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, which 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 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 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.  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 precede 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 that 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).

———, “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 / 

Slippage in Buddhist Geography, by Todd Gibson

Swat River, Pakistan - Wikicommons

“Slippage” in Buddhist Geography: 

Orissa, Bengal, Kashmir, and Nepal as Sacred Proxies

Todd Gibson

Note: Today’s blog is an original essay by Todd Gibson. It is extracted from a chapter of his forthcoming book Inner Asia and the Nyingmapa Tradition of Tibet: The Case of Shri Singha.

 

Abstract: The reconstruction of the history of Buddhism in India and Tibet is complicated by the often-haphazard approach to geography found in the Indic sources, and a changing understanding of Indian names in the Chinese material. It is becoming apparent, however, that the shifts in perception of what geographical terms referred to was not always due to a mere lack of adequate information; the article discusses four cases which demonstrate deliberate, ideologically-motivated relocation of sacred sites away from the Indian border areas in the wake of historical changes.

It has long been noticed that geographical accuracy was not a great concern for many Indian scholars of the past. In his masterly survey of esoteric Buddhism in India, Davidson notes (2002, p. 33) that “geographical terms are used in a hazy and imprecise manner” and “alternate names are encountered with alarming suddenness in epigraphs and literature”. As a result, “The problem of the relationship between designation and locale can be acute, especially in medieval Buddhist literature.” This relationship is even more tenuous in Indian accounts of the countries of the mleccha peoples, those which lay beyond the civilized area of Āryavārta.

Chinese sources dealing with Indian Buddhist history must also be used with caution. When Buddhism first began to appear in China, the Chinese had only the haziest geographical understanding of the Indian subcontinent. As a result, the names of Indian locales in Chinese sources altered over time, sometimes (but not always) reflecting an improved understanding of the facts on the ground. Another factor that must be taken into account in weighing geographical references in Chinese Buddhist accounts is the veneration of central India as the holy land of Buddhism, and the increasing desire to distinguish the Buddhism of India from that of the Inner Asian peoples who were China’s neighbors, and who had an often-troubled relationship with the Chinese.[1] These factors, however, do not tell the whole story; creative geography in the service of religious legitimation that is found in some sources (both Indian and Tibetan), is a factor that has not yet been well examined. This article treats four cases in which this factor contributed to several persistent but inaccurate identifications of sacred lands.

The first of these cases is the country of Odiyana.[2] The current scholarly consensus in the West is that the name (in Sanskrit: Uḍḍyāna, Uḍḍiyāna, Oḍḍiyāṇa, Uḍyāna,[3] etc.; in Tibetan: Urgyan, Orgyan), narrowly defined, is conterminous with the region of Swat in the north of present-day Pakistan, a valley west of the Indus and separated from the Indus valley by a single range of mountains. This identification, based first on the testimony of Chinese pilgrims such as Xuanzang,[4] was accepted by early scholars such as Aurel Stein and Giuseppe Tucci,[5] and has been supported by the vast number of Buddhist archaeological data that are still coming to light.[6] Their opinion been followed by the majority of Buddhologists since (dissenting opinions will be discussed below), and can be accepted with some important qualifications.

As is the case with so many toponyms in India and elsewhere, Uḍḍiyāna has not been an entity with fixed boundaries throughout its history. Upasak (1990, pp. 20- 24) has asserted that in the early Indic sources, it designated modern eastern Afghanistan while Kapiśa meant that country’s central region, and Bālhīka its north. He cites Ptolemy as indicating that the name included the whole region to the north and west of the realm of Gandhāra, centered on what is now Jalalabad, and including the Swat valley, but adds that by the fourth or fifth century, Uḍḍiyāna sometimes meant only the eastern part of this region, up to the Indus, while the land from the Kabul River to the Khyber Pass was called Nagarahāra. In considering references to Odiyana, particularly in Chinese sources, it is often necessary to distinguish between these meanings. 

