Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies

Transcription

1 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies Issue 4 December 2008 ISSN An online journal published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL)

2 Articles Editors-in-Chief: José I. Cabezón and David Germano Guest Editors: Ken Bauer, Geoff Childs, Andrew Fischer, and Daniel Winkler Book Review Editor: Bryan J. Cuevas Managing Editor: Steven Weinberger Assistant Editors: Alison Melnick, William McGrath, and Arnoud Sekreve Technical Director: Nathaniel Grove Contents Demographics, Development, and the Environment in Tibetan Areas (8 pages) Kenneth Bauer and Geoff Childs Tibetan Fertility Transitions: Comparisons with Europe, China, and India (21 pages) Geoff Childs Conflict between Nomadic Herders and Brown Bears in the Byang thang Region of Tibet (42 pages) Dawa Tsering and John D. Farrington Subsistence and Rural Livelihood Strategies in Tibet under Rapid Economic and Social Transition (49 pages) Andrew M. Fischer Biodiversity Conservation and Pastoralism on the Northwest Tibetan Plateau (Byang thang): Coexistence or Conflict? (21 pages) Joseph L. Fox, Ciren Yangzong, Kelsang Dhondup, Tsechoe Dorji and Camille Richard Nomads without Pastures? Globalization, Regionalization, and Livelihood Security of Nomads and Former Nomads in Northern Khams (40 pages) Andreas Gruschke Political Space and Socio-Economic Organization in the Lower Spiti Valley (Early Nineteenth to Late Twentieth Century) (34 pages) Christian Jahoda South Indian Tibetans: Development Dynamics in the Early Stages of the Tibetan Refugee Settlement Lugs zung bsam grub gling, Bylakuppe (31 pages) Jan Magnusson, Subramanya Nagarajarao and Geoff Childs Temporary Migrants in Lha sa in 2005 (42 pages) Ma Rong and Tanzen Lhundup Exclusiveness and Openness: A Study of Matrimonial Strategies in the Dga ldan pho brang Aristocracy ( ) (27 pages) Alice Travers ii

3 The Mushrooming Fungi Market in Tibet Exemplified by Cordyceps sinensis and Tricholoma matsutake (47 pages) Daniel Winkler Interpreting Urbanization in Tibet: Administrative Scales and Discourses of Modernization (44 pages) Emily T. Yeh and Mark Henderson Translation, Critical Edition, and Analysis The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas: A Lost Mahāyoga Treatise from Dunhuang (67 pages) Sam van Schaik A Note from the Field Population, Pasture Pressure, and School Education: Case Studies from Nag chu, TAR, PRC (21 pages) Beimatsho Book Reviews Review of A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 2: The Calm before the Storm, , by Melvyn C. Goldstein (10 pages) Matthew Akester Review of Rulers on the Celestial Plain: Ecclesiastic and Secular Hegemony in Medieval Tibet. A Study of Tshal Gung-thang, by Per K. Sørensen and Guntram Hazod, with Tsering Gyalbo (7 pages) Bryan J. Cuevas Abstracts Contributors to this Issue iii

4 The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas: - A Lost Mahāyoga Treatise from Dunhuang Sam van Schaik The British Library Abstract: This article presents a previously unknown tantric treatise from the Dunhuang collections. Dating to the ninth or tenth century, the treatise is an early and important example of the Tibetan assimilation of Indic tantric Buddhism, in particular the form known as Mahāyoga. The treatise is especially interesting for showing how Mahāyoga and Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen) or Atiyoga were closely associated with each other during this early stage in their development. The treatise, which is based on the work of a previously unknown Indic teacher called Madhusādhu, is translated here in full, along with an annotated transcription. Tibetan Buddhism in the Tenth Century Tibet s Buddhist histories speak of a time of strife that falls between the initial period in which Buddhist scriptures were systematically translated into Tibetan in the eighth and ninth centuries and the later appropriation of Indic texts and teaching lineages from the eleventh century onward. Often, western accounts of Tibet borrow the term dark age from European history to characterize this period in Tibet. Yet, while historical sources are indeed sparse for Tibet in the tenth century, this age was not entirely dark. Although revolutions or civil wars were by all accounts common during this time, careful attention to historical sources and manuscript shows that there was in fact a great deal of political and religious activity in Tibet s small kingdoms and clan holdings. The traditional name for the era in Tibetan histories, the period of fragmentation (sil bu i dus), seems a more appropriate appellation. 1 1 For a discussion of traditional and modern strategies in the periodization of Tibetan history see Bryan Cuevas, Some Reflections on the Periodization of Tibetan History, Revue d Etudes Tibétaines, no. 10 (2006): It has been argued that the traditionally accepted assassination that brought about the end of the early diffusion (snga dar) King Glang dar ma s persecution of Buddhism may never have occured; see Zuihō Yamaguchi, The Fiction of King Dar-ma s Persecution of Buddhism, in Du dunhuang au Japon: Études chinoises et bouddhiques offertes à Michel Soymié, ed. Jean-Pierre Drège (Geneva: Droz, 1996), There is an excellent overview of the age of fragmentation based on Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008): /2008/4/T by Sam van Schaik, Tibetan and Himalayan Library, and International Association of Tibetan Studies. Distributed under the THL Digital License.

5 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 2 That the fragmentation of the previous political and religious establishments did not stop the development of Buddhism in Tibet is shown by the strong evidence for a vibrant Buddhist community in one of the fragmented segments of tenth-century Tibetan culture: the Tibetans of the Hexi corridor. This region joins the northeastern end of the Tibetan cultural area, now known as A mdo, with the western limit of the Chinese cultural sphere. Passing through it were a number of the trans-asian trade routes popularly known today as the Silk Road. 2 After the fall of the Tibetan Empire in the mid-ninth century, there was indeed a fragmentation of Tibetan power in the Hexi corridor. Yet the small Tibetan kingdoms and principalities that established themselves in the region were surprisingly robust, establishing diplomatic relations with the short-lived Chinese dynasties of the tenth century and subsequently with the Song dynasty. The historical records also indicate the growing importance of Buddhist monks in the political events of this period. 3 From the hidden manuscript cache of the Dunhuang caves we have documentary evidence of the Tibetan forms of Buddhism practiced in the Hexi corridor. The Tibetan manuscripts that were found in the cave date from the ninth and tenth centuries, with the majority of the tantric manuscripts dating from the latter end Tibetan historical sources and recent research in Ronald Davidson, Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), In the Tibetan language, a recent and extensive study of this period is found in Nor brang o rgyan, Bod sil bu i byung ba brjod pa shel dkar phreng ba [The Garland of White Crystals] (Lha sa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrun khang, 1991). 2 The name Silk Road is of course the relatively recent coinage of Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, but remains a useful shorthand for the trade routes that passed through Central Asia. 3 See Tsutomu Iwasaki, The Tibetan Tribes of Ho-hsi and Buddhism during the Northern Sung Period, Acta Asiatica, no. 64 (1993): See also Luciano Petech, Tibetan Relations with Sung China and the Mongols, in China Among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th-14th Centuries, ed. Morris Rossabi (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), ; Ruth Dunnell, The Hsi Hsia, in The Cambridge History of China 6, Alien Regimes and Border States, ed. H. Franke & D. Twitchett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), ; and Davidson, Tibetan Renaissance, The Tibetans occasionally appear in the Chinese historical literature from this period; see Ouyang Xiu and Richard L. Davis, Historical Records of the Five Dynasties (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 29, 59-62, 79, 97, 179, and 276. In addition, there is an important Tibetan source on the Tibetans in this region that has not yet been properly studied. The scroll IOL Tib J 754 contains a series of letters of passage for a Chinese monk passing through the Tibetan regions of Tsong kha and Liangzhou on his way to India in the late 960s. The letters are evidence of thriving Tibetan monastic communities during this period, as well as the merging of the roles of temporal leader and spiritual teacher among those communities. A detailed monograph on this manuscript by the present author and Imre Galambos will be published in the near future.

