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 religious 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.

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 with dating with assurance a lot of events during that time whether they have to do with Bon or not. Part of the problem is that 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 nevertheless 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’s 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 “TheView 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.

Padampa in the Vatican?

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(*On the recto of fol. 76[101].)

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+  +  +

Notes on the Vatican Padampa Set

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

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

2[29]

3[30]

5[32]

17[42]

73[96?]

74[97]

75[100]

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

•

New Text (initial folio not there!):

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

3[115?]

4[116]

18[130]

20[132]

21[133]

22[134?]

23[135]

24[136]

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

•

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

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

28[139]

31[142]

32[143]

33[144?]

34[145]

35[146]

36[147?]

37[148]

38[149]

39[150]

40[151]

41[152]

42[153]

43[154]

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

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

46[155!]

47[158]

48[159]

49[155!]

50[158!]

51[159]

52[160]

53[161]

54[162]

55[163]

56[164]

57[165]

58[166]

59[167]

60[168]

61[169]

62[170]

63[171]

64[172]

65[173]

66[174]

67[175]

•

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

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

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

•

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

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

•

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

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

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

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

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

•

New text (also bio-historical in nature).

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

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

•

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

PS (March 27, 2024)

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

1 egg = 250 kilos of chocolate