The White Old Man Sūtra - Part Two

To start at the beginning, click here.

So here is my fast attempt to elaborate on the meanings of every last detail in this surprisingly complex picture. First of all, look on the Old Man’s right hand and see how he holds a pitcher or ewer in the act of pouring out a ritual libation into a small stemmed goblet that rests on top of a larger bowl in its turn placed on an altar table. The larger bowl is there to catch the overflow from the goblet. The overflow itself conveys a notion of copious overabundance.

Another, more lightly printed, example 

of a verso of the 100 srang banknote

Some may imagine it to be a ‘secular’ scene of an old man pouring himself a drink, but no, nothing could be further from the truth. The elaborate ritual setup indicates a normative practice of Tibetan Buddhism — some people, be they male or female, monastic or lay, perform it every morning. This relatively simple ritual, usually called Water Casting (ཆུ་གཏོར་, ཆབ་གཏོར་, or མཆོད་གཏོར་), involves the pouring of the liquid accompanied by prayers for the pretas, or “hungry ghosts.” Not only was it performed by the earliest Kadampas, but by Bonpos even before them. This practice is supposed to be done out of compassion for those unfortunate beings known as pretas, unable to eat or drink on their own, since it all turns to fire in their mouths. Not incidentally, the practice develops Buddhist merit* and compassion in the person who performs it. One significant further point: Even if the word yidag / ཡི་དྭགས་ generally used for preta is employed here, the objects of compassion are widened to include other large classes of spirit beings, even including the spirits of the dead.

(*I hope to devote some writing to Buddhist ideas about merit another time, but at the moment, do remember that it is one of the two legs that permit advancement on the Path to Enlightenment in Great Vehicle Buddhism. As one of the Two Accummulations, it cannot just be tossed aside in favor of intellectualism or meditation as our 21st-century neo-Buddhists so often try to do.)

Now move directly above the altar and what you will see is a bat flying in the sky, swooping toward a fruiting tree. It is known that some kinds of bats feed off of fruits. I regard that fact as irrelevant to our reading of the tableau. Their close proximity in the picture is accidental. My reason for thinking so: It’s well known that the bat as a positive cultural symbol is owed to a pun in Chinese. The Chinese word for ‘bat,’ “蝠” (fú) sounds exactly the same as the word for ‘good fortune,’ and ‘wealth’ “福” (fú), and you can see an obvious similarity in the characters as well.* This pun explains why you can see artistic representations of bats all over the place in Chinese households, not just in temples.

(*Look here for an amusing analysis of the parts that make up the character.)

You also see here a cloth article that looks like a scarf draped over the tree limb. I had to think long and hard about this one. Of course it may or may not be a Tibetan khata. Although difficult to be certain, it actually seems to be a Mongolian contribution to the iconography. Still, it does remind us of Arhat portraits (based in the Vinaya Sūtra, and meant to illustrate it, I believe) in which a part of the clothing is just being left on a nearby limb to dry. Like the tableaus I describe here, these Arhat scenes are often painted on the walls of the monastery on the outside... Hmmm, this sounds like the beginning of a theory that would explain the placement of those tableaus... 

But then again, it may be in some way associated with the scarf in the iconography of ’O-de-gung-rgyal (and similar long-life deities with varied names) explained by Toni Huber in his book Source of Life (vol. 1, p. 84). Let me quote it at some length:

“The white silk pennant or scarf they hold encodes a dual symbolism that expresses the transfer of life powers between cosmic realms. One of its aspects is g.yang,* and such scarves are sometimes referred to as g.yang dar, while the other aspect of the white scarf is a symbol of the messenger, of something pure and important passing between agents. For these reasons the white scarf is closely associated with the messenger bat...”

(*My note: On g.yang as a culture-specific concept, look here.) 

Given the great distances and cultural differences involved, it is rather impressive that the conceptual pairing of scarf and bat that we see in our tableau would show up in remote areas of eastern Bhutan in contexts that are regarded as inestimably archaic and local.

Some people see pomegranates or persimmons, but I believe this is a  peach tree. These are the peaches of immortality, well known from very early Chinese ideas about the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu) who used to preside over peach feasts with the immortals of her court in a place often identified with the Kunlun Mountains. While these relatively low mountains form the natural northern border of the Tibetan Plateau, they don’t seem to be known to Tibetan literature. Even so, in Chinese myth and literature (and now film) they have assumed a towering importance. I suppose the immortals were already as immortal as they could ever hope to be, yet the peaches were said to confer longevity if not immortality.

Now we continue circumambulating in the Bon direction, with the left hand oriented toward the central figure. Passing over a cloud-and-mountain-with-waterfall landscape we next encounter a pair of dancing cranes. Pairs of cranes remain lifelong lovers, but they are also amazingly long-lived. Chinese sources have sometimes attributed to them lifespans as long as a thousand years. I like to imagine, as one who has seen for himself how inspiringly and effortlessly they soar in slow spirals upward into the sky, taking advantage of thermal updrafts, that something about that is in there, too. They make migration look too easy.

Next in our leftward turn is what would seem to be an arrangement of offerings related to the libation ritual directly above it. This may well be the case, but close inspection tells me the basin is filled with peaches with their leaves still attached. Do you see something else?

I think the deer couple appears clearly enough for everyone to recognize, but what is that thing off to the side? One of the deer seems to be turning its head toward it. It looks like a plant, but a plant with some kind of bulbous growth in the center. This would be a lingzhi fungus. Sometimes, even if not here, the lingzhi is depicted as if it were growing out of the deer’s head. In Chinese lore, these deer are sort of like the pigs that are used to sniff out truffles in France. The mushroom hunters would never be able to find the lingzhi without the help of the deer, since to every other creature they are invisible.

You can see a few more lingzhi fungi here, but what I want to point out right now is the rocky cavern with the stream of water descending from it. I did have trouble putting my finger on this exactly, but I was imagining it reflects Chinese landscape ideas. Artistically speaking it seems obvious. What we see here bears meanings situated between, or is perhaps shared by, fengshui geomancy and ideals of Chinese landscape painting. When I looked into it further, I thought the landscape feature might be the one known as “shan shui” (dragon/mountain + descending stream). Still, a cave with a water source inside of it has a special name in Chinese that is, as a matter of convention, translated as “grotto.”  

Now look a little to your left. You can see a row of blossoms leading diagonally to  a more distant grotto that I think, with good reason, would indicate the Peach Blossom Grotto, a kind of bucolic Shangri-la of the Daoists. We do have the close proximity of the peaches and the grottos, so we may be justified in putting two and three together like this. There is a long and rich history of the Peach Blossom Grotto in China and a number of Sinological essays are devoted to it. It is a place very difficult if not impossible to find, but going there would mean encountering the immortals.

Now for the main figure of the White Old Man itself: First observe the smaller human seated on a mat of grass to his left side. Sometimes this is called an “acolyte figure,” as if it were a child assistant in a Catholic mass, procession or the like. I see no reason to speak Catholic here, so I would suggest the youth depicted here represents 'youth,' or or maybe even rejuvenation. The youth seems to hold something up in one hand, but I am unable to make out what it is. Alternatively or at the same time, he may serve as an attendant, an errand boy.

The Old Man’s very corpulence is a sign of opulence. His right hand holds the ritual ewer, in his left a rosary. The ewer we have mentioned already, but the rosary is evidently a māla used as support for mantra recitations, a constant occupation of many Tibetan elders. He has a beard, no doubt very white. 

There is one interesting thing, among others, that is not visible here. We might think he needs to have a staff inside the crook of his left elbow. The staff might end, as the texts describe and prescribe in a knob or handle in the shape of a dragon. But not here, which is remarkable since it would seem to be one of the few constants according to the Sūtra and texts associated with it. More on these texts presently.

Now let’s leave the money behind for a few minutes and have a quick glance at the literary sources, especially as these have bearing on the iconography.

Here above, you see the opening lines of the White Old Man Sūtra, in Sanj Altan’s translation from the Oirat version. Pay special attention to the iconographical information in lines 10-12. This text is sometimes called by that just-given title, but also The Sūtra of the Power to Keep within Bounds the Earth and Water.  The titles you see below.

Both of the texts you see here are from the collection of the Mongolian National Library (Ulan Bator). Both are scans done by agreement with the BDRC. I think we can safely say that these Tibetan texts are local Mongolian products, and that versions of it might not even exist on the Tibetan plateau (we need to demonstrate local Tibetan interest rather than assume it, since Mongolian monks did compose and scribe Tibetan texts for their own use). One interesting thing is that the title is given first in Chinese, which would suggest that the original text was in that language. Still, I do not know of any Chinese version of it existing today (I may very well require correction on this point), and believe that this apocryphal scripture was made in Mongolia, very likely by a monk who knew Tibetan language as they very often did, in order to accommodate the local cult of the White Old Man within a Buddhist context.

An outstandingly talented artist, Robert Beer supplies two versions of the Old Man in his book, yet it is only the one labeled as "Tibetan style" that is based on an earlier painting done by a Tibetan, while it appears that the "Chinese style" he created by combining various elements he thought to be Chinese, many of them indeed associated with immortals and with the Old Man of Chinese lore called Shouxing (Shou Hsing). It’s interesting that he is depicted with an antlered deer, this being his usual mount, a dragon-headed staff,* and a gourd. Why is the gourd there at the top of the staff? That question leads us into amazing territory nicely surveyed by R.A. Stein in his book, a book I much recommend. The gourd was used by Chinese herbalists to contain the herbs they collected in the mountains. It also served for Daoists as a container for a miniature world that immortals could physically enter into by miniaturizing themselves. It is basically equivalent to the grotto, both gourd and grotto being a normally unseen interior world, perhaps in miniature; both are populated by hermits or refugees from the busy world, and they have skies of their own, no matter how difficult that may be to think about...  Oh, and the staff ought to be craggy and a little crooked, resembling a gnarly pine tree limb, if it is to be associated with Chinese immortals. Not the smooth cane we see here. In sum, I would have composed the picture of the "Chinese style" a little differently than Beer did.

