Rolf Stein's Tibetica Antiqua

Rolf Steins Tibetica Antiqua

BrillsTibetan Studies

Library

Edited by

Henk BlezerAlex McKay

Charles Ramble

VOLUME 24

Rolf Steins Tibetica Antiqua

With Additional Materials

By

Rolf A. Stein

Translated and edited by

Arthur P. McKeown

LEIDEN BOSTON2010

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stein, R. A. (Rolf Alfred), 19111999.Rolf Steins Tibetica antiqua : with additional materials / by Rolf Stein ; translated

[and updated] by Arthur P. McKeown.p. cm. (Brills Tibetan studies library ; v. 24)

Translation of articles which originally appeared in French in the journal Bulletin de lEcole francaise dExtreme-Orient from 1983 to 1992, together with Steins contributions to the Annuaire de college de France from 1967 to 1970.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-90-04-18338-4 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Tibet (China)Civilization.

2. Tibet (China)CivilizationSources. 3. Indigenous peoplesChinaTibetReligion. 4. BuddhismChinaTibetHistory. 5. BuddhismChinaTibetHistorySources. 6. TaoismChinaTibetHistory. 7. Tibet (China)Religion. 8. Buddhist literatureChinaTibetHistory and criticism. 9. Tibetan languageTexts. 10. Dunhuang Caves (China)Antiquities. I. McKeown, Arthur P. II. Title. III. Title: Tibetica antiqua. IV. Series.

DS786.S765 2010294.309513dc22

2009053997

ISSN 1568-6183ISBN 978 90 04 18338 4

Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints BRILL, Hotei Publishing,IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permissionfrom the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted byKoninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly toThe Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910,Danvers, MA 01923, USA.Fees are subject to change.

printed in the netherlands

Dedicated as a gurudaksin toLeonard W.J. van der Kuijp,

in lieu of a cow

CONTENTS

Preface ................................................................................................. xiAcknowledgements ............................................................................ xixList of Abbreviations ......................................................................... xxiIntroduction by Cristina Scherrer-Schaub .................................... xxiii

Tibetica Antiqua I The Two Vocabularies of Indo-Tibetanand Sino-Tibetan Translations in the Dunhuang Manuscripts .................................................................................... 1 Vocabulary ................................................................................. 19 Analysis of vocabulary ............................................................. 22 Recapitulation ............................................................................ 83 Notes on the sources ................................................................ 85

Tibetica Antiqua II The Use of Metaphors for Honorific Distinctions in the Epoch of the Tibetan Kings ...................... 97Additional note to Tibetica Antiqua I ....................................... 111

Tibetica Antiqua III Apropos of the Word Gtsug lag and theIndigenous Religion ...................................................................... 117The dating ....................................................................................... 118Characteristics of the Ancient Religion ..................................... 121The sense of Gtsug and Gtsug lag ............................................... 126Review of the Sources ................................................................... 170Appendix: The etymology of gtsug lag ....................................... 182Recapitulation ................................................................................ 187

Tibetica Antiqua IV The Tradition Relative to the Debut ofBuddhism in Tibet ........................................................................ 191The religious kings and the royal laws ...................................... 215The stra fallen from the sky ...................................................... 220Recapitulation ................................................................................ 229

Tibetica Antiqua V The Indigenous Religion and the Bon poin Dunhuang Manuscripts ........................................................... 231

viii contents

Theories ........................................................................................... 231The ancient religion .................................................................. 231Bon pos and Bon ....................................................................... 237 Theories on the antecedents of late Bon .......................... 237The Dunhuang manuscripts and the later tradition ........... 243

Dunhuang Documents ................................................................. 246Bon po in the texts translated from Chinese and bon po communities. ......................................................................... 246 Translations from Chinese .................................................. 246 Bon po communities ............................................................ 250Bon po and gshen, their differences and their functions .... 251Gshen rab mi bo ........................................................................ 255Other people .............................................................................. 258Names and their epithets ......................................................... 261Themes ........................................................................................ 264Funerary ritual ........................................................................... 265Divinities .................................................................................... 267The word Bon alone ................................................................. 268Linguistic and stylistic traits ................................................... 269

Tibetica Antiqua VI Confucian Maxims in Two Dunhuang Manuscripts .................................................................................... 273

