Journal of the
International Association
of Tibetan Studies
Issue 5 — December 2009
ISSN 1550-6363
An online journal published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL)
www.jiats.org
Editors-in-Chief: José I. Cabezón and David Germano
Guest Editor: Kurtis R. Schaeffer
Book Review Editor: Bryan J. Cuevas
Managing Editor: Steven Weinberger
Assistant Editor: William McGrath
Technical Director: Nathaniel Grove
Contents
Articles
• Contributions to the Development and Classiication of Abhisamayālaṃkāra
Literature in Tibet from the Ninth to Fourteenth Centuries (56 pages)
– James B. Apple
• A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis: Methodological Issues
in the Study of a Mahāyoga Text from Dunhuang (51 pages)
– Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer
• On the Very Idea of a Tantric Canon: Myth, Politics, and the Formation of the Bka’
’gyur (37 pages)
– David B. Gray
• Recovering a Lost Literary Heritage: Preliminary Research on the Wanli Bka’ ’gyur
from Berlin (27 pages)
– Agnieszka Helman-Ważny
• Two Bka’ ’gyur Works in Mahāmudrā Canons: The
Ārya-ātajñāna-nāma-mahāyāna-sūtra and the Anāvila-tantra-rāja (24 pages)
– Roger R. Jackson
• Classicism in Commentarial Writing: Exegetical Parallels in the Indian
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā Commentaries (67 pages)
– Ulrich Timme Kragh
• Canonical Literature in Western Tibet and the Structural Analysis of Canonical
Collections (27 pages)
– Bruno Lainé
• The Role of the Bodhicittavivaraṇa in the Mahāmudrā Tradition of the Dwags po
bka’ brgyud (31 pages)
– Klaus-Dieter Mathes
• Notes on the Co ne Bka’ ’gyur and Bstan ’gyur in the Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C. (14 pages)
– Susan Meinheit
ii
• Guṇaprabha’s Vinayasūtra Corpus: Texts and Contexts (19 pages)
– Paul K. Nietupski
• On the Vicissitudes of Subhūticandra’s Kāmadhenu Commentary on the Amarakoṣa
in Tibet
– Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp
• Pseudepigrapha in the Tibetan Buddhist “Canonical Collections”: The Case of the
Caryāmelāpakapradīpa Commentary Attributed to Śākyamitra (31 pages)
– Christian K. Wedemeyer
Book Reviews
• Akester’s Rejoinder to M. Goldstein’s Response to “Review of A History of Modern
Tibet, Volume 2: The Calm before the Storm, 1951-55, by Melvyn C.
Goldstein” (4 pages)
– Matthew Akester
• Review of Tibetan Ritual, edited by José Ignacio Cabezón (12 pages)
– Christopher Bell
• Review of The Culture of the Book in Tibet, by Kurtis R. Schaeffer (3 pages)
– Hildegard Diemberger
• Goldstein’s Response to M. Akester’s “Review of A History of Modern Tibet,
Volume 2: The Calm before the Storm, 1951-55, by Melvyn C. Goldstein” (12 pages)
– Melvyn C. Goldstein
• Review of Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri’s Mission to Tibet, by
Trent Pomplun (6 pages)
– Michael Sweet
Abstracts
Contributors to this Issue
iii
A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis:
Methodological Issues in the Study of a Mahāyoga Text
-
from Dunhuang1
Cathy Cantwell
University of Oxford
Robert Mayer
University of Oxford
Abstract: The Dunhuang manuscript IOL Tib J 321 is a Rnying ma tantra
commentary in eighty-ive folios, the Thabs kyi zhags pa padma ’phreng gi don
bsdus pa’i ’grel pa’, with its root tantra embedded as lemmata. Marginal notes
and a concluding verse of praise associate the work with Padmasambhava.
Although cited by Rong zom pa and Klong chen pa, later Rnying ma pas lost touch
with the commentary, available to them only in truncated form within Bstan ’gyur
editions. The Dunhuang manuscript now enables reconstitution of the entire
commentary. More complex is the root text’s transmission. Extant in all Ancient
Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa (Rnying ma’i rgyud ’bum) and Bka’ ’gyur
Ancient Tantra (Rnying rgyud) sections, the versions can differ substantially,
raising fundamental questions of textual boundedness. The differences derive from
a thousand years of imprecise differentiation between root and commentary in
many major editions, persisting unresolved from Dunhuang times until now despite
the survival of correctly bounded ancient versions at the cultural margins. Rnying
ma responses to uncertain scriptural boundaries entailed a distributive approach
to knowledge, at variance to some modern textual presuppositions.
1
We are grateful to the British Arts and Humanities Research Council for providing us with the
funding that enabled the research on which this paper is based. We would also like to thank David
Germano and the other anonymous reviewer who made comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Parts of the paper were presented in 2009 and 2010 as lectures at Harvard, Chicago, Vienna and SOAS
(University of London). We would like to acknowledge the comments which arose in the discussions
on those occasions. Furthermore, at the inal revision stages, Helmut Eimer and Helmut Tauscher drew
our attention to the versions of the Thabs zhags found in the Independent Bka’ ’gyurs of ’Ba’ thang
and of Hemis, and these additional witnesses have clariied our picture of the historical transmission
of the text.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009): 1-51.
http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5696.
1550-6363/2009/5/T5696.
© 2009 by Cathy Cantwell, Robert Mayer, Tibetan and Himalayan Library, and International Association of Tibetan
Studies.
Distributed under the THL Digital Text License.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
2
Introduction
This paper is a brief relection on the culture of tolerable scriptural variation
that we ind in Rnying ma Buddhism. It raises methodological issues for textual
scholars of the Rnying ma tantras, which, although speciic to Rnying ma texts,
might also shed useful comparative light on other genres. In comparing appropriate
methodological approaches for the Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma
pa and for the Bka’ ’gyur, the orthodox canonical collection which gained shape
in the fourteenth century, we make two main points:
1. While current Bka’ ’gyur scholarship is, for entirely compelling reasons, in
many cases abandoning the hope of recovering unitary original texts or archetypes
through philological analysis, study of the Rnying ma canon suggests the opposite.
Our admittedly meager analysis so far tends towards the provisional conclusion
that Rnying ma tantras may often have original redactorial moments, and should,
in theory at least, present archetypes recoverable through philological methods.
We certainly do believe we can partly succeed in recovering an archetype of the
Thabs zhags root text, and will present our evidence for this in a forthcoming book.
However, note well that neither the terms “original” nor “archetype” need always
imply in the context of tantric texts independence from borrowings from earlier
texts or freedom from orthographical or grammatical error! Those are quite different
issues.
2. If Bka’ ’gyur scholarship is currently emphasising the non-unitary and varied
nature of texts before their incorporation into Tibetan canons, our work on the
Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa is currently emphasising diversity
after incorporation into Tibetan canons. Hence our second point, a little ironically,
slightly devalues the irst. Even if historians of the Rnying ma pa might (as we do
here to some degree) enjoy the luxury of recovering very early archetypes or even
originals through philological methods, this luxury is of partially limited value
because the Rnying ma pas themselves do not operate in quite this way. On the
one hand, their tantras have come to vary over time through scribal error and
piecemeal attempts at correction, or, as in this instance, confusions between root
text and commentary; and on the other hand, the Rnying ma pa have never sought
to establish a centralized authority that could standardize their scriptures. Nor do
they systematically identify or specify in their tantra catalogues the different
versions of a text. Of course, there is little problem where one reading is clearly
better than another – bad readings can be eliminated without controversy – but the
cumulative effect of centuries of dissociated hypercorrections made without recourse
to other editions, leads to an occasional variety of good readings, each equally
plausible, each the potential basis of further learned exegesis. For example, the
commentarial tradition on the tantric deity Rdo rje phur pa had to make sense of
two rather different readings within the root verses on the creation of the deity’s
maṇḍala (dkyil ’khor), even though these root verses are so important that they
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
3
are shared by all the scriptural texts, and repeated in all major practice texts.2 Hence,
despite in many cases apparently starting out with unitary texts or redactorial
moments, the Rnying ma pa are by now no better off than the Bka’ ’gyur tradition.
They have had to accept that in different editions and in different regions, ostensibly
the same versions of important tantras can vary somewhat, at some points
displaying what appear to be equally viable yet different readings. It is true that
some Rnying ma bla mas aware of such discrepancies can sometimes bemoan this
lack of uniformity. Yet de facto, for the last many centuries, the Rnying ma bla
mas have had little option other than to live with it. Perhaps partly making a virtue
out of necessity, but perhaps equally because of their ontological beliefs about bla
mas and tantric texts, many of them do not seem to see this as an unmitigated
problem. On the contrary, they seem in practice to have been compelled towards
a distributive understanding of knowledge, very like the understanding of Mahāyāna
and tantric scriptures that often prevailed in India, in which each sound and
meaningful variant version can be appreciated for contributing its partial vision of
the Buddhas’ total authorial intention (bad readings are of course rejected without
hesitation as the mistakes of scribes). The point should not be over-stated: bla mas
will often insist on particular readings established in commentarial traditions in
which they have been taught. Yet they will hesitate to dismiss or criticize
alternatives presented by other bla mas of different commentarial traditions, and
when pressed, may afirm that the alternative readings are valid for that other
lineage of descent. To approach this within narrowly political terms: if a bla ma
takes too strong a stand in rejecting one plausible good reading in favor of another
plausible good reading, he incurs the risk of unwittingly challenging some other
respected authority. If he could have near-total knowledge of all previous and
present views, then he might be happier to take such a risk, but such complete
knowledge is seldom available. What then, if Rin po che A were to take a radically
exclusivist position today, only to ind out tomorrow he had in doing so
inadvertently labelled Gter chen B or Mkhan chen C as deinitely mistaken? The
embarrassment could be considerable. So dogmatism tends to be avoided, and the
range of good readings cautiously tolerated. For most Rnying ma pa, the perfect
2
Generally, commentarial writings will consider only the readings witnessed in the speciic liturgical
tradition on which they are commenting, but occasionally, variation is acknowledged. Kong sprul’s
commentary on the Rdo rje phur pa rtsa ba’i rgyud kyi dum bu (’Jam mgon kong sprul blo gros mtha’
yas, Dpal rdo rje phur pa rtsa ba’i rgyud kyi dum bu’i ’grel pa snying po bsdud pa dpal chen dgyes
pa’i zhal lung, in Bdud ’joms bka’ ma [Bdud-’Joms ’Jigs-bral-ye-śes-rdo-rje Rñin ma Bka’ ma rgyas
pa], vol. tha [Kalimpong: Dupjung Lama, 1982-1987], 78-80) explicitly recognizes one variant in the
irst root verse (thig le/thigs pa), and implicitly acknowledges another (sgor shar/gor shar), elucidating
the text with reference to the alternative connotations. Kong sprul (Kong sprul, Bdud ’joms bka’ ma,
vol. tha, 92-93) furthermore draws attention to a contrast between the reading of the Rdo rje phur pa
rtsa ba’i rgyud kyi dum bu and of Ancient Tantra Collection texts for the second root verse, suggesting
they can be understood as variant translations, and reiterating that the signiicance of these profound
vajra words of the root tantras is the same in both cases (bsgyur ba gnyis don ni gong du bshad pa
dang ’dra’o; Kong sprul, vol. tha, 92.6). See the discussion in C. Cantwell, “To Meditate upon
Consciousness as Vajra: Ritual ‘Killing and Liberation’ in the rNying-ma-pa Tradition,” In Tibetan
Studies: Proceedings of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz
1995, ed. H. Krasser, M. T. Much, E. Steinkellner, and H. Tauscher (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie
der Wissenschaften, 1997), 1:115.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
4
and complete text of a tantra is not an historical archetype recoverable
philologically: it is something that exists only in the tantric heavens or in the
guardianship of the Ḍākinīs, of which extant terrestrial versions, including the
philologist’s, are in all likelihood little more than imperfect partial relections.3
We are not yet certain to what degree and in what way this partly ideological and
partly pragmatic view is peculiar to the Rnying ma tantras, and to what degree it
pervades other genres as well. We are aware of the variant versions of texts like
the Heart Sūtra preserved in the Bka’ ’gyur,4 and we are equally aware of the
perspective of modern scholars like Jonathan Silk and Paul Harrison, who
understand Indian Mahāyāna scriptures as works in constant motion that never
indigenously achieved a ixed entity. In addition, we are aware of the works by
colleagues in parallel ields, notably the modern Talmudists, who have clariied
the way in which anonymous collective scriptural authorship may work on the
ground. Nevertheless, we do not want to extrapolate from other ields, but will
ensure through careful collations that the Rnying ma texts talk to us directly with
their own historical message.
Why Ancient Tantra Collection Texts Are so Valuable
The Rnying ma or “Ancient” school of Tibetan Buddhism, like the Bon, has the
unusual distinction of basing its major tantric systems upon scriptures largely
excluded from the Bka’ ’gyur. The Rnying ma response was to consolidate their
tantras within their own compilation known as the Rnying ma’i rgyud ’bum, or
the Ancient Tantra Collection, a process that achieved increasing maturity in the
ifteenth century. In its fullest editions, this collection nowadays includes around
one thousand works, in about thirty-ive thousand folios, or seventy thousand
pages. The provenance and authenticity of the Rnying ma tantras has been
questioned in various ways from the turn of the eleventh century until the present
day. Some considered them translated from Sanskrit, hence authentic; others
considered them Tibetan compositions, hence inauthentic. Yet others, including
the famous eleventh century Rnying ma sage Rong zom chos kyi bzang po, seemed
to accept the possibility that they were compiled in Tibet, yet nevertheless deemed
them authentic.5 Either way, the Rnying ma tantras have had, and continue to have,
a very powerful inluence on Tibetan religion.
3
Since writing the above, we have noticed David Gray’s article in JIATS (David Gray, “On the Very
Idea of a Tantric Canon: Myth, Politics, and the Formation of the Bka’ ’gyur,” Journal of the
International
Association
of
Tibetan
Studies,
no.
5
[December
2009]:
http://www.thlib.org/collections/texts/jiats/#jiats=/05/gray/), which discusses different versions of this
mythic ideal throughout Tibetan Buddhism, including the speciically Rnying ma version of the revelation
of the tantras of Mahāyoga to King Jaḥ. In conclusion, Gray makes the point that the absence of the
ideal texts was a factor in preventing absolute canon closure.
4
J. Silk, The Heart Sūtra in Tibetan: A Critical Edition of the Two Recensions Contained in the
Kanjur (Wein: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 1994), 31-41.
5
Many (although not all) of these tantras are presented with Sanskrit equivalent titles and colophons
naming one or more of the illustrious igures from the traditional historical accounts of the early
transmissions as translators. Some later Rnying ma voices argued that these texts were indeed verbatim
translations from Sanskrit originals from the reign of Khri srong lde’u btsan. By contrast, much (not
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
5
Ancient Tantra Collection scriptures often become more widely known through
references reproducing citations given in important commentarial works,6 rather
than through direct reading of the source texts, although learned bla mas certainly
could, did, and still do, have direct recourse to scriptural texts.
The genre comes into view in the post-Imperial period. Modern academic
analysis, including our own, inds that most Rnying ma scriptures studied so far
resemble what Davidson7 has dubbed “gray” texts. Neither wholly Indian nor
wholly Tibetan, they are Tibetan compilations in the style of Indian tantrism
comprising predominantly Indic materials with some Tibetan admixture and
localization.
Our most reliable sources for the early Rnying ma are of course the Dunhuang
Tantric texts. Recent research on them reveals a sophisticated and complex tantrism
demonstrably continuous with the Rnying ma tantrism of later centuries, although
with interesting differences too. More speciically, detailed comparative
examinations of Dunhuang tantric materials with texts from the Ancient Tantra
Collection now shows with certainty that the Ancient Tantra Collection does indeed
conceal within its vast bulk a great deal of genuinely pre-Gsar ma pa Tantric
materials.8 For those interested in studying the early history of Tantric Buddhism
in Tibet, the Ancient Tantra Collection is thus potentially a treasure trove of
information.
all) modern scholarship locates them somewhat later, mainly after the collapse of empire around 842.
Interestingly, the criterion of Indian provenance used by the compilers of the Bka’ ’gyur to judge the
authenticity of a tantra was not always fully accepted by Rnying ma pa scholars, such as the inluential
Rong zom pa. As Dorji Wangchuk puts it (Dorji Wangchuk, “An Eleventh-Century Defence of the
Authenticity of the Guhyagarbha Tantra,” in The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism, edited by D.
Germano and H. Eimer [Leiden: Brill, 2002], 282), “Rong zom pa’s response… does not categorically
rule out the possibility of the tantra being a compilation or a composition by a Tibetan scholar… but
rather addresses his opponents from a stance of spiritual ethics, trying to persuade them that in spite
of such a possibility, one should approach the text with reason and respect on the basis of its scriptural
coherency.” Wangchuk presents some passages from Rong zom pa’s work; perhaps most pertinent is
the point that the Buddhas need not be restricted by time or place, or to superior Buddha-like bodies,
but arise in response to the needs of sentient beings. Thus (in Wangchuk’s translation), “even if tantric
treatises are taught with overlaps and so on, and even if it is possible that they were compiled and
composed by [Tibetan] Upādhyāyas, they should not be considered objects of doubt, for the ways the
blessings of the tathāgathas appear are not restricted” (rgyud kyi gzhung ldab bu la sogs par ston pa
dang / gal te mkhan po rnams kyis bsdus shing sbyar ba srid na yang / de bzhin bshegs pa’i byin gyis
rlabs byung ba la tshul nges pa med pa yin pas the tshom gyi yul du bya ba ma yin no/; Wangchuk,
“Eleventh-Century Defence,” 283-284).
6
C. Cantwell and R. Mayer, The Kīlaya Nirvāṇa Tantra and the Vajra Wrath Tantra: Two Texts
from the Ancient Tantra Collection (Vienna: The Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2007), Ch. 2.V.
7
R. Davidson, “Gsar ma Apocrypha: The Creation of Orthodoxy, Gray Texts, and the New
Revelation,” in The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism, edited by D. Germano and H. Eimer (Leiden:
Brill, 2002), 212.
8
Our work on the Dunhuang texts relating to the tantric phur pa practices demonstrates substantial
passages in common between the Dunhuang materials and Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying
ma pa texts. See especially C. Cantwell and R. Mayer, Early Tibetan Documents on Phur pa from
Dunhuang (Vienna: The Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2008), chapters 5 and 6.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
6
Textual Obscurity and Scribal Corruption in the Extant Ancient
Tantra Collection
Tibetology has known the historical potential of the Ancient Tantras since Rolf
Stein’s time, yet use of them has remained slight, because they are so dificult to
consult. One major problem is the lack of commentarial literature: only a very
small proportion of Ancient Tantra Collection texts have extant commentaries, so
that the root verses on their own frequently remain obscure even to the most learned
bla mas.