6 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 3 of this period. 4 The manuscripts show that here Tibetan forms of Buddhism were not just subsisting, but actively flourishing throughout the tenth century. 5 In fact, recent research has shown that it is during this very period that much of what we think of as specifically Tibetan Buddhism was coming into being. The Dunhuang manuscripts from the tenth century show us, for example, the developing cultural importance of the deity Avalokiteśvara (spyan ras gzigs dbang po) and the master Padmasambhava (padma byung gnas). The manuscripts also present us with several organizational rubrics that came to characterize the Rnying ma school of Tibetan Buddhism, including the nine-vehicle hierarchy of Buddhist teachings and the group of twenty-eight tantric samaya vows. 6 The specific focus of this article is the approach to tantric practice that became fundamental to Tibetan Buddhism during this time (and later in the Rnying ma lineages) under the name of Mahāyoga. During the ninth and tenth centuries Mahāyoga came to signify for Tibetans a particular approach to tantric practice based on a group of eighteen tantras, a group overlapping significantly with the later Rnying ma lists of eighteen Mahāyoga tantras. We know this because we are fortunate to have a number of texts which define Mahāyoga and the other tantric vehicles from the Dunhuang manuscript cache. 7 4 On the dating of many Tibetan tantric texts from Dunhuang to the latter part of the tenth century see Tsuguhito Takeuchi, Old Tibetan Buddhist s from the Post-Tibetan Imperial Period (mid-9 C. to late 10 C.), in Proceedings of the 10th Conference of the International Association of Tibetan Studies (forthcoming). On the dating of Dunhuang manuscripts by paleographic methods, see Jacob Dalton, Tom Davis, and Sam van Schaik. Beyond Anonymity: Paleographic Analyses of the Dunhuang Manuscripts, Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 3 (2007): 1-23, 5 For a full descriptive catalogue of the Tibetan tantric manuscripts from the Stein Collection of Dunhuang manuscripts, see Jacob Dalton and Sam van Schaik, Tibetan Tantric Manuscripts from Dunhuang: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Stein Collection at the British Library (Leiden: EJ Brill, 2006). 6 On the early cult of Avalokiteśvara see Sam van Schaik, The Tibetan Avalokitesvara Cult in the Tenth Century: Evidence from the Dunhuang Manuscripts, in PIATS 2003 vol. 4, ed. Christian Wedemeyer and Ronald Davidson (Leiden: Brill, 2006), On Padmasambhava in the Dunhuang manuscripts, see Jacob Dalton, The Early Development of Padmasambhava Legend in Tibet: A Study of IOL Tib J 644 and Pelliot tibétain 307. Journal of the American Oriental Society 124, no. 4 (2004): On the nine vehicles in the Dunhuang manuscripts see Samten Karmay, The Great Perfection: A Philosophical and Meditative Teaching of Tibetan Buddhism (Leiden: Brill, 1988), and Jacob Dalton, A Crisis of Doxography: How Tibetans Organized Tantra during the 8th-12th Centuries, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 28, no. 1 (2005): On the twenty-eight samaya (dam tshig) vows of Mahāyoga, see Sam van Schaik, The Limits of Transgression: The Samaya Vows of Mahāyoga, in Aspects of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang: Rites and Teachings for This Life and Beyond, ed. Matthew Kapstein and Sam van Schaik (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 7 I discuss the Dunhuang sources for a definition of Mahāyoga at length in Sam van Schaik, A Definition of Mahāyoga: Sources from the Dunhuang Manuscripts, Tantric Studies, no. 1 (2008): This article is a study of the most important text for understanding the way Mahāyoga was defined in this period, A Summary of the View of Mahāyoga According to Scripture (IOL Tib J 436). In addition the two doxographical texts IOL Tib J 644 and Pelliot tibétain 656 briefly define the three inner yogas of Mahāyoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga. These are discussed and translated in Dalton, A Crisis of Doxography. Among the longer Mahāyoga treatises from Dunhuang, the most important are probably the one that is the subject of this article and The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva (Rdo rje sems pa i zhus lan). The latter is the subject of a study and translation by Kammie Takahashi

7 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 4 This material provides us with a clear view of the way Mahāyoga was understood and practiced in the tenth century. I have discussed this in detail elsewhere, so a brief summary will suffice here. Meditative practice included the different styles of the development and perfection stages and the three absorptions (ting nge dzin), as well as the transgressive practices of union and liberation (sbyor sgrol). The philosophical basis or view (lta ba) behind these practices was expressed in terms of nonduality and nonconceptualization, as the following passage from one Dunhuang manuscript attests: The view of Mahāyoga: Phenomena are neither existents nor non-existents. Having renounced purity and impurity, not renouncing and not obtaining are one in space. Whoever understands the true state of Vajrasattva (rdo rje sems dpa ) becomes him. Since one s own mind is the path to liberation, nothing will come of seeking it anywhere else. 8 This way of formulating the philosophical approach to Mahāyoga practice was sometimes called the mode (tshul) of the Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen). 9 This approach to tantric practice, which has clear precedents in Indic works like the Guhyagarbha Tantra, was of great interest to the Tibetan interpreters of tantric literature. We find the Great Perfection approach firmly embedded in Mahāyoga treatises like The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva (Rdo rje sems pa i zhus lan), which includes the following explanation of the mode of Great Perfection: When, as in the example of a king appointing a minister, The accomplishments are granted from above, this is the exoteric mode. When the kingdom is ruled having been offered by the people, This is the mode of the unsurpassable, self-arisen Great Perfection. 10 In addition to these works, the Great Perfection mode is also found in brief instructional texts that completely reformulate the ritual framework of Mahāyoga, permitting only a discourse on the spontaneously present state of enlightenment. This approach can be seen in two Dunhuang manuscripts: Buddhagupta s The Secret Handful (Sbas pa i rgum chung; IOL Tib J 594) and the unascribed (forthcoming). Variant versions of The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva exist in the Bstan gyur and in three different Dunhuang manuscripts. Of these three, Pelliot tibétain 837 and IOL Tib J 470 are almost identical, and the latter appears to be a copy of the former. The third, Pelliot tibétain 819, which is not complete, differs from the other two, and is generally closer to the version found in the Bstan gyur (Q.5082; Snar thang Rgyud grel vol. ru, ff.121a-27a). 8 IOL Tib J 508/8 v5.2-v6.1: / rnal byor chen po i lta ba la// dngos po dngos po myed pa i chos// dag cing ma dag rnams spang nas ma spangs ma blangs dby-ings su gcig// rdo rje sems dpa i ngang nyid la gang shig shes pa der gro o// bdag sems thar pa i lam las ni gzhan las btsal bar myi byung o/. 9 For example, in The Rosary of Views we have the following triad (i) development stage (bskyed rim), (ii) perfection stage (rdzogs rim), and (iii) Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen). Each of these are described as modes in the view of esoteric yoga (rnal byor). See Karmay, The Great Perfection, 155, IOL Tib J 470, section 9: / dper na rgyal pos blon por bskos pa ltar na/ / grub pa gong nas byin ba phyi i tshul lo/ / bangs kyis rgyal ba i srid phul nas dbang bsgyur ltar/ / rang byung rdzogs chen bla na med pa i tshul/.

8 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 5 commentary to the Cuckoo of Awareness (Rig pa i khu byug; IOL Tib J 647). 11 Some other dateable early texts in the same spirit can be found in the Tibetan canon, in particular the Six Lamps (Sgron me rnam drug) of Gnyan dpal dbyangs, and Mañjuśrīmitra s Meditation on the Awakened Mind (Byang chub sems bsgom pa). 12 These are the forerunners of the later Great Perfection traditions. The rhetoric of nonduality and nonactivity found in such texts might be taken to imply a rejection of all practice, but treatises like The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva suggest otherwise. In short, we find both Mahāyoga and Great Perfection being interpreted by Tibetans in the tenth century in very close association with each other. This close relationship might surprise those who see the separation of these two as an earlier or original state. This opinion is sometimes found in the history of the exegesis of the Guhyagarbha Tantra, which is traditionally distinguished into the Zur tradition (zur lugs) and the tradition of Rong zom pa and Klong chen pa (rong klong lugs). The latter tradition employs the terminology of Great Perfection in explicating the tantra, while the former tends to avoid such terminology, and is presented as a pure Mahāyoga approach. For this reason the Zur commentaries are sometimes characterized as more conservative or more authentic. 13 On the contrary, our Dunhuang manuscripts show that Mahāyoga was from an early stage approached through the view of Great Perfection understood as a mode (tshul) of Mahāyoga practice, and that the hardening of doxographical categories which separated Anuyoga and Atiyoga from Mahāyoga as vehicles per se was not itself generally accepted until at least the eleventh century. 14 This paper presents a translation of a previously unknown Dunhuang treatise which promises to contribute much to our understanding of Mahāyoga and Atiyoga in ninth and tenth century Tibet. This is an extensive treatise based on the work of an Indic master known as Madhusādhu, which (for reasons that will become clear later) I will call The Four Yogas. This work is, I will argue, one of the most important early Tibetan tantric treatises. 15 The Four Yogas is pervaded by the 11 See Karmay, The Great Perfection, On Gnyan dpal dbyangs, see Karmay, The Great Perfection, and Sam van Schaik, The Early Days of the Great Perfection, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 27, no. 1 (2004): Mañjuśrīmitra s text (listed in the early 9th century Ldan dkar ma) is translated in Namkhai Norbu and Kennard Lipman, Primordial Experience: An Introduction to Rdzogs-chen Meditation (Boston: Shambhala, 2001). 13 I have come across statements to this effect in two recent unpublished doctoral dissertations. Rather than criticising these otherwise excellent works specifically, I would like merely to indicate the presence of an assumption that might otherwise go unchecked, and ought to be questioned in the light of our increasing knowledge of the Dunhuang material. 14 I return to this issue in Section Also worthy of note here are two commentarial works attributed to Padmasambhava. The first is The Rosary of Views, a commentary on the thirteenth chapter of the Guhyagarbha Tantra (see Karmay, The Great Perfection, ). The attribution to Padmasambhava is not certain but seems entirely possible. The second is a commentary on the Upāyapāśa Tantra, which is preserved in the Dunhuang manuscript IOL Tib J 321, as well as in the Bstan gyur (Q.4717). It is not clear in either case whether

9 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 6 themes of nonduality (gnyis su med) and spontaneous presence (lhun gyis grub), while at the same time displaying a distinctly philosophical agenda, which may be briefly characterized as the attempt to resolve apparent contradictions arising from the application of tantric practices in the content of normative Mahāyāna doctrines. For example, in the context of deity meditation, the text attempts to resolve the question of how phenomena can be produced from the ultimate state of reality (the dharmadhātu); a long section grapples with the relationship between the mind and the appearances it perceives; and the text ends with a detailed discussion of the three Buddha bodies (sku; kāya) and their relationship to each other. 16 The Four Yogas is situated at a pivotal point in the development of Tibetan Buddhism. Drawing the central theme of nonduality, it is an expression of an Indic tantric tradition based on the Mahāyoga tantras in general and the Guhyagarbha Tantra in particular, that flourished from the mid-eighth to mid-ninth centuries. At the same time The Four Yogas contains a complex of themes that would be picked up and developed much further in the evolving Tibetan literature of Great Perfection. Thus The Four Yogas is situated at the end of an Indic tradition since the Guhyagarbha Tantra and its related texts seem to have been largely forgotten in India by the time Tibetan translators returned at the end of the tenth century and at the beginning of the specifically Tibetan tantric traditions that came to be called Rnying ma and were expounded within the three vehicles of Mahāyoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga. The Four Yogas and Madhusādhu The Four Yogas is found in a scroll in the British Library s Stein Collection: IOL Tib J 454. For the reasons outlined above, the text promises to contribute much to our understanding of the way Tibetans interpreted the Mahāyoga tantras and sādhanas and put them into practice in the ninth and tenth centuries. Yet there are frustratingly few clues to its identity. It lacks a title or colophon (breaking off rather abruptly at the end), although the scroll on which it is written appears to be complete. Yet it seems to have been considered of some importance by the scribe or patron who is responsible for this copy, for it is written in clear headed script (dbu can) on a new scroll. The scribe himself was Chinese and held an official rank (see below). This single scroll contains the only extant copy of The Four Yogas, which was not preserved in any of the Tibetan canonical collections. The authorship of The Four Yogas seems a mystery, but thanks to a couple of clues, it is perhaps a solvable one. The first clue comes from another Dunhuang manuscript, IOL Tib J 508. This fragment of a scroll contains a series of scribbled notes discussing different Vajrayāna themes. The only tantra mentioned as a subject of these discussions is the Guhyasamāja Tantra. Manuscripts like IOL Tib J 508 these texts were translated into Tibetan or composed in Tibetan. In either case, if we accept the attribution to Padmasambhava these are not yet the first truly Tibetan treatises on Mahāyoga. 16 See ll.40ff, 72ff and 160ff, respectively.