Annuaire 1967 .................................................................................... 285Aspects of the Sworn Faith in China .......................................... 285The Bonpo Cosmogonies in Tibet and among the Mosso ........ 290

Annuaire 1968 .................................................................................... 299Daoist texts relative to the transmission of revealed books ..... 299The bonpo accounts on the beginnings of culture ..................... 304

Annuaire 1969 .................................................................................... 307Bonpo accounts on the first men ................................................. 307Some aspects of the Daoist parishes ............................................ 313

Annuaire 1970 .................................................................................... 321Popular cults in organized Daoism ............................................. 321Elements constitutive of the bonpo literature ............................ 328

contents ix

Bibliography of Rolf A. Stein ........................................................... 337Select Bibliography ............................................................................ 343Indices

General Index ................................................................................. 355Index of Dunhuang Documents ................................................. 371Index of Tibetan Terms ............................................................... 375Index of Sanskrit Terms ............................................................... 380Index of Chinese Terms ............................................................... 382

PREFACE

Many of Steins categories are as persistent a problem now as they were for him, though perhaps more widely discussed. This is par-ticularly true for his concern with what he variously terms popular religion and nameless religion. This encompasses what many now name domestic religion, or what J.Z. Smith called the religion of here.1 Smith could rightly state that popular religion represents a dubious place-holding category (325), and Stein recognized it as such. Smith defines domestic religion as focused on an extended fam-ily, [it] is supremely local. It is concerned with the endurance of the family as a social and biological entity, as a community, as well as with the relations of that community to its wider social and natural environs (326). In Steins writing on the bon po religion, funerary rituals made up the greater part of their significance. When he writes about the criticisms of excessive worship charged against Daoists, he notes that the polemics are not so much between Confucians and Daoists as between individual adherents within Confucian and Dao-ist schools to official and semi-official behavior, codified institutions and popular customs (which are not limited to the people, but are partaken by all the layers of society) (p. 322). In this, Stein recognizes the defects of popular in the sense of folk religion. However, any other category large enough to be generalized has similar deficiencies, including domestic or family religion.

Steins ultimate concern, though, was not with the popular or domestic religions of antiquity. He recognized that he had no access to them. He had textual evidence from the past and ethnographic evi-dence from the present. The texts constituted a testament to the inter-pretation or remembrance of the nameless religion among members of the official religions. He was concerned with the continuities and relationships among these categories. In the Tibetan context, this lies with the relationships among (and within) bon, Bon, and Buddhism.

1 J.Z. Smith, Here, There, and Anywhere, in Relating Religion, 323339. Smith cites a number of works on domestic religion, and draws inspiration from the work of Granet on China. Granet was, of course, Steins mentor and predecessor at the cole franaise des Hautes tudes.

xii preface

Each of these groups werein time, place, or membershipboth semi-official and official, domestic and civic, religions of here, there, and anywhere.

Translating and updating Tibetica antiqua

The Tibetica antiqua series was an obvious and long-overdue object of translation. I am aware that the third and fifth articles have been translated by Peter Richardus, and published already in the collection edited by Alex McKay, History of Tibet.2 Aside from any question of the quality of translation of those articles (which may have only been provisional), they suffer in other respects. Rendering these articles into English requires not only the translation of Steins French, but also his Tibetan and Chinese. Stein used a French system for transliterating Tibetan, which has here been changed to the widely accepted Wylie system. Further, he used the FEO transcription of Chinese terms, which has here been rendered into Pinyin. Stein attempted to pro-vide Chinese characters wherever possible in these articles, which were generally restricted to a separate, sometimes handwritten appendix, presumably due to the formatting restrictions of the day. I have here attempted to provide the Chinese characters next to the pinyin wher-ever possible without being too repetitive.

Further, these six articles were intended by Stein as a set, and they often refer to each other, especially to Tibetica antiqua I, which can be viewed as laying the groundwork for the others. Therefore, it was imperative to translate all the articles in a single volume which could be indexed. Finally, I have in certain cases provided some updating. For instance, where an article or criticism by Stein elicited a response from another scholar, I have tried to include a reference to that article in a separate footnote, or as an addition to a previous footnote. Steins own footnoting system is somewhat idiosyncratic, and to leave it unchanged I have had to take recourse to what may seem like a slightly burden-some additional system. All footnotes that are not Steins are lettered rather than numbered. All notes added by the editor are marked as

2 On the word gcug-lag and the indigenous religion, in The History of Tibet, ed. Alex McKay (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 530583; The indigenous reli-gion and the bon-po in the Dunhuang manuscripts, in The History of Tibet, ed. Alex McKay (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 584614.

preface xiii

such (-ed.). Cristina Scherrer-Schaub has also been kind enough to provide some very useful comments and criticisms of these articles. Her emendations are marked by her initials (-C.S-S.). These references are by no means exhaustive, but will hopefully be useful.

