Tibetan Buddhist Literature

WESTERN TIBET AND THE WESTERN HIMALAYAS

ESSAYS ON ARCHEOLOGY, ART,  LITERATURE AND HISTORY

(edited by Amy Heller and Giacomella Orofino)

PREFACE


The present volume is the result of a panel at the International  Association for Tibetan Studies Oxford seminar, September 2003.
The raison d’être of this panel was to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Mnga' ris skor gsum and  adjacent regions.
Although they were integrated into the zone of the Tibetan empire since the seventh century, the geography of these regions led over time to distinct patterns of trade and cross-influences  with the polities of central Asia, Nepal and India.
By their diversity, the participant's research  covers a very broad time range from the Zhang  zhung period to the 20th century,  in order to offer as complete an outline as possible of the state of research in this area and to illustrate the rich terrain of information which it provides. In addition to specific topics linked to the political history of the kingdoms of Gu ge and Pu hrang, the contributions focussed on religious and secular art, architecture, and literature produced in or for western Tibet and the western Himalayas.
This particular field of studies has begun to  attract  ever increasing  interest on the part of scholars, mainly since it has proved to  be of seminal importance for the definition of the historical and cultural processes of the entire Indo-Tibetan civilization,  especially after the recent archaeological discoveries which  have produced  highly significant scientific results.
The panel was scheduled on the last morning of the Oxford seminar, which precluded a  general discussion of all participants as several were obliged to depart before the conclusion of the entire session.  In addition, two panellists were obliged to publish separately within the context of their university:  Renate Ponweiser, University of Vienna, who presented  a paper on narrative composition in the ambulatory of the cella in the ‘du khang of Ta bo, and  Zhang Changhong, Sichuan University Institute for Tibetan Studies, who presented her findings on typology of stūpa in the vicinity of Mtho gling and Dung dkar.  Geshe  Wangyel, a Bonpo lama  from  Dolpo district, northwest Nepal, unfortunately died a few weeks before the Oxford Seminar.  His presence was sorely missed. The abstract of his paper is included in the present volume as a testimony to his achievement and as a salient reminder of the scholars  of western Himalaya, who increasingly are analysing their history, religions, and societies. Enrico dell’ Angelo, director of the Khor chags restoration project, had proposed a study of the history of Khor chags monastery, but was unable to attend.  Giacomella Orofino, who participated in the same restoration project with dell’Angelo, presented the results of the ASIA restoration project  and her research on a specific text recovered in Khor chags (see below). Huo Wei, director of the Sichuan University Institute for Tibetan Studies, was prevented from attending the Oxford seminar due to unforeseen visa problems, and his paper has been included in the present volume. His student Zhang Changhong represented their institute at the Oxford seminar.
In terms of content, the volume begins with archaeology, secular and religious. Aldenderfer  and Huo Wei present here the first archeological reports in the history of the International Association for Tibetan Studies.  Aldenderfer  has done in-situ excavations at  Dindun, a site located on a high terrace overlooking the river between the modern villages of Phyi yang and Dung dkar in Mnga’ ris. Testing in 1999 and more extensive excavation in 2001  revealed the presence of residential architecture dating to approximately ca. 85 BC.  This excavation revealed several residences and differentiated living environments. Huo Wei, after initial archeological investigations of Tibetan tombs in central Tibet and the Lha rtse district,  has recently concentrated his efforts on excavations and site-reports of Tibetan caves and mchod rten in the vicinity of Dung dkar,  in Mnga’ ris. He discusses here the recently rediscovered wall paintings of the caves of Byang rtse Mkhar phug, north of Dung dkar, which may be dated to the flourishing of Buddhism in Mnga’ ris during the bstan pa phyi dar due to the content of the mural paintings and maṇḍala of the liturgical cycles of Vairocana.
The volume proceeds with two articles on architecture. Kozicz investigated with Prof. Heusgen of Graz and measured several sites, including Nyar ma in Ladakh, whose foundation is attributed to Rin chen bzang po, according to his biography written shortly after his death in 1055. As the results of their measurements illustrate some basic aspects of the architectural practices, Kozicz has studied the architecture of this former monastic enclave, working towards  a comparison with A lci (Ladakh) and Ta bo (Spiti) and the analysis of the criteria for the architectural design of Nyar ma. Di Mattia does not study the entire architecture of  monastic buildings, but instead concentrates on the development and differentiated usage of  architectural frames in the facades and interior decoration of monasteries in western Himalaya and Tibet.
The analysis of religious literature, in the context of the historical development of these regions,  is the focus of the studies of Orofino, Heller  and De Rossi Filibeck.
Orofino presents here the background of the Khor chags restoration project with the finding of a collection of manuscript texts, hidden in three walled hollow rooms  in the ‘dus khang. One of the buried manuscripts, the well known canonical text, Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgiti has proved to be, on the base of critical textual analysis, very near to the Rin chen bzang po’s translation archetype, tracing back,  with great probability,  to the first phases of the foundation of the Khor chags settlement, before the 12th century. The critical analysis of the text proves, once again, the importance of the western Tibet literary collections in the study of the formation of the Tibetan canons.
Heller and De Rossi Filibeck  both analyze the prefaces of manuscript copies of volumes of the Tibetan Buddhist canon.  In the context of a restoration project in a village of Dolpo, Nepal, Heller discusses here the history of Gnas sar dgon pa and analyses the prefaces of several manuscripts from a corpus of more than 600 volumes conserved in this Dolpo temple. These prefaces range from  mid-14th to late 15th century, corresponding respectively to periods of Khas Malla and Glo bo patronage of Buddhism in Dolpo. The Gnas gsar prefaces show literary and organizational similarities with those analysed by De Rossi Filibeck in her previous studies of  several prefaces of 17th century manuscripts, collected by Giuseppe Tucci in his travels near Ta bo and Mtho gling and now preserved in the IsIAO library.  Here  De Rossi Filibeck presents a new study  on the contents and the formal aspects of this very interesting  literary material.   
The history of the monastery is the topic of Lo Bue who here presents his study of Guru lha khang in Ladakh . Lo Bue reviews previous analysis of the chronology and content of this monastery’s mural paintings as a prelude to a new analyis and definitive dating for Guru lha khang to the 15th century. Geshe Wangyel’s abstract on Bsam gling, the principal Bonpo monastery in Dolpo, is a useful summary of the history of this monastic foundation. The history of a Bonpo pilgrimage in Dolpo and the synchronic development of its sacred geography is presented in the research by Kind.  Jahoda also studies the history of a monastery, however his study of the Ta bo monastery is specific to the economic history of Ta bo village and monastery brought to light by documents pertaining to the economic relationships between the monastery and the lay population of Ta bo and other villages in Spiti valley during the third quarter of the 20th century, and examined through the 19th century  antecedents of these relations.
Spanning secular, religious and economic history, literature, art and archaeology from pre-historical period to the 20th century, the articles presented here show  the importance of  research on west Tibet and western Himalaya and demonstrate the fruitful exchange of interdisciplinary research within  this geographical context.  The editors wish to thank  all of the contributors for their patience and cooperative attitude.  We are grateful to Dr Charles Ramble, as convenor of the conference, for his hospitality, congeniality and encouragement of this publication, and Mr Anthony Aris, of the Aris Trust, which facilitated the organization of the Oxford IATS seminar and publication of this volume. To honour the memory of our dear friend and colleague Dr Michael Aris, historian of Tibet and of the Himalayas, this volume is humbly dedicated.