10 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 7 may be notes taken down from oral teachings, and this particular one may be notes from a series of discussions of the Guhyasamāja Tantra. 17 The fifth passage in this series of scribbled notes discusses the interpretations of a master called Ma du san du. The text is frustratingly incomplete but there is enough here to show that these notes deal with exactly the same topics, and in the same order, as The Four Yogas. Perhaps IOL Tib J 508 represents notes taken during a teaching of The Four Yogas, or an attempted summary of its contents. The second clue comes from A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation (Bsam gtan mig sgron) by Gnubs chen sangs rgyas ye shes, the most important treatise to come out of Tibet s dark age. Written in the late ninth or early tenth century, it presents a fourfold doxography of Buddhism: (i) the approaches of the gradual path of Indic scholastic Buddhism, (ii) the Chinese system of Chan, (iii) Mahāyoga, and (iv) the Great Perfection. 18 At the very beginning of the section on Mahāyoga, Gnubs chen cites a certain master called Ma du sa du. This citation defines the word inside as meaning assembled inside the circle of reality. 19 The very same line appears in The Four Yogas, where it is subjected to several different interpretations. Thus it seems that in this Ma du sa(n) du we have a possible author for The Four Yogas. The name itself may be a rendition of the Sanskrit name Madhusādhu, the extra n being a plausible Prakrit transformation of the long vowel. 20 The name appears in this very form (Madhusādhu) in Lo chen dharma shrī s commentary to the Guhyagarbha Tantra called The Oral Teaching of the Lord of Secrets (Gsang bdag zhal lung). In this work Lo chen dharma shrī took the line assembled inside the circle of reality along with its attribution to Madhusādhu from A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation. 21 Thus we have a plausible Indic name meaning sweet or pleasant (madhu) sage (sādhu), not a specifically Buddhist name, but that in 17 I have discussed the issue of manuscripts written from oral sources in Sam van Schaik, Oral Teachings and Written s: Transmission and Transformation in Dunhuang, in Contributions to the Cultural History of Tibet, ed. Matthew Kapstein and Brandon Dotson (Leiden: Brill, 2007), Traditional sources usually ascribe a very long lifetime to Gnubs chen sangs rgyas ye shes (9th-10th century), no doubt the result of a need to place him in the reign of Khri srong lde btsan. In fact, as Roberto Vitali has shown, he was probably born in the year 844, and was involved in the revolution (kheng log) of 904. Four of Gnubs chen s sons are said to have died in the revolution. See Roberto Vitali, The Kingdoms of Gu.ge Pu.hrang. (Dharamsala: Tho.ling gtsug.lag.khang lo.gcig.stong khor.ba i rjes.dran.mdzad sgo i go.sgrig tshogs.chung, 1996). 19 A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation: 187.5: de yang slob dpon ma du sa dus su bshad pa las/ nang zhes bya ba ni chos nyid kyi khor lo kha nang du dus pa o/ zhes byung. 20 My thanks to Ronald Davidson for confirming this. 21 The context is a discussion of the Sugātagarbha (Bde gshegs snying po). The complete passage is as follows: de yang snying po i don nang rig gyur med la bzhed pa i phyogs legs te/ mgon po byams pas/ rigs khams sbrang rtsi dra ba di gzigs nas/ / zhes dang / slob dpon dur khrod bde bas kyang / / bde gshegs snying po rang rig la/ / zhes dang / slob dpon ma dhu sā dhus/ nang zhes bya ba ni chos nyid kyi khor lo kha nang du dus pa o/ zhes mig sgron du drangs pa dang / sngar gyi/ gdod nas dag pa i rig pa ni/ / zhes sogs kyis kyang ston pa i phyir ro/. An electronic file was created by the Shechen Input Project; contact THL for details.

11 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 8 itself was not unusual in Indic Buddhist tantrikas. 22 Therefore this Madhusādhu would probably have been an Indic, rather than Tibetan, teacher. A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation gives us one more clue about Madhusādhu. He is mentioned in the enumeration of different ways of presenting the Mahāyoga view. According to the interlinear notes, the view of sameness (mnyam nyid) was the speciality of Padmasambhava and Madhusādhu: 23 According to some spiritual guides (the masters Padmasambhava and Madhusādhu) the view of Mahāyoga is sameness. They (the arguments, scriptural sources, and esoteric instructions on sameness) say that there is sameness in ultimate, in conventional, in the nonduality of the truths, that the five great elements are the same as the five tathāgatas, and that the eight consciousnesses are the same as the five wisdoms. To go into the arguments for these at length would exhaust beings with a multitude of words. 24 It is indeed the case that The Four Yogas makes extensive use of the idea of sameness (mnyam nyid), along with synonymous terms like nonduality (gnyis su med), inseparability (dbyer med), and single taste (ro gcig pa). More importantly, we have an exact correlate to Gnubs chen s description in one passage of The Four Yogas which is attributed merely to the commentary : Ultimate and conventional truth are inseparable and of one taste. Ultimate truth is one because it is uncreated. Conventional truth is one because it is illusory. Furthermore, ultimate and conventional truth are one because they are inseparable. It is like the rosary having a single string. 25 This passage looks like it could well have been exactly the one that Gnubs chen had in mind when writing of the sameness in ultimate, in conventional, in the nonduality of the truths. There are frequent citations throughout The Four Yogas from this unnamed commentary. In all likelihood the unnamed commentary is the work of Madhusādhu, with The Four Yogas being a treatise based on the commentary. 22 For example, the Bstan gyur contains Kālacakra texts authored by a Sādhuputra (Q.2069, 2075 and 2076) and a Sādhukīrti (Q.2096). 23 Gnubs chen is probably responsible for the interlinear notes in his own text; in both the main text and interlinear notes, the writer refers to himself with the same epithet: ban chung. This note raises the intriguing possibility of a historical connection between Padmasambhava and Madhusādhu, but in the absence of any other evidence to substantiate such a connection, and it may just be that Gnubs chen had noticed this similarity in their approaches. 24 A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation: : dge bshes (slob dpon padma dang ma du sa du i bzhed) kha cig ni mahā yo ga i lta ba ni mnyam pa nyid du bzhed de/ de (mnyam pa i gtan tshigs pa lung man ngag gsum) yang don dam par mnyam pa dang / kun rdzob du mnyam pa dang / bden pa gnyis su med par mnyam pa dang / chen po lnga de bzhin gshegs pa lngar mnyam pa dang rnam par shes pa brgyad ye shes lngar mnyam pa dang lngar gsungs na/ de dag gi gtan tshigs rgyas par ni yi ge mangs te gro bas ma bgod do/. 25 IOL Tib J 454, l.132: / grel las don dam pa dang kun rdzob du dbyer myed par ro gcig pa dang zhes pa ni/ [133] don dam par ma skyes pas gcig/ kun rdzob du sgyu mar gcig/ don dam pa dang kun rdzob du yang dbyer myed par gcig pa [134] ni/ lha i phreng ba rgyu gcig pa lta bu lags/.

12 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 9 The Four Yogas itself could only have been written by Madhusādhu if he was writing in Tibetan, for the text contains etymological discussion of yoga (rnal byor) and maṇḍala (dkyil khor) that rely on the Tibetan syllables, and could not have been composed in any other language. Though it is not impossible that an Indic master could have written a treatise on Mahāyoga in Tibetan, it is more likely that The Four Yogas is a Tibetan treatise making extensive use of a translated Indic commentary by Madhusādhu. The author of The Four Yogas remains unknown, but considering Gnubs chen s familiarity with the work of Madhusādhu, we should at least consider him among the plausible authors. Any date for Madhusādhu must be based on the fact of his appearance in A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, which, as we have already said, was written in the late ninth or early tenth century. It is possible that Madhusādhu s work had passed directly to Gnubs chen, perhaps in a master-disciple relationship, although no extant sources mention Madhusādhu among Gnubs chen s teachers. This would place Madhusādhu in the second half of the ninth century. If there were intervening figures in the lineage between Gnubs chen and Madhusādhu, this date could be moved back. On purely doctrinal evidence, however, it seems unlikely that his works were written before the ninth century. Thus the period around the mid-ninth century seems the most likely for the transmission of Madhusādhu s teachings to Tibet. 26 This would also place him in the same period as Gnyan dpal dbyangs, whose works have a very similar doctrinal content. Furthermore, a later date may be considered less likely when we consider the absence (with a few minor exceptions) among the Dunhuang manuscripts of Indic tantras or commentaries post-dating the mid-ninth century. 27 If, as I have suggested, The Four Yogas is a Tibetan work based on a commentary by Madhusādhu, then it could be later than the dates for Madhusādhu himself which we have been discussing, as late as the closure of the Dunhuang library cave at the beginning of the eleventh century. However, since it is likely that The Four Yogas, like Gnyan dpal dbyangs s The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva, was composed and became popular in more central Tibetan regions before arriving in Dunhuang, the date for its composition should be somewhat earlier between the mid-ninth and mid-tenth centuries seeming most likely. Along with the citations from an unnamed commentary that may have been the work of Madhusādhu, The Four Yogas cites an unattributed root text at several 26 As David Germano has pointed out, other Indic figures whose tantric lineages came to Tibet in this period (such as Prajñāvārman and Dānaśīla) remained obscure compared to earlier figures like Vimalamitra, even though their lineages survived. He also mentions the almost completely forgotten mid-ninth century figure Guhyeśvara (David Germano, The Seven Descents and the Early History of rnying ma transmissions, in The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism, ed. Helmut Eimer and David Germano [Leiden: Brill, 2002], ). 27 Adelheid Herrmann-Pfant has written: So we can expect, and that expectation is fulfilled in practice at least concerning the tantra texts, that Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts containing translations from Sanskrit as a rule were not made later than in the 8th/9th centuries (Adelheid Herrman-Pfant, The Lhan kar ma as a Source for the History of Tibetan Buddhism, in PIATS 2000, ed. Henk Blezer [Leiden: Brill, 2002], 134; her italics).

