Recovered Connections 2 - Interdependent Emergence of Tibetan Buddhist Schools

• Continued from Recovered Connections 1.

It is surprising to see just how prominent the Zhijé school is within the early Matho fragments. Fewer are identifiable with other schools like Sakya, Kagyu and even Nyingma.  Bon does show up twice, but there isn’t even one bit of a text I’ve noticed that can be assigned directly to a Bon religious source. This may indicate that the pre-Mongol* religious situation, in this part of the Plateau at least, was not like we have been thinking it was.

(*Please don’t misunderstand me, I mean by pre-Mongol the era before the Mongols appeared on the world stage [the Xixia invasion of 1205] and in just a couple of decades took over the better part of Eurasia.)

These other schools can wait until later. First, I’d like to direct attention to the Padampa and Zhijé texts. I estimate for now that there are about 25 such Zhijé fragments among the Matho, and will not try to cover them all just yet (some of them will feature in future blogs no doubt).  Right now I will limit myself to a question about early Zhijé art in Ladakh, more on Padampa’s women disciples,* and early lay religious movements: 

The cane flute in Padampa icons

Have a look at this photo, see how Padampa in a relatively large size (compared to nearby painted figures on the robes) is hovering there between the shins of the Bodhisattva of Wisdom and Science. Above him are the robes populated with images of the Great Siddhas (rather generic and difficult to identify individually, as Rob Linrothe has noted in his study).  He has a meditation belt around his knees and his characteristic white blanket loosely hanging behind him, otherwise unclothed.  Difficult to make out what he has in his right hand, but in his left he is holding a kind of white tube pointed downward.

I could show a lot of Ladakhi examples, for instance in the caves of Saspola, and in other sites in Alchi. Earlier Ladakhi sites all tend to have Padampa holding the white tube.  

Click here

It was Sarah Harding who noticed the connection and sent me the text, a Shangpa Kagyü text that she was working on. Tibeto-logicians should go here to view the text, while I suppose the rest of you will have to go to her new book that I don’t yet have on hand. The resulting blog can be seen just above.

So after those earlier revelations about the Shangpa connection had been sealed and settled, or so I thought, I was shocked and perplexed to find just a few years later this Matho fragment with the word “flute” right there on the first line. In the continuation you can see that the wording and the practice are both parallel with the Shangpa Kagyu text, one associated with Sukhasiddhi that Sarah Harding published very recently. So as it turns out we don’t need to imagine that Shangpa Kagyupas were active in Ladakh. This purely Zhijé text existing in Matho quite early on can explain the iconography without their help.

This hardly effects the other points made in the earlier blog. On the Sumtsek temple in general, I most highly recommend the central part of the following book: Peter van Ham with Amy Heller and Likir Monastery, Alchi, Treasure of the Himalayas: Ladakh's Buddhist Masterpiece, Hirmer (Munich 2018). However, there is hardly anything said there about the Padampa painting in question (most of it on page 53), and it differs profoundly with what I would say. For one thing, I don’t believe it is a later addition motivated by Drigungpa interests. I do believe it reflects a very early (ca. 12th century) iconography of Padampa, even if it may have benefitted from some later touchups. While Padampa was still alive there was no concept of any group of precisely 84 Mahâsiddhas, that only started to emerge as far as Tibet is concerned in the mid decades of the 12th century. Still, there are a lot of reasons why he might be associated with or even included within that group, so his portrait is by no means irrelevant in the place where it is found, it is hardly out of place. Of course, there will have to be more discussions on these points, but the newly emerging literary evidence practically hands us the reason why the painting is where it is on a silver platter.

Yuthokpa, HAR no. 185

Teachings found in the Yuthok Nyingtig may also have something about healing nectar being transferred by means of a flute.  Here in this slide you see two flute-playing goddesses dancing on either side of Yuthokpa the Elder. The cycle of medical teachings would have been emerging just around the first decades of the 13th century. We see opening up yet another avenue for  investigation even if we won’t go any further in that direction right now.

Carla Gianotti’s book on the subject of Padampa’s women disciples.
In Italian, an English version ought to be forthcoming.

Padampa’s women disciples

One of the biggest surprises in the Matho was to find fragments of a version of Kunga’s text on Padampa’s women disciples. Owing to its importance and difficulties this deserves more research and, before too much time goes by, an independent blog or two of its own. I mention it here because it connects to the discussion that lies ahead of us.

Here you can see a sample of the fragment about the women, women who went on to be spiritual leaders after scattering all over the Himalayan plateau in the early 12th century.

Lay religious movements

To begin with what may or may not be a remarkable point, these lay religious movements appear to have left hardly a trace if any in the Matho and other caches.

Over 25 years ago I did my best to find out about what may be the most obscure religious movements in 11th to 12th century Tibetan history, or in all of Tibetan history for that matter. That means I was keen to find something about them in the Four Caches.

The sources we do have are scattered and difficult to piece together. The earliest of the them that supplies a general coverage, and by far their most sympathetic witness, is in the appendix to the Chöjung history by Nyangrel Nyima Özer.  

In this slide I’ve made a kind of composite of various sources, all charted out in detail in the Kailash essay. No particular source has everything, but there is a great deal of overlap. You can find women leaders associated with Padampa among the Four Children, the Six Yogis, and particularly the Four Tirthika Dakinis. It is said the latter were originally teaching something contrary to Buddhism, but were then in some way corrected or converted by Padampa. But these are later and very possibly motivated narratives I hesitate to accept as historical reporting.

