On the Vicissitudes of Subhūticandra s Kāmadhenu Commentary on the Amarakoṣa in Tibet 1

Transcription

1 - On the Vicissitudes of Subhūticandra s Kāmadhenu Commentary on the Amarakoṣa in Tibet 1 Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp Harvard University Abstract: Subhūticandra s (ca ca. 1110) circa 1100 Kāmadhenu commentary on the Amarakoṣa ( Chi med mdzod) is one of the great monuments of Indian lexicography. Only several incomplete manuscript witnesses of the Sanskrit text are known to have survived. However, a complete manuscript of Nepali origin was translated into Tibetan by the great Si tu paṇ chen chos kyi byung gnas ( ) in the eighteenth century. This paper seeks to provide a preliminary biography and bibliography of the Kāmadhenu and the ways in which, beginning with the translation of an incomplete manuscript by Kīrticandra and Yar klung lo tsā ba grags pa rgyal mtshan ( ) in Kathmandu, this work was able to insinuate itself in Tibetan intellectual circles. As a matter of course, it shares a great deal of history with the Amarakoṣa itself. Introduction The transmission of the Sanskrit text of Subhūticandra s (ca ca. 1110) corpulent Kāmadhenu or Kavikāmadhenu commentary on Amarasiṃha s circa fifth century Nāmaliṅgānuśāsana, that is, the famous Amarakoṣa lexicon, 2 is a far from happy one. 3 Only four incomplete manuscript witnesses of this not 1 I owe a debt of gratitude to what was then the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People s Republic of China, Washington, D. C., and is now the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China, New York, for a research grant that enabled me to work at the China Nationalities Library of the Cultural Palace of Nationalities, Beijing, from October to December of 1992 and from July to September of The manuscripts of texts used for this paper housed in this library are marked C. P. N. Finally, I have dispensed with placing into brackets what I considered to be implicit in the few passages that I have translated. The experienced reader will be able to judge for him or herself whether my considerations were justified. 2 Amarasiṃha, Amarakoṣa [ Chi med mdzod], edited by S. Misra (Jaipur: Jagdish Sanskrit Pustakalaya, 2005). 3 See Claus Vogel, Indian Lexicography, in A History of Indian Literature, edited by J. Gonda, volume 5, fasc. 4 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1979), ; and now Mahes Raj Pant, ed., Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009): /2009/5/T by Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp, Tibetan and Himalayan Library, and International Association of Tibetan Studies. Distributed under the THL Digital License.

2 van der Kuijp: On the Vicissitudes of Subhūticandra s Kāmadhenu Commentary 2 insignificant work have been sighted thus far and to date not even one of these has been fully edited or published. Two of the four were located in Tibet. Since they were written in the Newari script, there can be little doubt that they were copied in the Kathmandu Valley rather than somewhere else in the Indian subcontinent. One of these two is the seventeen-folio manuscript R. Sāṅkṛtyāyana ( ) and Dge dun chos phel ( ) photographed in the fall of Originally preserved in the Lha khang chen mo complex of Sa skya Monastery in midwest Tibet, this manuscript contains Subhūticandra s comments from almost the beginning of the Amarakoṣa to I: 4, 8a, with a piece missing in between. The photographic plates of this manuscript are located in the library of the K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute, Patna, and copies are stored with the Department of Indian and Buddhist Studies of Göttingen University. Mahes Raj Pant reproduced select passages from it in his remarkable recently published study of Jātarūpa s Amarako- ṣaṭīkā. 4 Sāṅkṛtyāyana and Dge dun chos phel also discovered folios of another manuscript with a concluding colophon in Ngor evaṃ chos ldan Monastery, which is located to the north of Sa skya. Physically different in appearance from the first manuscript, it does therefore most probably not constitute one of its missing portions, as is sometimes thought. Apparently, they did not photograph this manuscript. Sāṅkṛtyāyana also did not photograph it when he returned to Tibet in 1934 and 1936, although he does include a description of it in one of his articles where he recounts the successes achieved by these expeditions. 5 Writing of his experiences with the Indian scholar and the many manuscripts they encountered, Dge dun chos phel relates that the Ngor manuscript had (unidentified) annotations in Tibetan (Bod kyi mchan bu can). 6 We do not really know for certain when these manuscripts of the Kāmadhenu entered the Tibetan cultural area, or how they ultimately ended up in Sa skya and Ngor that, we remind ourselves, were built in 1076 and 1429, respectively. Jātarūpa s Commentary on the Amarakoṣa, Part I and Part II (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2000), part I, Pant argues with some reason for calling it Kavikāmadhenu. Nonetheless, following Tibetan tradition, I will continue to refer to it as the Kāmadhenu. 4 Pant, Jātarūpa s Commentary, part II, R. Sāṅkṛtyāyana, Sanskrit Palm-leaf MSS in Tibet, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 21, no. 150 (1935): 40. See also Zhongguo zangxue yanjiu zhongxin shouzangde fanwen beiye jing (Suowei jiaojuan) mulu [Krung go i bod kyi shes rig zhib jug lte gnas su nyar ba i ta la i lo ma i bstan bcos (sbyin shog dril ma i par) gyi dkar chag mdor gsal] (np, nd), 152, no. 173; my thanks to V. A. Wallace for so kindly giving me a copy of Ta la'i lo ma'i bstan bcos, a handlist of the titles of a large number of Sanskrit manuscripts that were found in Tibet. 6 This is noted in the fascinating Dge dun chos phel, *Thog mar lha sa nas phebs thon mdzad pa i tshul, in Collected Works, volume 1, edited by Hor khang bsod nams dpal bar et al., Gangs can rig mdzod 10 (Lha sa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1994), 30. For an in-depth appraisal of Dge dun chos phel s ( ) encounter with the Indian subcontinent and its culture, see Toni Huber, Colonial Archeology, International Missionary Buddhism and the First Example of Modern Tibetan Literature, Bauddhavidyāsudhākaraḥ. Studies in Honour of Heinz Bechert on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, edited by P. Kieffer-Pültz and J.-U. Hartmann, Indica et Tibetica, Bd. 30 (Swisttal-Odendorf: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 1997), , and now also his The Holy Land Reborn. Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of Buddhist India (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), as well as Du Yongbin, Ershi shiji xizang qiseng (Beijing: Zhongguo zangxue chubanshe, 1999),

