Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies

Transcription

1 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies Issue 7 August 2013 ISSN An online journal published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL)

2 Editor-in-Chief: David Germano Guest Editor: Karl Debreczeny Book Review Editor: Bryan J. Cuevas Managing Editor: Steven Weinberger Assistant Editors: Naomi Worth, Ben Nourse, and William McGrath Technical Director: Nathaniel Grove Contents Articles Si tu paṇ chen chos kyi byung gnas in History: A Brief Note (pp. 1-16) Elliot Sperling Si tu paṇ chen and the House of Sde dge: A Demanding but Beneficial Relationship (pp ) Rémi Chaix The Prolific Preceptor: Si tu paṇ chen s Career as Ordination Master in Khams and Its Effect on Sectarian Relations in Sde dge (pp ) Jann Ronis Purity in the Pudding and Seclusion in the Forest: Si tu paṇ chen, Monastic Ideals, and the Buddha s Biographies (pp ) Nancy G. Lin Si tu paṇ chen and His Painting Style: A Retrospective (pp ) Tashi Tsering Si tu paṇ chen s Artistic Legacy in Jang (pp ) Karl Debreczeny Mercury, Mad Dogs, and Smallpox: Medicine in the Si tu paṇ chen Tradition (pp ) Frances Garrett Si tu paṇ chen on Scholarship (pp ) Kurtis R. Schaeffer Notes Apropos to the Oeuvre of Si tu paṇ chen Chos kyi byung gnas (1699?-1774) (4): A Tibetan Sanskritist in Nepal (pp ) (forthcoming) Peter Verhagen ii

3 Other Articles Arriving Ahead of Time: The Ma das sprul sku and Issues of Sprul sku hood (pp ) Marcia S. Calkowski The Significant Leap from Writing to Print: Editorial Modification in the First Printed Edition of the Collected Works of Sgam po pa Bsod nams rin chen (pp ) Ulrich Timme Kragh In the Hidden Valley of the White Conch: The Inscription of a Bhutanese Pure Land (pp ) Bryan Phillips and Lopen Ugyen Gyurme Tendzin Book Reviews Review of A Noble Noose of Methods, The Lotus Garland Synopsis: A Mahāyoga Tantra and Its Commentary, by Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer (pp ) Giacomella Orofino Abstracts (pp ) Contributors to this Issue (pp ) iii

4 - The Significant Leap from Writing to Print: - Editorial Modification in the First Printed Edition of the Collected Works of Sgam po pa Bsod nams rin chen 1 Ulrich Timme Kragh Leiden University Abstract: New textual technologies inspire and force interpretive communities to rethink the way a text is perceived and used. Today, the possibilities of computers and the internet lead text-users to digitize materials and make sources searchable. This, in turn, changes the nature of texts, how they are used, and how they are understood. Past technological revolutions have had similar strong ramifications on the history of literature. In Tibet, one such shift was the spread of printing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Much money, time, and effort had to be invested in transforming handwritten manuscripts to printed texts, which impelled Tibetans to take a new look at the existing literature. Publishers and editors often sat down to reorganize and emend texts of the manuscript tradition in order to make them more reader-friendly, thus justifying the increased circulation of the texts that printing made possible. Yet, modifying the texts also meant changing their significance in terms of how the texts and their authors were subsequently perceived. Relying on redaction and source criticism, the present article analyzes the editorial modifications that were imposed when the collected works of Sgam po pa Bsod nams rin chen, a twelfth-century founder of the Bka brgyud tradition, were printed for the first time, and reveals the religious and literary ramifications this textual transformation involved. 1 The present article is partly based on two conference papers, viz. Construction of a Tradition: The Writing and Compilation of the Collected Works of Gampopa Sonam Rinchen (paper presented at the XIVth conference of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, London August-September 2005), and Compilation Practices in Early 16th Century Tibet: Editorial Modifications in the First Xylograph Publication of the Collected Works of Gampopa Sönam Rinchen (paper presented at Themes in Buddhist Studies Conference, Harvard University, April 2006). The research was made possible by a series of post-doctoral stipends from the Carlsberg Foundation. For feedback and help, I wish to thank Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp, Charles Lock, Kurtis R. Schaeffer, Trungram Gyaltrul Rinpoche Sherpa, the late E. Gene Smith, and the two anonymous peer-reviewers from JIATS. Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 7 (August 2013): /2013/7/T by Ulrich Timme Kragh, Tibetan and Himalayan Library, and International Association of Tibetan Studies. Distributed under the THL Digital License.