13 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 10 points, presumably a tantra. The identity of this root text is unknown. The references in IOL Tib J 508 to the Guhyasamāja Tantra suggest that Madhusādhu and The Four Yogas might be connected with a lineage of Guhyasamāja Tantra exegesis, and The Four Yogas does cite the Guhyasamāja at one point. However, as the root text cited throughout The Four Yogas is always unattributed, so the fact that the Guhyasamāja Tantra is cited by name indicates that it is not the root text. Confirming this, I have not found any of the unascribed citations in the Guhyasamāja Tantra. A credible alternative is that our text is based on the Māyājāla teachings. This seems plausible considering the coalescence of Great Perfection discourse around the Guhyagarbha Tantra and other tantras of the Māyājāla cycle. There is certainly an overlap of terminology between The Four Yogas and various Māyājāla tantras, as I will discuss in the following section. We also have the fact (noted earlier) that the line, assembled inside the circle of reality, is quoted in Lo chen dharma shrī s Guhyagarbha Tantra commentary. Furthermore, when it appears in Gnubs chen s A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation it is immediately followed by a similar line from the Guhyagarbha itself: Totally internalized, without inner or outer. 28 However, I have not found the unascribed citations in The Four Yogas in any of the extant Māyājāla tantras, and if there is a lineage of a particular tantra behind The Four Yogas it remains obscure. 29 Let us turn then to the names of the named tantras which are cited by the author of The Four Yogas. They are: 1. The Tantra of the Union with All Buddhas (Sangs rgyas thams cad dang mnyam par sbyor ba i tan tra; Sarvabuddhasamāyoga Tantra) The Tantra Encompassing the Great Empowerments (Dbang chen bsdus pa i tan tra) The Tantra of the Primal Supreme Glorious One (Dpal mchog dang po i tan tra; Śrīparamādya Tantra) The Tantra of the Secret Assembly (Gsang ba dus pa i tan tra; Guhyasamāja Tantra) The Tantra of the Mountain Peak (Ri bo i [rtsegs pa i] tan tra) Tb.417: 154.1: phyi dang nang med pa/ kun tu yang nang du gyur pa/. This line is commented upon by Vilāsavajra (Q.4718: 137a.3) and Sūryasiṃhaprabha (Q.4719: 226a.1) in their Guhyagarbha commentaries, but neither uses the same terms as The Four Yogas. 29 I would like to give heartfelt thanks to Márta Matkó who painstakingly checked many tantras for the root text and, more fruitfully, located most of the citations found in The Four Yogas. 30 The citation appears in Tb Though this name could refer to Tb.445, 462, 557 or 595, the citation is not found in any of these texts. 32 Tb Tb.409, Q This should be Tb.411, but the citation is not found there.

14 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) The Tantra Proceeding from the One (Gcig las phros pa i tan tra) The Noose of Method (U pa ya pa sha; Upāyapāśapadmamālā Tantra). 36 All seven cited titles appear in at least one of the various lists of eighteen Mahāyoga tantras enumerated in the Rnying ma tradition. 37 It is significant that no tantras outside of this group are cited, even The Symposium of Truth ( Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha), which was well-known and influential among Tibetan tantrikas of this period. Thus the textual affiliations of The Four Yogas may be considered sufficient to place it in the context of Mahāyoga, as it was known to the later Tibetan tradition. Another approach to the question of the doxographical orientation of our text is its ritual and doctrinal content. The Four Yogas does not discuss the ritual practices particularly associated with Mahāyoga, like the practices of union and liberation, nor is there any discussion of specific ritual practice. In this it is similar to A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, which discusses Mahāyoga mainly in terms of philosophical doctrine rather than ritual practice. It is to these doctrines we now turn. Themes in The Four Yogas The Four Yogas Themselves The Four Yogas begins with the explication of four kinds of yoga from which I have taken the name of the text as a whole. They are: (i) The yoga of the nature (ii) The yoga of accomplishment (iii) The yoga of abiding by the oaths (iv) The yoga subsequent to accomplishing the samaya. I have not seen this enumeration of yogas anywhere except for IOL Tib J 508, which, as mentioned above, is either based on this text or has a common source. 38 The yoga of the nature (rang bzhin gyi rnal byor) is mentioned alone in Pelliot tibétain 283, 39 and also appears alone in the title to the first chapter of one of the 35 A Gcig las phros pa i rgyud is mentioned in some later lists of eighteen tantras, but I have not located an extant version of this tantra. 36 Tb.416, Q See the discussion of these in Dan Martin, Illusion Web Locating the Guhyagarbha Tantra in Buddhist Intellectual History, in Silver on Lapis: Tibetan Literary Culture and History, ed. C. I. Beckwith (Bloomington: The Tibet Society, 1987), On the overlap between the lists of eighteen tantras in the Rnying ma sources and the tantras attested in the Dunhuang manuscripts, see van Schaik, A Definition of Mahāyoga. 38 There are two texts in the Bstan gyur dedicated to the topic of four yogas (Q.2881 and 3222) but they bear no relation to the set of four yogas discussed in our text. 39 Final panel, ll.19-20: rang bzhin gyi rnal byor gi dbang phyug che [sic] po la/ sngags gyi yig bru bkod de/.

15 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 12 later Māyājāla tantras. 40 The content of this yoga is analogous to Great Perfection meditation instructions, especially those of the Mind Series (Sems sde): It does not matter whether all of the phenomena of mind and mental appearances, or affliction and enlightenment, are understood or not. At this very moment you should remain in the spontaneous presence of the body, speech, and mind of primordial buddhahood, without achieving it through a path or fabricating it with antidotes. 41 Here we have the first appearance of the term spontaneous presence (lhun gyis grub), an important theme in The Four Yogas. As we see here, spontaneous presence refers to the presence of the enlightened state (expressed as the Buddha s body, speech, and mind) prior to, and independent of, any attempt to reach that state. Elsewhere in the text it is explicitly defined as the absence of effort (brtsal). 42 While the term spontaneous presence appears in several sūtras (such as the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra) and many tantras, it is probably used most extensively in the Māyājāla tantra group. In later Tibetan literature even that context was overshadowed by the popularity of the term in Great Perfection literature where, as here, it was specifically associated with the absence of effort. 43 The remaining three yogas concern maintaining the state of realization expressed in the first yoga, binding spririts by oath, and keeping the samaya vows. The author of The Four Yogas seems to want to dissociate this presentation of four yogas from any kind of graduated practice. He cites from an unnamed commentary a discussion of a meditation called the unsurpassed concentration (bla ma i ting nge dzin), which entails the simultaneous accomplishment of all four stages of absorption. This unsurpassed concentration appears in another Māyājāla tantra and is linked to the maṇḍala of spontaneously present body, speech, and mind (sku gsung thugs lhun kyis grub pa i dkyil khor); such spontaneously present maṇḍalas appear in most Māyājāla tantras, including the Guhyagarbha The Guhyagarbha Tantra in One Hundred Chapters known as the Gsang ba i snying po de kho na nyid nges pa sgyu phrul brgya pa (Tb.421). The first chapter is entitled: Rdzogs pa chen po i tshul rang bzhin gyi rnal byor. 41 IOL Tib J 454, l.1: rang bzhin gyi rnal byor ni/ / sems dang sems snang ba i chos thams cad dam/ / kun nas [2] nyon mongs pa dang / rnam par byang ba i chos thams cad rtogs kyang rung ma rtogs kyang rung / phral la lam [3] gy-is ma bsgrub gnyen po ma bcos te/ ye nas sangs rgyas pa sku gsung thugs lhun kyis grub par gnas pa la bya/. 42 IOL Tib J 454, l.179: de brtsal ba myed par [180] lhun kyis grub/. 43 Here I would disagree with Samten Karmay s statement that spontaneous presence (lhun gyis grub) may be considered as rdzogs chen s own terminology rather than conveying tantric notions. (Karmay, The Great Perfection, 119). This is, however, often the impression conveyed by the later Tibetan tradition. 44 This is The Guhyagarbha Tantra in Thirteen Chapters known as the Gsang ba i snying po de kho na nyid nges pa sgyu phrul dra ba bla ma chen po (Tb.419: 365.5). For the spontaneously present maṇḍala see Tb.417, and throughout chapter 6.

