would like to see the PDF version.) 

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The text on the top leaf of the Lambum of Senaleg (based on p. 61 of the article) in Wylie transcription:

dpal lha btsan po khri lde srong btsan gyi thugs dam glegs bam bzhi pa ’di / skar chung gtsug lag khang mes tshig pa thal ba’i gseb nas ma tshig par byon pa lags byin gyi rlabs shin tu che ba yin no /  slad nas lding gi dgon par dpe’ dag pa gcig la gtugs nas sum thug gcig dang lan gnyis byas /  yi ge’i sdebs ni bcos pa ma grub / ’gyur ni reg gzigs lags gzab par zhu //

e ma'o / rgyal ba'i thugs dam 'bum po che / 'di ka sgrog pa'i mchod gnas pa rnams kyis gzab par zhu / dar Xres pa dang / go zhing che ba dang dri mas zos pa de lhag par snyi bar gda' bas zur nas bzung la / phyag gnyi gas bsgyur bar zhu / bam po'i khrid de ma byas na legs / 'di kun la gces pa lags so /

This last bit begs people to treat the volumes with care, to hold the pages by their edges and to turn them using both hands. Perhaps I’ll try for a complete translation another time. Meanwhile, take care.

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A final appendix (July 8, 2012):  

Was the Lambum of Emperor Senaleg scribed in Dunhuang?

After doing a little experiment, I’m now fairly convinced the answer is Yes.

Method?  I simply went to volume 3 of the Lalou catalogue (the volume where most of the Mother manuscripts are listed), took the names of the scribes that were supplied by Kawa and looked them up in the volume index. To make it simple, I’ll tell you the results before I give you the evidence. I do think it quite significant that some of the family/clan names are matches, but the real clincher is that two full names are perfect matches: Phab-ting is found as a scribe name 4 times in Lalou. Phab-dar occurs there twice. Also certainly worthy of note is the fact that in the O.T. Mother manuscript scribal colophons you often find the exact same syntax as found in the Lambum, with the scribe listed first, followed by the three proofreaders/checkers.

The samples of lists of Lambum scribe names are found in Kawa’s article, p. 64.  These listings are said to be found in the KHA volume, fols. 35, 44, 55, 75 and so on — in other words, at regular intervals.  In each of these little scribal/editor colophons you find first listed a scribe, then a checker (zhus), a further checker (yang zhus) and a tertiary checker (sum zhus).  I have marked what I found out by looking at Lalou's catalogue in red, with her catalog nos. in square brackets.

khong g.yu legs bris /  √similar names, but not this one.

dam tsong zhus //  √similar name Dam-dzong [1429], but not this one.

sgron ma yang zhus //  √

seng ge sdes suṃ zhus /  √

on fol. 140:

song stag skyes bris //  √similar name Song Stag-rma [1452], with many Song family names.

dam tsong zhus //  √repeat.

phab ting yang zhus //  √the name Phab-ting found 4 times [1324, 1372, 1404, 1429].

ji kyin suṃ zhus /  √similar names, but not this one.

Again,

keng g.yu zhe bris //  √possibly Keng occurs as a family name, but this name not found.

che'u jing zhus //  √not found.

seng ge sdes yang zhus //  √repeat.

phab ting sum zhus  /  √repeat (see above).

Again,

je'u hing cin gis bris //  √Je'u occurs a number of times as a family name, but this particular name not found.

dam tsong zhus //  √repeat.

ceng se'u yang zhus //  √I find the rather similar name Cang Se'u-hwan.

phab dar suṃ zhus //  √the name Phab-dar is found twice [1340, 1344].

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A final final appendix! (Nov. 3, 2012)

I place this photo here just to draw your attention to the added note in the comments.  Here you see a photo of an elderly woman doing puja offerings in front of the Kwa Bahal's Perfection of Wisdom manuscript.

I stumbled upon this photo here. I trust my readers will recognize that it is verily a book between those long heavy binding boards.