3 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009) 3 The present essay focuses on some of the highlights of the ways in which the Kāmadhenu was handed down among Tibet s literati from the late twelfth to the middle of the eighteenth century. As a matter of course, its transmission is closely tied to that of the Amarakoṣa and it is for this reason that the narrative at times impinges on this text s biography in Tibet as well. It goes without saying that these Tibetan translations of the Amarakoṣa and (a portion of) the large Kāmadhenu were events that contributed significantly to the ongoing process of the Tibetan acculteration and enculturation of the subcontinent s religious, material, and social culture. While it is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify their contributions to Tibetan culture in general, these two treatises did give rise to an entirely new literary genre in Tibetan lexicography known as mngon brjod kyi bstan bcos, a calque of Sanskrit abhidhānaśāstra. As in the subcontinent, lexica belonging to this genre were important reservoirs of words from which the Tibetan scholar-poets drew, if not their inspiration, then at least the more arcane and perhaps also the more beautiful and resonant equivalents of otherwise well-used and known words for the enhancement of the expressive power of their poetry or prose. 7 The Tibetan Translations and Translators of the Kāmadhenu Khro phu lo tsā ba byams pa i dpal ( ) According to its colophon, the Ngor Monastery manuscript of the Kāmadhenu is dated 14 February, Whether happenstance or not, this date nicely coincides with what is so far one of the very first occasions where the very existence of the Amarakoṣa is signaled in Tibetan literature, namely, in a brief passage of Khro phu lo tsā ba byams pa i dpal s ( ) autobiography of There Khro phu lo tsā ba informs us that, shortly after he had turned nineteen (lo bcu dgu pa i stod la, = eighteen), he had begun to harbor a deep desire to study Sanskrit in order to become a bona fide lo tsā ba or sgra pa, that is, a Sanskritist-cum-translator of Buddhist scriptures. 9 What had apparently prompted him seriously to consider such a career move was a series of conversations he had with a much older master by the name of Dkar lo tsā ba. 10 A native son of Sha dros in the Dkar area, itself located in the Nyang ro district of eastern Gtsang, this little known figure had lived 7 For what someone traditionally needed to learn at a minimum to become a poet of some standing in the subcontinent, see Siegfried Lienhard, The Making of a Poet, Indologica Taurinensia 7 [Dr. Ludwik Sternbach Felicitation Volume] (1979), ; see also the introductory remarks in his A History of Classical Poetry. Sanskrit-Pali-Prakrit, in A History of Indian Literature, edited by J. Gonda, volume 3, fasc. 1 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1984). 8 Vogel, Indian Lexicography, What follows is taken from Khro phu lo tsa ba byams pa i dpal, Khro lo chen pos mdzad pa i dpag bsam khri shing, handwritten dbu med manuscript, C. P. N. catalog no (4), 11a-12a [Khro phu lo tsa ba byams pa i dpal, Pan grub gsum gyi rnam thar dpag bsam khril shing, blockprint, C. P. N. catalog no (2), 11b-12a]. The carving of the printing blocks for the Dpag bsam khri shing, the blockprint of the autobiography, is dated Khro phu lo tsa ba, Pan gsum rnam thar, 11b, has Skor lo tsā ba, and writes that he was a native of Skar, which is homophonous with Dkar. I am not at all sure which one is correct, and adopt Dkar for the sake of convenience.

4 van der Kuijp: On the Vicissitudes of Subhūticandra s Kāmadhenu Commentary 4 in the subcontinent for close to thirty years. As a result, he had come to enjoy the reputation of being very learned in linguistic sciences, especially in Sanskrit grammar, as well as in logic and epistemology, and tantra. Khro phu lo tsā ba adds the detail that he had a tremendous facility in either spoken Sanskrit or in one or the other Indian vernacular. Without revealing his source, he relates that when Dkar lo tsā ba would be in conversation with native non-buddhist scholars in his residence in India, those listening outside were quite unable to distinguish between them, so fluent was he. Though evidently recognized as a translator and eminent Sanskritist in his life time, I have so far found absolutely nothing in the literature that tells us anything about his scholarship in this or any other area. 11 Whatever its extent or limitations may have been, upon his return to Tibet, Dkar lo tsā ba landed in Khro phu Monastery for reasons Khro phu lo tsā ba does not render explicit. There he met and spoke with this institution s founder and leading master Rgyal tsha kun dga shes rab ( ), alias Rin chen mgon, Khro phu lo tsā ba s maternal grandfather. And it turned out that he was so impressed with Rgyal tsha that he prolonged his stay in Khro phu in order to request him for instructions (ngo sprod) in the system of D[w]ags po pa. The phrase in quotation marks doubtlessly refers to the Bka brgyud pa teachings of Sgam po pa bsod nams rin chen ( ) and his nephew Dwags po sgom tshul ( ). We do not know how long he ultimately made Khro phu his residence, but we should hardly be surprised that the topic of India and his adventures in the holy land came up in the course of many informal chats this experienced traveler had with the young and curious Khro phu lo tsā ba. What the young man learned from him further piqued his curiosity, and his initially diffuse wish to embark on Sanskrit studies soon sharpened into a firm resolve to venture into the subcontinent and learn its sacred language properly. Recording a discussion about this point between Dkar lo tsā ba and his grandfather, he relates that the former had said 12 that it would not hurt were this son of a noble family (jo sras, = Khro phu lo tsā ba) to go to India to learn the trade of a lo tsā ba-translator. But Rgyal tsha was a bit less enthusiastic about the prospect of his grandson heading south of the Tibetan border. In spite of this, he informed Dkar lo tsā ba that if it were not for the present need to have someone teach religion at the monastery because, after all, he was getting on in years, he would consider sending his grandson to India. Khro phu lo tsā ba writes 11 His name does not figure in the standard handbooks on Tibetan translators, for which see the Gangs ljongs skad gnyis smra ba du ma i gyur byang blo gsal dga skyed (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1983) and Dbang dus tshe ring and Phrin las rgya mtsho, Bod kyi sgra sgyur lo rgyus dang lo tsā ba rim byon gyi mdzad rnam gsal ba i me long (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2001). But, in his ecclesiastic chronicle, Dpa bo II Gtsug lag phreng ba ( ) registers him among the Tibetan translators, for which see Dpa bo gtsug lag phreng ba, Dam pa i chos kyi khor lo bsgyur ba rnams kyi byung ba gsal bar byed pa mkhas pa i dga ston, stod cha [volume 2], edited by Rdo rje rgyal po (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1986), The next two quotations read in Khro phu lo tsa ba, Dpag bsam khri shing, 11a: jo sras di rgya gar du lo tsatsha bslabs na tshegs med pa la gsung skad/ and kho bo rgas pas jo sras chos bshad pa dra la bsdad dgos pa min na lo tstsha slob du gtong dgos pa yin pa la gsung /. Khro phu lo tsa ba, Pan gsum rnam thar, 12a, has: jo sras di rgya gar du lo tsa slab na tsheg med pa la gsung skad/ and kho bo rgas pas jo sras chos bshad dra la sdad dgos pa min na/ lo tsha slob du gtong ba yin pa la gsung /. I follow the former.