16 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 13 The Superiority of the Secret Vehicle After these four yogas have been discussed, our text moves on to another fourfold set, the four greatnesses. The greatness in question is that of the Vajrayāna (or as it is known here, Guhyayāna, the secret vehicle) over the other methods of Buddhist practice. This is a theme that was popular in Indic tantric treatises, and was later revived by Tibetan exegetes, a well-known example being the Sa skya patriarch Bsod nams rtse mo s General Presentation of the Tantric Canon (Rgyud sde rnam gzhag). 45 In any case, the four greatnesses are: (i) The great result: this is a discussion of the differences between the result of practicing the causal vehicle, that is, the ordinary Mahāyāna, and the secret vehicle, or Vajrayāna. (ii) The great accomplishment: under this heading the causal and secret vehicles, are distinguished in terms of their methods. The causal vehicle rejects the five desirable objects, while the secret vehicle utilizes them. (iii) The great merit: an assertion that the meditation practice of the secret vehicle is the most meritorious activity. (iv) The great wisdom: under this heading we find an argument for the superiority of the secret mantra (gsang sngags) path, based on the assertion that the spontaneously present wisdom is greater than the wisdom of non-self realized by śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas and the non-self of phenomena realized by bodhisattvas. The Nature of Buddhas and Yi dams The author of The Four Yogas takes some trouble to explain the relationship between the unproduced realm of the deities and the experience of phenomena with perceptual characteristics (mtshan ma; nimitta). The question is how something existent (dngos po; vastu, bhavanā) can be produced from something nonexistent. The answer is by analogy: it is like the way a baby lacks distinct sense faculties while inside the mother, but possesses them after birth. The background to this issue is the practice of seeing all phenomena as the display of the yi dam deity. The author goes on to advise that it is not necessary to meditate on the identity of each and every existent with the deity rather the meditation on a single deity accomplishes this automatically. The reason for this is that one s own deity is no more or less than the true nature of one s mind. 45 Davidson, Tibetan Renaissance, , characterizes Bsod nams rtse mo s defenses of the tantric tradition to his experience of the reformist ideals of the Bka gdams pas at Gsang phu. He writes:...the extraordinary emphasis on the hermeneutics of esoterism (bshad thabs) found throughout Sönam Tsémo s esoteric works, particularly in the chapter in his General Principles of the Tantric Canon devoted to the topic, was derived in part from his need to explain esoterism to monks devoted to Buddhist philosophical exegesis and scandalized by the tantric vocabulary. It is interesting to note the same tendencies in The Four Yogas, although whether the same motivations lie behind them must remain an open question.

17 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 14 Mind and Appearances After explaining these four, The Four Yogas goes on to discuss at length the topic of meditation on the nature of mind (sems), and the distinction between the mind and appearancess (snang ba). This section begins with the line, Assembled inside the circle of reality, which was quoted in A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation. The commentary on this line contains a pseudo-etymology of the word maṇḍala, in which the two elements of the Tibetan term dkyil khor are explained as wisdom s awareness encircling ( khor) a center (dkyil) of non-elaboration. This section contains the strongest statement that the Buddhas and buddhahood are identical with the mind: It is this very realization that the reality of your own mind is completely pure that is known as the Buddha. Your own mind is primordial purity and buddhahood, and to comprehend that mind is primordial purity and buddhahood is to be accomplished as a Buddha, to see the face of a Buddha, and to hold a Buddha in your hand. Therefore, it is sufficient to realize mind s reality. It is not necessary to seek buddhahood anywhere other than in the mind. 46 A close scriptural parallel is found in the Guhyagarbha Tantra, where we have the lines: The mind itself is the perfect Buddha; Do not search for the Buddha anywhere else. 47 The discussion in The Four Yogas then turns to the question of whether the mind (sems) and mind s appearance as phenomena (sems snang ba i chos thams cad) can be distinguished or not. The conclusion is that they are nondual in that both are empty. Awareness and Wisdom The author of The Four Yogas relies heavily on the concept of an inherently enlightened mind, which is mind s true nature. This true nature of mind is most commonly referred to in the text as mind s reality (sems kyi chos nyid). It is also called mind itself (sems nyid) and the awakened mind (byang cub kyi sems; bodhicitta); these terms became popular in the Great Perfection tradition, especially in the Mind Series literature, but they are also very well-attested in the Mahāyoga sādhanas that we find among the Dunhuang manuscripts IOL Tib J 454, l.53ff: rang gyi sems kyi chos nyid rnam par dag par rtogs pa de nyid sangs rgyas yin pas zhes bya ba am/ yang na rang gy-i sems ye nas rnam par dag cing sangs rgyas pa yin dang / sems ye nas rnam par dag cing sangs rgyas pa yin pa i don rtogs pa ni sangs rgyas su grub pa am/ sangs rgyas kyi zhal mthong ba am/ sangs rgyas lag tu ongs zin pa yin pas/ sems kyi chos nyid rtogs pa kho nas chog/ sems la gzhan du sangs rgyas btsal myi dgos/. 47 Tb.417, : / sems nyid rdzogs pa i sangs rgyas te// sangs rgyas gzhan du ma tshol cig//. 48 For mind itself see for example the sādhana (sgrub thabs) IOL Tib J 331/1 (1r.3) which is attributed to Mañjuśrīmitra; the awakened mind (byang chub kyi sems) appears in most Mahāyoga sādhanas,

18 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 15 The most frequently used term for the enlightened mind in The Four Yogas is none of the above however; it is awareness (rig pa). Awareness here embraces all the manifestations of buddhahood, as the following passage makes clear: Accordingly, the dharmakāya (chos sku) without characteristics and the rūpakāya which is the manifestation of characteristics are nondual within awareness. 49 Interestingly, a passage making exactly the same point appears in the influential Seminal Heart (Snying thig) scripture titled the Tantra of Self-Arisen Awareness (Rig pa rang shar gi rgyud), which appeared in Tibet in the eleventh century. Ronald Davidson has argued that the use of the term awareness (rig pa) in the Tantra of Self-Arisen Awareness represents a new reworking of Indic materials by Tibetans, so that awareness as the primordially enlightened mind is stripped of its previous perceptual baggage represented by the philosophical term self-referential awareness (rang gi rig pa; svasaṃvedana). 50 In fact, this way of understanding awareness seems already to be present in The Four Yogas, where the term self-referential awareness does not occur at all. Here awareness is freed of any association with ordinary mental functioning, and represents the enlightened nature of one s mind. In fact, the simple term awareness in The Four Yogas seems to be the short form of another term, bodhicitta awareness (byang chub kyi sems kyi rig pa). The latter appears frequently in The Four Yogas as a synonym for the true nature of reality (chos nyid) of one s own mind; for example: And: Your own deity means the reality of your own mind, the very being of the dharmakāya endowed with the bodhicitta awareness. 51 When you do not err from the reality of your own mind, your mind is the bodhicitta awareness. 52 These passages suggest that it might be fruitful to look for a different source for the use of awareness in the Great Perfection texts. Some of the earliest Great Perfection texts use bodhicitta as a synonym for the primordially enlightened mind, and the exact phrase bodhicitta awareness itself appears in Great Perfection where it can indicate both the drop of sexual fluids used in the higher initiations, and the enlightened nature of mind itself. 49 IOL Tib J 454, l.193ff: de ltar chos kyi sku mtshan ma myed pa dang/ gzugs kyi mtshan mar snang ba nyid gnyis su myed par r-ig pa. 50 Davidson, Tibetan Renaissance, The usual Sanskrit forms are svasaṃvedana and svasaṃvitti. Davidson locates the original source for these terms in the works of Dignāga. 51 IOL Tib J 454, l.53ff: rang gyi lhar ni/ rang gy-i sems gyi chos nyid nyid chos kyi sku i bdag nyid byang chub kyi sems kyi rig pa dang ldan pa. 52 IOL Tib J 454, l.219ff: rang gyi sems kyi chos nyid ma nor par/ rig pa i byang cub kyi sems dang ldan pas/ bdag mchod pa yin la/.

19 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 16 texts. 53 Indeed, the source of much early Great Perfection terminology can be found in the perfection stage sādhanas of Mahāyoga where, as I have previously suggested, the term great perfection itself probably originates. 54 In these sādhanas bodhicitta is a multivalent term that includes the pure aspect of mind. 55 For example, the sādhana in Pelliot tibétain 245, closely based on the Guhyagarbha Tantra, invokes the bodhicitta as the mental state at the end of the perfection stage practice of union: Having practiced union in nonduality, consciousness is the bodhicitta of the nondual father and mother. 56 Since, then, the term bodhicitta bridges the gap between the Mahāyoga sādhanas and the early Great Perfection texts of the Mind Series, we should seriously consider the term bodhicitta awareness as a source of the Great Perfection s awareness. 57 Sameness The final thematic section of The Four Yogas is a discussion of the result of the practice (or non-practice), which is explained in terms of sameness (mnyam pa nyid) with the Buddhas. As we saw in Section two above, Madhusādhu seems to have been known for his position that the view of Mahāyoga is characterized as sameness, as that view is associated with him (along with Padmasambhava) in A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation. Sameness is undoubtedly the central theme of The Four Yogas, along with numerous synonyms including nonduality (gnyis 53 The early Great Perfection text Meditation on Bodhicitta (Byang chub sems bsgom pa, Q.3418) appears in the Ldan dkar ma, where it is attributed to Mañjuśrīmitra. The Dunhuang Great Perfection text IOL Tib J 594, attributed to Buddhagupta, is categorized as The Transmitted Precepts of bodhicitta (1r.1: Byang chub sems kyi lung). An example of the specific phrase bodhicitta awareness (byang chub sems kyi rig pa) can be found in the Great Perfection tantra, The Great Perfection of All Phenomena Equal to the Ends of the Sky (Tb.83: Chos thams cad rdzogs pa chen po nam mkha i mtha dang mnyam pa i rgyud chen po), in the title of chapter 22. In addition, the appearance of this phrase in Bon po Great Perfection sources is discussed in Karmay, The Great Perfection, Great Perfection is here the culmination of the perfection stage (rdzogs rim). See van Schaik, The Early Days of the Great Perfection, Of course, one of the most important sources of the meaning of bodhicitta here is the ultimate bodhicitta of the Mahāyāna commentarial tradition, which is essentially the realization of emptiness. However, this concept may have also come to The Four Yogas and the Great Perfection texts via the Guhyagarbha Tantra, the second chapter of which is dedicated to a discussion of the two types of bodhicitta as a context for the whole of the tantra. 56 Pelliot tibétain 245, 12r.4ff: gnyis su myed par sbyor ba mdzad nas/ rnam par shes par ni yab yum gnyis su myed pa i byang chub gyi sems te//. 57 Note that the term bodhicitta awareness does not appear in A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, where Gnubs chen seems to use awareness and self-referential awareness interchangeably. Such is also the case in many later Great Perfection texts (for example the hidden treasure [gter ma] of Jigs med gling pa see Sam van Schaik, Approaching the Great Perfection: Simultaneous and Gradual Approaches to Dzogchen Practice in the Longchen Nyingtig [Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004]). Since a multitude of sources and allusions are the norm in Great Perfection literature, trying to find a single definitive source for any Great Perfection terminology is probably a fruitless task.