This article focuses on a specific iconography of the dGe lugs pa school. This iconography is known by the name of tshogs zhing (a spiritual field for the accumulation of merits), here analyzed in its 18 th century form. The images described here are an essential tool for the religious practice prescribed by the dgGe lugs pa's bla ma mchod pa tantric literature. As an esoteric literature, the bla ma mchod pa is based on an "essential instruction" (man ngag) which gathers teachings on the main tantras of the so called niruttara classes. This paper will discuss the oldest iconography of the bla ma mchod pa tshogs zhing, directly related to the root text of the first Paṇ chen Bla ma Blo bzang Chos kyi rgyal mtshan (1567-1662). Among the many images of tshogs zhing I have analyzed 1-almost identical in the representation of this specific subject-I present here a xylograph (Fig. 2) and a thang ka (Fig. 1). The xylograph, realized in the style of the 18 th century's woodblocks of sNar thang, 2 is an uncatalogued item of the Tucci Tibetan Collection (IsIAO Library, Rome). The thang ka is property of a Tibetan private citizen living now in Bodhgaya, in the Indian state of Bihar. 3 Within the dGe lugs pa order, the bla ma mchod pa literature stems from essential tantric and esoteric instructions (man ngag) related to the guru devotion liturgies and practices prescribed by guruyoga literature. 4 In order to receive these particular man 1 Research has been done in the dGe lugs pa monasteries of Ladakh, McLeod Ganj and the Kathmandu Valley. Further sources of comparison were several catalogues on Tibetan art (see below) and the web site www.himalayanart.org. As primary sources, I also studied and translated two texts, Sangs rgyas ye shes's Bla ma mchod pa'i cho ga dngos grub kun 'byung, and Ye shes rgyal mtshan's Bla ma lha'i rnal 'byor gyi khrid dmigs kyi bsdus don snyan rgyud gter mdzod 'byed pa'i lde mig (see the bibliography for complete references). 2 A monastery located 15 km west of Shigatse, in gTsang (Central Tibet), which is famous as a printery. 3 I wish to thank the former President of IsIAO, the late Professor Gherardo Gnoli, and Mr. Thinlay Nepali for allowing me to study and show the xylograph and the thang ka presented here. 4 Bla ma mchod pa translates the Sanskrit term gurupūjā. Concerning the meaning of mchod pa, see Makransky 1996.