5 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009) 5 that upon hearing that his grandfather had tentatively and in principle given him his blessings for studying Sanskrit in India a great ebullience arose [in me] (dga spro chen po skyes). In deference to the wishes and quiet reluctance of his grandfather to give him permission to take leave, the young Khro phu lo tsā ba patiently bided his time at Khro phu. But he was not content with sitting on his hands. While for some unknown reason he did not do so with Dkar lo tsā ba, he managed to learn some Sanskrit before the long awaited opportunity for travel presented itself in circa 1195/6. Having heard of another Sanskritist, Zhang lo tsā ba dge ba (?-ca. 1195), who lived in the nearby Bring mtshams area, he was given permission to seek him out. As befits a scion of Tibetan landed nobility, he set out for this master s residence in the company of three servant-companions: Dge bshes brtson grus rdo rje, Lha rje Ra phyar, and Ston pa phag mo. Later, in 1195/6, these three men (the second may have even been his personal physician as, after all, he is styled Lha rje) were also to accompany him on his journey to the subcontinent, although, because of the social and political unrest caused by the wars that raged in northern India, they were only able to get as far as the Kathmandu Valley. Zhang lo tsā ba dge ba Concerning Zhang lo tsā ba dge ba, we know that he had earlier taught Dpyal lo tsā ba chos kyi bzang po (?-1217/29) phral skad and klog yig, by which I understand an Indian vernacular and the reading of an Indic script (or scripts). 13 After this initiation into the basic of Indic linguistic lore, Dpyal lo tsā ba had gone off to the subcontinent where he ended up studying at Nālandā Monastery with inter alia Śākya-Śrībhadra ( ), the famous master from Kashmir, Muniśrī, Kṣitigarbha, Niśka-Laṅka (the Younger), and Ānanda. Parenthetically, a palm-leaf manuscript of the Sanskrit text of the Amarakoṣa that had been in Dpyal lo tsā ba s 13 A note on his life is found in Shes rab ral gri s chronicle of the Dpyal family of possibly 1305, for which see the Bla ma chen po dpyal pa i gdung rabs rin po che i za ra tshags, handwritten dbu med ms., C. P. N. catalog no (2), 17b-19a. The author indicates on fol. 19a that he excerpted his sketch from a separate biography of Chos kyi bzang po, which has so far not been sighted, and Khro phu lo tsā ba s autobiography. We learn there also that Dpyal lo tsā ba passed away in the wood-ox (shing mo glang) year, which can only be But this is impossible, inasmuch as he was a teacher of Rgwa rnam rgyal rdo rje ( ), alias Rong pa rgwa lo. Titled Dpyal pa i lo rgyus kyi yi ge, a thirteen-folio manuscript of what amounts to virtually the same text has it more ambiguously, yet at the same time more precisely, on fol. 7b, that he died in an ox (glang) year, which would therefore be 1217 or My thanks to E. Gene Smith for lending me a typescript copy of the latter. A number of Sanskritists were born into the Dpyal family, so that it is not always easy to identify who is being referred to when we come across the phrase Dpyal lo tsā ba. Of no uncertain interest is of course that Ta la'i lo ma'i bstan bcos, 74, no. 100(5), lists a palm leaf manuscript of another Dpyal family history titled Dpyal ston gdung rabs gser gyi phreng ba! Further, the homophone Spyal for Dpyal is not infrequently attested, though not always so readily identified; see, for example, Pieter C. Verhagen, A History of Sanskrit Grammatical Literature in Tibet, volume 1. Transmission of the Canonical Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 61. Lastly, a study of one branch of this extended family may be found in Roberto Vitali, The White Dpyal: Early Evidence (from the 7th century to the beginning of the bstan pa phyi dar), in Pramāṇakīrtiḥ. Papers Dedicated to Ernst Steinkellner on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, edited by B. Kellner et al., Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 70.2 (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, 2007),