5 Kragh: The Significant Leap from Writing to Print 366 Brief Introduction to the History of Printing in Tibet The technology of printing text on paper was first developed in China, used for producing almanacs and other short texts as early as the seventh century CE. 2 The technique was that of woodblock printing, also called xylographic printing, where the prefix xylo means wood. When using this craft, the text to be printed is first handwritten by a scribe on a thin piece of paper, which is then pasted face down onto a wooden block. A carver follows the reverse shapes of the characters, chiseling away the excess wood surrounding each letter. Once all the needed blocks have been prepared in this manner, the engraved block is smeared with ink and the paper to be printed is rolled against it, thereby producing a printed page. 3 By the middle of the ninth century in the late Tang dynasty ( ), the technology began to be employed for printing whole books. 4 By the eleventh century, during the Song dynasty ( ), the culture of printing had become widespread in China with the emergence of printing presses sponsored by the imperial court, monastic printeries, and numerous private publishers. The printed literature was of a broad range, including religious, literary, as well as secular texts. Meanwhile, the technology spread outside of China. To the east, it was adopted quite early in Korea and Japan, where it became common during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. To the west, the new craft was first adopted by the Tanguts (Mi nyag in Tibetan) during the Western Xia dynasty (Xixia, 西夏, ), a medieval kingdom located northeast of the Amdo region. In the twelfth century, the Tanguts undertook several woodblock printing projects, such as the production of a large corpus of Buddhist texts translated from Chinese written in the special Sino-Tangut script. In addition, the Tanguts had extensive dealings with Tibetan 2 See T. H. Barrett, The Feng-kao k o and printing on paper in seventh-century China, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, no (1997): Concerning seal and textile printing as precursors to book-printing technology, see respectively T. H. Barrett and Antonello Palumbo, The Mystery of the Precious Seal of the Ruler and the Origins of Printing, Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies, no. 7.1 (2007): , and T. H. Barrett, Woodblock dyeing and printing technology in China, c. 700 a.d.: the innovations of Ms. Liu, and other evidence, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, no (2001): For a general introduction to the history of printing in China, see Constance R. Miller, Technical and Cultural Prerequisites for the Invention of Printing in China and the West, Studies in East Asian Librarianship, Asian Library Series vol. 21 (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1983). 3 For further detail on the technique of printing in Tibet, see Corneille Jest, A Technical Note on the Tibetan Method of Printing, Man, no. 61 (1961): 83-85, and Kurtis R. Schaeffer, The Culture of the Book in Tibet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009): 11. The technique can be seen used at the modern Sde dge printery in the first chapter of the DVD movie, Auf der Suche nach dem alten Tibet: Eine Reise zu Buddhas Erben / Looking for Ancient Tibet: A Journey to Buddha's Legacy, Yogifilm Production, The most well-known case, which has often been hailed as the world s earliest printed book, is the copy of the Diamond Sūtra belonging to the British Library. It was printed in China in 868 with an impressive wood-carved frontispiece of the Buddha teaching the sūtra. A slightly earlier printed book may have been an alchemical treatise entitled Xuanjie lu, known in English as The Mysterious Antidotarium, which according to catalog information is said to have been printed in several thousand copies in 855 by the Chinese official Hegan Ji; see T. H. Barrett, Religion and the first recorded print run: Luoyang, July, 855, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, no (2005):

6 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 7 (August 2013) 367 masters and the extant scriptures from the ruins of the Tangut capital Khara Khoto comprise several Tangut and Chinese translations of Tibetan texts as well as some writings in Tibetan. 5 The latter include numerous prints of the Uṣṇīṣavijaya Dhāraṇī in Tibetan 6 and a stitched prayer book 7 produced in the mid-twelfth century, which may be the earliest examples of printed texts in Tibetan. 8 A century later during the Yuan dynasty ( ), whole Tibetan texts began to be printed at the Mongolian court in China. These prints, referred to by Tibetans as the Mongol xylographs (hor par ma), include an annotated edition of the Hevajratantra printed in the 1270s, 9 the Kālacakratantra, 10 the Guhyagarbhatantra, as well as selected works by Sa skya paṇḍi ta Kun dga rgyal mtshan ( ) printed between 1310 and In 1410, the imperial Yongle edition of the Tibetan Bka gyur was printed in Beijing at the behest of the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, Emperor Yongle ( 永樂, ). Shortly thereafter, the technology began to be used in Tibet proper in the early fifteenth century. 12 One of the earliest extant prints of a whole text produced in Tibet is the Tibetan translation of the Guhyasamājatantra with Candrakīrti s commentary Pradīpoddyotana printed in the years under the supervision of Tsong kha pa Blo bzang grags pa i dpal ( ). 13 Following this, a collection of works by Tsong kha pa referred to as the Dga ldan par rnying 5 For a survey of the 160 fragments of texts in Tibetan from Khara Khoto kept in the Kozlov Collection at the Oriental Institute in St. Petersburg, see Kirill M. Bogdanov, Tibetskie knigi iz Hara-Hoto (Kollektsiia R.K. Kozlova), Pis mennye pamjatniki Vostoka, no (2010): Newly excavated manuscripts are now found in Chinese collections, too. 6 See Shen Weirong, Reconstructing the History of Buddhism in Central Eurasia (11th-14th Centuries): An Interdisciplinary and Multilingual Approach to the Khara Khoto s, in Edition, éditions: l écrit au Tibet, evolution et devenir, edited by Anne Chayet, Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, Françoise Robin, and Jean-Luc Achard, Collectanea Himalayica 3 (Munich: Indus Verlag, 2010): , The stitched prayer is manuscript XT 67 in the Kozlov collection. See Heather Stoddard, Stitched Books from the Tibetan World, in Edition, éditions: l écrit au Tibet, evolution et devenir, edited by Anne Chayet, Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, Françoise Robin, and Jean-Luc Achard, Collectanea Himalayica 3 (Munich: Indus Verlag, 2010): , Schaeffer, Culture of the Book, 9. 9 Schaeffer, Culture of the Book, See Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp, Faulty Transmissions: Some Notes on Tibetan ual Criticism and the Impact of Xylography, in Edition, éditions: l écrit au Tibet, evolution et devenir, edited by Anne Chayet, Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, Françoise Robin, and Jean-Luc Achard, Collectanea Himalayica 3 (Munich: Indus Verlag, 2010): , See David P. Jackson, Notes on Two Early Printed Versions of Sa-skya-pa Works, The Tibet Journal, no. 8.2 (Summer 1983): 3-24, in particular 6; Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Early Buddhist Block Prints from Mang-Yul Gung-Thang, Lumbini International Research Institute Monograph Series vol. 2 (Nepal: Lumbini International Research Institute, 2000), 11, with further bibliographical references; and van der Kuijp, Faulty Transmissions, van der Kuijp, Faulty Transmissions, , has though drawn attention to several possibly earlier xylographs produced in Tibet. 13 David P. Jackson, The Earliest Prints of Tsong-kha-pa s Works: The Old Dga -ldan Editions, in Reflections on Tibetan Culture: Essays in Memory of Turrell V. Wylie, Studies in Asian Thought and Religion vol. 12 (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990): , in particular 107.