(*The dragon head on the staff might seem to indicate Chinese origins, but I believe it to be a Mongolian contribution to the iconography of the White Old Man. Of course it requires further consideration. I am not especially clear what Beer meant by "Chinese style." He might be talking about actually artistic practice in China, but on the other hand he might intend a conscious artistic choice made by a Tibetan artist to produce a Chinese-inspired painting... )

I’m not going to go into the very relevant question of when the Mongolian White Old Man entered into Tibetan monastic dances called Cham (འཆམ་). The common wisdom is that the 13th Dalai Lama introduced it, inspired by a performance he witnessed during his time in Mongolia in the early 20th century. (I haven’t been able to trace a Tibetan-language source on this yet.)  It’s interesting to see how Cham dances done in different Himalayan communities identify the same figure as either the Chinese Hoshang, or as the White Old Man.  I can’t sort that out right now, but it is fascinating and merits reflection. In Tibetan Cham he tends to have a comic role, in that he attempts to perform simple lay Buddhist practices like khata offerings and prostrations and fails miserably. Or should we say hilariously?

I did my best for the time being to locate earlier testimonies for the White Old Man in Tibetan history, and by far the most interesting thing I could come up with is an 18th century verse by a well-known author of eastern Tibet.

The Six of Long Life,

by Zhuchen Tsultrim Rinchen (1697-1774)

On the author, see the biographical sketch by Benjamin Nourse at Treasury of Lives.

 

སྔོན་དུས་མ་ཧཱ་ཙི་ནའི་ཡུལ་གྲུ་ན།།

བསྐལ་པ་ཆགས་པའི་ཐོག་མར་བྱུང་བའི་བྲག།

མཐོ་མཛེས་དྲུང་གི་དབེན་གནས་ཉམས་དགའ་རུ།།

འཆི་མེད་མགོན་པོ་གྲུབ་པའི་དྲང་སྲོང་བྱུང་།།

In an era long gone by, in the region of Mahācīna,

was a rock that emerged at the dawn of the eon's formation.

Close by its lofty splendor, in a pleasant retreat place,

appeared an accomplished sage, a master of immortality.

དེ་མཐུས་བྲག་རི་དེ་ཡི་འགྲམ་པ་ནས།།

རྒ་ཤི་མེད་པའི་བཅུད་ལེན་ཚེ་ཡི་ཆུ།།

རྟག་པར་བབ་ཅིང་མྱ་ངན་མེད་པའི་ཤིང་།།

མེ་ཏོག་འབྲས་བུས་ལྕི་བ་ཞིག་ཀྱང་སྐྱེས།།

Through his magical powers at the side of that rocky mountain appeared 

a spring of life with alchemical powers to do away with old age and death.

It flowed down unceasingly and there as well was an Ashoka [non-suffering] tree

heavily weighted down with flowers and fruits.

དྲང་སྲོང་དེ་ཡི་བྱམས་པའི་ར་བ་ན།།

ཟང་ཟིང་མི་འཇིགས་སྦྱིན་པའི་གཡབ་མོ་ཡིས།།

འཁོར་དུ་བོས་པའི་འདབ་ཆགས་སྤུ་སྡུག་དང་།།

རི་དགས་རུ་རུ་གནས་པའང་ཚེ་རིང་གྱུར།།

Fast within the corral of that sage's affection 

were the soft downed birds, their birdsongs all around, 

and dwelling with them the Ruru deer. 

With a wave of his hand he grants them fearlessness and food. 

དེ་དག་རྒ་ཤི་སྤངས་པའི་བདེ་བ་ལ།། 

རེག་པ་གང་ཕྱིར་ཚེ་རིང་རྣམ་དྲུག་ཅེས།།

གྲགས་པའི་འཕྲིན་ཡིག་ཕྱོགས་ཀྱི་དགའ་མ་ཡི།།

མཁུར་ཚོས་རྣམ་པར་མཛེས་པའི་རྒྱན་དུ་བྱིན།།

Together these are known as the Six of Long Life who serve 

for attaining to the comfort of being done with old age and death.

This announcement letter is offered as an ornament to beautify

the cheeks of the gladdening women of the compass directions.*

(*Note: Zhuchen liked to use the image of “the cheeks of the gladdening women” in other contexts, and I believe these are all alluding to the messenger poems, an Indic literary genre, its most famous example being Kālidāsa's Cloud Messenger. I should add in order to forestall predictable reactions, that the ‘Indianization’ of particular elements in the poem — the tree identified as Ashoka tree, the deer as a ruru deer, for examples — reflects the strong impulse within Tibet's own traditions of kāvya poetry to Indianize whenever possible for artistic/aesthetic reasons. This is •not• an example of Buddhist ‘appropriation’ along the lines you might be thinking.)

As I said already, his iconographic white color bears no connection to skin color or race. It’s the color of his hair if he has any and beard, and/or his clothing. This iconographic whiteness is something he holds in common with the primary ancestral divinity (with varied names and guises including one we mentioned already) associated with the rites of bringing down life that Toni Huber explored so thoroughly in his recent two-volume book. His tunic, scarf, horse, deer, bird etc. are all said to be white (pp. 83-84). Of course there are a lot of observations about details such as these that might be pointed out (the bat for another surprising instance). 

Mongolists mostly have faith in the idea that today’s White Old Man is an adapted form of an ancient, natively Mongol shamanic complex. Still, Chinese origins for much of his iconography is relatively clear, while one academic, Brian Baumann, deserves attention for his arguments in favor of Indic priority in the form of the sage Agastya, often identified with the bright but seldom seen southern star Canopus. And for those who can’t imagine that Tibet could possibly be a place of origins, I’d ask them to read Toni Huber’s book I mentioned before.

If made to decide what the main point of it all ought to be, I think it is this: The inter-national, inter-cultural dimensions of the cult of longevity as we find instanced in so many parts of eastern Eurasia has had very complex interconnections reaching far back into the haze of prehistory. So far back I’m convinced we will never be able to single out a single culture as the one that best exemplifies it, or that would preserve it in its most pristine forms. As usual, I think reflections about possibilities can be more productive than closing off discussion with a conclusion. Now that it’s so close to lunchtime, might I suggest as starter the sautéed mushrooms? The lingzhi if you can find them.

Reading list

Fred Adelman, “The American Kalmyks,” Expedition, vol. 3, no. 4 (1961), pp. 26-33, with photographs by Carleton S. Coon. There is also a digital version of it.

Sanj Altan, “An Oirad-Kalmyk Version of the ‘White Old Man’ Sūtra found among the Archives of the Late Lama Sanji Rabga Möngke Bakši,” Mongolian Studies, vol. 29 (2007), pp. 13-26. This includes a translation of an Oirat Mongolian text, preserved within the Kalmuck community in Philadelphia, of the apocryphal sūtra listed below as Tibetan text no. 4.

Barbara Mary Annan, “Persistence and Renewal of Worship of the White Old Man in Western Mongolia: An Independent Folklore Research Project in Collaboration with Dr. Balchig Katuu.” The great value of this 16-page essay (including photos) is that it recounts a number of stories told from life about the persistence of Old White Man related beliefs among modern Mongolians, particularly those in the western regions. Available at academia.edu.

Anonymous, “Buddhists Build Their Own Church,” Life, no. 33 (November 10, 1952), pp. 97-98.

Robert Antony, “The Peach Tree” (posted on August 30, 2022).

Although I don’t know on what basis, it is sometimes said that peach trees were first domesticated, which is to say grown in orchards, on the slopes of the Kunlun Mountains, and if this is so it may serve as a kind of vindication of the Chinese myths. What is more certain is that the domestication of the peach took place in the general area of China (which specific spot it is difficult to determine).

Richard M. Barnhart, Peach Blossom Spring: Gardens and Flowers in Chinese Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York 1983). A gorgeously illustrated exhibition catalog on pre-18th-century paintings of garden scenes, with well written and evocative essays as well.

Brian Baumann, “The Legend of Mother Tārā the Green,” contained in: Vesna A. Wallace, ed., Sources of Mongolian Buddhism, Oxford University Press (Oxford 2020), pp. 361-382.  On p. 363:

“The White Ṛṣi in question is obviously a foreign deity in the Mongolian tradition that originated in Hindu Brāhmaṇism. There ‘White Ṛṣi’ is an epithet for the deity Agastya, personification of the star Canopus. It so happens that the White Old Man the White Ṛṣi turns into is a personification of the exact same star only in Chinese Daoist tradition. The text therefore appears to allude to the assimilation of Chinese Canopus allegory from heterodox Daoism into the Mongolian Buddhist pantheon, an act which appears to have taken place sometime in the mid eighteenth century. Shamanism is a synthetic ontology invented by Western scholars and ascribed to the Mongols irrespective of historical reality. The Legend of Green Tārā has nothing to do with it whatsoever.”

Brian Baumann, “The White Old Man.”  Paper given in Berkeley (2017).  Video on YouTube.

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Brian Baumann, “The White Old Man: Géluk-Mongolian Canopus Allegory and the Existence of God,” Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 62, no. 1 (2019), pp. 35-68.

Robert Beer, “Narrative Illustrations,” Chapter 4 in: The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs, Serindia (London 1999), pp. 94-100.  

What he calls narrative illustrations I call tableaus. The modern British artist supplies a Chinese style grouping called Shou-Lao, or the Six Symbols of Longevity (plate 58), as well as a Tibetan-style group he calls by the same name (plate 59). In both case he identifies the fruits as peaches. He says the Tibetan-style version is patterned after a drawing by the modern Tibetan Tsering Wangchub (Wangchug?) of Tashijong. It seems that the Chinese version is the British artist’s own creation, combining various elements perceived as being Chinese.