6 van der Kuijp: On the Vicissitudes of Subhūticandra s Kāmadhenu Commentary 6 possession is apparently located in the library of the Nor bu gling ka in Lha sa. The title page of this manuscript contains a remark made by a certain Mkhan chen ma hā lo tsā ba, the great scholar, great translator, to the effect that it had belonged to Dpyal lo tsā ba and that the glosses (mchan) were owed to Lo tsā ba byang bum. 14 I am inclined to identify this Mkhan chen ma hā lo tsā ba as none other than Thar pa gling lo tsā ba nyi ma rgyal mtshan (ca ), who was closely associated with the Dpyal family and the monasteries of Sman lung and, of course, Thar pa gling. In any event, upon the young Khro phu lo tsā ba s arrival, Dge ba first taught him the text of the Amarakoṣa, evidently so that his young student would be somewhat prepared for his trip to the subcontinent. But the Amarakoṣa formed only part of what turned out to be a rather intense regimen of linguistic studies. Other treatises that formed part of the curriculum were the Smra sgo, that is, Smṛtijñānakīrti s (ca. 1000) Vacanamukhāyudhopama, the Sgra la jug pa (*Sabdāvatāra), the Kā bya sa ras nytsa (*Kāvya-?), and the Bya ka ra ṇa i a lang ka ra (*Vyā-karaṇālaṃkāra). 15 The autobiography does not mention exegeses of either the Amarakoṣa or the Vacanamukhāyudhopamā 16 in this context, so that, swallowing hard, we should assume that Dge ba taught these without their accompanying commentaries. Dge ba, Khro phu writes, was himself a native of Bring mtshams in southeastern Gtsang and one of the four great Tibetans (Bod kyi mi chen bzhi) of his time I do not know who the other three may have been in this context and that he was 14 Ta la'i lo ma'i bstan bcos, 49-50, no. 67. Part of the gloss reads stong gyur gyi mchan. I do not understand stong gyur. However, were we to read stod gyur (in cursive Tibetan da and nga are often virtual homographs), then these glosses on the translation of the first part of the text were written by Lo tsā ba byang bum. The latter is probably Rgyang ro byang chub bum (? ca ), who was involved in the compilation of the Snar thang Bstan gyur of circa as well as in the authentication of translated scripture. A handwritten dbu med ms. in eighty folios of a copy of the Lhan [sometimes: Ldan] Dkar ma catalog [the title page calls it Dkar chab ldan dkar ma] that belonged to him is located under C. P. N. catalog no. 2376(2). However, it is well to note that neither Bu ston rin chen grub s ( ) ecclesiastic chronicle of (= bu), nor the one by Dpa bo II register either Lo tsā ba byang [?chub] bum or Rgyang ro in their listings of Tibetan Sanskritists; see, respectively, Bu ston rin chen grub, Bu ston s History of Buddhism in Tibet, edited by J. Szerb, Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, Nr. 5 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990), ; and Dpa bo, Chos byung mkhas pa i dga ston, Stod cha [volume 2], Bstan dzin phun tshogs, ed., Bras spungs dgon du bzhugs su gsol ba i dpe rnying dkar chag, smad cha (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2004), nos , , registers a treatise on linguistics by him in nineteen and thirty folios that is titled Sgra i bstan bcos dri med snang ba. We should also add that Bstan dzin phun tshogs, Bras spungs dkar chag, no , tentatively attributes a nine-folio tract on case-endings, the Sgra i rnam dbye, to this Dpyal lo tsā ba. 15 The Sanskrit titles given in Khro phu lo tsa ba, Dpag bsam khri shing, 12a, show the following orthographic variants: A ma ra ko sha, Kā bya i sa ra san tsa and Bya ka ra na i a. Long ago, Professor A. Aklujkar suggested to me that *Vyākaraṇālaṃkāra might be a reference to the grammatical considerations found in Bhāmaha s (?seventh c.) Kāvyālaṃkāra. 16 For this work, see Pieter C. Verhagen, A History of Sanskrit Grammatical Literature in Tibet, volume 2. Assimilation into Indigenous Scholarship (Leiden: Brill, 2001), The canonical commentary is at times attributed to Smṛtijñānakīrti himself, or to his Tibetan contemporary and disciple Rong zom lo tsā ba chos kyi bzang po. Based on a blockprint of the printing blocks whose carving was subvented by Ju mi pham rnam rgyal ( ), it is included in the recently published collection of Rong zom s oeuvre, for which see Rong zom chos bzang gi gsung bum, volume 1, edited by Bkra shis and Pad+ma tshul khrims (Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1999),

7 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009) 7 one who had studied the art of translation (lo tsā mkhas par bslabs pa cig) in India. To be sure, the Zhang prefix to his name in religion indicates that he belonged to one of the many families that traced their origins back to one or the other maternal uncles (Zhang) of the Tibetan emperors. 17 It would appear that Zhang became a clan name in later times and that it was variously divided into sub-clans it seems that it was not originally the name of a clan name per se. The Zhang family name is therefore rather widespread, so that it hardly comes as a surprise that the tradition knows several other members of this large, extended family who had also been Sanskritists. For example, Pa tshab lo tsā ba tshul khrims rgyal mtshan (d. after 1130) 18 informs us in his lengthy and extremely rewarding colophon of his Tibetan translation of the massive Āryasaddharmasmṛtyupas-thānasūtra that a unique son (bu gcig) of the Zhang family had aided him in the final preparation of the translation. 19 The name in religion of this unique son seems to have been Shes rab od. Already Nyang ral nyi ma i od zer ( ) notes in his ecclesiastic chronicle that there were two contemporary Zhang lo tsā bas from Bring mtshams, namely, Zhang lo tsā ba shes rab bla ma and Zhang lo tsā ba mya ngan med pa i dpal. Both were responsible for translating a trilogy of texts that had to do with the tantric deity Yamāntaka. 20 It is tempting to equate Shes rab od with Shes rab bla ma, the more so since bla ma, teacher, was most probably not a part of his actual name in religion. However, what he tells us about his (or their) floruit precludes his (or their) identification with Dge ba. Inasmuch as they hailed from the same area and their names have the identical Zhang prefix, we can surmize that they may have belonged to the same clan or perhaps even to the same extended family another, perhaps better known Sanskritist of the Zhang family was Zhang lo tsā ba grub pa dpal (before ), who was a native of Dbus On this point, see now Brandon Dotson, A Note on Zhang: Maternal Relations of the Tibetan Royal Line and Marriage into the Royal Family, Journal Asiatique 291 (2004): A twelve-folio, handwritten dbu med ms., C. P. N. catalog no , titled Rgyal ba zhang ston man chad kyi lo rgyus is a chronicle of yet another branch of the Zhang family. 18 He was a teacher of Karma pa I Dus gsum mkhyen pa ( ) in Stod lung when the latter was around twenty years old. 19 The Tibetan Tripitaka, Taipei [= Sde dge] Edition, ed. A. W. Barber (Taipei: SMC Publishing Inc., 1991), volume 15, no. 287 [# 287], 65/7-66/3 [sha, 228a-29b]. The full text of the long colophon is conveniently reproduced in Tadeusz Skorupski, A Catalogue of the Stog Palace Kanjur, Bibliographia Philologica Buddhica, Series Maior IV (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1985), A palm leaf Sanskrit manuscript of a sutra with this title in one hundred and twenty-seven leaves is registered in Ta la'i lo ma'i bstan bcos, 67, no. 88. See also Lin Li-kouang, L Aide-mémoire de la Vraie Loi (Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra). Recherches sur un Sūtra développé du Petit Véhicule, Publications du Musée Guimet, Bibliothèque d études, LIV (Paris, 1949), but this work is unfortunately not available to me. For further bibliographical notes, see the now somewhat dated remarks in Hajime Nakamura, Indian Buddhism. A Survey with Bibliographical Notes (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), Chos byung me tog snying po sbrang rtsi i bcud, edited by Nyan shul mkhyen rab od gsal, Gangs can rig mdzod 5 (Lha sa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1988), His biographies are found in his disciple Rba d+ha ra shri s *Zhang lo tsā ba i yon tan dang lo rgyus bstan [pa], in Bde mchog mkha gro snyan [b]rgyud, volume 1 (New Delhi, 1973), , and in rta, See now also Fabrizio Torricelli, Zhang lo tsa ba s Introduction to the Aural Transmission of Śaṃvara, Le Parole e I Marmi. Studi in Onore di Raniero Gnoli nel suo 70º Compleanno, edited by R. Torella, Serie Orientale Roma, XCII, I (Rome: Istituto Italiana per l Africa