In Nepal this spring, I spent a pleasant hour on a guesthouse rooftop in conversation with Dan Hirshberg, a Harvard PhD candidate. Dan has been studying the earliest biographies of Nyang ral, the great Nyingma master of the 12th century. Based on his reading of these biographies, Dan is developing the theory that the very earliest Buddhist termas (gter ma), the revealed 'treasure texts' for which the Nyingma school is so famous, could sometimes be based on the simple concrete recovery of actual old manuscripts. By contrast, Dan remarked, subsequent terma discovery depends more heavily on the more complex mystical processes of 'remembering' a teaching from a past life with which all students of terma are familiar. Unfortunately there was not time for me to hear at length how Dan himself sought to support his hypothesis, but I was able to briefly tell him that we had already found some possibly supporting evidence. Last year, Cathy Cantwell established that a substantial component text from one of the most important early terma collections, Nyang ral's famous Deshek Dupa (bde gshegs 'dus pa), corresponds exactly to the Dunhuang manuscript IOL TibJ 331.III.[1] While the Dunhuang version is anonymous, Nyang ral claimed the original author of his terma was Vimalamitra, a famous Indian scholar traditionally associated with the Dzogchen teachings and held to have come to Tibet in the late 8th century, at the time of Padmasambhava and Emperor Trisongdetsen.

In Indian and Tibetan forms of Buddhism “pointing-out instructions” (ngo sprod) generally signifies an introduction to the nature of mind by a spiritual teacher to a qualified disciple. Pointing-out instructions are associated with tantric Buddhist lineages of meditation and yogic practice in a number of Indo-Tibetan traditions. In Nyingma lineages pointing-out instructions are connected to varied Great Perfection (rdzogs chen) traditions where one confronts the natural state (gnas lugs ngo sprod). Kagyü and other Tibetan Buddhist traditions of the new sects (gsar ma) associate pointing-out instructions with the practice of mahāmudrā. It is often claimed that the influence of Gampopa Sönam Rinchen’s (1079-1153) mahāmudrā teachings in Tibet was such that, as one erudite scholar has even suggested, “all Kagyü reflections on mahāmudrā is really but a series of footnotes to Gampopa.” Following this mode of thought, most modern scholarly sources have ignored the possibility of Kadampa influence on Gampopa and the varied Kagyü meditation manuals that came after him. This article clearly demonstrates that Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna (982-1054) and his early Kadampa followers significantly influenced Gampopa and subsequent Kagyü traditions in their structuring of mahāmudrā meditation manuals.  The systematized and structured “not-specifically-tantric-practice” type of pointing-out instructions of mahāmudrā are intimately related to Atiśa’s Stages of the Path, its commentaries, and the teachings found in the Pointing-Out Instructions in Sets of Five presented and translated in this article for the first time in English.