20 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 17 su myed), oneness (gcig pa), inseparability (dbyer med), and single taste (ro gcig pa). An important passage defines the nature of nonduality thus: Because the phenomena of nirvāṇa (mya ngan las das pa) and saṃsāra ( khor ba) manifest depending on whether there is realization or non-realization, they are nondual. Therefore they are called the single basis (gzhi gcig) or the single truth. 58 The concept of a basis (gzhi) as the source of either nirvāṇa or saṃsāra depending on whether the nature of mind is realized or not, became very important in the later Great Perfection tradition, especially as it was developed in the Seminal Heart texts. 59 As for the specific phrase single basis, though it appears in A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, it is in the context of the Mahāyoga chapter, and not the Atiyoga chapter. 60 Later, by the time we reach the earliest Seminal Heart texts, the so-called Seventeen Tantras (Rgyud bcu bdun), the term single basis is being used in the context of the Great Perfection. 61 The nonduality of nirvāṇa or saṃsāra is also expressed as the identity of the practitioner and the Buddhas. This state of being is called great sameness (mnyam nyid chen po): This is different from renunciation of the three realms or three worlds. In the pure land there is no distinction between an object and its antidote, for the three worlds are themselves the Buddha realms. This is the state of great sameness which was discussed earlier. It is the state of the yogin (rnal byor pa) who is the personification of all the Buddhas, which is to be the same as all the Buddhas. 62 Sameness and great sameness are important concepts in the Guhyagarbha Tantra and most other Māyājāla tantras. 63 In fact, the entire discussion of the three Buddha bodies in The Four Yogas seems to be indebted to the Guhyagarbha Tantra. According to the author of The Four Yogas, the dharmakāya is the nonduality of space and wisdom, the saṃbhogakāya is the mantra (sngags) and the nirmāṇakāya 58 IOL Tib J 454, l.103: rtogs ma rtogs kyi khyad par gyis [104] khor ba dang mya ngan las das pa i chos su snang bas gnyis myed de/ gzhi gcig pa am don gcig pa zhes bya/. 59 On the basis as presented in A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, see Karmay, The Great Perfection: On the presentation of the basis in the Seminal Heart tradition, see David Germano, Architecture and Absence in the Secret Tantric History of the Great Perfection (rdzogs chen), Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 17, no. 2 (1994): and Jean-Luc Achard, La base et ses sept interpretations dans la tradition rdzogs chen, Revue d Etudes Tibétaines, no. 1 (2002): A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, The single basis is discussed in the Six Spaces Tantra (Seventeen Tantras vol. 2, 166), The Tantra of the Lion s Perfect Dynamism (Seventeen Tantras vol. 2, 268) and The Garland of Precious Pearls Tantra (Seventeen Tantras vol. 2, 520, 525, 529). 62 IOL Tib J 454 l.145: khams gsum am/ srid pa gsum po di spangs pa i pha rol [146] na/ zhing dag pa bya ba zhig gnyen ris su bcad pa myed de/ srid pa gsum nyid zhing dag pa yin/ mnyam nyid sbyor nyid che ba -i zhe ba [147] gong du bstan pa i gnas de nyid/ sangs rgyas thams cad mnyam sbyor ba i/ sangs rgyas thams cad kyi bdag nyid chen po i [148] rnal byor pa i/ gnas yin pa am/. 63 Tb.417, 163.3, 168.5, and elsewhere.

21 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 18 is the mudrā (phyag rgya). The discussion of the last of these is closely based on the discussion of mudrās in the Guhyagarbha Tantra, distinguishing between the nonexistent (dngos med) mudrā and the existent (dngos po) mudrās that are derived from it. 64 The Result: Lions and Garuḍas The other important aspect of the way the result is presented in The Four Yogas is the simile of the lion and the garuḍa, which is used to explain the way in which the qualities of buddhahood appear when the realized yogin passes away. 65 According to the simile, these powerful creatures do not display their qualities when in the womb or the egg, but embody those qualities as potentials. It is the same for the yogin who has realized sameness; his qualities are present but will only fully manifest when he attains buddhahood. One early source for this simile appears in a passage from an unidentified Māyājāla tantra cited in A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation. 66 The simile played an important role in later Tibetan intellectual history, being prominent in the polemics between the Bka brgyud and Sa skya schools. 67 Within the Rnying ma tradition it appears in at least one Great Perfection tantra, and was utilized in Great Perfection apologetics. 68 Mahāyoga and Atiyoga in The Four Yogas and Beyond As we have seen, The Four Yogas is based on the themes developed in the Mahāyoga tantras, especially the Māyājāla group. At the same time, the text s particular focus on the themes of nonduality and spontaneous presence is quite consistent with the early Great Perfection literature. This confluence of Mahāyoga and Atiyoga should not be surprising, first because most aspects of the early Great Perfection are all present to a greater or lesser extent in the Mahāyoga tantras in general, and the Guhyagarbha Tantra in particular, and secondly because Mahāyoga literature from the ninth century, such as Padmasambhava s Garland of Views (Man ngag lta ba i phreng ba) and Gnyan dpal dbyangs The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva, makes it clear that the Great Perfection was considered at that time to be a mode (tshul) of approaching the meditative techniques of the Mahāyoga sādhanas. 64 This discussion appears in Chapter 5 of the Guhyagarbha Tantra (Tb.417). 65 I have translated the Tibetan khyung as garuḍa here, although it is not clear that there is an exact match with the Indic mythological bird. See the discussion of this in David Jackson, Birds in the Egg and Newborn Lion Cubs: Metaphors for the Potentialities and Limitations of All-at-once Enlightenment, in Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 5th Seminar of the International Associaton for Tibetan Studies (Narita 1989), ed. Ihara Shoren (Tokyo: Naritasan Shinshoji, 1992), A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation: 40.5ff. 67 See David Jackson, Birds in the Egg, See Sam van Schaik, Approaching the Great Perfection, , where I discuss the simile in the context of the works of Klong chen pa and Jigs med gling pa.

22 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 19 Another quotation from The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva might help to make this point. In answer to the question of how one should perform ritual service (bsnyen pa) to the deity: In ultimate service no subject or object is perceived, Because there is no toil or effort this is the supreme service. 69 Here again we see the rhetoric of non-effort, and in the manuscript copy written by the same scribe who copied out The Four Yogas we find the following note written underneath the words no toil or effort: This is considered the view of Atiyoga. 70 Elsewhere in The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva Gnyan dpal dbyangs specifically addresses the issue of how to apply the mode of non-activity to Mahāyoga practices, writing: With effort, one meditates over and over again, By cultivating this gradually, entering the expanse, Till it arises spontaneously without effort. 71 And here again the words without effort are glossed in the interlinear notes as the meaning of Atiyoga. 72 Although the author of The Four Yogas does not mention Atiyoga or the Great Perfection, we have seen that the text, with its emphasis on sameness and spontaneous accomplishment belongs to the same milieu of Mahāyoga exegesis as The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva, and can be taken as another example of what was meant by the application of the Atiyoga view to Mahāyoga practices. Even the early doxographical texts found in the Dunhuang manuscripts, which seem to reflect developments from the tenth century standardizing the distinctions between the esoteric tantric frameworks of Mahāyoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga, do not designate these three as vehicles per se. Rather they continue to present Anuyoga and Atiyoga as modes of approach to deity practice, without any meditative content of their own. Thus it appears that Anuyoga and Atiyoga were not, until the eleventh century, widely considered to be independent vehicles with their own distinctive practices. The early Great Perfection texts clearly fulfill the role of being an interpretative framework for Mahāyoga practices, reformulating the key themes of the Mahāyoga tantras including the deity, the experience of bliss, and transgressive activity 69 IOL Tib J 470, question 13: / bsnyen pa don dam par bya ba dang byed pa myi dmyi[g]s na/ / tshegs dang bad pa myed pas bsnyen pa i mchog go/. 70 IOL Tib J 470, question 13, interlinear note: a ti yo ga i lta ba i bzhed. 71 IOL Tib J 470, question 31: / rtsol bas yang nas yang du mnyam bzhag ste// goms pas klung du gyur pas khad gyis ni// rtsol ba myed pas lhun kyis grub par gyur/. 72 IOL Tib J 470, question 31, interlinear note: a ti yo ga i don. Note that the root text does not use the term Atiyoga, but refers to the mode of the Great Perfection (see the citation in Section 1 of the present article). I have suggested elsewhere that the appearance of Atiyoga as a correlate for the Great Perfection seems dates from the time of Gnubs chen sangs rgyas ye shes (late ninth and early tenth centuries). See van Sam van Schaik, The Early Days of the Great Perfection,