7 Kragh: The Significant Leap from Writing to Print 368 Xylograph was printed in Lhasa in the 1420s and 30s sponsored by the Phag mo gru pa ruler Grags pa rgyal mtshan ( ). 14 In the same period, the ruler of Rgyal rtse, Rab brtan kun bzang phags pa ( ), undertook his own printing project of publishing a Dhāraṇī Collection (gzung bum), which had been compiled by the fourteenth-century Zha lu master Bu ston Rin chen grub ( ). By the latter half of the fifteenth century, a veritable wave of printing projects was underway in Tibet involving texts of all the major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. 15 In terms of the Bka brgyud tradition, which is the particular focus of the present study, one of the earliest printing projects seems to have been the printing of a large Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā commentary by Gos lo tsā ba Gzhon nu dpal ( ) produced by the Phag mo gru pa ruler Ngag gi dbang phyug grags pa ( ) in This was followed by the printing activity of the hermit Gtsang smyon he ru ka Rus pa i rgyan can ( ), which took place in the La stod lho principality in southern Tibet. 17 In the years , he headed the publication of the hagiography and songs of the famous eleventh-century Bka brgyud anchorite Mi la ras pa ( /1123; alternatively spelled Mid la ras pa), and published in circa 1505 the hagiography of Mi la ras pa s teacher, Mar pa chos kyi blo gros (1002/ ). 18 Six of Gtsang smyon s students became very active publishers in the first half of the sixteenth century, when they compiled and printed hagiographies, songs, and works of the founding fathers of the Bka brgyud tradition Jackson, Earliest Prints, See Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Early Buddhist Block Prints, See Klaus-Dieter Mathes, Gos Lo tsā ba gzhon nu dpal s Commentary on the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003), xiii. For possible earlier, non-extant xylographs of the Bka brgyud tradition, see van der Kuijp, Faulty Transmissions, The principality was bordered by the Himalayan range to the south, the Gtsang po river to the north, the area of Sa skya to the east, and the area of Gung thang to the west. See Hildegaard Diemberger, The Horseman in Red: On Sacred Mountains of La stod lho (Southern Tibet), in Tibetan Mountain Deities, Their Cults and Representations: Papers Presented at a Panel of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995, edited by Anne-Marie Blondeau, vol. 6 of PIATS 1995: Proceedings of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995, edited by Ernst Steinkellner, vol. 266 of Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse, Denkschriften, Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie Band 3 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1998): 43-55, For more information on Gtsang smyon he ru ka and his printing activities, see E. Gene. Smith, Among Tibetan s: History and Literature of the Himalayan Plateau, edited by Kurtis R. Schaeffer, with a foreword by Jeffrey Hopkins, Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001), 59-79, and Kurtis R. Schaeffer, The Printing Projects of Gtsang Smyong He ru ka and His Disciples, in Mahāmudrā and the Bka -brgyud Tradition, edited by Roger R. Jackson and Matthew T. Kapstein, PIATS 2006: Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Eleventh Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Königswinter 2006 (Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH, 2011), The six students of Gtsang smyon were rab byams pa dngos grub dpal bar (b. ca ), Dbang phyug rgyal mtshan (b. ca. 1480), shrī lo paṇ ras pa jam dpal chos lha (dates unknown), Sangs rgyas dar po (dates unknown), rgod tshang ras chen sna tshogs rang grol ( ), and lha btsun rin chen rnam rgyal ( ), among whom the latter was the most active printer. They published more than twenty-nine important Bka brgyud works related to various early figures of the lineage, such as Vajradhara, Sa ra ha, Ti lo pa, Nā ro pa, Mar pa, Mi la ras pa, ras chung rdo rje grags pa

8 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 7 (August 2013) 369 In the same period, printing projects were also begun at a number of Bka brgyud monasteries, such as the publication of a compilation entitled the Complete Manifold Sayings (Bka bum yongs rdzogs) consisting of texts attributed to Sgam po pa Bsod nams rin chen ( ). Bsod nams rin chen is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Bka brgyud tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and he became renowned for having mixed Bka gdams explanations of traditional Mahāyāna exoteric teachings with various esoteric Tantric practices of Yoga and the Great Seal (Mahāmudrā). 20 In his late twenties and early thirties, he studied under several Bka gdams pa teachers and received special Yoga-instructions from the yogi Mi la ras pa, while he stayed with the latter for a period of eleven months in After spending a decade in solitary meditation-retreat in the mountains, he settled down on Mount Dags lha sgam po (also spelled Dwags lha sgam po) in the Dags po province in Shortly thereafter, students began to gather around him, and his retreat place on Dags lha sgam po gradually evolved into a little hermitage, which in the following centuries became a small but historically important monastery of the broader Dags po i bka brgyud tradition. Bsod nams rin chen s main students included his two nephews Dags po Bsgom tshul ( ) and Dags po Bsgom chung ( ), who as successive abbots of Dags lha sgam po became the official patriarchs of Bsod nams rin chen s tradition. Other students established their own monasteries in other localities and thereby became founders of new subschools of the Bka brgyud tradition, in particular Phag mo gru pa Rdo rje rgyal po ( ), Karma pa Dus gsum mkhyen pa ( ), and Ba rom pa Dar ma dbang phyug ( /1200). 22 In 1520, a descendant from Bsod nams rin chen s family line undertook a special printing project at Dags lha sgam po. This was the hermitage s sixteenth abbot, ( ), phag mo gru pa rdo rje rgyal po ( ), gling ras pa padma rdo rje ( ), rgod tshang pa mgon po rdo rje ( ), rgyal ba yang dgon pa rgyal mtshan dpal ( ), as well as works by Gtsang smyon he ru ka himself. These projects were carried out in western Tibet (La stod and Rtsib ri) as well as in southern Tibet (in a location near Skyid grong). For these printers and their publications, see Schaeffer, Printing Projects, and Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Editing and Publishing the Master s Writings: The Early Years of Rgod tshang ras chen ( ), in Edition, éditions: l écrit au Tibet, evolution et devenir, edited by Anne Chayet, Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, Françoise Robin, and Jean-Luc Achard, Collectanea Himalayica 3 (Munich: Indus Verlag, 2010): See, e.g., the Blue Annals, wherein he is characterized as being famous for having blended the two streams of Bka gdams pa and Mahāmudrā (bka phyag chu bo gnyis dres su grags); Deb ther sngon po [Blue Annals], facsimile published by Lokesh Chandra, Śata-Piṭaka Series vol. 212 (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1974), TBRC W , Dags lha sgam po, which is sometimes referred to as Mount Peace (Ri bo shānti), is located circa 170 kilometers east-southeast of Lhasa, in present-day Rgya tsha County within the Lho kha prefecture (in Chinese called Shannan Diqu, 山南地区 ), north of the border to Assam. It is southwest of Kong po, southeast of Ol kha, and northwest of Mt. Tsa ri. 22 For more details on the life of Bsod nams rin chen, see Herbert V. Guenther, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation (1959, reprint 1971, The Clear Light Series, Boulder: Shambhala Publications): xi-xii; further, Khenpo Konchog Gyaltsen and Ani K. Trinlay Chödron, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation: The Wish-fulfilling Gem of the Noble Teachings by Gampopa (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 1998): ; and, in particular, Trungram Gyaltrul Rinpoche Sherpa, Gampopa, the Monk and the Yogi: His Life and Teachings (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2004):