Modifications

I have made a small number of changes to the original articles, includ-ing correcting as many typographical errors as I could find. For ease of reading, I have shortened further a number of Steins abbreviations, P. tib. becomes PT [not to be confused with a common abbreviation for dPao gTsug (PT), which I write Dpao Gtsug] and I.O. becomes ITJ. Given the sheer number of times Stein references the call num-bers of Dunhuang manuscripts the longer P. tib. and IOL Tib J ref-erences would be too unwieldy. In addition, I have altered Steins Chinese reconstructions from Kalgrens 1950 scheme to Baxters 1992 schema.3

It was suggested to me that I change Steins references to the Tibetan kings to Tibetan emperors. While I agree that in general the Tibetan btsan po should be translated as emperor, and rgyal po as king, I have not changed Steins references to the Tibetan king. There are a few reasons for this. One superficial reason is that Beckwiths research on this topic was as yet unknown to Stein when he wrote Tibetica anti-qua I, and replacing king with emperor would be anachronistic, as well as perhaps representing a dangerous precedent for how much updating would be appropriate.

A more significant reason for not changing king to emperor is in deference to Steins theoretical schema. For Stein, the term king is not simply a hierarchical ranking, above kinglet and below emperor. It is an abstract, structural entity that partakes of a number of rela-tionships, with ministers (as well as the relationship king : minister : heaven : earth, etc.), mountains and sky, deities (as lha and lha sras) and other worldly beings, his own sacred being (sku bla), his good government (gtsug lag), ancestor-kings, the idea of the kings body, the king as bodhisattva, etc. When Stein uses the term kinglet or minor king it is almost always with reference to the twelve kinglets who

3 I owe this suggestion to Nathan Hill.

xiv preface

elected the first, mythic king of Tibet, thus making the use of the term kinglet a structural necessity. When Stein uses the term emperor (almost always restricted to the Tang emperors), this term is never used in relation with Tibetan kingship. When referring to Chinese royalty, Stein generally also uses the term king, especially when mak-ing a structural or theoretical point. As a result of this, to parse Steins use of king into emperor and king would constitute a disservice, and an undermining of his conceptual framework.

Annuaire

The inclusion of Steins contributions to the Annuaire de collge de France from 196770 was suggested by one of the readers from Brills Tibetan Studies Library. Rather that just translate the sections relating to Tibet, I decided to translate them in full. The Annuaire provides a concise demonstration of Steins method and theoretical framework as they relate to his project of comparative religion. Stein never makes strong comparative statements linking Chinese Daoism and Confu-cianism with Tibetan Buddhism and Bon, but he does make occasional references from one to the other, and the reader can see that he is constantly informed by a wide field of sourcesreligious, geographi-cal, philological, and ethnographic.

A Biographical Sketch4

Born June 13th, 1911 in Switzerland, Rolf Stein was the second of three children. The family moved to Berlin, where his older brother studied Latin and Greek at the Gymnasium, but left to study Mathematics, English and French at the Oberschule. Not wanting to make the same mistake, his parents enrolled Stein immediately at the Oberschule, but he wanted to study Latin and Greek. So he had to learn Latin on his own. He was not too fond of mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, but

4 This relies most heavily on the necrologies of Kuo Liying and Anne-Marie Blondeau, as well as Michel Strickmans earlier notes. Kuo Liying. In memoriam: Rolf Alfred Stein (19111999), Cahiers dExtrme-Asie, 11 (1999): xixx; Anne-Marie Blondeau. Rolf Alfred Stein, Ecole Pratique des Hautes tudes, Annuaire, tome 108 (1999): 2931; Michel Strickman. Introduction, in Tantric and Daoist Strudies in Honor of R.A. Stein, viixvi.

preface xv

the French and English were to prove useful. His older brother died at 18. This strongly affected Stein, who left school for a year.