The first one listed, Karudzin, is mentioned in a couple of 13th century sources, such as Sakya Pandita and the ca. 1260’s author of the Single Intention (Dgongs-gcig Yig-cha) associated with the Drigung Kagyü.  

The second one, Sangyé Kargyal, was said to be a heretical teacher in the form of a spirit pretending to be a Buddha. Despite his initial success in winning a following, he was brought to ground by the Great Translator Rinchenzangpo. You learn about him in the Great Translator's biography, but he is only rarely mentioned otherwise.

Latö Marpo, or Dampa Marpo, is a particularly interesting figure because of his role in popularizing the recitation of the Mani Mantra. He is mentioned a little more often than the preceding ones.

But let’s stop there, I don’t have time to go into the details or supply anything like full coverage right now.  Just to say that I have long been on the lookout for any kind of written trace of them, and particularly useful would be any type of self-representation. This is because all we have available otherwise are external testimonies of varying levels of hostility often with the misunderstandings and the polemical distortions that are likely to accompany that emotion. So far I haven’t noticed anything obvious about them in the Four Caches, but I suppose this doesn’t have to mean much, particularly if these movements were not producing literature, a real possibility.

One other matter of considerable interest is that the Matho cache includes fragments from some relatively rare Padampa transmissions (see the chart above for the overall picture). Of course most fragments are from the Kunga (བྱང་སེམས་ཀུན་དགའ་) lineage belonging to the Later Transmission. Still, Middle Transmissions texts related to both the Rma and Skam lineages can be identified among them as well.*

(*The author of the root verses of the long Deyu history, the so-called “Khepa Deyu” [as distinguished from the Deyu José] that I spent 12 years of my life translating belonged to a third major lineage of the Middle Transmission, the So.)

Other religious schools

I’ll close by saying not nearly enough about other schools represented in the Matho.  Firstly the Kagyü: Specifically Kagyü texts are decidedly less well represented than the Zhijé.  That fact already gives some cause for reflection, but these were days before the flood of Kagyü contemplatives in the Kailash area that began to form a steady stream late in the life of Jigten Gönpo (འབྲི་གུང་ཆོས་རྗེ་འཇིག་རྟེན་མགོན་པོ་རིན་ཆེན་དཔལ་, 1143-1217 CE). It is by now well known among Ladakh historians that the Drigungpa school held prominence in Ladakh before it was virtually eclipsed by the Drukpa, as it is today.

The split between the Drigung and Taglung lineages, both of them Kagyü lineages, would not have taken place if it hadn’t been for a dispute about where donated books were supposed to be kept (“The Book Moving Incident of 1209”). Again, we would invoke the same passage at the end of the history by Nyangrel we mentioned before. Of course it is quite strange to our contemporary minds to see both the Zhijé teachings of Padampa and the Kagyu school as a whole placed together with other popular laypeople-based movements. 

When the Nyangral appendix was written in around 1200, at most one or two decades later, the public consciousness of Kagyu subsect identities was at its beginning. When Nyangrel discusses the Kagyü, for most part he just lists a wide variety of students and students-of-students of Milarepa. The only distinction he observes is in recognizing the existence of a “Tshal Circle” and a “Tshur Circle.” That means, of course, what we would call the Tselpa Kagyü, a lineage instituted by Zhang Yudrakpa Tsondrüdragpa, and the Karma Kagyü (with its main monastery at Mtshur-phu) instituted by The First Black Hat incarnate.  I believe that by the term circle he is referring to two mother monasteries while intending to include smaller affiliated retreat caves, temples and monasteries. 

Up to this point none of the eight subschools of the Kagyü that split off from Pagmodrupa were known, meaning to say there was no public awareness of any Drukpa, Drigung, or Taglung Kagyü existing in that time, not yet.  And this is borne out by the contents of the Matho and the other caches. We do find a text associated with Pagmodrupa, and a mention of his name in a small birchbark fragment you will see in a moment, still no inkling of any identifiable subsect of the Kagyü.

The Pagmodrupa-related text is the one illustrated at the end of the published Khyunglung facsimiles, a single folio with atrociously abnormal spelling, but at least it has colophon information. Because of this colophon we are tempted to move the date of the Khyunglung chorten closure to a century later than the others, sometime up to as late as 1300. It will repay closer study, as if that needed saying. I do find it remarkable that, in all the Four Caches, this would be the only Cutting/Gcod-related text.*

(*But then it’s peculiar, when I searched in “Mon-ban and List” I found that teaching entitled Ku-su-lu’i Tshogs-gsog has a lineage through Atisha that does not include Pagmodrupa. I must search also in The Record of Teachings Heard of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama.)