Another problem is scribal corruption. We know from comparisons with
Dunhuang manuscripts that much of the material in these texts is around one
thousand years old, ample time for scribal errors to appear. When editing two
Ancient Tantra Collection texts some years ago, we found around one word in
three differing between our six witnesses. If punctuation was included, there was
a statistical average of one variant for every three or four syllables. In addition to
such small-scale variants, there are also larger ones, where longer passages, whole
folios and entire chapters can vary, be lost, misplaced, or otherwise jumbled.
Complete chapters can differ immensely across the different editions, to the extent
that the average reader might wonder if they are the same text at all.
When faced with such textual dificulties, Tibetan bla mas, like their Western
counterparts, seek out other editions. Before the Cultural Revolution, there were
undoubtedly more versions than there are today. As the major repository of their
scriptural tradition, every major Rnying ma monastery once held a copy of the
Ancient Tantra Collection, and several hundreds must have existed in the 1950s.
Yet after the Cultural Revolution, only a handful are still available: four from
Bhutan which are almost identical, a xylograph edition from Sde dge in East Tibet,
and four manuscripts from northern Nepal and Southern Tibet which are related
to one another. In short, we can currently muster only nine witnesses, representing
three distinct traditions, and with the exception of the Sde dge xylograph, mainly
drawn from the geographical peripheries of the Tibetan cultural region. Many
famous manuscript editions of the past seem to have been lost, such as the collection
made by Ratna gling pa in the ifteenth century, or ’Jigs med gling pa’s eighteenth
century edition, and the library copies from major Rnying ma centers like Smin
grol gling and Kaḥ thog have not yet reappeared, and might not have survived at
all.
Increasing the Usability of the Ancient Tantra Collection Texts
Being so early and so inluential, there is clearly an incentive to study Ancient
Tantra Collection texts. The question is, how? Can we simply start reading them,
with no particular regard to which edition, and without comparing the different
editions? Or should we try to critically edit them irst, carefully comparing
manuscripts and assessing variant readings? Purists might argue that work on
unedited Ancient Tantra Collection texts is unsafe, yielding little more than random
impressions. Pragmatically speaking, that goes too far: especially at this very early
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
7
stage in their study, useful insights can certainly be gained by browsing the texts
just as one inds them. But undoubtedly we get a much iner and more nuanced
understanding by editing the texts.
Tibetans themselves certainly made serious efforts to edit these texts, but
circumstances conspired against them. The great bulk of the volumes, their rarity
and expense, and the long distances separating the Tibetan cultural regions meant
that Rnying ma editors could only rarely assemble a fully representative collection
of their tantras for comparative purposes. Bringing one huge collection from far
away was dificult enough; assembling all editions from everywhere almost
impossible. Of necessity, Rnying ma editorial techniques for such huge collections
more often relied on comparison with geographically proximate editions,
accompanied by conjecture. We see evidence of this in the way that the nine
available editions of the Ancient Tantra Collection follow distinctive regional
afiliations. For example, the four editions from Bhutan often remain textually
almost identical, slavishly reproducing exactly the same errors, lacunas, folio
misplacements and good readings alike. Much the same can be said for the four
editions from South Central Tibet and Northern Nepal, although across this more
dispersed region, the homogeneity is less pronounced, so that, for example, some
individual South Central texts can follow the Bhutanese recension. Likewise the
Sde dge edition from far off East Tibet is entirely different from any of the South
Central or Bhutanese editions, even though it is said to have some readings from
Central Tibet. What we have read so far seems mainly to suggest the dominant
inluence of its several known Eastern Tibetan exemplars. Such empirical evidence
suggests that, perhaps somewhat more than with the Bka’ ’gyur, regional traditions
grew up, as new copies were made from editions nearby, with only occasional
admixture from far-away editions. However, two words of caution need to be added
here: the regional distinctions might in fact also have a sectarian element, and
moreover are more typical of the times after canonical formation, rather than before.
All the South Central texts might be Byang gter – we do not yet know – and all
the Bhutanese ones are, of course, Padma gling pa tradition. By contrast, the Sde
dge xylograph edition drew on seven different ma dpe making no sectarian
distinctions. Only time, and the inding of further manuscripts, will give a broader
picture of how regional and sectarian considerations interacted. Given that lineage
differences within the Rnying ma pa school are so luid and permeable, at this
stage we tend to emphasize regional factors. It must also be emphasised that regional
differentiation grew with time, and that individual text versions could and did
travel vast distances far more easily in the pre-canonical period, before they were
thrown together into huge unwieldy collections. Hence we should see, as theory
predicts, that the genuinely early text versions are not yet so affected by such
regional factors.
In addition, we ind evidence of conjecture in the redaction of Ancient Tantra
Collection texts: one volume of the Rig ’dzin tshe dbang nor bu manuscript from
South Central Tibet still preserves many emendations made in red ink, which on
close analysis appear to be conjectural, made without systematic reference to other
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
8
editions.9 This resembles the editorial styles still used by Tibetan bla mas in
preparing new editions, in which intensive conjectural effort is typically invested
into correction of orthographic and grammatical errors. However, where there are
serious cruxes and no other editions to consult, the hazard of hypercorrection, as
mentioned above, becomes serious. Aware of such a danger, even ine editions
backed by powerful scholarly monastic institutions have sometimes preferred to
reproduce obvious error, rather than attempt audaciously to insert corrections with
no textual support. In fact, it is probable that deliberate conjectural correction was
much less frequent in the transmission of these revered scriptural texts than in
compilations of monastic liturgies and so on in everyday use. The corrections
throughout half of one volume of the Rig ’dzin edition were clearly distinguished
from the original text by their red coloring (unfortunately, not so clearly
distinguished for modern users of the microilm copy), and we cannot know whether
these emendations were sanctioned. Certainly, they stop rather abruptly in the
second half of the volume. In the carefully edited Sde dge edition, the only edition
we know to have been prepared from a comparatively wide range of ma dpe
including some from other regions, occasionally where uncertainty occurs,
alternative readings are noted in marginal annotations.10
Our belief is that this great manuscript tradition of the Ancient Tantra Collection
richly deserves the best attentions of modern editorial technique, not only for the
sake of modern academic scholars who ind within it fascinating views into the
ritual and religious world of post-Imperial Tibet, but also for the beneit of some
millions of Tibetan Buddhists who revere these texts as the ultimate scriptural
source of their religion.
How Do We Edit Ancient Tantra Collection Texts? Can We
Stemmatize Them?
The question then arises, with no precedents to emulate, how does modern
scholarship approach the editing of Ancient Tantra Collection texts? To start with,
we turned to a near example for inspiration. The Ancient Tantra Collection shares
9
We discuss this feature elsewhere (Cantwell and Mayer, The Kīlaya Nirvāṇa Tantra, 74-78). These
emendations, which appear not to have been made by the original scribe, cannot be considered a
comment on the standards adopted by the edition’s editors, yet had a future copyist adopted them, they
would have impacted on the textual tradition.
10
In many of the Sde dge Ancient Tantra Collection edition’s texts, there are occasional marginal
notes which supply alternative readings. There were eight such notes in the Rdo rje phur bu chos thams
cad mya ngan las ’das pa’i rgyud chen po (Myang ’das), and two in The Vajra Wrath, Root Vajrakīlaya
Tantra (Rdo rje khros pa phur pa rtsa ba’i rgyud; see Cantwell and Mayer, The Kīlaya Nirvāṇa Tantra;
the alternative readings are most easily examined by browsing the diplomatic editions of the Sde dge
texts given on the accompanying CD). In some cases, the notes could be seen as suggesting better
readings or amending a reading, but often the variant merely suggests an alternative or underlines a
textual crux. Generally, the variants are followed by wording which could be translated as,
“also/alternatively, we ind…” such as kyang/yang, yin nam, or simply, byung. In one case in the Myang
’das (Sde dge, vol. zha, f.76v; Cantwell and Mayer, The Kīlaya Nirvāṇa Tantra, 214, nb 572), Sde
dge’s two readings, mgyogs and ’khyog, essentially corresponded to differing alternative readings of
the Bhutanese and the South Central editions.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
9
the same methods of reproduction as the Bka’ ’gyur and, even if not quite so vast
as the Bka’ ’gyur, is nevertheless of massive size and of comparable dificulty to
transport long distances; like the Bka’ ’gyur, its texts are also mostly considered
Buddhavacana, the actual speech of the enlightened ones. Hence it seemed rational
to start by following the lead of such Bka’ ’gyur scholars as Helmut Eimer and
Paul Harrison, who have attempted to use classic stemmatic analysis.
Stemmatic analysis is a method developed over recent centuries largely by
Classicists and Biblical scholars. Its methods involve the systematic analysis of
indicative errors, to infer lines of textual descent. From this, one can reconstruct,
or partially reconstruct, an earliest ancestor, or archetype, from which all texts
descend. But there are clear limits to what stemmatics can do, as scholars such as
Bédier and Timpanaro have shown.11
The Bka’ ’gyur scholars quickly ran into exactly such limitations. Stemmatics
is based on the premise that the tradition is closed: in other words, that there is a
single ancestor or archetype from which all existing versions of a text descend.
Helmut Eimer had irst set out, very reasonably, in the hope that a single translation
of a text into Tibetan might function as such an archetype. But later research by
Paul Harrison found that Bka’ ’gyur traditions can be open:12 in other words, he
found that in some cases, the branches of the Bka’ ’gyur transmission may represent
different recensions of a text, differing, for instance, in the Tibetan equivalents of
Sanskrit terms.13 Soon after, Peter Skilling found that in a signiicant number of
speciic cases, texts from the Tshal pa and Them spangs ma lines cannot descend
from a common source.14 Many Bka’ ’gyur texts underwent re-translations or
revisions of earlier translations, and the versions in extant collections need not
always stem from a single translation. Recent scholarly work on further witnesses,
such as texts or text fragments in the proto-Bka’ ’gyur collections in Western Tibet,
11
See Cantwell and Mayer, The Kīlaya Nirvāṇa Tantra, 14, for a discussion of J. Bédier, “La tradition
manuscrite du Lai de l’Ombre: rélexions sur l’art d’éditer les anciens textes,” Romania 54 (1928):
161-196, 321-356; for Timpanaro, see especially his essay, “Textual Criticism and Linguistics, and
their Crises at the End of the Nineteenth and in the Twentieth Century,” in S. Timpanaro, The Genesis
of Lachmann’s Method, edited and translated by G. W. Most (Chicago, London: University of Chicago
Press, 2005), 119-138.
12
See P. Harrison, Druma-kinnara-rāja-paripṛcchā-sūtra. A Critical Edition of the Tibetan Text
(Recension A) (Tokyo: IIBS, 1992), xlvi-xlviii. Apart from his important pioneering studies, which
began the work of clarifying the textual relationships between the Bka’ ’gyur editions, Helmut Eimer
has continued to play a central role in the continuing development of Bka’ ’gyur and Bstan ’gyur studies.
13
Helmut Eimer, “Editorial,” in Transmission of the Tibetan Canon: Papers Presented at a Panel
of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995, edited by H. Eimer
(Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1997b), viii. It goes without saying
that in an open tradition, the variant versions can interact with one another at any stage, thereby further
confusing the issue.
14
Texts of proto-Bka’ ’gyur collections found in Western Tibet seem to represent a further line of
descent (H. Tauscher and B. Lainé, “Western Tibetan Kanjur Tradition,” in The Cultural History of
Western Tibet: Recent Research from the China Tibetology Research Center and the University of
Vienna, edited by D. Klimburg-Salter, Liang J., H. Tauscher, and Zhou Y. [Beijing, Vienna: China
Tibetology Publishing House, 2008], 350, 358). Also see P. Skilling, “From bKa’ bstan bcos to Bka’
’gyur and Bstan ’gyur,” in Transmission of the Tibetan Canon, edited by H. Eimer (Vienna: The Austrian
Academy of Sciences Press, 1997), 101.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
10
underlines this caution. For instance, Tomabechi discovered15 that the Tabo
fragments of the Guhyasamāja are in parts close to the Dunhuang manuscript
readings, perhaps preserving Rin chen bzang po’s (958-1055) early translation
before the recensional amendments of ’Gos lhas btsas (ca. 1050). Under such
circumstances, the central premises of classic Lachmannian stemmatics do not
pertain, even if other useful results can still be derived from less ambitious
stemmatic analysis.
Further complications arise due to the well-known historical luidity of the
Indian Buddhist scriptures themselves, before translation into Tibetan.16 Jonathan
Silk, for example, argues that they never had a unique compositional kernel, nor
were ever subjected to a unique redactorial moment, but on the contrary, continued
to change and grow organically throughout their history. Under such circumstances,
where the very notion of an original work is negated, what could stemmatics hope
to recover? Silk suggests we loosen our ixation on quests for original works, and
instead adopt the editorial methods developed by Peter Schäfer for medieval
rabbinic literature, which, quite unlike the Masoretic Bible, is highly diffuse.17
Naturally, we have to ask how such limitations on stemmatics might apply to
the Ancient Tantra Collection texts. Are their traditions open or closed? Do they
derive from multiple translations of possibly varying originals? Did they ever have
a unique compositional kernel, or a unique redactorial moment? Our previous
editions of Ancient Tantra Collection texts were intended, amongst other things,
to test the experimental hypothesis that since many of them were Tibetan-made
compilations of largely Indic fragments, some might have had an identiiable
moment of redaction or compilation, and therefore need not be irrevocably diffuse
in their origins, even if they might have become so in their subsequent transmission.
Prior to our new edition of the Thabs zhags) root tantra, we had edited three Ancient
Tantra Collection texts,18 and despite their considerable corruption, and the
sometimes very considerable differences between their different witnesses, we did
not ind in these cases much evidence that cannot be most easily explained as the
outcome of transmissional error and attempts to correct it, as well as some cases
15
T. Tomabechi, “Selected Tantra Fragments from Tabo Monastery,” in Tabo Studies II: Manuscripts,
Texts, Inscriptions, and the Arts, edited by E. Steinkellner and C. A. Scherrer-Schaub, Serie Orientale
Roma, no. 87 (Rome: IsIAO, 1999), 56, 76–78.
16
Harrison, Druma-kinnara-rāja-paripṛcchā-sūtra, xlvi, remarks, “we are already familiar with the
same… with regard to Sanskrit texts: this century has seen the demise of the notion of ‘the text’… we
are… accustomed to… a textual tradition.”
17
Unlike the Masoretic Bible with its single ixed form and the effective effacing of all variants, in
medieval Jewish Rabbinic literature, pericopes, long divorced from any original context, are shared
between different texts, while texts and pericopes alike vary endlessly over time and space. Since such
characteristics are shared by Indian Mahāyāna scriptures, Silk suggests that Schäfer’s analysis is relevant
to Buddhist Studies (Jonathan Silk, Numata Lecture, Oxford May 19th, 2008, “What Can Students of
Indian Buddhist Literature Learn from Biblical Text Criticism?”).
18
R. Mayer, A Scripture of the Ancient Tantra Collection: The Phur-pa bcu-gnyis (Oxford: Kiscadale
Publications, 1996); C. Cantwell and R. Mayer, The Kīlaya Nirvāṇa Tantra and the Vajra Wrath Tantra:
Two Texts from the Ancient Tantra Collection (Vienna: The Austrian Academy of Sciences Press,
2007).
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
11
of editorial intervention to standardize spellings of mantras and so forth. One text
even seemed partially amenable to stemmatic reconstruction,19 although biidity
stymied stemmatic analysis for the other two. With all three of these important
Rnying ma tantras, after attempting to account carefully for the causes of every
individual textual error or variation found within their different versions, we
therefore felt we were most likely dealing with texts formed in an identiiable
initial redactorial moment. But these texts were also in many places demonstrably
compiled from pre-existent parts, to the extent that all of them actually shared
some similar text passages at various points. It is entirely possible some such
pre-existent parts were already replete with orthographic and other errors before
incorporation into their new locations. One of the tantras perhaps gave a greater
sense of coherent redactorial vision than the other two. A further still unexplored
feature in early Rnying ma tantrism is evidence suggesting that the same or very
similar text titles might have served as the basis for quite separate compositions
at different occasions, so that several quite different texts bearing the same or
almost the same title seem to have been in circulation. However, bearing the same
title is of course not the same thing as being a variant version of the same
composition. While the issue about titles still needs more research, what we can
already say with reasonable certainty is that all the three texts we studied diverged
over time, and we reiterated our earlier proposal that the divergences such texts
have acquired over the last thousand years are in many cases no longer resolvable
into a single “correct” text – at least not within a traditional framework. A further
complication is that an “original” text recovered philologically might well
incorporate “incorrect” features or incoherencies, since, as we have found, these
texts were compiled from pre-existing parts that were quite likely not in themselves
error-free. In short, the most “correct” text is not necessarily the historically earliest
or even the archetype. Unsurprisingly, our philological analysis shows that the
learned redactors of the Sde dge xylograph on several occasions “corrected”
problematic readings quite likely inherited from original redactorial moments,
most notably mantras. Textual mutability has de facto become accepted and
accommodated as an inherent feature of Rnying ma tantric culture, even if reference
is still made towards the ideal of a more unitary and more perfect tradition.20
The situation has now developed with a further Ancient Tantra Collection
scripture we are currently editing, called in its fullest title, A Noble Noose of
Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis (’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padma ’phreng
gi don bsdus pa, from this point given the short title, Thabs zhags), which is rare
in having a surviving word-by-word commentary. The different extant versions
of this tantra can vary quite dramatically, underlining how prominently textual
variation igures within the literary culture of the Ancient Tantra Collection. We
19
20
Cantwell and Mayer, Kīlaya Nirvāṇa Tantra, 79.
Of course, apart from a handful of key texts like the Secret Essence Tantra (Rgyud gsang ba snying
po), most of these texts are not the object of regular classroom study in monastic curricula. Yet they
are read by the very learned, for ediication and inspiration. Understood as the backbone of the Rnying
ma tradition on which the all-pervading “Treasure” Revelations (Gter ma) are textually dependent,
they are held in great esteem.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
12
cannot absolutely conclude if its tradition was open or closed, if it descended from
multiple translations that later intermingled or if it descended from a single
redactorial moment, although the latter would seem much more likely. What we
have found however is that in most of its more prestigious surviving editions (even
though not in some more obscure peripheral versions), this scripture descended in
a strikingly luid relationship with its own commentary, which has been a major
cause of the very high degree of variation between its surviving versions today.
Here, we describe the transmission of this text, and explore some of the causes
and circumstances of its variability.
