The Six Degrees of Laughter

March 24, 2018, 11:02 am

≫ Next: Dreaming Giant Thangkas, Part Two

≪ Previous: Dreaming Giant Thangkas, Part One

Monk of Tashi Lhunpo monastery make us laugh by pulling funny faces, Tibet 2015

Take the comedian and the scholar; of the two the fool that makes people laugh comes out on top. The comedian takes home the money, while the scholar goes away broke and empty.

bzhad gad mkhan dang mkhas pa gnyis ||

blun po bzhad gad byed pa mchog ||

bzhad gad mkhan gyis nor rnyed kyis ||

mkhas la nor med stong par ʾgro || 159 ||

— Nāgārjuna, Prajñādaṇḍa.

Sometimes I read in the tub. I avoid reading holy scriptures or any kind of Tibetan book for that matter, because it would seem sacrilegious somehow. Under such self-imposed strictures, I content myself with printouts of journal articles on subjects that are supposed to be entertaining more than informational. Just now I read a piece by a Norwegian professor in religious studies named Ingvild Sælid Gilhus with the title “Religion, Laughter and the Ludicrous.”

I’m not sure I learned anything all that new about why humor happens (we brought this subject up before), just the modest and usual idea that it arises out of the unmanageable clash of systems, strange juxtapositions, or incongruity in general. Something doesn’t fit, and however we try just can’t be made to fit, leaving our usual ways of responding in a treadmill that's well on its way to nowhere, leaving us nothing better to do than laugh at the predicament we've fallen into. First comes a sense of release as we give ourselves over to the laughter followed by a kind of relief. All this depends a lot on timing, opportunity and context. If unwelcome truths are too unwelcomed within the situation they get told in, the attempted humor falls flat and the buffoon is booted out of the room without benefit of ceremony. I’m not a professional, of course, but I have had this experience. Some people find humor in failed humor, as we know, although it comes with a large helping of scorn. It isn’t nice to laugh at the misfortunes of others, but you must confess, we aren’t always nice, and we let out a big one when we should be feeling the pathos.

I’m not sure about the general point of the article, that there is something in the laughter response that is analogous to mystical experience. I’ll admit that the idea did make me smile, perhaps just because I didn’t know what to do with it. Would I be condemning this fine article if I regarded the conclusion as absurd? I rather think not. One thing did surprise me, and that is that Buddhism was mentioned at all in what is a general piece on laughter as a broadly human phenomenon. Do we not all feel pain and oppression alike? Ditto with the ludicrous. Usually, in the world at large, Buddhism is regarded as the least humor-prone of all religions, with a laser-like focus on the discomfort and pain. This of course is funny because in practice Buddhists are observed to indulge in laughter to an inordinate degree. And unlike other web-based theorists, I haven’t noticed huge sectarian differences in this particular area. I mean among the Buddhists. It sometimes seems to me it’s the Christians that don’t know how to enjoy a good belly laugh. Or wait, maybe I’m really only talking about the Calvinists.

Even if so much is so good, I’ll admit there is nothing inherently or remotely funny about the Buddhist penchant for making lists of things, one after the other. The three this and the five that. You know what I mean. But since the professor mentioned them I was thinking already in the bath how I ought to look a little further into the (purportedly) Buddhist list of the six kinds and degrees of laughter, and perhaps compare it with the listing of the types and degrees of earthquakes. You think I'm joking? Come on, listology is a thing, get used to it.

For the numeric lists we have a genre known in Tibetan as རྣམ་གྲངས་ or enumerations. The longest compilation of these has appeared in print only a few years ago in three very thick volumes. That’s kind of funny, isn’t it? It’s also funny that I looked in vain through them for the six types of laughter. Not a hint of them in the section of sixes, not the least whisper. Somewhere along the way this bit of non-Buddhist Indian literary theory has gotten applied, by somebody, to Buddhism as if it would help make sense of Buddhist laughter, and it’s not even there to be found in the mother of all lists of lists.

What I do find in the section of eights is the eight laughs of heroes. I believe that this, too, is a literary idea about the kinds of laughs to be used by the heroic figure in a dramatic context, although its proximate source is likely to be found in Indian tantric treatises. I guess it amounts to eight because there are four pairs of laughs that always come in pairs:

The threatening laugh: ha ha.

The joyous laugh: hi hi.

The flirtatious laugh: he he.

The overpowering laugh: ho ho.

GAD MO BRGYAD — dpa' bo'i gad mo brgyad ni / ha ha bsdigs pa'i gad mo / hi hi dgyes pa'i gad mo / he he sgeg pa'i gad mo / ho ho zil gyis gnon pa'i gad mo rnams so. This is from my small dictionary of enumerations, the 1992 2nd printing (in 183 pages) of the text listed here, at p. 108.

The 3-volume dictionary of enumerations has an entry for the ten circumstances when Bodhisattvas enjoy a good laugh. It's in the section of tens as you may expect, page 2059.

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I wasn’t going to go into it, but Indian dramatic theory (yes, India has made a science of acting/dancing since forever) has identified 9 types of emotional moods or dramatic experiences that can be conveyed to an audience by the skilled stage actor/dancer, with good advice on how this may best be done. Since one of the nine is hāsya (བཞད་གད་), or the comedic mood, someone came up with six sub-types of it. The set of nine is fairly well known in Tibet, although I haven’t yet found that the six sub-types of the comedic mood have gotten attention from Tibetans. I’m skeptical it is even there to find.

In practical terms, for readers of classical Tibetan it is most important to distinguish ordinary laughter, that is called གད་མོ་, from the wilder more hilarious laughter called དགོད་པ་ or བཞད་མོ་.* It could just be me, but I like to imagine the etymologies of all but one of these Tibetan words reflect degrees of openness.

Let me explain: First we have the smile, which is not (yet) a laugh and does not involve opening the lips at all, otherwise it would be more like a grimace or something. The syllable གད་ implies a gap between the lips, as it is related to verbal roots འགད་ and འགས་, with meanings of cracking or splitting open. དགོད་པ་ doesn’t fit in my theory since it connects with words for wild and untamed, but བཞད་མོ་ is used for fully open blossoms and not just a hearty laugh, so it fits perfectly. When we meet with the compound བཞད་གད་ it can be understood to cover the entire field from chuckling to hilarity, and for this reason forms the main part of the classical word for comedian, which is བཞད་གད་མཁན་ (used to translate Sanskrit vidūṣaka, the stage clown or fool in Indian theatrics). Laughter begins its life as a bud that can start to open and then might fully flower. More truth than metaphor, or just truth in metaphor, if you ask me. To go through all the stages of laughter is to blossom as a human being.

(*True, there are still more ways of expressing degrees of laughter. One kind of laughter I have often encountered in the literature is khrel-gad, with many spelling variants. It specifies the ridiculing type of laugh meant to shame or scorn the other person. Not every laugh is nice or worthwhile.)

In case I may have given a contrary impression, I’m not at all saying that Tibetan specialists in Tibetan kāvya (སྙན་དངགས་) literature knew nothing of the six Indic degrees of laughter, just that they were the only ones likely to know about them, so its applicability to Tibetan (or any other) Buddhist society as a whole can hardly be assumed. It would be analogous to the strange fact that some of our contemporary feminists want to critique Tibetan culture on the basis of Indic kāvya epithets for women (as found in the abhidhāna or མངོན་བརྗོད་literature, known only to kāvya specialists), as if these could tell us anything of significance about Tibetan society’s gender issues. The whole point of kāvya was to bring the alien world of India to life in Tibet within the context of this peculiar style of exotic poetry that was much used but never got entirely naturalized.

For an example of a discussion of humor as a kāvya category by Dondrub Gyal, regarded by many as the tragic founder figure for modernist Tibetan poetry, look here. He has some interesting ideas about degrees of hilarity that ought to be studied more carefully than I am prepared to do right now. And finally, if you are the kind of person who peeks at the last sentence to get straight to the conclusion, I’ve got news for you. There isn’t any except the one you come to yourself.

• § • § • § •

Dreaming Giant Thangkas, Part Two

April 19, 2018, 9:13 am

≫ Next: Dreaming Giant Thangkas, the Final Installment

≪ Previous: The Six Degrees of Laughter

At Tashilhunpo Monastery in Tsang Province

Continued fromhere.

The Eighth Dalai Lama’s thangka was not the first neither was it the largest ‘brocade image.’* It may be interesting to sketch out the earlier history of the construction of the most monumental of these objects of worship.[1] Smaller sized fabric images were being made for Tibetans in earlier centuries, but they will be overlooked for the time being. Instead we will start with what was very probably the first one that was of a monumental size. It is said that this huge one was made, under the inspiration of a dream, by a princess who had the Indic name Puṇyadharī, although she was located quite some distance from India, in the region of the former Tangut Kingdom, I believe.[2] She dreamed of an image of Buddha the size of a neighboring mountain, and decided to have one made in memory of her brother who had recently died. The 4th Karmapa Rol-pa'i-rdo-rje traced the outlines of the image on the mountainside using the hoof-prints of his horse.
(*Göku, or gos-sku, is the usual Tibetan term.)

Completed by the year 1363, the Fourth Karmapa brought it back to Tibet with Him. It was so large it had to be carried on the backs of twenty-two mdzo (the female counterpart of the yak or g.yag), although another 22 mdzo were needed so they could take turns bearing the load.[3] We find the statement that the main central image contained in it measured 11 fathoms from its right to left ear, which means that the brocade icon as a whole must have been amazingly or even impossibly large. It was at first kept at Zho-kha Temple,[4]then divided into as many as three parts, although the main part remained in Zho-kha. It would seem that it was lost during the wars in the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama and can no longer be seen[5] although there is a slight possibility that some pieces of it could have been preserved somewhere.

In 1416, Chamchem Chöjé (Byams-chen Chos-rje),[6]the same teacher who would found Sera Monastery in 1419, returned to Tibet from China with a tapestry thangka (just how large is not stated) of the sixteen Arhats. This was later kept at Ganden Monastery and displayed there every year during the sixth month.[7]

In 1418, the King of Gyantsé (Rgyal-rtse) by the name Rabten Kunzang Pag (Rab-brtan-kun-bzang-'phags), had made what has been said to be the largest brocade thangka ever, and the first of its kind to be entirely constructed inside Tibet proper. It was named ‘Great Silk Icon Purposeful Sight’ (Gos-sku Chen-mo Mthong-ba Don-ldan), or alternatively ‘Silk Icon Great Liberation through Seeing’ (Gos-sku Mthong-grol Chen-mo).

The central Śākyamuni Buddha figure was 80 cubits in height. He was flanked by His two main disciples Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana, with further images including Maitreya, Dīpankara and the Sixteen Arhats. The lower part included the Great Kings (the Dharma Protectors of the four directions). The entire piece, including the framing brocades, measured 190 cubits in height. Thirty-seven tailors completed it in twenty-seven days.[8]

In 1468, the First Dalai Lama (1391-1474) invited the “king of the brush holders” Menla Döndrub (Sman-bla Don-grub)[9] and his students to erect a giant brocade thangka, which they completed in three months. Donations for it were already being accepted two or three years earlier. The completed icon measured eighteen by twelve fathoms.[10]

A year later, the leftover silk offerings were used to make a silk icon of Tārā which measured eight by six fathoms.[11] The circle of hair (mdzod-spu) on Her forehead was studded with over a thousand pearls,[12] and inside were placed various relics of holy persons. A variety of semi-precious stones — corals, pearls, amber and the like — were used for Her jewelry. In 1471, a silk icon of Avalokiteśvara, eight by six fathoms, was made, and in the following year a group of four, each measuring three by two fathoms.[13]

Sometime during the reign of the Rinpungpa (between 1480 and 1512), a huge silk brocade hanging, a “curtain” (yol-ba), depicting all 25 of the Kulika Kings of Shambhala was made. In 1642 it was offered to the Fifth Dalai Lama, and is said to be still in the treasury of the Potala Palace.[14]

In 1634, the sixty-fifth year of First Panchen Lama (Blo-bzang-chos-kyi-rgyal-mtshan, 1567-1662), a giant thangka was constructed. It was in the form of a kind of triptych. At the center of the central piece was Amitābha, with Mañjughoṣa and Vajrapāṇi on either side. In the two upper corners were Atiśa and Tsongkhapa, while in the two lower corners were Akṣobhya and the Medicine Buddha. The piece to the right had Avalokiteśvara as its central figure, while the piece to the left had Tārā. The same Panchen Lama made still another giant thangka in the same year. Later He also made a huge thangka depicting Maitreya. Work on it was started in 1649, the second Tibetan month, when its outlines were drawn by the celebrated artist Chöying Gyatso (Chos-dbyings-rgya-mtsho).[15]

It was finished within five months, and it was first shown the following year, on the fifteenth day of the fifth Tibetan month. Finally, when the First Panchen Lama was in His ninetieth year, in 1659, He had the artist Chöying Gyatso once again construct a huge thangka, this one depicting Avalokiteśvara.[16] Many more huge thangkas were made by subsequent Panchen Lamas.

These thangkas were mainly meant to be displayed on the holiday of the full moon of the fifth Tibetan month, by being unrolled down the side of Tashilhunpo's giant tower, said to be about 12 fathoms high (20.4 meters?), built for this purpose by the First Dalai Lama in 1468.[17]

From 1992 to 1994, a huge thangka was made at Tsurpu (Mtshur-phu), chief monastery of the Karmapa school. With Śākyamuni as its central figure, it measures 23 by 35 meters.[18] It is supposed to have been made to replace a similar thangka made in the seventeenth century by the Tenth Karmapa Chöying Dorjé who was Himself a remarkably original artist with a style of His own. Indeed He has been called “one of the most versatile and idiosyncratic artists in Tibetan history.”[19] In fact, however, this icon was begun in 1585 (by the year 1590, it had already been completed) by the Ninth Karmapa Wangchuk Dorjé.[20] In the latter’s biography we learn that the silks were donated by the Chinese Emperor, while the Ninth Karmapa Himself did the preliminary sketches for it. By comparing sources, we may see that the modern thangka[21] and the 16th century one[22]were quite different in their subject matter. In any case the modern thangkadoes have a piece of the original sewn into it, which assures its ritual continuity. This is the thangka that is supposed to be unrolled annually on a hillside near Tsurpu on the twelfth day of the fourth Tibetan month.

In 1683, soon after the actual death of the Fifth Dalai Lama, the Regent had made a giant thangka with the red Buddha Amitābha as the central figure. It is a well known story how the Regent concealed the death of the Dalai Lama from the public, as well as from foreign governments. This is the larger of the two thangkas that were always displayed on the front side of the Potala Palace during the Great Worship Assembly holiday, held on the 30th day of the 2nd Tibetan month.*

(*See now Michael Henss’s Monuments of Central Tibet, pp. 132-133 for the Potala fabric thangkas. It has a lot of information about stitched thangkas in general, but I haven’t made much use of it here.)

This holiday was instituted by the Regent as an annual memorial for the Fifth Dalai Lama.[23] In the Regent’s biography of the Dalai Lama, he gives the measurements of this thangkain terms of finger-widths (sor-mo): 2,598 by 2,208 finger-widths.[24] These measurements have been converted into the metrical system by Dagyab Rinpoche as 55.08 by 46.81 meters.[25] The second, smaller brocade thangka, with Buddha Vairocana as its central figure, measured in at 1,299 by 1,081 finger-widths.[26] Before long both thangkas became worn and had to be replaced. The Rdo-ring Paṇḍita biography informs us, in its account for the year 1787, which was during the time of the Eighth Dalai Lama, that they were exchanged for new ones.[27] In the first years of the 1940’s, following the enthronement ceremonies for His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, the two thangkas were replaced yet again.[28] So it is no surprise that the thangkas to be seen today[29]do not seem to quite match the descriptions of the divine figures found in the original.

Of course, many more huge brocade thangkas have been constructed down to the present day. It was not my intention to supply a complete inventory.[30] Especially in biographies of prominent figures of the 16th through 18th centuries there are numerous testimonies on their construction and display.[31] The significant points for now are that they were probably first ‘dreamed up’ by a Buddhist noble woman, that they subsequently continued to be made in great size, in a certain degree of abundance, and that they were used in acts of public worship in monasteries on annual holy days. They were usually explicitly made in memory of a famous teacher who had died a short while before. And, although we haven’t yet said much about this aspect, certain religious practices of both monks and laypersons were associated with giant thangka displays.

Labrang

Tsurpu Monastery

Unidentified Dutch Trade card

At Ganden Monastery

At Ganden Monastery, in front of the göku notice the white funerary
chorten for Tsongkhapa

— to be continued —

Notes:

Notice that I use shortened titles in the bibliographical references. The key will finally appear at the end of Part Three.

[1]Reynolds, "Fabric," pp. 248-251, and Tanaka, "Note," contain the most detailed sketches of gos-skuhistory known to me. Huge painted thangkas have their own history which will not be considered here. However, it is interesting to note that Atiśa's disciple Nag-tsho, already in the mid-eleventh century, had a portrait painting of Atiśa made that was 14 or 16 cubits in height (which I suppose would mean about 6 or 7 meters). It was made in Tibet by a resident Indian artist named Kṛṣṇa (see Martin, "Painters," pp. 141-146).

[2] Mi-nyag or Xixia (Hsi-hsia) in Tibetan and Chinese. Some believe that the Tangut land was the center of production for the earliest Tibetan Buddhist style fabric icons. See for examples Henss, "Woven," p. 26, and Heller, "Development," p. 213. I am hoping for greater clarity about the geography of Pundharî's kingdom. Despite her and her brother’s Indic names she was likely a scion of the Mongol ruling family.

[3] This information was taken from Sman-sdong, Bzhi-pa, p. 188.

[4] See Tanaka, "Note," p. 873, for more details based on a passage in Dpa'-bo's history (p. 966). For an account, in English translation, of the Fourth Karmapa’s life, with brief mention of Zho-kha in Kong-po, see 'Gos Lo-tsā-ba’s history, pp. 493-506 (with an account of the gos-sku on pp. 505-506). Zho-kha was the site of the Fourth Karmapa’s death (Dung-dkar’s dictionary, p. 34). The central image was of Śākyamuni Buddha, with Mañjuśrī and Maitreya to His left and right sides, with depictions of beautiful birds below the lotus thrones. Accounts of its construction may also be found in Karma Thinley, History, pp. 66-67, in Douglas and White, Karmapa, p. 58; and in Ldan-ma, Dpal, pp. 109-110.

[5] This suggested in Rin-chen-dpal-bzang, Mtshur-phu, p. 237, which also contains an account of the historical circumstances surrounding its construction. This author finds eleven fathoms to be equivalent to 18.70 meters. There being four cubits in a fathom, this would mean that for him one cubit is equivalent to .425 meters.

[6]Byams-chen Chos-rje Shākya-ye-shes (1354-1435), a disciple of Tsong-kha-pa who spent many years at the Ming capital. Returning to Tibet, he founded Se-ra Monastery in 1419. A number of fabric images that depict him have survived; see Henss, "Woven," pp. 36-38.

[7] Tanaka, "Note," p. 873. Henss, "Woven," p. 37, says that it was still preserved at Dga'-ldan Monastery in 1959. There is brief mention of this thangka in Rdzong-rtse’s history of Se-ra, p. 43, but note here that gnas bcu (which might seem to mean 'ten places') is simply a contraction of Gnas-brtan bcu-drug, ‘sixteen Arhats,’ and that the word bzi thang used here is an unusual spelling for si-thang (see the very important discussion of this term in Jackson, History, pp. 132-133). Looking back at the corresponding passage in Sde-srid‘s history, p. 118, we find that this same thangka, which was offered to the tomb of Tsong-kha-pa at Dga'-ldan, is referred to by the words Gnas-brtan bcu-drug-gi si-thang. More giant brocade thangkas were made at Dga'-ldan, and more may be known about them if Mkhar-nag Lo-tsā-ba’s history of Dga'-ldan ever reaches publication (for more on this work, see Martin, Tibetan Histories, no. 187).

[8] My source for most of these details is Dung-dkar’s dictionary, p. 550, although the thangka, which still exists, does merit brief mention in Chan, Tibet Handbook, p. 420, with longer treatment in Reynolds, "Fabric," p. 251, and Henss, "Woven," p. 39. Dung-dkar Rin-po-che estimates that the 'fathom' of an average person is 1.8 meters. Using this standard of conversion, the height of the main Śākyamuni Buddha image, at 20 fathoms, was 36 meters, while the overall height of the entire icon was 80.2 meters. This and still other giant brocade thangkas later constructed by the same king are mentioned in Ricca and Lo Bue, Great Stupa, p. 20; Reynolds, "Luxury Textiles," p. 130; and also Jackson, History, p. 111 (on a giant cloth image of Maitreya completed in 1439).

[9] For what is by far the most in-depth study of the early Sman-ris school of art, initiated by Sman-bla Don-grub in the mid-15th century, see Chapter 3: sMan-thang-pa sMan-bla-don-grub and the Early Followers of His Tradition," contained in Jackson, History, pp. 102-138.

[10]Reynolds, "Fabric," p. 248, gives the measurements as 274.3 by 213.4 centimeters, although it is very likely that the intended numbers were 27.43 by 21.34 meters, which could be correct.

[11] See the already-mentioned works of Reynolds and Tanaka, as well as Heller, Tibetan Art, p. 177. There is information to be found in the biography of Dge-'dun-grub as contained in 'Khrungs-rabs, vol. 1, pp. 207-300, in particular at pp. 273-276, which has been nicely summarized in Jackson, History, pp. 117-118. Jackson estimates that the larger thangka was about 28 by 19 meters in size. Reynolds, "Luxury Textiles," p. 130 gives the measurements as 2.74 by 2.13 meters (this is surely a typological error; most probably the intended measurement was 27.4 by 21.3 meters, although Reynolds, "Fabric," p. 248, gives the quite impossibly small measurement of 122 by 91 centimeters). Henss, "Fabric," p. 39, measures it at 27.4 by 21.3 meters. The story of this thangka is briefly told in Rdzong-rtse's history of Bkra-shis-lhun-po, pp. 125-126.

[12]Ye-shes-rtse-mo’s biography of Dalai Lama I, p. 471, gives a more exact number of pearls at 1,275. Reynolds, "Fabric," p. 248, gives the number as 2,775.

[13]Ye-shes-rtse-mo’s biography of Dalai Lama I, pp. 475-476.

[14] This information on the 'Kulika curtain' (Rigs-ldan yol-ba) is almost entirely based on Dung-dkar's dictionary, p. 551, and Tanaka, "Note," p. 873. However, what may be the ‘original’ passage about the donation of this famous fabric artwork is to be found in the Fifth Dalai Lama’s three-volume autobiography, in the first volume, bearing the title Za-hor-gyi Bande Ngag-dbang-blo-bzang-rgya-mtsho'i 'Di Snang 'Khrul-pa'i Rol-rtsed Rtogs-brjod-kyi Tshul-du Bkod-pa Du-kū-la'i Gos-bzang-las Glegs-bam Dang-po, at folio 107: rin spungs ngag dbang 'jig rten dbang phyug gi zhal bkod ma'i rigs ldan yol ba khyad mtshar gyis sna drangs / nang rten / bla sku / li ma / rgya nag mas mtshon pa'i rten mchod mang po dang gzhis ka bsam grub rtses thog drangs bod khri skor bcu gsum yongs su rdzogs pa 'bul ba yin zhes dril bsgrags. This passage of the biography, in the part covering the year 1642 (the very year of the founding of the Dga'-ldan Pho-brang government, which continued to rule Tibet until the 1950's), was located and reproduced from the digital version of the text produced by Tsering Lama and Christoph Cüppers of the Lumbini International Research Institute (Lumbini, Nepal).

[15] For a major study of his life and artistic accomplishments, see Chapter Eight in Jackson, History, pp. 219-246.

[16] This paragraph is based entirely on Rdzong-rtse’s history of Bkra-shis-lhun-po, pp. 124-131. On following pages Rdzong-rtse tells of still more giant thangkas that were later made and kept at Bkra-shis-lhun-po Monastery. One was made under the orders of the Second Panchen Lama in 1683 in order to replace one that had become worn, while yet another with Mañjughoṣa at the center was newly constructed.

[17] See Rdzong-rtses history of Bkra-shis-lhun-po, p. 134. This tower is known as the Gos-sku Spe'u, or ‘Brocade Icon Tower.’ Samuel Turner made note of this tower, which he calls "Kugopea," in his account of his 1783 visit to "Teshoo Loomboo" (Bkra-shis-lhun-po; see Turner, Account, especially the engraving on p. 315). An account of the festival as held in 1882 may be found in Das, Journey, pp. 198-199.

[18] See Temple and Nguyen, "Giant."

[19]Jackson, History, p. 247. Jackson's entire Chapter Nine is devoted to the Tenth Karmapa.

[20] His making of a Śākyamuni brocade image is mentioned in Karma Thinley, History, p. 99, and in Jackson, History, p. 177, and the story is told in some detail in Rin-chen-dpal-bzang, Mtshur-phu, p. 235. The date of 1585 for starting it is based on Si-tu and 'Be-lo's history, vol. 2, p. 186; it was consecrated in 1589 (ibid., p. 198). It is possible that it was constructed from the many offerings made after the death of the Fifth Zhwa-dmar hierarch in 1583 (His funerary chorten at Yangs-pa-can was completed and consecrated only in 1586), and it may also have been made in His memory. This brocade thangka had the ‘proper’ name Brocade Icon Ornament Beautifying the Three Realms (Gos-sku Khams Gsum Mdzes-rgyan).

[21] As described by Temple and Nguyen, "Giant."

[22] As described by Rin-chen-dpal-bzang, Mtshur-phu, p. 235.

[23] See Richardson, Ceremonies, pp. 74-81, which includes three old photographs showing the two thangkas hanging over the front side of the Potala.

[24] It does seem rather unusual that the Regent would choose to give the measurements of such a large object using the small measurement of the finger-width. In the measurement system Tibetans inherited from Indian Abhidharma texts, twenty-four sor-mois the equivalent of one khru, or cubit. Therefore, the thangka would have measured 108.25 by 92 cubits. Note that the same height measurement of 2,598 fingers is given in Sde-srid, Mchod-sdong, p. 420. Tanaka, "Note," p. 876, note 9, says that Charles Bell gave the height of each of the two thangkas at 80 feet, while Austin Waddell gave their height at 52 meters.

[25] The autobiographical and biographical parts combined fill six volumes, so locating a single passage in it recalls the proverbial needle in a haystack. I could locate the original passage in the Fifth Dalai Lama's biography only thanks to a reference in Dagyab, Tibetan Religious Art, pt. 1, p. 40, and with the further help provided by the digital version of the text produced by Tsering Lama and Christoph Cüppers of the Lumbini International Research Institute (Lumbini, Nepal). Dagyab Rinpoche takes a finger-width (the width of the middle finger of an adult male) to be equivalent to 2.12 centimeters. The entire passage, which goes into great detail on the materials that went into making the two thangkas, has been placed in an appendix at the final installment, based entirely on the Lumbini digital text, since I was unable to locate a print version.

[26] The primary literary source for the iconographic content of the two original giant Potala brocade icons is found in Sde-srid, Mchod-sdong, pp. 419-421 (a passage located thanks to the reference given in Tanaka, "Note," p. 876).

[27] The passage, found in Bstan-'dzin-dpal-'byor, Rdo-ring, vol. 1 (stod-cha), p. 538, leaves no possibility of doubt which thangkas were being replaced: gzhan yang rgyal mchog lnga pa chen po'i sku'i dus mchod du grags pa tshogs mchod chen mo'i skabs pho brang po tā lar 'grems rgyu'i gos sku rnam gnyis kyang lo mang bskul bgres la song stabs gsar brje dang. I must once more thank Tsering Lama and Christoph Cüppers of the Lumbini International Research Institute (Lumbini, Nepal) for the use of their digital versions of this text.

[28] For many details, see Gyeten Namgyal, "Tailor's Tale," particularly pp. 39-41 (here gos-sku is phoneticized as kyigu). The author informs us that at that time two pairs of gos-sku still existed, the pair made during the time of the Eighth Dalai Lama, and a still later pair. The original pair made by the Regent no longer existed, since it had been disassembled and its brocades distributed to various monasteries. Thus it would seem that the original thangkas were replaced with new ones three times.

[29] See pp. 18-19 of the official government publication Potala for a photograph of the two thangkas which were displayed in 1994 to mark the completion of the five-year renovation. These are very likely the ones made in the early 1940’s. One might compare the photograph from circa 1900, published in Reynolds, "Fabric," pp. 244-245 (which is also remarkable for depicting the elaborate procession).

[30] A Bhutanese thangka of Spungs-thang (Punakha), called Great Liberation through Seeing, was made between 1689 and 1692, and still another, called the Zhabs-drung Thang-ka, was made in 1753. See Smith, Among Tibetan Texts, p. 256. Every chief monastery in the Tibetan Buddhist world seems to have had the tradition of showing giant thangkas, stretching from Leh in Ladakh in the west to Kumbum, Labrang, and other monasteries in Amdo in the far northeast of the Tibetan cultural realm, and still further to the north in the Tibetan-style Buddhist monasteries of Mongolia.

[31] The biographies of the Fourth through Sixth Dalai Lamas, as well as the biography of Rdo-ring Paṇḍita, etc., are especially rich in such references, which could not all be included here.

↧

Dreaming Giant Thangkas, the Final Installment

May 19, 2018, 12:08 pm

≫ Next: Dzogchen’s Hermetic Transmission Scene

≪ Previous: Dreaming Giant Thangkas, Part Two

Continued from here.

In 1968, in his introduction to the Eighth Dalai Lama’s biography of His Tutor Yeshé Gyaltsen, the late E. Gene Smith emphasized the importance of locating and making use of information about particular artworks in Tibetan literature. At the same time he pointed out the wealth of such information to be found in this particular biography.[1] What he said then still rings fairly true today,

The Pasadena Tangka (click on the picture to enlarge it)

“It is sad to say that up to the 1970s there was little attempt to utilize Tibetan biographical materials to identify and accurately date Tibetan icons, even though there is an abundance of relevant literary sources... Only after a thorough comparison of thang-kas and literary evidence can we establish valid stylistic sequences. Only then can we begin to speak of the study of Tibetan art history.”[2]

Belatedly following Gene’s advice, it was possible, with a small amount of effort of course, to locate a short mention of the giant brocade made after the death of the Tutor, the one now found in Pasadena.

This was found in the very same biographical work that Gene Smith introduced. It adds some brief yet significant bits of information about the Pasadena tangka, including its size in Tibetan measurement system and the specific ritual purpose for which it was intended. It verifies the 1793-1794 dating.[3] It tells us, in the Dalai Lama's own words, His justification for having His own image placed in the tangka opposite that of His Tutor.[4] A translation follows:

Besides [those just mentioned artworks made in his memory], for the purpose of spreading out[5] upon [the occasion of] the Maitreya Aspiration,[6] it was ordered that a new brocade tangkaof Lord Maitreya be constructed.[7] So for the purpose of completing the [two] accumulations (of merit, puṇya, and Full Knowledge, jñāna), a brocade tangka of Maitreya was made from exceptionally sublime old material, the gan-type silk.[8] In height it was 21 cubits. In width, 13 cubits. As [Maitreya's] divine guests[9]it had the five-visions biography of Lord Tsongkhapa and the four Great Kings. To the right and left of Maitreya were: an image of the Lord Himself and — to indicate the interdependent connections on account of which in all [future] generations of lifetimes I would never be separated from this same guru— an image of myself was placed in it as well. The workmanship and composition were utterly perfect and blessings adhered to it.[10]

Pratapaditya Pal has said, more than once, that the Pasadena tangka is in such perfect condition that it seems to have remained always in storage and may have never been displayed. This passage at least tells us that it was intended to be displayed on a particular ritual occasion. Whether it ever actually served this purpose is unknown at present, although it does seem likely. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing where exactly it was kept, although it was surely originally in the Lhasa area. The most likely site is Drib Tsecholing (Grib Tshe-mchog-gling), but I have been able to learn little about the artworks in the possession of that monastery, originally built by either the Eighth Dalai Lama, His Tutor, or both of them, in the year 1788.[11] The most extensive source on Drib that I know of is appended to the Eighth Dalai Lama's biography of His Tutor.[12] Here we may learn what is actually meant by the “Maitreya Aspiration,” on occasion of which the Pasadena tangka (or one that looked just like it) was meant to be displayed. This three-day holiday, held on the full moon days (the 14th to 16th) of the fifth month, called Maitreya Aspiration (Byams-pa'i Smon-lam),[13] was instituted by the Tutor at Drib Tsecholing as a way of fulfilling the intentions of Lobzang Palden Yeshé (Blo-bzang-dpal-ldan-ye-shes, the Panchen Lama III, who died of smallpox while visiting Peking in 1780).[14] Of course, this same holiday was held at other monasteries, certainly in monasteries affiliated with Tashilhunpo, so here is no certain proof that the Pasadena tangka was kept there.[15] Still, it remains the most likely place. How it then moved away from Lhasa to come into the hands of the Sikkimese royal family, thence to a chateau outside Paris, to a London art dealer, to Baltimore (in 1974, when the asking price was $75,000 USD), and then onward to Pasadena, is another matter that ought to be explored and explained in greater detail, although a very informative article has been written by Pratapaditya Pal that is my source for most of the information just given. From this article we learn some interesting details, including the fact that Arianne Macdonald made a translation of the inscription long ago in Paris.