In Berlin, Stein was fascinated with astrology, and frequented a bookstore specializing in esotericism and occultism. A friend of the proprietor, a Russian emigrant and Egypto-phile let Stein read his hieroglyphics, and the young Stein worked to translate them. In searching for other scripts which might help him in the deciphering, he found Chinese. As the business of his father was far from prosper-ous, Stein began learning Chinese in order to become an interpreter. He later published an article on the Egyptian inscriptions, but was not forthcoming on where to find it.

He first trained in Otto Franckes sinological seminar in Berlin with fellow students Stefan Balazs and Wolfram Eberhard (19091989). When Eberhard graduated but couldnt live as a Jew in Berlin after the rise of the Nazis,5 Stein decided to leave for France as he knew the language and literature, thanks to the collection of his maternal uncle (and his education at the Oberschule). He emigrated to Paris in 1933, and did not return to Germany for 44 years. In 1977, he accepted an honorary degree from the University of Bonn in person. In Paris, his knowledge of Chinese impressed teachers and fellow students. He received his degree in Chinese in 1934, and in Japanese in 1936. He studied Chinese and Japanese at the cole Nationale des Langues Ori-entales Vivantes and followed the seminar of Granet (18841940) on ancient China and Mestre on Indochina at the 5th section of the cole des Hautes tudes. He worked on Tibetan under the tutelage of Jacques Bacot (18771965) and Marcelle Lalou (18901967), and attended the lectures of Paul Pelliot (18781945), Henri Maspero (18831945) and Sylvain Lvi at the Collge de France. In the milieu of Marcel Mauss (sociology)(18721950), Marc Bloch and Lucien Febre (social history), and Georges Dumzil (linguistics). Stein (in East Asia) seems to have followed the daunting example of Dumzil.6

Granet was his greatest influence, admired for his great intelligence and extreme lucidity. It was he who encouraged Stein to combine

5 Eberhard was to become a pioneer in the sociological and ethnographic study of China.

6 Stein recognized the additional hardships of attempting to implement Dumzils Indo-European comparative method in Asia, which lacked linguistic, ethnic, or socio-logical homogeneity. However, throughout his career, he demonstrated the possibility of such a method.

xvi preface

Chinese studies with the study of Tibet and Mongolia. He and Bacot were like fathers to him, introducing him to people and getting him jobs in libraries and collections. One of these contacts, Michel Calm-ann (18911976), was probably responsible for speeding through nat-uralization papers and saving Stein from deportation to the German camps.

Having applied for French nationality so as not to be a citizen of the Third Reich, he acquired French nationality only days before the outbreak of war in 1939. In June, 1940, the Acadmie des Inscription et Belles-Lettres proposed Stein as a member of the cole Franaise dExtrme-Orient. The nomination was quashed by the anti-Jew laws promulgated by the Vichy government. He was then sent to Vietnam as a Chinese and Japanese translator. When he arrived in Indochina, however, headquarters was not aware of his translating post and mobi-lized him to active service with the mountain artillery. He subsequently served translating Japanese papers at the Hanoi FEO, without pay (Vichy had removed his name from the rolls and deprived him of his salary). Despite amoebic dysentery and time spent as a Japanese pris-oner of war, the years in Indochina did provide him with the opportu-nity to witness the last vestiges of refined mandarin culture, as well as peasant and montagnard religion, first hand. These experiences were to perfuse his subsequent work.

Following interventions by Paul Mus and Paul Demiville, Stein was installed as a member of the cole Franaise in 1946 (retroactive to 1941), and sent to China. He resided in Chengdu, Kunming, and Bei-jing until 1949, making trips to Inner Mongolia, Amdo and Yunnan. Mindful of the counsel of Granet and Mestre, he continued his work on Tibetan and Mongol studies, as well as the aboriginal cultures of the Sino-Tibetan borderland.

In 1949, at the request of Paul Demiville, he returned to Paris to take up an appointment as Professor of Chinese at the cole Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes. In 1951, appointed professor at the fifth section of the cole des Hautes tudes. His chair, Religions de la Chine et de la Haute Asie, was formerly held by Granet. In 1957, its title was changed to Religions compares de lExtrme-Orient et de la Haute Asie, reflecting the special nature of his interests.