New Evidence from the Thabs zhags
The Thabs zhags is considered a key scripture by the Rnying ma pa, located within
a special and particularly esteemed doxographical section of the Ancient Tantra
Collections known as the Eighteen Tantras of Mahāyoga (Ma hā yo ga’i rgyud sde
bco brgyad). Its commentary displays some signs of possible authorship in Tibet:
in chapter six, it glosses the Tibetan equivalent word for maṇḍala, dkyil ’khor, in
terms of the two parts of the Tibetan word, giving irst an explanation of center
(dkyil), followed by an elaboration of the term, circle (’khor).21 But the core verses
of the root text do not appear Tibetan in any such obvious way, and the title was
accepted as an authentic Ancient Tradition scripture in the text lists of two early
Sa skya masters. Grags pa rgyal mtshan (1147-1216) included it as one of only six
Rnying ma scriptures in his tantra catalogue, and his great-nephew Chos rgyal
’phags pa’s (1235-1280) catalogue of 1273 followed likewise.22 From there, it
found its way into those Bka’ ’gyur editions of the Tshal pa branch that have a
special Ancient Tantra section, and also into at least two independent Bka’ ’gyur
collections. However, the famous fourteenth-century compiler of the Bka’ ’gyur,
Bu ston (1290-1364), did not endorse it as a valid translation from Sanskrit, and
it does not occur in the Bka’ ’gyurs of the Them spangs ma branch of descent,which
21
We understand from Sanskritist colleagues that it is extremely unlikely that the Sanskrit word,
maṇḍala, could have been similarly separated into two parts with exactly these implications. It seems
then, that this part of the Commentary cannot be an unmediated translation from a Sanskrit original. It
is worth noting that Tibetan commentarial traditions sometimes break the Sanskrit word, maṇḍala, into
two for the purpose of glossing its meaning, but the connotations would not correspond neatly to the
Tibetan equivalent term. For instance, Mi pham glosses maṇḍal as essence or vital juice, and la as
taking or holding, so that maṇḍala would mean, to grasp the essence enlightened qualities. He adds
that if the word is taken as a whole, it can also mean, completely circular or entirely surrounded, and
hence is translated as dkyil ’khor: maṇḍal ni snying po’am/ bcud dang la ni len cing ’dzin pa ste snying
po’i yon tan ’dzin pa’i gzhir gyur pa’am/ rnam pa gcig tu sgra ’brel mar thad kar bsgyur na kun nas
zlum zhing yongs su bskor ba’i don du ’jug pas dkyil ’khor zhes bya ste/ (Mi pham rgya mtsho, Gsang
’grel phyogs bcu’i mun sel gyi spyi don ’od gsal snying po, in ’Jam mgon ’ju mi pham rgya mtsho’i
gsung ’bum rgyas pa sde dge dgon chen par ma, vol. 19 [Paro: Lama Ngodrup and Sherab Drimey,
1984-1993], 136. Thanks to Karma Phuntsho for drawing our attention to this source).
22
Helmut Eimer, “A Source for the First Narthang Kanjur: Two Early Sa skya pa Catalogues of the
Tantras,” in Transmission of the Tibetan Canon: Papers Presented at a Panel of the 7th Seminar of
the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995, edited by H. Eimer (Wien: Verlag der
Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1997a), 52.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
13
do not have Ancient Tantra sections. The Bka’ ’gyur traditions, then, were not in
agreement, and we remain uncertain about its original provenance.
This text is extremely interesting for several reasons. It is one of only two
full-length, complete Ancient Tantra Collection scriptures found at Dunhuang, the
other being the Guhyasamāja, which is a text far more used by the Gsar ma pa
than the Rnying ma pa, who, de facto, rarely practice Guhyasamāja traditions,
even while having it in the Ancient Tantra Collection. The Thabs zhags is
furthermore one of the very few Ancient Tantra Collection scriptures anywhere to
have its own word-by-word commentary. This commentary survived at Dunhuang,
and in fact the Dunhuang version of the root tantra comes embedded within the
commentary, in the form of lemmata. Yet the commentary was seemingly ignored
or even forgotten by the later Rnying ma tradition. Despite the fact that a somewhat
corrupt partial version of it survives in three Bstan ’gyur editions, it does not seem
to have had any signiicant presence in Rnying ma collections such as the
Transmitted Teachings of the Nyingma Tradition (Rnying ma bka’ ma),23 and none
of the highly learned Rnying ma bla mas we showed it to seems to have had any
prior knowledge of its existence. We have found traditional citations from the
Thabs zhags commentary in the works of Rong zom chos kyi bzang po and of
Klong chen pa.24 They cite different passages, both from chapter two, which deals
with the samayas.25 Rong zom pa’s citation is almost verbatim from the
commentary, with some words omitted, while Klong chen pa seems to paraphrase
a number of points made in the commentary. In both cases, they simply note that
the citation is from the Thabs zhags, without specifying that it comes from the
commentary rather than the root text. Such historically early non-differentiation
between root text (mūla) and commentary might be of interest, in the light of our
discussion below.
23
No version of the Thabs zhags commentary was included in Dudjom Rinpoche’s Bka’ ma collection.
We do not know if it was included in earlier Bka’ ma collections. A copy of the Peking Bstan ’gyur
version has been included in the new Bka’ ma shin tu rgyas pa compiled by KaH thog mkhan po ’jams
dbangs (Chengdu, 1999), vol. wu (80), 125-236. It has been copied anew for this collection, but it does
clearly correspond to the Bstan ’gyur versions of the text, and an additional colophon identiies its
provenance: pe cin bstan ’gyur las bthus/ (presumably, btus or ’thus intended), “extracted from the
Peking Bstan ’gyur” (vol. wu [80], 236.5).
24
See Rong zom chos kyi bzang po, Rong zom bka’ ’bum [Thimphu: Kunsang Topgay, 1976],
397-398; Klong chen pa, Bdud ’joms bka’ ma, la:63; and G. Dorje, “The Guhyagarbhatantra and Its
XIVth Century Commentary, phyogs-bcu mun-sel,” unpublished Ph.D thesis [School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London, 1988], 393).
25
Klong chen pa also cites the root text elsewhere in the Phyogs bcu’i mun sel, passages from chapters
one, ive, ten, and from the inal teaching in the Thabs zhags root text, chapter forty-two (Klong chen
pa, Bdud ’joms bka’ ma, la:255, 279-280, 445-446, 488-489, 618-619). Rong zom pa refers to the
importance of the Thabs zhags (Rong zom pa, Rong zom bka’ ’bum, 490), and he cites from two parts
of the root text of chapter one (Rong zom pa, Rong zom bka’ ’bum, 375, 408), also including a further
apparent citation (Rong zom pa, Rong zom bka’ ’bum, 392-393) we have not identiied.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
14
Contents of the Thabs zhags and Their Historical Interest
The contents of this text amply demonstrate how interesting and worthy of editing
such texts can be. We have recently completed a preliminary translation of both
root tantra and commentary, but since we are dealing with the doctrines and
historical implications in greater detail elsewhere, we only briely review them
here.
The root text and commentary together present a complex Mahāyoga doctrine
that arguably equals the contemporary Rnying ma tradition in sophistication and
complexity. They teach a classic Rnying ma pa Mahāyoga doctrine of evenness,
or sameness (mnyam pa nyid), reminiscent of the famous Secret Essence Tantra
(Rgyud gsang ba snying po). Vairocana, the other ive family Buddhas, with their
consorts and retinues of bodhisattvas, make up the peaceful deities. The central
male deity of the wrathful maṇḍala is a form of Śrī Heruka with nine heads and
eighteen arms,26 surrounded by the Ten Wrathful Deities, or Khro bo bcu. The
central female is the great fearsome female deity (’Jigs byed chen mo), speciied
in the commentary as Ral gcig ma (Ekajaṭā), still the main ma mo, or wrathful
female deity, of the Rnying ma pantheon. These main deities are surrounded by a
large entourage of emanations whose names, ordering, and attributes remain very
similar in some transmitted Rnying ma texts, including some modern liturgical
texts. In addition, the tantra teaches a wide range of ostensibly more pragmatic
rituals, yet it packages them in a framework which comprehensively internalizes
them, conspicuously turning them towards an exclusively soteriological purpose
and orientation. It achieves this by an interpretation of Mahāyoga ritual that might
be seen as anticipating Klong chen pa’s Rdzogs chen-oriented interpretations of
the fundamental Mahāyoga tantra, the Secret Essence Tantra, in his famous Phyogs
bcu’i mun sel commentary. The Thabs zhags commentary also includes numerous
citations from other named tantric texts, some of whose titles correspond to famous
scriptures of the Eighteen Tantras of Mahāyoga. However, we have not located
the quoted passages in the extant scriptures of the same names, and it appears that
they may not be intended as exact citations in any case.27
The marginal annotations to the Dunhuang manuscript version of the
commentary are extremely valuable, existing nowhere else, since the Bstan ’gyur
versions did not reproduce them. They mention Śāntigarbha and several times
speak of Sambhava or Padmasambhava, but in enigmatic terms. Other scholars,
following Eastman’s short discussion of this text in the 1980s,28 have assumed
26
Described in A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis (’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags
pa padma ’phreng gi don bsdus pa’i ’grel pā), chapter 12: 47r-49v, IOL Tib J 321
(http://idp.bl.uk/database/oo_loader.a4d?pm=IOL%20Tib%20J%20321).
27
See C. Cantwell and R. Mayer, “The Dunhuang Thabs kyi zhags pa padma ’phreng gi don bsdus
pa’i ’grel pa’ Manuscript: A Source for Understanding the Transmission of Mahāyoga in Tibet. A
Progress Report,” to appear in OTDO Monograph Series 3, edited by M. Kapstein and Y. Imaeda, in
press.
28
K. W. Eastman, “Mahāyoga Texts at Tun-huang,” Bulletin of Institute of Buddhist Cultural Studies
22 (1983): 49-52.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
15
they represent Padmasambhava as author of the commentary.29 In fact, the
manuscript has no clear cut colophon at all, beyond giving a scribe’s name. What
it does inish with is an enigmatic annotated homage that is not unambiguously
identiiable as a colophon, together with a marginal note, which seems, if anything,
perhaps just as likely to point to Padmasambhava as the source of the root tantra,
possibly with Śāntigarbha as author of the commentary. However, we have
identiied a closely parallel verse to the main text’s homage in Nyang ral nyi ma
’od zer’s (1124-1192) Padmasambhava hagiography, the Zangs gling ma, and it
now seems clear that the commentary’s main text does indeed conclude with a
devotional praise to Padmasambhava.30 This may help to shed light on the
pre-history of the Rnying ma tradition, with a Tantric scripture associated with
Padmasambhava from the tenth century or perhaps even earlier; the dating of
Dunhuang texts remains too primitive to permit real certainty. The commentary
does employ some of the doctrinal technical terms associated with another genuinely
very early text associated with Padmasambhava, the Instructions on the Garland
of Views (Man ngag lta ’phreng), but in several other respects shows a different
doctrinal orientation.31 Śāntigarbha, a contemporary of Padmasambhava, was an
Indian master well known from early sources, and particularly associated with
Yogatantra texts. In Bu ston’s writings, he is given as a translator of the Total
Puriication of All Evil Existences, the King of Splendour (Ngan song thams cad
yongs su sbyong ba gzi brjid kyi rgyal po’i brtag pa, Sarva-durgati-pariśodhanatejorājasya-kalpa).32 The ’Phang thang ma claims he performed the consecration
rituals for Bsam yas.33 Śāntigarbha continues to play an important role alongside
Padmasambhava in later Rnying ma literature as one of the so-called Eight
Vidyādharas of India, whom the Rnying ma pa revere as important founders of
29
A recent article from Sam van Schaik, for example, writes that “the Dunhuang Ms IOL Tib J 321
contains a colophon which states that Padmasambhava was the author of the commentary” (Sam van
Schaik, “A Deinition of Mahāyoga,” in Tantric Studies 1 [Hamburg: Center for Tantric Studies, 2008],
47).
30
Our forthcoming book presents the evidence in detail.
31
In general terms, the Thabs zhags tends to more narrowly focus on its own speciic approach to
liberation, while the Garland of Views has a wider expository range. Also, unlike the Thabs zhags root
tantra, the Garland of Views is written as commentary, in a human voice, rather than the divine voices
of scripture. Those technical terms shared by both texts are still widely current in modern Rnying ma
literature, which likes to cite the Instructions on the Garland of Views as their ultimate source and
which still explains them in very similar terms to the Thabs zhags comnmentary and the Instructions
on the Garland of Views. See C. Cantwell and R. Mayer, “Continuity and Change in Tibetan Mahāyoga
Ritual: Some Evidence from the Tabzhag (Thabs zhags) Manuscript and Other Dunhuang Texts,” in
Tibetan Ritual, ed. José Cabezón (New York: Oxfor University Press, 2010), 79, 87 n. 29.
32
See A. Herrmann-Pfandt, Die lHan kar ma: Ein früher Katalog der ins Tibetische übersetzten
buddhistischen Texte (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008), 177,
item
323.
Martin
( Ti b s k r i t
Philology,
Jerusalem,
April
2006,
http://tibetan-studies-resources.blogspot.com/2006/04/tibskrit-bibliography-of-tibetan.html; entry on
Śāntigarbha) notes that Bu ston’s Yogatantra history (135.1, 140.1) lists his works and mentions his
Yogatantra explanations, ’Bru ’grel rgan po.
33
rgya gar gyi slob dpon bsam yas kyi rab gnas mkhan shaṃ ting gar bha/ (’Phang thang ma/ dkar
chag ’phang thang ma/ sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa [Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2003], 2 and
front matter plate 2, folio 1v.6-7).
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
16
their Mahāyoga tradition, and several of whom igure quite visibly in the Dunhuang
literature.34
In short, this old manuscript adds considerable weight to the evidence for
substantial representatives of what we now call Rnying ma Mahāyoga being already
present before the Dunhuang caves were closed. But such continuity is hardly
surprising, since the Thabs zhags root text itself still exists within the Ancient
Tantra Collection, and was cited as a source by various Rnying ma authorities over
the centuries; most of the commentary still survives in the Bstan ’gyur, even if
somewhat ignored.
The Thabs zhags Transmission
The Thabs zhags transmission in Tibet comprises two parts: the transmission of
the root scripture, and the transmission of the commentary. To understand the
transmission of the Thabs zhags in Tibet, we must consider that while the root
tantra probably did originally exist as a stand alone text, this stand alone version
seems to have been displaced very early on by another work in which the root text
came embedded in its commentary. We now know from stemmatic analysis that
the ancient stand-alone version did in fact leave traces within various marginal
editions in the extreme west, east and south of the Tibetan cultural regions.
However, by the time the Tshal pa Bka’ ’gyur and the some of the Rnying ma pa
canonical editions were being compiled, this stand-alone version seems to have
been lost to view. At least, we can certainly see that on separate occasions, canonical
compilers both Rnying ma and Gsar ma felt forced to attempt their own independent
efforts at re-extracting the root text from the commentary, and in doing so, came
to rather different conclusions about what was commentary and what was root. In
this paper, we will briely describe the transmission of the commentary, and then
focus on these prestigious and inluential canonical editions of the root text, the
ones that were and still are used by most Tibetan readers, and relect on the different
decisions their editors made about the boundaries of the root text.
The commentary survives in only two sources: the Dunhuang manuscript and
a truncated version in the three Bstan ’gyur editions of Peking, Snar thang, and
Dga’ ldan.35 The Bstan ’gyur versions derive from a single ancestor, as evidenced
in numerous shared indicative errors, including the omission of all text from the
middle of chapter six until the end of chapter ten; and from the middle of chapter
thirteen until the end of chapter seventeen: altogether over 30 percent of the total
text. Without the Dunhuang text, these missing parts would not be recoverable.
34
As far as we are currently aware, without having yet made an exhaustive search, at least ive out
of this list of eight masters have turned up so far in various Dunhuang tantric texts: Mañjuśrīmitra in
IOL Tib J 331.1, and in IOL Tib J 1774; Prabhahasti seems perhaps to be referred to (as “Pra be se”)
in PT 44 (Cantwell and Mayer, Early Tibetan Documents, 60), Padmasambhava in several (PT 44, PT
307, IOL Tib J 321), Śāntigarbha in IOL Tib J 321; Vimalamitra (Bye ma la mu tra, f.1) in IOL Tib J
644 and IOL Tib J 688 (on rosaries); Mañjuśrīmitra, Hūṃkara (and Buddhagupta), in IOL Tib J 1774
(slob pon nī ’bu ta kub ta dang / shī rī man ’ju dang / hung ka ra).
35
It does not, however, survive in the Sde dge or Co ne Bstan ’gyurs.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
17
Conversely, some much smaller but still signiicant omissions in the Dunhuang
text can be recovered from the Bstan ’gyur.
The transmission of the root scripture is more complex. It descends in ive extant
branches, each clearly distinguished by their sharing of unique indicative errors
and other features, and in two further Independent Bka’ ’gyur manuscripts, both
of which share important features with the ifth branch, but not its indicative errors.
1. Firstly, there are the lemmata within the Dunhuang manuscript.
2. Secondly, there are the lemmata from the Bstan ’gyur commentary.
3. Thirdly, several Bka’ ’gyurs from the Tshal pa line carry the root text in
their Ancient Tantra sections.36 The version in the Sde dge xylograph
Ancient Tantra Collection must also be considered part of this Bka’ ’gyur
branch, since it must have been prepared using publisher’s proofs (par
yig) made from the same blocks as the slightly earlier Sde dge xylograph
Bka’ ’gyur,37 with little more than the pagination varying.
4. Fourthly, there is a version witnessed by all four available Bhutanese
Ancient Tantra Collection manuscripts, namely Mtshams brag, Sgang
steng-a, Sgang steng-b, and Sgra med rtse.
5. Fifthly, there is a version witnessed by the South Central Tibetan Ancient
Tantra Collection manuscript editions of Gting skyes, Rig ’dzin, and
Kathmandu (we have not been able to check the Nubri manuscript of this
grouping, since the relevant folios are missing).38
6. Finally, thanks to our colleagues Helmut Eimer, Helmut Tauscher, and
Bruno Lainé, who have generously shared unpublished photographs with
us, we now know that further witnesses of the text are also found in the
two Independent Bka’ ’gyurs of ’Ba’ thang and Hemis, and these witnesses
share the textual tradition of the South Central version, but they each have
their own unique indicative errors.
These ive versions of the root text differ from each other, sometimes radically.
At irst glance, one might imagine the variation to result from an open tradition,
36
The Rgyal rtse Them spangs ma manuscript, the progenitor of the other main line of Bka’ ’gyur
descent, did not have an Ancient Tantra section (Paul Harrison commented, “I would say there is
virtually no chance that the text was included in the rGyal rtse Them spangs ma MS Kanjur.” Personal
communication, August 6th, 2007; see also Helmut Eimer, “Structure of the Tibetan Kanjur,” in The
Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism, edited by H. Eimer and D. Germano [Leiden: Brill, 2002], 66).