Pagmodrupa (note the spelling Phag-mo-grub-pa!) makes his appearance in the birchbark fragment you see just above.  This doesn’t mean much for our dating of the manuscripts. Of more significance is the absence of the names of any of his disciples in the all Four Caches, with the one exception of the Khyunglung colophon we just mentioned. The odd thing is that this Khyunglung colophon title does after all belong to a known title of a work of Pagmodrupa, one found in his Collected Works (as was normal in those days, his was a Kambum, not a Sungbum), and that work is not about the elephant-hook-equipped Mahākāla as the published version says. This is incorrect. It’s about the practice of Cutting usually believed to have been originated with Machig Labdrön.* But really, this is the one and only text, in all of the caches, on the subject of Cutting practice, and it dates later than all the rest. That could mean something eventually, once it is found to lend its weight to a larger discussion. Our most significant point at the moment is that a prominent Kagyüpa gets to be the author of that one-and-only Cutting text, and he was not a member of any discrete Cutting school.**

(*I do think regarding her as originator makes sense so as long as we don’t allow ourselves to get too doctrinaire about it. Nothing is really ever the work of a single genius working alone, regardless of what some hopeless romantics like to imagine. **More discussion is appended below.)

Now what about the school purportedly founded by the Noble Lord Atisha of Bengal?  The Kadam school can be understood to have its beginning during Atisha’s visit to Tibet of 1042, but came to be known by this name only some decades later. Let’s just say there are four texts that are clearly and unambiguously enclosed within the Kadam realm. At the same time there  any number of scriptural and Indic commentarial texts that were supposed to be studied by Kadampas.* We could say almost the same about the Sakya school, that there are many scriptures and commentaries that Sakyapas may have used, but how many texts could I find that are directly related to the Sakya or to Sakya figures? Not one.**

(*It seems the name of Kadam only became widely known as the name of a distinct school in around 1075, while public knowledge is quite well demonstrated later on, in dialogues that took place during the two decades Padampa spent in Tingri. **Leaving the Four Caches aside for the moment, this silence might yet contribute to a future assessment on the pre-1200 level of prominence, even while their post-1200 prominence is not in the least in question. While there are clear signs that Sakya figures in the 12th century, in particular Dragpa Gyaltsen, were aware of the Kagyü school, the reverse doesn’t seem to be the case, and we ought to look into this. Well, on second thought, what I just said is contradicted by Pagmodrupa, who studied Lamdré with an early Sakya master before meeting Gampopa...)

I should go on and on to speak about the Nyingma content in the Four Caches, but these have featured already in some earlier blogs, so I’ll send you back to them* if you want to hear more and we’ll say farewell for now.

(*The All Making King’s Earliest Fragment.  

The Only Terma in the Matho Termas.)

Well, sorry to hold you at the door just as you were ready to leave, but I suppose I ought to come to some kind of conclusion. I believe we are still far from understanding the era of Tibetan history that preceded the Mongol conquest of Eurasia. That holds true for its religious history, as well as other areas of research. That this time was crucial for the emergence of most of the sectarian affiliations known to us today goes without saying. But there were also movements afoot in those times, of various kinds, that have faded or disappeared from our history books. And these movements and supposed “foundings” were interlinked in ways that slowly come into view. 

That we now have these Four Caches of manuscripts with a quite well established cutoff date of 1200 opens a lot of new avenues of research that could bring much needed light. I realize that some will want to call the result “revisionist” history, so I would like to remind them in advance that history has always been revising itself. It is the history of that revisionism that we most need. Keener knowledge of it could enable us to see with greater clarity, to see through it and achieve greater surety about events and processes that took place in their own time and in their own terms, not ours. We would make ourselves dictators if we pretended to set the past in stone as a monument to our own self-serving concepts.

- - -

For a limited time only, you might be able to find a video of most of the talk here (the opening words were not recorded). The oral and written versions are definitely not identical:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fQpmJcKfUgP1RpRAcp6aqVfXzkOUg4CX/view

• Appendix on the Problematic Pagmodrupa Text in the Khyunglung Cache

Mgon po gru gug skor gyi yig rnying thor bu is the title given at p. 211 of the published book in the upper right hand margin (gru gug should have been spelled gri gug). Here we find a single folio, but it appears as if it could be a complete text, or at least the final folio of one.

At p. 212 line 9 (or 213 line 19) the following title:  Ku-su-lu'i Tshogs-gsog. I found among the works of Phag-mo-gru-pa a text with exactly this title:  Ku-su-lu'i Tshogs, or, Ku-su-lu'i Tshogs-gsog (just search BDRC for it).  The texts need comparing closely, as I see parallels in the last parts.

Colophon: phung po gzan du sgyur ba’i mchod pa phag mo grub pas spa’ ldan lum / gnyan sgom ras pa la [/] des ya’ chung gseng ge rgyal tshom la bla ma bdag la... I’d say the author is tracing the teachings that came from Phag-mo-gru-pa up through his own teacher named Seng-ge-rgyal-mtshan (?). What looks like Dpal-ldan Lum might actually be Dpal-ldan Ldum, and therefore this person: Chos-rje Ldum, a disciple of Phag-mo-gru-pa. See Blue Annals, p. 563.  Probably equals Chos-rje Bum known elsewhere. I couldn’t find any Gnyan-sgom-ras-pa, although one named Gnyan-ras-pa or Gnyan-ras Dge-’dun-bum was teacher of The Third Black Hat Karmapa incarnate (1284-1339), so this would bring us up to around 1300! In any case such a date would make sense for the activities of a spiritual grandchild of Phag-mo-gru-pa.