To conclude, we cannot be sure that the Pasadena tangka was ever displayed during the Maitreya Aspiration observance that began on the full moon of the fifth Tibetan month. We can be sure that this ritual usage was one of the primary motives for its making. This observance was instituted at Tashilhunpo by the First Dalai Lama, occasioned by the founding of the Giant Maitreya Temple there, and later instituted at Kyirong Samtenling (Skyid-grong Bsam-gtan-gling) by the future Tutor (he became Tutor only in 1782) immediately after the death of the Third Panchen Lama in 1780. When the monks of Kyirong fled the Gurkha troops they were resettled and carried on their ritual traditions, including the Maitreya Aspiration, at Drib Tsecholing in 1790 or so. We cannot be completely sure that the Pasadena tangka was kept and displayed at Drib Tsecholing. Still, I believe this is the most likely scenario. Evidence may emerge in the course of further reading — and research efforts of still other kinds — that could lead to its modification.

Perhaps the museum in Pasadena could be brought to realize more fully the importance of this Tibetan cultural property and treat it with the respect it richly deserves. They could at least incorporate into their building a wall tall enough that it could be displayed from time to time,[16] or even permanently given the proper museum lighting, so that this “utterly perfect” brocade monument can be marveled over by future generations. It was meant to be displayed and seen by everyone. I understand that it was displayed once, by constructing a special ramp inside the museum. The use of a ramp for this purpose is traditional enough, since some monasteries did display their giant tangkas on the slope of a mountain rather than vertically. Anyway, the association of giant tangkas with mountains is present already in the 14th-century tangkabrought to Tibet by the 4th Black Hat Karmapa. You might be a person who believes strongly in cultural property rights, and so you might want to see it returned to its original owner: perhaps to the Samten Ling Monastery in Boudhanath, Nepal?

A final puzzling note on the Pasadena tangka: It is quite large, and in terms of tangkas, size surely does, in some ways, matter. The passage in the Tutor’s biography gives its size as 21 by 13 cubits. If it is true as Dagyab Rinpoche has said, that one finger-width is 2.12 centimeters, and given that twenty-four finger-widths equals a cubit, this works out to 10.68 by 6.61 meters. If we were to base ourselves instead on the metric conversion made by Rin-chen-dpal-bzang, at .425 meters to a cubit, this works out to 8.925 by 5.525 meters. Or perhaps we should follow Dungkar Rinpoche, who says that a fathom is equivalent to 1.8 meters (therefore a cubit would be .45), following which, it would be 9.45 by 5.85 meters.

Now the catalogue puts the overall size of the Pasadena tangka (including the cloth frame surrounding the brocade picture) at only 6.8 by 4.5 meters. Several possible rationalizations for the size discrepancy might suggest themselves. One possibility is that the cloth frame has been replaced, reducing the overall size. A second possibility: the Pasadena tangka is not in fact the original, but a somewhat smaller but otherwise faithful copy, perhaps copied in order to replace an original that had become worn through annual display. This is, in fact, an additional and quite plausible explanation for the nearly perfect mint condition of the tangka of Pasadena.

In Mustang, Nepal. Notice the photo of the Sakya Tridzin on the throne.

As this and the following make clear, monks are surely involved, but these events
are extremely popular with laypeople still today.

Bibliographic Key

Appey, Dkar-chag— Khenpo Appey (Mkhan-po A-pad), et al., Dkar-chag Mthong-bas Yid-'phrog Chos Mdzod Bye-ba'i Lde-mig, Ngawang Topyal (New Delhi 1987).

Bhattacharya, “Stūpa” — Gouriswar Bhattacharya, “Stūpa as Maitreya's Emblem,” contained in: Anna Libera Dallapiccola and Stephanie Zingel-Avé Lallemant, The Stūpa: Its Religious, Historical and Architectural Significance, Franz Steiner Verlag (Wiesbaden 1980), pp. 100-111.

Bod-kyi Thang-ka— Bod Rang-skyong Ljongs Rig-dngos Do-dam U-yon Lhan-khang, Bod-kyi Thang-ka, Rig-dngos Dpe-skrun-khang (Lhasa 1984?).

Bsod-nams-don-grub, Bod-kyi Lo-rgyus— Bsod-nams-don-grub, Bod-kyi Lo-rgyus Dpe-tho, Bod-ljongs Mi-dmangs Dpe-skrun-khang (Lhasa 2000).

Bstan-'dzin-dpal-'byor, Rdo-ring— Rdo-ring Bka'-blon Bstan-'dzin-dpal-'byor (b. 1760), Rdo-ring Paṇḍi-ta'i Rnam-thar (=Dga'-bzhi-ba'i Mi-rabs-kyi Byung-ba Brjod-pa Zol-med Gtam-gyi Rol-mo), Si-khron Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Chengdu 1987), in 2 volumes.

Chan, Tibet Handbook— Victor Chan, Tibet Handbook: A Pilgrimage Guide, Moon Publications (Chico, California 1994).

Chandra, “Colossi” — Lokesh Chandra, “Buddhist Colossi and the Avatamsaka Sutras,” Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, n.s. vols. 24-25 (1995-7), pp. 35-58.

Chandra, “Maitreya” — Chandra, Lokesh, “Maitreya,” Dictionary of Buddhist Iconography, International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi, 2003), vol. 7, pp. 2056-2104.
Czaja, Olaf, “The Maitreya Festival at Tashi Lhünpo: A Historical and Art Historical Study.” With thanks to the author for sending a pre-published draft. I haven't made use of it, but include it in the bibliography because it is an excellent study that goes far beyond what I have been able to do in many ways.

Dagyab, Tibetan Religious Art— Loden Sherap Dagyab, Tibetan Religious Art (Part 1: Texts), Otto Harrassowitz (Wiesbaden 1977).

Dalai Lama V, Gsan-yig— 1970-1: Dalai Lama V Ngag-dbang-blo-bzang-rgya-mtsho, Thob-yig Gangga'i Chu-rgyun: The Gsan-yig of the Fifth Dalai Lama, Nechung and Lhakhar (Delhi 1970-1971), in 4 volumes.

Dalai Lama VIII, Biography— Dalai Lama VIII 'Jam-dpal-rgya-mtsho (1758-1804), Biography of Tshe-gling Yongs-'dzin Ye-shes-rgyal-mtshan, Ngawang Gelek Demo (Delhi 1969), with introduction by E. Gene Smith.

Dam-chos Thub-pa Lnga'i Sngon-'gro Skor, Topden Tshering, Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Centre (Dolanji 1976).

Das, "Five Visions"— Sarat Chandra Das, “The Five Visions of Khadudje,” Journal of the Buddhist Text Society, vol. 1, no. 3 (1893).

Das, Journey— Sarat Chandra Das, Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet, ed. by W.W. Rockhill, Mañjuśrī Publishing House (New Delhi 1970), reprint of 1902 edition.

Douglas and White, Karmapa— Nik Douglas and Meryl White, Karmapa: The Black Hat Lama of Tibet, Luzac (London 1976).

Dpa'-bo's history — Dpa'-bo II Gtsug-lag-phreng-ba (1504-1566), Chos-'byung Mkhas-pa'i Dga'-ston, ed. by Rdo-rje-rgyal-po, Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Beijing 1986), in 2 volumes.

Dreyfus, Sound— Georges B.J. Dreyfus, The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk, University of California Press (Berkeley 2003).

Dung-dkar’s dictionary — Dung-dkar Blo-bzang-'phrin-las, Mkhas-dbang Dung-dkar Blo-bzang-'phrin-las Mchog-gis Mdzad-pa'i Bod Rig-pa'i Tshig-mdzod Chen-mo Shes-bya Rab-gsal, Krung-go'i Bod Rig-pa Dpe-skrun-khang (Beijing 2002).

Essen and Tingo, Götter— Gerd-Wolfgang Essen and Tsering Tashi Thingo, Die Götter des Himalaya. Buddhistische Kunst Tibets, Tafelband, Prestel-Verlag (München 1989).

Fontein, “Notes” — Jan Fontein, “Notes on the Tshechu Festival in Paro and Thimphu, Bhutan,” contained in: Dick van der Meij, ed., India and Beyond: Aspects of Literature, Meaning, Ritual and Thought: Essays in Honour of Frits Staal, Kegon Paul (London 1997), pp. 148-160.

Gangs-can Mkhas-grub— Ko-zhul Grags-pa-'byung-gnas and Rgyal-ba-blo-bzang-mkhas-grub, Gangs-can Mkhas-grub Rim-byon Ming-mdzod [‘A Dictionary of Historical Masters of Learning and Accomplishment in the Snow Land’], Kan-su'u Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Lanzhou 1992).

'Gos Lo-tsā-ba’s history — 'Gos Gzhon-nu-dpal (1392-1481), Blue Annals, tr. by G. Roerich, et al., Motilal Banarsidass (Delhi 1976).

Grags-can Mi-sna— Don-rdor and Bstan-'dzin-chos-grags, Gangs-ljongs Lo-rgyus Thog-gi Grags-can Mi-sna [‘Select Famous Persons in the Snow Land’s History’], Bod-ljongs Mi-dmangs Dpe-skrun-khang (Lhasa 1993).

Guenther and Kawamura, Mind— Herbert V. Guenther and Leslie S. Kawamura, Mind in Buddhist Psychology: A Translation of Ye-shes rgyal-mtshan’s “The Necklace of Clear Understanding,” Dharma Publishing (Emeryville 1975).

Gyeten Namgyal, “Tailor's Tale” — Gyeten Namgyal (Rgyal-bstan-rnam-rgyal), as recounted to Kim Yeshi, “A Tailor's Tale,” Chö Yang (Chos-dbyangs): The Voice of Tibetan Religion and Culture, no. 6 (1994), pp. 28-63.

Gyurme Dorje, Tibet— Gyurme Dorje, Tibet Handbook with Bhutan, Passport Books (Chicago 1996).

Heller, “Development” — Amy Heller, “On the Development of the Iconography of Acala and Vighnāntaka in Tibet,” contained in: Rob Linrothe and Henrik H. Sørensen, eds., Embodying Wisdom: Art, Text and Interpretation in the History of Esoteric Buddhism, The Seminar for Buddhist Studies, SBS Monograph series no. 6 (Copenhagen 2001), pp. 209-228.

Heller, Tibetan Art— Amy Heller, Tibetan Art: Tracing the Development of Spiritual Ideals and Art in Tibet, 600-2000 A.D., Jaca Book (Milan 1999).
Henss, “Liberation” — Michael Henss, “Liberation from the Pain of Evil Destinies: The Giant Appliqué Thang kas (Gos sku) at Gyantse (Rgyal rtse Dpal 'khor Chos sde),” contained in: Erberto F. Lo Bue, ed., Art in Tibet: Issues in Traditional Tibetan Art from the Seventh to the Twentieth Century, Brill (Leiden 2011), pp. 73-90.

Henss, Monuments — Michael Henss, Monuments of Central Tibet, Prestel (Munich 2014), in 2 volumes. I haven't directly made use of this work, but I do list it here because of its photographs of giant thangkas, many of them never seen before in published form.
Henss, “Silken Images” — Michael Henss, “Silken Images: The Monumental 15th Century Appliqué Thangkas of Gyantse,” Orientations, vol. 42, no. 5 (June 2011), pp. 58-66.

Henss, “Woven” — Michael Henss, “The Woven Image: Tibeto-Chinese Textile Thangkas of the Yuan & Early Ming Dynasties,” Orientations, vol. 28, no. 10 (November 1997), pp. 26-39.

Huntington, “Great Buddhas” — John C. Huntington, “The Great Buddhas of Asia,” In the Arts (October 1985), pp. 6-11.

Huntington, “Notes” — John Huntington, “Notes on the Iconography and Iconology of the Paro Tsechu Festival Giant Thang-ka,” Orientations(July 1986), pp. 51-57.

Jackson, History— David Jackson, A History of Tibetan Painting, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna 1996).

Karma Thinley, History— Karma Thinley, the Fourth Karma Thinleypa, The History of the Sixteen Karmapas of Tibet, Prajñā Press (Boulder 1980).

Karsten, “Note” — J. Karsten, “A Note on Ya sorand the Secular Festivals following the Smon lam chen mo,” contained in: Ernst Steinkellner and Helmut Tauscher, eds., Contributions on Tibetan Language, History and Culture (Proceedings of the Csoma de Körös Symposium Held at Velm-Vienna, Austria, 13-19 September 1981, Volume 1), Motilal Banarsidass (Delhi 1995), pp. 117-149.

Khag-cig Mtshan-byang— Bod-kyi Bstan-bcos Khag-cig-gi Mtshan-byang, Mtsho-sngon Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Chengdu 1985).

'Khrungs-rabs— 'Phags-pa 'Jig-rten-dbang-phyug-gi Rnam-sprul Rim-byon-gyi 'Khrungs-rabs Deb-ther Nor-bu'i 'Phreng-ba, Sku-sger Yig-tshang (Dharamsala 1977), in five volumes.

Khyongla Rato, My Life and Lives— Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, My Life and Lives: The Story of a Tibetan Incarnation, edited with a foreword by Joseph Campbell, Rato Publications (New York 1991).

Las-chen's history — Las-chen Kun-dga'-rgyal-mtshan, Bka'-gdams-kyi Rnam-par Thar-pa Bka'-gdams Chos-'byung Gsal-ba'i Sgron-me, B. Jamyang Norbu (New Delhi 1972), in 2 volumes.

Ldan-ma, Dpal— Ldan-ma 'Jam-dbyangs-tshul-khrims, Dpal Karma-pa Sku-phreng Rim-byon-gyi Mdzad-rnam, Kan-su'u Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Lanzhou 1997).

Lo-ras-pa, Works— Smad 'Brug Bstan-pa'i Mnga'-bdag Rgyal-ba Lo-ras-pa Grags-pa-dbang-phyug Mchog-gi Gsung-'bum Rin-po-che, Ven. Khenpo Shedup Tenzin & Lama Thinley Namgyal, Shri Gautam Buddha Vihar (Kathmandu 2002), in 5 volumes.

Loh, “Decision” — Jacinta Boon Nee Loh, “Decision from Indecision: Conservation of Thangka; Significance, Perspectives and Approaches,” Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies, issue 8 (November 2002), pp. 1-19.

Macdonald, “Portrait” — Ariane Macdonald, with the collaboration of Dvags-po Rinpoche and Yon-tan Rgya-mtsho, “Un Portrait du Cinquième Dalai-Lama,” contained in: Ariane Macdonald and Yoshiro Imaeda, eds., Essais sur l’art du Tibet, Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, J. Maisonneuve (Paris 1977), pp. 119-156.

Martin, “Painters” — Dan Martin, “Painters, Patrons and Paintings of Patrons in Early Tibetan Art,” contained in: Rob Linrothe and Henrik H. Sørensen, eds., Embodying Wisdom: Art, Text and Interpretation in the History of Esoteric Buddhism, The Seminar for Buddhist Studies, SBS Monograph series no. 6 (Copenhagen 2001), pp. 139-184.

Martin, Tibetan Histories— Dan Martin in collaboration with Yael Bentor, Tibetan Histories: A Bibliography of Tibetan-Language Historical Works, Serindia (London 1997).

Miyaji, “Idea” — Miyaji Akira, “The Idea and Realization of the Colossal Buddhas: Maitreya and Vairocana,” contained in: Shoun Hino & Toshihiro Wado, eds., Three Mountains & Seven Rivers: Prof. Musashi Tachikawa’s Felicitation Volume, Motilal (Delhi 2004), pp. 275-296.

Mullin, Fourteen— Glenn H. Mullin, The Fourteen Dalai Lamas: A Sacred Legacy of Reincarnation, Clear Light Publishers (Santa Fe 2001).

Mullin, “Tse-Chok-Ling’s” — Glenn H. Mullin, “Tse-Chok-Ling’s Biography of the Third Dalai Lama,” Tibet Journal, vol. 11, no. 3 (Autumn 1986), pp. 23-39.

*Nairitipa, Ajitanāthasādhana— *Nairitipa, Ajitanāthasādhana (Dpal Mi-pham-mgon-po'i Sgrub-thabs), Derge Tanjur, Rgyud section, vol. MU, folios 261v.2-262r.3 [Tôhoku catalogue no. 3649]. Translated by Gnubs Lo-tsā-ba Byams-pa'i-dpal (i.e., Khro-phu Lo-tsā-ba).

Nietupski, Labrang— Paul Kocot Nietupski, Labrang: A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery at the Crossroads of Four Civilizations, Snow Lion (Ithaca 1999).

Padma-dkar-po, Gsan-yig— 'Brug-chen IV Padma-dkar-po (1527-1592), Bka'-brgyud-kyi Bka'-'bum Gsil-bu-rnams-kyi Gsan-yig, contained in: Collected Works (Gsung-'bum) of Kun-mkhyen Padma-dkar-po, Kargyud Sungrab Nyamso Khang (Darjeeling 1973-76), vol. 4, pp. 309-496.

Padma-dkar-po’s history — 'Brug-chen IV Padma-dkar-po (1527-1592), Tibetan Chronicle of Padma-dkar-po (Chos-'byung Bstan-pa'i Padma Rgyas-pa'i Nyin-byed), Lokesh Chandra, Śatapiṭaka Series no. 75 (New Delhi 1968).

Pal, “Monumental” — Pratapaditya Pal, “A Monumental Applique Thangka from Tibet,” located on the internet at http://www.kaleden.com/articles/1018ḥtml, accessed June 1, 2005 (it is no longer there).

Patrul, Words— Patrul Rinpoche, Kunzang Lama’i Shelung: The Words of My Perfect Teacher, tr. by the Padmakara Translation Group, Harper Collins (San Francisco 1994).

Potala— Gangs-ljongs Gnas-mchog Pho-brang Po-ta-la (The Potala: Holy Palace in the Snow Land), Krung-go Yul-skor Dpe-skrun-khang [China Travel & Tovrism [!] Press] (Beijing 1996).

Rdzong-rtse’s history of Se-ra — Rdzong-rtse Byams-pa-thub-bstan, Mkhas Mang Rgya-mtsho'i Bsti-gnas Dbus-'gyur Gdan-sa Chen-po Gsum-gyi Ya-gyal Se-ra Theg-chen-gling-gi Chos-'byung Rab-gsal Nor-bu'i Me-long, International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi 1995).

Rdzong-rtse’s history of Bkra-shis-lhun-po — Rdzong-rtse Byams-pa-thub-bstan (b. 1933), Chos-grwa Chen-po Bkra-shis-lhun-po Dpal-gyi Sde-chen Phyogs Thams-cad-las Rnam-par Rgyal-ba'i Gling-gi Chos-'byung Ngo-mtshar Dad-pa'i Sgo-'byed, Bod-kyi Dpe-mdzod-khang (Dharamsala 1991)

Reynolds, “Fabric” — Valrae Reynolds, “Fabric Images and Their Special Role in Tibet,” contained in: Pratapaditya Pal, ed., On the Path to Void: Buddhist Art of the Tibetan Realm, Marg Publications (Mumbai 1996), pp. 244-257.

Reynolds, “Luxury Textiles” — Valrae Reynolds, “Luxury Textiles in Tibet,” contained in: Jane Casey Singer and Philip Denwood, eds., Tibetan Art: Towards a Definition of Style, Laurence King Publishing (London 1997), pp. 118-131, 298.

Rhie and Thurman, Worlds— Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A.F. Thurman, Worlds of Transformation: Tibetan Art of Wisdom and Compassion, Tibet House and The Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation (New York 1999).

Ricca and Lo Bue, Great Stupa— Franco Ricca and Erberto Lo Bue, The Great Stupa of Gyantse: A Complete Tibetan Pantheon of the Fifteenth Century, Serindia Publications (London 1993).

Richardson, Ceremonies— Hugh Richardson, Ceremonies of the Lhasa Year, ed. by Michael Aris, Serindia Publications (London 1993).

Rin-chen-dpal-bzang, Mtshur-phu— Rin-chen-dpal-bzang (b. 1924), Mtshur-phu Dgon-gyi Dkar-chag Kun-gsal Me-long, Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Beijing 1995).

Sde-srid, Mchod-sdong— Sde-srid Sangs-rgyas-rgya-mtsho (1653-1705), Mchod-sdong 'Dzam-gling-rgyan-gcig-gi Dkar-chag, Mtsho-sngon Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Xining 1990).

Sde-srid’s history — Sde-srid Sangs-rgyas-rgya-mtsho (1653-1705), Bai-ḍūrya Ser-po (= Dpal Mnyam-med Ri-bo Dga'-ldan-pa'i Bstan-pa Zhwa-ser Cod-paṇ 'Chang-ba'i Ring-lugs Chos Thams-cad-kyi Rtsa-ba Gsal-bar Byed-pa Bai-ḍūrya Ser-po'i Me-long), International Academy of Indian Culture, Śatapiṭaka series no. 12 (New Delhi 1960).

Se-ra Theg-chen-gling— Tshe-dbang-rin-chen, ed., Se-ra Theg-chen-gling [Sera Thekchen Ling], Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Beijing 1995).

Si-tu, Account— Kah-thog Si-tu Chos-kyi-rgya-mtsho, Gangs-ljongs Dbus Gtsang Gnas-bskor Lam-yig Nor-bu Zla-shel-gyi Se-mo-do [An Account of a Pilgrimage to Central Tibet during the Years 1918-1920], Sungrab Nyamso Gyunphel Parkhang (Tashijong 1972).

Si-tu and 'Be-lo’s history — Si-tu Paṇ-chen Chos-kyi-'byung-gnas and 'Be-lo Tshe-dbang-kun-khyab, History of the Karma Bka'-brgyud-pa Sect, Being the Text of Sgrub-brgyud Karma Kaṃ-tshang Brgyud-pa Rin-po-che'i Rnam-par Thar-pa Rab-'byams Nor-bu Zla-ba Chu-shel-gyi Phreng-ba, D. Gyaltsan and Kesang Legshay (New Delhi 1972), in two volumes.

Sle-lung Rje-drung, Collected Works— Sle-lung Rje-drung Bzhad-pa'i-rdo-rje (b. 1697), The Collected Works (Gsung-'bum) of Sle-lung Rje-drung Bzhad-pa'i-rdo-rje, T. Sonam and D.L. Tashigang (Leh 1983), in 11 volumes.

Sman-sdong, Bzhi-pa— Sman-sdong Mtshams-pa Karma-nges-don-bstan-rgyas (late 19th century), Bzhi-pa Chos-rje Rol-pa'i-rdo-rjes Rnam-thar Rag-rim, contained in: Collected Biographies of the Successive Embodiments of the Karmapas, 1st to 16th, Konchog Lhadrepa (Delhi 1994).

Smith, Among Tibetan Texts — E. Gene Smith, Among Tibetan Texts: History and Literature of the Himalayan Plateau, ed. by Kurtis R. Schaeffer, Wisdom Publications (Boston 2001).

Sponberg and Hardacre, Maitreya— Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre, Maitreya, the Future Buddha, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge 1988).

Stratton, “Paro” — Carol Stratton, “The Paro Tsechu Festival and the Giant Thangka,” Orientations (July 1986), pp. 46-50.

Tanaka, “Note” — Yuko Tanaka, “A Note on the History, Materials and Techniques of Tibetan Appliqué Thangkas,” contained in: Per Kvaerne, 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), vol. 2, pp. 873-876.

Tokarska-Bakir, “Naive” — J. Tokarska-Bakir, “Naive Sensualism, Docta Ignorantia, Tibetan Liberation through the Senses,” Numen, vol. 47, no. 1 (2000), pp. 69-112.

Tsepak Rigzin, Festivals— Tsepak Rigzin, Festivals of Tibet, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (Dharamsala 1993).

Temple and Nguyen, “Giant” — Terris Temple and Leslie Nguyen, “The Giant Thangka of Tsurphu Monastery,” available at the website of Asian Arts. GIVE LINK!

Thurman, Life and Teachings— Robert A.F. Thurman, ed., Life and Teachings of Tsongkhapa, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (Dharamsala 1990).

Tshe-mchog-gling, Works— Tshe-mchog-gling Ye-shes-rgyal-mtshan (1713-1793), The Collected Works (Gsung-'bum) Of Tshe-mchog-gling Yongs-'dzin Ye-shes-rgyal-mtshan, Tibet House Library (New Delhi 1974), in 25 volumes.

Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls— Giuseppe Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, SDI Publications (Bangkok 1999), reprint of 1949 edition, in 3 volumes, with graphic editing by Bruce L. Miller.

Turner, Account— Captain Samuel Turner, An Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet, Containing a Narrative of a Journey through Bootan, and Part of Tibet, Mañjuśrī Publishing House (New Delhi 1971), reprint of London edition of 1800.

van der Kuijp, “Lives” — Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp, “On the Lives of Śākyaśrībhadra (?-?1225),” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 114, no. 4 (1994), pp. 599-616.

Willis, Enlightened— Janice D. Willis, Enlightened Beings: Life Stories from the Ganden Oral Tradition, Wisdom (Boston 1995).

Ye-shes-rtse-mo, Biography of Dalai Lama I — Paṇ-chen Ye-shes-rtse-mo, Rje Thams-cad Mkhyen-pa Dge-'dun-grub-pa-dpal-bzang-po'i Rnam-thar Ngo-mtshar Rmad-byung Nor-bu'i Phreng-ba, contained in: The Collected Works of the First Dalai Lama Dge-'dun-grub-pa, Dodrup Lama Sangye (Gangtok 1981), vol. 5, pp. 385-509. Composed in 1494 CE.

Yon-tan-rgya-mtsho’s history — Yon-tan-rgya-mtsho, Dge-ldan Chos-'byung Gser-gyi Mchod-sdong 'Bar-ba, Yonten Gyatso (Paris 1994-1995), in 2 volumes.

Sunset over Kathmandu Valley from Tinchuli

[1] This introduction by E. Gene Smith has been republished in a more widely available format as Chapter Thirteen in Smith, Among Tibetan Texts, pp. 171-176.

[2] Smith, Among Tibetan Texts, pp. 175-176. Just to mention one remarkable exception to the rule, Paris researchers uncovered the very passage in the Fifth Dalai Lama's biography which mentions a cast-metal image of Him that is now found in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. This passage permitted a precise dating of the Boston image to the year 1679. For the details, see Macdonald, et al., "Portrait."

[3] Since the biography was completed in 1794 I assume that the passage that follows also dates to that year, and this passage fairly proves that the brocade thang-ka had been completed by the time of its writing.

[4] This image of the Tutor is iconographically identical to the modern drawing found in Guenther & Kawamura, Mind, which is a translation of one of the Tutor's books. Therefore it is initially quite puzzling why this drawing is identified as one of Dpal-sprul, the famous 19th-century Rnying-ma-pa teacher (however, it would seem that Dpal-sprul's iconography is identical — well, very nearly so, since the hat does differ slightly — to that of the Tutor; see the woodblock printed [?] image in Patrul, Words, p. xlvi).

[5] The verb 'grems-pa (some dictionaries spell the present tense form without the 's') is used in very many gos-sku descriptions. It seems that the more basic meanings of this transitive verb are 'to strew about' [straw or flowers] or 'to spread out flat' [something that was not flat before], but it is so often used in this sense that one is tempted to translate it as to display. But it is notable that the same verb is used for the display of thang-kas of all types, and not just the giant ones.

[6] One might think that this Maitreya Aspiration holiday refers to the part of the Lhasa Aspiration (Lha-sa Smon-lam) in which an image of Maitreya is taken in procession around the 'intermediate circumambulation route' (Bar-skor, or in English-language literature, the Barkhor). On this holiday, known as Byams-pa Spyan-'dren, or Invitation of Maitreya, see Richardson, Ceremonies, pp. 52-55; Tsepak Rigzin, Festivals, pp. 19-20; and Karsten, "Note," p. 125, the latter supplied with a large number of further references. Dreyfus, Sound, p. 258, argues that the main motive for the Smon-lam festivities that follow the Tibetan New Year is to bring about the coming of the future Buddha Maitreya. The Maitreya procession is the final religious act of the Smon-lam period (athletic events coincide with it and continue on the following day). See the personal account of these events in Khyongla Rato, My Life and Lives, pp. 101-102. However, I believe that we must instead understand the specific Maitreya Aspiration of this passage as referring to the three-day observance held on a different date entirely at Grib Tshe-mchog-gling, on which more below.

[7] Some silk Maitreya icons have already been mentioned, Apart from those, there is a 4-folio text listed in the works of Lcang-skya Ngag-dbang-chos-ldan (1642-1714) entitled Rgyal-ba Byams-pa'i Gos-sku Mthong-ba Don-ldan-gyi Dkar-chag, not currently available to me. It ought to contain an account of a giant Maitreya brocade thang-kaolder than that of the Eighth Dalai Lama. In the works of Sle-lung Rje-drung Bzhad-pa'i-rdo-rje (b. 1697), is a work in 27 folios entitled Bsam-yas-su Byams-pa Gtsor Gyur-gyi Gos-sku Gsar-bzhengs-kyi Dkar-chag (it may be located in Sle-lung Rje-drung, Collected Works, vol. 5, pp. 249-268). It describes the new construction at Samye of a large brocade thang-ka portraying Maitreya as its central subject.

[8] The same gan-type silk (gan-gos) is said to have been used as well for making the Mtshur-phu monumental thang-ka (see Rin-chen-dpal-bzang, Mtshur-phu, p. 235). I am for the moment unable to identify which exact type of silk is intended.

[9] It might be worthwhile to draw attention to the particular Tibetan word that is used here, lha-mgron, since it appears to be absent from the dictionaries. It is commonly used in thang-kadescriptions for the entire group of deities and holy personages that are depicted surrounding the larger sized central figure.

[10] Dalai Lama VIII, Biography, p. 384: gzhan yang byams pa'i smon lam gyi thog tu 'grem rgyu'i byams mgon gyi gos thang gsar bzheng gnang bzhed yod pa ni / bdag nyid tshogs rdzogs pa'i ched du gan gos rgyu rnying khyad 'phags las bsgrubs pa'i byams pa'i gos thang srid du khru nyi shu rtsa gcig dang / zheng du khru bcu gsum yod pa / lha mgron du rje tsong kha pa'i rnam thar gzigs pa lnga ldan dang / rgyal chen sde bzhi / byams pa'i g.yas g.yon du rje nyid kyi sku brnyan dang / tshe [385] rabs thams cad du bla ma 'di nyid dang mi 'bral ba'i rten 'brel mtshon byed bdag nyid kyi gzugs brnyan yang 'khod pa bzo bkod phun sum tshogs shing byin chags pa zhig gsar du bzhengs shing.