9 Kragh: The Significant Leap from Writing to Print 370 Sgam po Bsod nams lhun grub ( ), who for the first time produced a printed version of works associated with Bsod nams rin chen, namely the above-mentioned Complete Manifold Sayings. It is this particular xylograph that will be the focus here, serving as a case-study for the first xylographic printing of a collection of texts that until then had only existed in the form of handwritten manuscripts. It will be argued that the change from handwritten manuscript to printed text involved significant modification of the text and that this technological process consequently had broader ramifications for the religious tradition of the Bka brgyud school. 23 To demonstrate this, the first printed edition of the Complete Manifold Sayings will be compared with an earlier handwritten manuscript of the same collection. The Manifold Sayings of Dakpo (Dags po i bka bum) and Its Witnesses In the earliest known reference, the collected works of Bsod nams rin chen are called in Tibetan Dags po i bka bum (The Manifold Sayings of Dakpo). 24 The corpus today exists in two main recensions. The first recension is a handwritten golden manuscript, henceforth referred to as the Lha dbang dpal byor manuscript, which seems to date from the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The second recension is a series of printed editions starting with the above-mentioned first printed xylograph from The impact of printing on texts and the use of texts has been a topic of much discussion in Western literary theory; see, in particular, the writings by D. F. McKenzie, e.g., Bibliography and the Sociology of s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). In the field of Tibetan studies, the issue has so far not received theoretical consideration. Recently, Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp has examined some historical issues of printing and the impact it had on how Tibetan scholars engaged in text critical practices. For the latter, see van der Kuijp, Faulty Transmissions, especially This is how the collection is referred to in the Lha dbang dpal byor manuscript (see below), vol. Kha, folio 1a. 25 The printed xylograph of 1520 is postdated by seven reprints. These include three later xylographs, which all are closely derived from the 1520 xylograph and thus constitute a single recension. The three later xylographs published in pre-1951 Tibet include: (1) the Mang yul gung thang xylograph produced in 1575 by gnas rab byams pa byams pa phun tshogs ( ), available on microfilms from NGMPP (= The Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project), reel nos. L118/3, L119/1 and L136/7, running nos. L1525 and L1652; (2) a later reprint of the Mang yul gung thang xylograph, the date and origin of which are unknown, available on NGMPP microfilm reel no. L247/4, running no. L2957; (3) the Sde dge xylograph produced at the monastic printing house Sde dge par khang chos mdzod chen mo at the Sa skya monastery Lhun grub steng in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, extant in several prints, e.g., the two volume Dvags po bka bum kept at Musée national des Arts asiatique Guimet, Paris, accession nos. T0541 and T0542, and also available from TBRC in a newer print of the same blocks (reference no. W22393). Moreover, four modern non-xylographic prints of the Dags po i bka bum have been published by the Tibetan exile-community in India and Nepal, which likewise belong to the recension of the 1520 xylograph. These include: (4) Selected Writings of Sgam-po-pa Bsod-nams-rin-chen, published by Topden Tshering (Dolanji, Himachal Pradesh: Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Centre, 1974), being an off-print of an incomplete handwritten copy of the 1520 Dags lha sgam po xylograph written in Tibetan cursive script (dbu med); (5) Collected Works (gsung bum) of Sgam-po-pa Bsod-nams-rin-chen, published by Khasdub Gyatsho Shashin (Delhi, 1975), being an offprint of an incomplete handwritten copy of the 1520 Dags lha sgam po xylograph written in Tibetan standard script (dbu can); (6) Collected Works (gsung bum) of sgam po pa bsod Nams Rin Chen, published by Kargyud Nyamso Khang (Darjeeling, 1982), being an incomplete off-print of a handwritten