§   §   §

Email from John Bellezza (May 3, 2024):

Dear Dan, I don't want to be a bug-bear but when you compare the Gathang Bumpa mss. with the Toling ms., which I just downloaded, there are significant differences in the scripts used. On paleographic grounds, I think this comparative exercise justifies dating the GB mss. to before the 11th century. One must do the legwork still, but grammatical and orthographic analysis are likely to bear this out too.

Ph Kh

My answer (May 4, 2024):

Dear J, Yes, I know those captchas are often impossible even for young people with sharp eyes, but I have to allow them, otherwise we’d be swamped with enhancement and disfunction ads. I don't myself doubt the Gathang could very well go back to the late 10th century as physical manuscripts, I just don't know. The one thing I am relatively certain about is that all of the Four Caches were closed at about the same time in around 1200 (the Khyunglung perhaps a century later, but anyway). By Toling I take it you mean the history book, since the cache as a whole is not yet out there for downloading. Or is it?  If you think about the Matho, there are quite a lot of them that based on their content could be dated at earliest to mid-11th or mid-12th centuries. That would go for all the Zhijé fragments that had to have been inscribed during the long 12th century, definitely not before the 12th.  The history book from Toling, too, by its content, has to be mid- or late-12th-century (detailed discussion in D. Pritzker's dissertation).  All that is fine by me, since the 12th century is the very time I'm interested in knowing more about.

Yours, D.

A video on the Gatang cache:  

If there were a bibliography, I should have included a 2019 video of a lecture in the Khyentse Lecture series by Toni Huber of Humboldt University entitled “Recently Discovered Ancient Tibetan Manuscripts and What They Reveal about Old Cultures of Ritual and Some Tibetan Buddhist Innovations.” Tap on the title and you will be there.

Bon Studies of Guru Chöwang at Age Six

 

Guru Chöwang statue, HAR 73029

In the face of a recent statement on the hopelessness of ever finding chronological coordinates for the history of Bon,* I have to say I’m not so pessimistic, at least not for the early 11th century up into the Mongol period. Yes, there are problems dating with assurance a lot of events during that time whether they have to do with Bon or not. Part of the problem is back in those centuries it was usually thought enough to supply 12-year-cycle “animal” dates for events without calculating 60-year-cycle “animal-element” dates.** There are indeed recorded events in Bon history that present chronological conundrums.***  Having said that, there are nonetheless myriad opportunities to coordinate events and feel more sure about chronology, and that’s one thing that makes me an optimist. I feel I need to rein in the naysayers.

(*Huber's book, vol. 2, p. 367, note 10. The criticism is harsh and in a some part deserved, but no alternative is suggested, so the general attitude dismissive of early Bon written sources is to my mind too much too soon. **Of course I'm speaking about writings actually written in those times. Later writers writing about those times tend to give 60-year-cycle dates, in this way 'updating' their pre-Mongol sources, but in the process they sometimes introduced problems. Among 20th and 21st century scholars it has been normal to trust Blue Annals dates, but as far as these early dates are concerned, we often have to wonder if they might not be a 12-year-cycle or two off the mark... This goes for the date of death of Phadampa, which might need moving back in order to make his stay in Tingri fit in the reign of the western king Tsedé (see this recent Tibetologic blog). We continue to give this date as 1117, but other chronologies, like the one by Katok Rinzin, give 1105, and this I now believe is more likely to be correct. That’s just to supply an example of one of the uncertainties we might well entertain for quite many events during those days and, I would emphasize, not only datings of Bon events. ***For instance, the consecration ritual of Shenchen’s disciple Zhuyé that Atiśa is invited to attend, even though by then Atiśa would have been long gone from the scene. Martin’s book, pp. 87-89, discusses this.)

If we are being optimists, the biggest problem that looms over us is the prevailing public skepticism that is largely thanks to centuries of polemical interchanges between Bon and Chos. There is no simple way to extract ourselves from the poisoned atmosphere, we have to work on it, and we may even have to work on ourselves. I think one of the most useful prongs of approach is to find mentions of Bon events and Bon texts in Chos works of earlier times. 

At least to some degree such evidence can count as outside verification.  Some of these mentions have already been located in datable early Kagyü literature from the pre-Mongol era (especially in the last half of 12th century, since that’s when the majority of those more reliably dated texts start becoming available for our consideration). One example is when Zhang Yudragpa tells us in a matter-of-fact way that he was presented with a copy of the Eight Elements (Khams-brgyad) scripture of Bon.* This is the kind of material we can use against the Bon minimalizers, not that by themselves such bits will be enough.

(*Martin's book, p. 123. The Tibetan passage, as found in an unpublished manuscript of his works known as “Samdo A,” vol. 1 (KHA), fol. 90: bon po cig gis khams chen phul, “A Bonpo offered him a Great Eight Elements scripture.”  The Great Eight Elements ought to be the one in 16 volumes. From around the same era, there are a lot of Bon references in the works of Drigung Jigten Gönpo, regarded as the founder of the Drigung Kagyü school. He was born as a Bönpo after all. In past blogs, like this one, we’ve sometimes mentioned Padampa’s late 11th-century teaching exchanges with the Bon teacher Trotsang Druglha. The list could go on, so if you want to pursue this matter see the book by Phun-tshogs-nyi-ma listed below.)

So it was partly with this aim in mind that I was intrigued to find this passage telling us what Bon texts the famous Tertön Guru Chöwang studied as a child, as that would appear to date the list to around 1217. This would tell us with some degree of assurance that the texts and teachings there mentioned have to date prior to 1217. 