Stein began to focus on the Gesar epic in the 1950s (though his research on Gesar goes back to the 40s), regarding it as a privileged point of access into Tibetan culture. This culminated in his monumen-

preface xvii

tal Recherches sur lpope et le barde au Tibet in 1959, in which he demonstrated his unequalled understanding of Tibetan literature.

In the 1960s, he turned to the study of Buddhism and Daoism, and moved away from the aboriginal religions per se. In 1960, he brought Dagpo Rinpoche from Kalimpong so students would be familiar with spoken as well as written Tibetan. He returned to Sikkim, India and Nepal to acquire books and information, never neglecting the impor-tance of contemporary sources, oral or written. In 1966, Stein was appointed Professor at the Collge de France. While there, he began an intellectual exchange with fellow-professor Claude Lvi-Strausse.

While his early career emphasized indigenous or nameless religion, usually overshadowed by Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, his work gradually turned to these religions. Once, he stated that if he had to start all over again, he would take Buddhism as the principal subject as Buddhist worship and belief effectively constitute the common fund of communal Asian culture. He was able to bring together his concerns with Buddhism and social practice in his 1972 publication Brug pa kun legs, le yogin. Concomitantly, he became ever more interested in the source of this communal culture, looking to Dunhuang manuscripts to illuminate the early workings of Buddhism and Daoism in Tibet and East Asia. In a work which synthesized the differing viewpoints which occupied his research on Tibet, he published La civilisation tibtaine in 1962, substantially revising and augmenting it in 1981.

Throughout the 1970s, his lectures at the Collge de France dealt with tantrism, particularly Sino-Japanese and Tibetan. Regarding Tibet, he was concerned especially with non-canonical Rnying ma tantras, many of which he viewed as perhaps not having been translated from Sanskrit, but composed in Tibetan, and so demonstrating the original-ity of Tibetan culture. Because of his background and expertise, Stein could trace the often Byzantine diffusion of tantric influence in East and Central Asia both synchronically and diachronically.

Much of Steins genius lay in demonstrating the importance of syn-thesizing diverse genres of literature, as well as recognizing synthesis in that literature itself. He underscored the desideratum of utilizing Chinese sources for the comprehension of the history and civilization of Tibet. As well, he highlighted the necessity of combining rigorous philological and ethnographic methods in the study of Tibetan litera-ture. One should consider that he published classic works on the Gesar epic and historical geography in the same year. At the same time as

xviii preface

he was lecturing on the non-canonical Rnying ma tantras and publish-ing on the mystic and social critic Brug pa kun legs, he was writing this monument to careful philological and historical analysis, Tibetica antiqua.

In her testament at his passing, Anne-Marie Blondeau stated that Rolf Stein was the uncontested master of generations of Tibetologists and Sinologists. It is hoped that even now, on the ten-year anniversary of his death, this publication will offer some glimpse of why.

Arthur P. McKeownCambridge, MA9 October, 2009

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I should like to first of all thank Professor Leonard Willem Johannes van der Kuijp, who initially urged me to translate these articles dur-ing my first year as a graduate student. While too many years have passed since then, it is perhaps fitting that I now have the opportunity at the end of my graduate career to dedicate this book to one who has provided me with so much help and inspiration. I would also like to thank especially Cristina Scherrer-Schaub for kindly agreeing to write the introduction, giving the manuscript a detailed reading, and pro-viding extremely valuable comments. I am also very grateful to Nathan Hill, who read preliminary drafts and made very useful suggestions for updating these articles, adding a great deal of worth to this edition. Thanks are also due to Christina Svendson, who made valuable trans-lation suggestions. Obviously, any lack of precision or mistake is my responsibility alone. Many thanks also to Dr. Christoph Ceppers of the Lumbini International Research Institute for providing a wonder-ful library and great company while I was revising these translations. Finally, I would like to thank Albert Hoffstdt, Patricia Radder, and everyone at E.J. Brill for their guidance and patience.

I would also like to thank the following for permission to publish in translation articles originally appearing elsewhere:

Tibetica Antiqua I: Les deux vocabulaires des traductions indo-tib-taine et sino-tibtaine dans les manuscripts des Touen-Houang. Bulletin de lcole franaise dExtrme-Orient 72 (1983): 149236.

Tibetica Antiqua 2: Lusage de mtaphores pour des distinctions hon-orifiques lpoch des rois tibtaines. Bulletin de lcole franaise dExtrme-Orient 73 (1984): 257272.