8 van der Kuijp: On the Vicissitudes of Subhūticandra s Kāmadhenu Commentary 8 The Provenance of the Sanskrit of the Kāmadhenu In the said colophon, the longest for any text of the Tibetan Buddhist Bka gyur, Pa tshab lo tsā ba also relates that he had studied this sūtra (mdo) at Vikramaśīla with inter alia Mahāpaṇḍita Rab byor zla ba, that is, Subhūticandra. In view of the time frame, I think it not at all out of the question that he might in fact be none other than the author of the Kāmadhenu. What is more, he says that he was a scholar of grammar, poetics and the modality of the Sanskrit language, (legs par sbyar ba i skad kyi lugs la mkhas pa) whereby the latter phrase may, but only may, be a clumsy way of designating lexicography. The mention of Subhūticandra in terms of having achieved reknown as a Sanskrit scholar, and perhaps also as a lexicographer, is not insignificant towards establishing his dates. It allows us to infer that he may have been around fifty years old at the time when Pa tshab lo tsā ba had studied with him. Moreover, in his colophon, Pa tshab lo tsā ba also put forth the notion that the Āryasaddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra was a large-vehicle sūtra. The great Sanskritist Si tu paṇ chen chos kyi byung gnas ( ) classified the Āryasaddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra as belonging to the corpus of small- rather than large-vehicle sūtras in his 1734 catalog of the Sde dge print of the Bka gyur. 22 He states that this is supported by what he calls the entries of the earlier catalogs, but adds that both Pa tshab lo tsā ba and Rngog lo tsā ba blo ldan shes rab (?1059-?1109) had claimed it to be a large-vehicle scripture. As one of his contributions to Buddhism and an act of merit-making, Grags pa byung gnas rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po ( ), the Phag mo gru gong ma ruler who reigned from 1381 to his passing, had requested Pad dkar bzang po 23 to write a general survey of the sūtra-section of the Bka gyur. 24 The latter went to work on it, but it was long in the writing. It appears that the first to ask (or: order) Pad dkar bzang e l Oriente, 2001), For Rta tshag tshe dbang rgyal, see my On the Fifteenth Century Lho rong chos byung by Rta tshag Tshe dbang rgyal and Its Importance for Tibetan Political and Religious History, Lungta 14 [Aspects of Tibetan History, edited by Roberto Vitali and T. Tsering] (2000), Si tu pan chen chos kyi byung gnas, Bde bar gshegs pa i bka gangs can gyi brdas drangs pa i phyi mo i tshogs ji snyed pa par du bsgrubs pa i tshul las nye bar brtsams pa i gtam bzang po blo ldan mos pa i kunda yongs su kha bye ba i zla od gzhon nu i khri shing, in Collected Works, volume 9 (Sansal: Sherabling Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1990), 454 (= Sde dge i bka gyur dkar chag [Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1988], 380). For this many-sided genius and in particular his wondrous paintings, see now David P. Jackson, Patron and Painter. Situ Panchen and the Revival of the Encampment Style. With an Essay by Karl Debreczeny (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2009). 23 Gser mdog paṇ chen shākya mchog ldan s ( ) 1474 biography of his master Rong ston shākya rgyal mtshan ( ) notes that Padma bzang po (early fifteenth c.) I take him to be identical with Pad dkar bzang po was also a significant, albeit, in his teacher s view, a flawed commentator of the Vimalaprabhā (= Kālacakra) Pad[ma] dkar [po] is the name of the author of the Vimalaprabhā, and it is possible that the Pad dkar / Padma variant reading was enabled precisely through this commentary; see Gser mdog paṇ chen shākya mchog ldan, Rje btsun thams cad mkhyen pa i bshes gnyen shākya rgyal mtshan dpal bzang pa i zhal snga nas kyi rnam par thar pa ngo mtshar dad pa i rol mtsho, in Complete Works, volume 16 (Thimphu, 1975), 353. Rong ston is there said to have criticized the said commentary. 24 What follows is based on Mi nyag mgon po, ed., Mdo sde spyi i rnam bzhag (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2006), ,