Janet Gyatso over 30 years ago wrote a breathtakingly pathbreaking work about Terma/Treasure revelations, a study of Guru Chöwang’s treatise on the subject.  Search it down and have a look.

My source of the Tibetan text and my text edition with some variant readings may be seen at the end of this blog entry in the Appendix One, but here is my translation, in two parts, each part followed by my attempts to identify persons, places and texts:

“When he was in his sixth year, in the presence of the Pha-jo, he studied the following: orally transmitted texts subsumed under the nine root mdo of Shen Priests’ Phenomenal World Vehicle scriptures together with terma treasures from Red Rock Having Leather Egg* and still others adding up to ten divine Bon sets. He knew all the minor chapters of the (?) Bon scriptures he took up,* while his practical application of them was very strong.”

(*The Hardened Leather Case refers to an evidently globe-shaped casket with leather casing that would have contained a set of texts.)

“Now for the tantras of Bon that he learned:  He once stated that he did not know the Bon-gsal Kun-’dul apart from just the great sādhana (sgrub-chen).  As for the Mind Section of Bon, these included the Bon Lung Drug Ti-’dab Rgyas-pa, the Sems Sngon Sde Bcu,**  the Thugs-brnag Nyer-gcig, the Bon ’Khor-ba Dong-sprugs, the G.yung-drung ’Bum-khri, and the Man-ngag Kun-btus.”

(*I follow P here, although it seems to supply an example of what philologists call ‘eye skip,’ and I’m not any more sure about its meaning.  **I.e., the Sems don sde bcu teaching. See the Yang-rtse Klong-chen history, pp. 44.8, 45.1.  Actually, the Dzogchen texts mentioned here belong to treasure texts of Bzhod-ston Dngos-grub-grags-'bar, as part of the “proclamation to the humans” section of the Three Proclamation Cycles (Sgrags-pa Skor Gsum), their discovery conventionally dated to 1088 CE. In the Brgyud-rim text we find this: lung la / rdzogs chen sems don sde bcu le'u bcu / man ngag la / thugs kyi brnags pa skor gsum. The main tantra of the “proclamation to the gods” section is the Golden Tortoise studied by S. Karmay along with the Twelve Small Tantras studied in D. Rossi’s book. [Note April 23, 2024: See now the comment by Jean-Luc Achard, below.]  See the listing that includes all these texts in Per Kvaerne’s canon catalogue, no. K111.)

 

Two small yet significant points: Here is evidence that one of the greatest of the early Nyingma Tertöns studied Bon texts as a child, even practiced some of the more shamanic teachings and had some success at it.  He did have acquaintance with one tantra text of Bon, but the greater part of what he studied were Mind Class, and that means Dzogchen. Since he would have received these teachings in around the year 1217, we can say that the Bon texts mentioned should have been available before that time.

By taking the evidence from the Matho fragments as well as this list of teachings given to Guru Chöwang we have a basic list of Dzogchen scriptures that were assuredly extant in the pre-Mongol period. Not that there were not others, I’m sure there were, but these texts deserve a special emphasis in our future research on the history of Nyingma and Bon developments in the field of Terma and Dzogchen both. Because sad to say there are many doubters out there who require greater clarity before they will be convinced.

But when we place our two in varying degrees reliable sources on pre-Mongol era Terma teachings side-by-side, we see the two of them are pointing at two different bodies of texts. The Matho evidence points to Nyingma/Bon Termas from the mid-11th century while the Guru Chöwang evidence points to a Bonpo Tertön active in 1088 by the name of Gzhod-ston Dngos-grub-grags-'bar. Interesting to see, the latter is indeed one of those Tertöns shared between Bon and Chos. He is often identified with a shadowy figure involved in the Terma origins of the Mani Kambum collection in association with Nyangral, the somewhat earlier Nyingma Tertön Guru Chöwang is so often paired with.  Gzhod-ston may be identical to the one usually remembered in Nyingma sources as “Grub-thob Dngos-grub.” This very possible identification was discussed 40 years ago in an essay by Madame Blondeau.

So, anyway, I’ll spare a final word or two in an attempt to drive in my point before saying a friendly farewell for now. The 1217 dating of Guru Chöwang's Bon library fits fiendishly well with my diabolical plan to split Tibetan history in half with the dividing point right there in the vicinity of 1200. By standing sure-footedly above that gap with a set of well verified or verifiable coordinates, with datable texts from before and the possibility of comparing and contrasting what they say with what comes after, we could hope to achieve enhanced historical clarity all around. And yes, that includes chronology.

•   •   •

Biblio Refs

Michael Aris, Bhutan: The Early History of a Himalayan Kingdom, Vikas Publishing House (Ghaziabad 1980). On p. 6, you may learn that Rtsis-lung (var. Rtse-lung) Temple is nowadays called Dkon-mchog-gsum. See also pp. 7, 33-37, 39, 54-55.  It was site of a bell with inscription and remains of a pillar from Imperial Era Tibet. Of course if this is easier for you there is an entry with less information at Wikipedia. The temple by this name that you can see today is entirely rebuilt, although presumably some of its ancient artefacts are still there.