Wolfgang Bertsch, A Study of Tibetan Paper Money with a Critical Bibliography, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (Dharamsala 1997). 

This publication is a serious analytical study, the best I know about, and it doesn’t give indications of values given to banknotes by collectors. I understand that the 50-srang notes are actually much more valuable to them than the 100, counterintuitive as that may seem. Both have the Long-Life Man design on their versos.

Raoul Birnbaum, “Secret Halls of the Mountain Lords: The Caves of Wu-t'ai shan,” Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, vol. 5 (1989-1990), pp. 15-140. 

 

Àgnes Birtalan, “Ritual Texts Dedicated to the White Old Man with Examples from the Classical Mongolian and Oirat (Clear Script) Textual Corpora,” contained in: Vesna A. Wallace, ed., Sources of Mongolian Buddhism, Oxford University Press (Oxford 2020), pp. 270-293. The same author wrote an essay, “Cagān Öwgön – The White Old Man in the Leder Collections The Textual and Iconographic Tradition of the Cult of the White Old Man among the Mongols,” although I haven’t gotten access to it.

Stephen R. Bokenkamp, “The Peach Flower Font and the Grotto Passage,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 106, no. 1 (1986), pp. 65-77.

Suzanne E. Cahill, Transcendence & Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of the West in Medieval China, Stanford University Press (Stanford 1993). I think everyone agrees this is the best source available in English about the Queen Mother of the West and her residences.

Barbara Gerke, Long Lives and Untimely Deaths: Life-Span Concepts and Longevity Practices among Tibetans in the Darjeeling Hills, India, Brill (Leiden 2012).

Walther Heissig, The Religions of Mongolia, tr. by Geoffrey Samuel from the German edition of 1970, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London 1980), pp. 76-81. At p. 76 you can see how Tibetan rgan, ‘elder,’ and sgam, ‘wise clever,’ get crossed somehow:  

“The Mongols worship under the name of Tsaghan Ebügen (White Old Man) a deity of the herds and of fertility, who is also present with the same form of manifestation and the same functions among the Tibetans (sGam po dkar po)* and the Na-khi tribes of South-West China (Muan-llū-ddu-ndzi), and to whom East Asian parallels can be found in the Chinese Hwa-shang, Pu-tai Hoshang and the Japanese Jurojin, and a European parallel in the form of the bearded St. Nicholas. This is an instance of the veneration of the ‘Old Man’ as a personification of the creative principle.”

(*My note: Observe how the Tibetan spelling meaning “White Wise [Man]” is given rather than the spelling that means ‘White Old Man,’ but this confusion of near homonyms appears to be endemic, and may be indicative, which is not to say that old always means wise. In his iconography he is often characterized by a dragon-headed staff that Heissig understands as the shaman’s staff.)

Futaki Hiroshi, “Classification of Texts Related to the White Old Man,” contained in: H. Futaki & B. Oyunbilig, eds., Questiones Mongolorum Disputatae, Association for International Studies of Mongolian Culture (Tokyo 2005), pp. 35-46.  

Toni Huber, “An Obscure Word for ‘Ancestral Deity’ in Some East Bodish and Neighbouring Himalayan Languages & Qiang Ethnographic Records towards a Hypothesis,” contained in: Mark W. Post, et al., eds., Language & Culture in Northeast India & Beyond in Honor of Robbins Burling, Asia-Pacific Linguistics (Canberra 2015), pp. 162-181. 

On a curious name for the clan ancester deity: Gu-se-lang-ling, it appears in various forms including "Gurzhe," and is often spoken of as 'O-de-gung-rgyal. A less emphasized figure is Tshangs-pa or Tshangs-pa Dkar-po as a natively Tibetan figure (and not as a translation of Brahma!?). More on this in his 2020 book, vol. 1, pp. 80-93.

Toni Huber, “From Death to New Life: An 11th-12th Century Cycle of Existence from Southernmost Tibet: Analysis of Rnel dri 'dul ba, Ste'u & Sha slungs Rites, with Notes on Manuscript Provenance,” contained in: G. Hazod & W. Shen, eds., Tibetan Genealogies: Studies in Memoriam of Guge Tsering Gyalpo (1961-2015), China Tibetology Publishing (Beijing 2018), pp. 251-350.  

Toni Huber, Source of Life: Revitalisation Rites and Bon Shamans in Bhutan and the Eastern Himalayas, Austrian Academy of Sciences Press (Vienna 2020), in 2 volumes. While centered on extensive research into local traditions still current in the eastern half of Bhutan and the adjacent Mon-yul Corridor, issues of broad-ranging areal significance are drawn from them. Highly recommended.

Toni Huber, “The Iconography of gShen Priests in the Ethnographic Context of the Extended Eastern Himalayas, and Reflections on the Development of Bon Religion,” contained in: Franz-Karl Ehrhard & Petra Maurer, eds., Nepalica-Tibetica: Festgabe for Christoph Cüppers, International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Andiast 2013), vol. 1, pp. 263-294.  See especially pp. 266-267 for the ‘Great Wise Bat’ (Sgam-chen Pha-wang), a useful summary on the subject that also takes up an entire chapter in Toni’s monograph Source of Life.

Siegbert Hummel, “The White Old Man,” tr. by G. Vogliotti, The Tibet Journal, vol. 22, no. 4 (Winter 1997), pp. 59-70. Originally published in German in Sinologica, vol. 6 (1961), pp. 193-206. This discusses the age of his cult in Tibet as well as the exchange of identities between him and the Hoshang.

Caroline Humphrey, “A Note on the Kalmyk Tsagan Aav, the ‘White Grandfather’: Ritual and Iconography,” might be found posted at Kalmyk Heritage website.

Tenzin Jamtsho, “The Old Man ‘Mitshering’ at Nyima Lung Monastery,” Journal of Bhutanese Studies, vol. 28 (Summer 2013), pp. 90-99. 

This is mainly about the dance figure known to some Bhutanese as the Long-Life Man (Mi Tshe-ring) and to others as Rgyal-po Hwa-shang, suggesting he was both a king and a Chinese monk. In my experience he is always identified as being in some way Chinese, although within the context of the monastic dances he always pays his respects to Guru Rinpoche.

Luther G. Jerstad, Mani-Rimdu: Sherpa Dance-Drama, University of Washington Press (Seattle 1969), pp. 129-135:

Here we have a significant description of the Long-Life Man 0r “Mi-tshe-ring,” with photos of the same in the illustrations between pages 128 and 129.  The figures of the Long-Life Man and the Hoshang are combined together, something that happens with some frequency elsewhere, but here in the land of the Sherpas in Nepal, the comic figure takes precedence. He makes valiant attempts to perform simple acts of worship and offering, but fails hilariously each time. Interestingly enough, it is suggested that he was imported by the 13th Dalai Lama from Peking, with not the least mention of Mongolia.

Richard J. Kohn, Lord of the Dance: The Mani Rimdu Festival in Tibet and Nepal, State University of New York Press (Albany 2001), in particular “Dance Five: The Long-Life Man,” at pp. 199-204.

Among the Sherpas of Solu-Kumbu of Nepal, the Long Life Man performance is made up of lay religious practices badly performed by him and his acolytes including offerings of ritual scarves or khatags, prostrations, and, most significantly for our currency iconography.the water torma offering (chu-gtor).

Stephen Little with Shawn Eichman, Taoism and the Arts of China, The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago 2000).  At pp. 268-271 are some marvelous painted scrolls of the Shouxing and at pp. 276-277 a very nice one of Xiwangmu; her assistant holds up a bowl of peaches with the leaves attached, a thing we see sitting on the ground in our Tibetan banknote.

S. Mahdihassan, “The Patron-Gods of Health and of Longevity: Chinese, Greek and Indian,” Bulletin of the Indian Institute for the History of Medicine, vol. 19, no. 1 (January 1989), pp. 111-127. The pharmacology/alchemy of revitalization and longevity hasn’t been my main theme, but I do think this article can instigate important comparative reflections.

Jim R. McClanahan, “Journey to the West and Islamic Lore,” a webpage posted back in 2017, but updated earlier this year. Especially pertinent for the parts about the speaking peaches and the Waqwaq tree. Thanks to S.V.V. for suggesting the link.

Rene de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Tibetan Religious Dances: Tibetan Text and Annotated Translation of the 'Chams Yig, Paljor Publications (New Delhi 1997), pp. 82-84.  

As a figure in monastic masked dances, the Hashang is sometimes highly honored and in other cases ridiculed, depending on the audience and what they perceive him to be. It may be that his role in these dances in Tibetan regions is not very old, but introduced by the 13th Dalai Lama after his visit to Mongolia.  At p. 83:  

“Originally cagan öbö seems to have been a divinity of the pre-Buddhist Mongolian folk religion. He was apparently a clan deity and moreover a benevolent earth spirit protecting the household, the herds, and the pastures and granting rich harvests.”

Jeremy Roberts, Chinese Mythology A to Z [Second Edition], Chelsea House Publishers (New York 2010), p. 114:

“Shouxing (Shou Hsing, Shou-hsing Lao T’ou-tzu) The Chinese god of longevity, connected with a star located in the constellation of Argo. The star is known to many in the West as Canopus, the second-brightest star in the sky.”

Edward H. Schafer, “Empyreal Powers and Chthonian Edens: Two Notes on T’ang Taoist Literature,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 106, no. 4 (October 1986), pp. 667-677.  On the Peach Blossom Grotto and so on.

Karma Lekshe Tsomo, “Prayers of Resistance,” Nova Religio, vol. 20, no. 1 (August 2016), pp. 86-98.  At p. 92:

“On the second and sixteenth days of the lunar calendar, they go to the field to pray to the White Old Man, a practice of nature worship that predates Buddhism in Central Asian cultures. In this ritual, the women worship the master of nature and make prayers for peace, rain, and abundant crops, and to stave off natural disasters. They make a fire using butter and sheep fat, and present their requests for the welfare of both people and animals.”