[11] The main building survived the cultural revolution, and may still be visited today. See Chan, Tibet Handbook, p. 170 (here the date of founding is given as 1782). The full name of the monastery is Grib Tshe-mchog-bsam-gtan-gling (and it should not be confused with monasteries of similar names in other parts of Tibet, and even in Bodhanath in Nepal, some of them being affiliates of the Grib monastery). One reason for the building of this monastery was to house monks from the Tutor's earlier establishment, Skyid-grong Bsam-gtan-gling, who had been displaced by the Nepalese-Tibetan war. See Dung-dkar's dictionary, pp. 560-561 (here the date of founding is given as the Earth Hen year of 1789). It would seem that its construction basically spanned the years 1788 through 1790 (see Dalai Lama VIII, Biography, pp. 392, 394).

[12] Dalai Lama VIII, Biography, pp. 386-410. A less detailed inventory of the artworks kept in this monastery appears in Si-tu, Account, pp. 142-143, based on a visit made at the end of the year 1918 or the beginning of 1919. Perhaps the most remarkable among the sacred objects was the clay sculpture that contained the Tutor's embalmed body.

[13] Note that this is the exact wording used in our passage. One might point, as well, to an anonymous 'Phags-pa Byams-pa'i Smon-lam (no Sanskritic title is supplied here) contained in the Gzungs-'dus section (in its vol. 2 [Waṃ], fols. 266-267) of the Derge Kanjur scripture collection. It has sometimes been attributed to Sthiramati. It is very often chanted by Tibetan Buddhist monks, and it occurs immediately after the Samantabhadracaryapraṇidhānarājain most monastic liturgical handbooks (chos-spyod), just as it does in the Gzungs-'dus. It is worthy of note that the date of the Maitreya Aspiration coincides with that of a holiday celebrated quite widely in Tibet, the 'Dzam-gling Spyi-bsangs, 'Juniper Burning Rite for [Purifying] the Whole World.' On this holiday, see Richardson, Ceremonies, pp. 94-95. People, especially laypeople, go up to high places to offer juniper as incense for the local mountain deities (who of course are also protectors of Buddhism), and many of the oracles go into trance on that day. It is interesting to note, although not much is said about it, a reference to the annual observance of something called the Byams-pa'i Smon-lam in Las-chen's history, vol. 2, p. 162 (general context is the early history of Snar-thang Monastery).

[14] The passage on which this information is based occurs as part of a list of annual observances held at Grib Tshe-mchog-gling contained in Dalai Lama VIII, Biography, p. 405: hor zla lnga ba'i tshes bco lnga dang bstun rje btsun blo bzang dpal ldan ye shes kyi dgongs rdzogs su byams pa'i smon lam nyin gsum dang.

[15] I could locate in a collection of prayers in the use of Skyid-grong Bkra-shis-bsam-gtan-gling and its affiliate monasteries (which does include Grib Tshe-mchog-gling), a short aspiration prayer (smon-lam) dedicated to Maitreya. It has neither title nor authorship attribution. It is known, like so many other popular prayers, by a title that places a final ma syllable after the first words of the text, hence Byams-pa'i Sku-gzugs-ma. By checking in a liturgical handbook, I could find out that the author of this short prayer is the First Dalai Lama Dge-'dun-grub [it ought to be contained in vol. NGA of His works, according to Klong-rdol Bla-ma, in His Gsung Thor-bu]. His authorship is confirmed in Rdzong-rtse's history of Bkra-shis-lhun-po, p. 229, which says this prayer was offered at the presence of the Great Maitreya image of Bkra-shis-lhun-po on its completion. In its opening verse it says, "May those embodied ones who brought about the conditions and causes / for the erection of [this] perfect image of Maitreya / live their lives in the glory of the supreme Vehicle teachings / at the feet of Lord Maitreya (byams pa'i sku gzugs phul byung bzhengs pa la // mthun rkyen sgrub par byed pa'i lus can rnams // rgyal ba byams pa mgon po'i zhabs drung du // theg mchog chos kyi dpal la spyod par shog). It was written on the occasion of the completion, after four years of work, of the giant gilded copper image of Maitreya at Bkra-shis-lhun-po (Rdzong-rtse's history of Bkra-shis-lhun-po, pp. 69-70), an event that occurred in 1463 (Ibid., p. 199). This metal image measured 25 cubits (Ye-shes-rtse-mo, biography of Dalai Lama I, p. 462). The construction history of giant sculptures of Maitreya is not entirely disconnected with the history of giant brocade Maitreyas. The Great Maitreya of Khro-phu was built under the direction of Khro-phu Lo-tsā-ba and consecrated in 1212 CE. It in turn was no doubt inspired by a text Khro-phu Lo-tsā-ba translated that recommends the visualization of Maitreya in the colossal size of 80 cubits (*Nairitipa, Ajitanāthasādhana). In fact the Great Maitreya that Khro-phu built is said to have been 80 cubits high (for a very old source, see van der Kuijp, "Lives," p. 614, but also Dpa'-bo's history, p. 843; Gyurme Dorje, Tibet, p. 348). It was located about 60 kilometers away from Bkra-shis-lhun-po.

[16] For example, the large thang-ka of Mtshur-phu was displayed on a ramp especially designed for it, with stepped walls all around, on a hillside close to the monastery.

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Dzogchen’s Hermetic Transmission Scene

June 30, 2018, 9:52 am

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The Tibetan-born translator Vairocana’s role in the transmission of Dzogchen, and particularly the Mind Series kind of Atiyoga Dzogchen, into Tibet has been a well kept secret in traditional Tibetan historiography. It is as if the cultural image of the lotus guru Padmasambhava grew so large that many other important figures were made to take less and less space in the history books. In the case of Vairocana, at least, the cramped area allotted to him was clearly undeserved.*

(*We put up an earlier blog about Vairocana called “Kashgar Tiger,” where it was shown that there are good reasons for even the proud skeptic to believe in his actual historical existence.)

The story of Dzogchen’s first transmission to Tibetans in the 8th century is recounted in the Vairocana biography called the Great Mask, as well as in the post-1263 CE history of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism by Khepa Deyu. Two Tibetan men, Vairocana and Legdrug, were given an imperial commission, equipped with enough gold to fill a hind's hide, to bring back Buddhist teachings from India. Here is a rough translation from the Deyu (pp. 309-310). You need to understand that the Dzogchen masters of India as a whole regarded it as a matter of the highest importance that their spiritual treasure should never be allowed to get out of India. The one and only Dzogchen master who agreed to help them was Śrīsiṃha:

“You came here accompanied by much hardship. As for conferring the teachings, I will do so. But the method of conferring them is quite a difficult one. If it becomes known that I have conferred them upon you, we shall all three be in danger for our lives, so we must act with skillful methods.” He [Śrīsiṃha] stuck his two disciples inside the skin bag made from the pelt of a hind. On their heads he planted feathers of the magpie. The teacher put them inside a copper water pot placed upon a tripod made up of three boulders. He closed the opening of it with a stone slate. On top of that he placed a large clay pot in which he himself stayed. Boring a hole through the clay, he spoke down to them through a copper trumpet. By day he taught them the teachings of cause and effect. At midnight he taught them the Rig pa khu byug, the Rtsal chen sprug pa, the Yul kun nas ’jug pa, the Khyung chen lding ba and the Rdo la gser zhun.* Then he asked them if they were satisfied. Legdrug said he was satisfied and, hoping for honor and recognition, returned early. But he was killed on his way back to Tibet by a borderguard. Vairocana said he was not satisfied, so the teacher went on to teach him the Nam mkha’ che, Rmad du byung ba and Man ngag rgya mtsho’i klong. When asked if he was satisfied, he said, “Yes, now I am satisfied.”
(*I didn’t translate the Tibetan text titles, because it is such a problem to do these titles justice in English, even more so than the texts themselves. Besides, you can conveniently locate a list of them in the Wikipedia, with translations not entirely satisfying, but not at all bad, really.)

This elaborate setup was meant to keep the Dzogchen masters of India from getting access to the information they were looking for. They suspected that India’s exclusive hold on the most lofty Buddhist teachings was in imminent danger of being compromised. They just didn’t know where and how and by whom. That’s why I decided to call the elaborate attempt to block their supernatural access a firewall, just to keep things short, and to have a little fun using an anachronism that may be otherwise apt enough.

If the historian side of me speaks freely and plainly, I say it is very likely that knowledge of what Vairocana did in India was lost to the tradition, but that stories were introduced into the gap, including this story. But I hate to be a spoilsport, and I’m not really (certainly not always) wearing a history hat. I’m here to praise the Mind Series, not to look down my nose at it. Besides, it dawned on me just today that something interesting is going on here that is cause for perplexity, reflection and maybe even amazement. Tell me, were you able to visualize in your mind’s eye the setup as Khepa Deyu described it? What does it look like? Two bulbous chambers one on top of the other. They are elevated on a tripod, and therefore likely meant to have a fire beneath,* and a pipe joining the two chambers? Is that what you saw?

(*It rests on three boulders, which is just how Tibetans make a hearth when they have to cook outdoors. Sometimes this is called by the name sgyed-bu, or sgyid-bu.)

Among the laboratory instruments much in use by early English and continental alchemists was a vessel nicknamed the pelican. I think it was named as it was because of a story about the bird rather than actual bird behavior. For the moment what birds really do doesn’t count for much. The pelican served in the Middle Ages as a type of Christ as the savior. Long ago I noticed one above a tunnel door in an Oxford college. Very recently I saw a crusader period capital example in the Upper Room on Mount Zion, one of the traditional sites of the Last Supper. Here is my photo of it.

The stone carving has gotten worn over the last millennium, so I’m not sure how well you can see how the beaks of the pelicans are poking into their own chests. So let me find another example out on the internet.

For the source, look here.

Here it is easier to see that the pelican is curving its neck down to reach its own breast in order to draw blood to feed its chicks. If you can’t begin to see how that might be an image of Christ’s bodily sacrifice that for Christians means redemption, the eucharist and so on, you may need to brush up on Christian theology and get back with me.

Forgive me if I haven’t made it very clear where I’m going. I don’t suggest that medieval Christian pelicans have anything at all to do with the Dzogchen transmission story’s firewall. Not directly. I’m just saying that the firewall is remarkably similar to an alchemical setup named for its resemblance to the pelican, used for distillation purposes. It’s the traditional symbolism that explains why the beaker used in medieval alchemy was called a pelican. The beaker itself, or the distillation setup, is our main point of comparison. Not the pelican bird.

Some distillation vessels have a long spout leading into a collecting container off to the side, while others have spouts leading back into the heated chamber below, so the distillate can undergo the process again and again, resulting in a super-refined product.

In western alchemy, the pelican represents the reddening, or rubedo, the penultimate phase just before the formation of the Philosophers Stone.*

(*You can see double-beaked pelican vessels depicted near the top of the so-called Ripley Scrolls for this reason, I think.)

~•~•~•~•~

Thanks to the elaborate firewall setup, it was possible to prevent even the most spiritual masters with the most highly advanced clairvoyant powers from knowing just how the transmission of Dzogchen Mind Series took place:

The Paṇḍitas talked among themselves, “By employing prasenadivinations, we would realize who it was who taught this teaching.” The results of their investigations were as follows. “The master who taught this teaching was this one: There is a lake on the surface of three mountains. On the surface of that is a rock. On the surface of the rock is a creature, its body filled with eyes and with a very long beak. This is the one who gave the teachings to the two hinds.”

So they didn’t discover who it was.

I was just wondering why all those lab vessels are to this day called beakers, anyway? What is a retort? An alembic? I’m not clear on a lot of matters alchemical. Still, given that this is what we are presented with, the message seems to me clear, that the tellers of the story intended to tell us that Atiyoga Mind Series Dzogchen is not just a distillation, it’s a super-refined super-distillation of the Buddha’s teachings, the essence of the essence. (Ever wonder why the Mind Series texts are so tiny, as short as just six lines of verse?) They are saying that this process creates something miraculously effective, something like the universal medicine or gold-transforming elixir promised by alchemical manipulations of the elements. Well, that’s what I’m thinking. What do you think they wanted to say?

PS: I appreciate you allowing me this time to talk about a strange idea that popped into my head, but now I really have to go back to my less fun work. I was letting myself get tied up in the tedium of it, and so I thank you for the brief respite. And one more thing, I would like to encourage or even urge you to exercise your freedom of expression. As they say, use it or lose it. Say what you think! And if you want, you can say it here in the comments section.

• • •

The Double Pelican, from the Buch zu Distillieren, by Hieronymus Brunschwig, 1519 CE

Agrawal, D.P., “Indian Chemistry through the Ages.” If you wonder whether India knew the use of distilling apparatus, this essay is for you. Not only did she know about it, she may have invented it.

Dpal-lhun-dgra-'dul, Bod-kyi Lo-rgyus Thog-gi Skyes-mchog Pa-gor Bai-ro-tsa-na'i Skor-gyi Dpyad-brjod, Bod-ljongs Mi-dmangs Dpe-skrun-khang (Lhasa 2012). This is really just an edition of Great Mask biography in 15 chapters, with a very long introductory section added by the modern editor. For the firewall see p. 335.

Dudjom Rinpoche Jikdrel Yeshe Dorje, The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, Its Fundamentals and History, Gyurme Dorje, tr., with collaboration of Matthew Kapstein, Wisdom Publications (Boston 1991), vol. 1, pp. 538-540. This account of the transmission neglects to tell the story of the “firewall.”

Fairley, T., “Early History of Distillation,” Journal of the Institute of Brewing, vol. 13, no. 6 (1907), pp. 559-582. Look here for a free-access PDF. You can even find illustrated here a distillation setup from Tibet and Bhutan. Page 576:

“Where the process [of distillation] required a prolonged heating or digestion, a vessel with two side arms or tubes joining the body with the head was used, called the pelicanus, from the resemblance of the outline to that of a pelican plucking blood from its breast according to the ancient fable. A modification of this apparatus with two vessels was called gemellus, the twin brothers...”

I guess the ultimate source of this illustration is Giovanni Baptista della Porta, De Distillationibus Libri IX, published in Strassburg in 1609

Samten Gyaltsen Karmay, The Great Perfection, a Philosophical and Meditative Teaching of Tibetan Buddhism, E.J. Brill (Leiden 1988). There is a newer edition, but I don’t have a copy. There is a whole chapter in this book about Vairocana that does include an account of the transmission, but not a word about the firewall against detection. I suppose the omission is justifiable on the grounds that the story is so wildly improbable that it couldn’t possibly be historical.

Erik Pema Kunzang, tr., The Lotus-Born: The Life Story of Padmasambhava by Yeshe Tsogyal, Shambhala (Boston 1993), pp. 90-97. At p. 91 we read:

“He [Śrīsiṃha] took them into a house surrounded by nine walls and conferred the empowerment of direct anointment. He then placed a huge copper vessel upon a tripod, and the master sat himself upon it. He donned a cotton robe with lattice work, put a copper pipe to his mouth, and gave teachings.”

This is so much less detailed than the Khepa Deyu, so I would say Deyu must have based himself on the Great Mask (well, some version of it), and not on the Copper Isle biography that is the source of Erik’s translation.

Nyang-ral Nyi-ma-'od-zer, Chos-'byung Me-tog Snying-po Sbrang-rtsi'i Bcud, Bod-yig Dpe-rnying Dpe-skrun-khang (Lhasa 1988), pp. 317-321, has the account of Vairocana’s India travel in it. It doesn't tell about the elaborate "fire-wall" protections, but it does say that the Indian masters were zealous about keeping the Mind Series teachings in India. Vairocana has to learn the fast feet practice to get over the mountains as quickly as possible.

Sakyapa Sonam Gyaltsen, The Clear Mirror, a Traditional Account of Tibet’s Golden Age, tr. by McComas Taylor & lama Choedak Yuthok, Snow Lion (Ithaca 1996), p. 139:

“Then Gar... arranged three large hearth-stones on the floor and placed a great cauldron filled with water upon them. Next, he scattered the feathers of various species of birds on the water and covered the cauldron with a red shield. He seated his hostess on the shield and covered her head with a pot which was itself covered with a net. He bored a hole in the pot and inserted a copper trumpet into the hole through the net...”

Rolf A. Stein, The World in Miniature: Container Gardens and Dwellings in Far Eastern Religious Thought, tr. by Phyllis Brooks, Stanford University Press (Stanford 1990), pp. 232-233. Stein was probably the first Tibetanist to notice that the story of the elaborate secrecy precautions taken by Śrīsiṃha* is so exactly paralleled in a story about what took place in 7th-century China when Minister Gar went to find a Chinese princess to be given in marriage to the Tibetan prince and heir to the throne. He even notes (without supplying details) a parallel in the Gesar Epic.

(*Stein’s source for the Śrīsiṃha story is the Copper Isle version of the biography of Padmasambhava according to the 12th-century Nyangral Nyima Özer. For this see Erik Pema Kunzang, tr., listed above).

Yudra Nyingpo, The Great Image: The Life Story of Vairochana the Translator, tr. by Ani Jinba Palmo (Eugenie de Jong), Shambhala (Boston 2004), p. 117:

“Inside his room Master Shri Singha put a clay pot on top of three big stones and surrounded it with a net. He sat inside the pot and had the opening covered with a big lid on which a pan filled with water was placed. A pipe ran through a hole in the pot and crossed through a cleft in the wall outside of the house...”

I’m puzzled by the differences here, and imagine Khepa Deyu must have drawn his extracts from a different version of the Great Image.

On the pelican symbol, look here and here and here and here.

One of the most intriguing artistic deployments of the pelican symbol is found on the back side of Hieronymus Bosch’s “St. John on Patmos.” Look here, if possible, since you can see it in a very large size. The Pelican with her chicks is perched on top of a vertical boulder emerging from the middle of a lake. Do you notice what is going on at the bottom of the boulder, just above the lake level? Is this boulder in fact some kind of furnace?

§ § §

An added note (July 1, 2018): I noticed that the Padmakara Translation Group, in their published translation of Zurchungpa's Testament with commentary by the late Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, chose to translate the Tibetan name of a bird — skyar-mo / སྐྱར་མོ་ — as pelican. Examples are in the Snow Lion publication of 2006 at pp. 157-8. 291 and 344. These metaphorical passages interest me a great deal, since it is one of those points of contact you can see with the precepts of Padampa, one of several remarkable matches. Now I suppose Padampa himself could have had the pelican in his mind, and its practice of carrying around fish in the sag of its beak is well known, so the metaphorical usage makes a lot of sense. However, I believe Tibetans had no experience of pelicans, and choose to translate it as heron instead. One reason I do this is that I know of no actual record of an honest-to-goodness Tibetan word for pelican. On the other hand, one modern materia medica book clearly describes skyar-mo as some kind of a duck. Oh well, I’ll think about it some more. Meanwhile let me know if you happen to spot any pelicans in the high Himalayas.

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Tibetan Proper Name Index

September 10, 2018, 7:07 am

≫ Next: Military Law Document of Imperial Era Recovered in 2014

≪ Previous: Dzogchen’s Hermetic Transmission Scene

I apologize to all three of my regular readers that I haven’t posted here for awhile. I’ve been preoccupied by several projects, and will be busy with one or the other of them in the months to come. In case you are concerned there is no reason for worry about me. I don’t plan to ever quit doing Tibeto-logic blog, but I see no reason to post unless I feel inspired to, no reason to keep it on a monthly basis as I’ve sometimes aimed to do.

I did earlier today manage to overcome a technical problem when I completed the merging of nine fascicles of the Tibetan Proper Name Index into one and posted them at a new kind of website where lengthy files don’t present much of a problem. The new site is called “Tibetosophy,” but it doesn’t contain anything except the reference work that can be called by the acronym TPNI. So far it has gotten through the Tibetan alphabet up to somewhere in the middle of the letter {PA}, so I suppose it is about half done. A key to the bibliographical references is included because it is entirely necessary. The scanning of the original file to eliminate errors and typos is quite tedious and tiring to my eyes, so I hope you won’t blame me if it is still far from completion. I do hope to do more on it in my spare time. I suppose I could use a little encouragement, since so many little thing keep getting in my way. Let me or your other friends know if you find it useful. I think I have to get it out there for you diehard Tibeto-logicians who can find ways to draw benefit from it. It isn’t for everyone, it’s for you.

The link is HERE. Have a look.

https://sites.google.com/view/tibetosophy/home

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Military Law Document of Imperial Era Recovered in 2014

September 21, 2018, 9:10 am

≫ Next: Efficacy of the Living Dam

≪ Previous: Tibetan Proper Name Index

An Old Tibetan army general named Sna-nam Rgyal-rgan,
aka Sna-nam Rgyal-rta Rgan-mo-chung, commander of the Central Horn:
after Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche

My heroes have always been the peacemakers. I guess I’ve told you this before, but in my high school Latin class we were forced to read Caesar’s Gallic Wars.* After several months of what would nowadays be regarded as unbelievable cruelty I swore “I ain’t gonna study war no more” and meant it with all my heart. People who arm themselves are such fearful people, after all, and that’s no way to lead your life. But sometimes taking your job seriously as a translator you find yourself driven into areas you never even thought you would be delving into.

(*Imagine being told to admire a man guilty of acts of such belief-begging brutality.)

If you think the same person could not have written both this blog and some of those earlier ones, welcome to my world. Since the 2nd decade of the 3rd millennium got started I’ve been translating a huge book of history. It has a lot of Buddhist history, of course, but it also has a section on administration and law. The good thing is this section had already been studied directly and indirectly by several other people in the past starting with Giuseppe Tucci and Geza Uray in the 1950’s and ‘70’s, and onward. The bad news is that some of it still has difficulties, with interpretations that are sometimes deeply problematic, and to tell the truth likely to remain so.

With this background in mind, you might understand why I went to some trouble to get a recent publication by Pa-tshab-pa Pa-sangs-dbang-’dus entitled Gsar-rnyed Byung-ba'i Spu-rgyal Bod-kyi Dmag-khrims Yi-ge, Bod-ljongs Mi-dmangs Dpe-skrun-khang (Lhasa 2017). I suppose the title could be translated “A Newly Found Document of the Military Law of Pugyel Bö,” with Pugyel Bö implying not only Tibet, but Tibet of the Imperial Period. When I sent away for it I imagined it would be a study of one of the Dunhuang Tibetan texts.

That’s why I was surprised when after it arrived I looked into the introduction. I found to my amazement that this clearly Old Tibetan text was physically located in Lhasa in 2014, when the head of the Dpal-brtsegs group by the name of Karma-bde-legs saw a photocopy and searched out the owner. The owner, a Tibetan merchant who told him the source of the manuscript was in western Tibet, sold it for a price of twenty lakhs of yüan, I suppose somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand US.

Even if I have no doubt it is a relic of Tibet's imperial period, I’m not so sure it had to come from Dunhuang. True, it has Chinese on one side of the paper (this kind of paper reuse happened in Dunhuang). It does resemble other Dunhuang texts in still other ways. Still, I’m not sure if its provenance is all that well established. Couldn’t it have survived the centuries in the dry altitudes of western Tibet?

We do have one instance of a Perfection of Wisdom Sûtra volume that was scribed in Dunhuang, but preserved over the intervening centuries in Lhasa. It is what is called an “Imperial Hundred Thousand,” or Bla-’bum, of Emperor Khri-lde-srong-btsan (unless you’re dyslexic and are thinking of Khri-srong-de-brtsan, that means the early 9th-century Emperor Sad-na-legs, who reigned up until 815 CE). It was found in Drepung in 2003. We’ve blogged about this before (look here, where you can find all the references, too).

Photographic facsimiles of the original manuscript pages are included. Without committing to any serious paleographical analysis, it is plain to see that many of the markers normally associated with late imperial or post imperial Tibetan texts are present. The positionings of the vowels over their consonants, the extra-added syllable-final 'd's, and so on. Each line is numbered in the Tibetan-script transcription of the text. One thing that interested me a great deal was the strange way Old Tibetan represents the interrogative pronoun gang by assimilating the 'nga' to the added grammatical ending. For instance, where Classical Tibetan would have genitive and agentive forms gang-gi or gang-gis, meaning whose or by whom, Old Tibetan often has gag-gi and gag-gis.* We can notice this same phenomenon in the Tibetan Avatamsaka Sûtra, which shouldn’t be such a big surprise, since this is one Old Tibetan translation of a scripture that was never put through the revision process. I think the reason was that no Sanskrit text of this huge collection could be located to serve as a basis for revision. I'm sure somebody is studying it right now, but it is sure that the Bla-'bum just mentioned was also an early and relatively unrevised translation (its colophon calls it a reg-gzigs, a way of referring to the abbreviated form of the earliest Hundred Thousand translations). Anyway, the form gag-gis appears in the military law book at line 408.

(*Search for these forms in OTDO, but make sure to check the box that says "ignore case." The form gag-na should never occur, but there is one instance of it, as if to spoil my theory of how things are supposed to work. In modern Tibetan, the syllable gang got reduced to the ga familiar in such terms as ga-par and ga-nas, meaning where / where to? and where from? Also, ga-tshad, or how much?)

Let’s try and see if we can find out what’s going on in the text here, starting around line 406. I think it’s saying something like this: If the scouts* are negligent in their tasks and are sighted by the enemy, according to the laws of the battlefront (occupied frontier?)... ... The scout who does not sight out the enemy is found at fault. One who gives a crafty/false count and is found guilty is put to death, while his wife and children (bu smad) are expelled to a far place beyond the borders.

(*The term bya-ra rta-ra is much repeated, perhaps a compound of two types of scouts. The term bya-ra is the more familiar one with the meaning of scout or spy. Generally we would expect rta-ra to mean a horse corral or stable, but that meaning doesn't at all fit here.)

I didn’t put any of this in quote marks because the reading is far too uncertain. The translation, if I can call it that, was done on the spur of the moment. I wanted to include something here to give a taste of it, bitter as it is.

Tibetan Woman Warrior, after Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche

A few sites to sight out on the internet

Notice that in June of this year there was a small conference about Tibetan warfare. I see there is an associated webpage dedicated to the history of the Tibetan army for the duration of the Ganden Phodrang period. I think you might find it worth the time you will spend there. Look here.

There isn't a lot of literature dedicated to Tibet's military history, but if you go to this link at TBRC, you can find a listing of a few items.

We our early blog on firearms.

I put the Tibetan-letter version of the bibliography for the sake of people who do Schmoogle searches in Tibetan script:

པ་ཚབ་པ་སངས་དབང་འདུས།

གསར་རྙེད་བྱུང་བའི་སྤུ་རྒྱལ་བོད་ཀྱི་དམག་ཁྲིམས་ཡི་གེ། བོད་ལྗོངས་མི་དམངས་དཔེ་སྐྲུན་ཁང་༼ལྷ་ས་ ༢༠༡༧༽.

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If you are interested in the military equipment used by Tibetan armies of various periods, best look at Donald J. LaRocca's book Warriors of the Himalayas, available from your favorite book dealer, probably.

A note on illustrations

I believe the line drawings were done by the late Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche (མཁས་བཙུན་བཟང་པོ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ།) of Bodhanath, Nepal. They were reproduced in his Tibetan-language book with the English title A Nectar for the Ear: An Early History of Tibet edited from the Findings Unearthed at the Dunhuang Caves (Kathmandu 1986). The added color is proof you should keep your books out of the reach of children.

MAY PEACE INCREASE!

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Efficacy of the Living Dam

October 18, 2018, 8:31 am

≫ Next: On the Dhole, the Wild Dog Dhole

≪ Previous: Military Law Document of Imperial Era Recovered in 2014

Today’s blog has something to do with singing bowls, skepticism, physics, and the creative metaphysics of sound. As is often the case in these pages, there will be no conclusion apart from the one you draw yourself. We’re not children here, are we? We don’t need to be told what we think.

The thing that provoked me was this: I was looking through a book I’d never looked at before, with the promising title Magical Techniques of Tibet, by one J.H. Brennan. There on page 33, I saw a passage that caught my attention partly because it was about something Madame Alexandra David-Neel observed and described herself, a Bonpo ritual performed at a Bon monastery called Tesmon, a ritual used to drive an unwanted person away. Always a sucker for the miraculous event, and always interested to know what people are saying about Bonpos, I decided to investigate a little more. The book cited as source is given with all its details in the bibliography: Alexandra David-Neel, Bandits, Priests, and Demons, Uitgeverij Sirius en Siderius (The Hague 1988).

The trouble was, it appeared this book did not exist. Or at least it was a puzzling problem. Perhaps Bandits, Priests & Demons represents a Dutch title for one of her books that bears a different title in English? Now that I’ve enquired about it, I guess this does solve the problem.

I found that the monastery of Tesmon that Brennan mentioned is, oddly, known from another authoritative (smiley!) book by Megan McKenna entitled Keepers of the Story, at p. 164:

“After docking in the Bay of Bengal, Emdlen and six companions made a grueling trek across the harsh terrain of India and the mountainous expanses of Nepal. After eight months, they reached the Bon monastery of Tes-mon, Tibet. Huthaum Re was expecting Emdlen. This mystified his Atlantean companions...”

Well, to shorten the story of my own long journey, I eventually found out that David-Neel did indeed tell a story connected with the Bön Tesmon Monastery in her 1936 book Tibetan Journey, which I didn’t physically possess, even if a miserable scan quickly popped up on the internet.

I left this blog for several months in suspended animation, while the book made its way to me over the sea. I’ll tell you what I found there later, but meanwhile, I really wanted to locate the Bon Monastery, which ought to have been not far from the important town of Kandze (Dkar-mdzes/དཀར་མཛེས་) in Kham Province. This is the one book by David-Neel where most of the time you know exactly where she is, but Tesmon isn’t marked on the map that comes with the book, and it is also not to be found in what is without a doubt the most complete catalog of Bon monasteries, the one printed in Japan that you will see in the list of authorities down below. I know there is one French writer with the temerity to publish a book about how David-Neel didn’t actually go to Tibet. No Tibetanists I’ve ever known has any such doubt. Even the semi-miraculous things she witnessed are indeed just the kind of semi-miraculous things you can know about from many Tibetan sources (like the gomlungpa speed-walkers and so on). For the doubters, I can just say that the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, India, somehow has some travel documents officially issued for her travel in eastern Tibet. I see that Kandze is even mentioned in one of them. Have a look here to find out more.

§ § §

The following passage is taken from Alexandra David-Neel, Tibetan Journey, John Lane the Bodley Head (London 1936).

[p. 176]

Towards the end of the afternoon we arrive in sight of the Bönpo monastery of Tesmon. To reach it, we

[p. 177]

have to cross a bridge. Like so many of the Chinese bridges this one is arch-shaped, and, for the moment, the only part of it that emerges from the water is in the centre of the river, which has risen to three times its normal height. The way on to the bridge from either side is by a primitive stairway, made of unhewn slabs of rock. This stairway has now disappeared under the water and the current beats violently against it. Between the first step and the place where we have stopped is about fifteen yards; this distance will have to be crossed in the rushing river.

Carrying their loads on their heads, the porters go over one by one, each of them supported on either side by a man who is not loaded. Other villagers form a chain, evidently with the purpose of catching their comrades should they fall and of preventing them from being carried away by the river. With their arms stretched out sideways, they all stand above those who walk in the water, instead of below them, facing upstream. I wonder what their idea is. It is quite certain that if a man or his load were to fall, this chain of arms, placed where it is, would not prevent either of them from being swept away. But I must be the only one who thinks so. The imperturbable seriousness of all those around me plainly shows that they have no doubt as to the efficacy of the living dam.

In order not to stand in the mud during the time that it takes for the luggage to be carried over, I remain seated on my big black mule, watching the operation. When it is finished, Sonam and Tobgyal lead my beast to the stairway. This kind of bridge is never crossed on horseback, and now less than ever is it the moment for making the attempt. I therefore dismount on to the submerged steps. The mule will he taken over after I have passed across. The bank is higher on the other side, consequently the water has not spread so far inland. When I reach the other end of the bridge

[p. 178] a man picks me up, puts me like a sack over his shoulder, and carries me to safety.

We are going to stay at the monastery. One of the monks gives up his quarters to me: two little rooms, one of which is a kitchen, the other a bedroom. I settle myself in the latter, and Yongden will sleep in the kitchen. My boys and the militiamen will be housed by another monk.