Tibetica Antiqua III: A propos du mot gtsug-lag et de religion indigne. Bulletin de lcole franaise dExtrme-Orient 74 (1985): 83133.

Tibetica Antiqua IV: La tradition relative au dbut de bouddhisme au Tibet. Bulletin de lcole franaise dExtrme-Orient 75 (1986): 169196.

Tibetica Antiqua V: La religion indigne et les bon-po dans les manu-scrits des Touen-Houang. Bulletin de lcole franaise dExtrme-Orient 77 (1988): 2756.

xx acknowledgements

Tibetica Antiqua VI: Maximes confucianistes dans deux manuscrits de Touen-houang. Bulletin de lcole franaise dExtrme-Orient 79 (1992): 917.

Les Presses du palais royal for:

Etude du monde chinoise: institutions et concepts. Annuaire du col-lge de france (1967): 411421.




LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Mhvy MahvyutpattiPkg PekingJAs Journal AsiatiqueDDT Documents de Touen-houang relatifs lhistoire du

TibetTLTD Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents Concerning Chi-

nese TurkestanChoix Choix de documents tibtains conserves la Bibliothque

NationaleAFL Ancient Folk-Literature from North-Eastern TibetJRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic SocietyTP Toung Pao (Leiden)Tribus Les tribus anciennes des marches sino-tibtainesA.M. Macdonald, Ariane. Une lecture des Pelliot tibtaine

1286, 1287, 1038; 1047 et 1290, Essai sur le formation et lemploi des mythes politiques dans la religion royale de Sron -bcan sgam-po, in Etudes tibtaines ddies la memoire de Marcelle Lalou, Paris, 1971, pp. 190391.

tani A comparative analytical catalogue of the Kanjur divi-sion of the tibetan Tripitaka, tani University, Kyoto, 19302.

Ty Bunk A Catalogue of the Tibetan manuscripts collected by Sir Aurel Stein

TA Tibetica AntiquaBEFEO Bulletin de lcole franaise dExtrme-Orient (Hanoi,

Paris)BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

(London)HJAS Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (Cambridge, MA)T. bstan gyurK. bka gyurPT Pelliot tibtaineP. chin. Pelliot chinoiseITJ IOL Tib J (India Office Library Tibetan J)

INTRODUCTION

The wealth of material presented here, despite its being just part of Steins impressive work, is literally amazing.1 The felicitous initia-tive of Arthur McKeown of translating into English Tibetica Antiqua (together with the related rsums of Steins teaching) makes accessible to the scholars and educated persons a fundamental corpus of writings for the history of Tibet. If we try to pierce the impetus given by Stein to his oeuvre, we note that he constantly proceeds by way of succes-sive approaches to the subject-matter, while never departing from that vision largie inherited from his teachers.2

The tendency towards specialization that has characterized the field of Asian studies from the second half of the past century up to the present has provided (and still continues to provide) a large and var-ied amount of inestimable instruments (edited documents, catalogues of primary sources, indices, unpublished works, data-bases etc.). On the other hand, the fact of distributing the knowledge of the field of Asian studies among current themes has impressively contributed to the number of essays built upon common etic models shared with social sciences at large. Steins intellectual project navigates between the Scylla and Charybdis of these two methodologies if taken to the extreme, that is, between the kaleidoscopic image resulting from refracting the problem into discrete elements and the uniform image built upon overly relying on (if not conforming to) fashionable theo-ries. In the words of Michel Strickmann (1981: vii) the themes set forth by R.A. Stein . . . call for a synoptic approach to the subject,

1 For two excellent portraits of Rolf A. Stein, including the list of his publications, see the late Michel Strickmann Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R. A. Stein Bruxelles, Institut belge des hautes etudes chinoises, 1981, vol. I, pp. ixxi, and KUO Liying In Memoriam: Rolf Alfred Stein (19111999), in: Nouvelles tudes de Dun-huang. Centenaire de lcole franaise dExtrme-Orient, Cahiers dExtrme-Asie 11, 1999-2000, pp. xixxx.