Hence the four mixed Bka’ ’gyurs of Snar thang, Sde dge, Lha sa, and Urga, could be predicted also
in this case to have relied on exemplars from the Tshal pa Bka’ ’gyur branch, and our collations,
demonstrating a close relation between all the Bka’ ’gyur versions, would support that prediction. The
case of the Ulan Bator manuscript Bka’ ’gyur is less clear, since this is said to be a Them spangs ma
Bka’ ’gyur, yet it also contains an Ancient Tantra section. However, since these texts seem to be
identical to the eighteen or nineteen contained in the Tshal pa editions, they might simply be a copy
of those, which technically would render the Ulan Bator manuscript a mixed Bka’ ’gyur, rather than a
pure Them spangs ma transmission.
37
Samten G. Karmay, Feast of the Morning Light, Senri Ethnological Reports, no. 57 (Osaka:
National Museum of Ethnology, 2005), 78, describes the process of making the publisher’s proofs (par
yig).
38
Missing from volume ma.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
18
like those Bka’ ’gyur texts where different Tibetan translations, sometimes also
deriving from differing Sanskrit sources, had descended separately and then
interacted within Tibet. If the Dunhuang inds had never been recovered, this is
quite possibly the kind of conclusion philologists might have come to for the Thabs
zhags.
But on closer inspection, the evidence actually indicates otherwise. Differences
between the two versions of the commentary can all be explained by transmissional
error causing loss or corruption of text in one or the other version. Striking
variations in the root text appear to have been generated from confusion as to which
words of the commentary were lemmata, and which words were commentary. We
believe the South Central Tibetan Ancient Tantra Collection grouping, with the
two independent Bka’ ’gyurs of ’Ba’ thang and Hemis, preserve the original
boundaries of the stand-alone root text. However, the historically much more
inluential Tshal pa Bka’ ’gyur and Bhutanese editions of the root text do not
descend from the original stand-alone root text: they descend from the commentary,
and on different occasions, took quite different and mutually varying decisions
about what were lemmata of the root text and what was commentary. So even
though our textual analysis may not be able irrevocably to exclude all other
possibilities, including an open tradition,39 nevertheless it is undeniable that a major
factor in the social transmission of this tantra over the last ten centuries has been
its fuzzy boundaries with its own commentary within its most widely used editions.
There are parts of the commentary where all the lemmata are made perfectly
clear by the structure or wording of the text. For example, most chapters commence
with a clearly framed four line verse of root text. Often, words of the root text may
be signaled by wording, such as zhes gsungs te (it is said). However, there are large
sections where the root text is not explicitly marked off in this way.
The Dunhuang scribes clearly understood the importance of distinguishing root
text from commentary. In the Dunhuang manuscript, lemmata are often highlighted
with a semi-transparent wash sometimes found in Indian and Tibetan manuscripts
that is similar to the idea of modern highlighting ink. Unfortunately, it seems not
to have been applied completely or consistently,40 leaving major ambiguities.41 We
39
There are several possible scenarios, although only a few likely ones: perhaps a unitary root text
irst appeared in Tibet embedded in its commentary, and variation was generated as scribes tried to
separate the lemmata from the commentary; or perhaps a unitary root text might have begun life
independently, and over time become expanded and contracted through editorial reference to the
commentary; or perhaps there was an open tradition in which several differing original root texts
interacted over time with each other and with the commentary. We believe only the second of these
possibilities is at all likely.
40
The exact original extent of the highlighting is uncertain. In some cases, the wash may originally
have been applied, but later vanished. There are also other cases where it has seeped through the page,
so that some text on the reverse side mistakenly appears to have been highlighted (although this is
mostly a problem only for modern readers of the digital images, since this feature is clearer when
reading the actual document).
41
Sometimes, text that would clearly appear to be part of the root text, and is so indicated by the
phrasing of the text, is not highlighted, and the dissolution of the wash cannot explain all such examples.
More rarely, text which is not found in any of our extant root texts is highlighted.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
19
cannot know how far other ancient manuscripts might have applied such marking,
and there is no evidence for it in the modern Bstan ’gyur versions. However, it
does enable us to see how the scribe of the Dunhuang manuscript understood the
boundaries of the root and commentary, at least for large sections of the text. And
it is striking that a good deal of text that occurs in some or all of our various root
texts, is neither indicated as root text in the Dunhuang manuscript by wording or
by highlighting.
To consider one example (see the Transcription Section), parallel diplomatic
transcriptions of part of chapter eleven from: [1] the Dunhuang manuscript; [2]
the South-Central Tibetan manuscripts; [3] the Bhutanese manuscript tradition;
[4] the Bka’ ’gyur Tradition (as represented here simply by D/Dk). See also the
British Library’s digital images of the relevant folios (folios 42r-43r, 44v-45r, at
http://idp.bl.uk/database/oo_loader.a4d?pm=IOL%20Tib%20J%20321), on which
the highlighting is clear.
IOL Tib J 321, folios 41v-42r.
Reproduced by kind permission of The British
Library.
IOL Tib J 321, folios 42v-43r.
Reproduced by kind permission of The British
Library.
-
-
IOL Tib J 321, folios 43v-44r.
Reproduced by kind permission of The British
Library.
IOL Tib J 321, folios 44v-45r.
Reproduced by kind permission of The British
Library.
-
-
Firstly, if one looks at this passage in the Dunhuang manuscript, it can be seen
that the mantras alone have been selected for highlighting, most probably indicating
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
20
that they alone constitute root text.42 Then, if you look at Transcription B, you will
see that more than ive hundred years later, the South Central Tibetan and the ’Ba’
thang independent Bka’ ’gyur editions still agree with this assessment (the passage
is unfortunately lost through folio loss in the Hemis independent Bka’ ’gyur),
reproducing as root text only what the Dunhuang manuscript has highlighted. The
Bhutanese editions on Transcription C have mainly agreed with this assessment,
but have also added the list of eight zoomorphic goddesses found lower down in
the commentary (for convenience, we have underlined them in the Dunhuang
manuscript transcription). By contrast, the Bka’ ’gyur versions in Transcription D
disagree entirely: in this section they take every single word given in the
commentary as root text.
What has happened here? We know from stemmatic analysis that the South
Central and Independent Bka’ ’gyur traditions alone remain faithful to an ancient
and correct tradition as represented in this case in the Dunhuang manuscript through
its highlighting, while the Bka’ ’gyur tradition has mistakenly allowed a lot of
commentarial passages to intrude into the root text. But in fact, there are powerful
apparent justiications for the Bka’ ’gyur reading. The text at this point appears
seemlessly to continue the reported conversation begun at the beginning of the
chapter, between Vajrasattva, as teacher of the tantra and Vajrapaṇi, as interlocutor.
In other words, unlike much of the commentary, it takes the literary form of root
text, the actual speech acts of the Buddhas, rather than the commentarial utterances
of a human voice. But this raises further questions, because elsewhere in the text,
Vajrasattva is the interlocutor, and Vairocana the expounder: might this section
then be an interpolation from another tantra? Yet that need not be the case, since
Vajrapaṇi and the Eight Bodhisattvas are undoubtedly part of the maṇḍala, so that
Vajrasattva could quite convincingly be explained as addressing his explanation
to Vajrapaṇi in the implied capacity of intermediary to Vairocana. Thus the question
remained for the Bka’ ’gyur editors, does the passage count as commentary, or is
it intended as an integral part of the root text? The text here describes and comments
on the effectiveness of the female deities who are listed in the irst part of the
chapter, and whose mantras are now given. The phrasing of the additional text
correctly omitted in the South Central, ’Ba’ thang, and Bhutanese versions could
from appearances alone perfectly well be either root text or commentarial meditative
instruction. It is almost impossible to adjudicate between the different readings
without stemmatic analysis.
Perhaps Tibetan editors found it additionally hard to know the answers to these
questions, because the literary conventions separating Buddhist root tantras from
42
An element of uncertainty remains, since very occasionally, the manuscript highlights words or
phrases that it clearly does not recognise as root text – for instance, a few citations of other texts are
highlighted. Furthermore, we are considering the possibility that for areas where the commentary merely
reproduces root text, the manuscript may be satisied with highlighting the opening words or otherwise
leaving long passages of root text unhighlighted. In this case, however, the coincidence of the South
Central Tibetan and ’Ba’ thang versions agreeing with the manuscript’s highlighted words suggests
that the manuscript correctly identiied the root text. Moreover, there is no other part of the manuscript
where mantras are singled out for highlighting.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
21
their commentaries are not always rigorously observed. A root tantra text passage
can sometimes look like commentary, and vice versa. Moreover, within a tantra,
interlocutors and expounders can change (we ind this for example within the Phur
pa bcu gnyis), and there is no inherent reason why a divine igure who is an
interlocutor at one juncture cannot become an expounder at another.
If the Dunhuang manuscript is anything to go by, it is quite likely that the Tshal
pa Bka’ ’gyur and Bhutanese Ancient Tantra Collection editors were not much
helped by the layout of the commentary witnesses they were working from. Albeit
rarely, we can sometimes feel conident that the Dunhuang manuscript’s
highlighting technique does identify commentary intruding into the root text. The
opening root text citation in both chapters seven and eight contains a single line
explaining that Vajrasattva is being addressed. This line in each opening verse is
un-highlighted in the Dunhuang manuscript, but it occurs (mistakenly) in the Bka’
’gyur version of the root text. Unfortunately, most occasions where we have
apparent disagreement, often over extensive passages, are not so easily resolved.
The Dunhuang manuscript does not highlight any of the text within the penultimate
chapter forty-one, which some versions count as the irst part of the inal chapter.43
The Bhutanese Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa version appears
largely to accept this assessment, jumping from the chapter’s opening words to
the content of chapter forty-two, which in some versions is not a separate chapter.44
Yet the Bka’ ’gyur version includes every word of chapter forty-one of the
commentarial text, while only only the South Central Ancient Tantra Collection
and two Independent Bka’ ’gyurs correctly show only a few lines from it. In this
instance, the text actually looks much more like commentary, suggesting a good
case for the Bhutanese decision, although the speciic lines given in the South
Central Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa and the Independent Bka’
’gyurs make good sense as root text and are actually correct. Again, there is no
easy or obvious way of adjudicating such a case without stemmatics. In this paper,
we have examined only one specimen boundary difference: in fact, the extant
versions of the root text all display different and unique boundary choices in various
places, showing that the deinition of the root texts’ boundaries has been quite
undecided over the last one thousand years. At least ive different decisions about
it survive in the extant literature, and we have no idea how many others might have
existed in the past.45
43
Equivalent to the irst part of the inal unlabelled chapter in the Dunhuang manuscript version.
44
Note that in contrast, in chapter seven, the Bhutanese version accepts strings of mantra syllables
given in the commentary (unhighlighted in the Dunhuang manuscript) in its version of the root text,
where the Tshal pa Bka’ ’gyur, the ’Ba’ thang Bka’ ’gyur, and South Central Ancient Tantra Collection
versions do not include them (the Hemis Bka’ ’gyur is missing this section through folio loss).
45
In addition to the decisions represented by the three groupings of root text versions, we can add
the commentary’s implicit marking of lemmata by its wording in some parts of the text, together with
its apparent failure to mark off the lemmata in other parts of the text (making its assessment of the
boundaries uncertain in these areas of the text). Finally, we have the added layer of the Dunhuang
manuscript’s version of the commentary with its highlighting, apparently clarifying the commentary’s
assessment, but in fact, still leaving some uncertainty, and apparently underestimating the extent of the
root text, in comparison with the three surviving root text versions.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
22
Perhaps we have little option but to allow, as do Tibetan bla mas with some
reluctance in actual social practice, that the root text of the Thabs zhags has taken
several widely differing forms, most of them equally defensible on purely semantic
grounds. Despite the probable unitary origins of the text in a single archetype,
undoubtedly, the boundaries between the root text and the commentary have proven
fuzzy for a thousand years or more. If we accept the possible interpretation that
the root text was originally seen as the teachings of Padmasambhava, a fully
enlightened being in human form who resembles the later Rnying ma treasure
revealers by being able to produce both scripture and commentary alike, then it
looks harder still to ix the fuzzy boundaries without the beneit of stemmatics.
The text of the Thabs zhags root tantra remains singularly dificult to separate
from its commentary to this day and probably would have always remained so,
without the beneit of modern stemmatic analysis.
Concluding Relections
In previous studies, we have looked at how what may seem signiicant variation
to modern Western eyes, is tolerated in different editions of Rnying ma tantric
texts. For example, we looked at the development of the Bdud ’joms gter gsar
sngon ’gro text, from Bdud ’joms gling pa’s (1835-1904) earlier version to that of
the second Bdud ’joms sprul sku, ’Jigs bral ye shes rdo rje (1904-1987).46 Some
years ago, we looked at two variants within the Vajrakīlaya root verses, perhaps
transmissionally generated, both of which have attracted an immense degree of
commentarial exegesis over the centuries from many great masters.47 Thus the
Thabs zhags reminds us once again that beyond technical questions of open or
closed transmissions, a major desideratum for Rnying ma textual scholars is further
investigation into its culture of seemingly tolerated textual variation – a topic not
so far suficiently explored.
Institutionally speaking, Rnying ma tantric culture was a world of shifting
decentralized religious authority, where no single body could establish a text
deinitive for all. Moreover, textual reproduction through manuscript copies
dominated over print culture. Sde dge’s late eighteenth century xylographic edition
was the only Ancient Tantra Collection ever printed, and as has often proven to
be the case with Tibetan literature, the impact of its printing in any case did little
to reduce the variation between editions.48 In common with much traditional
46
C. Cantwell, “Variations in Tibetan Buddhist Meditations on Deities: Relections on the Process
of Generating Practices,” Unpublished paper presented to the UK Association for Buddhist Studies
Conference: Buddhism and Popular Culture, Lancaster, July 2006. Rather more radical variation has
since been generated within English language sources presenting the Bdud ’joms gter gsar sngon ’gro
practices, since interpretations of the terse instructions have greatly varied.
47
See note 2, and on the speciic variant of the homophones, sgo/go in the irst root verse, see Mayer,
A Scripture, 213-216.
48
The popular perception that a manuscript tradition must necessarily generate more variation than
a printed tradition is frequently overstated. The Masoretic Bible was exclusively a manuscript tradition
for many centuries before the age of print, yet famously succeeded in eliminating variation through
the application of ingeniously simple traditional methods of alphabetic and verbal calculations, so that
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
23
Buddhist scholasticism, it was also a world characterized by prodigious feats of
memory, resulting in complex ongoing interactions between written and memorized
versions of texts, the dynamics of which so far remain little analyzed by
international scholarship. More importantly, as with the rest of Tibetan Buddhism
and so typically of many pre-modern cultures, the literary ideal was usually not to
author brilliant entirely original ideas in the modern post-renaissance sense – that
would be decried as mere individualistic contrivance (rang bzo). Rather, the idea
was faithfully to pass on existing understandings, often by preserving received text
verbatim. In short, a common ideal was not the “author” as we modernists know
it, but something more akin to the igure of the “tradent” that has been so brilliant
analyzed in recent Talmudic scholarship. In such a world of de facto ongoing
collective authorship, existing fragments or building blocks of holy dharma, blessed
through their usage by many previous generations of masters, are typically
re-inlected, re-anthologized, and rearranged by learned bla mas to suit the needs
of their contemporary audiences. This has two implications: irstly, the notion of
an individual creative author as we have it does not always apply very well – the
notion of tradent as part of a collective enterprise descending through the
generations often its better. Secondly, the notion of a ixed text was not strictly
envisaged in all cases: as Jonathan Silk and Paul Harrison have pointed out for
India, some genres of Tibetan literature in a very real sense included an aspect of
collective works in endless progress.49
the scribe knew exactly how many instances of each word and letter should occur in each paragraph.
Conversely, as modern textual critics like Jerome McGann have shown, literary works that are far more
recent than the Masoretic text and which only emerged in the age of print, can vary considerably, for
a wide variety of reasons. Hence we must conclude that the unyielding ideological determination of
generations of Jews to keep their Torah absolutely free of variation or error proved more signiicant
than any limitations of the manuscript medium; while the lack of such determination has allowed some
modern printed literary works, such as Byron’s The Giaour, to vary greatly from the outset (J. J.
McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983], 31-2,
59ff, 105-106). The same has been true of Rnying ma block prints and other printings of religious
liturgies in recent history: signiicant textual variations between different printed versions of the same
popular practice texts are rife in Bhutanese and Tibetan monasteries in India. The mere fact of printing
has failed to eradicate variation or make such Rnying ma texts uniform. Thus we can see that in pursuit
of uniformity, ideological commitment clearly trumps technology. One of our major theoretical points
is that a Masoretic Jewish-type absolute commitment to accuracy at any cost has not been evidenced
in the Ancient Tantra Collection tradition, nor generally in Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna Buddhism –
otherwise, as we know from the Jewish example, complete uniformity could technically have been
achieved, even before the advent of print. Nor were techniques for textual uniformity similar to the
Masoretic ones unknown in India and Tibet – far from it – the stability of the Paninian and Tibetan
syllabaries encouraged the development of methods of alphabetic calculation, so that we ind comparable
methods routinely applied with complete success in coded mantra tables (mantroddhāra, sngags btu
ba; see note 52 below). These served to protect the exact spelling of mantras over many centuries
against any possible transmissionally generated variation. There was probably nothing other than the
lack of overwhelming ideological commitment to prevent suchlike or other even more compact and
simple techniques of alphabetic and verbal calculation being applied to the entirety of Buddhist texts,
beyond the mantras. Perhaps the very words of the traditional Buddhist nidāna – “Thus have I heard:
at one time...” – leaves open some possibility that someone else heard something slightly different
regarding another occasion when the Buddha taught.
49
Gter ma its this description very well. To give one extremely simple example, the version of Bdud
’joms gling pa’s (1835-1904) fulillment liturgy (bskang ba) for Vajrakīlaya which his reincarnation
Bdud ’joms rin po che (1904-1987) edited makes one very small yet potent textual change, which has
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
24
Such pervasive features of Tibetan literary culture remain desperately
under-studied, and we are scheduled to make further investigations into them in
the near future. From what little is understood so far, it seems that the parameters
of process and change might differ between genres. In Gter ma, textual variation
often accumulates over time through the complex yet often visible interactions of
identiiable authors, governed by strict cultural norms. For example, our recent
work on the Immortal Life’s Creative Seed (’Chi med srog thig) and other texts
within the Bdud ’joms corpus shows how named bla mas edit, revise, remix and
republish the revelations of previous gter stons, or else adapt previous revelations
into a newer revelation.50 Yet in the Ancient Tantra Collection, variation more
often takes the form of a mute inscrutable anonymous inheritance from the distant
past.51 Our present question is, how might we begin to approach Rnying ma
understandings of variation speciically in the Thabs zhags and in the wider Ancient
Tantra Collection?