It has been a tiring day for the porters. I urge them not to return at once to their homes, where they would only arrive late in the night, but to rest first. In addition to their tip, I offer them a good supper; they can then leave at daybreak. The thought of a “good supper” instantly settles the question. They decide to remain. After giving orders for them to be provided with flour and meat for making soup, I go back “home”.

The owner of the room that I have been given must be an ascetic, or else a poor man — unless he be simply a sage. His household goods consist of a low table, before which he sits on the floor; a brazier; a set of unpolished wooden shelves, which serves for a bookcase; two blankets for a couch; and a long stick, suspended from the ceiling beams by cords, for hanging clothes on. To these must be added the “torma(ritual cakes) cupboard”, a kind of tabernacle in which, by means of magical processes, the Lamaists, as well as their Bönpo colleagues, imprison a being of demon race or a wrathful deity.

My host carries away his blankets and some books, then leaves me alone. I hang my wet clothes on the stick and make my bed. While waiting for my meal to be cooked, I shall visit the temple, where an office must be in progress, for I hear the dull sound of a drum that is being rhythmically beaten. But before going there, I want to see what is in the tabernacle.

This wish is not idle curiosity on my part, but a desire for knowledge. Does a Bönpo stock it in the

[p. 179]

same way as a Lamaist? As a rule these cupboards are kept padlocked; for the uninitiated must not gaze upon their contents. The ordinary reason given for this prohibition is that the being who is held captive there may then escape or become irritated. However, the Tibetan occultists explain things differently. According to them, that which resides in the mysterious tabernacle is a force created by magical processes. They say that the tormasthat are found in the tabernacle have been “animated” by the one who has placed them there and that an “energy” of a different order has been incorporated in each of them. Exoterically each tormais said to represent a different personality, divine or demoniac. Shut up in the tabernacle after having been thus “animated” and each of them provided with suitable “food”* these tormas form a group of active energies, of “living entities”, among which various secret exchanges and mysterious combinations take place. It naturally follows that an inopportune opening of this occult laboratory may disturb the work that is going on within it and unseasonably liberate the force that should remain captive. This force, through not being controlled and directed by a competent initiate, can cause harm and take for its first victim its imprudent liberator.

(*This food consists ofofferings of rice, meat, wine, tea, etc., or of other tormas that represent nourishment.)

At least, this is what I have been told, but my informants themselves have been careful only to apply these explanations to the tabernacles that belong to initiates in secret sciences. Those that are found in the rooms of the ordinary monks are of little or no importance, for their owners have neither the necessary power for “animating” the various tormas, nor the knowledge required for grouping them in the correct way.

My host’s little cupboard must have belonged to

[p. 180]

this last category. Made of roughly carved wood, blackened by smoke, it had nothing impressive about it. There was no padlock on the door. Inside I saw ten tsa-tsas,* which probably represented the ten Bönpo Sages, and a triangular torma, in front of which, by way of offering, lay a heap of dusty cutlet bones. All this was not of great interest. However when you are curious by nature, there is always some question that requires answering. Why were these bones, without exception, all cutlet bones? Did my host only eat this part of the animal, the remains of which he passed on to his favourite demon; or was it the demon himself who demanded these particular bones? Here was a mystery to be solved.

(*Imitations, modelled in clay, of the monuments called chörtens [the stupas of India].)

In the temple, on the other side of the court, someone continued to beat a drum rhythmically. Perhaps I could find somebody over there who, without my having to confess my indiscretion, would enlighten me as to the particular part that cutlet bones play in Bönpo rites.

So I go down into the court, mount the temple steps and enter the building. The interior is very gloomy, almost in darkness. A single lamp burns before the altar. Not far from it two people are seated; the man who is beating the drum and another man who is chanting in a low voice what he reads in a book that is lying on a narrow table in front of him. A lamp, placed close to the book, casts a curious light on the faces of the two monks.

My eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, I am also able to distinguish some tormas, four tiny lamps, and the various other objects forming a kyilkhor (magic diagram )* that is set up on another table in front of the celebrants.

(*Magic diagram on the different parts of which various objects are sometimes placed.)

[p. 181]

While I am watching them, some of my porters enter the temple. Doubtless, like me, they are strolling about until supper is ready.

They remain motionless for a time, then one of them takes a few steps forward. Something, a table or a bench, which he does not see in the shadow, lies in his path; he knocks against it and it overturns. The noise the thing makes in falling resounds through the empty hall. Under his breath, the man snaps out a low oath. The reader lifts his head.

“Go away,” he orders, using the most authoritative and the least polite expression in the Tibetan language.

David-Neel's travel companions: Lama Yongden, her adopted son,
and three servants: Sönam, Tobgyal and Sezang Tales.

There are sceptics in the Kham country, and they exist in greater numbers than one would have thought possible. There, coming from the lips of a woman, I have heard the most terrible blasphemy of which a Tibetan can conceive : “I don’t care a rap for religion, I like money better.”

At the base of the intellectual ladder the sceptics of Kham remain usually in the state of mind illustrated by this impious woman, although, as a rule, they are more discreet as regards the voicing of their unbelief. On the upper rungs of the ladder, sceptics are occultists. or, sometimes, profound thinkers.

The man who had just sworn so rudely was an “unbeliever” of the lowest rung. As I learnt some hours later, he had lived at Tachienlu and at Chengtu, and had probably broadened his mind there after his own fashion.

He violently resented being ordered about in so rude a manner.

“I am not a dog,” he said. “I didn’t see the bench ... it isn’t broken .... I’ll pick it up. There is no reason for you to speak to me in this way.”

Whereupon he stoops, lifts something up, which scrapes the floor noisily.

“Go away!” repeats the celebrant.

“I won’t go.” retorts the man obstinately, making a movement in the direction of the lama.

[p. 182]

“Do not come near the kyilkhor!” imperiously orders the monk.

This interdiction only irritates the aggressor the more.

“Oh! your kyilkhor!, your tormas!” he shouts.

“The ta ren (distinguished people) foreigners,* who are very learned, say that it is momos (bread) dough and that all that is chanted in the gompas is only nonsense. . .. Speaking to me as if I were a dog!”

[*My added note: The porter is using Chinese here, ta ren meaning “great man.”]

The rustic was wound up. His companions had seized him and were trying to drag him outside, but he was a hefty fellow and his anger only increased his strength. He freed himself, cursing, and again shouted.

“Your kyilkhor! . . . Your momos! . . . I will break them to pieces. . . . Speaking to me as if I were a dog!”

Then, as he rushed forward, the Bönpo, at the other end of the temple, seized the shang* that was beside him and shook it. An extraordinary sound, made up of a thousand unloosed cries, filled the hall with a surge of tumultuous vibrations and pierced through my brain. The scoffing peasant gave a cry. I saw him recoil violently, with his arms outstretched before him, as if to thrust back some terrifying apparition.

A Shang Bell. Courtesy of Himalayan Art Resources, HAR 81413

“Go away,” the lama repeated again.

The other men hastened to their comrade’s aid, and they all left the temple in a great state of agitation.

Dung! Dung! continued the placid drum, quietly marking time for the soft chanting of the Bönpo, who once more sat in front of the kyilkhor.

What had happened?— I had not remarked anything peculiar beyond that strange sound. I went out to question the porters. The braggart who had disturbed the office boasted no longer.

(*The shang (written gshang or གཤང་) is a musical instrument that is special to the Bönpos, In shape it faintly resembles a cymbal with a turned-in edge, and has a clapper attached to it. When shaken the clapper is usually held on top, as in an inverted bell.)

[p. 183]

“I tell you it was a serpent,” he was declaring to the others who stood round him in the court. “A serpent of fire, which came out of the shang.”

“What, you saw a serpent of fire?” I asked him. “Is that why you shrieked?”

“Did you not see it? It came out of the shangwhen the lama shook it.”

“You dreamt it,” I replied. “I saw nothing at all.”

“We did not see the serpent; but lights flashed from the shang,” interposed his companions.

In short, they had all seen some marvel. Only I, unworthy foreigner, had been blind. However it might be, it was only fitting, since I was receiving hospitality in the monastery, that I should apologize for the rudeness of one of the men I had brought with me.

I re-entered the temple and remained standing near the door, waiting for the office to end. The acolyte who was beating the drum stopped at last, put the instrument back into its cover, and the celebrant wrapped his book in a piece of silk.

I went forward and expressed my regrets for my porter’s behaviour. The lama courteously received my apologies. “It was not your fault, it had nothing to do with you,” he said. “The thing is of no importance, do not think any more about it.”

I had fulfilled that which politeness demanded from me. The Bönpo remained silent; there was nothing left for me to do but to go. Yet the strange sound I had heard and the villagers’ visions continued to puzzle me. Unconsciously, I looked at the shang, the tangible cause of all this phantasmagoria.

It was not difficult for the lama to guess my thoughts.

“You would like to hear it sound again?” he said to me, with a vaguely mocking smile.

“Yes, Kushog, if it will not trouble you too much. That instrument has a curious sound. Will you please shake it again?”

[p. 184]

“You can do it yourself,” he answered, handing me the shang.

“I am not an expert at handling it,” I made him observe.

For indeed the sound that I produced in no way resembled the one I had heard.

“I have not your skill, Kushog,” I said, returning him his instrument. “No serpent has come out of your shang.”

The Bönpo looked at me inquiringly. Was he pretending not to understand, or did he really not understand?

“Yes,” I resumed, “the vulgar man who spoke to you so rudely declares he saw a serpent of fire come out of the shang and rush at him. The others saw flashes of light.”

“Such is the power of the zungs (magic word) that I uttered,” declared the lama, with a slight emphasis. And he continued in a low voice:

“Sound produces forms and beings, sound animates them.”

I thought he was quoting a text.

“The chirolpas (Hindus) say that too,” I retorted. And in the hope of inducing the Bönpo to express his opinion, and to speak of the doctrine he professed, I added:

“Some, however, believe the power of thought to be superior to that of sound.”

“There are some lamas who think so too,” answered the Bönpo. “Each has his path. Methods differ. As to me I am master of sound. By sound, I can kill that which lives and restore to life that which is dead.”

“Kushog, these two things: life and death, do they really exist as absolutely distinct opposites?”

“Do you belong to the Dzogschen sect?” asked the lama.

[p. 185]

“One of my masters was a Dzogschenpa,” I answered evasively.

The Bönpo remains silent. I would like to bring the conversation back to the subject of life and death and to hear his theories concerning it, but his silence is not very encouraging. Must I interpret it as a polite hint that it was time I went away? Suddenly, however, the lama mutters to himself, seizes the shang, and gives it several shakes.

Wonder of wonders!Instead of the terrifying sound that it has given out before and the anything but harmonious one I myself have produced, I hear a soft peal of silver bells. How can this be? Is that Bönpo simply a skilful artist, and can anyone, with the necessary practice, obtain such vastly different effects from so primitive an instrument as the shang, or else, must I believe, as he has proudly declared, that he is really “master of sound”?

The desire I felt to talk with the lama had greatly increased. Was I going to succeed in getting him to explain the mystery of the shang? ...

A commonplace incident put an end to the interview. Yongden entered the temple to tell me that our supper was ready. The lama quickly took advantage of the interruption to escape from me, pretending, with a great show of politeness, that he did not wish to detain me.

Rain fell in torrents during the night, and it became again necessary to send a gang of mountaineers to examine the path I had to follow, before attempting to go along it myself with the beasts and luggage. This circumstance forced me to remain for a whole day in Tesmon. I determined to profit by the delay to try and see the “master of sound” again. Unfortunately it continued to rain, and the inmates of the monastery remained shut in their homes. I could not go and indiscriminately knock at their doors in order to find the one who interested me. Such behaviour would have given offence. However,

[p. 186]

Yongden, as a young man, had greater liberty of action. He discovered the master of sound’s house, and, thinking himself extremely diplomatic, invited him to come to tea with me.

The Bönpo accepted. An hour later, accompanied by a young trapa, he came to the cell I occupied. Our conversation began with the usual polite enquiries. After which the lama wanted me to tell him about my travels in India. He questioned me concerning the customs of that country, then regarding its religious world: the Buddhists and Hindus, their practices, the supernormal powers they attributed to their dubthobs(sages who possess supernormal powers). I endeavoured to satisfy his curiosity, hoping to find a favourable moment in which to question him myself. He gave me the opportunity when speaking of the powers of the Indian dubthobs.

“There is no necessity to go to India to meet men who possess these powers,” I said to him. “You, yourself, I think, made that clear last evening. And, moreover, the Hindus, who look upon Tibet with veneration, as the home of great sages, also believe that magicians exist here who are much more powerful than theirs.”

“That is possible,” answered the Bönpo. “I have never been to India. It is about the shang that you are thinking, is it not? Why do you attach so much importance to this trifle. Sound has many other mysteries.

“All beings, all things, even those things that appear to be inanimate, emit sounds. Every being, every thing gives out a sound peculiar to itself; but this sound, itself, becomes modified, according to the different states through which the being or thing that emits it passes. How is this? — It is because these beings and things are aggregates of atoms (rdul phra) that dance and by their movements produce sounds. When the rhythm of the dance changes, the sound it produces also changes.

Remarkable Old Tibetan examples of Double Vajras, ink on paper: IOL TibJ 384
Mdm. David-Neel calls them gyatams.

“It is said that, in the beginning, the wind, in whirl-

[p. 187]

ing, formed the gyatams, the base of our world.* This whirling wind was sonorous and it was sound that aggregated matter (rgyu) in the form of gyatams. The primordial gyatams sang and forms arose, which, in their turn, generated other forms by the power of the sounds that they gave out. All this does not only relate to a past time, it is always thus. Each atom (rdul phra) perpetually sings its song, and the sound, at every moment, creates dense or subtle forms. Just as there exist creative sounds, which construct, there exist destructive sounds, which separate, which disintegrate. He who is capable of producing both can, at will, construct or destroy. There is one sound that is called by our masters : ‘the sound. that destroys the base’. This sound is itself the foundation of all destructive sounds. The dubthobwho could cause it to sound would be capable of annihilating this world and all the worlds of the gods up to that of the great ‘Thirtythree”, of which the Buddhists speak.”

After this long speech, the Bönpo took his leave, wishing me to a happy journey and fine weather for the next day.

The rather abstruse theories he had propounded were not lacking in interest, but they brought me no light on that which remained, for me, the “mystery of the shang”.

(*An allusion to the Tibetan cosmogony. According to it, the wind — explained as being movement — produced the first forms. These forms, the Lamaists conceive as gyatam,that is to say, the shape of two dorjees (ritual sceptre) placed crosswise. As a rule, the Böns imagine them under the shape of swastika — the symbol of movement. My informant belonged to the White Böns who have adopted many lamist theories.)

§ § §

This passage may tell us something worthwhile about how sounds can change perceptions or have other effects on us. No doubt a “Tibetan Bells” concert can be very soothing and entrancing. I've known this to be true despite my resistance to something I regard as made up in Thamel for the foreign mountain hikers. The street hawkers there know that hooking “Tibet” in front of anything you’re selling is much more likely to land a sucker.

The gshang bell is after all what this piece is about, not our contemporary singing bowls. If anything, it is the sound effects rather than the instrument that can find authorization in David-Neel’s story. I’m sure the gshang bell, even if originally Persian, actually does go back to Tibet’s culture of the Imperial Period. We find one clear and unambiguous usage of the word in a weird Dunhuang text about a part of a high-class funerary rite that includes a mdzo sacrifice. The priest is supposed to hold a gshang bell in his right hand, and a wing in his left. It’s the wing as a ritual implement that can mark a ritual as shamanistic or mediumistic on the plateau still today. Even more surprising, the priest seems to be called Gshen-rabs-kyi Myi-bo. Henk Blezer discussed this passage a long time ago, in an article you can see after freely downloading it, so I'll just send you there and say goodbye for now.

Supporting witnesses:

I’d like to thank a true friend H.B. for an email exchange we had about two years ago that helped to clarify some problems of Dutch bibliography relevant to this particular blog.

Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Nada Brahma, the World is Sound: Music & the Landscape of Consciousness, East West Publications (London 1988), written from a jazz and Hindu perspective. Hindus are the ones called Chirolpas (ཕྱི་རོལ་པ་) in the David-Neel passage, although I suppose jazz musicians could be added to that category as well. Take note that David-Neel's story also features in this book, in a condensed form, on pp. 178-179. These days I prefer my jazz with Maghrebian characteristics (listen to and watch Dhafer Yosef here).

Henk Blezer, “sTon pa gShen rab: Six Marriages and Many More Funerals,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, vol. 15 (November 2008) [Tibetan Studies in Honor of Samten Karmay], pp. 421-480. Freely available online. If you would rather look at the Dunhuang text itself, it’s HERE.

Mirielle Helffer, “La question des bols sonores dits <>,” contained in: Mchod-rol, les instruments de la musique tibétaine, CNRS Éditions (Paris 1994), pp. 327-329. It’s already been more than two decades since it was shown beyond much doubt that "Tibetan singing bowls" are a very recent invention in which non-Tibetans filled all the main roles. I think they were invented in the tourist market center of Kathmandu known as Thamel. Thamel merchants have long recognized the added value of objects when hawked as “Tibetan.” By now these bowls are so ubiquitous, it seems overly rude to point out their inauthenticity. Around the turning of the millennium, I remember seeing a news story in which a Tibetan monk rang several such bowls that had been placed on strategic bodily positions over the chakras in order to heal the poor western seeker, and at that very moment I decided to give up trying to persuade anyone one way or the other. Skeptics are never honored in their own blogospheres. Why raise dust when for so many the question has already settled long ago if it was ever asked at all? Why cry out in the wilderness where nobody’s ready to hear?

Braham Norwick, “Alexander David-Neel’s Adventures in Tibet: Fact or Fiction?” The Tibet Journal, vol. 1, nos. 3-4 (Autumn 1976), pp. 70-74. Things didn't work out well with David-Neel’s new secretary Jeanne Denys. Disgruntled, she went on to write an exposé published in 1972 that created a shadow of doubt in many minds about the factuality of D-N’s books. J.D.’s shortcoming is she had only very thin knowledge of the Tibetan realm to work with. I’m reminded of a 1995 book by Frances Wood about how Marco Polo never went to China. It is usually easy to debunk this kind of debunkment, and skeptical scholarship often needs to be subjected to skeptical scholarship.

Tshering Thar, “Bonpo Monasteries and Temples in Tibetan Regions in Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan,” contained in: Samten G. Karmay & Yasuhiko Nagano, eds., A Survey of Bonpo Monasteries and Temples in Tibet and the Himalaya, Senri Ethnological Reports no. 38, Bon Studies no. 7, National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka 2003), pp. 247-668, at pp. 415-417, where only one Bon monastery is found in the vicinity of Kandze, the one called Gong-lung G.yung-drung-mi-'gyur-gling. It is extremely small. Anyway there is no reason at all to think it might be the Tesmon Monastery visited by David-Neel. So far I haven't even been able to decide how Tesmon would have been spelled in Tibetan. Maybe you can tell me.

https://savageminds.org/2015/10/31/tripping-on-good-vibrations-cultural-commodification-and-tibetan-singing-bowls/

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On the Dhole, the Wild Dog Dhole

October 20, 2018, 6:25 am

≫ Next: Tibetan Vocabulary

≪ Previous: Efficacy of the Living Dam

A dhole, or more specifically Cuon alpinus dukhunensis

In the bus on my way back from my Rheumatology appointment, I wanted to withdraw my attention from the bothersome crowd, so I drew from my knapsack the reading material I’d taken with me for the waiting room. It was written by an acquaintance from long ago, and its title, implying some ambiguity or confusion between the classes of dogs and cats, intrigued me.

Of course the Tibetan side of things was what most interested me, nothing new there. Ruth Meserve, my muse, makes use of two lexicons of the sort that have Tibetan components entered into a multilingual setting. One is the five-language dictionary, called therefore the Pentaglot, that dates from 1771-1794, while the other is Jampel Dorjé’s Materia Medica. Well known to the world at least since Lokesh Chandra published it in Delhi way back in 1971, its woodcut illustrations of plants and animals, among them the Abominable Snowman, were its main attractions for the larger body of humans unready to get serious and deal with the language problems.

For the translations from Jampel Dorjé’s book, the author relied on a Tibetanist, Frederica Venturi (footnote 45 on p. 147). In observance of old-school scholarly noblesse oblige, the author accepts all errors as her own responsibility. I won’t bore anybody with my quibbles about little inaccuracies. That would be unkind or boarish for no reason of any importance, so I’ll just give translations of my own. Here they are.

Jampel Dorjé, p. 237c: The animal called gung.

The caracal (gung). It is called Dog of the Forest. Like a tiger, but murkier colored, dark with black striations. Its body is about the size of a full-grown fox. The Crystal Orb (Shel-sgong) says:

The types of flesh that eliminate illnesses caused by gdon possession are these: wild man [abominable snowman], lion, tiger, leopard, bear, wild goat, wild boar, sambar deer (lit., snow deer), bamboo [dwelling] tiger, lynx, lammergeier, elephant, caracal, hoopoe, crow and raven.

Jampel Dorjé, p. 237c: The animal called 'phar-ba

The ’phar-ba. It is called Small Red Mountain Dog, as well as Lives on Game Animals. It bears resemblance to a domesticated cat (byi-la), but is larger, about the size of a fox, and is colored a murky red. The tail of one linking with another, they climb trees.* These both** are, in the [Medical] Tantras, taught to belong to the class of carnivores.***

(*This is my reading of the statement, although I do not believe prehensile tails are a feature of any kind of dog or cat for that matter. It is as if part of a description of the spider monkey got misplaced here. And if this is a dhole, the spots do not at all belong in its woodcut depiction.)

(**I guess this means the 'phar-ba and the animal mentioned just before it, the leopard [gzig].)

(***I guess this intends the section on flesh-derived medicinals in the Explanatory Tantra at the end of its 20th chapter, although I checked and didn’t find that leopard and 'phar-ba are mentioned in the same context.)

SO MANY THANKS to Ruth Meserve and Frederica Venturi for forcing me to think more about dholes. Not only myself, but everyone else on the planet should be thinking more about these disappearing wild creatures while we have the chance.*

(*Take note of this alarming evidence of human harm to the biosphere in the form of massive insect loss that goes together with declining populations of the creatures who feed off of them. See also this report from the World Wildlife Fund on just how quickly the free-ranging animals are disappearing. It’s called “Living Planet Report 2018: Aiming Higher.”)

I confess to being inspired by another message that issues out of Meserve’s essay. It caught me off guard, the idea that animal names can be shifted around because of naming taboos. I haven’t heard about this particular kind of naming taboo in Tibetan culture, but I guess it only makes sense that the most feared animal would be the one whose name would be avoided. Could this be invoked to explain why Padampa Sangyé always used the word for camel to name the bear? I mean, literal dictionary-slaves would inevitably translate his words kind of like, “Camels crave honey,” when I think they do not, even if they can be made to eat it. Well, they are said to love air.

244a: Rnga-mong. Camel. Air Lover (rlung dga') is one of its epithets here.

All about the books:

Jampel Dorjé ('Jam-dpal-rdo-rje), Gso-byed Bdud-rtsi'i 'Khrul-med Ngos-'dzin Bzo-rig Me-long-du Rnam-par Shar-ba Mdzes-mtshar Mig-rgyan, contained in: Lokesh Chandra, ed., An Illustrated Tibeto-Mongolian Materia Medica of Ayurveda of 'Jam-dpal-rdo-rje of Mongolia, with a foreword by E.Gene Smith, International Academy of Indian Culture (New Delhi 1971), pp. 1-347. I put up another entry from this text for the hare or rabbit in an old blog of about 7 years back called Ownerless Donkey. In the colophon the author calls himself a layperson of the Naiman clan who later on after his arrival in Tibet made revisions to his text. We can call this a Mongolian work of Tibetan literature, as it was originally composed in Mongolia by a Mongolian. In the early days I had no idea who the author was, and only slowly, with help from Vladimir Uspensky, could I begin to get an idea about who he was.

Jampel Dorjé (’Jam-dpal-rdo-rje) aka Don-grub-rgyal-mtshan, aka Tho-yon Ye-shes-don-grub-bstan-pa’i-rgyal-mtshan lived from 1792 to 1855. I’ve never seen the woodblock print of his entire collected works although a set is registered in the Drepung Catalog, p. 2063, and I’ve noticed a listing of the titles it contains in another catalog. And I’ve noticed a record of teachings received as well as a biography that ought to be available in Rome. One valuable service he performed for Tibetan literary history is his anthology of early Kadampa works, or selections from them, many still not made available to us in any other form.

Mdo Dbus Mtho-sgang-gi Sman-ris Gsal-ba’i Me-long, Mtsho-sngon Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Xining 2009). In my experience copies were very difficult to obtain, but I finally succeeded. Volume 3 is the one about animals. Almost entirely in Tibetan language, it does supply Chinese names for the animals. This is a modern work, most of the time supplying systematic descriptions based on direct observation, it seems. However, the illustrations of animals are largely unclear, and not up to any scientific standards. It is a shame there is no entry for the gung, but the ’phar-ba entry is there, on pp. 55-56. To give a rough translation of the descriptive parts:

“Its bodily shape resembles the dog. It is about a meter in length. Its tail is slightly bulging, its tip a murky dark color. The entirety of its body is the color of kham-ser, and on its back is kham-nag, its belly hairs lightish yellow. The fur on its four paws and on its back resemble each other. (This is written after inspecting an actual specimen in the district north of the Kokonor.)”

It seems to me that this description matches photos and descriptions of the dhole very nicely. The color terms here are tricky to translate, but perhaps the English word tawny works well enough, with kham-ser leaning more toward the yellowish tawny, and kham-nag toward the darker kind. I have another book on Tibetan wildlife that has only Chinese and English. I picked up my copy a long time ago at a bookstore inside the entrance to the Norbu Lingka. The English title is An Instant Guide to Rare Wildlife of Tibet. On p. 11 it has a photo of Cuon alpinus, and even though it is labelled as "Jackal (Wild Red Dog),” it absolutely resembles the dhole.

Ruth I. Meserve, “Wild Dogs or Wild Cats? Puzzles in Lexical Sources and Medical Texts from China, Tibet and Mongolia,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, vol. 23 (2017), pp. 137-165.

Skad Lnga Shan-sbyar-gyi Manydzu'i Skad Gsal-ba'i Me-long, Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Beijing 1957), in 3 volumes. Called the Pentaglot, this is a five-language dictionary published on the basis of a manuscript version kept in the “Pho-brang Rnying-pa'i Nor-rdzas Bshams-ston-khang.” Manchu, Tibetan, Mongolian, Uighur and Chinese are the five languages.

Joel Sartore, photographer for the National Geographic, takes amazing photos of rare animals he is convinced are unlikely to be with us much longer, and one of them is of a zoo-kept dhole that you can see HERE. His home page is here. You will probably find yourself unable to not love these portraits of extraordinary beasts.

After Mdo Dbus Mtho-sgang-gi Sman-ris Gsal-ba'i Me-long,
a drawing of a dhole ('phar-ba)

(*) (*) (*) (*) (*)

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Tibetan Vocabulary

December 17, 2018, 6:16 am

≫ Next: Quingentenary of the Ganden Podrang Nearly Passes Unobserved

≪ Previous: On the Dhole, the Wild Dog Dhole

I must apologize. I know according to my own rules I am supposed to post something here every month or so. Ease up on me though. It’s not like I have a contract or anything. I reckon myself free apart from the dictates of my own conscience. That’s the beauty of retirement. It gives a fellow lots of time to do all that work he’s been putting off for years. I know, I haven’t finished putting up all of TPNI yet, and already I’m starting to put up something else. I suppose my problem is that all of a sudden I discovered that free websites are now available that no longer limit the size of ordinary text files. That means the sky is the limit, I suppose. In actual practice what I get are “error” messages every time I try to add another big piece of text. Still, after some initial confusion and struggles against the machine, it seems to work just fine.

It’s true that a version of “TibVocab” has been available to the world for years now at THLIB, as part of their much-used “Tibetan-English Translation Tool,” I say much-used because 21st-century students of Tibetan written language can scarcely move without it. But there is one particular inadequacy in the way TibVocab is presented there. I had intended to produce a word index, with the references supplied, and often with citations from the literature, especially in case of problematic terms that still haven’t been defined adequately. I do appreciate all the serious work that went into getting it up there, but in the dictionary tool there is no place to put a key to bibliographical references, so it simply disappeared. One large part of TibVocab's reason for existence vanished into thin air.

One more thing, TibVocab has expanded during the years that passed since it segued into the Dictionary Tool. That means when you go to the link I will supply presently, you will have a somewhat better chance of finding that word you’re looking for.

For more about what TibVocab is and isn’t you can read the introduction at the website itself. I can’t promise anything for tomorrow, but as of today, I have only gotten started with the initial letter KA. I know that in coming days I’ll be testing the limits of what ‘full capacity’ can mean in a free website, but I’ve got the time. And I’m developing the patience.

So if you like, go visit it now by clicking with all your might on THIS LINK, or just double-click on the banner you see up above at the very top of this blog entry. Once you get there, feel free to make a bookmark.

A free tip: If you would like to limit your search to main entries, as you might, just add a bullet [•] immediately before the word you would like to find.

If you do on an odd chance come across a very unusual word such as mu-yad (or dmu-yad) I recommend that you look in TibVocab, of course, but I’m not saying you should stop there. Go ahead and do a word search in TBRC's repository of scanned Tibetan texts.* It immediately locates any Tibetan word within a corpus of over a million pages of text. You aren’t all that likely to find a definition using this method, but what you will find are a number of usages in various contexts that could help a lot in your efforts to divine meanings.**

*Come to think of it mu-yad wasn't such a good choice for an example after all. Having gone to TBRC I see that only one result pops up, and not a very illuminating one at that. Since Tibetans didn't often have reason to speak of deserts, I'd say try searching for mya-ngam (with the final 'm') instead. And after the experiment do read Joanna Bialek's “The Tibetan Fiery Way to Nirvana: Reflections on Old Tibetan mya ngan,” Rocznik Orientalistyczny, vol. 70, no. 2 (2017), pp. 60-96. Or use a TBRC search to try and figure out which celestial display is indicated by dgu-tshigs or dgu-tshigs skya-mo. What does star arrow (skar-mda') mean? You got the idea even before I got to telling about it.

**I rarely make appeals for anything at Tibetologic, but seeing that many of us are in the middle of the holiday season, do think about making a donation to TBRC just because they are doing the work of gods and would make excellent use of the offerings. Without TBRC 21st-century Tibetologicians cannot thrive, let alone be of good cheer.

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Quingentenary of the Ganden Podrang Nearly Passes Unobserved

December 30, 2018, 1:09 am

≫ Next: The Flood that Backfired, & the Tangut Refugees

≪ Previous: Tibetan Vocabulary

Ganden Phodang, the building, as it exists today at Drepung Monastery in Lhasa

It’s one of those mysteries in the history of history making why some major events get memorialized over the course of time with centennial observances, while others are overlooked.* A case in point: Even though the year 2018 is probably already over as you read this, it would be a pity if 2019 arrived before anyone thought to recall a significant development in Tibetan history that occurred in 1518, just 500 years ago. You heard me right, but allow me to explain.

(*To be sure, the idea of a centennial never occurred in earlier centuries in Tibet, where time was marked not by 100-year, but by 60-year cycles. But we’re not back there right now, we’re in the 21st century world, where things are seen a little different by us all.)

Well, with the deadline rapidly approaching, I’ll squeeze in a few words about why the restoration to the Gelugpa monasteries of a major annual festival and the presentation of a ‘palace’ to the Second Dalai Lama ought to be recalled half a millennium later. In a true sense, the past hasn’t even really passed, since the results of those events carry on in what is done and thought today, even given the twists and turns that occurred in the interval. I’m told dull-minded people do exist, and they along with certain politicians are the ones who when it suits them assert that the past counts for nothing for us in the present. I’d say the supposed irrelevance of history is just an artefact of our lack of attention to it, or an excuse for a more general apathy or antipathy.