Anne Marie Blondeau, “Le ‘Découvrer’ du Mani Bka' 'bum était il Bon po?” contained in: Louis Ligeti, ed., Tibetan and Buddhist Studies Commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Alexander Csoma de Koros, Akadémiai Kiadó (Budapest 1984), in 2 vols., vol. 1, pp. 77-123, at p. 83 & ff.

James Gentry, “Why Did the Cannibal King Fly? Tantric Transformations of an Indian Narrative in Tibet,” Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines, no. 64 (July 2022), pp. 84-135, particularly pp. 100-102, on Guru Chöwang.

Janet Gyatso, “Guru Chos-dbang’s Gter ’byung chen mo: An Early Survey of the Treasure Tradition and Its Strategies in Discussing Bon Treasure,” contained in: Per Kværne, ed., Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Fagernes 1992, The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture (Oslo 1994), pp. 275-287. This well researched and much too seldom cited article is essential reading on the subject of Guru Chöwang's connections with Bon, based on a different text. The passage on his Bon studies at age 6 is mentioned, without going into it, at footnote 34 on p. 286, usefully telling us where it can be located in the published version of his Autobiography at vol. 1, pp. 44-45, but this must be a typo, it’s actually on pp. 14-15. It is the proximate source of our ebook version, so its readings ought to be entirely identical.

Gzhod-ston Dngos-grub-grags-’bar, Tertön, Rdzogs-chen Bsgrags-pa Skor Gsum — Rdzogs-pa Chen-po Zab Lam Gnad-kyi Gdams-pa Bsgrags-pa Skor Gsum Ma Bu Cha-lag dang bcas-pa, “collection of Bonpo Rdzogs-chen teachings rediscovered by Gzhod-ston Dngos-grub-grags-’bar from a Vairocana image at Lho-brag Mkho-mthing, reproduced from a manuscript from Bsam-gling Monastery in Dolpo,” Patsang Lama Sonam Gyaltsen, TBMC (Dolanji 1973).  BDRC Work RID: W8LS67596.

Toni Huber, Source of Life: Revitalisation Rites and Bon Shamans in Bhutan and the Eastern Himalayas, Austrian Academy of Sciences (Vienna 2020), in 2 vols. This may be the most important Tibetan Studies book to appear so far in print during this century. If you don’t understand why I can say that, it may be because you haven’t read enough of it yet.

Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Taye, The Hundred Tertons, tr. by Yeshe Gyamtso, KTD Publications (Woodstock NY 2011). At pp. 101-106 is a sketch of Guru Chöwang’s life. It makes no mention of his childhood Bon studies, even if it does emphasize that he studied a broad range of traditions. Notice that among his 18 treasure recoveries, one took place at Bumthang in what would become Bhutan. Bumthang Tsilung Temple was a site for Nyingma Termas beginning around the mid-11th century. See the passages in the Aris book, listed above.

Per Kvaerne, “The Canon of the Tibetan Bonpos,” Indo-Iranian Journal, vol. 16 (1974), pp. 18-56, 96-144. No. K111 is the entry that most concerns us right now.

Jacob Leschly, “Guru Chowang,” Treasury of Lives website.

Dan Martin, Unearthing Bon Treasures: Life and Contested Legacy of a Tibetan Scripture Revealer, Brill (Leiden 2001).

Dol-po Dge-bshes Phun-tshogs-nyi-ma (Menri Geshe from Dolpo), Bon dang ’Brel-lam Byung-ba’i Bod-kyi Chos-brgyud Khag-gi Skyes-chen Gleng-ba, Nor-bu Ghar-phig-si Dpe-skrun-khang (Sarnath 2016), in 191 pages.

Subject of a blog page dated to April 2016 (http://theyungdrungbon.com/2016/04/ttt-3/), including a long table of contents, this remarkable book surveys Bon connections among the Chos teachers of various schools. Some of these Chos teachers had either Bon personal connections, or were even born into Bon families. It is especially important for showing that relations were not always as antagonistic as we tend to assume. There is even a section about Guru Chöwang on pp. 47-49. He quotes a rather recent work by Jigme Lingpa telling us how he had studied various topics: “Bon gyi gzhung chen bdun cu don lnga / mdos gzhung chen po brgya phrag / gsang sngags phyi nang gi thig rtsa mang po / phur pa'i skor pod chen bzhi la sogs pa thos pa mang po mdzad.” I need to look into what the 75 Great Textbooks of Bon might be, but the other items in this list are not explicitly marked as Bon, and probably are not. He quotes some even later summaries of the same information in Tertön histories. But then he also quotes our same passage from Guru Chöwang’s biography, with a few significantly different readings (introduced in footnotes to my text with the siglum “P” in the Appendix One below).

Donatella Rossi, “The Don Gsum (Three Teachings) of Lady Co za Bon mo, a Bon po Gter ma from the G. Tucci Tibetan Fund,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, no. 51 (July 2019), pp. 301-322. The Dzogchen text that is the subject of this and her other essay listed just below is among the rediscoveries of Bzhod-ston Dngos-grub-grags-pa.

———, The Philosophical View of the Great Perfection in the Tibetan Bon Religion, Snow Lion (Ithaca 1999). This includes text editions and translations of two Dzogchen texts: [1] a Rgyud Bu-chung Bcu-gnyis and [2] a terma of Bzhod-ston entitled “The View which is Like the Lion’s Roar.”