First, we must review what data we have – which of course is still small, since
most of the Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa remains unread.
However, we do know that the Sde dge Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying
ma pa, the only surviving Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa redaction
that was able to consult several geographically diverse editions, carefully reproduces
good alternative readings in its marginal notes (see note 10). Taking this further,
the effect of bringing the group of deities in the retinue into line with Bdud ’joms rin po che’s own
version of Bdud ’joms gling pa’s revelation. A line which in Bdud ’joms gling pa’s text referred to the
four families of the Sras mchog kīlas (sras mchog kī la rigs bzhi’i thugs dam bskang:, Bdud ’joms
gling pa, Padma’i rnam rol bdud ’joms gling pa’i skor nye brgyud zab gter chos mdzod rin po che, ed.
H. H. Bdud-’joms ’jigs-bral-ye-ses-rdo-rje [Kalimpong: Dupjung Lama], ca:126), has been amended
to ive families (sras mchog kī la rigs lnga’i thugs dam bskang:, Bdud ’joms rin po che, ’Jigs bral ye
shes rdo rje, The Collected Writings and Revelations of H. H. bDud-’joms Rin-po-che ’Jigs bral ye
shes rdo rje, vol. tha [Kalimpong: Dupjung Lama, 1979-1985], 160).
50
Dudjom Rinpoche’s works in volume pha of his Collected Works on a tantric longevity practice
revealed by one of his root gurus, Zil gnon nam mkha’i rdo rje (Bdud ’joms rin po che, The Collected
Writings; including his Commentary, bsnyen yig, 431-509; Notes on Ritual Procedures, khrigs zin,
193-208; and Ritual Practice Framework Manual, sgrub khog, 233-296), reproduce
historical/mythological and ritual practice material from the Fifteenth Karmapa’s empowerment texts.
They also introduce a number of modiications (many related to the Smin grol gling practice traditions
which he followed) and his own elaborations (we discuss this at length in our forthcoming book written
jointly with Geoffrey Samuel, The Seed of Immortal Life: Contexts and Meanings of a Tibetan Longevity
Practice [Kathmandu: Vajra Books]). His texts on the Gnam lcags spu gri cycle of Vajrakīlaya (volumes
tha and da of his Collected Works) are said to represent Bdud ’joms gling pa’s original Gter ma
revelation, although they are clearly extensively re-written and expanded.
51
We need to distinguish here variation within single texts across different editions and different
versions of the same blocks of material across different named scriptures. The focus of this article has
been on variation within one text, but the re-presentation of different versions of the same text in
different root tantras is even more striking. See Cantwell and Mayer, Early Tibetan Documents, chapters
5-6 (especially p. 76-87 and Appendix to chapter 6) for an example of a text preserved at Dunhuang
(IOL Tib J 331.III), the contents of which are largely reproduced in varying sequences in different
Ancient Tantra Collection texts. Since publication, we have further identiied the same text within
Nyang ral nyi ma ’od zer’s The Eight Scriptural Deities Embodying the Sugatas (Bka’ brgyad bde
gshegs ’dus pa) collection. A very different form of variation is evidenced in the apparently jumbled
parallel text within the two Ancient Tantra Collection texts of the Myang ’das’s chapter eighteen and
the Rdo rje khros pa phur pa rtsa ba’i rgyud’s chapter six (Cantwell and Mayer, The Kīlaya Nirvāṇa
Tantra, chapter 2.IV).
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
25
the Sde dge edition of the Phur pa bcu gnyis even preserves quite variant readings
for the entire extended set of Vajrakīlaya mantras within this single text – one set
given in a mantra list, the other a corrupt and inconsistent phonetical rendition
encoded in a mantra table - with a marginal note explicitly drawing attention to
the editorial decision to leave the mantra table unedited, even though it had been
scrutinized.52 Thirdly, the two main variant renderings of the Vajrakīlaya root
verses, quite probably originally the result of accidental transmissional variation,
have over the centuries each generated prodigious quantities of prestigious
commentarial text – so that to reduce this variation to a single “correct” version in
modern times has become unthinkable (see notes 2 and 46). Above all, we ind
the constant and ubiquitous repetition, within Ancient Tantra Collection scriptures,
of passages of text across the spectrum of being exactly the same (barring
transmissional variants), of remaining close but showing recensional variation, or
differing through more creative rearrangement. This is abundant evidence that both
verbatim reproduction and variations on an existing theme were de riguer for the
anonymous compilers of these texts (see note 49). What does this imply?
Our impression gained from textual studies is that the bla mas’ response to
apparently equally good but variant readings in their Ancient Tantra Collection
scriptures implicitly resembles the ideas of many modern anthropologists who see
knowledge or culture as distributive. In other words, Rnying ma pa bla mas,
although they would prefer a less varied tradition, de facto operate on the basis
that no single extant form of words from the Ancient Tantra Collection is necessarily
uniquely complete and valid. In this view, a deinitive version, vast in length and
perfect in every detail, persists eternally in the Tantric pure realms, but
unfortunately, no longer earth. Instead, pragmatically, they accept that the remaining
available terrestrial sources are varied and distributed, each nevertheless potentially
having a valid partial contribution to make to the total picture.
This is very close to many modern anthropological formulations. In the words
of Roger Keesing,53 a distributive model of culture
takes as fundamental the distribution of partial versions of a cultural tradition
among members of a society…[it] must take into account both diversity and
commonality… “A Culture” is therefore seen as a pool of knowledge to which
individuals contribute in different ways and degrees.
52
Such coded mantra tables make possible the preservation of mantras, by using numbers to
correspond to each Sanskrit letter. The decoded mantras in the Phur pa bcu gnyis’s mantra table appear
to relect a corrupt and inconsistent early phonetic rendering in Tibetan, while the mantra list earlier
in the text’s Sde dge edition instead gives a more correct representation of Tibetan transliteration of
Sanskrit mantras. See the extensive discussion in Mayer, A Scripture, 135-146.
53
Roger Keesing, Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective (Florida: Harcourt Brace,
1981), 71-72.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
26
A more recent presentation of the distributive nature of knowledge comes from
Fredrik Barth,54 based on examples taken from New Guinea, Bali, and England,
but it seems written while he was staying in Bhutan. Barth analytically distinguishes
three faces or aspects of knowledge. First, any tradition of knowledge must contain
a corpus of substantive assertions and ideas about aspects of the world. Secondly,
it must be instantiated and communicated in one or several media as a series of
partial representations in the form of words, symbols, gestures, or actions. Thirdly,
it will be distributed, communicated, employed, and transmitted within a series of
instituted social relations.55
Barth’s exposition of a distributive model is underlined in his insistence that
the three faces of knowledge appear only in their particular applications, and not
as a generalized abstract entity. We believe that such a distributive model
corresponds quite closely to one important aspect of how Rnying ma pa bla mas
work in practice with the transmission of their Ancient Tantra Collection. By
understanding their distributive mode of operation, we also understand how they
tolerate such wide discrepancy of good readings in their canonical sources without
excessive dismay or alarm (bad readings are of course rejected by all as scribal
error).
To adapt Barth’s model to our purposes, we can say that knowledge of the
Ancient Tantra Collection in Tibet had three aspects:
The irst aspect is the actual substantive teachings and doctrines of the
Ancient Tantra Collection: By acknowledging the importance of these, one avoids
the absurdity of an extreme relativism, which would say that the Rnying ma tantric
tradition is really just whatever anyone claims it to be. In the parlance of the bla
mas, this aspect is symbolically represented by the widespread idea of the complete
and perfect versions of the tantras eternally preserved in transcendent locations
such as pure lands, which uniquely represent the complete and full authorial
intention of the Buddhas.
The second aspect is each of the numerous and varying manuscript and
xylograph witnesses within which the Ancient Tantra Collection has been
represented in history, such as the South Central Tibetan text from Gting skyes,
54
Fredrik Barth, “An Anthropology of Knowledge,” in Current Anthropology 43, no. 1 (February
2002): 1-18.
55
Barth sees these three faces of knowledge as interconnected, and above all, mutually determining.
However, Barth says that to understand his ideas, we need to invert the way we habitually construct
analyses. He emphasises that he is not positing a highly generalized and abstract unity called knowledge,
which then subdivides into the three parts of substantive corpus, communicative medium, and social
organization, which in turn progressively break down further until we inally arrive at the level of
particular human actions and events. On the contrary, Barth proposes that these three faces of knowledge
appear together precisely in the particulars of action in every actual event of the application of
knowledge, in every actual transaction in knowledge, in every actual performance of knowledge. Their
mutual determination, says Barth, takes place at those speciic moments when a particular item of
substantive knowledge is cast in a particular communicative medium and applied in an action by an
actor positioned in a particular social organization. Their systematic interdependence, he says, arises
by virtue of the constraints in realization that these three aspects impose on each other in the context
of every particular application.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
27
or the Sde dge xylograph. By acknowledging their occasional diversity of good
readings, and accepting their particular differences, one avoids the extreme of
positing a monolithic textual uniformity which, as the bla mas are well aware, does
not exist.
The third aspect is the instituted social relations through which the Ancient
Tantra Collection is transmitted, taught and reproduced. By acknowledging
this, one accepts that the tradition is inseparable from its human performance, and
thus we counteract the latent tendency of textual scholarship to abstract its materials
away from actual historical realities. In the parlance of the bla mas, this corresponds
to their notions of transmission through exalted lineages of enlightened gurus to
worthy disciples, sponsored by virtuous donors. [For many students, direct
involvement in the texts might be limited to the receipt of their ritual transmissions,
or occasional public readings for the purpose of making merit and conferring
blessings. Their direct study was an elite activity, while general familiarization
with Ancient Tantra Collection materials would be effected through the
incorporation of some sections into liturgical practice, and through the medium of
commentarial presentation.]
As Barth suggests, these three aspects mutually determine each other, but should
not be envisaged as an abstract unity with three parts. Rather, they appear in the
particulars of action in every event of the application, performance and transmission
of knowledge of the Ancient Tantra Collection. They mutually interact and
determine each other as particulars, in numerous moments distributed through time
and space, and it is these particular events that constitute the actual transmissions
of the Ancient Tantra Collection.
Hence the editorial decisions made in any speciic redaction of the Thabs zhags
has depended on the mutually determining factors of what doctrines the Thabs
zhags is teaching, the readings of the available exemplars or ma dpe, and on how
the presiding editors on that occasion, ideally supported by their supernatural
cognitions, attempted to ensure the new text’s accordance with the eternal doctrines.
In short, there is no single monolithic or abstract entity that we can call The
Transmission of the Thabs zhags, or of the Ancient Tantra Collection. Rather, their
transmission is distributed, instantiated in numerous separate events through time
and space that have their own dynamic and individuality. In this way, the range of
good readings of the different editions of the Ancient Tantra Collection do not as
far as we can see cause agony to the bla mas simply because they might vary
somewhat. A comfortable degree of latitude, within which variation can be tolerated
while still upholding the overall purity of the scriptural tradition, is gained in the
endless mutually determining interplay of the three factors we have outlined above.
The Rnying ma pa’s de facto distributive mode of operation over the last many
centuries implies that even if the recovery of a strictly historical single earliest text
is the Holy Grail for philology, it perhaps has somewhat less absolute signiicance
for them, unless they are to now embrace modern text critical criteria. Combining
pragmatic acceptance of the status quo with mystical idealism, they tacitly
acknowledge that over time, ongoing repairs to scribal errors can cause texts
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
28
topresent varying good readings, but their response is almost as much transcendental
as historical. To put that another way, it considerably depends on the religious
authority of their great bla ma-editors, who, if realized and learned beings, must
have some degree of direct access to the perfect original meanings of the tantras,
and who, if gter stons, can even act like Padmasambhava as fountainheads or
mediums for new Buddhavacana, over and above mere learned editing. But religious
authority in the Rnying ma pa has never been centralized, and on different
occasions, the editorial decisions of different realized and omniscient bla mas have
taken mysteriously different turns, even when faced with exactly the same textual
crux. This means that in different places at different times, a variety of divergent
but semantically equally profound meanings could potentially be generated around
a single textual crux; and because of the great expense of transporting huge Ancient
Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa collections across large distances, such
variant readings often became regional, and only rarely cross referenced with one
another. The upshot is that we international scholars cannot and should not ignore
the many transmissionally and recensionally transformed semantically good readings
within the Ancient Tantra Collection that have appeared through Tibetan history
and across its regions. We know, for example, that the great ’Jam mgon kong sprul
kept a copy of the Ancient Tantra Collection in his residence at Dpal spungs,56 and
it also looks quite likely from their shared readings that it was the Sde dge xylograph
edition he consulted.57 We also know that this Sde dge edition seems to relect a
distinctive East Tibetan tradition, but, unusually for Ancient Tantra Collection of
the Rnying ma pa editions, also has some exposure to editions from distant regions,
and is in addition full of recensional changes mainly attributed to famous late
eighteenth century bla mas.58 From the point of view of stemmatics, this heavily
redacted and conlated edition is far removed from any original archetype. From
the point of view of living Tibetan Buddhism, and hence of functional Tibetological
scholarship, its widely inluential readings are crucial.
This partially transcendental and distributive mode of working, shaped by a
shifting and decentralized religious authority, which we see as an important element
in the transmission of the Ancient Tantra Collection, is thus considerably at variance
to the strictly historical presuppositions of stemmatic analysis. Stemmatics
developed in the West with reference to such cultural models as the monolithically
uniform Masoretic Bible, and the notionally ixed and timeless utterances of
individual Classical authors. With growing scholarly awareness of the luidity of
so many Buddhist texts through history, the relevance of stemmatics is sometimes
56
R. Barron, trans., ed., The Autobiography of Jamgön Kongtrul: A Gem of Many Colours (Ithaca,
Boulder: Snow Lion, 2003), 282, 286.
57
At least in the speciic case of a seminal commentary on Rdo rje phur pa, a number of his citations
from the Myang ’das would suggest this (Cantwell and Mayer, The Kīlaya Nirvāṇa Tantra, 50-52).
Kong sprul also refers (Barron, The Autobiography, 255) to his receipt of the transmission of the
twenty-ive volumes of the Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa, which again would seem
to indicate Sde dge’s edition.
58
At the authoritative hands of the great Rig ’dzin tshe dbang mchog sgrub, who was not a gter ston,
but a vastly inluential author of commentaries on Gter ma and much else.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
29
called into question by contemporary Buddhist scholars, including some important
voices within the major European centers of philology, who understand full well
that its historicist premises do not it Buddhist literature. We feel such a rejection
can be overdone. We do recognize the grave limitations inherent in trying to force
onto Buddhist literature a Lachmannian style of stemmatic method, with all its
underlying presuppositions of textual uniformity. Nevertheless we believe we can
use stemmatics as a probing device, an analytic tool, to isolate not merely archetypes
such as that of the Thabs zhags, but also particular versions of an otherwise luid
scriptural tradition at interesting junctures in its development and history: for
example, we believe we might have enough evidence to reconstruct for many texts
the Tibetan Lha lung hypearchetype from which all the current Bhutanese
manuscripts of the Ancient Tantra Collection are descended, and we ind this a
potentially useful tool. So our approach preserves and combines two perspectives
on textual editing otherwise seen as contradictory. On the one hand, there is the
pioneer’s optimism of Helmut Eimer, whose initial vision was that the classic
stemmatic methods of Paul Maas could yield dividends in Bka’ ’gyur analysis. On
the other hand, there is the more pessimistic approach of some recent scholars,
who suggest that in a universe of irreducible textual luidity, the best we can hope
for is the elimination of orthographic errors and other egregious transmissional
accumulations. Our methodology, by contrast, accepts and even celebrates the
ongoing permutations of these texts, but still inds value in stemmatic techniques
as a way of recovering both their original archetypes and also signiicant moments
in their history. In conclusion, we should add how delightful it would be if further
Ancient Tantra Collection texts turn out to be genuinely amenable to stemmatic
analysis, so that we can reconstruct more early readings from them, to aid our
understanding of the doctrines and practices of the texts, and also historical
investigations into the seemingly impossibly obscure period of Rnying ma origins.
At the same time, it would be unfortunate if we were to lose ourselves in historically
oriented researches and fail to recognize and explore the de facto distributive
realities which constitutes the actual historical existence of the Ancient Tantra
Collection in Tibet and beyond.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
30
Transcription
A Commentary on the Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus
Garland Synopsis (’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padma ’phreng
gi don bsdus pa’i ’grel pa’)
An extract from chapter eleven in the Dunhuang Manuscript IOL Tib J 321 42r-45r. Most
scholars currently date this manuscript as not later than the mid-eleventh century. The text is
available online at the International Dunhuang Project site: http://idp.bl.uk/database/
oo_loader.a4d?pm=IOL%20Tib%20J%20321.
Conventions:
Highlighted text (ཱཾ་) represents text highlighted in the original with a translucent
yellow wash.
1.
2.
Bracketed location descriptions [below line 6] represent interlinear annotations in
small writing.
3.
Asterisks (***) represent spaces for string holes in the manuscript.
4.
Light blue text with underline (ཅྀ་) represents additions.
5.
Red text between vertical lines (|ུ་|) represents deletions.
6.
Underlining (སིང་ཧ་ུ་ཁ་) is added for the reader’s convenience, to indicate the
zoomorphic goddesses.
7.
[Gt]: The Golden Bstan ’gyur (Gser gyi lag bris ma), produced between 1731-1741,
currently held at Ganden Monastery; published in Tianjing 1988, digitally scanned
for TBRC, New Delhi 2002. A CD version is available from the Tibetan Buddhist
Resource Center, New York (W23702). The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa
padmo ’phreng gi don bsdus pa’i ’grel pa commentary is in volume Rgyud ’grel vol.
bu (78), 243-321.