10 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 7 (August 2013) 371 The Lha dbang dpal byor Manuscript The earliest extant version of a complete collection of Bsod nams rin chen s works is a golden manuscript in five volumes, the Lha dbang dpal byor manuscript. The name Lha dbang dpal byor appears in a tiny prologue placed in a box on the cover page of volume Ka of the manuscript, which states: This is the beginning of 31 Dharma-lessons starting from here, [written] with great care by Lha dbang dpal byor himself. May it be auspicious! 26 Since the manuscript is written by a single hand, Lha dbang dpal byor must be the name of the scribe who wrote the manuscript or, alternatively, the person who had the manuscript commissioned. Lha dbang dpal byor is a rather uncommon name in Tibetan, and it has still not been possible to identify this person. The original manuscript is in the private possession of Khenpo Shedup Tenzin in Kathmandu. 27 It consists of five volumes in dpe cha format with a total of 815 folios handwritten in a well-executed dbu can script. It is written with white ink on black paper and is thus a so-called golden manuscript. The first volume, which is labeled Ka but which shall be referred to as Ka Thar rgyan, contains Bsod nams rin chen s opus magnum, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation (in short referred to as Dwags po i thar rgyan, The Jewel Ornament of Dakpo). The four remaining volumes constitute a separate set having the volume-labels Ka-Nga. 28 The manuscript has no scribal colophon, is undated, and bears no reference to any location. However, given that it does not reflect the readings, organization of contents, and lay-out that became widespread with the second recension of the manifold sayings (bka bum) first seen in the xylographic print of 1520, the manuscript probably predates the first xylograph and may thus be tentatively dated to the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Its terminus post quem is the first half of the fourteenth century, since the manuscript in one place refers to a transmission lineage copy of the 1520 Dags lha sgam po xylograph written in Tibetan standard script; and (7) Khams gsum chos kyi rgyal po dpal ldan mnyam med sgam po pa gro mgon bsod nams rin chen mchog gi gsung bum yid bzhin nor bu bzhugs so, published by Khenpo Shedup Tenzin and Lama Thinley Namgyal (Kathmandu: Shri Gautam Buddha Vihar, Manjushri Bazar, 2001), being a computer-typed dpe cha style text, which generally appears to follow closely the readings of the Sde dge xylograph, though its list of contents (dkar chags) states that it was based on all the available editions. For information on gnas rab byams pa byams pa phun tshogs, see Franz-Karl Ehrhard, gnas rab byams pa byams pa phun tshogs ( ) and His Contribution to Buddhist Block Printing in Tibet, in This World and the Next: Contributions on Tibetan Religion, Science and Society, edited by Charles Ramble and Jill Sudbury, PIATS 2006: Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Eleventh Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Königswinter 2006 (Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH, 2012): Vol. Ka folio 1a: di nas gzung ste chos tshan sum bcu so cig kyi dbu/ /lha dbang dpal byor kyi[s] legs par bzabs// maṃgha laṃ//. 27 See Sherpa, Gampopa, the Monk and the Yogi, ( DKB-Nag ). 28 It should be noted that the second half of volume Ka incorrectly bears the volume label Kha (from folio 64a onwards) in the left margins of recto folios, thereby causing a pagination-overlap with the second volume that is also labeled Kha. These incorrectly labeled folios of volume Ka will be referred to as Ka and not Kha.

11 Kragh: The Significant Leap from Writing to Print 372 that ends with the second Karma pa Karma pakshi ( ) 29 and elsewhere contains a revelation (gter ma) text extracted from a lake at Sgam po brdar by Rin po che Dung tsho ras pa, probably referring to the earlier Dung tsho ras pa Shes rab rgyal mtshan (also known as Rin chen bzang po), who died around Four of the manuscript s five volumes have now been published in facsimile form in the collection Bri gung bka brgyud chos mdzod chen mo. 31 Volume Ka Thar rgyan is not included in this reproduction. The reprint exhibits several minor changes in comparison to the original manuscript. First, a new frontispiece and line-drawings of Bka brgyud masters have been added to the first few folios of each volume; these do not appear in the original manuscript. Secondly, a new volume label pertaining to Bri gung bka brgyud chos mdzod chen mo (e.g., Da ) has been added to the vertical volume label and Tibetan folio pagination that appears in the left margin on recto folios. Thirdly, the incorrect volume label Kha in the second half of volume Ka has been corrected, so that the volume label now reads Ka throughout the volume. Fourthly, the vertical text title in the left margin on verso folios has been inserted reading Bri gung bka brgyud chos mdzod, where no such title originally appeared. Fifthly, a Western-style page number in Arabic numerals has been added to the right margins of each folio side. Sixthly, the entire text has been printed in reverse so that it now appears with black letters on a white background instead of white letters on a black background. Finally, in the fourth volume Pha, a Bsod nams rin chen hagiography has been excerpted from the 1520 Bsod nams rin chen xylograph and inserted into the manuscript starting from page 317 onwards. The last page of volume Nga of the Lha dbang dpal byor manuscript is 315 in volume Pha of the Bri gung bka brgyud chos mdzod publication. Aside from these changes, the reproduction of the manuscript seems to be entirely reliable. The 1520 Dags lha sgam po Xylograph The second recension of Dags po bka bum began with the first xylographic print ever made of this corpus, namely the 1520 xylograph of Dags lha sgam po. 32 The xylograph consists of two volumes labeled E and Vaṃ with a total of 734 folios measuring 49.7 x 9.1 cm (19.5"x3.6"). The print is made with black ink on white 29 See vol. Ka folio 31b: The stream of empowerment from to the great Gro mgon ras pa, to the precious master Pong brag pa and down to the precious Karma pa, has never ceased and ( de la gro mgon ras pa chen po dang/ slob dpon rin po che pong brag pa dang/ rin po che karma pa yan chad dbang gi chu bo ma nub cing). Since the lineage mentioned here is the standard Karma kaṃ tshang lineage, the epithet the precious Karma pa evidently refers to the second Karma pa Karma pakshi. 30 Vol. Ga, folios 88b-92b. 31 Published by A mgon rin po che (Lhasa, 2004), volumes Da-Pha; available from TBRC, W00JW I1CZ2562, W00JW I1CZ2563, W00JW I1CZ2564, and W00JW I1CZ The 1520 xylograph is available on microfilm from the NGMPP, reel nos. L594/1 and L595/1, running no. L6086, filmed during the Taplejung expedition. The original print is in the private collection of Mr. Lcags phug sprul sku, in Phole (two hours south of the village Ghunsa) near Mt. Kangchenjunga in eastern Nepal. A second incomplete print is in the possession of Khenpo Shedup Tendzin in Kathmandu; see Sherpa, Gampopa, the Monk and the Yogi, 322 ( DKB-Dwags ).