2 Marcel Granet of course, but also Sylvain Lvi, both being les chantres par excel-lence of an enlarged vision of Asian studies. Cf. Michel Strickmann, op. cit., p. VIII, and KUO Liying, art. cit., p. xviii: Suivant la grande tradition de ses matres, Cha-vannes, Pelliot, Maspro et Demiville, R.A. Stein voulut toujours comprendre la cul-ture asiatique dans son ensemble et la traiter globalement. Il voulait tout prix viter tout cloisonnement entre des cultures qui partagent un fond commun.

xxiv introduction

overleaping the traditional bounds imposed on Asian cultures both by their own, internal tradition and by the majority of western inter-preters. Steins youthful vision of the basic, if complex, interrelation-ship between high culture and the nameless religion of the people became the lattice structure for all his subsequent works. His writings represent adventurous French scholarship at its finest, mingling eru-dition with intuition in a manner all too seldom found in the Asian studies of other lands.

In the essays presented here, Stein focuses on Tibet. In his own words, he is not primarily and essentially concerned with history, although this last intervenes and surfaces relatively often. His analysis, reconsidered from a distance (twenty years or so separate his teaching on the subject and the publication of Tibetica Antiqua) the themes of his research, excellently combining erudition and intuition, brings about a polymorphous reading of socio-political facts, that is religious and social practices and institutions.

Despite the inevitable restatements that the attentive and informed reader will be confronted with, the essays presented here continue to be a precious source of information for the history of Tibet, and a remarkable example of an original methodological approach. Rolf Stein, a Tibetologist and Sinologist, stresses the problematic related to both fields of investigation. The Indianists and the specialists in Indo-Tibetan studies find food for thought. This material is a field to explore; indeed the groundbreaking themes that Rolf Stein developed in the wake of his teachers remains, in part, unknown.

The background of the dynamic and material that we may see in Tibetica Antiqua is partially inspired by two fundamental works published by Stein the same year (1959), Recherches sur lpope et le barde au Tibet and Les tribus anciennes des marches sino-tibtaines. The Gesar Epic represents an inextinguishable field where myths, narrative motives, toponyms, ethnonyms, institutional patterns, not to speak of cross-borrowings meet. To this wealth of material, Stein adds the study of the Dunhuang documents, and his extensive recourse to indigenous literature, Chinese, Tibetan, and Mongol, aims at tentatively trying to distinguish the possible dynamic instantiated between indigenous prac-tices and beliefs versus les religions constitues, namely Buddhism. Stein was aware of the difficult task of disentangling the influence, impact and contribution of Buddhism on local religions. From this point of view the relatively recent prodigious rise of Buddhist studies

introduction xxv

in the field of the manifold aspect of its transmission outside India, and the parallel success of the studies on Tibetan indigenous religion and social practices, have given a better understanding of some aspect of the phenomenon. Nonetheless the problematic is still puzzling the field of Asian studies.3

Steins monumental first essay (TA I) concentrates upon the Indo-Tibetan and Sino-Tibetan vocabularies that result from the trans-lation of Buddhist literature into Tibetan based upon a Chinese or an Indian text. His analysis takes its stand upon a selection of Dun-huang manuscripts (Mss), focusing in particular upon the Mss of the so-called Chinese-Chan (p. 5), that first attracted the attention of Marcelle Lalou, whose pioneering work was eventually retaken by the Japanese scholars (p. 5). The problematic is extremely complex and Stein proceeds his inquiry in advancing a working hypothesis carefully considered according to the pro and contra arguments. In brief, he is cautious and critical in recognizing the limits of theoreti-cal presuppositions. But his incisive and relevant remarks are made so much en passant that it is as if they escaped notice. With much accuracy Stein notes extremely pertinent facts, despite his strange-ness to Indian and Buddhist textual history precluding him from a further step. Examples may be chosen at random, such as the follow-ing (p. 10): Another case which leaves one perplexed; Chan Writ-ing (ITJ 709.11) studied by Kimura. This text utilizes the Ind.[ian] voc.[abulary], but preserves at the same time the Chin.[ese] voc.[abulary] from the translation of the Lankvatra-stra when it cites it. As a matter of fact this may well result from a common prac-tice of editing texts and translating technique, mentioned for instance in the Dag yig mkhas pai byung gnas of lCan skya Rol pai rdo rje4

3 On this problematic, see David S. Ruegg The symbiosis of Buddhism with Brah-manism/Hinduism in SouthAsia and of Buddhism with local cults in Tibet and the Himalayan region, (Wien: Verlag der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008). The same author has published various essays that may be considered a neces-sary complement to Steins Tibetica Antiqua, among them Buddha-nature, Mind and the Problem of Gradualism in a Comparative Perspective. On the Transmission and Reception of Buddhism in India and Tibet. (London: SOAS, 1989), and Ordre spirituel e ordre temporel dans la pense bouddhique de lInde et du Tibet, (Paris: Collge de France, 1995).