The Zhang dictionary describes the events very succinctly:

"[In 1519] the Victor Gendun Gyatso was head of the assembly of the Mönlam. This was the year the Great Mönlam was reinstituted in accordance with the earlier traditions of Sera, Drepung and Ganden."

༼ rgyal ba dge 'dun rgya mtshos smon lam gyi tshogs dbu mdzad / 'di lo nas se 'bras dga' gsum slar yang sngar rgyun ltar smon lam chen mo tshugs༽

"The Nedong ruler Tashi Dragpa offered the Blue Stone House (Rdo-khang Sngon-mo) of Drepung Monastery to the Victor Gendun Gyatso, and its name was changed to Ganden Podrang."

༼ sne gdong mi dbang bkra shis grags pas 'bras spungs rdo khang sngon mo rgyal ba dge 'dun rgya mtshor phul ming dga' ldan pho brang du bsgyur༽

From 1498 up to and including the year 1517, Gelugpa monks were not allowed to participate in the annual observances that follow the Tibetan New Year, even though this “Great Prayer Festival”* had been instituted by none other than Tsongkhapa himself in 1409 CE, the same year he founded Ganden Monastery. At first the school was called Gandenpa, after the name of the monastery. This -pa construction in Tibetan would have us understand that Gandenpa just means [an] inhabitant[s] of Ganden. I believe the Ganden in Ganden Phodrang, too, is meant as a reference to Ganden Monastery, even if not entirely sure of it.**

(*Mönlam isn’t well served by the translation prayer since that might imply a petitionary type of prayer. It’s more like a prayer of hope, an aspiration for a distant but achievable goal of the most positive kind, particularly Complete Enlightenment.) (**Ganden is also the Tibetan translation of Sanskrit Tuṣita, a paradise for the Future Buddha. I’d like to go into this another time, but the prominent New England professors Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp and Georges Dreyfus have drawn some interesting conclusions about the emergence of the name and early institution of the Gelugpa School that go against the grain of the usual conceptions. It may be needful to say that institutions scarcely ever sprout up fully grown at the fiat of a single Great Person with a singularity of purpose, but that’s how institutions often come to portray themselves later on, perhaps a result of efforts to promote unity within their ranks.)

The Victor Gendun Gyatso (1476-1542) would today be called the Second Dalai Lama even though the title “Dalai Lama” was first awarded in the year 1578 CE, thirty-six years after His death.

So, to keep things short since I’m writing against the clock: I always tell people I’m stuck in the 12th century. There is truth in this, I freely admit. It could explain why I’ve found myself clueless to fathom the shock on people’s faces when you tell them that the Gelugpa school and more particularly the Dalai Lamas haven’t always ruled Tibet from the beginning of time.*

(*Someone should also inform them of a much broader truth, which is that nothing in the present world was or is inevitable, that there have been forces at work in the past that helped bring about, and other forces that very well could have prevented, today’s institutions. We live, as we always have lived, in a permanent state of precariousness.)

Those shocked faces reveal an assumption, that Tibet remained always the way it was at the verge of the 1950’s. For them it was a culture wedded to immutability from time immemorial, so stuck in place as to be practically lifeless. But pay attention while I say that rule by the Ganden Podrang, the same name that was given to a building five centuries ago and the name that would eventually be found on Tibet-minted coins and currency notes, only effectively began in 1642, when the Fifth Dalai Lama rose to power with the indispensable backing of Mongolian patrons.

I would say that I hate to disillusion people, but I neither love nor hate it. Buddhism is always there poised and ready to raise in us the consciousness that whatever gets put together through combinations of conditions is bound to come apart eventually. For readers of Tibetan, I can just remind you, འདུས་བྱས་ཐམས་ཅད་མི་རྟག་པའོ།། Eternity never happens. Contingencies happen.

Who could be better to quote than His Holiness the present Fourteenth Dalai Lama, who has often in recent years suggested, to the shock and dismay of many of his closest followers and admirers, that He may be the last Dalai Lama, that it depends on how the institution continues to serve the Tibetan people. But then we have to underline how He emphasized on the same occasion that Tibetan Buddhism will in any case continue. I wanted to quote His words directly, but every single news story from the early-to-mid 2010’s seems to paraphrase and mis-hear as much as it quotes, so I’m waiting on a more authoritative source, if you could be so kind as to suggest one.

I know a lot of people haven’t been keeping up with the news, thinking the Dalai Lama still rules just as before. In His 2015 CNN interview by Amanpour, He said, as transcribed by myself:

“In 2011 I totally retired from political responsibility, not only myself retired but also [the] four-century-old tradition [of the] Dalai Lama institution, particularly being head of both spiritual and temporal. That formally, voluntarily, happily ended.”

Clearly, important changes have already taken place. As far as the future roles of the Dalai Lamas are concerned, just as in the past, there are forces at work pushing this way and that. How things will play out in the end is anybody’s guess. No historian can know the outcome in advance, and it’s first and foremost the fools and political prophets who claim to have that kind of knowledge.

Meanwhile, I think we should all join the Tibetan community around the world on the last day of 2018 by celebrating the long life of His Holiness. Every single Tibetan I’ve met inside or outside Tibet thinks the world of Him. And Gallup released a poll of Americans showing His Holiness still ranking highly—one of the top ten—among the most admired men. There are precious few humans with the ability to engage and inspire humanity in humans as He does. So if it is up to me we will end the old year and open the new with hopes for the best of all possible futures for Him and for all us sentient beings in the years ahead. That’s my Mönlam.

§ § §

Read when and if you like:

There is a fairly good Wikipedia article on the Ganden Podrang that I recommend for those who feel need of an introduction to the subject.

Matthew T. Kapstein, The Tibetans, Blackwell Publishing (Oxford 2006), pp. 130-131.

Vincent Lemire, Jerusalem 1900: The Holy City in the Age of Possibilities, University of Chicago Press (Chicago 2018), particularly the section entitled “The Causes of Forgetting,” on pp. 7-10. Putting the many differences aside, it may be worthwhile to ponder why the Ottoman Empire, which lasted through roughly the same centuries as the Ganden Podrang, is also drably painted as dreadfully stagnant and unproductive. I see it as a failure of the historical imagination, which cannot find the life in these periods because of cultural and ideological presuppositions and biases.* Our lack of interest does not translate into the absence of events.

(*And, although I don’t intend to go into it right now, in both the Ottoman and Ganden Podrang cases, [1] the difficulty of access to sources due to limitations placed on their access or [2] our difficulties in reading and interpreting them.)

Pankaj Mishra, “The Last Dalai Lama?” The New York Times (December 1, 2015). You might not be able to procure it without a digital subscription to the newspaper, but go ahead and try. I suggest taking time to read the whole long essay, since it does have an important message about the variety of points of view available among exiles in India.

Glenn H. Mullin, The Second Dalai Lama: His Life and Teachings, Snow Lion (Ithaca 2005). Previously published under the interesting title Mystical Verses of a Mad Dalai Lama. There is a section on the reestablishment of the Great Prayer Festival on pp. 94-98. Besides this work by G.M. I know of only a couple of studies and translations connected to the Second Dalai Lama, which is a pity. He wrote about a lot of fascinating subjects in fields of poetics, alchemy, philosophy, Buddhism and the Vajra Vehicle.

Hugh Richardson, Ceremonies of the Lhasa Year, Serindia (London 1993), pp. 11-59. This is still by far the best account of the events in Lhasa during the first month of the Tibetan-style year, which include among other things the observance of the Great Prayer. It is illustrated with black-and-white photographs.

Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa, One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet, translated by Derek F. Maher, Brill (Leiden 2010), vol. 1, pp. 269. 295. An excerpt follows:

“In 1518, the Nedong King Tashi Drakpa offered his home at Drepung Monastery to the second Dalai Lama Gendün Gyatso. Renamed Ganden Podrang, it served as a sort of monastic estate of the Dalai Lamas. When the Fifth Dalai Lama came to political power in 1642, he named his government after this institution.”

Turrell V. Wylie, “Monastic Patronage in Fifteenth-Century Tibet,” contained in: Gray Tuttle and Kurtis R. Schaeffer, The Tibetan History Reader, Columbia University Press (New York 2013), pp. 266-277, especially p. 271.

Zhang Yisun (1893-1983), et al., Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo, Mi rigs Dpe skrun khang (Beijing 1985), in the chronological table in the back of its third and final volume. This has been reprinted several times, in 3, 2 or just one volume. By now every serious student of Tibetan knows and uses it in one form or another. If you like or need an introduction to this and other important lexical resources, look at this earlier blog.

§ § §

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

—Wm. Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun.

And I want to add, quoting from who knows who:

A little more knowledge is always a great thing.

A Tibetan banknote. The legend in the two yellow fields can be translated, “100-Srang currency note of the heavens-appointed Ganden Podrang, victorious over all directions, in both religious and political affairs.” From its serial number we may know that it was printed in around 1958. I apologize that the photograph is not reproduced here in the correct scale or dimensions. The printed field ought to measure 18.25 by 11.85 centimeters.

↧

The Flood that Backfired, & the Tangut Refugees

January 26, 2019, 11:08 am

≫ Next: Gold Digging Ants of Herodotus, Part 1

≪ Previous: Quingentenary of the Ganden Podrang Nearly Passes Unobserved

A Tangut Tangka

This is hardly the first time we’ve spoken of Tanguts. You might remember we once blogged on evidence of the Tangut ties of Padampa and his spiritual descendents.* I’m walking on air these days, since an unbelievable source for the history of Tibet and the Western Xia has suddenly popped up. This is the biography of Tishirepa by his Tangut-born disciple Repakarpo. Let me assure you it is chocked full of fascinating information about the life of a court-appointed Tibetan ritual master’s activities in Tangut Land. The proud but few experts in Tangut studies will particularly crave to know everything that is in it. Part of what makes it most fascinating, its frequent first-person narration, also creates difficulties. It’s somewhat colloquial and a challenge getting used to the cadences of the syntax, a style of Tibetan we moderns are bound to find strange.** It is further complicated by being located in a somewhat alien environment that was even then disappearing from the face of the earth, person and place names were transcribed back and forth between very different languages. Here the Tibetanists require the help of Tangutists, Mongolists and Sinologists.

(*See The Tangut Connection, and for more interesting discussion see the articles of Sun Penghao listed below. Bear in mind the text was put together by a non-native speaker of Tibetan. Tangut and Tibetan may be distantly related, but the two languages were never going to be mutually intelligible.)

We find that Tishirepa very often tells his prophetic dreams, but immediately before and after them he also narrates the events of his day matter-of-factly, in a somewhat glib manner, without a lot of descriptions or adjectives. We can’t dismiss what he says just because we might not think dreams can be taken serious as prophecies or signs as most people did believe in the past, and many in fact still do today. We didn’t have such excellent and contemporary sources on the events in Tangut Land from the Tibetan sources before, but now we have something, so I’m asking you, How would it hurt you to stop complaining about the difficulties and try to overcome them?

Today I’m just going to translate one brief paragraph. That should be enough of a taste of it to awaken somebody’s appetite to study the entire text in detail, since I’m not about to do it.

Repakarpo’s biography of Tishirepa, at page 304:

Then on the first day of the third moon the fortress was surrounded by water, which made people anxious. In the evening of 17th day of the 7th moon prior to this I had dreamed it was surrounded by water, but then I dreamed that things turned out well. But then in the evening of the 15th day the water supply of the fortress overflowed. Just as [the fortress] was about to be breached (?), a way was shown to stop the water, so it did not destroy the fort from within. Later that evening Tsangsoba and I together made tormas and hurled them into the water. Then on midnight of the 6th day the water spilled outward, and much of the Mongol encampment was swept away. On the 14th they made a gift of the king's own daughter and held negotiations. They went back to their own country. On the 17th the Tibetan lama teachers requested a timeout (?tshe-ka) and went each to his own monastery. I, too, went to the Gzing-gha Monastery of Ling-chu. In those times I had one evening a dream in which the Precious Taglungthangpa was giving teachings and said, “The inhabitant of the center has a lotus ground.”

Here is the Tibetan text in Wylie transcription:

de nas zla ba gsum pa'i tshes gcig la mkhar chus bskor / blo ma bde bar byung / sngar zla ba bdun pa'i tshes bcu bdun gyi nub mo chus bskor ba rmis nas / de nas bde bar byung bar rmis / de nas tshes bco lnga'i nub mo mkhar gyi chu khung nang du brdol bas / chod la khad du yod pa'i dus su chu 'gog pa'i thabs bstan pas chu khog nas mkhar ma zhig / phyir de dgong mo rtsang so ba dang nged gnyis kyis / gtor ma byas nas chu la 'phangs pas / tshes drug gi nam phyed na chu phyir bo nas / hor gyi dmag ra mang po phyags / tshes bcu bzhi la rgyal po'i bu mo byin nas 'dum byas / khong rang gi yul du phyir song / tshes bcu bdun la bod kyi bla ma dge ba'i bshes gnyen rnams / tshe ka zhus nas rang rang so so'i dgon par song / nged kyang ling chu'i gzing gha dgon du song nas / de'i dus su nub cig rmi lam du rin po che stag lung thang pas / dbus pa padmo'i sa gzhi yod // ces bya ba'i chos bstan gsungs.

The mysterious words received in a dream about the lotus ground I understand to be prophetic in the sense of saying that the “center” (Central Tibet) would be the safer option. Overall, this seems to be the same as the story from Chinese language sources, but our eye-witness Tishirepa saw things differently. According to him, the city’s own water source welled up and overflowed — nothing here about the river water being diverted through Mongol dam and dike building. Yet we are left to wonder why to begin with water surrounded the city. When the water later spilled out of the city to flood the Mongol camp we are meant to understand that this was due to a torma ritual performed by the Tibetans. Admittedly there are problems in the reading of the passage that may allow it to be read differently, and bluntly stated, I have probably made mistakes. But this is the kind of material historians need to do their job, and I think they ought to go to work on it.

Tishirepa says the Mongols “went back to their own country.” This is an overly hopeful statement. I think what really happened is they retreated to higher ground to regroup and rethink strategy. The Mongols kept coming back until 1226 when they finally defeated the Tanguts. We know from their later campaigns in other parts of the world that the Mongols did not in the least appreciate it when people refused to give in to their awesome military power, and they simply could not stand the effort invested in lengthy siege warfare, so in the end they punished and made examples of the resisters by slaughtering them one and all. The only Tangut survivors fled to Tibet and Tibet's eastern borderlands. Tishirepa and his disciple Repakarpo were among them. That’s why they could tell the story of the tragic events they witnessed firsthand.

At the Tangut Royal Tombs. I believe these eerily unearthly monumental figures are protectors.
Photo by Andrew West - see this blog entry at Babelstone CC BY-SA 3.0

Read these today or tomorrow:

Wikipedia has what turns out to be a very creditable page called "Mongol Conquest of Western Xia."

“One of their first endeavors at siege warfare, the Mongols lacked the proper equipment and experience to take the city. They arrived at the city in May, but by October were still unsuccessful at breaking through. Genghis attempted to flood the capital by diverting the river and its network of irrigation canals into the city, and by January 1210 the walls of Yinchuan were nearly breached. However, the dike used to divert the river broke, and the ensuing flood wiped out the Mongol camp, forcing the Mongols to take higher ground.”

Ruth Dunnell, “Translating History from Tangut Buddhist Texts,” Asia Major, third series, vol. 22, part 1 (2009), pp. 41-78. There is quite a lot of discussion here about who the Dishi actually were. The same author has a number of articles on Tanguts that deserve attention.

Rob Linrothe, “Xia Renzong and the Patronage of Tangut Buddhist Art: The Stūpa and Usnīsavijayā Cult,” Journal of Sung-Yuan Studies, vol. 28 (1998), pp. 91-123. This essay mostly concerns a slightly earlier period, but it does demonstrate the Vajrayâna interests of the Tangut royalty.

H. Desmond Martin, “The Mongol Wars with Hsi-hsia (1205-27),” JRAS (1942) 195-228, with maps. It has this to say, on p. 201, about the flooding incident of 1210, entirely based on Chinese language sources:

“The enemy at his gates, Li An-chuan took personal command and directed the defence with such energy that by the end of October the Mongols had not gained a single foothold on the walls. But there then occurred a catastrophe that nearly brought the capital to its knees. Seeing that the autumnal rains had swollen the Huang Ho, Chinghiz Khan ordered the construction of a great dyke to turn the river into the city, and the waters entering Chung-hsing, took a fearful toll of life and property.

“Faced with this predicament, Li An-ch'uan sent in November to beg the Chin for help. Many Chin ministers and high officers urged that troops be dispatched to break the leaguer, for they pointed out that the conquest of Hsi Hsia would certainly be followed by an attack upon their empire. But the new emperor Yüng-chi (1209 1213) regarded both contestants as enemies and turned a deaf ear to the Tangut cry for succour. The siege dragged on until January, 1210, when the walls of the city were on the point of 1210 collapse. Then suddenly the pent up waters of the river burst their outer dykes, and spreading over the surrounding plain, forced the Mongols to retire to higher ground.”

Mi-nyag Ras-pa-dkar-po, Bla ma rin po che 'gro ba'i mgon po ti shri ras pa'i rnam par thar pa, contained in the series entitled Lo paṇ rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, Krung-go'i Shes-rig Dpe-skrun-khang (Beijing 2018), vol. 7, pp. 255-365. Note that this volume 7 has its own distinct cover title: Lam yig phyogs bsgrigs.

Kirill Solonin, “Local Literatures: Tangut/Xixia,” Brill Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. 1, pp. 844-859. Especially valuable as a survey of surviving writings in Tangut including translations from other languages, and for its bibliography. Other works of the same author should have been listed here, although they haven’t been. And if there is any chance you might be contemplating learning Tangut language, try this link. And don’t be too discouraged, because as you will learn when you watch it, “Compared to Tibetan, Tangut is relatively easy.” "A very simple language in fact." Well, I can never tell when he’s not joking, and this might not be an example.

Elliot Sperling, “Further Remarks Apropos of the 'Ba'-rom-pa and the Tanguts,” Acta Orientalia Hungarica, vol. 57, no. 1 (2004), pp. 1-26. I believe this article is the only one to take notice of the Tibetan-language flooding account (at pp. 17-20). Of course this mid-15th century history translated by Elliot, the Lho rong chos 'byung, even if it did made direct use of our 13th-century biography, is nonetheless a secondary source compared to the Repakarpo. I only wish Elliot could still be around to hear the news , he would have been so excited. Although the Lho rong chos 'byung preserves the first-person nature of the account, it abbreviates and leaves out quite a lot, as you can see in Elliot's translation of it:

“...I had a dream that the Xia citadel was surrounded by Mongols. In the first month of the Horse Year [January 17-February 25, 1210] the Mongols surrounded the Xia citadel. Shri Phug-pa, Rtsang-po-pa and I, we three, took steps to repulse the troops. On the 1st day of the third month [March 27, 1210] the citadel was surrounded by water. We did a gtor-ma and on the 6th [April 1, 1210] at midnight the water fell back and many Mongol troops were swept away. On the 14th [April 9, 1210], using the king's daughter, peace was made...”

Elliot besides his brilliance dealing with languages both old and new had a famously acute sense of humor, and I'm sure he felt no need to point out that the backwash took place on April Fools Day.

Elliot Sperling, “Rtsa-mi Lo-tsâ-ba Sangs-rgyas Grags-pa and the Tangut Background to Early Mongol-Tibetan Relations,” contained in: Per Kvaerne, ed., Tibetan Studies, The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture (Oslo 1994), pp. 801-825.

Elliot Sperling, “The Szechwan-Tibet Frontier in the Fifteenth Century,” Ming Studies, no. 26 (Fall 1988) 37-55. This is important for evidence of Tangut migration and eventual integration into the Tibetan population. In Tibetan, the name for both the original Tanguts and their later descendents is Mi-nyag (མི་ཉག).

Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, “The Tangut Royal Tombs near Yinchuan,” Muqarnas, vol. 10 (1993), pp. 369-381.

Sun Penghao, “Four Texts Related to Pha dam pa sangs rgyas in the Chinese Translation of the Tangut Kingdom of Xia,” contained in: Shen Weirong, ed., History through Textual Criticism (Beijing 2012), pp. 85-97.

Sun Penghao, “Pha-dam-pa Sangs-rgyas in Tangut Xia: Notes on Khara-khoto Chinese Manuscript TK329,” contained in: Tsuguhito Takeuchi, et al., eds., Current Issues and Progress in Tibetan Studies, Research Institute of Foreign Studies (Kobe 2013), pp. 505-521.

Weirong Shen, “A Preliminary Investigation into the Tangut Background of the Mongol Adoption of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism,” contained in: Orna Almogi, ed., Contributions to Tibetan Buddhist Literature, International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Halle 2008), pp. 315-350. This article emphasizes significant Sakyapa connections with the Tangut court.

Andrew West, Western Xia Tombs Revisited. Totally worth visiting.

Assignment: Go study Tangut art at the site of the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Notice especially this one that is identified as a Dishi or Guoshi.

It could just be me, but I’ve been there and found it so awesomely hideous it had best be dismantled. You’ll have to go to the link if you want to see it since I won’t put photo of it here on my blog:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6079991/Genghis-Khan-statue-Mongolia-sees-tourists-anniversary-death-800-years-ago.html#i-f5a6c44417858606

§ § §

A note on ethnonyms: Tibetans always call the Tangut country and nation and language by the name Mi-nyag. The Tanguts called themselves something like "Mi-nia," and their state the "Great Xia" (Chinese sources call them Xixia, or Western Xia, in an effort to disambiguate which Xia is meant). This "Xia" (once upon a time not so long ago transcribed as "Hsia") is represented in Tibetan sources as 'Ga' or Gha (འགའ་ or གྷ་), and later on as Sga and sometimes Rga (སྒ་ and རྒ་). There were a number of famous persons in later Tibetan history who belonged to this clan called Sga, including teachers of both Sakya and Bön schools, and I believe they are all supposed to be descendants of Tangut families who escaped the Mongols and emigrated to Tibet.

— Oh, and I think the right name of the other Dishi (and that word is the same as the Ti-shi or Ti-shri in Tishirepa; the "repa" means cotton-clad, just like in Milarepa), or Imperial Preceptor, had the name Tsangsoba, and not Tsangpopa. The 'p' and 's' are close enough to be confused in Tibetan cursive script. To my mind, he was likely from a place called Tsangso (Gtsang-so) in La-stod region rather than from the Tsangpo (Gtsang-po) River.

I'm not too sure, but this is supposed to be a wall painting of an imperial preceptor
of the Tanguts depicted in Yulin Cave no. 29.
If there were five points in his hat, I'd say it could be Tishirepa.

* * *

This blog I would like to dedicate to the memory of Elliot Sperling (1951-2017). There is so much more he was meant to do in this world.

↧

Gold Digging Ants of Herodotus, Part 1

February 11, 2019, 4:03 am

≫ Next: Stone Inscription from the 8th-Century Rule of Trisongdetsen Suddenly Shows Up

≪ Previous: The Flood that Backfired, & the Tangut Refugees

The story about the ants — or are those really ants? — described by Herodotus as digging up gold for the benefit of human prospectors is well known. It has fascinated a lot of people a lot of times for various reasons. Since the classic 1870 study by Danish professor Frederic Schiern (1816-1882), in its shortened English translation by Anna Childers, only exists in a version with cracked up letters that won’t scan well, I resolved to use my own eyesight and keyboard muscles to type it out. My source is The Indian Antiquary, August 1875, pages 225-232. Please forgive me if I’ve made transcription errors of my own (the notes in particular have some unclear letters), although I did double-check and did my best, copying every last jot and tittle as is.* This is only the half of it. There is a brief and I hope representative bibliography at the end for your reading pleasure.

(*If you notice inaccuracies in my transcription, please do drop a note in the comments section and I’ll try to fix them.)

THE TRADITION OF THE GOLD-DIGGING ANTS.*

by Frederic Schiern, Professor of History at the University of Copenhagen. Translated by Anna M.H. Childers.

HERODOTUS is the earliest Greek writer who mentions gold-digging ants. Omitting irrelevant matter, the following is the account he gives of them:—

“Besides these there are Indians of another tribe, who border on the city of Kaspatyrus and the country of Paktyika: these people dwell northward of all the rest of the Indians, and follow nearly the same mode of life as the Baktrians. They are more warlike than any of the other tribes, and from them the men are sent forth who go to procure the gold. For it is in this part of India that the sandy desert lies. Here in this desert there live amid the sand great ants, in size somewhat less than dogs, but bigger than foxes. The Persian king has a number of them, which have been caught by the hunters in the land whereof we are speaking. These ants make their dwellings underground, and, like the Greek ants, which they very much resemble in shape, throw up sand-heaps as they burrow. Now the sand which they throw up is full of gold. The Indians when they go into the desert to collect this sand take three camels and harness them together, a female in the middle, and a male on either side in a leading-rein. The rider sits on the female, and they are particular to choose for the purpose one that has just dropped her young: for their female camels can run as fast as horses, while they bear burdens very much better . . . . When, then, the Indians reach the place where the gold is, they fill their bags with the sand and ride away at their best speed: the ants, however, scenting them, as the Persians say, rush forth in pursuit. Now these animals are so swift, they declare, that there is nothing in the world like them: if it were not, therefore, that the Indians get a start while the ants are mustering, not a single gold-gatherer could escape. During the flight the male camels, which are not so fleet as the females, grow tired, and begin to drag first one and then the other: but the females recollect the young which they have left behind, and never give way or flag. Such, according to the Persians, is the manner in which the Indians get the greater part of their gold: some is dug out of the earth, but of this the supply is more scanty.”†

*Professor Schiern's essay was published in the Verhandl. Kgl. Dänischen Gesellsch. der Wissensch. for 1870, and was also printed separately as a pamphlet in Danish, German, and French. My translation is from the French version, which is considerably abridged, and therefore more suited to the pages of the Antiquary. I have slightly condensed the text in a few places. I take this opportunity of pointing out that Professor Schiern is not the first who has supposed the gold-digging ants to be Tibetan miners, as Pall Mall Gazette of March 16, 1869, written by Sir Henry Rawlinson :—

“Now then for the first time we have an explanation of the circumstances under which so large a quantity of gold is, as is well known to be the case, exported to the west from Khoten, and finds its way into India from Tibet; and it is probable that the search for gold in this region has been going on from a very remote antiquity, since no one can read the Pandit's account of the Tibetan miners, ‘living in tents some seven or eight feet below the surface of the ground, and collecting the excavated earth in heaps previous to washing the gold out of the soil,’ without being reminded of the description which Herodotus gives of the ‘ants in the land of the Indians bordering on Kaspatyrus (or Kaspapyrus for Kaśyapura or Kā ś m īr), which made their dwellings underground, and threw up sand-heaps as they burrowed, the sand which they threw up being full of gold.’ Professor Wilson indeed long ago, and before it was known there were any miners actually at work in Tibet, suggested this explanation of the story in Herodotus, on the mere ground that the grains of gold, collected in that country were called pipilika or ant-gold.”

To Professor Schiern is, however, unquestionably due the merit of an independent discovery, and above all of the lucid and laborious exposition of the evidence in favour of his theory.—A.M.H.C.

†Herodotus, iii 102, 105. I take the translation from Rawlinson.—A.M.H.C.

Such is the story of the gold-digging ants as told by the far-travelled Herodotus, “the Humboldt of his time,” who had come to Susa for the preparation of his magnificent history, a work scarcely less valuable from a geographical and ethnological than from a historical point of view. The story, for the truth of which Herodotus was compelled to rely entirely upon the statements of the Persians, we find repeated by a great many later Greek and Roman authors.[1] How deeply the legend had taken root among the ancient Greeks may best be seen from the narrative of Harpokration, who records the sarcasms of the comic poets relative to a fruitless expedition against the gold-digging ants undertaken by the Athenians with troops of all arms, and provisions for three days. “It was rumoured among the Athenians one day,” he says, “that a mound of gold-dust had been seen on Mount Hymettus guarded by the warlike ants: whereupon they armed themselves and set out against the foe, but returned to Athens after much expenditure of labour to no purpose, they said mockingly to

[1] Cont. Strabo, II.1; XV.1; Arrian. de Exped. Alexandr. V.4; Indica, 5; Dio Chrysostom, Orat. XXXV.; Philostrat. de l'Iti Apollonii Tyan, VI.1; Clem Alex. Poed, II.12; Allian, de Nat.An. XV.14; Harpokrat. n.t. khrusuthoein(?); Themist. Orat. XXVII; Heliodor. X.26; Tzets. Chil XII.330-340; Pseudo Callisth. II.29; Schol ad Sophoel. Antig. v.1025.

______________

[p. 226]
each-other, ‘So you thought you were going to smelt gold!’”

The gold-digging ants of the Indians are mentioned in the writings of the Middle Ages and in those of the Arabian authors, and the tradition of them survived among the Turks as late as the sixteenth century. None of the authorities throw any doubt upon the truth of the tradition except Strabo, who treats the whole story as a fiction, and Albertus Magnus, who in quoting it adds, “sed hoc non satis est probatum per experimentum.”

The advent of criticism did not at once dispel the belief in this fable. So late as the end of the last century we find the learned Academician Larcher, in his French translation of Herodotus,[1] cautioning his readers against hastily rejecting the narrative of the Greek historian; and two years later, in 1788, Major James Rennel, while admitting the exaggerations of the story, gives it none the less as his opinion that the formidable adversaries of the Indians were termites or white ants.[2] In the 19th century when people at length ceased to look upon these bellicose gold-diggers as really ants, the opinion began to prevail that there had simply been a confusion between the names of the ant and of some animal of larger size. In connection with this view, or even excluding the hypothesis of a confusion of names, it was also supposed that a certain resemblance between the ant and some larger animal had given rise to the fable, or at least contributed to maintain it. The idea of resemblance was especially grounded on the larger animal's mode of digging its burrow, or excavating the earth with any other object. This animal has been variously identified with the corsac or Tartary fox, the hyena, the jackal, the hamster (Mus cricetus) and the marmot.[3] The theory that the auriferous earth cast up by burrowing animals guided the Indian gold-seekers, and originated the tradition of the gold-digging ants, is curiously confirmed by an observation of Alexander von Humboldt: “I have often been struck,” he says, “by seeing ants in the basaltic districts of the highlands of Mexico carrying along shining grains of hyalith, which I was able to pick out of the anthills.”[4] But the supposed similarity which has led to classifying as ants animals widely different from them is not limited to their mode of excavation or throwing up the earth, for an attempt has also been made to extend it to their shape and general appearance. This was done long ago by Jacob Gronovius in his interpretation of the ancient narrative,[5] and even in our own time Xivrey expresses himself still more plainly to the same effect.[6]

The hypothesis of a confusion of names had to be entirely abandoned when Wilson pointed out that the ancient Sanskrit literature of India itself mentions these ants. In a remarkable passage of the great Indian epic, the Mahâbhârata, we have an enumeration of the treasures sent by the Northern tribes to king Yudhisthira, one of the sons of Pâṇḍu, and among them are lumps of paipilika gold, so called because it was collected by ants (pipîlikîs).[7] Apart from this fact, it must be admitted that the burrowing habits of foxes, jackals and hyenas hardly afford a plausible pretext for confounding them with ants : it would be more natural to make comparisons of this sort with certain rodents such as marmots, but even those who adopt this solution make no attempt to ignore its weak points. Thus Lassen writes: “The accounts of their prodigious swiftness, their pursuit and destruction of gold-seekers and their camels, must be looked upon as purely imaginary, since they (marmots) are slow in their movements and of a gentle disposition.”[8] In the same way Peschel makes the following admission : “It has not been hitherto explained on what grounds such remarkable speed and ferocity should be attributed to these ants, while marmots are represented as peace-loving crea-

[1] Tome III, p. 339.
[2] Memoir of a Map of Hindostan, Int. p. xxix.
[3] Conf. Link. Die Urwelt und das Alterthum (Berlin 1821-22), I, 258; Ritter, Die Erdkunde, III, 659; Humboldt, Kosmos, II, 176; Wahl, Erdbeschreibung von Ostindien (Hamburg 1805-7), II, 185, 486; Wilford, Asiat. Res. XIV, 467. Kruse [?], Indiens alte Geschichte (Leipzig, 1856), p. 39; Heeren, [illeg.] über die Politik, I, 1, 348; Vigee [?], Travels in Kashmir ¶c, 1f, 287; Peschel, Der Ursprung und die Verbreitung einiger geographischen Mythen in Mittelalter, II, 265; Lassen, Ind.Alt, I, 50, 1022; Cunningham, Ladak, p. 232.
[4] Kosmos, II, 422. Compare the story of the diamond anthill in the case of Rahery [Rubery?] n. Sampson.—Ed.
[5] Worte in den Anmerkungen zu Tschuckes Ausgabe von Pomponius Mela (Leipzig, 1806), III, 3, 245.
[6] Traditions tératologiques, pp. 265, 267.
[7] Wilson, Ariana Antiqua, p. 135, and Jour. R. As.Soc. (1843) vol. VII, p. 148
[8] Ind. Alt. I, 1922.