In two parts, this dissertation offers a study and readings of the Life Story of Yeshé Tsogyal, a fourteenth-century hagiography of an eighth-century woman regarded as the matron saint of Tibet. Focusing on Yeshé Tsogyal's figurations in historiographical and hagiographical literature, I situate my study of this work, likely the earliest full-length version of her life story, amid ongoing questions in the study of religion about how scholars might best view and analyze works of literature like biographies, especially when historicizing the religious figure at the center of an account proves difficult at best.
      In my readings, I advocate a hermeneutical approach that engages the Life of Yeshé Tsogyal's self-understanding as a work that is both an authentic terma (gter ma), that is, a "treasure text" or "revealed scripture," and a namtar (rnam thar), here understood to be a narrative of an individual's pursuit of spiritual realization. Following a consideration of the work's genre, I examine two of its dominant literary features: intertextuality and dialogue. Through its use of intertextuality, I suggest that the Life seeks to cultivate a reader who is ever eager to find more—more information, but above all, further significance—in the text. The reader who reads intertextually is apt to gain both facility and comfort with the work, and even, ideally, the ability to see the work as persistently relevant to their own life. Through its use of dialogue, I find that the story works to familiarize the reader with Yeshé Tsogyal in ways that extend beyond the capacities of diegesis alone. For its dialogic qualities both among texts and between persons, I understand the Life of Yeshé Tsogyal to be a work of literature that seeks not only to account for the spiritual progress of Yeshé Tsogyal, but also to enliven her amid the religious landscapes of Tibet and Bhutan.

Dorji Wangchuk,  “On the Identity and Authenticity of the *Sarvadharmacaryopadeśābhisamayatantra: A Tantric Scripture Associated with the Vikramaśīla Tradition." In Relationship between Tantric and Non-Tantric Doctrines in Late Indian Buddhism, edited by Norihisa Baba. Oriental Culture 96. Tokyo: Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo, 2016, pp. 95–106.

Edited by Jim Rheingans, University of Hamburg

The papers in Tibetan Literary Genres, Texts, and Text Types deepen our knowledge of Tibetan literature. They not only examine particular Tibetan genres and texts (pre-modern and contemporary), but also genre classification, transformation, and reception. Despite previous contributions, the systematic analysis of Tibetan textual genres is still a relatively undeveloped field, especially when compared with the sophisticated examinations of other literary traditions.
The book is divided into four parts: textual typologies, blurred genre boundaries, specific texts and text types, and genres in transition to modernity. The introduction discusses previous classificatory approaches and concepts of textual linguistics. The text classes that receive individual attention can be summarised as songs and poetry, offering-ritual, hagiography, encyclopaedia, lexicographical texts, trickster narratives, and modern literature.
Contributors include: Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Ruth Gamble, Lama Jabb, Roger R. Jackson, Giacomella Orofino, Jim Rheingans, Peter Schwieger, Ekaterina Sobkovyak, Victoria Sujata, and Peter Verhagen.

The bsTan rim (Stages of the Doctrine) and similar graded expositions of the Bodhisattva's path were for me a very important Tibetan doctrinal genre.  I ended up translating one written by Sakya Pandita (Thub pa'i dgongs gsal), and also used as a crucial source the bsTan rim chgen mo of Gro lung pa. I also edited and introduce the genre for the book Stages of the Buddha's Teachings for The Library of Tibetan Classics.

Here, the title is given as mDo sde brgyad cu khongs. 6 Its catalogue lists a Hwa shang mā ha ya nas mdzad paʼi mDo sde brgyad cu'i khungs ('Bras spungs dpe rnying dkar chag: 1655, No 018810), the manuscript, however, is accessible neither to Western nor to Chinese scholars.

During the twelfth century, innovative developments in Tibetan Buddhist spiritual biography helped provide new narrative license to describe the lives and practices of revered saints with a level of detail and sophistication that far surpassed the preceding minimalist approach to biography. This article draws attention to several of the key literary techniques employed by authors to compose spiritual biographies. By comparing two recently published works of this genre, Brilliant Moon: the Autobiography of Dilgo Khyentse (2012) and Blazing Splendor: The Memoirs of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (2005), I argue that the latter text’s persistent breaks from established literary precedence are reflective of Könchok Paldrön’s influence on her grandson, Tulku Urgyen. In addition, I argue that these breaks provide scholars with novel information pertaining to the family dynamic that exists between saints who have been recognized, as children, as reincarnations of enlightened masters (tulkus), the mothers who gave birth to them, and the religious institutions that raised them.