Franciscus Verellen, “The Beyond Within: Grotto-Heavens (Dongtian) in Taoist Ritual and Cosmology,” Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, vol. 8 (1995), pp. 265-290.

Sissi Wachtel-Galor, John Yuen, John A. Buswell, and Iris F. F. Benzie, “Chapter 9: Ganoderma lucidum (Lingzhi or Reishi), a Medicinal Mushroom.” This is an extract from the 2nd (2011) edition of Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Offering Water Charity to the Pretas: Including the Daily Practice of Water Offering to Dzambhala, FPMT (Portland OR 2006), a booklet in 53 pages. 

+  +  +

Some Tibetan-language Manuscripts on the White Old Man

Rgan-po Dkar-po Bsangs, ‘Incense Offerings for the White Old Man.’  A 3-folio text, author given as Blo-bzang-bstan-'dzin ming-can.  TBRC no. W1NLM61. 

Rgan-po Dkar-po-la Mchod-gtor Bsangs G.yang.  An 11-folio ms.  It seems to bear the title Rgan-po Dkar-po Mdo [see the final line of fol. 11 verso], and it is immediately followed by interesting text we list next. TBRC no. W1NLM2000. 

Sa [dang] Chu'i 'Dul-bar Gnon-par Nus Mdo, ‘Sūtra of Power to Subjugate, to Tame, Earth and Water.’ It supplies titles in Chinese and Mongolian as well as Tibetan, and on its 2nd folio it supplies an iconography of the White Old Man.  It has all the marks of being a scriptural sūtra, although it is surely not of Indian origins, but locally produced, and for that reason of extraordinary interest. TBRC no. W1NLM2000. I found another version of it with a variant title in TBRC no. W1NLM1842: Sa dang Chu’i Bdal-bar Gnon-par Nus-pa’i Mdo, which I am tempted to translate, very tentatively, as Sūtra on the Power to Prevent Earth and Water from Exceeding their Bounds (there is a lot of variance in the Mongolian language titles and in the ways they have been Englished in the literature).  

Rgan-pa [D]kar-po [G]sol-mchod [note the subscribed Dkris, perhaps abbreviation for Bkra-shis]. A 7-folio ms. The colophon says it was written by Tho-go-rtse Tho-tho [clarified in a note as meaning Tho-go-co Khu-thug-tho] at the urging of the layperson (U-pa-shi) Sangs-rgyas-shes-rab.  TBRC no. W1NLM1590.  

Rgan-po Dkar-po’i Gsol-mchod. The folios are unnumbered, but you can see near the end that its composition is attributed to Padma-’byung-gnas, or Padmasambhava. Contained in TBRC no. W1NLM3102.  

Rgan-po Dkar-po’i Gsol-mchod Byas-tshul [=Bya-tshul]. A 9-folio ms.  Its colophon simply attributes it to Padma-’byung-gnas, or Padmasambhava. Contained in TBRC no. W1NLM2308.

 

To this list we ought to add

Srid-pa’i Pha-wang Lha-’bod Lha-’bod Lha Mi Bar-gyi Phrin Gyer, “A Divine Invocation for the Bat of Existence (Life/Evolution): A Chant Message between the Divine and Human,” contained in the scanned volume with the cover title Bsang-brngan Yid-bzhin-nor-bu sogs, pp. 159-174.  TBRC no. W4CZ332272.  I do find a Pha-wang Lha-’bod, “A Divine Invocation for the Bat,” text listed in a Bon scriptural canon catalog, actually twice, once accompanied by a text called Pha-wang-gi Zhu-ba, “The Questions of the Bat.” Inspired by Toni Huber’s monumental book, I thought I would write up a tiny web-log about these texts, but now I’m thinking someone just like you might be interested in working on them.

§  §  §

I’ve merely touched on the subject here, so I recommend a look back at “Star Water,” an earlier Tibeto-logic blog posted on September 15, 2017, where the Sage Agastya and connections to the Canopus star may become brighter than they are at the moment. Canopus is even entangled with Tibetan swimming festivals, as you’ll see. For more in-depth on the Agastya connection, see Baumann’s 2019 & 2020; Roberts’ 2010.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has an interesting page with beautiful artworks devoted to Chinese longevity symbols.

This blog and the one that came before it represents a blog-ified version of a paper with powerpoint given recently at a small conference entitled “Tibet & the Oirats — Oirat Cultural Legacy and the Earliest History of Tibetan and Mongolian Studies,” held on 14–15 November 2022. 

One last thing

Did Tibetans of early times know anything at all about a Peach Blossom Grotto that was supposed to lie at the northernmost edge of their plateau according to Chinese literature? I had my strong doubts, but no definite idea how to answer this question, so I did some creative searching in BDRC’s database. Unfortunately, all I could come up with is a 2006 publication from the PRC that gives to it a Tibetan name: “Thar-ldan Kham-bu ’Byung Tshal.”* I suppose what is interesting about this source is that it makes a direct comparison with Sems-kyi Nyi-zla (‘Mental Sun-Moon’?). I know that may not ring a bell, but that’s the fake back-translation (or rather phonetic transcription!?) into Tibetan of Shangri-la (as it is pronounced in modern Chinese) that was then used to justify choosing where Shangri-la as tourist destination would from then on be found. For that exceedingly weird story, see that 2016 Tibeto-logic blog entitled “Signs of Shangri-la.” Are we even surprised that Wikipedia-wallahs were totally suckered into the rabbit hole? They may never find their way out, and meanwhile human history may never recover from the altered time line unless... Look here.

(*I thought to unpack this translation: Clearly Kham-bu is the Tibetan word for “peach,” and 'Byung indicates “origin,” so “peach origin.” But Tshal means “Grove.” Did the translator choose a Tibetan word meaning “grove” for the Chinese term we translate into English as “grotto”? A grove is not a grotto... Oh, and Thar-ldan means “Having Freedom,” right?)

The White Old Man Sūtra - Part One

South Korea, July 2022

From Lhasa to Philadelphia

The White Old Man Sūtra and the Long Life Tableau on the Back of Tibetan Currency Notes.

This two-part blog is for Yu Wonsoo, and Hanna Sorek, too.

During these past years of shutdown and isolation, visits to homes of friends have been rare. Still, we did do it once several months ago. I noticed our long-time friend Hanna, known to have an interest in Tibetan things, had a 100 srang currency note framed on her wall. She took it out from behind the glass and I started to say something about the design decorating the back of it, a tableau of the Man of Long Life (མི་ཚེ་རིང་), and before I knew it I was trying to point out and interpret its every detail. There is really a lot to see in it, and I’m sure I didn’t get it all right. So I’m going to try again. I hope this will not be a narrowly iconographic study, but a wider search for the meaning of this particular work of art and why it is found where it is. Placement may not be everything, but it is always significant.

Before we dive into the iconography of money, a few words about the circumstances that made me rethink a few things. Several connections I could not have even conceived before reading into Toni Huber’s impressively important 2-volume monograph on annual rituals for long life and prosperity held in both eastern Bhutan and its eastern neighbor, the Mönyul Corridor. A life of Tibetan Studies is one filled with amazing coincidences that can also create ruptures in your ordinary thought processes. So naturally, while I was reading the early chapters of Huber’s Source of Life an article fell on top of me, one by the famed Mongolist Caroline Humphrey,* that started me along a new train of  thinking. The conclusion that there are connections between the two was inescapable if not immediately explicable.

(*If you like, go to the references listed at the end of Part Two. Humphrey’s article fell on me thanks to the weekly notifications I receive from “Googlescholar.” I’m not going to review Toni’s book here, just extract from you a promise to read it, the first hundred pages at the very least.)

Now the Kalmuck-American community in New Jersey formed after a group of the westward-moving Oirats — displaced after World War II in Vienna, Belgrade and elsewhere in Europe — were taken much further west; in 1951 the U.S. granted them asylum and resettlement in New Jersey and Philadelphia. Among the first arrivals was Lama Sanji Rabga Möngke Bakši, who served as the head of the St. Tsongkhapa temple in Philadelphia until his death in 1972. Found among his personal effects was an Oirat version of the White Old Man Sūtra. According to the essay writer, Sanj Altan, the rituals associated with it were performed by the Kalmyk settlers up until the 1980’s.  

Click to enlarge

Basically a lay practice, monastics might be present to do the sūtra recitation, although in their absence this, too, could be done by a literate layperson. It involved ritual libations of milk, aspersed using a leafy branch, as you can see in the photograph, taken by an anthropologist named Carleton Coon, well known for other reasons back in the early 60’s.

It could be argued that in a sense all of Tibetan religion is about long life. Or, to put it in a different way, lay Tibetans tend to think that attending Buddhist teachings and particularly empowerments will result in a longer life, and they might even call such events ‘Long Life.’  I heard this numerous times during my days in Bodhnath in Nepal, but if you have doubts about this testimony, I can suggest Barbara Gerke’s book you see here, with the title Long Lives and Untimely Deaths. It might change your mind.

I use the word ‘tableau’ as a convenient word for a small group of Tibetan artworks with set iconography. I would identify three or four sets of figures I would like to call by the name of artistic tableaus, or simply tableaus.

They have in common that they are symbolic devices often found painted on outside walls of Tibetan monasteries and the like. They are sometimes found on odd sides of the building where they aren't especially visible. I cannot confidently explain why this is.

The Six of Long Life is one of them. Here you see illustrated two more. On the right you see the Four Harmonious Brothers, and on the left, the Mongol Leading the Tiger. 

Another less commonly seen one is the Indian Teacher Leading an Elephant.  I once noticed an example tucked into an outside corner of a temple in Bodhnath, and wish I could find the photograph.