9 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009) 9 Po for this unusual treatise, a work in which this still little known scholar has given an analytical survey of the contents of every sūtra and the doctrinal view that it espoused, were two individuals who lie in relative obscurity behind the phrase lord of the gods, the king of religion, the uncle and nephew (lha dbang chos rgyal chen po khu dbon) and the Nye dbang (*Upendra) Bsod nams rgyal mtshan. It would appear that the uncle and nephew refers to the Phag mo gru gong ma and Grags pa byung gnas ( ) in 1440, the Ming court gave him the title shanhua wang that ended in king (wang, dbang) and he was the son of the Gong ma s youngest brother Sangs rgyas rgyal mtshan ( ) and that Bsod nams rgyal mtshan was probably another one of the Gong ma s younger brothers, the penultimate one, who flourished from 1386 to At long last, Pad dkar bzang po completed his work well after the Gong ma s passing, namely, on the third day of the New Year of 1445, that is, on February 9th of that year. Of interest is that it apparently formed part of a later, even more comprehensive work we may presume that the other part dealt with the tantra-section of the Bka gyur with the title Bstan pa spyi i rgyas byed. In addition, the colophon informs us that the complete title was Mdo sde spyi i rnam bzhag bka bsdu ba bzhi pa. The subtitle, The Fourth Council (Bka bsdu bzhi pa), is of course quite intriguing. It goes without saying that the Tibetans were well aware that, in the remote past, the early development of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent knew of three such gatherings in which revisions were made to the received teachings of the Buddha. The subtitle is no doubt intentional, but its precise intention is still unclear to me and, to my knowledge, this is the second and last time that a Tibetan commentarial treatise was subtitled in this way. To be sure, the first was Dol po pa shes rab rgyal mtshan s ( ) perplexing tract of circa 1358 in which he basically summarizes in sound bite form the uncommon philosophical and religious conclusions he had reached over a lifetime of meditative praxis and scholarship. 25 A more immediately accessible work, one that is more carefully argued than Dol po pa s and one that obviously echoes his Fourth Council, is The Fifth Council, the Bka bsdu lnga pa, which is subtitled Mtha bral dbu ma chen po i grub mtha rab gsal. 26 This tract was written on the eighth day of the ninth lunar month of an unspecified year by a certain Jam dpal grags pa, a disciple of Sa bzang lo tsā ba blo gros rgyal mtshan ( ), Byang chub seng ge, and Mkhas grub lha dbang blo gros, while he resided at Sa bzang Monastery under the sponsorship of Sa bzang pa shes rab dpal. In the entries in his work, Pad dkar bzang po usually, but not consistently, divides his comments on each individual sūtra into three sections. In the first, he provides a summary of its contents; in the second, he identifies its grub mtha ; and in the third, he gives, when pertinent, his own replies to controversies (rgal lan) that surrounded the sūtra. Thus, as far as the doctrinal position taken in the 25 See the text and translation in Cyrus R. Stearns, The Buddha from Dolpo. A Study of the Life and Thought of the Tibetan Master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), Phrin las rgya mtsho et al., eds., Jo nang dpe tshogs, volume 16 (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2008),

10 van der Kuijp: On the Vicissitudes of Subhūticandra s Kāmadhenu Commentary 10 Āryasaddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra is concerned, Pad dkar bzang po suggests that it was written from the point of view of the Madhyamaka which engages in śrāvaka-spiritual practice (nyan thos spyod pa i dbu ma [pa]), after which he discusses several controversial points. He characterizes the philosophical tenor of a number of other sūtras with the uncommon designation nyan thos spyod pa i dbu ma as well. 27 Written in a miśra-mixture of verse and prose, the Sanskrit manuscript of the Tibetan translation of the Āryasaddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra must have been quite formidable, and, with its abundance of fairly arcane lexemes that relate to Indian material culture, the text no doubt posed substantial hurdles for any translator. Pa tshab lo tsā ba therefore was quite the man if he had indeed single-handedly shouldered the task of rendering this huge work into Tibetan. No doubt, the sūtra had a complicated textual history, and the extant Sanskrit manuscript of what is purportedly this very sūtra that was signaled above in note 16 obviously does not measure up to the length of the manuscript of the text that lies behind either the Tibetan or Gautama Prajñāruci s Chinese translation of Indeed, it may very well be an abridged version of the sūtra, a manuscript of which was rendered into Chinese by Fatien in Titled Dharmasamuccaya, an excerpt consisting of its verses was compiled by a certain Avalokitasiṃha and was translated into Chinese as late as A Tibetan translation of this excerpt is not found in the printed Bka gyur (or Bstan gyur) collections. Tibetan Editions of the In terms of the Āryasaddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra s actual length, the amount of text of the sūtra as we find it in the Sde dge Bka gyur measured thirty-six thousand shu log (śloka)-units of text this number is given towards the end of sūtra itself. 29 And we find the following stated in a post-colophonic note: 30 The number of bam po was not determined. The length of the text, thirty-six thousand [ślokas], was contained in the Indian manuscript itself. There appears to be some dissimilarity from the older terminology [my translation of this sentence is entirely uncertain!!]. Were it determined that three hundred [ślokas] were one bam po, the Smṛtyupasthāna consists of one hundred and twenty bam pos See, for example, Mi nyag mgon po, Mdo sde spyi i rnam bzhag, 55, 76, anent the *Nandagarbhāvakrānti-[nirdeśa]sūtra and the Maitreyamahāsiṃhanādasūtra. 28 The Varanasi edition of the Sanskrit text can be accessed at Currently, the text is being reedited by Bao Quoc Do in a dissertation at the Phillips Universität Marburg, Germany, under Prof. Dr. Michael Hahn. 29 Taipei Sde dge Tripitaka, volume 15, no. 287 [# 287], 65/7 [sha, 228a]. 30 Taipei Sde dge Tripitaka, volume 15, no. 287 [# 287], 66/3 [sha, 229b]. 31 // bam po i grangs ni ma bcad do / / gzhung tshad ni stong phrag sum cu rtsa drug tu rgya dpe rang la bzhugs so / / yi ge i brda sngon gyi rnying pa dang mi dra ba cung zad snang / / dran pa nye bar gzhag pa* shlo ka sum brgya la bam por bcad na brgya nyi shu o//. - *The Sde dge text has pa /, whereas Skorupski, A Catalogue of the Stog Palace Kanjur, 153, omits the /.