[panel 42r]
[line 1]
ཤར་ྱོགས་ན་འྲ་མེན་མ་ཀོུ་རེ་ཁ་དོག་ྔོན་མོ་ ྱག་གཉིས་པ་ྟེ ྱག་གཡོན་པ་ཙན་དན་
[line 2] དམར་པོས་བཀང་བ་ཐོགས
[line 3] ན
གཡས་ཞིང་ུང་ུ་འི་དྱིག་པ་ཐོགས་པ་ྟེ་ ཱཾ་བ་ྲ་ཀོུ་རི་ཱ་ཱ་ཱུ ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་
སངས་ྱས་ྱང་འུགས་ན *** གཞན་ྟ་ྨོས་ྱང་ཅི་དགོས་ ***** ཆེ་གེ་མོ་ཞིག་ཅེས་བཅོལ་ལ་
ཱཾ་ུ་|ུ་|ུ་ ུ་ུ་ཱུ་ྱོ་ ཞེས་བྗོད་ཅིང་ ཨ་ྒ་ལན་གུམ་
ྷོ་ྱོགས་ན་ེུ་རི་ཁ་དོག་སེར་མོ་ ྱག་ན་མདའ་གུ་འགེངས་པ ཱཾ་བ་ྲ་ོུ་རི་ཱུ་འཱ ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་
[line 4] གཏོར་མ་དང་ཙན་དན་དམར་ཆེན་ྱི་ཨ་*****ྒ་ལ་
[line 5] ྲེང་ངོ་
[below line 5, continuing onto note below line 6]
[line 6] ན
59
གདོན་དང་དྲ་འི་གུགས་ྱས་ལ་མདའ་འི བར་བཞག་གམ་གང་ལ་གུག་པའི་
ྱག་ན་ྡོ་ྗེ་འི་མུ་ཡང་ ུལ་ཙམ་ཡང་ྱེད་པར་ུ་ུས་པ་ན་
གཞན་ྟ་ ྨོས་ྱང་ཅི་དགོས་
[below line 6] ྱོགས་ཁ་བྟས་ཏེ་མདའ་འཕངས་ཏེ་ཕོག་ཅིང་གཟིར་ལ་ལ་བདག་ུ་གི་དབང་ུ་འུར་རོ
ུབ་ྱོགས་ན་ྲ་མོ་ཧ་དམར་པོ་
[panel 42v]
[line 1] ྱག་ན་ུ་[Gt 272]
[below line 1, on left]
59
ྲིན་ྱི་ྱལ་མཚན་ཐོགས་པ ཱཾ་བ་ྲ་ྲ་མོ་ཧ་ཱུ་ཛ་ཱ་ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་ན
ྱི་བོར་ལ་བྐོར་བར་བསམ
[below line 1, on right]
ྱག་ན་ྡོ་ྗེ་ཡང་རང་གི་མུ་
ྷ་དང་ྱི་ཡང་བདག་གི་དབང་ུ་འུས་པར་བྒོམ
It appears that ུ་ written in error has been deleted; in part, it has been amended into the following ུ་.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
[line 2] གཞག་ནས་དབང་ུ་འོང་ན་
གཞན་ྟ་ཅྀ་ྨོས་
60
31
ྱང་ྱོགས་ན་བེ་ཏ་ལི་ཁ་དོག་ནག་པོ ྱག་གཡོན་ན་ཞིང་ུང་ུ་འིན་ཟ་བ་
[line 3] ྱག་གཡས་ན་ྡོ་ྗེ་ྱར
ཱཾ་བ་ྲ་བེ་ཏ་*****ལི་ཱུ་ཱ་ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་ན་ **** འཇིག་ྟེན་དང་འཇིག་ྟེན་ལས་འདས་
[line 5] ུས་ཀ་སི་དམར་སེར་
ྱག་གཉིས་ཞིང་ུང་ུ་འི་བ་ུ་ཏ་འྲེན་ཅིང་ཟ་བ ཱཾ་བ་ྲ་ུས་ཀ་སི་ཱུ་ཱ་ ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་
[line 4] པའི་དངོས་ུབ་ཐམས་ཅད་ྱང་ུབ་ན་******
[line 6] ན་
ྱག་ན་ྡོ་ྗེ་ཡང་འཆིང་ཞིང་འྲེན་པར་ུས་ན་ གཞན་ཟ་བར་ྱ་བ་ྟ་ཅི་ྨོས་
[panel 43r]
[line 1] ༆
[line 3] མ་ཁ་དོག་ྗང་ུ
[line 5] སེར་ྱ་ྱག་གཡས་ན་
[line 6] བཅོལ་ན་
[panel 43v]
[line 1] ྱ་བ་
ྱག་ན་ྡོ་ྗེ་ཡང་ྱོས་པར་འུར་ན་ གཞན་ྟ་ྨོས་ྱང་ཅི་དགོས་ ུབ་ྱང་མཚམས་ན་བྲ་ཀར་
ལས་གང་*****ྱ་བ་ཐམས་ཅད་འུབ་བོ་
ྟ་ཅི་ྨོས་
[line 2] ུལ་བཞིན་བྱི
ྱང་ཤར་*****ྱི་མཚམས་ན་ ཙན་ཏ་ལི་ཁ་དོག་
ཞིང་ུང་ུ་འི་བན་ད་འིན་ གཡོན་ཞིང་ཉིད་འིན་ ཱཾ་བ་ྲ་ཙན་ད་ལི་ཱུ་ཱ་ ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་
འྲ་མེན་མ་འདི་ྣམས་འྲིན་ལས་མཛད་པར་བུལ་བའི་ེ ཨ་ྒ་དང་གཏོར་མ་དུལ་བ་ནི གོང་ུ་ྨོས་པ་བཞིན་
པ ྲོས་ན་ཐམས་ཅད་ྱག་ཆ་ྲིལ་ུ་|ལ|་འབར་བ་ གཡོན་[ྡེ?]ུ་ུང་བྣམས གདན་ྱེ་ུག་གནག་
[line 3] ུ་འི་ཁ་དོག་ནག་མོ་ལ་
ྲག་དང་*****ཞག་དང་ཐལ་བའི་ཐིག་ལེས་ུམ་ུར་ྱས་*****ཤིང་ བ་ུ་ཏས་ྐེད་པར་བཅིངས་
[line 4] གསེར་ྱི་པགས་པ་གོས་ུ་བགོས
[line 5] གཡོན་ྡེུ་ུང་བྣམས་
***** ྲོ་|ན|་ཏ་ཨན་ཱ་ནས་ུས་བྱན་ཏེ་ ***** གཅེར་ུ་འི་ོགས་ུག་གནག་འབར་བ་
གདན་ྱེ་ུག་གནག་ ུ་འི་ཁ་དོག་ནག་མོ་ལ་འཇིག་ྟེན་ཁམས་ཟད་ཅིང་བྲེག་པར་ྱས་ནས་
[line 6] ླར་དཔལ་ཆེན་པོ་འི་ུ་ལ་ཐིམ་པར་ྱ་འོ
[panel 44r]
༠
༠
62
ད་ནི་ྱི་རིམ་བཤད་པར་ྱ་ྟེ་ ཤར་ྱོགས་ུ་སིང་ཧ་ུ་ཁ་ ཁ་དོག་སེར་མོ་
ཞིང་ཁ་ན་ཐོགས་པ་ ལག་པ་གཡས་གཡོས་བྣོལ་པ་སེང་གེ་འི་མགོ་ཅན་
ལག་པ་གཉིས་བྣོལ་ཏེ་མུན་ངན་ཞིང་གནས་པ་ལ་ྟ་བ་ྟག་ྱི་མགོ་ཅན་
[line 3] ལག་པ་གཉིས་ྱིས་[Gt 274] ཞིང་ུང་ུ་འིན་*****ཅིང་ྕེས་ྡག་པ་
[line 4] ཁ་དོག་མཐིང་ཀ་ལག་པ་གཉིས་*****ྱིས་ཁོང་ྲལ་ཏེ་ྟ་བ་
[line 5] དོག་དམར་གནག་
[panel 44v]
[line 2] མུས་ཞིང་ཐོགས་པ་
ུབ་ྱོགས་ན་ྲི་ཁ་ ཁ་དོག་ནག་མོ་
ཝ་ མགོ་ཅན **** ྱང་ྱོགས་ན་ྭ་ན་ུ་ཱ
64
ྱི་མགོ་ཅན་***** ཤར་ྷོ་འི་མཚམས་ན་ྲི་ཏ་ཁ་
ྱ་བཀང་ཀ་འི་འགོ་ལ་མུ་རིང ཐོར་ཏོ་ུག་ཟེ་བ་དམར
ུབ་ྱང་གི་མཚམས་ན ཀ་ཀ་ཁ་དོག་ནག་མོ་
ལག་པ་གཡོན་བས་པད་མོ་བན་དྷ་འིན ྱ་རོག་མགོ་ཅན་ ྱང་ཤར་ྱི་མཚམས་ུ་ུ་ུ་ཁ་དོག་ྣ་ོགས་
[line 4] ནང་རིམ་ུག་པའི་འཁོར་གིས་བྐོར་*****
[line 5] རིངས་ྱི་འཁོར་ྱིས་བྐོར་
62
གཡས་ྡོ་ྗེ་ྕགས་ུ་*****འིན ུག་པའི་མགོ་ཅན་
དེ་འི་ྱི་རིམ་ྱ་རོག་གི་འཁོར་གིས་*****བྐོར་
64
དེ་འི་རིམ་ཀང་ཀ་མུ་
དེ་འི་ྱི་རིམ་ྱ་ྒོད་ྱི་འཁོར་ྱིས་བྐོར་ དེ་དག་ཐམས་ཅད་ྱང་ཞིང་མང་པོ་གསར་ྙིང་ུངས་པའི་
ཅྀ་ is added in small writing as a correction, below the line.
ྱ་བ་ྱ་བ་: dittography at the turn of the folio.
Here we find two punctuation marks, each of a small circle positioned in the middle of the line, and evenly
placed between separating shads.
63
63
ཞིང་ུང་ུ་འི་བ་ུ་ཏ་ཁ་ན་ཐོགས་པ་ ལག་པ་གཡས་པ་ན་བན་དྷ་ གཡོན་ྲི་ཐོགས་པ་ ྱ་ྒོད་མགོ་
[line 3] ལག་པ་གཡོན་པ་ུང་ཅེན་ྲག་གིས་གང་****བ་ལ་འུང་བ་
60
ྷོ་ྱོགས་ན་ྱ་ྲ་ུ་ཁ་ ཁ་དོག་དམར་
ྷོ་ུབ་མཚམས་ན་ཀང་ཀ ཁ་དོག་དཀར་དམར་ ྲག་པ་གཡོན་པ་ན་ཞིང་ཁེལ་ཞིང་ྐང་པ་ནས་བུང་བ་
[line 1] གཡས་པ་མགོ་འིན
61
ཱཾ་བ་ྲ་ཀར་མ་ཱུ་ཱ་ ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་
ཟ་མ་[Gt 273] དང་མ་ནིང་ལ་ཡང་ུད་འཕེལ་བར་ྱེད་ན་ དབང་པོ་ཚང་ཞིང་ཉམས་པ་ྱེད་པ་ ེ་དང་དབང་ཐང་འཕེལ་བར་ྱ་བ་
61
[line 6] ཅན
ྷོ་ུབ་ྱི་མཚམས་ན་ ཀས་མ་ལི་
ཞིང་ུང་ུ་ལག་པ་*****གཉིས་ྱིས་བུང་ྟེ་ྙིང་ཁ་ནས་ཟ་བ་
[line 4] བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་ན་
[line 2] མོ་
ཤར་ྷོ་འི་མཚམས་ན་
ཁ་དོག་ྗང་ུ་ ྱག་གཡོན་པ་ན་བན་ད་ཙན་དན་དམར་པོས་བཀང་ྟེ་ྡོ་ྗེས་དུག་ཅིང་འུང་བ་ ཱཾ་བ་ྲ་ཀས་མ་རི་ཱུ་ཱ་
[line 2] ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་ན་
[line 1] ༆
འཇིག་ྟེན་ྱི་བུབ་པ་ྲན་ེགས་ྟ་******ཅི་ྨོས་
The final ར is subscribed.
The letter is not a clearly written ཝ་ but is consistent with the ཝ་ given in ཕ་ཝང་ on 54v.4.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
[line 6] ྟེང་ུ་
ཞིང་ལ་ྟོད་པའི་ྱིར་འཐབ་པའི་ུལ་ྟོན་པ་ཤེ་དག་གོ་
[panel 45r]
[line 1] ༆
འདི་ུན་འུ་རེ་རེ་ཡང་ལན་བཞྀ་བཞི་བྗོད་དོ་
[line 2] མོ་བཞི་བྱེད་
[line 3] ྱབ་པར་བྱི་འོ་
ཕཊ་ྱིས་ཐམས་ཅད་ྲོ་བར་བུལ་
དེ་དག་གི་ྙིང་པོ་ནི་[Gt 275]འདི་ྣམས་སོ་
ུང་གིས་གོ་བོས་བྱེད་
32
ཱུ ཧ ཧེ ཕཊ ཱུ་
ཧས་ནང་གི་ྷ་མོ་བཞི་བྱེད་ ཧེ་ྱི་འི་ྷ་
ཱུ་ྱིས་ཐམས་ཅད་ཡེ་ཤེས་ྱི་འོད་གསེར་འབར་བས་ྱོགས་བུར་
A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis (’Phags
pa thabs kyi zhags pa padma ’phreng gi don bsdus pa)
An extract from chapter eleven in the South Central editions of the Ancient Tantra Collection,
and in the Bathang Independent Bka' 'gyur.
Abbreviations:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
R = Rig ’dzin volume dza, 187r.2-3 (second half of the eighteenth century?)
T = Gting skyes volume dza, 205r.5-6 (first half of the nineteenth century, perhaps
around 1830?)
K = Kathmandu ms. volume ma, *329v.1-2 (perhaps nineteenth century?)
The relevant volume of the Nubri manuscript is missing.
Bth = Bathang Bka' 'gyur volume rgyud a, 209v.5-6.
ཨཾ་བྲ་ཀེ་ུ་ཛ་ཛ་ཱུ
65
ཨཾ་ུ་ུ་ུ་ུ་ཱུ་ྱོ་ཱུ
ཨཾ་བྲ་ེུ་རི་ ཱུ་ཛ
68
ཨཾ་བྲ་ྲ་མོ་ཧ་ཱུ་ཛ
ཨཾ་བྲ་པེ་ཏ་ལི་ཱུ་ཛ
ཨཾ་བྲ་ུ་ཀ་སི་ཱུ་ཛ
67
69
70
71
ཨཾ་བྲ་ཀྲི་ར་ ཱུ་ཛ
72
ཨཾ་བྲ་ྨ་ཤ་ནི་ ཱུ་ཛ
74
65
66
73
75
The two double shads found in RT indicate a break in the text. In K, the tshig rkang is damaged and largely
illegible.
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
oṃ badzra ke ru dza dza hūṃ/; Bth, oṃ badzra klu re dza dza hūṃ/.
oṃ ru lu ru lu hūṃ bhyo hūṃ/: Bth oṃ ra lu ra lu hūṃ bhyo hūṃ/
ེུ་རི་: K ིུ་རི་.
oṃ badzra tse'u ri hūṃ dza/: Bth oṃ badzra tsu ri hūṃ dza/
oṃ badzra pra mo ha hūṃ dza/ oṃ badzra pe ta li hūṃ dza/: Bth omits
oṃ badzra pu ka si hūṃ dza: Bth oṃ badzra pu ka si hāṃ dza
ཀྲི་ར་: T ཀ་ྲི་ར་; K ཀ་ྨི་ར་.
oṃ badzra kasmri ra hūṃ dza: Bth oṃ badzra pa smra ra haṃ dza
ྨ་ཤ་ནི་: T ྲ་ཤ་ནི་ (Note that this reading, shared with the Batang’Ba’ thang KangyurBka’ ’gyur, is correct, while
the reading, karma, appears to be an error shared by the Dunhuang manuscript, the TselpaTshal pa
KangyurBka’ ’gyur and Bhutan).
75
oṃ badzra sma sha ni hūṃ dza: Bth oṃ badzra [ba?] sha ni hāṃ dza
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
ཨཾ་བྲ་ཙན་ད་ལི་ཱུ་ཛ
ཱུ་ཧེ་ཧེ་ཕཊ་ཱུ
77
33
76
78
A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis (’Phags
pa thabs kyi zhags pa padma ’phreng gi don bsdus pa)
An extract from chapter eleven in the Bhutanese editions of the Ancient Tantra Collection. All
these Bhutanese editions stem from a mid-seventeenth century original from Lha lung.
Abbreviations:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Ga = Sgang steng-a volume wa, 58r.3-6
Gb = Sgang steng-b volume wa, 58v.3-5
Gr = Sgra med rtse volume wa, 53r.3-5
M = Mtshams brag volume wa, 70r.2-3
ཨཾ་བྲ་ཀཽ་རི་ྲ་ྲ་ ཱུ
79
ཨཾ་ུ་ུ་ུ་ུ་ཱུ་ྱོ
ཨཾ་བྲ་ོུ་ རི་ཱུ་ ཛ
80
81
ཨཾ་བྲ་ྲ་མོ་ཧ་ཱུ་ཛ
ཨཾ་བྲ་བེ་ ཏ་ལི་ཱུ་ཛ
82
ཨཾ་བྲ་ཱུ་ཀ་སི་ཱུ་ཛ
ཨཾ་བྲ་གྷྨ་རི་ཱུ་ཛ
ཨཾ་བྲ་ཀྨཱ་ ཱུ་ཛ
83
ཨཾ་བྲ་ཙྜ་ལི་ཱུ་ཛ
སིྒ་ུ་ཛ
84
ྱ་ྲི་ུ་ཁ
76
oṃ badzra tsan da li hūṃ dza: in K, this tshig rkang is damaged and partly illegible; Bth, oṃ badzra tsan da le
hūṃ dza.
77
TRK insert: ལས་ྣམས་. We are not clear how to account for these words, which are not given in Bth. It is
conceivable they derive from the words used above to introduce this section: འྲ་མེན་མ་འདི་ྣམས་འྲིན་ལས་མཛད་པར་.
78
79
80
81
hūṃ he he phaṭ hūṃ/; Bth, hāṃ he he phaṭ hāṃ/.
ྲ་ྲ་: Gr ཛ་ཛ་.
ོུ་: Gr ཽ་.
M ཱུ་ (and similarly in some of the following mantras, or giving ཧ་ in place of ཧ་). The several modern re-editions
of Mtshams brag available today all stem from a single photo-offset litho reproduction made in the 1980s. Here,
and on six further occasions within in this short passage, these modern reproductions lose anusvara, thus rendering
ཱུ་ in place of ཱུྃ་, or ཧ་ in place of ཧ་. It is not yet clear if this results from the modern reproduction processes or if it
was a feature of the original manuscript.
82
83
84
བེ་: Gr པེ་.
ཀྨཱ་: Gr ཀྨ་.
ཛ་: Gr ཁ་.
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
34
ྲི་ ཀ་ུ་ཁ
85
ཱ་ ན་ུ་ཀ
86
ྲི་ཏ་ུ་ཀ
ཀྐ་ུ་ཀ
ཱ་ཁ་ུ་ཀ
ཱུ་ུ་ཀ་ུ་ཁ
ཱུ་ཧ་ཧེ་ཕཊ་ཱུ
A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis (’Phags
pa thabs kyi zhags pa padma ’phreng gi don bsdus pa)
An extract from chapter eleven in the Sde dge xylograph editions of the Bka’ ’gyur and
Ancient Tantra Collection. The two Sde dge xylograph versions are printed from blocks that
are virtually identical in all respects other than the page and volume indicators at the ends of
the folios (a few spelling errors appear to have been corrected in D); hence we surmise the par
yig for the Ancient Tantra edition was taken from a print of the slightly earlier Bka’ ’gyur
edition. The text itself descends from the Tshal pa Bka’ ’gyur transmission.