———, “The Three Teachings (Don gsum) of Lady Co za Bon mo: A Bon po gter ma from the Giuseppe Tucci Tibetan Fund,” contained in: Elena de Rossi Filibeck et al., eds., Studies in Honour of Luciano Petech, a Commemoration Volume, 1914-2014, Fabrizio Serra Editore (Pisa 2016), pp. 155-164.

Appendix One

Gu-ru Chos-kyi-dbang-phyug, Gter-ston (1212-1270), Gu-ru Chos-dbang-gi Sku'i Rnam-thar Skyabs-brgyad-pa, as contained in: Idem., Rang-rnam dang Zhal-gdams, ed. by Gdung-sras Bla-ma Padma-tshe-dbang, Tsum Library / Btsum Dpe-mdzod-khang (Tshum, Nepal 2022), vol. 1, pp. 14-57, at p. 23 (of 306). A freely downloadable ebook, in 3 vols., given the title “NangNam.”

དགུང་ལོ་དྲུག་ལོན་པའི་ཚེ་ན། ཕ་ཇོ་ལ་གནང་གཤེན་གྱི་བོན་རྩ་མདོ་དགུས་བསྡུས་པའི་བཀའ་མ་དང་། བྲག་དམར་བསེ་སྒོང་ཅན་གྱིས་གཏེར་ལ་སོགས་པ་ལྷ་བོན་སྡེ་བཅུ། གཡང་བོན་མེ་དྲོན་ཀུན་མཁྱེན་ཅིང་ལག་ལེན་ཤིན་ཏུ་ཆེའོ།།

Differences in P (punctuation differences are not noted): གནང་གཤེན་ > P སྣང་གཤེན་.  ཅན་གྱིས་ > P ཅན་གྱི་.  The final part beginning with གཡང་བོན་... > P གཡང་བོན་སྡེ་བཅུ། ཡར་ལོན་བོན་ལེ་ཕྲན་ཀུན་མཁྱེན་ཅིང་ལག་ལེན་ཤིན་ཏུ་ཚའོ། ། A གཡང་བོན་སྡེ་བཅུ། ལར་བོན་ལེ་ཕྲན་ཀུན་མཁྱེན་ཅིང་ལག་ལེན་ཤིན་ཏུ་ཚའོ།  

བོན་གྱི་སྔགས་ལ། བོན་གསལ་ཀུན་འདུལ་གྱི་སྒྲུབ་ཆེན་ཙམ་གཅིག་ལས་མི་ཤེས་གསུངས། བོན་སེམས་ཕྱོགས་ལ། བོན་ལུང་དྲུག་ཏི་འདབ་རྒྱས་པ། སེམས་སྡོན་སྡེ་བཅུ། ཐུགས་ནག་ཉེར་གཅིག །བོན་འཁོར་དོང་སྤྲུགས། གཡུ་དྲུང་འབུམ་ཁྲི། མན་ངག་ཀུན་བཏུས་ལ་སོགས་མཁྱེན་ནོ། །ཆོས་ཀྱི་ཀྲི་ཡ་སྤུངས་བཟང་གི་རྒྱུད་ཀྱི་བཀར་བཅས་པ་ཚར་གཅིག་གསན།

བོན་གསལ་ > A བོན་གསས་  སྒྲུབ་ > P གྲུབ་.  བོན་ལུང་དྲུག་ཏི་འདབ་རྒྱས་པ། > P བོན་རླུང་ཏི་འབར་བ་བཅས་པ། A བོན་ལུང་དྲུག་ཏི་བར་བཅས་པ། [?]  སྔོན་ > AP དོན་.  ཐུགས་ནག་ > [I read:] ཐུགས་བརྣག་.  ཉེར་གཅིག > P ཉེར་ལྔ།.  འཁོར་ > P འཁོར་བ་.  གཡུ་དྲུང་ > P གཡུང་དྲུང་.  བཏུས་ > AP འདུས་.  P omitted the final sentence, as it is about a Chos scripture the Subāhu-paripṛcchā (Dpung-bzang, not Spungs-bzang), not Bon.  གི་རྒྱུད་ཀྱི་བཀར་ > A ཀྱིས་རྒྱུད་ཏི་དཀར་.

The first set of teachings he received from Pha-jo were from one of the Causal Vehicles of Bon, the Vehicle of the Priests of the Phenomenal World (Snang-gshen Theg-pa).  It includes a group of Kama teachings summarized in Nine Root Scriptures (Bon Rtsa Mdo Dgu). The second set of teachings were derived from Terma findings from the treasure site in Brag-dmar called Bse-sgong-can (“Having a Hardened Leather Egg’).  These are characterized as Ten Sets of Divine Bon Texts (Lha Bon Sde Bcu). The third set is rather obscure, and so there are variant readings, but I believe we have to understanding it as saying that he had entirely mastered and very much put into practice G.yang Bon texts in ten minor chapters (le phran).

Now for the tantras of Bon that he learned:  He once stated that he did not know the Bon-gsal Kun-'dul apart from just the Great Sâdhana (Sgrub-chen).  As for the Mind Section of Bon, these included the Bon Lung Drug Ti-’dab Rgyas-pa, the Sems Sngon Sde Bcu, the Thugs-brnag Nyer-gcig, the Bon 'Khor-ba Dong-sprugs, the G.yung-drung ’Bum-khri, and the Man-ngag Kun-btus.