The Four Harmonious Brothers seems to have its source in the Vinaya-vastu, but the stories used to explain the picture can vary quite a lot.  The message would seem to be one of the importance of cooperating in order to attain common goals, and that is how I've nearly always heard and seen it explained. However, in the Vinaya text it is more about respecting hierarchies based on seniority (the smallest animal is in fact the oldest and for that reason requires the top position).

Mongol Leading the Tiger:  Even if less frequent, this is another scene often painted on outer sides of temple walls. I’ve seen arguments this represents a legendary Mongolian warrior called Dugar Jaisang.  Somehow, in some unknown way, I’m thinking it must at least in a general way symbolize the Mongolian assistance given to the Gelugpa school against its opponents. It’s as if the aggressor (in the form of the tiger) is being pulled back and led away. Some give an elaborate interpretation of its three elements — the tiger, the Mongol and the chain — as symbolizing three Bodhisattvas. From what few explanations I’ve learned about, this has been the most popular one.

Both the Four Harmonious Brothers and the White Old Man can be found on backs of Tibetan currency notes of the early-to-mid 20th century. Here you see the front side of a Tibetan 100 srang denomination banknote. Have a good look at it, and I’ll briefly review its main features.

We can know from the twice handwritten serial no. kha[1] 18253 that this particular bill was made in 1953, the year of my birth (that the two numbers share the last 2 digits is another happenstance). I’ve labeled the various elements, and translated the main inscriptions in the slide you see here:

I should also point out a few difficult-to-see details — Note the sūrya-candra (sun-moon) symbol forming the top of the the round seal of the Dalai Lama, and Vajra Wall symbol surrounding the 'Phags-pa letters in the square seal of the Lhasa Bank. The sūrya-candra in this context surely means the pairing of religious and political affairs, while the Vajra Wall emphasizes the impenetrable nature of the Lhasa Bank. It conveys the notion of security and inviolability, although “security features” is one of those many subjects that could easily lead us off into interminable tangents. So let’s turn it over and see what’s on the back.

The verso of the same 100 srang banknote

One thing to notice before we narrow in on the central field:  The green border conceals ’Phags-pa script of Tibetan words also found on the front side.” The left side reads “Dga’-ldan Pho-brang” or ‘Ganden Phodrang,’ while the right reads “Phyogs-las Rnam-rgyal,” or ‘Victorious over the Directions.’ 

The central field of the same enlarged

For comparison, I also show the back side of the 50 srang banknote, all printed in blue. Its design is pared down to the most basic elements corresponding to the Six of Long Life, but its relative simplicity may make it easier to read.

Verso of the 50 srang banknote

• In the mean time, try and see what you can see in it. For the explanations that I think I can offer, go to the continuation by clicking here.

Plagiarization of a Dissertation on Tibetan Verbal Prefixes

Turcologist Herbert Wilhelm Duda,
who may be in some sense partly to blame

Dear reader! I recommend you read this astonishing story about more and slightly less imperfect academics first, and afterwards I’ll supply a list of the perpetrators. It is drawn from a book of memoirs, Nicholas Poppe’s Reminiscences, ed. by Henry G. Schwarz, Studies on East Asia series vol. 16, Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University (Bellingham 1983), pp. 230-231.

“In 1952 I received a letter from a young Austrian scholar, the Turcologist and Mongolist Udo Posch, who taught at the University of Graz. He asked me whether he could obtain a Fulbright Fellowship to work at the University of Washington. I talked this over with Professor Taylor, and arrangements were made for Posch’s coming. He arrived in the fall of 1953. From the very beginning he appeared a strange person. He often was, or pretended to be, ill and missed many classes. One could often see on the blackboard of his class the notice "No Turkish today." Finally this notice became permanent, and a note to the janitor was added which told him not to erase it. 

“Posch was irascible and unfriendly to his students. His unpublished doctoral dissertation was on Tibetan verbal prefixes, and he often showed it to his students as if wanting to say that they would never be able to produce a scholarly work like this. Once a student who was not studying under him asked him for help in translating an obscure passage in a Tibetan text. Posch flew into a rage and declared that he did not know and did not want to know “all those monkey languages,” and ordered the student out of his office. The student went to the student lounge and while he was sadly reflecting on his clash with Posch, another student entered and asked what the matter was. He related his experience with Posch and his listener said that he was utterly puzzled because Posch had always boasted about his dissertation on Tibetan verbal prefixes. The two students then decided to solve this puzzle, and one day when they found Posch’s office open and empty, they took Posch’s dissertation which lay on his desk and microfilmed it. They then went to the university library and discovered in the catalog the title of a book on Tibetan verbal prefixes by von Koerber, published in Los Angeles in 1939. After obtaining a copy of that book, the students quickly discovered that Posch’s dissertation was a verbatim translation of that book. Armed with this evidence, they marched to Professor Taylor and showed it to him. Posch was immediately fired, Vienna University was notified, and it declared Posch’s doctoral degree null and void. 

“When I asked Posch why he had done it, he answered that he had been Professor Duda’s doctoral candidate in Turkish but that he had a quarrel with him and changed over to become a graduate student of Professor Robert Bleichsteiner, the Tibetanist and Mongolist. Bleichsteiner allegedly suggested that he write his dissertation on Tibetan. I suspect that Bleichsteiner knew perfectly well that Posch’s dissertation was simply a translation of von Koerber’s book because Bleichsteiner was too good a scholar not to be acquainted with that book. Being a kind person, he obviously wanted to help Posch who was in a difficult position after his clash with Duda.

“Professor Taylor suggested to Posch that he get a valid doctoral degree, but Posch had become addicted to drugs in the meantime and died in the 1960s. Posch’s case was unique. I had never before encountered a plagiarist quite like him, and I was surprised to learn that a plagiarist could be as naive as to show his manuscript to everybody and to brag about it. At the very least, he should have destroyed the manuscript after having obtained his degree.”

-  -  -

Dramatis personae

Robert Bleichsteiner (1891-1954) is memorable mainly for his book Die Gelbe Kirche, published in Vienna in 1937, translated into French as L'Eglise jaune, about the Gelugpa school. It is rarely even mentioned in recent times. I don’t think there was ever an English translation of it. His specialty was in the languages of the Caucasus, primarily Georgian.

“Duda” means Herbert W. Duda (1900-1975). There is a fairly substantial Wiki entry about him in German. Here we see that he was one of the many German academics who signed a statement welcoming Adolf Hitler’s rise to the chancellorship.

The book that was plagiarized was this one: Hans Nordiwen von Koerber (1896-1979), Morphology of the Tibetan Language: A Contribution to Comparative Indosinology, Suttonhouse (Los Angeles 1935). For a PDF, just search in Internet Archive (https://archive.org/) and download it in a format of your choice.  In this book he also announced a book in preparation: Dictionary of Tibetan Roots and Their Development. His works have seldom been found worthy of mention. The author was one of the many Germans kept prisoner in India during the war, but other than that I can find out little more about him apart from a brief sketch here. This does tell us that this book is an English rendering of his 1921 dissertation in German. There are two slight inaccuracies in the Reminiscences: [1] The English version of his dissertation was published in 1935, not 1939, and [2] Tibetan only makes use of verbal prefixes when making calques from Sanskrit (examples: rjes-su, rab-tu, rnam-par), otherwise verbal inflections are mainly done with suffixes.

One of the two UW students responsible for uncovering Posch’s plagiarism was John Krueger (1927-2018) who would later teach Mongolian Studies at Indiana University’s Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies, meanwhile moonlighting as a pimp for welfare mothers under his moniker Paul Toll (he was tried and found guilty, but let off lightly). I have a clipping of this on file: Dan Kadlec, “Professor Charged in Prostitution Ring,” The Herald-Telephone [Bloomington, Indiana], vol. 107, no. 69 (Tuesday, August 2, 1983). Other news items can be found on the internet if you look for them, like this one on his sentencing. I was in town at the time, and distinctly remember joking speculations about why he may have given himself the name “Paul Toll,” suggesting it was a ‘hidden’ version of *Tall Pole or the like. But now with a little hindsight and Schmoogling I can see how ad hoc that explanation really was. Paul Toll (1882-1946) was business partner with another wealthy Swede who finally committed suicide in Paris in 1932 named Ivar Krueger. In 1908 the two of them jointly formed a company called “Krueger & Toll.” If we were to look further, it may well be that the two Kruegers were twigs in the same family tree. A movie, The Match King, was based on the life of Ivar Krueger. It portrays him as an early modern global entrepeneuer and victim of his own Ponzi scheme. You can see a trailer here. It seems in the movie the name of Paul Toll turns into Paul Kroll which is then used as the name of Ivar Krueger, his role played by the actor Warren William, or do I have things mixed up here?

Have a look at this letter to The Crimson by Richard N. Frye.  Note that Frye, Harvard professor and former OSS member, was active in recruiting Poppe for the American academy. Given his personal role in bringing Nicholas Poppe to North American and finding him a position, we might be wary of slanted testimony. For more on how Poppe’s Americanization was one example of a broader post-war policy of recruiting ‘brains’ for the academic world while turning a half-blind eye when it came to just whose interests those brains had been working for during the war, see Martin Oppenheimer, “Social Scientists and War Criminals.” 

The dates of Udo Posch are 1922-1965. I really cannot add anything of interest about him except to say that he contributed a few entries about ethnic groups in Northwest China for the Human Relations Area Files in 1956. A list of his works was published after his death in the Central Asiatic Journal, but I can’t get access to it at the moment. (I did get access with a little help from J.S.) 

“Professor Taylor” means the Sinologist George Edward Taylor (1905-2000), another professor at the University of Washington.