______________

[p. 227]
tures.”[1] In short, as regards those writers who have endeavoured to explain the confusion of names by a certain external resemblance, suffice it to say that they have themselves despaired of finding an animal that would satisfy the conditions of their theory. Xivrey naïvely attributes this difficulty to the auri sacra fames, holding that a race of gold-digging animals may have really existed, and gradually disappeared before the incursions of man.[2]

We now come to a wholly different solution of the question. So long ago as the year 1819 Malte-Brun wrote : “May we not also suppose that an Indian tribe really bore the name of ants?”[3] It is by following up the clue thus afforded by our learned countryman that we may hope to arrive at a solution of this question. But it will be necessary in the first place to determine, in what direction we are to look for the dwelling-place of the gold-digging ants, by taking as our starting-point the places mentioned by Herodotus. According to the Greek historian, the Indians who went in search of the gold lived in the neighbourhood of the city of Kaspatyrus (Κασπατυρος) and of Paktyike (η Πακτυικη χωρη). Now the inhabitants of Paktyike are none other than the Afghans, who in the west call themselves Pashtun and in the east Pakhtun,[4] a name idéntical with that given to them by Herodotus. As to the second locality, instead of Kaspatyrus, the name given in most editions of Herodotus, the Codex Sancroftianus, preserved in Emanuel College, Cambridge, give that of Kaspapyrus (Κασπαπυρος), a reading found also in Stephanus Byzantinus, and clearly pointing to the ancient name of the capital of Kâśmîr, Kâśyapapura, contracted to Kâśyapura.

We are thus brought to Kâśmîr. We have in our own times seen how the Sikhs, the present masters of Kâśmîr, took possession of large portions of Tibet, namely, of Ladak or Central Tibet in 1831, and of Balti or Little Tibet in 1840. But we know that in former times the Subâhdârs, or governors of Kâśmîr under the Great Mughul, and earlier yet the kings, both Muhammadan and Hindu, of independent Kâśmîr, likewise strove to extend their conquests in the same direction. And hence we may well suppose that it was to Tibet that the Indians of Herodotus repaired when they left their native Kâśmîr in search of gold. This supposition is confirmed by the fact that Strabo and the elder Pliny expressly mention the Dards as those who robbed the ants of their treasures.[5] For the Dards are not an extinct race. According to the accounts of modern travellers, they consist of several wild and predatory tribes dwelling among the mountains on the north-west frontier of Kâśmîr, and by the banks of the Indus : [6] they are the Daradas of Sanskrit literature. They understand Pushtu, the language of the Afghans,[7] but their native tongue is a Sanskritic idiom. Even at the present day they carry on their marauding profession in Little and Central Tibet, and it is chiefly on this account that the picturesque vale of Huzara, which has at all times belonged to Little Tibet, remains in great part waste, in spite of its natural fertility.[8] Mir Izzet Ullah, the travelling companion of Moorcroft, who visited Tibet in 1812, writes as follows in his Journal:—“The houses of this country from Matayin to this place are all wrecked and deserted. Last year a great number of the inhabitants were carried off by bands of Dards, an independent tribe who live in the mountains three or four days’ march north of Diriras, and speak Pashtu and Dáradi. The prisoners made by them in these raids are sold for slaves.”[9]

AElian, who makes the river Kampylinus the limit of the ant country,[10] throws no light upon the question of Tibet, for it is impossible to gather from the text whether or not the Kampylinus denotes a branch of the Indus. But Tibet is indicated with tolerable certainty in the remarkable passage of the Mahâbhârata above referred to, as well as in the statements of Herodotus, Strabo, and Pliny. For among the north-

[1] Der Ursprung und Verbreitung einiger geographischen Mythen im Mittelalter, in Deutsch Vierteljahrschrift, II. 266.
[2] Trad. tératologiques, p. 267.
[3] Mémoire sur l'Inde septentrionale, in Nouvelles Annales des Voyages (Paris, 1819), II. 382.
[4] Hindustanicè Pathân.—Ed.
[5] Strabo, XV. 1; Pliny, Hist. Nat. VI. 22; XI. 36.
[6] Vigne, Travels, II. 300 ; Leitner, Dardistan, II. 31-34.
[7] Vigne, Travels, II. 268.
[8] Moorcroft and xxxx [the notes are illegible here in my copy]

______________

[p. 228]

-ern tribes who brought to king Yudhishṭhira the paipîlika gold the Khaśas are expressly mentioned ; and not only are the Khaśas frequently alluded to in the Kâśmîrian chronicle Râja Taraṅgiṇî, which locates them in the neighbourhood of the city of Kâśmîr,[1] but they are even known at the present day under the name of Khasiyas, as a people speaking one of the Indian languages, and dwelling on the borders of Tibet.[2] In the passage relating to the tribute brought to the king by the Khaśas and other northern tribes, the Mahâbhârata also speaks of “sweet honey made from the flowers of Himavat,” and of “fine black châmaras , and others that were white and brilliant as the moon.” Now Himavat is only another name for the Himâlaya, and châmara is the name of the fans or fly-flaps which in India kings only are allowed to use, and which are made from the tail of the Yak or Tibetan ox (Bos grunniens).[3]

[1] Troyer's transl. II. 321 ff. ; Neumann, Geschichte des englischen Reiches in Asien (Leipzig, 1837), I. 209 ; Lassen, Ind' Alt. I. 1820 ; Huc, Souvenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartarie, &c 264-66, 311, 321, 381.[2] Hodgson in Jour. As. Soc. Beng. (1848) XVII. 546 ; Lassen, Ind. Alt. I. 24, 67, 459, 473=74, 646, 1020-1021.
[3]

TO BE CONTINUED! Start up again at p. 228, the first full paragraph.

Herodotus, one of the world's earliest history book writers.

BRUNIALTI, A. “La tradizione delle formiche che scavano l'oro e i minator, del Tibet,” Bol. Soc. Geog. Ital., vol. 40 (1874), pp. 370-6. Not seen.

CARDELL, MONIQUE L. “Herodotus and the Gold Digging Ants, A Voyage across Time and Space,” a paper in docx format from internet (now try this link).

FRANCKE, AUGUST HERMANN “Two Ant Stories from the Ancient Kingdom of Western Tibet (A Contribution to the Question of the Gold-Digging Ants),” Asia Major, vol. 1 (1924), pp. 67-75.

JEAN-BAPTISTE, PATRICK “L'historien grec Herodotus a-t-il dit la verite? L'or des marmottes” [Did the Greek Historian Herodotus Tell the Truth? The Marmots’ Gold], Sciences et avenir, no. 656 (2001), pp. 74-75.

KARSAI, GY. “Die Geschichte von den goldgrabenden Ameisen” [The Story of the Gold-Digging Ants], Annales Universitatis Budapestinensis, Sectio Classica, vol. 5-6 (1977-8), pp. 61-72.

LAUFER, BERTHOLD “Die Sage von den goldgrabenden Ameisen” [The Legend of the Gold-Digging Ants], T'oung Pao, vol. 9 (1908), pp. 429-452.

McCARTNEY, EUGENE S. “The Gold-Digging Ants,” Classical Journal, vol. 49 (1954), p. 234.

PEISSEL, MICHEL The Ants' Gold: The Discovery of the Greek El Dorado in the Himalayas, Harvill Press (London 1984).

PUSKAS, ILDIKO “On An Ethnographical Topos in the Classical Literature (The Gold-Digging Ants),” Annales Universitaris Budapestinensis, Sectio classica, vol. 5-6 (1977-78), pp. 73-87.

REGENOS, G.W. “A Note on Herodotus III, 102,” The Classical Journal, vol. 34, no. 7 (April 1939), pp. 425-426.

RIZVI, JANET “Lost Kingdoms of the Gold-Digging Ants” [a review of Michel Peissel's book L'or des fourmis: La découvete de l'Eldorado grec au Tibet], India International Centre Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 2 (Summer 1988), pp. 131-147.

SCHIERN, FREDERIC “The Tradition of the Gold-Digging Ants,” tr. by Anna M.H. Childers, Indian Antiquary, vol. 4 (August 1875), pp. 225-232. Idem., Über den Ursprung der Sage von den goldgrabenden Ameisen (Copenhagen/Leipzig 1883). Try this link. Same title in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, vol. 6 (1874), 98-101, although this is actually a review by Felix Liebrecht.

SHARMA, ARVIND “The Story of the Gold-Digging Ants: Greek Rationality or Rationalization?” From the internet; try here.

I think Arvind Sharma is on to something: Not only later classical Greek authors, but modern classicists as well, have been gripped by the urge to “save” the rationalism of Herodotus, and the Greeks as a whole, from what looks like a fantastically irrational story. Rationalists feel duty-bound to defend what must be perceived by us all as the origins of our European-Aristotelian rationalism. And to do this they see themselves entirely justified in using whatever reasonable-enough-sounding rationalization works for them. True, E.R. Dodds did write that book on The Greeks and the Irrational.

SIMONS, MARLISE “Himalayas Offer Clue to Legend of Gold-Digging ‘Ants’.” New York Times (November 25, 1996). Try here.

THOMAS, DANA “An Explorer’s Answer to the Tale of Furry, Gold-Digging Ants,” The Washington Post (December 16, 1996). Try here.

WARSH, DAVID “Found: Mountain Mouse Ants,” Aramco World(September 1997). Look here. Also reprinted on the internet at www.silk-road.com.

§ § §

In fact there are any number of internet pieces on the subject, just try cutting and pasting the words

Herodotus and the Gold Digging Ants

into the Schmoogle box and see what pops up. Like this, for instance.

↧

Stone Inscription from the 8th-Century Rule of Trisongdetsen Suddenly Shows Up

April 18, 2019, 10:32 am

≫ Next: History Blah Blah

≪ Previous: Gold Digging Ants of Herodotus, Part 1

Samyé Temple and Monastery, founded in the era of Trisongdetsen. It has an inscribed stele of its own.

I apologize to my rare and for that reason all the more precious readers that I haven’t been exercising my writing disabilities here in this space much of late. My excuse is they are much needed elsewhere. Just yesterday I noticed something on the web that excited me so much I feel I simply must say something about it. It is what appears from its language characteristics to be a genuinely old stele inscription, what Tibetans call a ‘long stone’ (rdo-ring) that has never been studied before. I don’t propose to study it now or in the future, just to say a few words of introduction, and after that transcribe the Tibetan letters into Wylie in order to make internet searches more effective. I should emphasize that this will by no means be a scientific transcription, since I have never seen even one bad photograph of the stele, and rely entirely on the Tibetan-script version supplied on the internet (I did go over it to verify my readings), at a site called “Utsang Culture.” It was posted less than a month ago, on March 22, 2019, with the accompanying description,

“Khri srong lde btsan gyi skabs gtsang gi gro shod du btab pa'i pra dun rtse gtsug lag khang gi mdun du yod pa'i btsan po'i dus kyi rdo ring gi zhal bshus kyi ma phyi cha tshang.”

If you will allow me a quick and rough translation:

“A Complete Transcription of the Stele from Imperial Times that Stands in Front of the Traduntse Temple that was founded in Groshod of Tsang Province in the time of Emperor Trisongdetsen.”*

(*If you want to know exactly where to find Traduntse (Pra-dum-rtse) on the map, look here. Or if you happen to be at this moment trekking in the ancient kingdom of Mustang, now forming a part of northern Nepal, head directly north, crossing the Brahmaputra, and you should be there in a matter of weeks, give or take a few. The name, probably Zhang-zhung in its origins, has been subjected to a Tibetanizing re-interpretation with the spelling Skra-bdun-rtse, meaning Seven Hair Tips. Contrary to what it says in my translation, Pra-dun-tse was founded by the wise emperor Songtsen somewhere near the end of the first half of the 7th century.)

As far as I am aware, there are no long stone inscriptions surviving from Tibetan history prior to the reign of Trisongdetsen, who ruled the plateau through most of the last half of the 8th century. Hugh Richardson’s well-known collection of inscriptions only has three stone stele inscriptions dating from his times, so now we have the pleasure and privilege to raise that number to four. (I haven’t counted the inscribed bell.)

Our inscription is dated to a Hare year, so it should be possible to decide its exact date once the entire document has been thoroughly studied by more competent authorities.

The gist of its content is a granting of boons and/or privileges* by the Emperor to a person of ministerial rank who evidently had been serving as a ‘governor’ (?) of some area or another in western Tibet and who had demonstrated outstanding valour in battle. The final line refers to him as the rgye-shin** of Phan-yul. The inscription gives his full personal name, a rather odd looking one if truth be told, but since it is repeated several times there can be little doubt: Khri-dbang Gtsug-phud Rje-la Khwe.

(*Instead of me-rtags we have to read che-rtags.
**An internet search reveals that rgye-shin appears with exact same spelling in the name rGye-shin Blon-skyid found in an inscription that Francke has reproduced, evidently, in an article of his. For reference, see his Historische Dokumente von Khalatse in West-Tibet(Ladakh), published in 1907, p. 602, where he thinks it is a faulty spelling for "rgya [b]zhin." I think without good reason, even if I have no substitute explanation to offer. Perhaps the Rye-shin Khu-bul-bu that appears in Old Tibetan Annals entry for the year 677 CE is of some relevance, even if referring to a period a century earlier than our stone inscription.

To see the “original” Tibetan-script version of the inscription, look here:

https://utsangculture.com/ཁྲི་སྲོང་ལྡེ་བཙན་སྐབས་/

If clicking on it doesn’t take you there right away, try cutting & pasting the entire line into your browser.

This surprisingly lengthy stone inscription mentions the absorption of neighbors into the territories of the expanding Tibetan state including Zhangzhung, Azha (Tuyuhun), and Dakpo already during the times of the ‘ancestor’ Khri-sta'u-snya-gzigs.* That means sometime in the middle of the 6th century.

(*Stag-bu-snya-gzigs is another spelling. It could be that this new inscription will cause modern historians to give more credence to the historicity of Songtsen the Wise's grandfather and father.)

We find here some important indications of early Tibetan religion, Tibetan paganism if you will permit the term, and Zhang-zhung language along with other things familiar in Bon religion. Notice it uses the Zhang-zhung language term dang-ra, meaning lake. I think the main action of conferring rank that happened in the winter of a Hare Year took place in the western Tibetan fort well known in Bon sources as [Gad-kyi] Byi-ba-mkhar [meaning Mouse Fort], although here called the palace (pho-brang) Gro-shod Pi-ba-mkhar.*

(*This and other western Tibetan forts as known to Bon sources are listed and discussed in footnote 18 of Namkhai Norbu's The Necklace of Gzi, Information Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama [Dharamsala 1981].)

It also has a very remarkable reference to vampire suppression (sri gnon) rituals that has to be one if not the earliest reference to this Tibetan exorcistic practice that surely predates the introduction of Buddhism if anything does. I fail to identify even a remote hint of Buddhism, per se. It mentions the royal ‘soul mountain,’ in the process using a strange word Amy Heller has noticed in an inscription on a piece of gold taken from a horse saddle, zhu-lub[s] (look here). Then we find a ‘soul lake’ using that Zhang-zhung word dang-ra, describing it as ‘having a halter of turquoise’ (g.yu mtshul can; this could conceal a more archaic way of speaking about the famous lake Dang-ra G.yu-mtsho [go here and search for Dangra Yutso, or click here for a map], since after all the Tibetan syllable mtsho for lake would have to be regarded as redundant to all who understand enough Zhang-zhung to know that dang-ra means lake). There is even a ‘soul field,’ something I don’t recall ever seeing before. We could go on and on, but let’s stop there for now, and let the Old Tibetan document experts take over, as they indubitably will. For now, I think it will be amusing to talk about what we see in it in the comments section you will notice below.

Nota bene: I’ve eliminated most of the line numbers along with the line breaks, so they will not get in the way of internet searches. I’ve marked up some of the main names in color to draw attention to them. I’ve bracketed a few of my suggested readings, where I imagine they could be helpful. I’ve added a few notes, I hope just enough to help you on your way to achieving your own understanding, but not enough to spoil your fun trying to meet the challenge.

gnam labs [~babs] kyi btsan po // sa lhund kyi mnga' mdzad // myi rje lha'i sprul pa / gnam gyi lha las 'greng myi'i rjer gshegs ste* / dud rngog chags kyi rkyen du bskyod pa'i bod kyi spu rgyal btsan po khri srong lde btsan gyi zha snga' nas pho brang gro shod pi ba mkhar na bzhugs pa'i dus su // bka' lung gsal ba'i mdo' byang gu ge'i sde rgye shin blon chen po khri dbang gtsug phud rje la khwe la yos bu'i lo rgun zla tha chung gi ngo la bkas gnang ba /

(*Echoes words of ITJ 0751: gnam gyi lha las myi'i rjer gshegs pa... Other OT documents echo the words "rjer gshegs" and "mi'i rjer gshegs." This may be verified at the OTDO website. Compare also the words from the Mnga'-ris Rgyal-rabs as found in Roberto Vitali's The Kingdoms of Gu.ge Pu.hrang (Dharamsala 1996), p. 72, opening words of what is evidently a quoted document in connection with a war of 1083 CE fought in the lands north of Tibet, in Rgya Gye-sar: gnam lha babs kyi rgyal po / sa lhun grub kyi mnga' bdag / bod kyi lha btsan po rtse lde'i zhal mnga' nas... (for English translation, see the same volume, pp. 123-124.)

[11] rgye shin blon chen po khri dbang gtsug phud rje la khwe mchis na yang btsan po gdung rgyud rim par pha mes rgyud kyis sku'i nye zhing zho sha cher phul /

mes khri sta'u snya gzigs kyi sku ring la rgye shen blon chen po 'dzam gling khri don bzher btsan nes dru gu yul du dmag pon bgyis te / myang dbas mnon dang gsum / tshe spongs 'phrin dang sgo bstun nas / rgyal phran bcu gnyis kyi' srid brlag / zhang zhung sde dang bcas pa 'a zha''khor dang bcas pa / dags po rgyab dang bcas pa mngar 'dus te / zhabs 'degs phul /

mes khri gnam ri srong btsan rlung nam gyi sku ring la rgye shin blon chen po rus rgya 'dzam bus dmag pon bgyis te / sbal ti dang nol thabs mdzad pa'i sar dpa'i ya rab bgyis chab srid rgyas par bcugs pas bka' rtags kyi sgrom bu mtha' dbus su brtsan bar rmeng chags pa'i zhabs 'debs phul /

mes srong btsan sgam po'i sku ring la rgya shin blon chen po mang rje btsan la myis rgya'i phyogs su dmag drangs te ga ram gyi rgya thang du rgya dang nom thabs [~nol thabs] mdzad pa'i dus su dpa'i ya rab bgyis / dpa' mtshan stag gi zar chen* gsal / 'gar stong brtsan yul zung dang / da rgyal mang po rje stong nam gnyis dang sgo bstun nas bod kyi mkhar bzhi brtsegs pa dang / bod rur phye ba dang / sum pa sder bcad pa la sogs pa'i zhabs 'degs phul bas dpen yon la gser gyi yi ge chu du [~chu ngu] bkas gnang /

(*See the comments on this syllable zar in Hugh Richardson's A Corpus of Early Tibetan Inscriptions, p. 19. Likely a borrowing from a late Persian language source, I think it is probably a luxury cloth woven in the design of the tiger's stripes, which would anyway by a symbol of military heroism.)

[29] btsan po khri srong lde brtsan gyi sku ring la / rgye shin blon chen po khri dbang gtsug phud rje la khwes yul na gar du gnyi 'go dang nol thabs mdzad pa'i dus su / bya lo nas lo rgu'i bar du rgu khrom bgyis dpa''dzangs kyi phul bton te / mtha'i 'go mnan rje'i sku btsas chab srid kyi nol thabs sngar byung du sgo srog la ma 'dzems te chab srid grangs dang rim par phyag tu phul te / dpe yon la seng ge'i go lag gsal g.yu'i yi ge chu du [~chu ngu] bkas gnang / de ltar sug byad yun du bzang zhing gdung rgyud rim pa la myi rabs rgyud kyis zho sha cher bgyis pa'i rge yon dang sbyar nas bka' rtsigs gnang ba yin gyis mnga' mdzad gdung rgyud jo mo bdan zhur phyi ma rnams kyis nam nam zha zha / tshe tshe rabs rabs bu tsha mtha' rjes myi rabs rgyud mar myi bco myi bsgyur myi dbri myi bskur bkas myi bshu myi sha sman chal sma stong dang bcas pa yang gdung rgyud rim pas bkas gnang ba'i yig rtsang dang mthun bar bka' rtags 'gyur snyags dang bcas pa 'chang du gsald pa yin no //

nga'i rgye shig blon chen po khri dbang gtsug phud rje la khwe bu cha [~bu tsha] rgyud du khrag che bton chung bton ni shi ri shi thang du bkas gnang / sus bkum yang lha gnyan mchod pa dang sri gnon gyi rkyen la bran pho rus sna rgu bran mo rus sna rgu gser gyi mda' rgu hwa dar rgu / g.yu'i 'phang rgu la srin bal 'dab ma rgu btags pa / mon lug rgu / mon ra rgu / nas khal dgu / shin tog khal rgu / mar khug rgu dgu ram rgu bla snang rgu la sogs pa dang mchod pa bya'o //

bla ri spo ri rma bya mdongs gser gyi zhu lubs su g.yon / bla mtsho dang ra g.yu mthur can ni gzi mchod des gcal du bkram / bla thang g.ya' thang myir ma ris ni dar zab kyis g.yon / srad yas dar yug rgu / gser gyi sbram bu rgu / 'bri rgu / ro g.yogs la khrab mying can drgu / ro gal la sta rab rgu / snying non la gser srang brgya dang g.yu rab rgu / bar stong la rta rab rgu / g.yag rab rgu / za bog rab rgu / nas khal rgu / lug srang rgu / stong nag ni shi ri shi thang gi rkang grangs las bkas gnang / srang rgu khri rgu stong rgu brgya rgu bcu rtsa rgu / zho rgu / nam rgu / lug rgu ting rgu bkas gnang / so sta sen gas na sgra lug ra yugs sa'i gos rin srang rgu / mchi phyis 'bri cig dang dar yug cig / spya rin la rta cig theb grib dar yug dmar pos byas te sar mar btus / mna' ma dang bu sring gi khrin srang bzhi brgya / mtshon che phyung chung phyung kheng rab kyi stong dang bsnum / myi zhing 'brog sogs gnang ba ni me nyag dang thag dar ljags dang nam pag ti 'di dang 'dre / skyu ru dang mo lcags tu rbar lasogs rus sna dgu grong brgya cu rtsa bdun / yul 'phan yul gyi rgya tshar srang / zhing rgod dor brgya bzhi bcu rtswa lnga pa / 'brog skyi thang ring mos yas bcad pa / spang ri 'brong tshang can gyis mas bcad pa / brag dmar chu mdo' lung lag gis bcad pa / na rlung 'om tshang gis bcad pa / bar gyi ro leb la shing lbag yu bkas gnang sngar chod pa'i myi zhing 'brog sogs bka' drin mdzad pa nyos zhing phru sa yan chod dbang bgyid par bkas gnang / spus lcogs pa rnams bla'i sgo gnyer chen po 'cham par bkas bsnan bka' zhang blon por bzhag cing gnya' snyom bar bkas gnang / sdos nyes che chung ci mchis kyang myi bkum myi spyug / gzhan snyan phra zhu ba byung na yang ma sbyangs par myi gsan zhing bkas chad ston myig myi mdzad par bkas gnang rtsigs zhing rtsigs 'brog 'tshal ba ma bka' skos myi mdzad par bkas gnang ba'i zhal phan gsal ba 'di sgrog rdo la than bar gyis shig /

[91] rgye shin blon chen po khri dbang gtsug phud rje la khwe nu tsha [~bu tsha] rgyud du spyan ras kyis myi btsa' re / 'khor yul blar bzhes re / gzhan du yang spyur re / snyan phra byung na yang gas re / shags khar rdzong re / 'dus 'gros ltar bkas myi bcad re / ma sbyangs par gtam slas gcod pa mdzad re / blon che khri dbang gtsug phud la bu tsha rgyud du 'di ltar bka' rtsigs 'chang du rung du brtsan bar bkas gnang ste gzhi phyag rgya 'chang du gsald pa shang shang dum rtsen du btab pa cig las bshus pa lags s.ho //

[103] yul phan yul gyi rgye shin gyi me rtags [~che rtags] / yongs su rdzogs so //

Postscript (April 19, 2019):

Somebody kindly pointed out one thing I neglected to mention, an article by Charles Ramble about Traduntse: “The Demonesse's Right (or Left) Knee (or Ankle): A Pilgrim's Account of Traduntse Temple from 1898," contained in: Olaf Czaja & Guntram Hazod, eds., The Illuminating Mirror: Tibetan Studies in Honour of Per K. Sørensen on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, Dr. Ludwig Reichert (Wiesbaden 2015), pp. 375-388. I was wondering, why is this particular message worthy of a major stone monument? The privileges granted to this Khri-la Khwe were granted in perpetuity, to be passed on to his descendents until the ends of time. Well, that was the intent anyway. So tell me, how better to say this than to have it chiseled into stone? Actually, another stele from those times also includes statements about how a minister's descendents would continue to hold his privileges and ranks and even immunity from punishment for any offenses short of treason. See the north face of the Lhasa Zhol pillar as transcribed and translated in H. Richardson's Corpus of Early Tibetan Inscriptions, pp. 16-23.

↧

History Blah Blah

August 16, 2019, 8:50 am

≫ Next: Letter Switching Codes of the Fifth Dalai Lama

≪ Previous: Stone Inscription from the 8th-Century Rule of Trisongdetsen Suddenly Shows Up

My theory is a theory against theory—although I am well aware of the painful irony of the fact that a profoundly theoretical book is needed for the rejection of theory.

— Frank Ankersmit as cited by Hadfield, p. 218.[1]

It’s been said that human beings are storytellers. But more to the point, we are story dwellers. We live inside stories passed down from earlier generations, and it is of these that much of human culture consists. It is perhaps as true among people who are not especially literate, as it is among those literate people who give not one fig about the conscious pursuit of historical truths. They are all victims. We all are. We should wake up to what we keep doing to ourselves, even as with feigned innocence we complain about what is happening to us, as we descend into opioid addictions of our own doing. What pain? Pain you say?

Our historical curiosity has its own rules and its own justifications that have little to do with romanticism and progressivism. It doesn’t care so much for historical restoration — the past doesn’t have to ‘come back alive’ for us or prove its profitability. And it shouldn’t force the past to serve as a measuring stick against our own times, always coming out to our advantage. In other words, we do not need to keep serving up histories that bear the heavy footprint of modernism.

So who are we, and who do we think we represent, when we try to write history? It’s been said that different occupations take different trajectories over the course of a lifetime.[2] Basketball players reach their peaks early on, and soon must think about other ways to occupy their many declining years. No need to mention professional boxers. But one occupation is practically unique in the sense that, at least until one or more of those diseases that used to be called senility takes over, its practitioners peak out at an age somewhere in their 50’s. Just consider how many dates, names, facts and impressions might have to be jumbled in your head before you would be able to say with any sense of finality something about, I don’t know, um... Patronage of ballet in New York City during the Great Depression.

Suppose you were required to explain to an audience of reasonably informed people why it was that the North American ballet companies emerged precisely during a time of severe economic crisis. Most of us would not know where to start, but a historian who has done the background studies into the economic, social, cultural and educational conditions, a historian at least virtually familiar with the physical layout of the city and its major institutions, etc., would likely have something pointed to say. I can’t be sure, since I know and care very little about ballet or about the history of New York City, being not especially fond of the former and fairly indifferent about the latter, except when I find myself there.

Still I am getting on in years, and although I’m not satisfied that I’ve made any progress worth remarking, I have to admit to myself that this is probably as good as I’ll ever get at the kind of history I’ve been working on. And, this being an important point, I have not been working on the history of American ballet, so I wonder why you would come to me with this kind of question. Why did you ask me, anyway?

I said what I just said because I want to convince you, as if you needed this convincing, that if you have an arcane historical question, you shouldn’t pop it to the person who just happened to get ticketed to the seat across from you on the weekend train out of Boston. No, you should ask a historian, and not just any historian either. Take the trouble to find a historian who does history in the specific area, time period and subject. It doesn’t especially matter what theories of history that historian may be favoring; what does matter is how familiar she is with the sources.*

(*I hesitate to suggest it, but I’m trying to be honest with you. You’ll probably want to take the answer you receive to yet another historian of the same specific area, time period and subject for a second opinion.)

Of course the guy on the train looks alright, is likable enough, and seems quite sure of himself. But there are a number of reasons why you shouldn’t trust him. If lifelong historians make mistakes, which they do of course, then how much more so amateurs? Ordinary people tend to commit various fallacies that historians are more likely to see through. One is the "great founder" idea. According to this the founder of a religion, philosophical movement, artistic trend, factory, school or whatever has the creative powers of an omniscient deity, knowing ahead of time about the future courses the created thing will take. Most people fail to notice that the founder-ship role is most often retrospectively awarded by people with strong stakes in the very thing that was supposedly founded. Experienced historians nowadays are unlikely to trust the explanatory power of founding moments. Instead they will find the actual (and generally multiple) sources of human institutions in larger socio-cultural forces outside the control of their reputed ‘founders’ and look more carefully at the lives of their earlier and latter followers. Give credit where credit is due.

There are other common fallacies in the failure to recognize implications of the well-known fact that history is written by winners. This is one among many reasons that you have to be critical of your sources in ways that inexperienced historians often are not. You have to constantly ask yourself which voices are missing. Triumphalist historians, and there are many such burrowing within our nation states, hardly ever state clearly, “Warning! What you are about to read would have been contradicted by our opponents, the losers, if we hadn't tossed their words on the bonfire so they would never be heard from again.” Perhaps the federal governments could recommend adding such warning labels in the future, now that our coffee cups warn us in very large letters that coffee can, despite all contrary possibilities, be hot. Now what will we go on to do with that knowledge? Why this need to have our needs met?

A brief apology, since I haven’t blogged much this year, the reason being that I've been working too hard on an introduction to a history book I’ve been translating for most of this decade. What you see here is a result of one basic yet harsh principle of literary self-editing called “Kill your darlings!” That means... If it’s just spinning wheels, grandstanding, or spouting blah blah, and doesn't help your plot, be merciful to your readers and mercilessly put it down, even if you lavished a lot of love and care on it. I offer one of the larger scraps that fell on the editing room floor, dished up with a little added seasoning. If you don’t enjoy it it won’t matter much, and if you feel a little cheated I’ll understand.

§ § §

Here’s some of the things U.S. citizens know, or don’t know, about Washington. Let’s see, who among the founders of things is seen as fallible or having human foibles?

The photos, the one up front entitled Artifice and the one closer to the end called Nature, were taken in Paris about a month ago.

[1]Andrew Hadfield, “History / Historiography,” Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, vol. 15 (2007), pp. 217-239, at p. 218.