•

Appendix Two

Source:  Sku gsum ston pa'i gsung rab bka' 'gyur rin po che'i lung rgyun ji snyed pa phyogs gcig tu bsdus pa'i bzhugs byang brgyud rim bcas pa dri med shel gyi phreng ba, a 1929 work by Gsang-sngags-gling-pa (for more on it, see the Oslo Bon Kanjur catalog) —

bla ma bzhod ston dngos grub grags 'bar gyis / lho brag khom mthing rnam snang sku rgyab nas dngos grub tu rnyed pa'i / RDZOGS CHEN SGRAGS PA SKOR GSUM GYI BKA' STENG LHA YUL DU SGRAGS PA'I BKA' la /

[347] rgyud lung man ngag gsum ste / rgyud rgyal gser gyi rus sbal le'u sum cu pa dang / yan lag tu rgyud chung bcu gnyis zhes pa le'u bcu gnyis pa / lung la'ang rtsa ba lung nyi ma dgu skor le'u dgu pa / yan lag la lung drug ste rtsa bral nyag gcig dgongs pa'i lung / kun bral nyag gcig ci ma spang pa'i lung / man ngag thams cad 'dus pa'i lung / sun 'byin rdzogs chen gsang ba'i lung / rang byung nyag gcig sems kyi lung / la zla rdzogs pa chen po'i lung dang le'u drug / man ngag la / man ngag brgyad pa zhes pa le'u brgyad / ston pa ye gshen gtsug phud kyi stong thun / BAR MI YUL DU SGRAGS PA'I BKA' la rgyud lung man ngag gsum ste / rgyud la [ ] g.yung drung

 

[348] gsang ba'i dbang rgyud / ba ga mngon rdzogs kyi rgyud / phun sum tshogs pa'i rgyud / gol sgrib rnam par phye ba'i rgyud / thams cad ma lus rdzogs pa'i rgyud / rtsa ba gcig la rnam pa bgrang ba'i rgyud dang drug go // lung la / rdzogs chen sems don sde bcu le'u bcu / man ngag la / thugs kyi brnags pa skor gsum / 'og klu yul du sgrags pa'i bka' la / rgyud lung man ngag gsum ste / rgyud dmar byang le'u bcu pa / lung seng ge'i sgra bsgrags / man ngag 'khor ba dong sprug le'u bcu dgu pa / de'i yan lag / man ngag lung gi tshad ma [illeg. mchan] lta ba la shan sgron ma sogs bzhugs pa'i rim ni / bon sku kun tu bzang po'i thugs nyid rnam par dag pa'i / longs sku gshen lha 'od dkar gyi thugs la go /

[349] longs sku'i thugs nyid sprul sku ye gshen gtsug phud kyi thugs la gsal / sprul sku'i thugs la gsal ba de / lha klu mi gsum gyi snyan la bsgrags / de la sgrogs lugs gsum du gyes pa yin te / lha bon yongs su dag pas mang la 'brel pa'i bon rin po che'i byang bur rin po ches bris te / steng lha yul du spyan drangs nas bstan pa dar zhing rgyas par mdzad / klu grub ye shes snying pos nyung la 'dus pa'i bon dar dkar la g.yu yis bris te 'og klu yul du spyan drangs nas bstan pa dar zhing rgyas par mdzad / rgyal gshen mi lus bsam legs kyis dran la 'tshoms pa'i shog gur ke ru la snag tshas bris te / bar mi yul du spyan drangs nas bstan pa dar zhing rgyas

[350] par mdzad / STENG LHA YUL DU SGRAGS PA'I SKOR ni yongs su dag pas slob dpon bla ma bzhi yi snyan du sgrags te / 'od zer dpag med / mun pa kun gsal / 'phrul gshen snang ldan / gsang ba 'dus pa dang bzhi'o / de nas mkhas pa mi bzhis spyod de / stong rgyung mthu chen / gyim tsha rma chung / lce tsha mkhar bu / sha ri dbu chen dang bzhi'o / de nas mkhas pa nyi shu la brgyud de / khyung po stag sgra dun tsug / snya li shu stag ring / bhe shod tram / gu ru btsan po / phu li gru 'dzin / sde gyim thar tha bo / bum pa mu phya / 'gang po dug 'dul / stag sgra ge shag / ba gor dod de / ljang tsha 'phan snang / gnub gnyer bzhi btsan / ga ra mon pa / lha gnyer mtshams pa / sku gyim thang

[351] rma bo / gshen dran pa nam mkha' / bla chen blon gsas chen / dbal khri zung lod / mkha' 'gro co za bon mo / 'gos khri srong rgyal po dang nyi shu'o // de nas gter bdag bya ra ma gsum gyis / bla ma bzhod ston dngos grub la lung gnang ngo / 

§  §  §

Update (April 23, 2024)

I moved Jean-Luc’s comment out of the comment section to give it more prominence. I hope other people won’t make the same mistake I did.

Jean-Luc AchardTuesday, April 23, 2024

Dear Dan, The rGyud bu chung bcu gnyis that Donatella translated is from the Zhang zhung snyan rgyud. The one that is referred to here is from the bsGrags pa skor gsum. These are two different texts, although they share the same title.

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.

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