While among Buddhologists, the view now seems to be that, when discussing Buddhist esoterism, Odiyana is indeed to be located in Swat, there have been attempts to claim that the Oḍḍiyāna of the Sanskrit Buddhist sources refers not to the Eastern Afghanistan or Swat regions, but rather the area of Orissa/Odishya (Oḍra) in eastern India. Among modern Indian scholars, this may even be the majority[7] view, but some Western commentators have also thought among similar lines. Huntington (1975, p. 8 n. 12), for example, claimed that “there is substantial indication in Tāranātha’s History of Buddhism in India . . . that the Uḍḍiyana of the 8th and 9th centuries would have been in the Orissan or the Orissan-Bengal border region.” He bases this evaluation on the idea that most of the mahāsiddhas mentioned in the History were supposedly active in this area.[8] On the other hand, Tāranātha closes his book (Chimpa and Chattopadhyaya, 1970, p. 351) by saying that he was not able to include an account of how Buddhism spread to Kashmir, Odiyana (Urgyan), Tokharistan, or South India, for lack of detailed source material. This seems to argue against a location in Orissa. In any case, Tāranātha composed his work in the 17th century, and some of his Indian sources may well have placed Uḍḍiyāna in east-central India.

In his translation of the “official” biography of the master Shan wu wei, the first of the recognized patriarchs of the main East Asian Buddhist tradition, Chou (1945, p. 252 n. 4), notes that the same Chinese logograph can be used to represent Odiyana and Orissa/ Odishya, and clearly this was one of the reasons for a confusion between the two.[9] A possible example of this confusion is found in the history of a major sutra, the Avataṃsaka, in China. The first complete translation of this sutra into Chinese was carried out in 420 by Buddhabhadra, a monk from Afghanistan,[10] who had obtained his copy from the king of Karghalik, just west of Khotan (Hamar, 2013, p. 85). Similarly, another Afghan monk, Prajñā, who hailed from Kapiśa,[11] brought and translated a late version of the Gaṇḍavyūha chapter of the Avataṃsaka to China. The mainstream tradition accepts that Prajñā received the scripture from the king of Orissa, but given the history of the earlier version and Prajñā’s own provenance, it seems more likely that he obtained the scripture from a ruler of Odiyana in the larger sense (i.e. the eastern Afghanistan or Swat area). As for Shan wu wei himself, Chou assumes — for no clear reason — that he was from Orissa, but given the documented association of Odiyana with esoteric currents in Buddhism from early times[12] the subject deserves a thorough revisiting.[13]

In the present case, it is likely that the perceived connection with Orissa is not only a matter of an honest misunderstanding taken up and repeated, but also reflects certain later Buddhists’ attempts to locate all milestones of Buddhist history, especially its esoteric aspects, well within the bounds of the Indian subcontinent. This assertion is borne out by other cases in the later Tibetan (and Chinese) Buddhist literature in which sites in Inner Asia and the northwestern border areas of the Indian subcontinent have evidently been “moved” to India proper. Particularly noticeable in this regard is the case of a country called Zahor. A certain king of Zahor, Indrabhūti (also sometimes known as Tsa, or Dza in the Tibetan tradition), is regarded by the Nyingmapas, the oldest Buddhist school in Tibet, as having transmitted the tantric literature known to them as Mahāyoga. This tradition usually locates Indrabhūti’s kingdom in Odiyana, but sometimes in Zahor.[14] An Indrabhūti also appears in the historical accounts of the newer Tibetan schools as the source of their so-called Yogatantra literature, including the fundamental tantra called the Compendium of Buddhas (Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha).[15] The confusion brought about by the Tibetan attempts to make a coherent whole out of a variety of conflicting accounts of this literature’s history has resulted in various versions, in which one or two Indrabhūtis are posited, and Odiyana is considered to be either the same as or different from Zahor.[16] A few scholars (Davidson, 2002, pp. 242-245; Karmay, 2009, pp. 76-93; Van der Kuijp, 2010) have attempted to deal with this tangle of material, but it is clear that the legend is so fraught with textual corruption and so tied up with issues of religious legitimation that a definitive description of the evolution of these traditions will probably never be had. Nevertheless, from the point of view of the present work, it is significant that the Nyingmapa almost invariably locate Zahor (whether identified with Odiyana or not) in the northwest,[17] while the newer Tibetan schools in general support the idea that Zahor was in eastern India, probably Bengal (Karmay, 2009, pp. 80- 81; van der Kuijp, 2010, p. 148, citing Drigung Paldzin). Karmay has concluded from this (ibid., p. 89) that “Just as the later Tibetan tradition made the first king of Tibet an Indian, in the same way it also desired to connect king Tsa /Dza with the land which gave birth to Buddhism.”