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This article relates to folios of some important early Tibetan literary traditions, including the famous Maṇi bka’ ’bum. Though they have acquired the tentative title of “Gyalpo Kachem” folios, this article problematizes this ascription by identifying the text in those folios to which I have access with its closest correspondence among other Tibetan works. It thereby shows that one folio contains text from another tradition, that of the Na rak dong sprugs (“Churner of theDepths of Hell”), which does not have any obvious link with the a single “Gyalpo Kachem.” In the conclusion, I indicate some intriguing links between the content of these folios and Nyang ral Nyi ma ’od zer (1124–1192). These connections suggest that the folios were once part of an anthology of teachings, prayers, and narratives, much but not all of which is loosely focused on Avalokiteśvara and Srong btsan sgam po, but linked through traditional attribution of the original works in the anthology to this 12th-century treasure revealer, Nyang ral Nyi ma ’od zer. 

A short paper published in the book of collected papers presented at The First International Conference “Historical and Cultural Links between Mongolia and Tibet”, Qinghai, China. 2017.7.21—23.
The 18th century Khalkha Mongol scholar Ching Sudjugthu Lobzang Norbu Sherab was an important Geluk author whose Tibetan Gsung vbum was presumably block printed in Peking. It consists of seven volumes four of which, ga to cha, contain the collection of sādhanās entitled Yi dam rgya mtsho’i sgrub thabs rin chen ’byung gnas kyi lhan thabs gsal ba’i me long. It is a commentary to the famous collection by Tāranātha known as Rin ’byung. Its importance was sustained by the Seventh Panchen Lama Bstan pavi phyogs las rnam rgyal who compiled his own version of the collection and prepared an iconographic album with two additions. The album contains about 500 miniatures of various Buddhist saints and deities and was widely used by Buddhist icon painters. A comparison of Panchen’s version with the previous versions shows that he could use Ching Sudjugthu’s collection in his own work. Obviously, the latter’s version remained in use, too, since it was studied by Boris Pankratov, in the 1920s. This Russian scholar lived in China, mostly in Beijing, during the 1920s up to the middle of the 1930s, for several years he was an assistant of A. Staël von Holstein who organized and headed the Sino-Indian Institute in China’s capital. The archival documents found at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, the Russian Academy of Sciences, shed light on Pankratov’s studies of Ching Sudjugthu’s collection of sādhanās which deserves more attention as a source on the Buddhist iconographic tradition of Tibet and Mongolia.

Here I summarize my findings about several rare manuscripts that could become valuable sources for the study of Tibetan Pramāṇa traditions that I found preserved in the Tibetan collection of the the Bihar Research Society. They included several rare commentaries or  treatises from both gSang phu and Sa skya pa traditions of Tshad ma studies.

Are We Legend?
Reconsidering Clan in Tibet


Tibetan Studies is relatively familiar with the theme of clan. The so-called “Tibetan ancestral clans” regularly feature in works of Tibetan historiography, and have been the subject of several studies.  Dynastic records and genealogies, often labelled “clan histories,” have been examined, and attempts have been made to identify ancient Tibetan clan territories.  Various ethnographic and anthropological studies have also dealt both with the concept of clan membership amongst contemporary populations and a supposed Tibetan principle of descent, according to which the “bone”-substance (rus pa), the metonym for clan, is transmitted from father to progeny.

Can it be said, however, that we have a coherent picture of clan in Tibet, particularly from a historical perspective? The present article has two aims. Firstly, by probing the current state of our understanding, it draws attention to key unanswered questions pertaining to clans and descent, and attempts to sharpen the discussion surrounding them. Secondly, exploring new avenues of research, it considers the extent to which we may distinguish between idealised representation and social reality within relevant sections of traditional hagiographical literature.

The paper introduces one of the first block print editions of Gzungs bsdus in Tibetan made in Mongolia, presumably in the middle of the 17th century. This edition seems to be very close to the first edition printed in the Tibetan Rtag brtan (later Dga’ ldan phun tshogs gling) monastery. The copy of the edition was discovered at the Tibetan library of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, RAS, its detailed description along with analysis, partial translation and edition of its dkar chag are first presented. The paper stresses that the Mongolian tradition of making editions of Gzungs bsdus influenced the formation of its Beijing “Imperial” version in Tibetan (around 1674).

Review of De Rossi Filibeck, Catalogue of the Tucci Tibetan Fund in the Library of IsMEO, Volume 1 (Rome: 1994), This catalog made accessible for the first time the contents of the fabled Tibetan book collection of the great Tibetologist G. Tucci in Rome, which ended up in the Library of IsMEO.