11 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009) 11 A term and measure word for which there are no Indic equivalents, bam po is used to denote a certain amount of text that is measured in a number of different shu log-units of text; it is discussed by me elsewhere. 32 In the present instance, one bam po equals three-hundred ślokas. The Sde dge print of the Tibetan translation of the Āryasaddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra consists of four volumes marked ya to sha. Of these, volume ya begins with the first bam po (bam po dang po), volume ra with the twenty-first bam po, and volume la with the forty-sixth bam po, and volume sha does not begin with any bam po identification. In fact, the last piece of text that is marked by a bam po is bam po forty-nine, and this occurs in the middle of volume la! 33 That the history of its translation may be more complicated than is immediately evident from the colophon which is, for example, appended to the Sde dge or Stog Palace text is evident from Ngor chen kun dga bzang po s ( ) 1447 catalog of the Bka gyur manuscript that was housed in Brag dkar theg chen gling Monastery, in Glo bo smon thang, present day Mustang, Nepal. Apparently not a mainstream Bka gyur, we learn from this catalog that the first twenty-four bam pos of the text were identified as having been translated during the era of the emperor and ministers (rgyal blon gyi ring las [sic]), that is, during the late imperial period, and that Pa tshab lo tsā ba had only translated the remainder of the text into Tibetan. 34 The repeated copying and editing of the Bka gyur and Bstan gyur collections from the late thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries in particular, had given rise to a special concern with catalography and several scholars were beginning to notice that some of these had serious problems. Dpa bo II was among those who focused their attention on these matters and wrote what was apparently a comparative study of the various catalogs of the Bka gyur, and two generations earlier Stag tshang lo tsā ba shes rab rin chen ( ), alias Chos khor sgang lo tsā ba, credits himself with a tract in which, judging from the title, Bstan gyur gyi dkar chag dres khrug rnam byed, he had examined the various contaminations and confusions that had crept into earlier catalogs of the Bstan gyur. 35 To be sure, the uncertainty surrounding the author or authors of the translation of the entire sūtra will have to be explored a little further, since it impinges in no uncertain terms on the veracity of the apparent terminus ad quem of its translation. We find further evidence for this uncertainty in the undated catalog of titles of 32 See my Some Remarks on the Tibetan Word bam po, which is forthcoming in the Zangxue xuekan [Journal of Tibetology], Sichuan University. 33 Taipei Sde dge Tripitaka, volume 14, no. 287 [# 287], 388/5 [la, 101a]. There is also a problem with the length of the last bam po, for whereas bam po forty-seven extends from 366/2 to 372/3 [la, 22b-44a], bam po forty-eight extends from 372/3 to 388/4 [la, 44a-100b]! 34 Helmut Eimer, The Early Mustang Kanjur Catalogue, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 45 (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 1999), Dpa bo II s unpublished work is titled Bka gyur snga phyi i dkar chag don legs grub pa and Stag tshang lo tsā ba registers this work in his 1470 autobiography, for which see Dpa bo II, Lo chen thams cad mkhyen pa shes rab rin chen rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po i zhabs kyi rnam par thar pa, Gsung bum, volume 2, Mes po i shul bzhag, volume 30, edited by Rgyal mo brug pa (Beijing: Krung go i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2007), 38.

12 van der Kuijp: On the Vicissitudes of Subhūticandra s Kāmadhenu Commentary 12 translated scripture (and a few other items besides) that Dar ma rgyal mtshan ( ), alias Bcom ldan [rig(s) pa i] ral gri, most probably completed in the 1270s. There, he registers the following titles: Dam pa i chos dran pa nyer [b]zhag; the translation consisted up to forty-three bam po units of text from a total of thirty-six thousand shu log-units. 2. Its versified summary in one bam po. 3. Its mdo, or sūtra, in fifty shu log-units. Similarly, Bu ston has three entries in his catalog of titles of translated scripture (and a few other items besides) which he appended to his ecclesiastic chronicle of that he titles Dran pa nye bar gzhag pa or that have this phrase in their title. 37 The first is the Phags pa dran pa nye bar gzhag pa and it is simply marked bam po. It is this work that was translated by Pa tshab lo tsā ba. Bu ston classified it as a small vehicle-sūtra, adding that, while large catalogs stated it to be a small vehicle-sūtra, Pa tshab lo tsā ba himself had held it to be a large vehicle-mahayana sūtra. He lists the other two under the heading of titles of texts that were certainly translated previously, but were not obtained at present ; these are a versified Dran pa nye bar gzhag pa in one hundred ślokas and a short (chung ngu) Dran pa nye bar gzhag pa. And he writes of the former that: I think that the Ldan [better: Lhan] Dkar ma catalog counted it as a commentarial treatise (bstan bcos, śāstra). He was right, as we will presently see. The Lhan (also: Ldan) Dkar ma and Phang thang ma catalogs of, respectively, 824 and 830 list the titles of two works that contain the title Dam pa i chos dran pa nye bar gzhag pa. The former registers one in twelve thousand and nine hundred śloka or forty-three bam po units in length and another text, this time in verse, of one hundred śloka units in length. 38 The first is classified under the rubric of small vehicle-sūtra and the second under that of commentarial treatise. The Phang thang ma catalog lists a summary-in-verse from the Dam pa i chos dran pa nye bar gzhag pa in one bam po and an incomplete translation of the large Phags pa dam pa i chos dran pa nye bar gzhag pa. 39 Here the first is listed under the 36 Kurtis R. Schaeffer and Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp, An Early Tibetan Survey of Buddhist Literature. The Bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi od of Bcom ldan ral gri, Harvard Oriental Series, volume 64 (Cambridge: Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, 2008), 148, Bu ston rin chen grub, Bde bar gshegs pa i bstan pa i gsal byed chos kyi byung gnas gsung rab rin po che i mdzod, in Collected Works of Bu ston [and Sgra tshad pa], part 24 (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1971), 922; see also Soshū Nishioka, Index to the Catalog Section of Bu ston s History of Buddhism I [in Japanese], Tōkyō Daigaku Bungakubu Bunkakōryū Kenkyū-shisetsu Kenkyū-kiyō [Annual Report of the Institute for the Study of Cultural Exchange, University of Tokyo] 4 (1980), nos. 9, 90, See Marcelle Lalou, Les textes bouddhiques au temps de roi Khri srong lde btsan, Journal asiatique CCXLI (1953), , nos. 271, See the Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa, in Dkar chag phang thang ma, edited by Bod ljongs rten rdzas bshams mdzod khang (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2003), 20, 48.