Abbreviations and Conventions:
1.
2.
Dk = Sde dge Bka’ ’gyur, Ancient Tantra (Rnying rgyud), kha (102):607.3-609.7
D = Sde dge Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa (Rnying ma’i rgyud
’bum), pa:291r.3-92r.7
Ms = Dunhuang manuscript, IOL Tib J 321
3.
Bold (ཨཾ་) has been added to indicate text which is highlighted in the Dunhuang
4.
manuscript.
[panel Dk607/D291r]
[line 3]
ཤར་ྱོགས་ན་ྲ་མེན་མ་ཀཽ་རི་ཁ་དོག་ྔོན་མོ་ྱག་གཉིས་པ་ྟེ
[line 4] ཙྡན་དམར་ྱིས་བཀང་བ་ཐོགས་པ
གཡོན་བྷན་དྷ་
གཡས་ན་ཞིང་ུང་ུའི་དུག་པ་ཐོགས་པ ཨཾ་བྲ་གཽ་ཱི་ཛ ་ཛ ་ཱུ་ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་ན་
སངས་ྱས་ྱང་དུག་ུས་ན་གཞན་ྟ་ཅི་ྨོས ཆེ་གེ་མོ་ཞིག་ུག་ཅིག་ཅེས་བཅོལ་
[line 5] ནས་གཏོར་མ་དང་ཙྡན་དམར་ཆེན་ཨྒྷ་ལ་
ཨཾ་ུ་ུ་ུ་ུ་ཱུ་ྱོ་ཞེས་བྗོད་ཅིང་ཨྒྷ་ལན་གུམ་ུ་བྲེང་ངོ་
ྱག་ན་མདའ་གུ་འགེངས་པ ཨཾ་བྲ་ཽ་ཱི་ཱུ་ཛ ་ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བཅོལ་ན་ྱག་ན་ྡོ་
[line 6] ྗེའ་ི མུ་ཡང་ུལ་ཙམ་ཡང་མེད་པར་ུ་ུས་ན་གཞན་ྟ་ཅི་ྨོས
ཐོགས་པ
ྷོ་ྱོགས་ན་ཽ་རི་ཁ་དོག་སེར་མོ་
ུབ་ྱོགས་ན་ྲ་མོ་ཧ་དམར་མོ་ [Ms 42v] ྱག་ན་ུ་ྲིན་ྱི་ྱལ་མཚན་
ཨཾ་བྲ་ྲ་མོ་ཧ་ཱུ་ཛ ་ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་ན་ྱག་ན་ྡོ་ྗེ་ཡང་རང་གི་མུ་བཞག་ནས་དབང་ུ་
[line 7] འོང་ན་གཞན་ྟ་ཅི་ྨོས
ྱང་ྱོགས་ན་བཻ་ྟ་ལི་ཁ་དོག་ནག་མོ་ྱག་གཡོན་ཞིང་ུང་ུ་འིན་ཅིང་ཟ་བ གཡས་ན་ྡོ་ྗེ་འྱར་བ ཨཾ་བྲ་བཻ་ྟ་ལི་
ཱུ་ཛ ་ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་ན་འཇིག་ྟེན་དང་འཇིག་ྟེན་ལས་འདས་པའི་དངོས་ུབ་ཐམས་ཅད་
[panel Dk608/D291v]
[line 1] ྱང་འུབ་ན་
འཇིག་ྟེན་ྱི་བུབ་པ་ྲན་ེགས་ྟ་ཅི་ྨོས ཤར་ྷོའ་ི མཚམས་ན་ུྐ་སི་ཁ་ དོག་དམར་སེར་ྱག་གཉིས་ཞིང་ུང་ུའི་བ་
ུ་ཏ་འྲེན་ཅིང་ཟ་བ ཨཾ་བྲ་ུྐ་སི་ཱུ་ཛ ་ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་ན་ྱག་ན་ྡོ་ྗེ་ཡང་འཆིང་ཞིང་
85
86
ྲི་: Gr སི་.
ཱ་: Gr ྭ་.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
[line 2] འྲེན་པར་ུས་ན་གཞན་བཅིང་ཞིང་ཟ་བ་ྟ་ཅི་ྨོས
35
ྷོ་ུབ་ྱི་མཚམས་ན་གྷྨ་རི་ [Ms 43r] ཁ་དོག་ྗང་ུ་ྱག་གཡོན་ན་བྷན་དྷ་
ཙྡན་དམར་པོས་བཀང་བ་ྡོ་ྗེས་དུག་ཅིང་གསོལ་བ ཨཾ་བྲ་གྷྨ་རི་ཱུ་ཛ ་ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་ན་ྱག་ན
[line 3] ྡོ་ྗེ་ཡང་
ྱོས་པར་ུས་ན་གཞན་ྟ་ྨོས་ྱང་ཅི་དགོས ུབ་ྱང་གི་མཚམས་ན་བྲ་ཀྨ་ཁ་དོག་ྗང་ུ་ཞིང་ུང་ུ་ལག་པ་གཉིས་ྱིས་
བུང་ྟེ་ྙིང་ག་ནས་ཟ་བ ཨཾ་བྲ་ཀྨ་ཱུ་ཛ ་ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་ན་ལས་གང་ྱ་བ་ཐམས་ཅད་
[line 4] འུབ་བོ
ྱང་ཤར་ྱི་མཚམས་ན་ཙྜ་ལི་ཁ་དོག་སེར་ྱ་ྱག་གཡས་ན་ཞིང་ུང་ུའི་བྷྡྷ་འིན་པ གཡོན་ྱིས་ཞིང་དུག་འིན་
པ ཨཾ་བྲ་ཙྜ་ལི་ཱུ་ཛ ་ཞེས་ྟོང་ྩ་བྱད་བླས་ཏེ་བཅོལ་ན་ཟ་མ་དང་མ་ནིང་ཡང་ུད་འཕེལ་བར་ྱེད་ན་དབང་པོ་
[line 5] ཚང་ཞིང་ཉམས་པ་མེད་པ་ལ་ུད་འཕེལ་ཞིང་ེ་དང་དབང་ཐང་འཕེལ་བར་ྱ་བ་ [Ms 43v]
ལས་ུལ་བའི་ེ་ཨྒྷ་དང་གཏོར་མ་དུལ་བ་ནི་གོང་ ུ་ྨོས་པ་བཞིན་ུ་བྱིའོ
[line 6] ྡེུ་ུང་
ྟ་ཅི་ྨོས་ ཏེ ྲ་མེན་མ་འདི་ྣམས་ྲིན་
ྲོས་ན་ཐམས་ཅད་ྱག་ན་ྲི་ཱུ་ལ་འབར་བ གཡོན་
བྣམས་པ གདན་མེ་ུག་ནག ུའི་ཁ་དོག་ནག་མོ་ལ་ྲག་དང་ཞག་དང་ཐལ་བའི་ཐིག་ ལེས་ོམ་ུར་ྱས་ཤིང་བ་ུ་ཏས་
ྐེད་པ་བཅིངས་པ གསེར་ྱི་པགས་པ་གོ་ུར་བགོས་ པ་ྲོད་ཏ་ཨ་ཛ་ནས་ུས་བྱན་ཏེ་གཅེར་ུའི་ོགས་ུག་
[line 7] གནག་འབར་
བ གཡོན་ྡེུ་ུང་བྣམས་པ གཡས་མེ་ུག་ུན་ཀ་ཁ་དོག་ནག་མོ་ལ་འཇིག་ྟེན་ ྱི་ཁམས་བྲེགས་ཤིང ཟད་པར་
ྱས་ནས་ླར་དཔལ་ཆེན་པོའ་ི ུ་ལ་ཐིམ་པར་ྱའོ
[panel Dk609/D292r]
[line 1] དོག་སེར་མོ་ [Ms 44r]
དེ་ནི་ྱི་རིམ་བཤད་པར་ྱའོ
ཤར་ྱོགས་ུ་སིྷ་ུ་ཁ་ཁ་
ཞིང་ུང་ཁ་ ན་ཐོགས་པ ལག་པ་གཡས་གཡོན་བྣོལ་བ སིང་གེའ་ི མགོ་ཅན ྷོ་ྱོགས་ན་ྱ་ྲི་ ུ་
ཁ་ཁ་དོག་དམར་མོ་ལག་པ་གཉིས་བྣོལ་ཏེ་མུན་ན་ཞིང་གནས་པ་ལ་ྟ་བ ྟག་གི་ མགོ་ཅན་ུབ་
[line 2] ྱོགས་ུ་
ྲིན་ླ་ུ་ཁ་ཁ་དོག་ནག་མོ་ལག་པ་གཉིས་ཞིང་ུང་ུ་འིན་ཅིང་ྕེས་ྡག་པ་ཝ་མགོ་ ཅན ྱང་ྱོགས་ན་ྭ་ན་ུ་ཁ་ཁ་དོག་
མཐིང་ག་ཞིང་ལག་པ་གཉིས་ྱིས་ཁོང་ྲལ་ཏེ་ྟ་ བ་ྱི་མགོ་ཅན ཤར་ྷོའ་ི མཚམས་ུ་ྲྀཌྷ་ུ་ཁ་ཁ་
[line 3] དོག་དམར་གནག་
ཞིང་ུང་ུའི་བ་ུ་ཏ་ཁ་ན་ཐོགས་པ ལག་པ་གཡས་བྷན་དྷ་གཡོན་ྲི་ཐོགས་པ་ྱ་ ྒོད་ྱི་མགོ་ཅན ྷོ་ུབ་
མཚམས་ན་ཀྐ་ུ་ཁ་ཁ་དོག་དཀར་དམར་ྲག་པ་གཡོན་པ་ལ་ ཞིང་ཁེལ་ཞིང་ྐང་པ་ནས་བུང་བ [Ms 44v] གཡས་པ་
[line 4] མགོ་འིན་
པ ྱ་ཀྐའི་མགོ་ཅན་མུ་རིང་ཐོར་ཏོ་ུག་ཟེ་བ་དམར་མོ
ུབ་ྱང་མཚམས་ན་ཱ་ཀ་ ུ་ཁ་ཁ་དོག་ནག་མོ
མགོ་ཅན་མུས་ཞིང་ཐོགས་པ ལག་པ་གཡོན་བས་པྨ་ བྷན་དྷ་འིན་པ ྱང་ཤར་མཚམས་ུ་ཱུ་ཱུ་ཀ་
[line 5] ུ་ཁ་ཁ་དོག་ྣ་
ྱ་རོག་གི་
ོགས་ལག་པ་གཡོན་པ་ུང་ཆེན་ྲག་གིས་བཀང་བ་ལ་འུང་བ་ལ་གཡས་པ་ྡོ་ྗེ་ྕགས་ ུ་འིན་པ ུག་པའི་མགོ་
ཅན ནང་རིམ་ུག་པའི་འཁོར་ྱིས་བྐོར དེ་འི་ྱི་ རིམ་ྱ་རོག་གི་འཁོར་ྱིས་བྐོར དེ་འི་ྱི་རིམ་ྱ་ཀང་ཀ་མུ་
[line 6] རིངས་ྱི་
འཁོར་ྱིས་བྐོར དེའ་ི ྱི་རིམ་ྱ་ྒོད་ྱི་འཁོར་ྱིས་བྐོར དེ་དག་ཐམས་ ཅད་ྱང་ཞིང་མང་པོ་གསར་ྙིང་ུངས་པའི་ྟེང་
ན་ཞིང་ལ་ྟོད་པའི་ྱིར་འཐབ་པའི་ ུལ་ྟོན་པ་ཤ་ྟག་གོ
[line 7] ུན་འུ་རེ་རེ་ཡང་ལན་བཞི་བཞི་བྗོད་དོ
དེ་དག་གི་ྙིང་པོ་འདི་ྣམས་སོ
ཱུ་ཧ་ཧེ་ཕཊ་ཱུ [Ms 45r] འདི་
ཱུ་གིས་གོ་བོ་བྱེད ཧས་ནང་གི་ྷ་མོ་བྱེད ཧེས་ྱིའ་ི ྷ་མོ་བྱེད ཕཊ་ྱིས་ཐམས་
ཅད་ྲོས་པར་བུལ ཱུ་གིས་ཐམས་ཅད་ྱི་ཡེ་ཤེས་ྱི་འོད་ཟེར་འབར་བས་ྱོགས་བུར་ྱབ་པར་བྱིའོ
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
36
Glossary
Note: these glossary entries are organized in Tibetan alphabetical order. All entries
list the following information in this order: THL Extended Wylie transliteration
of the term, THL Phonetic rendering of the term, the English translation, the
Sanskrit equivalent, the Chinese equivalent, other equivalents such as Mongolian
or Latin, associated dates, and the type of term.
Ka
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Other
Dates
Type
kaḥ thog
Katok
kong sprul
Kongtrül
kyang
kyang
klong chen pa
Longchenpa
dkar chag
Karchak
Contents List
Text
dkyil
kyil
center
Term
dkyil ’khor
kyilkhor
bka’ brgyad bde
gshegs ’dus pa
Kagyé Deshek Düpa The Eight
Scriptural Deities
Embodying the
Sugatas (a
revelation of Nyang
ral
nyi ma ’od zer)
bka’ ’gyur
Kangyur
Canonical
collection of the
Buddhas’
Teachings, shared
by all Tibetan
Buddhist schools
Textual
Collection
bskang ba
kangwa
fulillment liturgy
Term
Phonetics
English
Place
Person
also
Term
Person
San. maṇḍala
Term
Textual
Collection
Kha
Wylie
Other
Dates
khri srong lde’u btsan Tri Songdeutsen
Type
Person
khrigs zin
trikzin
notes on (ritual)
procedures
Term
khro bo bcu
Trowochu
Ten Wrathful
Deities
Buddhist deity
’khor
khor
circle
Term
’khyog
khyok
bent
Term
Wylie
Phonetics
English
go
go
place
gor shar
gorshar
arising at the place
Ga
grags pa rgyal mtshan Drakpa Gyentsen
dga’ ldan
Ganden
mgyogs
gyok
’gos lhas btsas
Gö Lhatsé
Other
Dates
Type
Term
Term
1147-1216 Person
Place
swift
Term
ca. 1050
Person
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
rgyal rtse
Gyantsé
rgyud
Gyü
rgyud ’bum
Gyübum
37
Place
San. Tantra
Doxographical
Category
Tantra Collection
Doxographical
Category
rgyud gsang ba snying Gyü Sangwa Nyingpo Secret Essence
Tantra
po
Text
sgang steng
Gangteng
Place
sgo
go
door
Term
sgor shar
gorshar
arising at the door
Term
sgra med rtse
Drametsé
sgrub khog
drupkhok
ritual practice
framework manual
Term
bsgyur ba gnyis don
ni
gong du bshad pa
dang ’dra’o
gyurwa nyidönni
gongdu shepa dang
drao
they are two
(different)
translations, but the
meaning (of the
second) is the
same as (the irst),
explained above
Term
Phonetics
Place
Nga
Wylie
English
Other
ngan song
Ngensong Tamché
thams cad yongs su Yongsu Jongwa
sbyong ba gzi brjid
Zijikyi Gyelpö Takpa
kyi rgyal po’i brtag pa
Total Puriication
of All Evil
Existences, the
King of Splendour
San. Sarva-durgatipariśodhanatejorājasya-kalpa
sngags btu ba
ngak tuwa
coded mantra table San. mantroddhāra
Wylie
Phonetics
English
’chi med srog thig
Chimé Soktik
Immortal Life’s
Creative Seed
Dates
Type
Text
Term
Cha
Other
Dates
Type
Text
chos rgyal ’phags pa Chögyel Pakpa
1235-1280 Person
Ja
Wylie
Phonetics
’jang sa tham
Jangsa Tam
English
Other
’jigs med gling pa
1813-1899 Person
Jamgön Mipam
’jigs bral ye shes rdo Jikdrel Yeshé Dorjé
rje
Type
Place
’jam mgon kong sprul Jamgön Kongtrül
Lodrö Tayé
blo gros mtha’
yas
’jam mgon mi pham
Dates
1846-1912 Person
Dudjom Rinpoche
1904-1987 Person
Jikmé Lingpa
1729-1798 Person
Nya
Wylie
Phonetics
English
nyang ral nyi ma ’od Nyangrel Nyima Özer
zer
Other
Dates
Type
1124-1192 Person
mnyam pa nyid
nyampanyi
evenness/sameness
Term
rnying rgyud
Nyinggyü
Ancient Tantra
(section)
Doxographical
Category
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
38
rnying ma
Nyingma
Ancient (Tradition)
Organization
rnying ma bka’ ma
Nyingma Kama
Transmitted
Teachings of the
Nyingma Tradition
Textual
Collection
rnying ma rgyud ’bum Nyingma Gyübum
(Tsamdrak Gönpé
(mtshams brag dgon Drima)
pa’i bris ma)
The Mtshams brag
Manuscript of the
Rñiṅ ma rgyud
’bum (rgyud ’bum/
mtshams
brag dgon pa)
Text
rnying ma pa
Nyingmapa
Followers of the
Ancient Tradition
Organization
rnying ma’i rgyud
’bum
Nyingmé Gyübum
Ancient Tantra
Collection of the
Rnying ma pa
Textual
Collection
bsnyen yig
nyenyik
Term
Ta
Wylie
Phonetics
gting skyes
Tingkyé
English
Other
Dates
Type
gter ston
tertön
visionary revealer
Term
gter ma
Terma
“Treasure”
Revelation
Doxographical
Category
bstan ’gyur
Tengyur
Canonical
collection of
commentarial
writings on the
Buddhas’
Teachings,
shared by all
Tibetan Buddhist
schools
Textual
Collection
Phonetics
English
Place
Tha
Wylie
Other
Dates
Type
Tapkyi Zhakpa Pema
thabs kyi zhags
pa pad ma ’phreng ba Trengwagi Dön Düpé
Drelpa
gi don bsdus pa’i
’grel pa’
The Commentary
on “A Noble Noose
of Methods, the
Lotus Garland
Synopsis”
Text
thabs zhags
Tapzhak
Noose of Methods
Text
thig le
tiklé
creative seed or
drop
Term
thigs pa
tikpa
falling seed or drop
Term
them spangs ma
Tempangma
Place
Da
Wylie
Phonetics
English
bdud ’joms
Düjom
Dudjom
Other
Dates
Type
Name
bdud ’joms bka’ ma
Düjom Kama
Collection of
Transmitted
Teachings
published by Düjom
Rinpoché
(Bdud-’Joms
’Jigs-bral-ye-śes-rdo-rje)
Textual
Collection
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
bdud ’joms gling pa
Düjom Lingpa
1835-1904 Person
bdud ’joms ’jigs bral Düjom Jikdrel Yeshé Collected Works of
Dorjé Sungbum
Düjom Jikdrel
ye
Yeshé Dorjé
shes rdo rje’i gsung
’bum
bdud ’joms gter gsar Düjom Tersar
sngon ’gro
Ngöndro
Textual
Collection
The Düjom New
Treasure
Foundation
Practice
Text
bdud ’joms rin po che Düjom Rinpoché
Jikdrel Yeshé Dorjé
’jigs
bral ye shes rdo rje
rdo rje khros pa phur Dorjé Tröpa Purpa
pa rtsa ba’i
Tsawé Gyü
rgyud
39
1904-1987 Person
The Vajra Wrath,
Root Vajrakīlaya
Tantra
Text
rdo rje phur pa
Dorjé Purpa
San. Vajrakīlaya
rdo rje phur pa rtsa
ba’i rgyud
kyi dum bu
Dorjé Purpa Tsawé
Gyükyi Dumbu
The Fragment of
the Vajrakīlaya
Root Tantra
Text
rdo rje phur
bu chos thams cad
mya ngan las ’das
pa’i rgyud chen po
Dorjé Purbu Chö
Tamché Nyangenlé
Depé Gyü Chenpo
The Great
Vajrakīlaya Tantra
for the Nirvāṇa of
All Dharmas
Text
ldan dkar ma
Denkarma
See lhan kar ma
Text
sde dge
Degé
Place
sde dge par khang
Degé Parkhang
Publisher
Buddhist deity
Na
Wylie
Phonetics
English
gnam lcags spu gri
Namchak Pudri
Meteoric Iron
Razor cycle of
Vajrakīlaya texts of
the Düjom tradition
snar thang
Nartang
Other
Dates
Type
Text
Place
Pa
Wylie
Phonetics
padma gling pa
Pema Lingpa
English
padma’i rnam rol
bdud ’joms gling pa’i
skor nye brgyud zab
gter chos mdzod rin
po
che
Pemé Namröl Düjom
Lingpé Kornyé
Gyüzap Terchö Dzö
Rinpoché
The Collected
Terma
Rediscoveries of
Terchen Düjom
Lingpa
par yig
paryik
publisher’s proofs
pra be se
Trabesé
dpal rdo rje phur pa
rtsa ba’i rgyud kyi
dum bu’i ’grel pa
snying po bsdud pa
dpal chen dgyes pa’i
zhal lung
Pel Dorjé Purpa
Tsawé Gyükyi Dumbü
Drelpa Nyingpo Düpa
Pelchen Gyepé
Zhellung
dpal spungs
Pelpung
Other
Dates
Type
Person
Text
Term
San. Prabhahasti(?)