§  §  §

I don’t know that plagiarism of complete dissertations has been all that common in any field of study. I have the feeling that nowadays it would be much more difficult to get away with as there are a number of easy-to-use digital methods for detection. But there is one case I know of. A well-known contemporary Indologist and Tibetologist teaching in the Netherlands woke up one day to find that his dissertation on Tibetan grammar had been plagiarized by an Indian “author.” But let our good friend, Leiden professor Peter Verhagen tell you about it himself, in this Oral History of Tibetan Studies interview.

Mystery Histories - 6½ Including the 5 Chan

I wouldn’t expect you to remember a set of old Tibeto-logic blogs about the Nine Chan, Tibetan royal heirlooms of the imperial era that may have continued being passed down long after the fall of the empire in 842.* Today’s blog is a somewhat technical one about the distinct yet conceptually related set of Five Chan, a subset of the slightly larger set of 6½ early historical sources made use of in historical works of the late-12th-13th (and perhaps also 14th) centuries. After that we could say that they basically disappeared, for most part leaving behind hardly anything but traces. 

(*If you want to go back to look at the nine, start with the nine-year-old Regalia Untranslatable, Part One, and go on from there. If you want to schmoogle the newly published translation of the Long Deyu, the full title is A History of Buddhism in India and Tibet: An Expanded Version of the Dharma’s Origins Made by the Learned Scholar Deyu. You may want to look there to find relevant discussions and bibliographical references. For the classic original study on the Five Chan with discussion of their titles, see Samten G. Karmay's 1988 essay, “The Etiological Problem of the Yarlung Dynasty.”)

Why were the sets of nine and five objects associated with royalty all given names with the word Chan (ཅན་)? The names of each of the 14 objects share nearly identical syntax, typically five syllables in length, ending in that syllable chan that means ‘having.’ This means it possesses the mark or characteristic indicated in the (typically) two syllables that precede it. Another reason for the chan term has occurred to me — it turns out some parts of these objects are explicitly associated with the reign of Relpachan (རལ་པ་ཅན་) in the early 9th century so it may be they were called so as a homage to his name, which is actually a nickname meaning ‘Having Curls.’ Or perhaps I’ve gotten things backward. Did he received his nickname as a conscious homage to the objects?

The lists of five and nine have, besides their identical formal syntax, their own wildly differing spellings. Every main source is almost entirely unique in its ways of spelling them. This makes them more than likely to be misread and misinterpreted by us today, especially if we haven't done some preliminary homework. The spelling variants mostly result, I believe, from scribal hypercorrections (in which the scribe thinks she perceives a problem and imagines she knows what’s best), but they also result from misreading certain letters of the Tibetan cursive (dbu-med) script[s]. To non-Tibetanist readers that means the explanations are likely to prove opaque, and all I can do in response to their complaints is say how sorry I am.

Quite a number of works are explicitly referenced as source works in the Long Deyu, including histories and documents both available and unavailable to us today. Here, by way of introduction, I will briefly mention a few of them.

• One less mysterious history that is referred to directly by name is the Bka'-chems. The Bka'-chems Ka-khol-ma is used as a source, cited as Bka'-chems in the Long Deyu, p. 277, and summarized in its following pages.  

• Also, an early version of the biography of Vairocana, the Great Mask or 'Dra-'bag Chen-mo, although its title is not given, was the source for the account of Vairocana (Long Deyu, pp. 304-316). The Great Mask is well known and even exists in a fine English translation of one version, The Great Image.

• One of the most intriguingly mysterious of the cited works is completely unavailable to the best of my knowledge. It is frequently quoted, mostly using the title Heap of Jewels or Rin-chen Spungs-pa, and the passages taken from it all concern royalty.

I just mention these examples of histories cited in the Deyu histories as a prelude to our main subject, since they are not included in the category of the 6½.

So now we’ll try to find our way through those 6½ titles with their variant spellings. You will have to agree to do some of the work of sorting and figuring things out. One shockingly old source for their names only came to my attention a few days ago, but I’ll put off talking about that one for a few minutes.

That the Five Chan date to the time of Emperor Relpachan seems proven in a passage in the quite early text entitled Chos-'byung-gi Yi-ge Zhib-mo, contained in: Rba-bzhed Phyogs-bsgrigs (2009), p. 222 (and notice also p. 65 of the same publication):  [1] Zangs-ma Mjug-ral-can.  [2] Rje'i Bka'-rtsigs-can.  [3] Yongs-dga' Lha-dgyes-can.  [4] Ltab-ma Dgu-rtsegs-can.  [5] Zings-po Sna-tshogs-can.  [6] Gsang-ba Phyag-rgya-can.  [7] Spun-po-can.  Although there are clearly seven titles, it says there are five*. These are listed among the accomplishments of Relpachan whose name is (I think it may not be an accident) also ending with can.  This passage corresponds to the Stein ed. of the Sba-bzhed, at p. 75:  zhang blon rnams la yo ga lha dges ban dang / ltab ma dgu tsag can dang / zings po sna tshogs can dang / gsang ba phyag rgya can dang / spun po can lnga gnang nas... 

(*Or maybe it is saying that of those listed five of them are 'long' (yun po) or supply coverage of the full length of the dynasty[? more on this odd term later]... anyway, 7 or rather 6½ is the usual number.)

One can compare this to the Nyang-ral history (1988 ed.), p. 393:  gzhan bka'i yig rtsis che chung / bka'i thang yig che chung / bka'i gtsigs kyi yi ge mang du yod do // gzhan yang rgyal rabs rkyang pa dang / khug pa / zings po can dang / yun po la sogs mang po yod do.  On p. 426, some of these histories are directly credited to the time of Relpachan (more evidence for them coming from his time, and the first listed is on prostrations and polite enquiries, not itself numbered among the 6½ but quoted at considerable length in the Long Deyu):  zhang blon rnams la phyag dang / snyung rmed btab ma dgu rtseg can dang / zings po sna tshogs can la sogs rigs mi 'dra ba sna tshogs gnang (the first shad punctuation is misplaced, and should come after the syllable rmed).  And, at the very end, at p. 501, in telling the sources he used for composing his Dharma History:  rgyal rabs gsang ba chos lugs dang / sgrags pa bon lugs / rkyang pa / khug pa / sbags [sbas] pa gsum / rgyal blon gab pa / yun po gser skas dgu pa / zings po sna tshogs can / de rnams kyi don dang ston pa'i gsung rab las byung ba dang / bla ma dam pa rnams kyi bka' lung dang / rgyal po'i bka' chems / so so skye bo'i bden pa'i ngag smra ba rnams...  (This bit is translated in Hirschberg's book Remembering the Lotus-born, p. 168.)

• At this point I ask you to download a Word file containing a chart covering most of the main sources on the 6½ histories.  Just click once or twice on these words — “Mystery History 6½” — and you will be taken to a Dropbox site where you ought to download the doc file with ease (if you have trouble, try tapping on the three vertical dots to find the download button). You will see that there are four columns arranged chronologically according to the datings given to the historical writings. The idea is to place things side-by-side for easy comparison, and this is impossible to do within blog parameters.

Now I want to look at still further mysterious histories outside the category of the 6½, seeing that there is some overlapping. This also shows that still more mysterious histories remain out of our reach today.

In the Grub-mtha' by Rog Bande, p. 47 (in José Cabezón’s English translation, p. 92):

de rnams ni lha dang mi'i yul du ji ltar grags pa'i tshul lo /  lo rgyus de dag ni /  khams pa seng ge yis /  mdo khams smad kyi chos 'byung dang smri ti dznyā na kīr ti la dri ba'i the tshom bcad pa'i lo rgyus chen mo dag las ji ltar 'byung ba'i tshul brjod pa'o //

The pair of histories, mentioned as sources, include a Dharma History of Amdo by Khams-pa Seng-ge. This would likely be an account of the monastic revival that had its source in Amdo, but who knows... Who could believe that such an old history of Amdo could exist so long before it was even called by that name? The other one mentioned is a Great History (Lo-rgyus Chen-mo) that was meant to cut off doubts related to questions asked of Smṛtijñānakīrti. I doubt this last has anything to do with Khu-ston's Great History, although it may further fuel our perplexities. It appears that Smṛti’s text has been, at least in part, incorporated into the preceding pages of Rog Bande’s text — it retains the question and answer format — so not all is lost.

The Bka'-chems Ka-khol-ma (my 1989 edition), p. 235, says that for more detailed information on the supine demoness suppressing temples, see “the Bka'-chems Zla-ba 'Dod-'jo composed by the sixteen ministers and the Bka'-chems Dar-dkar Gsal-ba composed by the queens.” (And these two titles are distinct from the Rgyal-po'i Bka'-chems, which is the Ka-khol-ma itself.)  This same set of three is named by Nyang-ral (as noted in Tibetan Histories [1st ed.], no. 4).  One might wonder if these might be the actual rediscovered sources on which the Bka'-thang Sde Lnga was based, as three of its five books are likewise associated with kings, queens and ministers...

It seems to me there are a lot of interesting questions that haven’t even been asked yet, so forget about final conclusions, we just aren’t ready for them.

Too late for the book

To my chagrin, just yesterday I found, when looking for something else online, a fascinating essay, dated over a year ago, about an early history that was identified only recently. The translation of the Long Deyu history has already come out in July of 2022, which is anyway fortunate. I spent twelve years making this book and it simply had to walk off my desk at some point. How was I to know a small history book would emerge which, when it will in a future unknown date be made available, is going to be very important for several reasons, not least of all the 6½ histories.  For one thing, it has its own odd spellings for their titles, and having at hand even more odd spellings might really help us come to well weighed decisions about their actual or original or intended meanings. The source of all my information on this newly noticed old manuscript is this essay, and this essay alone:

Rmog-ru Gnam-lha-tshe-ring, “Gsar du rnyed pa'i bod kyi dpe rnying phyag bris ma Chos 'byung gsal byed mig thur gyi 'grel pa la thog mar dpyad pa,” Krung go'i bod rig pa [published online] (January 27, 2021), in around 14 or 20 or so pages.