12 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 7 (August 2013) 373 paper. The contents are divided into forty texts labeled Ka-Chi, two short eulogies without text labels, and two treatises labeled E and Vaṃ. It is possible that the two unlabeled eulogies (bstod pa) were not part of the xylograph in its original 1520 form and that they may have been added to the collection somewhat later. Besides lacking alphabetical text-labels, the eulogies have a slightly different page layout from the other texts in the volume. The first eulogy is a short text entitled What is To Be Known (Shes bya ma) and was composed by Bsod nams rin chen s student Phag mo gru pa Rdo rje rgyal po. It is notable that Phag mo gru pa s text was not included when a new xylograph of Dags po bka bum was made in Mang yul gung thang in 1575, which had the 1520 Dags lha sgam po xylograph as its prototype. The second eulogy is entitled The Grandeur of the Youthful Utpala Lotus: A Eulogy to the Three Lords, the Uncle and his [Two] Nephews (Rje khu dbon rnam gsum la bstod pa utpal gzhon nu i chen po). It was composed by the seventeenth abbot of Dags lha sgam po, Sgam po Bkra shis rnam rgyal ( ). 33 Since Bkra shis rnam rgyal s eulogy was included in the 1575 Mang yul gung thang xylograph, it must have been added to the collection prior to this date. The 1520 xylograph contains two colophons that clarify the history of the print. Out of the xylograph s forty works, the first colophon is repeated at the end of seventeen texts, namely the texts labeled Wa, Za-Chi, and Vaṃ. The colophon reads: This print was made at Mount Śānti by the master s descendant, the Dharma-master attendant Bsod nams lhun grub zla od rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po in order to disseminate the Bka brgyud teachings. 34 According to the colophon, the print (par) was produced at Mount Śānti, which is another name for Dags lha sgam po, i.e., the hermitage originally founded by Bsod nams rin chen in Further, the colophon informs that the print was produced by Bsod nams lhun grub zla od rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po 33 For the monastery s abbatial list, see Per K. Sørensen and Sonam Dolma, Rare s from Tibet: Seven Sources for the Ecclesiastical History of Medieval Tibet (Lumbini International Research Institute, 2007): 48. The eulogy s colophon gives its author s name as the one having the name Gampopa Maṅgala (ces pa di yang sgam po pa mangga la i ming can gyis sbyar ba o). Maṅgala is Sanskrit for Tibetan bkra shis. The name Sgam po pa mangga la is attested as the nom de plume for Sgam po Bkra shis rnam rgyal in the colophons of several of his works found in the Gdams ngag mdzod collection, e.g., his Phyag rgya chen po i khrid yig chen mo gnyug ma i de nyid gsal ba [Clarifying the Nature of the Natural State: A Great Instruction on Mahāmudrā]. See the Dpal spungs edition of Gdams ngag mdzod, vol. Nya, TBRC W , folio 26b (page 396). For further information on Sgam po Bkra shis rnam rgyal, see Matthew Kapstein, Review of Mahāmudrā: The Quintessence of Mind and Meditation, translated and annotated by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa, with a foreword by Chögyam Trungpa, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies no (1990): , and David P. Jackson, Which Bkra shis rnam rgyal Wrote the Renowned Tibetan Mahāmudrā Manual?, in Esoteric Buddhist Studies: Identity in Diversity: Proceedings of the International Conference on Esoteric Buddhist Studies, Koyasan University, 5. Sept.-8 Sept (Koyasan: Executive Committee, ICEBS, 2011), //par di ni/ rje nyid kyi dbon po/ spyan snga chos kyi rje/ bsod nams lhun grub zla od rgyal mtshan dpal bzang pos/ ri bo shantir/ bka brgyud kyi bstan pa spel ba i slad du bgyis pa o//.

13 Kragh: The Significant Leap from Writing to Print 374 ( ), 35 the sixteenth abbot of Dags lha sgam po, whose tenure as abbot was 1510/ Bsod nams lhun grub declares himself to be a nephew or descendant (dbon po) of Bsod nams rin chen, in the sense that he hails from the Rnyi family which goes back to Bsod nams rin chen s brothers. He is also described by the epithet Dharma-master attendant (spyan snga chos kyi rje), indicating that he belongs to the monastery s abbatial line stemming from Bsod nams rin chen s two nephews, who served as Sgam po pa s attendants. Additionally, the xylograph contains a second, more extensive colophon given at the end of text E, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, which reads: The Complete Manifold Sayings along with the Ornament of Liberation were made into a print 2,388 years after the nirvāṇa of our teacher Munīndra, 442 years after the birth of our protector [Bsod nams rin chen], 367 years after he passed into the realm of reality (dharmadhātu), on the fifteenth lunar day in the Month of the Rod of the male Iron-Dragon year. [It was produced] in order to disseminate a countless number [of copies] of the Complete Manifold Sayings by the master [Bsod nams rin chen s] descendant, the Dharma-Lord Attendant Bsod nams lhun grub zla od rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po in the temple of bsgom pa a khar bde chen at the neck of Mount Śānti for the purpose of spreading the Bka brgyud teachings. 37 By means of several fix points, the longer colophon establishes the date of the xylograph s completion to be September 26, Considering the dates of the publisher Sgam po Bsod nams lhun grub (abbatial reign 1510/ ), the male Iron Dragon year (lcags pho brug gi lo) can be identified as that of the ninth sexagenary cycle (rab byung), which is equivalent to the Gregorian year 1520 CE. The calculation agrees with the 367 years stated to have elapsed after Bsod nams rin chen s death in When the birth-year is counted as one, as is the common practice among present-day Tibetans, the year 1520 also agrees with the 442 years said to have elapsed after Bsod nams rin chen s birth in When 1520 is taken as year 2,388 of the Buddha s Nirvāṇa Era, it reflects a tradition of dating the Buddha s nirvāṇa to 868 BCE, which constitutes a Water Dragon year (chu brug gi lo) in the Tibetan calendar. Such a dating of the Buddha s nirvāṇa seems to reflect a little known tradition, because it neither corresponds to the well-known tradition of Jo bo rje (b. eleventh century) placing the Buddha s nirvāṇa in a Wood Monkey (shing pho spre) year, nor Sa skya paṇḍi ta s tradition placing it in a female Fire Pig (me mo phag) year, nor Gdon drug snems pa i lang 35 Referred to in brief as Sgam po Bsod nams lhun grub. 36 See the abbatial list in Sørensen and Dolma, Rare s, Vol. Vaṃ folio 131a: bka bum yongs rdzogs thar rgyan dang bcas pa di ni/ ston pa thub pa i dbang po mya ngan las das nas/ nyis stong gsum brgya go brgyad dang/ mgon po di nyid bltams nas/ bzhi brgya zhe gnyis lon/ chos kyi dbyings su zhugs nas/ gsum rgya re bdun rdzogs pa yi/ lcags pho brug gi lo/ dbyug pa zla ba i tshes bcwo lnga la/ bka bum yongs rdzogs grangs med pa spel ba i phyir du/ rje nyid kyi dbon po spyan snga chos kyi rje bsod nams lhun grub zla od rgyal mtshan dpal bzang pos/ bka brgyud kyi bstan pa spel ba i slad du ri bo shanti yi mgu la/ bsgom pa a khar bde chen gyi gtsug lag khang du par du bgyis pa o/.