23 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 20 in terms of nonduality and spontaneous presence. 73 There are essentially two different ways in which this approach is applied to Mahāyoga. At one end of the scale we have texts like Padmasambhava s Garland of Views and Sūryasiṃhaprabha s commentary on the Guhyagarbha Tantra, which address the issues arising out of deity yoga in Great Perfection terms. At the other end we have brief poetic texts, like Mañjuśrīmitra s Meditation on the Awakened Mind and Buddhagupta s Secret Handful, which communicate the Great Perfection approach without explicit ritual or meditative instruction. 74 The latter are of the type that came to be classified under the Great Perfection s Mind Series. At an early stage most of them were classed as transmitted precepts (lung) and esoteric instructions (man ngag) and seem to have lost their authorial associations in the process of transmission, yet the authors who did remain associated with such texts, like the two above, were generally also authors of Mahāyoga commentarial and sādhana literature. 75 Furthermore, if we consider these two texts in the wider context of the Dunhuang manuscript collection, they must be understood alongside the much greater number of sādhanas and other ritual material in the collection dating to around the same period. Given this context, it is difficult to justify a position that the reformulation of Mahāyoga terminology in these Great Perfection texts entails a rejection of meditative and ritual practice. Rather, the milieu in which we find these early Great Perfection texts, and the use they make of Mahāyoga terminology, indicates a role as instructional works that contextualize Mahāyoga practice. For all the above reasons I think we should be wary of the characterization of the earliest phase of Great Perfection texts as pristine Great Perfection as opposed to later developments of tantric Great Perfection. 76 The Great Perfection is 73 See especially Mañjuśrīmitra s Meditation on the Awakened Mind and Buddhagupta s Secret Handful. 74 It is possible that these short texts entail a kind of technique-free meditation technique. The earliest description of such practices that I am aware of is in Gnubs chen s Armor against Darkness, the Sun of Yoga that Clears the Eyes: A Commentary on the Sūtra of the Enlightened Intention of All Buddhas (Sangs rgyas thams cad kyi dgongs pa dus pa mdo i dka grel mun pa i go cha lde mig gsal byed rnal byor nyi ma; vol. 1, , vol. 2, 25-26, 34), a commentary on the Sūtra Gathering All Intentions (Dgongs pa dus pa i mdo), probably written toward the end of the ninth century. Here these practices are characterized as the gradual aspect of the mode of Great Perfection. Note however that these practices are not really free of technique, and resemble more Chan meditation techniques to identify and settle in the genuine nature of the mind. It is conceivable that the appearance of these techniques represents Chan-based practices appearing under the banner of Atiyoga. Gnubs chen distinguished Chan from Atiyoga (and Mahāyoga) at length in his A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, but this in in terms of view rather than technique, and the treatment also shows that Gnubs chen s knowledge of Chan was extensive. I would like to thank Jacob Dalton for making available to me his unpublished dissertation on the Sūtra Gathering All Intentions and Gnubs chen s commentary. 75 van Schaik, The Early Days of the Great Perfection, 173, and for a complete translation of The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva, see Kammie Takahashi, Ritual and Philosophical Speculation in The Rdo rje sems dpa i zhus lan, in Aspects of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang: Rites and Teachings for This Life and Beyond, ed. Matthew Kapstein and Sam van Schaik (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 76 Germano, Architecture and Absence, 13. I would like to make it clear that this article is a groundbreaking investigation into the historical analysis of the Great Perfection traditions, and my comments here relate only to this specific point of terminology and its potential misinterpretation.

24 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 21 fundamentally tantric in the earliest texts known to us, in that it arose from, and served to contextualize, the discourses and practices of Mahāyoga. David Germano, who coined the term pristine Great Perfection, was careful to define it as a literary characterization, leaving aside the question of what was actually practiced. 77 The sources we have been examining call into question the idea of an early Great Perfection pristine in practice as well as rhetoric. Nevertheless, we might be led to such an idea through two factors: (i) the fact that the rhetoric of nonconceptuality, nonduality and the spontaneous presence in the early Great Perfection texts could be interpreted as an injunction to forgo any kind of practice, and (ii) the development of Atiyoga as an independent vehicle from the tenth century onward. When the idea that Atiyoga comprises an independent vehicle is projected back upon the early stratum of Great Perfection literature, the idea of a tradition eschewing all ritual and meditative practices arises. But such an idea is, I would suggest, anachronistic. I have examined elsewhere the historical process behind the separation of the Great Perfection from Mahāyoga (in the form of the vehicle of Atiyoga), and argued that Gnubs chen sangs rgyas ye shes (a strong influence on the Zur tradition) was instrumental in this movement. 78 The earliest reliable source for the idea that Mahāyoga and Atiyoga are each independent vehicles with their own scriptures and their own formulations of the view is Gnubs chen s A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation. 79 Gnubs chen, as I have previously suggested, presented in this work a somewhat artificial corpus of Atiyoga scripture, both describing and perhaps creating an emergent scriptural category. Gnubs chen s use of the term vehicle in rather haphazard in this work, and it is interesting that in his other extant major work, Armor against Darkness (Mun pa i go cha), Gnubs chen treats Mahāyoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga as modes within a single vehicle, intended for trainees of low, middle, and high capacities respectively Germano, Architecture and Absence, 3, See van Schaik, The Early Days of the Great Perfection. 79 There is one ostensibly early source defining Mahāyoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga as vehicles per se in the manner of the later Rnying ma tradition. This is the Esoteric Instructions on the Stages of the View (Lta ba i khyad pa i man ngag), attributed to the eighth-century translator Ska ba dpal brtsegs. However, there are many reasons for doubting the authorial attribution and early date of this text. Samten Karmay has discussed Bu ston s questioning of the authorship (Karmay, The Great Perfection, 149), and elsewhere I have noted the text s absence from Gnubs chen s A Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation, despite the inclusion of other works by Dpal brtsegs (van Schaik, The Early Days of the Great Perfection, 188). Furthermore, Matthew Kapstein has noted that this text contains developments in doctrinal matters that bear comparison with works produced in the early second millennium transmitted scripture (Bka ma) lineages, notably the Definition of the Vehicles (Theg pa spyi bcings kyi dbu phyogs) of Kaḥ thog dam pa bde gshegs (personal communication). 80 Armor against Darkness, the Sun of Yoga that Clears the Eyes: A Commentary on the Sūtra of the Enlightened Intention of All Buddhas (Sangs rgyas thams cad kyi dgongs pa dus pa mdo i dka grel mun pa i go cha lde mig gsal byed rnal byor nyi ma), vol. 1, 509. Note that the root text of which Armor against Darkness, the Sun of Yoga that Clears the Eyes: A Commentary on the Sūtra of the Enlightened Intention of All Buddhas is a commentary, the Sūtra Gathering All Intentions characterizes these three not as mahā, anu, and ati but as development (bskyed pa), perfection (rdzogs pa), and total perfection (yongs su rdzogs pa).

25 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 22 By the later tenth century we see the ninefold doxographical system becoming increasingly popular, although as the Dunhuang manuscripts show, there were still several variants of this scheme, and the members of the esoteric class of tantra (Mahāyoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga) were not generally known as vehicles. Thus the fully developed nine-vehicle system does not seem to have become widespread before the eleventh century. 81 It is this development, I would argue, that led to Atiyoga (and thus Great Perfection) finally being cut loose from its original grounding in Mahāyoga. Now, it is very interesting that this very same period sees the appearance of the earliest Seminal Heart texts, found among the Seventeen Tantras. These texts bring Mahāyoga practices and deities (especially the peaceful and wrathful deities of the Guhyagarbha Tantra) back into the new vehicle of Atiyoga. It seems that the space created by the eventual separation of Atiyoga from Mahāyoga was filled, almost instantly, by elements drawn from Mahāyoga sources, but now recategorized as Atiyoga. 82 Thus the existence of a Great Perfection tradition with no ritual content seems to have been untenable. In fact, we have some evidence of an unsuccessful attempt to create such a tradition. The Crown Pith (Spyi ti) texts of the twelfth-century treasure revealer Nyang ral nyi ma od zer rejected the Seminal Heart developments in Atiyoga that had been becoming popular in the previous century, in favor of a rhetoric of nonduality and original purity. The difference from the earlier stratum of Great Perfection (which was a mode of deity yoga practice) is that with Atiyoga s new status as an indepedent vehicle, the Crown Pith texts had no ritual context at all. In this they were anomalies, and they seem to have had little success or influence on the later development of Great Perfection. 83 Certain collections of early material, especially the Collected Tantras of Vairocana (Bai ro i rgyud bum), may derive from a similar motivation, probably among the Zur lineage, of creating an Atiyoga 81 Further research to identify the source of this doctrinal development should probably be focused on the activities of the Zur and Kaḥ thog lineages during the eleventh and twelfth centries. For example, an important early text on the nine vehicles is the Definition of the Vehicles of Kaḥ thog dam pa bde gshegs mentioned earlier. 82 The simultaneity of the widespread categorization of Atiyoga as an independent vehicle and the appearance within this new vehicle of meditative practices drawn from Mahāyoga and new (gsar ma) tantric traditions may go some way to answering the questions posed at the end of Germano, The Funerary Transformation of the Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen), Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 1 (October 2005): 28, Why did the Great Perfection prove to be such a popular category of indigenous literary production in Tibet among the groups that gradually evolved into the Ancients and Bon po movements in the ninth and tenth centuries? Assuming that one of the chief sources of later transformations of the Great Perfection is the dominant tantric movements of those times, why did the Great Perfection prove to be such a popular category of literature among Ancients and Bon po groups for the creative assimilation of new Indian and Tibetan developments under the guise of treasure revelation in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries? 83 Germano, Funerary Transformation, 27. However, I would disagree to some extent with the statement that the Crown Pith s reactionary orientation failed ultimately because the incorporation of tantra into Great Perfection was too popular and powerful, because it implies the existence of an earlier form of Great Perfection that was independent of tantra.