A third case of geographical confusion or dissimulation can be seen in the region referred to in the Chinese sources as Jibin. Many or most Buddhist scholars (and some secular historians) have traditionally regarded the word as referring to Kashmir (cf. Zurcher, 2012), because the Chinese word represents an early attempt at transliteration of that name. Kuwayama, however, has noted (2006, p. 110; see also Kuwayama, 2002, pp. 142-146) that “In ancient Chinese accounts and maps Jibin’s location shifted from place to place as the Chinese geographical knowledge changed over time.”[18] Kuwayama uses the travel accounts of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, as well as monastic biographies of fourth- and fifth-century figures to demonstrate that for them, Jibin referred to the general area of Gandhāra, the pilgrimage region where the Buddha’s begging bowl was kept; he shows that on the routes these pilgrims took to and from China, any visit to Kashmir would have represented an extensive detour. More recently, Falk (2022-23, esp. n. 36) has also taken up the question of the Chinese pilgrimage routes, and has asserted that for Faxian, Jibin referred very specifically to the area around Hadda in present-day Afghanistan.

Kuwayama (2006, p. 108) also says that “In the Gaoseng zhuan” — a sixth-century Chinese compilation of Buddhist biographies — “Jibin surpasses any other region of India as the goal of Buddhist pilgrimage, and most of the foreign monk-translators in fourth-to-fifth century China were closely associated with Jibin, whether or not they were natives of that area.” Many celebrated teachers and translators from Inner Asia were trained in the Jibin of this era. The first of these was Fotucheng, who afterwards went to China, arriving in Luoyang in 310. Although Kuwayama believes he was a native of Gandhāra, an earlier, more detailed treatment of his career concluded he was probably originally from Kucha, and only studied in the former region.[19] His impact on Buddhism in China was considerable; he was able to increase the acceptance of Buddhism among both the upper classes and the common people mostly through practical means like rainmaking, war magic, and medicine, at a time of “chaos and misery”, as Wright puts it. This acceptance meant Fotucheng was able to lay the foundation for a future state-supported Buddhism, besides passing on his knowledge to disciples, who came to China from as far away as India and Sogdiana to study with him (Wright, 1948, p. 367).

The next illustrious alumnus of Jibin’s Buddhist schools was the great translator Kumārajīva (344-413). Like Fotucheng, he was from Kucha, and was taken as a child to be educated in Gandhāra.[20] After a few years, he returned to Kucha, but was kidnapped by an army from China and taken to Liangchou, where he remained for almost twenty years. Upon the capture of that city by the Later Qin dynasty, however, Kumārajīva was taken to Changan. Since by that time he knew not only his native Kuchean language, but also Northwestern Prakrit, Sanskrit, Chinese, and possibly Agnean and Sogdian (Hansen, 2012, p. 56), he was put to work at the head of the bureau that was rendering Buddhist scriptures into Chinese, and became the most prolific translator before Xuanzang. His renderings of many sutras remain the preferred versions up to the present, and he trained many Chinese disciples who became famous in their own right. Two other translators from Gandhāra, Buddhayaśas and Bhīmarakṣa, went to China to aid Kumārajīva in his work.

In sum, while there are some Chinese materials in which Jibin does refer to Kashmir, the identity can no longer be taken for granted, particularly in a Buddhist context.

The fourth example of this phenomenon is so well known that there can be no controversy about it. The kingdom of Khotan, stronghold of Mahāyāna Buddhism for over five hundred years, was well known to Tibet from at least the beginnings of the imperial period under the name of “the Li Country” (Li Yul), which name is found among some of the oldest surviving writings in Tibetan. Tibet conquered Khotan between 665 and 670, and solidified their rule in 675. Khotan maintained close contact with the Dunhuang area before and during the Tibetan imperial period, and many later documents in Khotan Saka were found at Dunhuang. Until the coming of Islam to Khotan in 1006, the three areas had strong cultural connections, and the religious chronicles of Khotan were translated into Tibetan. Nevertheless, by the twelfth or thirteenth century, some Tibetans had begun writing as if Li Yul referred to Nepal (in effect, to the Kathmandu Valley) (Snellgrove, 1987, pp. 366, 417; first remarked on by Brough, 1948).[21] It is possible that the relationship with Khotan had gradually been forgotten in Tibet during the institutional chaos that followed the fall of the Tibetan empire, but it is also likely that when the Tibetans began to reassemble their memories of that time, some of them had a vested interest in associating the country with India rather than the north. 