The title that appears on its title page is Chos-'byung Gsal-byed Mig-thur-gyi 'Grel-pa, ending with the usual zhes bya-ba bzhugs-so.  I will from now on call it the Mig-thur, a poetic title standing for the slightly longer Mig-gi Thur-ma, and that means a surgical instrument (thur-ma) used in the treatment of cataracts, making the blind or semi-blind to see clearly (metaphorically speaking: making plain as day the emergence of the Dharma, to interpret the Chos-’byung Gsal-byed part of the title).

The outline internal to this small text is not filled out completely, and the end is missing, so there is no way to know its author without locating a different complete copy somewhere (authorship statements for Tibetan books of earlier centuries were always found at the end, in a colophon). No form of its title seems to be available anywhere in the literature with one highly significant exception, the Small Deyu history. Since the Small Deyu, dating to around 1220 CE, apparently knew of this history, it would surely date from before that time.  It is only 17 or 18 folios (shog-ngos) in cursive script written seven lines to the page.

Like both Deyu histories, this is a commentary on a root text that is actually called "The Text" (gzhung) when it is quoted. This raises a very interesting question I’m afraid I can’t answer without looking at the manuscript itself, but we must wonder if The Text in all three texts might be the very same verse text by Deyu written in around 1180 CE. The essay writer Rmog-ru does supply one example of a single 9-syllable line the anonymously composed Long Deyu and the likewise anonymous Mig-thur both agree in attributing to The Text, but we cannot base a conclusion on that single suggestive example after all. The 9-syllable line is this one: “de nas snya khri btsan po byon pa la.”* 

(*There is a single spelling difference I won’t bother to point out since it really doesn’t matter. But okay, because you insist, gnya' in place of snya.)

The Mig-thur shows some similarities as well as differences in its overall outline. It promises to cover the following seven topics: [1] an accounting for the dynastic succession. [2] teaching the manner in which the texts of the Holy Dharma spread. [3] the manner in which the embers of the monastic community revived. [4] the way the old translations were preserved and taught. [5] the way the new translations were initiated. [6-7] how the teachings flourished and declined.

Here’s the passage from the Small Deyu that mentions the Mig-thur. It's on p. 90:  dam pa chos kyi 'brel rnam par bzhag pa chen po'i 'grel pa / gsal byed mig gi thur ma las / rgya gar du chos byon lugs yan chad bstan zin to //  Or to give it in Tibetan script: དམ་པ་ཆོས་ཀྱི་འབྲེལ་རྣམ་པར་བཞག་པ་ཆེན་པོའི་འགྲེལ་པ། གསལ་བྱེད་མིག་གི་ཐུར་མ་ལས།  རྒྱ་གར་དུ་ཆོས་བྱོན་ལུགས་ཡན་ཆད་བསྟན་ཟིན་ཏོ། །

This was noticed in Cabezon's appendix to his translation of Rog Bande’s Grub-mtha'. See his footnote 3 on p. 268:

“Lde'u bsdus pa [i.e. Small Deyu], 90, ends the section on Indian Buddhism with the words, dam pa chos kyi 'brel (sic) rnam par bzhag pa chen mo'i 'grel pa/ gsal byed mig gi thur ma las/ rgya gar du chos byon lugs yan chad bstan zin to/, implying that it is itself a commentary on another work, which, if we ignore the problematic 'brel, would be rendered The Great Exposition of the Holy Dharma.”  

I don’t believe this is exactly on the mark. I think that this is just a colophon for the Indian Buddhism section (or the part of the text up to and including the Indian Buddhism section) of the Small Deyu itself (although the Small Deyu’s final colophon is lacking, and the front title added on by someone besides the author, here its original title of the work as a whole is seemingly betrayed), referring to itself as a commentary on the Gsal-byed Mig-gi Thur-ma. Gsal-byed Mig-thur could (with emphasis on the could) then be the poetic title for the root text in verse composed by Deyu in ca. 1180. It has to seem like clutching at straws, but even so I’ve never before imagined it would ever be possible to find out the title of the original verse work!

Now to get to our main point, here is Rmog-ru's report on the Mig-thur’s spellings of the titles of the 6½ histories that include the Five Chan (I am quoting a quotation, as I have no access to the manuscript, but this quotation ends with skad so it is by its own admission a quotation!):  can lnga ni yo ga lha gyes can / stab ma dgung rtsegs can / zis po 'go sngon can dang / gsang pa phyag rgya can dang / zags ma bzhugs rabs can dang / de ltar can lnga lo rgyus chen po dang drug ste / gsang ba yang chung bang so'i rabs yin pas de la phyed du 'jog pa lags so skad.

And Rmog-ru supplies yet another listing of the 6½ titles from the Mig-thur that includes names of authors:  pha ba bon pos brtsams pa yo ga lha gyes can / kyis b[r]tsams pa zang ma bzhugs rabs can / kyi nam gyis brtsams pa bzings pa 'go sngon can / zhang blon gyis brtsams pa stab ma dgu rtsegs can / rje nyid kyis mdzad pa gsang ba phyag rgya can dang lnga / de dge' bshes khu ston brtson 'grus kyis brtsams pa lol [!] non chen po 'am / lo rgyus chen po zer / gsang ba yang chu[ng] phyed du bzhag.

The most closely corresponding passage in the text of the Small Deyu (pp. 98-99) I supply for convenient comparison:  spa sa bon pos brtsams pa yo ga lha dgyes can / yab tshan 'bangs kyis brtsams pa thang ma jug dral can skye nam gyis brtsams pa zings po sna tshogs can / [99] zhang blon gyis rtsams pa ltab ma dgu brtsegs can / rje nyid kyis brtsams pa gsang pa phyag rgya can dang lnga / khu ston brtson grus kyis brtsams pa log non chen po dang drug / grongs nas bang so btab pa ni gsang pa yang chung dang phyed du bzhag go / / or, in Tibetan script: སྤ་ས་བོན་པོས་བརྩམས་པ་ཡོ་ག་ལྷ་དགྱེས་ཅན།  ཡབ་ཚན་འབངས་ཀྱིས་བརྩམས་པ་ཐང་མ་[99]འཇུག་དྲལ་ཅན་སྐྱེ་ནམ་གྱིས་བརྩམས་པ་ཟིངས་པོ་སྣ་ཚོགས་ཅན།  ཞང་བློན་གྱིས་བརྩམས་པ་ལྟབ་མ་དགུ་བརྩེགས་ཅན།  རྗེ་ཉིད་ཀྱིས་བརྩམས་པ་གསང་བ་ཕྱག་རྒྱ་ཅན་དང་ལྔ།  ཁུ་སྟོན་བརྩོན་འགྲུས་ཀྱིས་བརྩམས་པ་ལོག་ནོན་ཆེན་པོ་དང་དྲུག གྲོངས་ནས་བང་སོ་བཏབ་པ་ནི་གསང་པ་ཡང་ཆུང་དང་ཕྱེད་དུ་བཞག་གོ ། (A kind of translation of this very passage appears in the Appendix B as part of the notes on Sha-bo’s essay.)

So to bring this confection, over-sweetened as it is by complications, to its bittersweet end, all I can say is we will have to wait until a full facsimile of the Mig-thur appears before we can be very sure about a lot that is pertinent to the Deyu histories. It’s possible we may have to expand the corpus of Deyu histories to encompass the Mig-thur. We may want to welcome it into the family. The possibility looms over us that Mig-thur is the original title for the root verses of ca. 1180. Some of the conclusions put forward in the introduction to the translation of the Long Deyu might require a little revision. We will see... with its help.

Appendix A - on a passage in the Dynastic History of Ladakh:

La dwags rgyal rabs (A.H. Francke, Antiquities of Indian Tibet, vol. 2, p. 28, with English translation on p. 76) has a very obscure reference: rigs brgyud kyi rgyal po ni spu rgyal bod kyi rgyal po yin te / 'di bshad lugs mang du ma mchis te / rgyal rabs spun po gsum khug blon po'i rgyal mtshan / gsang ba 'am 'bru bdus la sogs pa mang du yod kyang / bsdus na / gnyis legs skad / bsgrags pa / lha rabs bon lugs dang / gsang ba / mi rabs chos lugs so.* [Note: the spun-po here is clearly the same as the yun-po found elsewhere... more on this below.]  

(*E. Haarh's Yar-lun Dynasty book, at p. 170, supplies the same passage, and an English translation is ventured there on p. 170 as well as on p. 198, and see also the inconclusive discussion in note 6 on p. 445.)

The close parallel to the just-given quote from the History of Ladakh is in the mid-18th-century history by Tshe-dbang-nor-bu contained in Bod-kyi Lo-rgyus Deb-ther Khag Lnga, at p. 171 (he appears to be directly drawing from the History of Ladakh passage, but there is a significant difference or two):  

da ni pur rgyal bod kyi rgyal po ji ltar byung ba'i tshul ni / 'di bshad pa lugs mang du mchis te / rgyal rabs yun po gsum zhug blon po'i rgyal mtshan / gsang ba 'am 'bru btus la sogs pa mang du yod kyang bsdus na gnyis lags skad / sgrags pa lha rabs bon lugs dang / gsang ba mi rabs chos lugs so.

Appendix B - containing notes to a modern essay  by Sha-bo Mkha’-byams:

Source:  Sha-bo Mkha’-byams, “Rgyal rabs Gsang ba yang chung dang de’i rin thang skor gyi thog ma’i dpyad gleng,” Qinghai University for Nationalities Journal, issue no. 2 of the year 2014. My notes from it follow in blue letters (if the text is in grey these my own comments):

p. 1 (there are no page numbers on the pages):

The Rgyal-rabs Gsang-ba Yang-chung is first mentioned in the Nyi-ma'i Rigs-kyi Rgyal-rabs by Grags-pa-rgyal-mtshan. My note: But this history dates to mid-15th century, so I wouldn’t call it the first.