26 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 23 vehicle entirely free of Mahāyoga, but again, these collections were of little significance to the later tradition compared with the Seminal Heart material. In effect, even the old role of Great Perfection as an approach to Mahāyoga, which we have seen here in The Four Yogas, was not abandoned, but flourished in the Guhyagarbha commentarial tradition of Rong zom pa, Klong chen pa, and those who followed their examples. This again may be contrasted to the commentarial approach of the Zur lineage, which strenuously avoided the application of Great Perfection language to Mahāyoga material. In this way, The Four Yogas is a vital context for the work of the scholars who shaped the Rnying ma tradition, suggesting how they may have drawn on early currents of exegesis as they formed a distinctive interpretation of the Vajrayāna. The Manuscript (IOL Tib J 454) The Four Yogas is written in a carbon-based ink on a good quality scroll. Unusually for a Tibetan tantric work from Dunhuang, the scroll appears to have been made specifically for this text. Many of the tantric texts from Dunhuang are written on the versos of Chinese scrolls, or on small Tibetan po ti pages, indicating a scarcity of paper. In this case, somebody was able to obtain, or willing to pay for a fine copy of the text. Thus its incompleteness is rather mysterious. Perhaps the complete text was written in several scrolls, the rest of which were lost, or perhaps the text was considered important despite not being available in full. The handwriting is a neat and fluid headed script that will be familiar to anyone who has looked at the Aparamitāyurnāma-mahāyāna-sūtra (tshe dpag tu med pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po'i mdo) and Śatasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā (shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa stong phrag brgya pa) manuscripts mass-produced in Dunhuang. The scribe made only a few mistakes, and most of these were noticed and corrected at the time. The scroll does not contain the scribe s name, but fortunately we have another scroll in the same hand that does give a name. Interestingly enough, this other scroll is one of the three copies of The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva, IOL Tib J 470. The paper of the two scrolls IOL Tib J 454 and 470 is very similar to that used in the hundreds of sūtra scrolls produced in the mid-ninth century in Dunhuang. This is a strong, buff-coloured paper that was produced locally at Dunhuang during and after the period of Tibetan rule in Dunhuang. Perhaps the availability of this kind of paper may be in some way linked to the scribe s official status Regarding this type of paper, a recent project by Agnieszka Helman-Wazny has found these manuscripts to be primarily composed of mulberry fibers, a locally available source of pulp. All such scrolls were made on a paper mould with a moveable bamboo mesh, allowing paper to be removed before drying. In contrast, papermaking technique in Tibet and other Himalayan countries did not develop the removeable mesh, so that paper was always dried in its frame. The measurements of the IOL Tib J 454 and 470 are identical. Both have a panel height of 30.5 centimeters and length of 33.5 centimeters. Both have laid lines at / 3 centimeters and 7.5 / panel. As such, they are likely to have come from the same papermaking apparatus. The height of the scrolls matches that of Akira Fujieda s Type D, dating from the early ninth century onwards (see Akira Fujieda, Chronological

27 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 24 IOL Tib J 454 (The Four Yogas). All images reproduced by kind permission of The British Library. IOL Tib J 470 (The Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva). I have identified these of the two hands based on the forensic method of handwriting analysis adapted to the conventions of Tibetan manuscripts, which I have discussed elsewhere. 85 In brief, the method involves breaking down the handwritings into units of individual graphs (the written letters that appear on the page) and identifying sufficient similarities at the graph level to produce a convincing identification. The identification of such similarities is experience-based in that the examiner must know which graphic forms are likely to be idiographic, and which allographic. While allographic forms are learnt variations in writing styles, idiographic forms are those that are specific to a given writer, and not under his or her conscious control. A series of benchmarks may then be established as a basis for comparing one example of handwriting with another. 86 In IOL Tib J 470 the scribe has signed his name as Phu shi meng hwe i gyog. This is clearly a Chinese name. The scribal colophon in IOL Tib J 470. The first part of the name (phu shi) is an official rank (fu shi, 副使 ), the name for the third highest ranking official in a district called a zhen ( 鎮 ). 87 This is very interesting. Firstly, since this is a Chinese Classification of Dunhuang Buddhist Manuscripts, in Dunhuang Manuscript Forgeries, ed. Susan Whitfield [London: The British Library, 2002], ). 85 See Dalton, Davis, and van Schaik, Beyond Anonymity, The benchmarks shared by both IOL Tib J 454 and 470 include: (i) the reverse curl at the beginning of the text; (ii) two forms of the shad, one curving slightly to the left, and a less common variant with a slight s shape curving to the right; (iii) two forms of the zhabs kyu vowel, one a simple curve and the other ending in an extended horizontal line; (iv) a marked tendency not to connect the ra btags stroke to the bottom of the root letter; (v) an unusual form of the graph mya, where the ya btags and the right side of the ma are not joined to the left side of the graph. 87 This rank, as it appears in another Tibetan Dunhuang document (Pelliot tibétain 1124), is discussed in Akihiro Sakajiri, Kigigun jidai no Chibetto bun bokuchiku kankei monjo [A Post-Tibetan Period Tibetan Document on Stock-Breeding from Dunhuang], Shigaku zasshi 111, no. 11 (2002): Géza Uray has a different interpretation of phu shi, but Sakajiri has convincingly argued for fu shi ( 副使 ). See Uray, Géza, New Contributions to Tibetan Documents from the post-tibetan Tun-huang, in Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 4th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies

28 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 4 (December 2008) 25 official title not in use during the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang (or Shazhou, as the town was then known), we can be sure that the manuscript was written after the occupation, which ended in 848. The use of Tibetan by Chinese officials after the Tibetan occupation is a well-documented fact. 88 Secondly, the scribe s rank suggests an interest in Tibetan Mahāyoga among the Chinese officialdom of Shazhou. The title is followed by the scribe s family name, Meng ( 孟 ), a common family name in the Dunhuang documents. The last part, the personal name, can be tentatively reconstructed as Huai Yu ( 壞玉 ), though a search through the colophons of the Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts yields no other instances of this particular name. 89 As mentioned above, the IOL Tib J 454 and 470 scrolls appear very similar to those containing the Aparamitāyurjñāna Sūtra, which are usually dated to the end of the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang, the mid-ninth century. It would be unusual, though not impossible, for a Dunhuang Mahāyoga text to date from as early as the mid-ninth century. Since, as we have seen, the scribe s Chinese official rank dates him after the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang, the manuscripts should be dated to somewhere between the mid-ninth century and the end of the tenth century. A date toward the later part of that period is suggested by the cursive interlinear notes in IOL Tib J 470, and a few interlinear corrections in IOL Tib J 454. These were certainly written at the same time as the main text. 90 The cursive style in the interlinear notes is similar (though not, I think, in the same hand) to that found in the scroll Pelliot tibétain 849, which can be dated with certainty to the late tenth or early eleventh century. 91 Schloss Hohenkammer Munich 1985, ed. Helga Uebach and Jampa Panglung (Munich: Kommission für Zentralasiatische Studien Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1988), See Uray, New Contributions, and Tsuguhito Takeuchi, A Group of Old Tibetan Letters Written Under Kuei-I-Chün: A Preliminary Study for the Classification of Old Tibetan Letters, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 44, nos. 1-2 (1990): We do have a Meng hwa i kyim, whose signature appears in three manuscripts: IOL Tib J (a copy of the Śatasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā Sūtra), IOL Tib J 548 (an Uṣniṣasitātapātra Dhāraṇī) and Pelliot tibétain 982 (a letter). The hand seems to differ somewhat however from the hand in our two scrolls. Additionally, we have a Hwa i gog who worked as a proofreader in the scriptorium which produced copies of the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, probably in the first half of the eighth century: IOL Tib J 107.1, Pelliot tibétain 1382, A variant of the name appears in the Chinese manuscripts as well; for example in Or.8210/S.1067 (a copy of the Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya Sūtra) somebody, either the scribe or the owner, has written the name: Meng Huai ( 孟壞 / 懷玉 ). I would like to thank Kazushi Iwao for help with the Tibetan transcription of Chinese names, although the reconstructions offered here are entirely my own responsibility. 90 In IOL Tib J 470 long interlinear notes sometimes take up a line where the main text should be, and the main text carries on on the line below. The image here is an example of this. This indicates that the scribe was writing the interlinear notes at the same time as the root text, based on the exemplar for this manuscript, Pelliot tibétain Pelliot tibétain 849 was apparently written by a Tibetan scribe; it is signed by a Bro dkon mchog dpal. See Joseph Hackin, Formulaire Sanskrit-Tibétain du Xe siécle (Paris: Libraire Orientaliste Paul Geuthener, 1924), and Matthew Kapstein, New Light on an Old Friend: PT 849 Reconsidered, in Tibetan Buddhist Literature and Praxis, ed. Christian Wedemeyer and Ronald Davidson (Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the IATS, Oxford 2003), vol. 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 9-30.

29 van Schaik: The Sweet Sage and The Four Yogas 26 Cursive interlinear notes in IOL Tib J 470. Cursive corrections in IOL Tib J 454. Translation The beginning of a panel in the original scroll is indicated in square brackets, for example, [panel 2] and so on. The occasional interpolations which I have thought necessary appear in square brackets. I have also added a few general headings which appear here as an aid to reading the text, but they are not in the original, which has no architectural scheme. Some parts of the text are difficult to decipher, and this may be in part due to textual corruption. The text often lacks the usual signs that close a citation (zhes or ces), so in some cases it is a matter of guesswork where the citation ends and the treatise picks up again. The Four Yogas [i] The yoga of the nature. It does not matter whether all of the phenomena of mind and mental appearances, or affliction and enlightenment, are understood or not. At this very moment you should remain in the spontaneous presence of the body, speech, and mind of primordial buddhahood, without achieving it through a path or fabricating it with antidotes. [ii] The yoga of accomplishment. Having unerringly realized what the nature is, you become accustomed to that state. This brings together all of the Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and vidyādharas. It is also known as arising naturally. [iii] The yoga of abiding by the oaths. This concerns the lords and mistresses of the spirits who have previously been tamed by the Bhagavan and entrusted with the samaya. You should make them obey your orders to do this or that activity, and make sure that they do not transgress their oaths and promises. [iv] The yoga for accomplishing the samaya. Even if you are not endowed with the higher qualities of our forefathers, you should maintain [the samaya] and achieve [the results] in the same way that they did.