It is well known that sacred sites can “migrate” as part of either the spread or the domestication of a religion; the reduplication of sacred Indic place names throughout Southeast Asia was at least meant to establish a connection with India, and probably also served to supply surrogate pilgrimage sites to those who could not make the journey to the subcontinent. Sacred places may be also moved in the popular imagination, even to unapproachable areas, when the situation on the ground precludes their existence in their former location; the mythic land of Shambhala is probably the best-known example. However, the converse seems to be true as well. As Grenet has shown in relation to Zoroastrianism,[22] a religion may move its sacred sites geographically “inward” in order to be in harmony with changes in the prevailing politico-religious situation. In point of fact, it can hardly be coincidence that three of the four areas discussed above were “relocated” to the single area in India (Bihar-Bengal-Orissa) where Buddhism was still prospering and perhaps even predominant in the ninth century and after, following the Brahmanic Hindu resurgence and Muslim conquests elsewhere (Sanderson, 2009, p. 80). The fourth area, Kashmir, was also able to maintain the Buddhistic aspects of its culture much longer than was Gandhāra. There was probably a felt imperative to situate the holy places of Buddhism, particularly Vajrayāna Buddhism, within the small remaining Buddhist heartland on the subcontinent, and this resulted in the imaginative shift seen in later Indian accounts, in which all important developments were traced back to this area. The Tibetans, who for a variety of reasons became more and more inclined to equate scriptural authenticity with Indian origin, were for the most part happy to fall in with this reading of history.

•

Notes

[1] Chinese Buddhists increasingly differentiated the people of India (fan) from those living to the west of China (hu), and only the former land was held by them to be the domain of true sages. For a treatment of this trend, see Yang, 1988.

[2] I use a phonetic representation of the name rather than the more customary Sanskrit because the earliest named people of the area, the Odis, were neither Sanskrit speakers nor culturally “Sanskritized.” Settlements in the Swat valley date back to the Chalcolithic period, obviously predating the Indo-European incursions to the Indian subcontinent. The Odis themselves first appear in the historical record as satraps of a Saka ruler. Pāṇini, who was himself from the area of modern Peshawar, knew the name as Urḍi or Aurḍayāni (Upasak, 1990, p. 20). As late as the composition of the Purāṇas and the great epic Mahābhārata, Odiyana and its northern and western neighbors were not considered part of Āryavārta (Bronkhorst, 2016, pp. 17-34, pp. 124-25). In sum, it is misleading to insist on the Sanskritized spelling.

[3] But now see Falk (2022, pp. 17-19), who rejects the reconstruction of the name as Uḍyāna.

[4] Xuanzang’s name for the region was previously reconstructed as Wu chang, but this too seems to have been a scholarly error; see Li (1996, p. 82).

[5] Tucci’s 1977 contribution was the first to point out the importance of this area in detail, and pioneered the ongoing work by the Italian, Pakistani, and Japanese archaeological expeditions that have contributed decisively to its study.

[6] Callieri (2006); Neelis (2011). Neelis (ibid., p. 245) speaks of the valley’s “especially rich archaeological, artistic, epigraphic, and literary heritage with seemingly innumerable remains of Buddhist stupas, monasteries, and rock carvings.” The earliest Buddhist site, Butkara I, dates back to the third century BCE.

[7] See Mohanti and Panigrahi (2016) for a typical presentation. As with most such claims, their assertions rely largely on very late Indian and Tibetan literary sources. Chandra (1980) even proposed Kanchipuram, in southern India, as an alternative. 

[8] While Orissa was without doubt a major Buddhist stronghold in the ninth century, Tāranātha’s evaluation of the Buddhism prevailing there at that time has been called into question (Kinnard, 1996, pp. 284-287). 

[9] The confusion is not found only in Chinese sources. Sircar (1973, pp. 12- 13) has noted that in the Kālikā Purāṇa, Oḍra is inconsistently substituted for Oḍḍiyāna as one of the four major tantric seats, but he concludes that in relation to the Hindu tantric literature, the notion that the seat in question was actually located in Orissa is “unworthy of serious consideration.” Davidson (2002, pp. 206-211) also discusses the confusion and inconsistency surrounding the location of these seats.

[10] The usual reckoning has Buddhabhadra as Kashmiri, or just “Indian”, but Kuwayama (2002, p. 146; 2006, p. 109) shows that he was from Nagarahāra, specifically the area between Jalalabad and the Khyber Pass.

[11] Copp (2011, p. 360).

[12] As has been often noted, Xuanzang recorded the emphasis that the people of Swat laid on spell literature and meditation; see Li (1996, p. 83-84). 