13 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 5 (December 2009) 13 heading of small vehicle-sūtra and the second under that of incomplete translations of sūtras and Vinaya [texts]. Now Pa tshab lo tsā ba also states in his colophon that he used some five manuscripts of the sūtra while studying it at Nālandā and two while he was at Vikramaśīla. At Nālandā he worked inter alia under Abhayākaragupta (ca ca. 1125) 40 and at Vikramaśīla his masters were Śākyarakṣita, the Mahāpaṇdita Subhūticandra and?aṭitacandra. He mentions a prince by the name of Ne[?]Bai Pāla who was associated with the monastery of Jagaddala in Varendra and also writes that he translated the sūtra during the reign of his father, the Pāla king Ramapāla, whom D. C. Sircar has dated circa This provides additional support for holding that circa 1100 is the Kāmadhenu s terminus ad quem. My working hypothesis therefore is that Subhūticandra s dates can be roughly calculated to have fallen sometime between circa 1050 and circa 1120, which is a sigh and a half earlier than the date Pant has proposed, namely, that the Kāmadhenu was written in approximately the sixth decade of the twelfth century. 42 Thus, if the Subhūticandra as Pa tshab lo tsā ba s informant and the Subhūticandra as the author of the Kāmadhenu were identical, and I strongly believe that this is in fact the case, then the obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that he probably wrote the Kāmadhenu around the year Of course, the fact that Rngog lo tsā ba appears to have made a pronouncement on its doctrinal affinity suggests, but only suggests, the same dating, in spite of the fact that his precise dates are still a matter of some controversy. 43 But there is nothing in the book that offers any evidence that he knew of Pa tshab lo tsā ba s translation, and that he did not have the earlier translations in mind when he made the said judgement. In Tibet, the sūtra itself was the object of several studies. Karma pa III Rang byung rdo rje ( ) wrote two of these. Sometime in the fifth lunar month of a monkey-year (1320), he composed a versified explanation of the sūtra at his retreat of Bde chen steng (near his see of Mtshur phu) as well as a summary of its contents. 44 In the remarks with which he concluded the first, the Karma pa wrote that earlier translators and paṇ di tas had rendered the section styled the thirty-three abodes (sum cu rtsa gsum gyi gnas) and that later, Pa tshab lo tsā ba had translated the remainder. The reference to these abodes also occurs in the aforecited colophon 40 Skorupski, A Catalogue of the Stog Palace Kanjur, 151, has Akaragupta (sic). 41 D. C. Sircar, Some Epigraphical Records of the Medieval Period for Eastern India (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1979), Pant, Jātarūpa s Commentary, part I, For him, see now the detailed study of Ralf Kramer, The Great Tibetan Translator. Life and Works of rngog Blo ldan shes rab ( ), Collectanea Himalayica 1 (München: Indus Verlag, 2007). The author does not address the question of the various sets of dates that we find proposed for this great translator in a number of Tibetan sources, a circumstance to which, as Kramer observes on p. 43, n. 71, already A. Vostrikov had drawn attention. 44 See the Karma pa III Rang byung rdo rje, Dam pa i chos dran pa nye bar bzhag pa i mdo yi don gsal bar byed pa i bstan bcos, in Collected Works, volume ca (Xining, 2006), , Its summary, the Dam pa i chos dran pa nye bar bzhag pa i bsdus don, is found on pp of this same volume.

14 van der Kuijp: On the Vicissitudes of Subhūticandra s Kāmadhenu Commentary 14 of the Mustang Bka gyur where it is said that the second volume of the text, there volume kha, begins with bam po forty and extends from the section on the the thirty-three abodes up to the first part of the passage dealing with the divine abode that is free from strife ( thab bral gyi lha gnas), that is, from Trāyastrimśa to the first section on Yāma. Finally, Shes rab rin chen, a disciple of the Karma pa, composed an undated commentary on the Karma pa s versified explanation of the sūtra. Written at the Karma pa s see (?of Mtshur phu), this work was included in the Xining edition of the Karma pa s oeuvre. 45 Shes rab rin chen writes in his introductory remarks that it was Pa tshab lo tsā ba nyi ma grags (eleventh-twelfth c.) who had completed the translation of the sūtra and that, because the sūtra s manuscript was incomplete, its purport could not be wholly ascertained. There is no evidence that Nyi ma grags and Tshul khrims rgyal mtshan are interchangeable. In fact, these are two distinct individuals, so that we should not hesitate to place his Nyi ma grags in the dustbin of bibliographical oversights. Khro phu lo tsā ba and His Translation To return to our story, both the blockprint and the undated handwritten manuscript of Khro phu lo tsā ba s autobiography relate that he took his monk s vows towards the end of his nineteenth year (lo nyi shu i smad la). On this occasion, Rgyal tsha functioned in the capacity of abbot, and the other two monks officiating at the ceremony were his old teacher Gtsang dkar, who acted as the ritual master, and his paternal uncle Kun ldan ras pa ( ), alias Zhi ba tshul khrims, who fullfilled the duty of the confessor. Ultimately, Khro phu lo tsā ba was only able to take leave of Khro phu after the funerary rituals for his deceased grandfather had been completed. As stated, he departed for the subcontinent in 1195, but never made it to India proper. The military campaigns of the invading Afghan-Turkmen armies in northern India and the political and social upheaval that came in their wake forced him and his party to remain in the Kathmandu Valley. Thus, the period of time in which Khro phu lo tsā ba could have studied with Zhang lo tsā ba dge ba is framed by a span of time amounting to about a year and a half. This leaves us with the question of the year of his birth, for the sources waver between 1172 and While he nowhere in his autobiography relates when he was born, he does state that he was ten (= nine) when he and his teacher Gtsang dkar were at Sa skya Monastery to attend the funerary ceremonies held in honor of Khon rtse mo. 46 The latter must refer to Slob dpon bsod nams rtse mo (b. 1142), Sa skya s second patriarch and scion of a branch of a branch of its ruling Khon clan, who passed away on the eleventh day of the smal po month (11 November) of Shes rab rin chen, Dam pa i chos dran pa nye bar bzhag pa i bstan bcos kyi grel pa, in Collected Works, volume cha (Xining, 2006), The colophon titles it: Dran pa nye bar bzhag pa i don snang bar byed pa i tshig le ur mdzad pa i rnam par bshad pa. 46 Khro phu lo tsa ba, Dpag bsam khri shing, 11a-12a [Khro phu lo tsa ba, Pan gsum rnam thar, 11b-12a]. 47 This date is given in his biography written by his younger brother Rje btsun grags pa rgyal mtshan ( ), for which see the Bsod nams rgya mtsho, comp., Bla ma i rnam thar bstod pa khyod nyid ma, in Sa skya pa i bka bum vol. 3, no. 4 (Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, ), 83/3. The converted