Commentary on
“The Fragment of
the Vajrakīlaya
Root Tantra”
Person
Text
Place
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
40
dpal gsang ba’i
snying po de kho na
nyid nges pa’i rgyud
kyi ’grel pa phyogs
bcu’i mun pa thams
cad rnam par sel ba
Pelsangwé Nyingpo
Dekhonanyi Ngepé
Gyükyi Drelpa
Chokchü Münpa
Tamché Nampar
Selwa
Commentary on
“The Secret
Essence Tantra”
Text
sprul sku
Trülku
reincarnate lama
Term
Wylie
Phonetics
English
phur pa
purpa
phur pa bcu gnyis
Purpa Chunyi
The Twelve-fold
Kīlaya Tantra
Text
phyogs bcu mun sel
Chokchü Münsel
See Dpal gsang
ba’i snying po de
kho na nyid nges
pa’i rgyud kyi ’grel
pa
phyogs bcu’i mun
pa thams cad rnam
par sel ba
Text
’phags pa thabs kyi
zhags pa padma
phreng gi don bsdus
pa
Pakpa Tapkyi Zhakpa A Noble Noose of
Methods, the Lotus
Pema Trenggi Dön
Garland Synopsis
Düpa
Text
’phags pa thabs kyi Pakpa Tapkyi Zhakpa A Noble Noose of
Methods, the Lotus
zhags pa padma
Pema Trenggi Dön
Garland Synopsis
’phreng gi don bsdus Düpa
pa
Text
’phags pa thabs kyi Pakpa Tapkyi Zhakpa A Noble Noose of
Methods, the Lotus
zhags pa padmo
Pemo Trenggi Dön
Garland Synopsis
’phreng gi don bsdus Düpa
pa
Text
The Commentary
on “A Noble Noose
of Methods, the
Lotus Garland
Synopsis”
Text
Pha
’phags pa thabs
Pakpa Tapkyi Zhakpa
kyi zhags pa padmo Pemo Trenggi Düpé
’phreng gi don bsdus Drelpa
pa’i ’grel pa
Other
Dates
San. kīlaya
’phags pa thabs kyi
zhags pa
padmo’i phreng
Pakpa Tapkyi Zhakpa See ’Phags pa
thabs kyi zhags pa
Pemö Treng
padmo ’phreng gi
don bsdus pa
’phang thang ma
Pangtangma
Type
Term
Text
a list of tantras
translated in the
earliest period of
Buddhism in
Tibet
Text
a list of tantras
’phang
Pangtangma:
thang ma/ dkar chag Karchak Pangtangma, translated in the
’phang thang ma/
Drajor Bampo Nyipa earliest period of
Buddhism in
sgra sbyor bam po
Tibet
gnyis pa
Text
Ba
Wylie
Phonetics
bu ston
Butön
bon
Bön
English
Other
Dates
Type
1290-1364 Person
Organization
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
41
byang gter
Jangter
Northern Treasures
Tradition
byung
jung
occurred
bye ma la mu tra
Jemalamutra
San. Vimalamitra
Person
bla ma
lama
San. guru
Term
’bru ’grel rgan po
Drudrel Genpo
Textual
Collection
Term
Text
Ma
Wylie
Phonetics
English
ma dpe
Mapé
exemplar
Other
Dates
Type
Term
ma mo
mamo
wrathful female
deity
Term
ma hā yo ga’i rgyud
sde bco
brgyad
Mahayogé Gyüdé
Chobgyé
Eighteen Tantras of
Mahāyoga
Textual
Collection
man ngag lta ’phreng Menngak Tatreng
Instructions on the
Garland of Views
Text
myang ’das
Nyangdé
See Rdo rje phur bu
chos thams cad mya
ngan las ’das pa’i
rgyud chen
po
Text
smin grol gling
Mindrölling
Place
Tsha
Wylie
Phonetics
tshal pa
Tselpa
English
Other
Dates
Type
Place
mtshams brag
Tsamdrak
Place
Dza
Wylie
Phonetics
English
rdzogs chen
Dzokchen
Great Perfection
Other
Dates
Type
Wylie
Phonetics
English
zhe chen
Zhechen
zhes gsungs te
zhé sungté
it is said
Wylie
Phonetics
English
zangs gling ma
Zanglingma
Text
zil gnon nam mkha’i
rdo rje
Zilnön Namkhé Dorjé
Person
Doxographical
Category
Zha
Other
Dates
Type
Place
Term
Za
Other
Dates
Type
Ya
Wylie
Phonetics
English
yang
yang
also
Other
Dates
Type
Term
yin nam
yinnam
there is...or
alternatively
Term
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
42
Ra
Wylie
Phonetics
English
rang bzo
rangzo
individualistic
contrivance
ratna gling pa
Ratna Lingpa
ral gcig ma
Relchikma
rig ’dzin
Rikdzin
rig ’dzin tshe dbang
nor bu
Rikdzin Tsewang
Norbu
rin chen bzang po
Rinchen Zangpo
rong zom bka’ ’bum
Rongzom Kabum
rong zom chos kyi
bzang po
Rongzom Chökyi
Zangpo
rong zom pa
Rongzompa
See Rong zom chos
kyi bzang po
Wylie
Phonetics
English
li thang
Litang
Other
Dates
Type
Term
1403-1479 Person
Single Lock of Hair San. Ekajaṭā
Buddhist deity
Person
1698-1755 Person
958-1055 Person
Rongzom’s
Collected Works
Textual
Collection
Person
Person
La
Other
Dates
Type
Place
Sa
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Other
Dates
Type
sa skya
Sakya
sras mchog
sechok
supreme son(s)
Term
gsar ma pa
Sarmapa
Followers of the
New Translation
traditions
Organization
gser gyi lag bris ma
Sergyi Lak Drima
Golden Tengyur
Textual
Collection
bsam yas
Samyé
Organization
Place
Ha
Wylie
Phonetics
lha lung
Lhalung
English
lha sa
Lhasa
lhan kar ma
Lhenkarma
list of tantras
translated in the
earliest period of
Buddhism in Tibet
Phonetics
English
Other
Dates
Type
Place
Place
Text
Sanskrit
Wylie
Sanskrit
Dates
Type
bodhisattva
Term
Buddhagupta
Person
the actual speech of Buddhavacana
the enlightened
ones
Term
Ḍākinī
Buddhist deity
dharma
Term
Guhyasamāja
Text
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
root text
43
guru
Term
Hūṃkara
Person
Jaḥ
Person
kīla
Term
Mahāyāna
Doxographical
Category
Mahāyoga
Doxographical
Category
Mañjuśrīmitra
Person
mantra
Term
mūla
Term
nidāna
Term
Padmasambhava
Person
samaya
Term
Sambhava
Person
Śāntigarbha
Person
Śrī heruka
Buddhist deity
tantra
Term
Vairocana
Buddhist deity
Vajrakīlaya
Buddhist deity
Vajrapaṇi
Buddhist deity
Vajrasattva
Buddhist deity
Vajrayāna
Doxographical
Category
Vidyādhara
Name
Yogatantra
Doxographical
Category
Chinese
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Chinese
Dunhuang
Dates
Type
Place
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
44
Bibliography
Dunhuang Tibetan manuscripts held at the British Library, London:
IOL Tib J 321 (Thabs kyi zhags pa pad ma ’phreng ba gi don bsdus pa’i ’grel
pa’); IOL Tib J 438.
IDP: The International Dunhuang Project (http://idp.bl.uk/). Contains digital
images of many items, and a catalogue (Dalton and van Schaik 2005).
Editions of the Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa [NGB]
Sde dge [D]: The Sde dge edition of the Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying
ma pa. Twenty-six volumes, ka-ra, plus Dkar chag volume a. Sde dge par
khang. The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padmo’i phreng is in volume pa,
286r-298r.
Mtshams brag [M]: The Mtshams brag Manuscript of the Rñiṅ ma rgyud ’bum
(rgyud ’bum/ mtshams brag dgon pa). Thimphu: National Library, Royal
Government of Bhutan, 1982. Forty-six volumes. (Microiche available from
The Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions, LMpj 014,862 - 014,
907. An electronic version is now available from the Tibetan Buddhist Resource
Center (http://www.tbrc.org), under the title, The Mtshams brag Manuscript
of the Rñiṅ ma rgyud ’bum (rgyud ’bum/ mtshams brag dgon pa) (Rnying ma
rgyud ’bum [mtshams brag dgon pa’i bris ma]), W21521. It is also available
online,
at
http://www.thlib.org/encyclopedias/literary/canons/ngb/
ngbcat.php#cat=tb/0416). The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padmo ’phreng
gi don bsdus pa is in vol. wa, 123-52.
Sgang steng [G]: The Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa manuscripts
preserved by Sgang steng Monastery, Bhutan. Forty-six volumes. (Digital
images were made under an AHRC funded project at Oxford University. The
collection consulted is the Sgang steng-b manuscript; more recently, the other
manuscript collection held at the monastery - Sgang steng-a - has also been
photographed as part of a British Library Endangered Archives Research
Project http://www.bl.uk/about/policies/endangeredarch/phuntsho.html). The
’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padmo ’phreng gi don bsdus pa is in wa:51r-65r.
Gting skyes [T]: Rñiṅ ma rgyud ’bum Reproduced from the MS preserved at
Gtiṅ-skyes Dgon-pa-byaṅ Monastery in Tibet, under the direction of Dingo
Khyentse Rimpoche, Thimbu, 1973. (Microiche of some volumes available
from The Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions, LMpj 011,825
- 012,584.) The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padma phreng gi don bsdus pa
is in dza:395-422.
Rig ’dzin tshe dbang nor bu [R]: The Rig ’dzin tshe dbang nor bu edition of the
Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying ma pa. Twenty-nine volumes are held
at the British Library, under the classiication, “RNYING MA’I RGYUD
’BUM MSS,” with the pressmark, OR15217. Volume ka is held at the Bodleian
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
45
Library Oxford at the shelfmark, MS. Tib.a.24(R). (Microilm is available
from The British Library, and the Bodleian Library for volume ka). Title folios
to volume ga and volume a are held at the Victoria and Albert Museum,
Accession nos.: IM 318-1920 and IM 317-1920. The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags
pa padma phreng gi don bsdus pa is in dza:180r-93r.
Kathmandu [K]: Manuscript edition of the Ancient Tantra Collection of the Rnying
ma pa from the Nubri area, held by The National Archives, Kathmandu.
(Microilm is available.) The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padmo ’phreng gi
don bsdus pa is in ma:20r-36r.
Bka’ ’gyur and Bstan ’gyur Collections
(Note that copies of the Independent Bka’ ’gyurs of Hemis, from Hemis Tshoms
lha khang, and of ’Ba’ thang, which is held in the Newark Museum, New York,
have not yet been made available in published form. The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags
pa pad mo ’phreng gis don bsdus pa occurs in Volume Rgyud a of the ’Ba’ thang
Bka’ ’gyur, ff.204r-214r, and the ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padmo phreng gyi
don bsdus pa occurs in Volume Rgyud ka of the Hemis Bka’ ’gyur, ff.31r-45v.)
The Sde dge Bka’ ’gyur, the Sde-dge mtshal-par bka’-’gyur [Dk]: a facsimile
edition of the eighteenth century redaction of Si-tu chos-kyi-’byun-gnas
prepared under the direction of H.H. the Sixteenth Rgyal-dban karma-pa,
1976-1979. 103 volumes. Delhi, Karmapae Chodhey, Gyalwae Sungrab Partun
Khang. A CD version is available from the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center,
New York (W22084). The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padmo’i phreng is in
volume Rnying rgyud kha, 597-621.
The Lha sa Bka’ ’gyur [Hk], 1978. 101 volumes. Microiche set made from a
xylograph completed in the early twentieth century, kept in Rashi Gempil Ling
(First Kalmuck Buddhist Temple) in Howell, New Jersey. Stony Brook, N.
Y.: The Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions. The ’Phags pa
thabs kyi zhags pa padmo’i phreng is in volume Rgyud wa, 472v-492r.
The ’Jang sa tham or Li thang Bka’ ’gyur [J], from the private collection of
Namkha Drime Rinpoche, Jeerang, Orissa. The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa
padmo’i phreng is in volume Rgyud ’bum (Rnying rgyud), wa, 294v-307r. It
is available in prints or copies made from the microilm held at the
Staatsbibliothek, Berlin.
The Snar thang Bka’ ’gyur [Nk] and Bstan ’gyur [Nt], Narthang Bka’ ’gyur, 102
volumes, set at the International Academy of Indian Culture, New Delhi,
scanned by the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, New York (W22703). The
’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padmo’i phreng is in the Snar thang Bka’ ’gyur
volume Rgyud wa, 816-855. The new Snar thang Bstan ’gyur edition (from
the blocks made in 1741-1742), in 225 volumes. Note that the Tibetan Buddhist
Resource Center, New York, have scanned a copy in 225 volumes, preserved
at Tibet House, Delhi, supplemented with pages and volumes from Dharamsala
Cantwell & Mayer: A Noble Noose of Methods, the Lotus Garland Synopsis
46
and libraries in the U.S.A. (W22704). The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padmo
’phreng gi don bsdus pa’i ’grel pa is in the Snar thang Bstan ’gyur volume
Rgyud bu (77): 176-228.
The Peking Bka’ ’gyur [Qk] and Bstan ’gyur [Qt], reprinted and catalogued in
The Tibetan Tripitaka, Peking Edition, kept in the library of the Otani
University, Kyoto, edited by D. T. Suzuki, 1955-1961. Vol. 1-45 Bkaḥ-ḥgyur.
Vol. 46-150 Bstan-ḥgyur. Vol. 151 Dkar-chag. Vol. 152-164 Extra (Btsoṅ Kha
Pa/Lcaṅ Skya). Vol. 165-168 Catalogue. Tokyo, Kyoto: Suzuki Research
Foundation. The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padmo’i phreng is in the
Bkaḥ-ḥgyur Rgyud wa:299v-313r and the ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa padmo
’phreng gi don bsdus pa’i ’grel pa is in the Bstan-ḥgyur Rgyud ’grel
bu:101r-129v.
The Urga Bka’ ’gyur [U], edited by Lokesh Chandra, 1990-1994, from the
collection of Prof. Raghuvira. 105 volumes. Delhi: International Academy of
Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan. The ’Phags pa thabs kyi zhags pa
padmo’i phreng is in volume Rnying rgyud kha, 597-621.
The Golden Bstan ’gyur (Gser gyi lag bris ma) [Gt], produced between 1731-1741,
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Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, New York (W23702). The ’Phags pa thabs
kyi zhags pa padmo ’phreng gi don bsdus pa’i ’grel pa commentary is in
volume Rgyud ’grel bu (78): 243-321.
Other Tibetan Sources
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zab gter chos mdzod rin po che. Edited by H. H. Bdud-’joms
’jigs-bral-ye-ses-rdo-rje. Kalimpong: Dupjung Lama, 1978. An electronic
version is now available from the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center
(http://www.tbrc.org), under the title, The Collected Gter-ma Rediscoveries
of Gter-chen Bdud-’joms-gling-pa, W21728.
Bdud ’joms rin po che, ’Jigs bral ye shes rdo rje. The Collected Writings and
Revelations of H. H. bDud-’joms Rin-po-che ’Jigs bral ye shes rdo rje.
Kalimpong: Dupjung Lama, 1979-1985. An electronic version is now available
from the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (http://www.tbrc.org), under the
title, Bdud ’joms ’jigs bral ye shes rdo rje’i gsung ’bum, W20869, 0334-0358.
25 vols.
Bka’ ma shin tu rgyas pa (Snga ’gyur bka’ ma) 120 volumes, published by KaH
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Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009)
47
’Jam mgon kong sprul blo gros mtha’ yas. Dpal rdo rje phur pa rtsa ba’i rgyud
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ma [Bdud-’Joms ’Jigs-bral-ye-śes-rdo-rje Rñin ma Bka’ ma rgyas pa]. Vol.
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