In the Sba-bzhed Zhabs-btags-ma (2010 ed.), p 240, we find the first appearance of the titles of the Five Chan:  “yo ga lha dges ban dang / lta ma dgu tsag can dang / zings po sna tshogs can dang / gsang ba phyag rgya can dang / spun po can [~yun po can?] lnga.”

In the Small Deyu which I date to ca. 1220 CE (in the 1987 edition, pp. 98-99), we find the expression of the six and a half histories: 

1. Spa-sa Bon-po’s composition Yo-ga Lha-dgyes-can. 

2. Yab-tshan-’bangs's composition Thang-ma 'Jug-dral-can.

3. Skye-nam’s composition Zings-po Sna-tshogs-can. 

4. Zhang-blon’s composition Ltab-ma Dgu-brtsegs-can. 

5. The ruler’s own composition Gsang-ba Phyag-rgya-can. 

6. Khu-ston Brtson-’grus’s composition Log-non Chen-po. 

& ½.  The foundings of burial mounds after the rulers’ deaths, Gsang-ba Yang-chung.  

But then he notices that the Gsang-ba Yang-chung is not included in the listing in Nyang-ral’s history that he dates to 12th century (2010 ed.), pp. 459, 463:

1. Bon-po’i Yi-ge Lha-dge-can.

2. Gnam nas babs zhes bsgrags pa’i lugs / rje nyid gsung ba Phyag-rgya-can /

3. Rgya gar rgyal phran rgyud par ’dod / de nas gleng ba’i zhib gtsang gsum / rkyang ba gcig rgyud brtsi ba yin / de min Za-gzhug Rgan-rabs-can /

4. Khug pa yum sgam smros pa la / Dab-ma Dgu-rtseg-can zhes bya /

5. Yun po rgyas bshad yin pa la / Zing-po Sna-tshogs-can du grags ces dang /

My note: But it is only to be expected that the Gsang-ba Yang-chung would not be in this list of the Five Chan. It belongs to the larger class of 6½.

p. 2:

He reports on how Samten Karmay said that this is the earliest, most extensive and authentic text on the subject of Tibetan royal tombs.  (However, the author Sha-bo himself believes, after comparing two other accounts of the tombs, that it was either edited down by the Long Deyu author, or that it is incomplete, or just that there are various editions [par gzhi]. Note to myself: I should look into this more.)

p. 3:

In the Sba-bzhed Zhabs-btags-ma it says that the Five Chan belong to the time of Relpachan...

Sha-bo quotes from Bla-dwags Rgyal-rabs 'Chi-med Gter of Joseb Gergan (1976 ed., pp. 62-63).  It says the history is called Spun-po because it contains a list of Father, Mother, Son, Minister, years in power, age at death, place of tomb.  (My note: some say spun-pa is bstun-pa, something like a correlation, and of course, there is also the reading yun-po...)  Actually, in Gergan's history there are two discussions of these sources, the first on p. 50 (I follow the original publication rather than the quotation):  

spu rgyal bod kyi rgyal po yin / 'di bshad pa la mang du mchis te / rgyal rabs spun po / gsum khug blon pos brgyan / gsang ba'am 'bru btus la sogs pa mang du yod kyang / bsdu na gnyis lags skad / bsgrags pa lha rabs bon lugs dang / bsang ba [~gsang ba] mi rabs chos lugs so.

and then at p. 60:  

glo bur bod kyi rgyal po'i lo rgyus la gsum ste / grags pa lha rabs bstod rar gleng ba dang gcig / smad pa tsha zhang skyon brjod zhang blon gyi lugs su gleng ba dang gnyis / gsang ba mi rabs chos lugs ma bstod ma smad par drang por gleng ba dang gsum mo //  

de la sgrags pa'i dbang du bgyis na / dang po 'dre mgo nag la rje med / gug ron rngogs chags la rkyen bu med / lha ri gyang ta'i kha na / [p. 51] phywa'i rgan mo cig gis lha byon lan gsum bnas pas / lha'i nal phrug cig 'ong pa la / ... 

My note: That amazing word gug-ron you see just above (and again in Gergan’s book, p. 63) I dare you to find in any dictionary. It has to be explained as an Old Tibetan word for 'steed' gu-rub, spelled a number of different ways: gu-ru, gu-rug, gu-rum, go-ru, mgo-ro, gong-ru, gu-rug.  I know how crazy I must sound right now. For the parallel expressions in the Long Deyu, see its English translation at footnote no. 1565, with an explanation of the term rkyen-bu, still another term not in the dictionaries. You can see it spelled skyen-pu in Gergan’s book, p. 53.

and at Gergan’s pp. 62-63: 

rgyal rabs ltar rnam pa bzhi ste / rgyal rabs spun po shwa ba khyis 'ded pa ltar gleng ba dang / rgyal gcig blon gcig gser mig g.yu yis spras pa ltar gleng ba dang / khug pa spyang mo bu stor ba ltar gleng ba dang / rgyal rabs rkyang pa 'gron po lam du zhugs pa ltar gleng ba dang bzhi lags skad //  

de la spun po zhes pa ni / yab dang yum dang sras dang blon po dang chab srid lo tsam bzung ba dang / tha gang du grongs pa dang / bang so gang du btab pa ste / de rnams la spun po zhes bya'o //  

khug pa bya ba ni yab yum sras dang gsum mo / 

rgyal gcig blon gcig gser mig g.yus spras pa'o // 

rgyal rabs rkyang pa ni / che longs tsam zhig / sku tshe gang tsam dang / yab la sras gang 'khrungs ces pa'o // 'di ni mgo zlum das chad bzhin no //  

My note: In the last line, this apparent text title (maybe name of an informant?) Mgo-zlum Das-chad is cited again on pp. 52 and 73. I’m mystified by it, but perhaps it is an account of how the bald-pated ones or rather dome-headed ones, probably meaning the monks, went out of existence..., but no, that doesn't seem to work... There may be help in an especially unclear passage in Nyang-ral’s history, 1988 ed., p. 459, where it tells us one of the disasters that happened when Tibet went to pieces after 842: ཡོངས་གྲགས་※མགོ་རེག་※ཟེར་ར་ཆོད་〈རས་གཅོད་〉བྱེད།  I could use some help here.*

(*I just went to look more at Gergan’s history and found on its page 9 an explanation of Mgo-zlum as a word for ‘human’ (evidently because “round head” is a poetic epithet for humans in general, not just monks), while Das-chad means Lo-rgyus or 'history.' But in what language does Das-chad mean “history’? Definitely not Tibetan... perhaps Urdu? I understand it was just a year ago that Ladakh dropped the Urdu requirement for placement in civil service jobs, but it’s widely known in the region in any case. Certainly Gergan knew Urdu, too. If das-chad is Tibetan 'das-[m]chad, I suppose it could refer to funerary rites.)

In Gergan’s understanding there are four different styles of relaying information, of speaking about, the Tibetan dynastic history: [1] the spun-po style gives the most details about family members, length of reign and burial site. This is likened to the dog leading the deer.  [2] the 'one king one minister' type in which one king and one minister [are named], likened to a turquoise in a gold setting. [3] the khug-pa style just names father, mother and child. It is likened to a wolf mother whose child is missing. [4] the rkyang-pa style only supplies the most general information, like only the length of reign, or only what children were born to one father. It is likened to a traveler setting out on the road.

I will have to rethink and go over all of this again to be sure of drawing the right meanings from it. I just have to say that the word spun-po, that often appears as yun-po* is one of the important keys to knowing how imperial and post-imperial Tibetans used to talk about their history. Oral literature styles of transmission could very well have a lot to do with it, which does make matters so much more difficult and interesting. But oh well, isn’t it true that there is a certain satisfaction to be gained by seeing part way into an area that had previously been almost entirely shrouded in mountain mists?**

(*That problem of scribes misreading cursive letters is so much in evidence here; and we might note that khug-pa sometimes appears, for example in the Tshe-dbang-nor-bu passage quoted above, as zhug[-pa]. The very frequency of misspellings can tell us that the concepts became less and less familiar as time went by... I haven't ventured to translate these key terms yet for reasons such as these.)  

(**We ought to pause to consider for a moment how it could be that this 20th-century Ladakhi Moravian Christian intellectual came across all his amazingly extensive material about kingship and clan history. The well-known Tibetan scholar T.T.J. told me a few decades ago what an outstanding resource the Joseph Gergan (ཡོ་སེབ་དགེ་རྒན་) history is, and I agree, we simply must find ways to compensate for the neglect it has so far suffered in our work.) 

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PS (October 24, 2022): I nearly forgot, but I did want to say how I finally ended up translating the titles of the 6½. You can find out in this paragraph from the published translation of the Long Deyu, at p. 436:

“The Five Can plus the Great Quelling of Revolts, with the Extra Small Secret being half,” it says. There are six-and-one-half writings that discuss Tibet’s incidental kings. These histories are: Splitting Off from the Gods of the Firmament, The Original One with the Seating Order, Accordion-Style Document with Stack of Nine, Miscellany with the Blue Head-Page, Confidential Sealed Document, Great Account, also known as Great Quelling of Revolts, composed by Dge-bshes Khu and Rgya Lha-po, and last of these is Extra Small Secret, which, being about the generations of tomb building for the deceased emperors, is left for a half. These cover the early divine generations, the intervening period of expanding royal dominion, and finally the way the divided dominion or the fragmentation came about.”

°

PS (May 22, 2023): In case you haven’t had enough, I at long last succeeded in uploading visual images of my ordered notes, in tables format, in a website posting at Tiblical entitled “Mystery Histories, the 6½.” It covers the main early textual evidence about their titles, authors and so forth. Go ahead and have a look at it.

https://sites.google.com/site/tiblical/mystery-histories-the-6