[13] It should be taken into account that the attempts to connect this master with a later royal family of Orissa — the so-called Bhauma-kara dynasty — are based on a reconstruction of his Sanskrit name (Śubhakarasiṃha) that can in no way be considered equivalent to Shan wu wei (Chou, ibid., p. 251 n. 3). Furthermore, Shan wu wei’s official biography was written by at least two different people (Chou, ibid., pp. 250-251), and while the first half, dealing with his purported birth and career in India, contains the usual tropes of royal descent and miraculous but otherwise unknown teachers, the second begins with his travels towards China and is supported throughout by much historically verifiable information, including the rule of a Türkic khan in Odiyana (in the expanded sense) when he passed through. 

[14] The connection between Indrabhūti and Odiyana seems to date back at least to around 800 (van der Kuijp, 2010, p. 130).

[15] Karmay (2009, p. 80-82). There is a close relationship between a collection of these tantras, which were brought to China by the Sogdian master Amoghavajra, and the tantras of the Mahāyoga, though the two collections are not identical. This was first noticed by Eastman (1981), and the similarities have more recently been taken up and analyzed by Giebel (1995) and Almogi (2014). The East Asian tradition claims that Amoghavajra’s collection was originally taken from a legendary Iron Stupa that was in South India. That the tradition does not claim a provenance in the Orissa-Bengal area might be because the legend of the Iron Stupa was already established in China before the shift in Zahor’s supposed location came about. 

[16] According to Davidson (2002, p. 244), however, the Sakyapas, oldest of the “new” schools, have a tradition of three Indrabhūtis – all from Odiyana.

[17] The Fifth Dalai Lama, who came from a Nyingmapa background, nevertheless felt compelled to invent a convoluted history of his own Zahor ancestry so that he could trace it back to Bengal (van der Kuijp, 2010, pp. 147 ff.). An interesting sidelight to this question is the fact that the traditional Tibetan account of the creation of their alphabet claims that they took the letter za from Zahor (van der Kuijp, 2010, p. 137). While this is usually understood to mean that they took the form of the letter from the alphabet used in that region (which was not the case), it might mean instead that they had to find a way to indicate the voiced sibilant /z/ which is found in Tibetan words, but not in Indic; the /z/ was a native phoneme in Northwestern Prakrit, but only used in “Iranian names and loanwords” in Sanskrit (Salomon, 1990, p. 269). This would also obviously indicate a northwestern location for Zahor.

[18] See Kuwayama (2006, p. 110 n, 14) for a discussion of various reckonings on the question. Kuwayama (2002, pp. 193-199) had earlier used the testimony of later pilgrims, as well as Chinese historical materials, to demonstrate that during the Tang, Jibin came to mean the kingdom of Kapiśa in what is now central Afghanistan. 

[19] See Wright (1948, pp. 332-335) for a discussion. Wright errs, however, in following the then-current consensus that Jibin always referred to Kashmir. Some sources claim that Fotucheng was a native of Central India and a descendant of royalty, but the trope of the royal (or high-caste) descent of prominent Buddhist figures found in Chinese biographical literature is far too commonplace to be accepted at face value, and can be seen as part of the hu vs. fan dynamic mentioned above (note 2).

[20] While McRae (2004, p. 442) continues to place Kumārajīva’s studies in Kashmir, Hansen (2012, p. 66) correctly locates them in Gandhāra. As usual, there also exist accounts that make Kumārajīva the descendent of Indian royalty (Hansen, op. cit.).

[21] Tāranātha was one Tibetan who placed Li Yul south of the Himalayas (Chimpa and Chattopadhyaya, 1970, p. 60, n. 41; see also Brough, 1947-48, p. 338).

[22] Grenet (2015, esp. p. 26) demonstrated that while the sites described in the oldest Avestan literature as being created by Ahura Mazda are all located in southern Inner Asia, Afghanistan, or western Pakistan, the later Pahlavi literature moved them to the Iranian plateau.

SOURCES

Almogi, Orna (2014) “The Eighteen Mahāyoga Tantric Cycles: A Real Canon or the Mere Notion of One?” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 30, pp. 47-110.

Bronkhorst, Johannes (2016) How the Brahmins Won: From Alexander to the Guptas, Brill, Leiden.

Brough, John (1948) “Legends of Khotan and Nepal,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 12, pp. 333-339.

Callieri, Pierfrancisco (2006) “Buddhist Presence in the Urban Settlements of Swat, Second Century BCE to Fourth Century CE,” in Gandhāran Buddhism: Art Archaeology, Texts, ed. P. Brancaccio and K. Behrendt, UBC Press, Vancouver, pp. 47-82.

Chandra, Lokesh (1980) “Oḍḍīyāna: a New Interpretation,” in Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson, ed. Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi, Aris & Phillips, Warminster, pp. 73-78.