14 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 7 (August 2013) 375 Tsho s (seventeenth century) tradition placing it in an Iron Monkey (lcags spre) year, 38 nor the tradition stated in the Blue Annals (Deb ther sngon po) by Gos lo tsā ba Gzhon nu dpal giving it as a female Water Hen (chu mo bya) year. 39 Finally, the month of the rod (dbyug pa zla ba) is another name for the month Āśvinā (Tha skar zla ba), when the moon rises in Aries (Aśvinī, Tha skar). This is the second month of autumn, corresponding to the ninth Mongolian month (hor zla), a calendar that is regularly used in Tibet. In both Tibetan lunar calendars that the author of the colophon may possibly have used to reckon this date, the fifteenth day of the ninth month of that year corresponds to September 26 in the Gregorian calendar. The two Tibetan calendars in question are the calendar of the Old Puk Tradition (phug lugs rnying ma), which is the more likely to have been used here, and the less likely calendar of the Tsurpu Tradition (mtshur lug). 40 Further, the colophon specifies the place of the publication as the temple of the meditator A khar bde chen (Bsgom pa a khar bde chen gyi gtsug lag khang) located on Mount Śānti, i.e., Dags lha sgam po. The publisher is again stated to be Sgam po Bsod nams lhun grub, the sixteenth abbot of the monastery. After the passage quoted above, the colophon continues with a segment discussing the particulars of The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, which will be examined in a later part of the article. At the end of the colophon, there are the following two verses: The one who clarified all nets of doubts by means of his editing, whose sword of knowledge overcame all invaders and cut away all errors of confusion, was the shākya monk Ye shes dbang phyug. The scribe was Kun dga rin chen. Dpal byor dar rgyas dbon bsam pa, who is knowledgeable in the carving of letters, arrived like an emanation. A team of thirty skillful men, akin to emanations of Viśvakarman s activities, then carved [the blocks]. Can anything compare to the carving of knowledge? 41 The above verses identify the publication s editor and proof-reader (zhu dag pa) to have been a monk (shākya dge slong) by the name Ye shes dbang phyug. 38 For these three traditions of calculating the Buddha's nirvāṇa, see R. O. Meisezahl, Fragmentary Tibetan dkar chag Xylographs Kept in the India Office Library, London, Oriens no. 32 (1990): , 301. Sa skya paṇḍi ta s Fire Pig year is also mentioned in u rgyan pa rin chen dpal s (1229/ ) Bka thang sde lnga [Five Chronicles], where it according to Vostrikov s calculation would correspond to 2134 BCE; see A. I. Vostrikov, Tibetan Historical Literature, trans. Harish Chandra Gupta, Soviet Indology Series no. 4: Indian Studies: Past and Present, edited by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (Calcutta, 1970): See Deb ther sngon po, For the date calculation of the two calendars, see Dieter Schuh, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der tibetischen Kalenderrechung (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner Verlag, 1973): *126*. 41 E (folio 131b4-7): //zhu dag lags pas khrul pa i skyon sel ba i/ /rig pa i ral gri g.yul las rgyal ba yi/ /the tshom dra ba mtha dag gsal ba di/ /shākya i dge slong ye shes dbang phyug yin// //yi ge ba ni kun dga rin chen yin// //rig byed brkos la mkhas pa sprul skur byon/ /dpal byor dar rgyas dbon bsam pa dang ni/ /wishwa karma i rnam thar sprul pa yi/ /mkhas par btus pa bcu phrag gsum gyis brkos/ /shes bya brkos la dran zla can mchis sam// //.