[2] Arthur C. Brooks, “Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think,” The Atlantic(July 2019). I don't want you to think I recommend reading anything as well written and depressing as this is — the writer even goes so far as to recommend Buddhist-style corpse meditations, with a hat tip to Tibetan bar-do ideas — but if you must, go ahead and look here. I cannot guarantee free access, only wish you good luck. Soon Tibeto-logic may be the only thing you get for free on the entire worldwide web.

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Letter Switching Codes of the Fifth Dalai Lama

September 10, 2019, 8:01 am

≫ Next: Locating a Tertön Prayer in Terma History

≪ Previous: History Blah Blah

Edward Brumgnach, The Lost Symbol: Magic Squares, Masonic Cipher

Years ago, a friend passed along to me color xeroxes of a 2-folio text in Tibetan, part of a very large set he had cataloged in an article of his. I’ll give you the reference to it later on.

It was laying on top of a pile for months, ever since I had taken it out of the file cupboard and wasn't sure what file to return it to. It starts with a little bit of geography, listing names of the nine islands of India. I’m sure that’s why he gave it to me, because he knew I had an interest in these kinds of geographic schemes. But that subject barely takes up two and a half lines, while all the rest has the Tibetan alphabet laid out in curious patterns. I hadn’t given it much attention, the place names were more compelling. But where to file it, under “Geography” or “Alphabet”?

It was only after watching the video that you see above, with its fascinating explanation not only of magic squares, but also an old Masonic letter substitution code. If you don’t see the video up above, just try searching the internet for “pigpen cipher.” It is a lot more fascinating than you may imagine, and it requires no more than minimal math. Just a few days after watching the video, I happened to be straightening out my room when I picked up the pages thinking I would try again to put the text in a logical place. No sooner did I have my hands on it and have a glance at the title — Rgya gar gling phran gyi ming dang krugs yig le tshan yod [keyletter on title page: HA] — than I knew exactly what it was.* The term krugs yig in the title means disturbed letters, or more to the point, letters whose order has been mixed around.

(*The text forms a tiny section of a very lengthy collection revolving around the 17th-century sealed visionary teachings of the Great Fifth. It's listed as no. 29 on p. 56 in Uspensky’s article.)

The Tibetan systems don’t work the same way as the Masonic code, and I haven’t ever before tried to tackle the systems used in the text, not before this moment. They are like charts that come with no instructions on how they are supposed to work. Let’s just look at the last one, the four disturbed (bzhi krugs) where we see that the 30 consonants of the Tibetan alphabet are written out in the usual order, divided up into sets of 4, as is often done anyway, with a pair of consonants left over at the end. The second line reverses the order within each set, so we get something like this:

ཀ་ཁ་ག་ང་། ཅ་ཆ་ཇ་ཉ། ཏ་ཐ་ད་ན། པ་ཕ་བ་མ། ཙ་ཚ་ཛ་ཝ། ཞ་ཟ་འ་ཡ། ར་ལ་ཤ་ས། ཧ་ཨ།།

ང་ག་ཁ་ཀ། ཉ་ཇ་ཆ་ཅ། ན་ད་ཐ་ཏ། མ་བ་ཕ་བ། ཝ་ཛ་ཚ་ཙ། ཡ་འ་ཟ་ཞ། ས་ཤ་ལ་ར། ་ཨ་ཧ།།

For my readers who may not be literate (in the literal sense of the word literate) in the Tibetan language, I put the same in Wylie transcription:

ka kha ga nga / ca cha ja nya / ta tha da na / pa pha ba ma / tsa tsha dza wa / ra la sha sa / ha a //

nga ga kha ka / nya ja cha ca / na da tha ta / ma ba pha pa / wa dza tsha tsa / sa sha ra la / a ha //

My suspicion is that wherever a letter ka is used in a word one would replace it with nga, and so forth and so on. This can lead to some odd letter combinations in practice. It seems to me I’ve noticed some of these in certain sections of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s record of teachings received. I'll have to go back and look for that. Meanwhile, using TBRC’s internal search facility, I found that there is a modern article on the subject of [d]krugs yig. I haven't had a chance to study that either, but I’ll supply the complete reference down below in case you might be interested to check it out.

A couple of bibliographical references and a geographical note:

Vladimir Uspensky, “The Illustrated Manuscript of the Fifth Dalai Lama's Secret Visionary Autobiography Preserved in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies,” Manuscripta Orientalia, vol. 2, no. 1 (March 1996), pp. 54-65.

Bstan-pa'i-sgron-me, Bod-yig-gi 'Bri-srol Bye-brag Dkrugs-yig Skor Rags-tsam Bkod-pa, contained in: Bod-kyi Rtsom-rig Sgyu-rtsal, vol. 98 in the general series or vol. no. 6 for the year 1996, pp. 61-68.

Here is a list of the nine Isles of India, according to the text in the Fifth Dalai Lama’s magical grimoire: In the east, the Isle of Shambhala. In the south, Bheta [‘Coconut’] Isle. In the west, Orgyan. In the north, Kashmir Isle. In the southeast, the Isle of Khang-bu. In the southwest, Copper Isle. In the northwest, Air Isle. In the northeast, the Isle of Kamaru. In the center, the Diamond Seat. Each of these has five different languages. I hope you can make out the text, and if there is need for it practice your Tibetan letter reading, in the photo that follows down below. Maybe if you tap on it it will expand a bit, we’ll see.

§ § §

I did check the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Record of Teachings Received, and found an example of what is, I suppose, a type of encodement, but not of the kind that features in text number HA of our St. Petersburg manuscript. See for example vol. 3, fol. 61, where the text is 'encoded' in such a way one suspects it was purposefully designed to impede reading and to thwart digital searching, as if he knew what we would worry about in the 21st century. Here is a sample of this type of encoding in Wylie transcription:

zur chen ng / ag dbang / phun tshogs / mkhas grub khra tshang / pa chen po / des bdag za hor bande la'o / / drag po'i skor gyi brgyud pa ni / chos sku snang / ba mtha' yas / long / s sku padma dbang / chen / sprul sku padma 'byung / gnas man sng / ar bzhin no / /

No letters have been switched here, just the punctuation marks are in all the wrong places.

What? You haven't learned the alphabet? Go directly to this video and sing it at the top of your lungs along with the kids. You get not only the alphabet, but some basics of the Tibetan spelling system along with it.

Jg zpv xbou up lopx ipx Tijgufe Bmqibcfu Dpeft xpsl, uijt qbhf ibt b iboez boe tjnqmf fyqmbobujpo, bt xfmm bt bo fodpefs cpy tp zpv dbo dsfbuf tfdsfu nfttbhft mjlf uif pof zpv ibwf cffo efdpejoh.

l nqrz wr vrph ri brx wklv pljkw orrn olnh wkh zbolh wudqvolwhudwlrq vbvwhp.

Read the PS if you must:

Well, I hardly had a chance to click the "publish" button in Blogger before I received the access I needed to that article by Bstan-pa’i-sgron-me.

Now I can tell you that it has similarly named systems of encodement, but is not identical to those of the Great Fifth.

The article says that as a general rule the consonants serving as root letter, prescript, postscript, or super-postscript are the ones that get changed. The vowels and the subscripts (subscribed 'y', 'r' and 'l') are left as is, unchanged.

Then it describes the (A) five systems of switching forward (གོ་རིམ་ལྟྟར་) and (B) the five systems of switching backward (གོ་རིམ་ལྡྡོག་པ་).

The five systems of switching forward are: (A1) 2-switching. Here the letter is replaced by the next letter in the alphabet. (A2) 3-switching. Here the letter is replaced by the 3rd letter that follows it in the alphabet. (A3) 4-switching. Here the letter is replaced by the 4th letter that follows it in the alphabet. (A4) 13-switching. Here the 13th following letter is used to replace it. (A5) 15-switching. Here the 15th letter us the one used to make the replacement.

And then, if you have time for it, we have B1 through B5, which are quite similar to A1 through A5, except that you go searching for the replacement letter backward through the alphabet instead of forward.

It gives examples for all ten types, but I'll limit myself right now to the forward 3-switching (A2):

ཏཔྱཀ་ཨ་ཇཐ་སྴ་ཚོ་ཀཛུཀ་སཀ་ཞཏོཏ་ཟཅོཞི་ཏབས།

See if you can figure out how that would correspond to this perfect line of Tibetan verse in praise of Sarasvati, the goddess/bodhisattva of learning, literature and music.

དབྱངས་ཅན་ལྷ་མོ་གཙུག་ལག་འདོད་འཇོའི་དཔལ།

Unlike the Fifth Dalai Lama’s system, the order of letters in the subsets of consonants are not reversed. But you know, it is in the nature of encodement systems that they require added complications if you want the result to be less crackable. The professor in the video, if you managed to watch far into it, explains some still more amazing complications that might be introduced for that enhanced sense of assurance that greater information security might bring.

ཕངྲ་ལིར་ཕཐེ་ཤེཁར།།

Read the PPS if you must:

Another odd thought occurred to me. If you did as I suggested and watched the lecture video, you would know that magic squares could be added in to make a further complication in the Masonic code. The magic square is of course very well known in Tibet as in China. You especially see it in astrological charts like this one, on the stomach shell of the turtle.

Do you see at the very center of the chart the nine numbers inside the checkerboard?

But you know, the 9-fold checker square board is also the ordinary arrangement of the divination cloth, is often associated with planets and so forth.

Thinking about how the 9-island geography of India might belong together with the disturbed letters leads me to a disturbing thought. Might this 9-fold arrangement also have something to do with the encodement system? Is it a numeric way of complicating the system? I'm trying to imagine how this might work. Any idea?

↧

Locating a Tertön Prayer in Terma History

September 29, 2019, 6:44 am

≫ Next: 12 ½ Crippled Verses

≪ Previous: Letter Switching Codes of the Fifth Dalai Lama

"Magic and Mystery in a Tibetan Woodblock Print" could’ve been the title. Some mysteries here beg for clarification ... your clarification, and for the magic, well, with a little patience you will see some soon enough. Once again, this not a report of my success, more like an account of a long continuing struggle likely to continue far into the future. And there is a long back story to it, in fact a little too long, so today I’ll stick to a few small bits of that semi-personal history.

Notice the weird gter snyon in the transcribed title. I hope it wasn't me.

In the early ’80’s I was one of the catalogers of the Berthold Laufer* collection of Tibetan manuscripts and woodblock prints kept by the Chicago Field Museum in Chicago. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. One of the very few photocopies of texts that somehow remained in my possession, even if it was misplaced for a few decades, was a very interesting Tertön Prayer. Over the years I often felt its loss and doubted I’d ever see it again. Forgive me if I don’t go into the sad and painful circumstances that led to its recovery. Instead let’s go inspect this manuscript and its intriguing features, beginning where it begins, with the title. This is going to be a kind of show and tell, with a lot of show and not so much tell.

(*That’s him staring out at you from the frontispiece.)

The title of the Tertön Prayer

As you could observe by glancing above, the first mystery is in the title itself, right in the middle, where two syllables are impossible to read with any assurance of making sense.*

(*and the form of the genitive ending right after those two syllables is impossible if the preceding syllable ends in a vowel, as it seems to do here... this detail forces us to think and think again about how to read through the letters, letters a little further obscured by what looks like a near-horizontal smear near the bottom.

Just for curiosity’s sake, here is an unofficial printout, done back when daisy wheel printers were in style although I think this was done by a dot matrix tractor-feed printer, of the page that contains the extremely brief cataloging entry (click on it to enlarge).

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Along with the photocopy of the Tibetan text I also recovered a typed transcription of the text, typed with my fingers, with some of my own added annotations (that bit of red was I added just last year). Notice that “drang ma kyi” was my reading back then, in the early years of the ’80’s.

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These are all four rectos of the text. At the moment I would like to draw your attention to the two syllables floating alone and outside the box of all four folios, the lower left hand corner (I know you don’t see anything like this on folio 4, but trust me, there’s one there, too).

A close-up to show both the complete title and what looks like a marginal notation and reads khang lhu. Although a matter of great obscurity for most of us, there has been a thin vein of discussion about this rare phenomenon of Tibetan woodblock printing, first named and identified by Helmut Eimer as something he called Schnitzerkolophonen, or carvers’ signatures.

This last slide has a brief bibliography of everything I can come up with at the moment.

Another example from folio 2 recto. What follows is from folio 3 recto.

There is only one obstacle to identifying these things as carvers’ signatures, and that is that they hardly make any sense as representations of names — well, unless they are using a method of abbreviation that is both obscure and severe. For example, in the example immediately above, phag bkra, we could theorize that the phag with likely meaning pig is short for some sort of clan or place name acting as a specifier.* It could be short for something longer, let’s imagine a place name Phag-tshang that means Pig Pen. Then the bkra could be short for, say, Bkra-shis-rgyal-mtshan or some other such common given name. That is a nice theory. The main problem is it only seems to work nicely on this particular example, and not on any of the others.

(*Something like a last name in English, except that it always comes first.)

In our next slide I’ve charted out all four examples for your puzzlement and contemplation:

Helmut Eimer dates these kinds of marginal carver signatures somewhere in the 15^th or 16^th centuries and believes they are most likely to be found in Mang-yul Gung-thang prints, even if not entirely restricted to that place.

Marta Sernesi has said:

"16^th century prints from South-Western Tibet (Mang yul Gung thang and La stod lHo) often carry the signatures of the scribes on the blocks, which are called ming thang or ming yig thang..." (Go here, download the PDF, and then scroll down to page 344.)

If ming thang is the word for it, and I really have no reason for doubt, then it could mean no more than name field, serving a purpose somewhat like the cartouche in ancient Egypt.

Eimer accepts Franz-Karl Ehrhard’s suggestion that these signatures may have been placed where they are for the purpose of calculating work done and payments due, but he thinks religious merit was also involved.

So far we identified two mysteries: [1] The mangled title and [2] the presence of what look like carvers’ signatures, even if that idea seems to fall apart due to the difficulty in finding names in them. [3] Now a third mystery, and the one that has troubled me most of all: It looks like the better part of the colophon has been made to disappear. On close inspection, it is clear this alteration was entered into the blocks itself, and not just into our particular print. Just observe up close and you can see the grain in the black area indicating wood. Most likely the original words were gouged out and replaced with a wooden plug. This technical method, mostly used to make corrections in already-carved blocks, is another matter that has been documented by Helmut Eimer. The bonded plug, whether blank or carved with letters, would serve a necessary function, to preserve the structural integrity of the woodblock as a whole as it is made to undergo the stresses of the printing process. Wood has a tendency to split, as you may know.

The still-existing words of the colophon are difficult, yet possible, to make out in the Laufer print. About all the sense we can make here is “Thus, in those words, the purifier vidya-mantra[s?]...” This is hardly enough to make sense on its own, so we can wonder why it was allowed to remain when the remainder was elided.

Last year when I sent him an email asking him about his research on the carvers’ signatures, Helmut Eimer surprised me. No, really, he shocked the hell out of me when he told me how he had happened to run across a second copy of the Tertön Prayer in the form of a manuscript kept in Berlin. So, after looking it up in the catalog and getting more advice from the cataloger Karl-Heinz Everding, I e-mailed the librarians in Berlin to get a copy, and it didn’t take them very long. A significant part of the mystery could be largely solved.

Here in this next slide you can see the beginning, including the title, of the Berlin manuscript.

Here the last three lines of the verse, plus the final word of the first line, are the very words that were removed from the woodblock print.

“The composer of those words? The Vidyâmantradhâra

Pel Tashi Tobgyel Wangpoi De,

also called by another name Guru Ralpacan,

a wanderer with no established abode is who wrote it.”

You can check the translation for yourself in the next slide:

As much as we search for some, there is a yawning absence of substantial information on the life of the author. The main source seems to be the Anuyoga Empowerment lineage history by the 2nd Rinzin of Dorjedrak. To best of my knowledge there is no full biography dedicated to him, unfortunately. He was a layperson, a lay Ngakpa and not a monk, as we can see from this miniature that was and for all we know might still be kept in Paris:

I don’t have the time or ability to go into the political situation in Ü and Tsang provinces in the mid-to-late 16th century. I know a lot of people, some good friends among them, who have more expertise in that area than I could ever claim. Still, we have to say something about one important ruler named Zhingshakpa Tseten Dorje. An ordinary farmer, yet he had some family relationship with the Rinpungpa ruling family and gradually rose up through the ranks until 1548 when he took the headship of Samdruptse Palace. He went so far as having his own older brother murdered along the way, and turned against the very Rinpungpa rulers that had promoted him.

But what does that have to do with our prayer author? Well, Tashi Tobgyel, a descendent of the Tangut royal line, had a disagreement with his older brother, and Zhingshakpa's elder son took the side of that older brother against him. Because of this, Zhingshakpa had him exiled to Ü province, where he settled in the Phyonggyé Valley.

Then a famous verbal exchange took place that is repeated almost every time Tashi Tobgyel is mentioned in the historical sources. Up to this point I’ve relied mainly on Shakabpa’s wellknown political history, but now I turn to what may be the ultimate source of this account in the Anuyoga Empowerment history, completed in 1681.

Zhingshagpa literally added insult to injury with his wickedly clever couplet punning on Tashi Tobgyel's name:

Here is my rough translation:

“You who are supposed to be 'powerful' are just a powerless wanderer.

I banish you to the banks of Preta City [Yama's abode in the land of the dead].”

Tashi Tobgyal responded in kind:

“You who may be called "field" have all ten fields complete.

I toss you in the jaws of the head of the eclipse god Râhula.”

We must admire the poetics of these clever puns based on their opponents’ names. Yet it was a poetry competition of grievous consequences. Everybody believes Tashi Tobgyel’s magic caused the death of Zhingshakpa who before long died of an illness. Tashi Tobgyel may have earned a reputation for magical powers. If you can imagine there is even an instance when for seven days he reversed the flow of the Brahmaputra River.

As a refugee in Chonggyé Valley, Tashi Tobgyel married into the local ruling family, and into this very family the Fifth Dalai Lama would eventually take birth. The Fifth was a great admirer of Tashi Tobgyel, a follower of some of his terma teachings including the cycle known as Karmaguru. Jake Dalton, in his book The Taming of the Demons (pp. 140-141) retells the remarkable story about a dream vision the Fifth Dalai Lama had in around 1642, as he was rising to power. In it, Tashi Tobgyel bestowed upon him empowerments of Karmaguru cycle and gave him a phurpa which he tucked into his sash. As you may know, this became a standard feature of The Great Fifth's iconography, just as you also see in the icons of Tashi Tobgyel illustrated above, interestingly enough.

There is a lot more that has been said and will be said about all of this. I much recommend some relevant works by Samten Karmay and James Gentry. But let’s turn to the content of the Tertön Prayer and say a few words about that before we call it a day.

These are the three main sources that were written as commentaries, commentaries that took the Tertön Prayer as their root text, quoting the verses and then discussing the teaching lineages (in case of Fifth Dalai Lama’s work) or lives of the Tertöns named in it. The existence of these works demonstrates the enduring impact the prayer had on historical understandings about the Tertöns.

Since you may have already thought to ask the question the answer is: No, this way of arranging the biographies of the Tertöns did not survive in Kongtrul’s famous Tertön Gyatsa of 1886. The somewhat earlier (early 19th century) history by Guru Tashi does in its brief section 4 of chapter 4 follow the Fifth Dalai Lama’s work. But he begins with a list of Tertöns that have prophecies in the Thang-yig texts, as he clearly believes these are the most significant and authentic Tertöns. Actually, Kongtrul has the same approach as Guru Tashi. He includes very many of the Tertöns mentioned in our prayer (I haven’t done a detailed comparison yet), but the original order has been abandoned. Clearly a lot of work needs to be done comparing the Tertön histories. So far Kongtrul’s is the only one that has been fully translated (partially by Eva Dargyay and then by Ramon Prats, and fully by Yeshe Gyamtso), and all others are most usually ignored, which is a shame...

Looking at the Tertön Prayer itself, what strikes us right away is that the first verse is devoted to a relatively unknown Tertön named Dorjebum (Rdo-rje-'bum) known for his medical terma. He is, in the Zab-bu-lung history explicitly stated to be the first of the Tertöns. The same history does slip Sangyé Lama (Sangs-rgyas-bla-ma) into the discussion, but I fail find him in the prayer itself. The Fifth Dalai Lama also mentions Sangyé Lama here, but says only that his lineages were not received. It may be due to Kongtrul that it is now common knowledge that Sangyé Lama must be called the first. As a rediscoverer, he may have himself been rediscovered, or at least revalidated, in the 19th century.

The Guru Tashi history has an argument that Dorjebum lived 4 generations before Yuthokpa, so dating Yuthokpa’s activities to around 1200, that would put him in about 1080 CE, so that’s about the best I can do at dating him.

Immediately after the doctor’s verse, verse 3 is about two women Tertöns, yet another somehow surprising feature. Why, we wonder, would physicians and women Tertöns take priority? It is only in verses 4 and 5 that we get the names of the Tertöns of greatest renown (to us at least), Nyangral Nyima-özer and Guru Chöwang.

Quote at the opening of the terma section of Fifth Dalai Lama's Thob-yig.

Seeing how he starts with the ‘earliest’ Tertön you might expect him to follow a chronological arrangement, but this is not the case. The Fifth Dalai Lama opens the terma section with his assessment of the content which is if anything thematically, not chronologically, ordered:

gnyis pa zab pa gter ma'i skor la / thang yig tu gter ston phal cher gyi lung bstan mtshan smos rnams kyang lam tsam las go rim nges sbyar rang du mi 'dug pa dgos pa'i dbang gis gab dkrugs su mngon.

“In the Scroll Document (Thang-yig) the prophecies of most of the Tertöns name their names, but these are only roughly, not exactly arranged in any definite order, [this order being] clearly disrupted on accountof [other] needs.”

chos 'byung rnams su yang dpyad bzod mi bzod sna tshogs snang la / khri srong rnam sprul dpal bkra shis stobs rgyal gyis mdzad pa'i sprul sku gter ston grangs nges kyi gsol 'debs thugs rje'i nyin 'byed la snga phyi'i go rim ma mdzad par mtshan dang chos skye brgyud sogs gang 'tsham sde tshan du bsdoms par gnang ba'i go rim gyi dbang du byas te...
[I omitted a clause that seems to say "In the Dharma Histories there appear various [systems?] that may or may not hold up under close scrutiny."]

“The work Compassion's Daymaker: Prayer of the Emanation Body Tertöns of Definite Number was composed by the emanation of Khri-srong by the name of Dpal Bkra-shis-stobs-rgyal. In it there is no chronological ordering, but the names [of the Tertöns] are combined in sets based on such things as name, Dharma teaching, birth and transmission lineage.”

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I assume no one will find it the least bit surprising if the Dalai Lama’s characterization of the Tertön Prayer’s internal organizing principles is so exactly on mark.

Another interesting verse to think about is the verse no. 23 about the group of Tertöns with Lingpa (གླླིང་པ་) in their names. It contains eleven names and explicitly addresses itself to “the unmistakable 11 Lingpas” as a group. The Zab-bu-lung history adds a fifth line to verse 23 containing 3 added names and addresses itself to “the 14 Lingpa Tertöns.”

The commentary on verse 23 on the Lingpas takes up by far the greater part of the history, extending from p. 98 to 225. That means a little more than one third of the total length of the history. Actually, the history, at p. 217.1-2, has a mchan-note somehow explaining the addition:

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gter bton bkris [~bkra shis] grangs kyi dbang du byas na gling pa bcu gcig du gsungs 'dug na’ang / las 'phro gling pa phyi ma / zhig po gling pa / bde chen gling pa gsum po 'di gling chen brgyad kyi grangs la 'dug pa gling pa bzhi byas nas mnan pa yin.

I have trouble with the arithmetic, although I understand that the unknown person who wrote this mchan-note is offering an apology for increasing the number likely meant to justify it. My solution is to fix the number 4 and assume in its stead 14 was intended. I assume that “Gter-bton Bkra-shis” is intended as a short name of the prayer author, and offer this quick translation:

“If we go by the number in Tertön Tashi, he clearly states there are 11 Lingpa. Yet this triad of Las-’phro-gling-pa the Later, Zhig-po-gling-pa, and Bde-chen-gling-pa is present in the enumeration of the Eight Great Ling, so they have been added bringing the number of Lingpa up to 14.”

But enough about those interesting questions, since our time is flying and we need to get tickets for far destinations. So if you have the time and if you would like to see the complete text of the prayer with a concordance to the commentarial works, here is the web page where before you know it you can see it all:

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Click here to go there

Conclusion:

At the very least, despite a number of avenues of research and argument left open, we may say, obvious as that may be by now, that the Chicago xylograph is an example of the motivated defacement of printing blocks. In the defacement of the title we find the motive of expressing disagreement with the idea that there might be a determinate number of Tertöns. In the blocking off of most of the colophon we see an equally deliberate attempt to erase memory of the author. At the same time, it appears that the prayer, those modifications having been made, was regarded as worthy of being printed over and over again on account of its valuable content.

Both the block carving and the defacement very likely took place in the Tsang region rather late in the 16th century or early in the 17th. The presence of carvers’ signatures alone suggests Tsang during those times. And of course the fact that the author was a very controversial figure suggests motives most likely to be found in Tsang after the author’s exile to Chonggyé valley in 1579. I suppose I may be reading too much into it, but I think the last line in the prayer’s colophon suggests he had already gone into exile when it was written: “a wanderer with no established abode.” As a landed aristocrat by background, he would hardly make this statement lightly.

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Oh, and one more thing: One of the great remaining mysteries in the bibliography of Tibetan histories is the fact that Tashi Tobgyel composed a history of the Old Translation Nyingma school at the request of a Kagyüpa, the Fifth Drukchen Rinpoche (1593-1641). A lengthy criticism of that history by Sogdogpa has been published, but the history itself is nowhere to be found. Now why do you think that might be? Is it possible an entire history book got lost in the same politico-magical controversies that brought about the woodblock defacement?

Coda

This always happens to me. I was thinking I was done, but perhaps a few words about the need and significance of this kind of study are in order. So far Tibetan Studies has more or less been operating under the impression that the history by Kongtrul has everything we need to know about the lives of the Tertöns.* I would like to encourage more investigation of earlier accounts of collectivities of treasure revealers that would go outside the history book genres a little in order to encompass collective prophecies, too, not just collective Tertön prayers.

Among other things we may need to contemplate why some earlier histories disappeared, not just the one just mentioned, but another specifically about Tertöns by G.yung-ston Rdo-rje-dpal (1284-1365).** And of course, it needs saying that the Bon school must be brought into our future conclusion-making processes, as they have a rich literature of Tertön histories, prayers and prophecies of their own. It’s even possible that followers of Bon got their terma traditions underway before the Nyingma did.

I guess collective prophecies of Tertöns whether Bon or Nyingma emerged in the 14th century while the Mongols were loosening their grip on Eurasia, even if a lot of individual prophecies existed before that time. I’m not sure what I just said is correct, but somebody needs to put their neck out and make these kinds of hypotheses so they can be proven or disproven. That way the field of study could be making better progress.

(*A remarkably early and brilliant exception is the article by Janet Gyatso listed in the bibliographical listing below. **It is mentioned in the Guru Tashi history, the 5-volume pothi edition, vol. 4, p. 107.)

§ § §

Some publications:

Please notice that just a few references are supplied here. There is no idea to supply coverage of the field of Tertön studies. There have been quite a few significant studies recently, and we’ll be sure to mention them some other time.

Eva M. Dargyay, The Rise of Esoteric Buddhism in Tibet, Motilal Banarsidass (Delhi 1979), the 2nd revised edition.

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 Kvaerne, 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.

Yeshe Gyamtsho, tr., Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Taye, The Hundred Tertöns: A Garland of Beryl, Brief Accounts of Profound Terma and the Siddhas Who Have Revealed It, KTD Publications (Woodstock 2011). See especially the entry "Karma Guru" on pp. 243-244.

Ramon Prats, Contributo allo studio biografico dei primi Gter-ston, Istituto Universitario Orientale (Napoli 1982).

༓་་་༓་་་༓

A quick climb out on a limb:

This final note is likely to seem trivial and nitpicking to your more casual investigators, but a loose end still remains: How is it possible that the woodblock could have once been carved with the actual title grangs nges kyi and through manipulation of the already-carved letters made to look like what we have in the Laufer, that might be read something like brang ma kyi. Thinking it through everywhere but Tuesday, I venture a solution. Although abbreviations are rare in headed script (dbu-can) texts, especially woodblock printed ones, it is possible that not enough space was left for the title when the carving was done. Well, okay, this brings up another question: Why wasn’t the normal practice followed to begin with? That is to say, Why wasn't the title featured prominently by being left floating alone in the middle of the recto of the first folio? I suggest this might have been done, but that something troublesome happened to the woodblock for the title page, so instead of carving a complete new block, they decided to crowd the title into the blank space, blank space as is often found at the beginning of texts on the folio 1 verso side. I know this must sound rather what-if-ish, but even if the explanation is reaching too far in your opinion it still may be that an abbreviated way of writing was used, so that instead of carving grangs nges kyi, or གྲྲངས་ངེས་ཀྱི་, the carver carved grang[s ng]es kyi, or གྲྲངེས་ཀྱི་ instead. So imagine གྲྲངེས་ཀྱི་ in raised wooden letters, and how you could take a couple of swipes with a sharp knife-point to obliterate a ligature here and a ligature there and end up with something that looks like བྲྲང་མ་ཀྱི་. Hmmm. I’m still thinking about it. Have some better idea?

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12 ½ Crippled Verses

November 22, 2019, 9:17 am

≫ Next: The Realm of Dharmas, Chapter One

≪ Previous: Locating a Tertön Prayer in Terma History

Twelve and a Half Crippled Verses

Prostrations to the revered Lama and

to the Vajra Skygoers.

Human body: attained.

Sense faculties: complete.

Age: young.

Dharma: encountered. What miracles.

Precepts: the best.

Lineage: good.

Compassion: mastered.

Lord: encountered. What miracles.

Directions: known.

Business: given up.

Retreat: staying.

Put into practice. What miracles.

Staying alone.

Devoted to meditation.

Anxieties: few.

Preserving experiences. What miracles.

Relaxed and unwound.

Immovably settled in meditation.

Dharmabody seen. What miracles.

Nothing to meditate.

Made a habit.

Become real.

Meditation and post-meditation the same. What miracles.

No root or foundation.

Doubts seen through.

Self-reification revoked.

Awakening attained. What miracles.

Voidness realized.

Compassion arisen.

Aspirations achieved.

Benefit for others done. What miracles.

Beggar-monk Zhang.

Directions: skilled.

Distracting doubts: cut off.

Words: abundant harvest. What miracles.

Disciples and sons

Are very loving,

Listen to what I say,

And keep pure commitments. What miracles.

Little Non Sequiturs

Prostrations to the revered Lama and

to the Glorious Vajra Skygoers.

For incomprehensibly many aeons

without leisure in body, speech and mind,

they tried to do all sorts of virtuous things

and meditated on the profundity of voidness.

But if they did not serve a Lama

it was all like churning water in hopes of butter.

With no one else to tell them about it

they would never find their birthright, The Innate.

“It is to be known through relying on the interventional

methods of the Lama and through ones own merit.”

This ever-clear Full Knowledge

has been concealed in the vase of partiality.

This naturally-arrived-at precious quality

has been encased in the mud of inimical anxiety.

The horse of our muddied awareness

has been hobbled in quotidian activity.

The source of the first is Zhang G.yu-brag-pa, Bka'-'thor-bu, p. 576, while the second starts at p. 637, line 7. For more about the author, see New Works on the Works of Lama Zhang. Before anyone complains about it, I'm aware there aren't even 12, let alone 12 and 1/2 verses. Thanks to D.T. who reminded me about them. The photos were taken in the winter of 2013 in Himachal, at McLeod Ganj.

↧

The Realm of Dharmas, Chapter One

December 10, 2019, 6:46 am

≫ Next: Guhyasamāja History by Pagpa

≪ Previous: 12 ½ Crippled Verses

Homage to Total Good.

Homage

to these strange and marvelous dharmas,

naturally-arrived-at from beginningless time;

to this self-engendered full knowledge,

Sheer Luminosity Bodhicitta;

to this unmoving, undiffusive treasury,

source of all appearances/becoming,

material/vital, sangsara/nirvana.