Chimpa, Lama and Alaka Chattopadhyaya (1970) History of Buddhism in India (by Tāranātha), Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla.

Chou, Yi-liang (1945) “Tantrism in China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 8, pp. 241-331; partially reprinted in Payne, 2006.

Copp, Paul (2011) “Prajñā” in Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, ed. Charles Orzech, Handbuch der Orientalistik series no. 24, Brill, Leiden, pp. 360-362.

Davidson, Ronald (2002) Indian Esoteric Buddhism, Columbia University Press, New York. 

Falk, Harry (2022-2023) “Faxian and Early Successors and Their Route from Dunhuang to Peshawar: In Search of the ‘Suspended Crossing’,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute n.s. vol. 31, pp.1 -48.

Giebel, Rolf W. (1995) “The Chin-kang-ting ching yü-ch’ieh shih-pa-hui chih kuei: an Annotated Translation,” Journal of Naritasan Institute for Buddhist Studies 18, pp. 106-199.

Grenet, Frantz (2015) “Zarathustra’s Time and Homeland: Geographical Perspectives” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism, ed. Michael Stausberg and Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, Wiley Blackwell, Chichester, pp. 21-30.

Hansen, Valerie (2012) Silk Road: A New History, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Hamar, Imre (2007) “The History of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: Shorter and Larger Texts” in Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayen Buddhism, ed. Imre Hamar, Harrassowitz Verlag, Weisbaden, pp. 151-178.

Huntington, John C. (1975) The Phur-pa, Tibetan Ritual Daggers, Artibus Asiae Publishers, Ascona (Switzerland).

Karmay, Samten (2009 [first published 1997]) The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet, vol. 1, Mandala Book Point, Kathmandu.

Kinnard Jacob N. (1996) “Re-evaluating the Eighth-Ninth Century Pala Milieu: Icono-Conservatism and the Persistence of Śākyamuni,” Journal of the International Association for Buddhist Studies 19.2, pp. 281-300.

Kuijp, Leonard W. J. van der (2010) “On the Edge of Myth and History: Za hor, its Place in the History of Early Indian Buddhist Tantra, and Dalai Lama V and the Genealogy of its Royal Family,” in Studies on Buddhist Myths: Texts, Pictures, Traditions, and History, ed. Bangwei Wang, Jinhua Chen, and Ming Chen, pp. 114-164.

Kuwayama, Shoshin (2002) Across the Hindukush of the First Millennium, Kyoto University Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto. 

—— (2006) “Pilgrimage Route Changes and the Decline of Gandhāra” in Gandhāran Buddhism: Art, Archaeology, Texts, ed. P. Brancaccio and K. Behrendt, UBD Press, Vancouver, pp. 107-134.

Li, Rongxin (1996)(trans. Xuanzang) The Great T’ang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions, Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research.

McRae, John R. (2004) “Kumārajīva” in Encyclopedia of Buddhism, ed. Robert Buswell, Macmillan Reference, New York pp. 442-43.

Mohanty, Bimalendu and Varish Panigrahi (2016) “Guru Padmasambhava of Odiyana (Odisha): The Founder of Lamaism in Tibet,” Journal of Bhutan Studies 34, pp. 80-86.

Neelis, Jason (2011) Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks, Brill, Leiden.

Payne, Richard C. (2006)(ed.) Tantric Buddhism in East Asia, Wisdom Publications, Somerville MA.

Sanderson, Alexis (2009) “The Śaiva Age: the Rise and Dominance of Saivism in the Early Medieval Period” in Genesis and Development of Tantrism, ed. Shingo Einoo, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, pp. 41-349.

Sircar, D.C. (1973) The Śākta Pīṭhas, Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi.

Snellgrove, David (1987) Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan Successors, 2 vols., Shambhala Publications, Boston.

Tucci, Giuseppe (1977) “On Swat. The Dards and Connected Problems,” East and West n.s. 27, pp. 9-85.

Wright, Arthur Frederick (1948) “Fo-tu-teng: A Biography,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 11, pp. 321- 371.

Yang, Jidong (1998) “Replacing hu with fan: A Change in the Chinese Perception of Buddhism during the Medieval Period,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 21.1, pp. 157-170.

Zurcher, Eric (2012) “Buddhism across Boundaries: the Foreign Input,” in Buddhism Across Boundaries: The Interplay of Indian, Chinese, and Central Asian Source Materials, ed. John MacCrae and Jan Nattier, Sino-Platonic Papers, pp. 1-25.

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