15 Kragh: The Significant Leap from Writing to Print 376 The name may refer to the well-known contemporary Brug pa bka brgyud scholar Smad brug mkhan po Ye shes dbang phyug (b. fifteenth century). The scribe (yi ge pa) was one Kun dga rin chen. Notably, the same person served as the scribe of another text, wherein the colophon identifies him as someone belonging to the Achak monastic house (A phyag bla brang). 42 Kun dga rin chen, however, was not the only scribe of the entire bka bum, since the names of three additional scribes are mentioned in the colophons of other texts in the collection, including Bon po Shes rab kun dga, 43 Dar po, 44 and Dkon mchog skyabs. 45 Finally, the colophon describes that a group of thirty carvers carved the wooden blocks for the xylograph, headed by one Dpal byor dar rgyas dbon bsam pa. The colophon of text Khi gives the name of another carver, Nyi zla rdo rje. 46 All later prints of Dags po bka bum are apographs, i.e., direct copies, of the Dags lha sgam po xylograph or its textual descendants. 47 Redaction Criticism Editorial Modifications In the following, the Lha dbang dpal byor manuscript will be referred to as the manuscript, while the 1520 Dags lha sgam po xylograph will be called the xylograph. critical collation of the manuscript and the xylograph reveals that the manuscript may have been a source for the xylograph. That is to say, there are corrupt readings in the manuscript that are repeated in the xylograph suggesting that the manuscript could be a textual ancestor of the xylograph or that they both derive from a common archetype. At the same time, it cannot have been the only source for the xylograph, because there are some archaic or corrupt readings in the manuscript that are not repeated in the xylograph, which suggests that the 42 The colophon of text Vaṃ, folio 27a, reads: These letters were written by Master Kun dga rin chen and two students (dpon slob gsum) from the Achak monastic household (yi ge di ni a phyag bla brang nas/ /kun dga rin chen dpon slob gsum gyis bris). 43 The colophon of text Sha on folio 10a reads: The letters were carefully written by Shes rab kun dga s fingertips (yi ge shes rab kun dga i sor mo[ i] rtse la skyong). The colophon of text Ki, folio 29a, reads: The scribe was Bon po Shes rab kun dga, the middle [brother] of the Spa [family] from the district of G.ye (yi ge pa ni g.ye phyogs spa bring ras pa bon po shes rab kun dga lags so). The latter colophon is very blurred and a paperfold in the print has distorted several letters; hence, the present transliteration and translation are only tentative. 44 The colophon of text Khi, folio 31a, reads: The letters of this text were written by the fingertips of Dar po (spar yig di ni/ dar pos sor mo i rtse las grub). Dar po might be identified with the sixteenth-century printer Sangs rgyas dar po, who studied under the three masters Gtsang smyon he ru ka, lha btsun rin chen rnam rgyal, and shrī lo paṇ ras pa jam dpal chos lha; see fn. 18 above. Twenty years later, in ca. 1540, Sangs rgyas dar po headed his own printing project of the hagiography of rgod tshang pa mgon po rdo rje at Brog la phyi gangs ra in Rtsibs ri; see Smith, Among Tibetan s, The colophon of text Ci, folio 6a, reads: These letters imparting knowledge were written by the fingertips of Dkon mchog skyabs from the height of the throne of E. May it be auspicious! (shes bya yi ge di/ e i khri phang nas/ dkon mchog skyabs kyis sor mo i rtse nas grub// //manggalam bhavantu//). The toponym E refers perhaps to the monastery of Bo dong e (Bo dong e mgon pa) in Lha rtse county, in which case Dkon mchog skyabs must have been its throne-holder, i.e., abbot. 46 Khi, folio 31a: [It] was carved by the carving-craftsman Nyi zla rdo rje (rkos byed mkhas pa/ nyi zla rdo rjes brkos). 47 See fn. 24.

16 Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 7 (August 2013) 377 manuscript was not the only ancestor of the xylograph and that the xylograph therefore could be a conflated misch-codex copied by comparing the readings of several ancestor manuscripts. Alternatively, it could signify that the editor of the xylograph thoroughly emended the text that was going into the new print, thereby eliminating corruptions seen in the manuscript. In any case, it is clear that the two recensions are closely related textual transmissions. Given the close text critical relationship between the manuscript and the xylograph, it is valid to submit the two recensions to an analysis of redaction criticism. When the two recensions are compared, it is evident that editorial modifications were introduced into the xylograph in three main areas: (1) the making of texts, (2) the arrangement of texts, and (3) the editing of language. The Making of s The xylograph s first and most obvious modification is its rearrangement of the contents of the bka bum into a structure of forty individual texts. To illustrate this, it is first necessary to understand the literary nature of the manuscript. The manuscript, on the one hand, is neither a collection of clearly demarcated individual texts with separate titles and colophons, nor is it one large text divided into sections. Rather, it is an almost random mass of hundreds of small segments of writing, without clear markings of beginnings and ends of the larger textual units that in the xylograph make up whole texts. The texts do not have separate cover pages, nor are they distinguished by alphabetical labels. Each of the five volumes of the manuscript has continuous pagination numbers and the pagination is therefore no indication of text divisions. Smaller textual segments, which in the xylograph constitute the sub-chapters of a given text, are in the manuscript demarcated by punctuation markers. The majority of segments begin with an homage phrase, such as homage to the guru (nā mo gu ru), I bow down to the authentic lamas (bla ma dam pa rnams la phyag tshal lo), etc. A frequently occurring demarcation marker placed between segments is the Sanskrit quotation marker iti, which is written ithi ( ) in Tibetan. In some cases, segments end with brief colophons, which in the xylograph appear as internal chapter colophons. While some colophons provide text titles, there is not a single text in the manuscript that is headed by a title at the beginning of a work. The xylograph, on the other hand, consists of forty neatly separated texts. The beginning of each text is marked by a separate cover page, on which the text s title is written in a square box. The titles given to texts have in some cases been extracted from the text s internal colophons, but in other cases they are newly given titles that are not reflected in the manuscript. The latter is particularly the case when a text is made up of segments that do not occur in a continuous series in the manuscript but which are scattered throughout one or more of the manuscript s volumes. Additionally, in the xylograph, each text has been given an alphabetical label from the Tibetan alphabet, such as Ka, Kha, Ga, Nga, etc., and the pagination is such that the folio numbers begin anew with each text. In some cases, a printer s