Listen attentively as I explain these marvelous total vastnesses:

the peak of all peaks of Vehicles —

receptive centre of sun, moon & King of Mountains;

the Sheer Luminosity naturally-arrived-at —

receptive centre of Vajra Heart;

the unsought, unstriven for —

receptive centre of nature as it lies.

• • •

CHAPTER ONE

NIRVANA AND SANGSARA HAVE NEVER MOVED FROM THE REALM

[. . .and the totality of dharmas has never moved from the continuity of the sky-like Great Completion.]

Out of the naturally-arrived-at receptive centre everything comes.

On what ground? It is substantially void, its nature unimpeded.

No thing is arrived-at/existent. Every thing appears.

While sangsara and nirvana display themselves

from the receptive centre of the Three Bodies,

still, they have never moved from the Realm, the Dharma Proper,

Buddhafield of Comfort.

No things have ever reverted from being ornaments of the

ALL REALM—

the continuity of changeless space

(great receptive centre of Mind Proper),

the receptive centre of compassion’s miracles

(You never know what role it will play.).

Objective and subjective absorptions and projections

are Bodhicitta’s special powers.

Since whatever appears is no thing whatsoever,

marvelously amazing, these miracles of dharmas!

Inner and outer comings and goings, all that appears in shapes,

are ornaments of the Realm, appearing as a physical wheel.

All heard sounds & languages without exception

are ornaments of the Realm, appearing as a verbal wheel.

Memory, awareness, flightiness, projections, misunderstandings, and thoughtlessness as well

are ornaments of the Realm, appearing as a mental wheel.

The six classes of beings and the four modes of birth

have moved not one iota from the Realm of Dharmas continuity.

The worlds of appearances and becoming, the six spheres of sense,

the subjective and objective realms,

are a great vastness of Total Voidness.

“They seem to be missing from the Realm of Dharmas continuity,”

says the way of illusion. Baseless warbling!

In just the way they show themselves, they dawn as ornaments of the

Realm of Dharmas.

[Dharmabody.]

The by nature level and unbudging Dharmabody that Bodhicitta is

is totally settled, self-Void, untransformed and untransported

in the great continuity of the realm of things seen and heard.

Hence all appearances are the continuity of the

Dharma Proper/self-engendered Full Knowledge

coiled up in a single, comfortable receptive centre

unworked for,

unstriven for.

[Perfect Assets Body.]

Self-displaying and immovable, its Perfect Asset

is a nature naturally-arrived-at from exactly the way it appears.

There is no fixing or transforming it.

It is by nature evenly distributed.

[Emanation Body.]

The meaning behind these self-produced phantom marvels

which have emanated by virtue of their dawnings as role-playings

(without being mixed up in the myriad things)

has never left their job of being

the unemployed Total Good.

[Body and Full Knowledge are perfected in the Awareness continuity.]

While in Bodhicitta (which has no pitfalls) itself

the unseekable Three Bodies are naturally completed,

they are unmoved from the Realm, naturally-arrived-at,

uncompounded.

While Body and Full Knowledge are a natural completion of

Buddha-activity,

They are the Total Completion of the Great Accumulation,

receptive centre of the great Total Dawn.

[The Buddhafield as receptive centre of Awareness.]

Even though one were viewing the Dharma Proper in the Realm of Dharmas continuity,

the totally naturally-arrived-at, the unmoving, unchanging Field;

that knowledge would itself dawn unimpededly as an ornament of the Realm.

Having done nothing, looked for nothing, totally placed,

they’re like the sun and the sky it illumines.

These strange and marvelous dharmas!

In this totally naturally-arrived-at Realm womb

Sangsara is Total Good. Nirvana is Total Good.

In the Total Good receptive centre sangsara and nirvana are totally lacking.

Appearance is Total Good. Void is Total Good.

In the Total Good receptive centre appearance and Void are totally lacking.

Birth and Death? Total Good. Pleasure and suffering? Total Good.

The Total Good receptive centre has no birth, death, pleasure and suffering.

Self and others? Total Good. Eternalism and nihilism? Total Good.

The Total Good receptive centre has no self, others, eternalism or nihilism.

Because we hold on to being and nonbeing, we are bound to error.

How strange we want to attach appropriate labels

like ‘sangsara’ and ‘nirvana’

to something so dreamlike it won’t hold up!

All is the great naturally-arrived-at Total Good.

There has not been, is not, and will not be any error.

The mere word ‘becoming’ tells us we are beyond extreme statements on ‘being’ and ‘nonbeing’.

No one has made an error about anything in the past.

Now there is no error. No error is to come.

This is the meaning behind, “The three becomings are pure from the letter ‘A’.”

[You don’t get anywhere by merely being without error in regard to the word‘illusion’.]

Since there is no error, there is no errorless Dharma.

The totally naturally-arrived-at, self-produced great Awareness

was, is and will be unliberated.

A mere word has never made anyone experience liberation in the past

and it will not in the future. Bonds are totally lacking.

It is a sky-like purity; unbelittlable, with no partial definitions.

This is the meaning behind, “Absolutely liberated from the letter ‘A’.”

[The great vastness of the natural, level Realm does not experience the existence of nirvana and sangsara.]

In brief,

out of the Realm womb naturally-arrived-at and vast,

whether it be sangsara or nirvana that arises

as role-playing from the special powers,

still, there is no experience of sangsara’s or nirvana’s existence

on account of that arising.

Whatever dreams arise through the special power of sleep

are devoid of meaning;

so, spread yourself out to the limit on the great, vast natural smoothness,

the comfortable bed of Awareness.

↧

Guhyasamāja History by Pagpa

January 4, 2020, 9:24 am

≫ Next: Great Balls of Iron

≪ Previous: The Realm of Dharmas, Chapter One

The Biography of Jñānapāda and His Guhyasamāja Lineage

In times long gone by, in the southern part of India, was a king of Orissa by the name of Visukalpa. He had faith in the Buddha, so he learned many teachings of both the Hearers and the Great Vehicle. Still, he was thinking there ought to be some other teaching yet more profound than they are when he settled in for the night. He had a dream that a woman approached him and said, “You must leave this place and go to a land called Oḍiyan in the north-western borders and you shall become a Vajraholder in this very life.” So saying, she vanished.

No sooner had he awakened than he set off for the region of Oḍiyan. When he arrived there he met a woman resembling the one he had seen in his dream. Thinking he was seeing an emanation, he prostrated at her feet, paid his respects and made a prayer requesting that she take him under her guidance. She initiated him into the great maṇḍala and granted him the complete Guhyasamāja Tantra together with the explanatory tantras. The king did indeed apply himself to the practices and thereby achieved the siddhis. He advanced the teachings in the world among such as Saraha, and then to the Saint Teacher Nāgārjuna and others that followed him. This much is known.

Moving on to later times, the Teacher Buddhajñānapāda is the name of a child born to the King Gha-pa-ru-pra-bha-wa in the region of southeast India known as Sindhura. From childhood his bodily form, his insight and behavior were impeccable, and he studied and learned to an advanced level such arts and sciences as grammar, prosody and statecraft. He matured to adulthood and left behind his royal prerogatives as if they were a pool of spittle on the ground.

In one of the regions of Nalendra was a place known as Taxila (Takṣaśīla). In that city, in a vihāra called Trikadhru built by King Śrī Dharmapāla, was a community of the Mahāsammata monastic order. Among the monks was one in particular who was graced by moral discipline and learnedness, the best of all the students of their abbot Vairocanabhadra. He had already attuned himself to compassion and bodhicitta, fully embodying the life of the Bodhisattva. He had mastered a number of the textual-explanatory traditions, holding the treasuries of a number of the scriptures of the Sugatas, but in particular he was able to fully illuminate the meaning of the Perfection of Insight Sūtras. [468] The person of whom we speak is the teacher and great personage Haribhadra. Pleasing Haribhadra with his attendance, Buddhajñānapāda studied and mastered a number of textual-explanatory traditions pertaining to the Perfection of Insight. Eventually he composed a commentary on the Sañcaya for the sake of a fully ordained nun of brahmin caste by the name of Guṇamitra, this being only one example of his many deeds of composition and instruction.

Then he left Magadha and traveled 300 yojanas to the northwest, finally arriving at Oḍiyan, a place blessed by assemblies of skygoers. There was a teacher who was native to Nor-bu-gling, one accomplished in Mahāmudrā known as Śrī Viśvarūpin, or to give his secret initiatory name, Vilāsavajra. Staying near him, he received initiations into a number of maṇḍalas of the secret mantra, as well as learning many tantra texts.

Later on, in a part of that same place, he received from a teacher with an inconceivable number of secret precepts, a yogi by the name of Guru, many Highest Yoga Tantra initiations as well as tantra teachings and precepts, which he mastered.

Then one evening he had another dream. In his dream a prophetic voice spoke to him, “There is living in the northern parts of Oḍiyan a young woman of low caste, a yoginī born into the caste known as Jātijava (Dzā-ti-dza-ba), who is called Lakṣmisena. Go to be with her. Your aims will be fulfilled.”

When he awoke he went to her and pleased her with his attendance. He heard much esoteric advice and teaching. Then he went to the region of Jalandhara in western India and the city of Ratnadhāra where he met a teacher who had performed the Jambhala practices and attained the flowing stream-like samādhi. This teacher’s name was Bālipāda (Byis-pa’i Zhabs). He studied with him a number of texts and the main tantras of the Prajñā class. He mastered these subjects and was persistent in their practices.

He also went to the south Indian region of Koṅkana,* the residence of a great teacher named Bālipāda who had the supreme samādhi and was especially learned in the tantras. There were a number of others who stayed there in his miraculous company including his disciple of the brahmin caste Saraha and one of the vaiṣya class named Mañjuśrī. Their living necessities were provided by Vasudhārā, Goddess of Wealth (Nor-rgyun-ma) — ten man-cha** of gold and a heap of pearls for each one of them as well as 300 cowries (kārṣāpaṇi). When he came into the presence of this teacher he received initiation into the 32-deity Guhyasamāja and learned the root tantra eighteen times. He also learned the explanatory tantras, the sādhanas and the secret precepts. In the mean time it emerged that there were 18 especially difficult points in the root tantraof the Guhyasamāja, and even though he asked his teacher about them he still had doubts. So he went to Śrī Vajrāsana and said his prayers at the Mahābodhi shrine. As he did so a voice cried out from the sky, “Thou son of the family! Seek out Mañjuvajra and receive his blessing, then all your doubts will depart.”

(*The Konkan coastal area of present-day Maharashtra, nowadays we are not likely to consider it as part of south India per se. **Interesting to see this gold and silver weight called manca or mancu here. I could be wrong, but this could be an Old English term, so this ought to be investigated further. Some readers of this translation may not be aware that cowries could be used as a medium of exchange, or that coins could be called cowries.)

Since Mañjuvajra was staying at Wu-tai Shan in China, he went to his teacher Bālipāda and asked if he could go there. Permission was granted, so he set out on the road from Vajrāsana traveling to the north. [470]

He happened to spy a garden of squash plants. Near to it was a house, and there beside the house he saw a woman and a bitch. Not far from them was a monk, his robe wrapped up around his head like a turban, plowing a field. ‘Oh my,’ he thought, ‘if it is even possible there could be a renunciate living with a woman and plowing a field like this then the teachings have truly fallen to ruin,’ and the thought saddened him. Meanwhile it was the noon time, so he thought he would beg alms. The monk said, “Teacher, come over and enjoy a Dharma feast.” The Teacher was given a seat and the monk ordered the woman, “Bring this renunciate a hot meal.” She took out a fish trap, caught a fish from a creek and cooked it. Then she placed a tree leaf in front of the bitch and ordered it, “Bring the Dharma feast.” When the bitch vomited, this together with the fish the woman served to him.

The Teacher thought the flesh had been specifically prepared for him, and that it was impure, so he abstained.

According to another account the woman had killed many small birds and cooked their flesh, but when she served it he abstained. The woman then snapped her fingers and the birds flew out of the curry and disappeared. So goes that other version of the story.

Then the monk said, “Goodness, since he is a worldling give him ordinary food.” So he was served a cooked rice dish with yoghurt. The Teacher finished eating and thought he would be on his way, but the monk said, “If you depart at this time of day you will not reach a place to stay in the evening. So leave tomorrow.” So he spent the night while the monk went to stay elsewhere. [471] The Teacher was there doing his Guhyasamāja recitations and arrived at a place he did not recognize. The look on the woman’s face told him that she was displeased, so he was convinced that she had the extraordinary ability to read minds.

So then he thought, ‘She may be the one to dispel my doubts.’ He prostrated to her and made his requests, but she replied, “I do not know the answers, but the monk who was just here is quite an expert, so you ought to ask him.”

He asked her where he had gone, and she told him, “He went to buy beer.”

“When will he return?”

“In the morning.”

So he waited until morning when he saw someone arrive who seemed to be drunk from beer. He didn’t really believe in him, but he anyway swallowed his pride and prostrated before him, “I solemnly request you to grant me your explanations of the Guhyasamāja.”

“You must take initiation!”

“I have received the initiations.”

“You need my personal initiation.”

So the Teacher went to find the items needed for the ritual and brought them when he requested the initiation.

In another account it tells how he had a cowrie and gave it to the woman. She then transformed her appearance to create the needed items.

It was on the night of the 8th day of the first lunar month of autumn when the grass hut was transformed into a divine palace, and within it clearly visible was a maṇḍala of the 19-deity Mañjuvajra. The monk was sitting there beside the maṇḍala in the same aspect displayed earlier. [472] He asked the Teacher, “Will you take the initiation from me or from the maṇḍala?’

The Teacher, even while thinking that the maṇḍala was an emanation of none other than the monk, had faith in the divine aspects, so he made his request to take initiation from the maṇḍala.

“Well then, so receive it!’ said the monk. Then he received the complete set of initiations from the maṇḍala.

Another account tells us that when he requested to take initiation from the maṇḍala, the maṇḍala vanished, and only then he knew that the maṇḍala was a manifestation by the monk and prostrated to him. Saying words of praise including the words, “You are the father of all sentient beings, their mother, too,’ he begged his indulgence and made requests. Then at the break of dawn he projected the maṇḍala out of his heart area. Then he smiled and, saying “Good!’ commenced the initiation. So says the other account.

Then began a summarization of the meanings of the Guhyasamāja with oral authorization and so on, and all the difficult points in the tantra he was at least made to understand. Then the Teacher, pleased and satisfied, thought, ‘I will offer a gift.’ So he asked the monk, “What is your wish?’

“I wish for nothing at all,’ the monk replied.

But the Teacher insisted that he must by all means accept something. Responded the monk, “Well then, make me the gift of prostrating whenever you see me.” The Teacher agreed to this and made his offering in this way.

Then the monk said,

“You had some small misconceptions

about eating behavior and about me.

So you will not become accomplished in

the present life through your bodily aggregate.

When your mind has turned into Vajrabody

you will be liberated only in the intermediate state.”

Then he added,

“Now you will perform the practices

but will not become Buddha in the present life.

You must spend your life teaching for the benefit of others,

and only then be liberated in the intermediate state.”

and with these words he disappeared.

Then the Teacher proceeded to the northeast of Vajrāsana to a place known as Ri-bo’i Phung where he lived in a [monastery] called Dharmāṅkura (Chos-kyi Myu-gu).* There Buddhajñānapāda received initiations directly from Mañjughoṣa and heard from him all the teachings. News of this spread throughout the world such that kings, panditas, teachers and others gathered around him.

(*See Tāranātha’s history where a place by this name is associated with Asaṅga.)

The fortunate among them received initiations as well as teachings of Mañjughoṣa suitable to their minds with the oral transmissions and so on. He went to still other places to teach.

Then even his previous teacher Bālipāta arrived there hoping to request teachings, but the Teacher said to him, “You are my teacher! There is no way I could teach you.” But then through an eloquent discourse he made his doubts dissolve, and for this purpose composed his work, Samantabhadra Sādhana. In general he composed 14 books that belong to this tradition. They are:

Kun-tu bzang-po’i sgrub-thabs.
Kun-tu bzang-mo’i sgrub-thabs.
Sbyin-sreg-gi cho-ga.
Gtor-ma.
Tshogs-’khor.
Dkyil-’khor-gyi cho-ga.
Nyis-brgya-lnga-bcu-pa.
Ye-shes chen-po.
Tshigs-su bcad-pa’i mdzod.
Grol-ba’i thig-le.
Bdag bsgrub-pa.
Byang-chub-kyi sems-kyi thig-le.
Dpal-bshes-kyi rnam-bshad bzhi-pa-la ’jug-pa.
Chu-sbyin-gyi sgrub-thabs.

So in sum this teacher did many teachings and composed many treatises until an immeasurable number of students came to him. Yet among them there were 18 who were outstanding, four who reached nirvāṇa by virtue of direct seeing.* The latter were Dīpaṅkarabhadra, Praśāntamitra, Rāhulabhadra and Mahāsukhavajra.

(*?? dṛṣṭadharma nirvāṇa, = Pāli ditthadhamma nibbana.)

Thus he illumined the minds of myriad beings. Once he was leading a teaching session for a great multitude when he saw coming into his presence a man who walked as if drunk with beer. He thought, ‘If I were to salute him the others might lose faith in me.’ So he did not salute him and he disappeared in the audience. But later on he followed him and caught sight of the guru sitting with his legs stretched out in the shade of a stūpa. Then he prostrated at his feet and the guru said to him, “You made a promise as an initiation gift to me that you would prostrate to me whenever you would see me, so how is it that today you did not salute me?”

The Teacher without thinking about it blurted out, “I did not see you.”

The guru said, “Essence of the earth, go out!” (sa’i snying-po gatstsha),

and the Teacher’s eyes fell on the ground. He prayed to the guru requesting his indulgence, so he was granted eyes that could see regardless of obstructions for a distance of a full yojana. From then on he was called Jñānalocana, which is to say Full Knowledge Eye. [475]

There is another account telling us that it was to one of Teacher’s disciples, a brahmin named Jñānapāda, that he appeared in the manner just described, and not to Teacher himself.

Once Teacher was staying in a hut not far from Vajrāsana performing his practices when everyone else was observing a holy day at Vajrāsana by doing prostrations and making offerings. Everybody was criticizing Teacher for not attending, and their words reached the ears of the king Dharmapāla. The king couldn’t believe that Teacher had neglected the holy day, so he decided to look into the matter. The king entered the hut and had a look, but all he saw was an image of Mañjuśrī. So he went back outside and asked a disciple who assured him that he was indeed inside. So once again he went in and had a look. He saw Teacher sitting there and asked him, “Why did you not go to Vajrāsana to perform prostrations?”

“I did so from this very spot where we stand.”

“How did you do that?”

“Śākyamuni was clearly seated in the space in front of Vajrāsana, and to him I prostrated.”

The king was impressed. Begging the Teacher’s indulgence, he requested him to serve as his court priest, but the Teacher did not accept the offer and went elsewhere.

On the very spot where the teacher’s hut had stood he erected a temple with a divine array just like the one he had previously seen.

Thus with the body of his present life he performed incalculable benefits for others before his death. In the intermediate state he attained the supreme siddhi.

He had a disciple named Dīpaṅkarabhadra whose lineage came down through first Śrīsena, then Vimalagupta, Ratnavajra, Ratnakīrti, Pandapa, Gnyan Lo-tsā-ba, Gnang-kha’u-pa brothers,* the guru and Dharma master Sa-skya-pa both father and sons.

(*The usual form of the name is Gnam-kha'u-pa.)

[Colophon:]

“This ’Phags-pa wrote based on all he had seen and heard

about the succession of gurus that transmitted the teachings

and the biography of Jñānapāda

who was tended by none other than Mañjughoṣa.”

Composed in the palace of Prince Qubilai in the final month of autumn in the year of the Earth Male Horse (1258 CE).

The source of this translation is this: ’Phags-pa (= Chos-rgyal ’Phags-pa Blo-gros-rgyal-mtshan, 1235-1280), Gsang-’dus Ye-shes-zhabs-kyi Rnam-thar dang Brgyud-pa’i Rim-pa, contained in: Chos rgyal ’phags pa’i bka’ ’bum, vol. 2, as contained in: Sa-skya-pa’i Bka’-’bum, Toyo Bunko (Tokyo 1968), vol. 7, pp. 1 (column 1, line 1) through 3 (column 3, line 3). This historical work has been awarded an update entry in the Tibetan Histories listing as no. 51.02. You can try locating it here, but you won't find it.

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Great Balls of Iron

January 18, 2020, 10:48 am

≫ Next: Prayer Wheels Came from Where?

≪ Previous: Guhyasamāja History by Pagpa

It’s one of those oddly interdependent co-incidents that now and then show up to remind you the Enlightened Ones got it right. In the last couple of days a whole lot of clues about this subject have been falling at my feet from out of the blue and from different directions in space. This augur leaves me with little choice but to blog about it. Who am I to question when the world conspires against me? Wait, that was a question, wasn’t it.

It may have started last night when to pass the time on the train home from the airport I was reading Charles Ramble's article about that modern novel, “Vicissitudes of a Ordinary/Commoner Family.”

That novel brings back odd memories of my first time in Lhasa. I was in a bookstore and had spent half the afternoon making a pile of Tibetan books, mostly about Buddhism, to mail home to myself when our minder (if you have been there in those days you probably know what I mean), a quite young Tibetan speaker, pretending to interest himself in books for himself as well as the books I was choosing, finally turned to me and told me that there is only one book worth reading, that same “Vicissitudes” book we just mentioned. Of course I put it on top of my pile, mainly out of curiosity why he thought I should forget all those Buddhist books. I never understood where exactly he was coming from, perhaps mainly because I shelved the book and hardly looked at it again.

The famous professor's book review started me thinking when I reached the part where he tells how Tibetan commoners couldn’t possibly share drinks or dine with metal smiths.* What I was thinking, first of all, was just how different that makes Tibetans from their northern neighbors, the Mongols and Turks. Why are Tibetans so hard on them?

(*commoners and smiths do not share a ‘mouth’ [kha] connection.)

It’s well known that the Mongols as they extended their empire in the Middle East & Eastern Europe — even in cities that had resisted the siege and were for this reason subjected to their over-depopulation policy — spared the lives of artisans, especially the smiths, and of them especially the goldsmiths...

Remember the story from an earlier blog of that French goldsmith taken captive in Hungary, the one who ended up making a giant wine dispenser for the Khan in Karakoram? Smiths were so greatly valued by the Mongols they went out of their way to procure them so they could put them to work doing what they do best. See the blog with the verses “In Praise of Beer,” written by Phagpa. But do come back, since I haven’t said anything yet.

For months now I’ve been watching a 300-plus-episode epic on the rise of the Ottoman Dynasty, and particularly the father of its founder, a contemporary of Phagpa by the name of Ertuğrul. The latest episode I’ve seen shows the Seljuk princess making a perilous journey together with an unrelated old blacksmith they called Wild Demir.* Quite a contrast with the blacksmith Lhakpa in Vicissitudes.

(*See Diriliş: Ertuğrul, Series 2, episode 41, or episode 117 overall. That demir is just the Turkish word for ‘iron’. He belonged to the Tayi tribe, that may have been the tribe of origin of the Ottoman rulers. Things are never all that simple, but even if it were, some say that the Tayi tribe was of Mongolic not Turkic origins. Perhaps they gained Turk/Turkoman identity when they converted to Islam? I’m not nearly half way through the episodes of the Ertugrul TV serial, but already I know a lot more Turkish than I ever did before, and yes, a lot more about the history of the Ottoman Empire. Watching the largely fictional show has made me search out more reliable sources of knowledge.)

Oh, and another thing, yesterday morning I was looking through the recently published collection of essays by one of the most interesting of early 21st century Tibetan authors, a scholar of the ’Bri-gung school by the name of Rasé Konchok Gyatso. Among those essays I found one about Tibetan society’s negative attitudes toward blacksmiths, not just them but also butchers and women. He gets discussion started with a quote from the French author Ru’u-su’u (རུའུ་སུའུ་) about human equality, making use of the modern Tibetan term ’dra-mnyam(འདྲྲ་མཉམ་) for equality.

And to think that the Mgar Ministers of the Old Tibetan era, who were practically running the Empire for a very long time, were smiths in their family origins if the name is any guide. Tibetans picked out for special contempt artisans of all types, and I wonder why. Of course farmers and nomads were the most normal things you could possibly be in those days all over Eurasia, not just Tibet.

Rasé explains that Buddhism itself (along with parts of Indian culture that came with it that may have roots outside of Buddhism) is to blame. How so? Buddhism has strong ethical arguments against taking life, any life. Butchers are directly involved in the business of killing, but smiths produce the instruments butchers need for their work, along with tools of warfare that entail killing done from other motives. Rasé at one point adds in the categories of hunters (among them, the pika eaters) and potters, although he doesn't discuss prejudicial attitudes against them any further. I’m not familiar with the term ya-bo that he uses here, although it occurs in a legal code he later quotes from, and he glosses it as anyone who makes a living from the hunting of animals. The legal code makes a triad of ya-bo with smiths and butchers. If I could be allowed to attempt a translation of this passage, from the Legal Code of the Roaring Turquoise Dragon (གཡུ་འབྲྲུག་སྒྲོག་པའི་ཞལ་ལྕྕེ་):

“When the A-tse King of Upper Tibet was slain by the Mongols (Hor), for the indemnity they weighed an equal measure of gold. In case of ya-bo, smiths and butchers, when they are killed the indemnity is one jute rope.”

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སྟོད་ཨ་ཙེ་རྒྱལ་པོ་ཧོར་གྱིས་བསད་། སྟོང་ལ་གསེར་དང་མཉམ་འདེགས་བྱས། ཡ་བོ་མགར་བ་བཤན་པ་གསུམ། བསད་ཀྱང་སྟོང་ལ་དྲེས་ཐག་གཅིག

(My note: I suppose by A-tse King is meant the Ya-tse King in the area of Gugé; to locate it just go to the extreme northwestern corner of modern Nepal and you will be in the right neighborhood. I suppose what is meant heer is that they measured out an amount of gold equal to the weight of the king's body. Hor originally named the Uighur Turks, but was applied to the Mongols after their emergence in the early 13th century.)

Reflecting on a reading of Rasé's essay, which deserves more attention than I’m giving it, I have to say I do agree with much of his critical argument. He says to think of metalsmiths as “dirty” and polluting is “brainless ignorant superstition” (ཀླད་མེད་གཏི་མུག་རྨོངས་དད་པ་). And now that I’m a vegetarian again, I do think, as Rasé says in his own way, there is a contradiction in condemning or looking down on butchers when the one condemning them is enjoying eating the meat they provide. They supply a demand, and the ones doing the demanding despise them for supplying it?

And finally, just a few mornings ago I opened an email from my old friend R.M. that linked me to an article more or less directly about thu-lum— a word you may remember from an earlier blog here at Tibeto-logic. And if you don’t remember it, and who could blame you since it has anyway been half a decade, you might like to have a look here, scrolling down toward the bottom of the page. The article by Joseph Marino, details below, is all about descriptions of Buddhist hell, and one in particular where its denizens are made to swallow flaming hot balls (or ingots) of iron. I won’t go further into this hell right now, just to say that the blazing ingots, whatever their origins, were represented in Tibetan translations with a word borrowed from the Turkish (perhaps via Mongolian?) tongues.* This word thu-lum has quite an old history in Tibetan, as far as I can tell first appearing in a translation of a portion of the story of Rāma of Indian epic fame (ITJ 0737-1). That means likely 10th century or earlier.**

(*A global search of the Derge canon yields nearly 60 instances of usage for the worrd thu-lum, and by far most of these contexts have to do with iron ones that are or would be hot and painful when swollowed. **If you are interested to know more about the fates of Rāma stories in Tibet, I recommend the essay by Roesler listed below.)

In earlier centuries in Tibet, the first person brought to mind when you hear the word ‘iron’ is Thang-stong-rgyal-po, the well-known builder of chain suspension bridges on the Plateau. So there can be no doubt that, at least when done with altruistic or at least public-minded purposes, metal working could, even if only in this one rare case, be regarded as good and noble. An exception can prove a rule. And rules can be improved upon, especially when they involve socially engrained injustices that so many centuries of Buddhism failed to find ways to overcome. Living traditions always have changed, and we may hope they can find and compassionately promote the right methods to change for the better without trying to fix whatever it is that was already right.

Bits of bibliography

Peter H. Hansen, “Why Is There No Subaltern Studies for Tibet?” Tibet Journal, vol. ”28, no. 4 (Winter 2003), pp. 7-22. As if in answer to the question after a decade-long wait, see the book edited by C. Ramble et al., below.

Joseph Marino, “From the Blacksmith’s Forge to the Fires of Hell: Eating the Red-Hot Iron Ball in Early Buddhist Literature,” Buddhist Studies Review, vol. 36, no. 1 (2019), pp. 31-51.

Fernanda Pirie, “The Turquoise Dragon: Symbol of Political Status?” See this page at TibetanLaw.org.

Rasé Konchok Gyatso (Ra-se Dkon-mchog-rgya-mtsho), “Bod-kyi Sems-khams-kyi Snang-tshul-las Mgar Bshan Bud-med-la Mthong-chung Byed-pa'i Lam-srol-gy 'Byung-khungs Bshad-pa,” contained in the same author's Bod Rig-pa'i Dpyad-rtsom Brgya dang Brgyad-cu-ma, Bod Rang-skyong Ljongs Dpe-skrun Do-dam Khru'u (Lhasa 2016), at pp. 1160-1167. The two types of discimination against smiths that he mentions are described in the phrases kha-phor mi bsre-ba, and gnyen-sgrig mi chog-pa, that I take to mean not putting together the [personal] bowl [for both food and drink], and not allowing marriage. The non-commensal and unmarriagable do fit together, in the sense that married people have to also be fed by their inlaws. Most marriage rites include somewhere within them the act of eating together.

Leonard Olschki, Guillaume Boucher, a French Artist at the Court of the Khans, John Hopkins Press (Baltimore 1946). A number of articles on the Karakorum fountain have appeared of late on the internet, particularly well written is this one by Devon Field.

Charles Ramble, “The Tibetan Novel as Social History: Reflections on Trashi Palden's Phal pa'i khyim tshang gi skyid sdug,” Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines, no. 49 (May 2019), pp. 149-191.

Charles Ramble, Peter Schwieger, Alice Travers, ed., Tibetans Who Escaped the Historian’s Net: Studies in the Social History of Tibetan Societies, Vajra Books (Kathmandu 2013).

Hugh Richardson, “Further Fragments from Tun-huang,” contained in: High Peaks, Pure Earth, Serindia (London 1998), pp. 28-36. On p. 35 you can see a number of comments about how, at least in post-imperial times, Tibetans despised smiths, even while other Central Asian peoples held them in very high esteem.

Ulrike Roesler, “The Adventures of Rāma, Sītā and Rāvaṇa in Tibet,” contained in: John Brockington, et al., eds., The Other Rāmāyaṇa Women: Regional Rejection and Response, Routledge (London 2016), pp. 44-70.

Cyrus Stearns, tr. King of the Empty Plain: The Tibetan Iron Bridge Builder Tangtong Gyalpo, Snow Lion (Ithaca 2007). This is a complete translation of the life of Thang-stong Rgyal-po Brtson-’grus-bzang-po (1361?‑1485), often known as Lcags-zam-pa, which is to say, the Iron Bridge [Builder].

Notice the iron chain links in his hand,
a wall painting photographed in Bhutan

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More funny stuff to read if you feel like

A few sites to sight out on the internet

A note on illustrations

All about the books:

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

—Wm. Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun.

Read these today or tomorrow:

Assignment: Go study Tangut art at the site of the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Notice especially this one that is identified as a Dishi or Guoshi.

THE TRADITION OF THE GOLD-DIGGING ANTS.*

Herodotus and the Gold Digging Ants

§ § §

Read the PS if you must:

Conclusion:

Coda

Some publications:

A quick climb out on a limb:

Bits of bibliography