4 See David S. Ruegg On translating the Buddhist Canon: a dictionary of Indo-Tibetan terminology in Tibetan and Mongolina: Dag yig mkhas pai byun gnas of Rol pai rdo rje, in Perala Ratnam, ed., Studies in Indo-Asian Art and Culture, vol. 3 (Acharya Raghu Vira Commemoration Volume), 243261.

xxvi introduction

and confirmed by the study of textual transmission.5 Other facts may intervene in order to explain the seeming discrepancy attested by the two vocabularies. Stein indeed notes (p. 25) that the Chinese vocabu-lary of the original texts was not [always] uniform. In fact, the trans-lation made from a Chinese version could also and indirectly stand upon Indian versions earlier than that actually used by the team of Indian panditas and Tibetan lo ts bas in the process of translating the Indian text into Tibetan. This fact is crucial in many respects. Indeed, if we know the exemplars or copies of Buddhist texts in Tibetan trans-lations, attested among the Dunhuang Mss, as well as the canonical Tibetan translations, we know nearly nothing about the precise iden-tity of their Indian antecedents. And still, we proceed by comparing relatively uncomparable matter. This, at times imperceptible, shift in meaning may be occasionally responsible for at least part of the hiatus that we may observe between the Indian- and the Sino-vocabularies. But there is more. What is indeed remarkable is the fact that if the terminology may be seen as different, apparently, there is in the tar-get language no phrase marker that could give a hint of the source language. Other factors may be involved, such as bi- or multilingual-ism, noted by Stein, and abundantly attested in Dunhuang and Central Asian documents. Or also, the interpreting process intervening in the course of translating (cf. infra p. 223), that the manual destined to the team of Tibetan and Indian translators, the sGra sbyor bam po gnyis pa, explains in detail. Relying on the longstanding tradition of the Indian principles of Buddhist exegesis and grammar, this sample of erudite lexicography offers a varied pattern of interpreting the Indian term to be translated into Tibetan. And the Buddhist Chinese tradition equally records the precise procedure of the translating process.6

The inquiry becomes particularly dense when Stein compares and analyzes the two vocabularies with respect to cosmology, mythol-ogy, social structure, territorial and institutional practices, or local/

5 Cf. the case of the Yuktisastikvrtti, Cristina Scherrer-Schaub Towards a meth-odology for the study of old Tibetan manuscripts: Dunhuang and Tabo, in C.A. Scherrer-Schaub & E. Steinkellner, eds., Tabo Studies II. Manuscripts, Texts, Inscrip-tions, and the Arts. (Roma: IsIAO, 1999), 23.

6 On these pattern, see C. Scherrer-Schaub Enacting words. A diplomatic analysis of the Imperial decrees (bkas bcad) and their application in the sGra sbyor bam po gnyis pa tradition JIABS 25, 12 (2002): 328330. On Chinese practices, see recently Jinhua CHEN Some Aspects of the Buddhist Translation Procedure in Early Medi-eval China Journal Asiatique 293/2, (2005): 603662.

introduction xxvii

indigenous beliefs. Worth noting and extremely didactic particularly nowadays is the fact that Stein never indulges in reductionism. He punctuates his work by illuminating short phrases, words of a wise man, underlining the complexity of the encounters and reciprocal influences among several societies, if not cultures (p. 66): There were loans. Yet certain analogies may be explained either by coincidence, or by a common archaic ground.

Some topics touched on in TA I, at times very briefly, will receive an elaborate treatment in TA IIIVI, when in TA II, Stein centers his analysis upon IO 506 and explores the symbolic code concealed behind the use of metaphors for honorific distinctions. While noting that the Old Tibetan Chronicles and the Annals, as well as secular Dun-huang documents and Tibetan inscriptions (Stein cites the lHasa rdo ring recording the treaty between Tibet and China in 821/2) attest the use of honorific ensigns (yi ge) in the civil and military administration of Imperial Tibet, Stein reads this material in the light of indigenous Chinese and Tibetan historiography, following the common trend of his fellows historians, in this case Gza Uray and Giuseppe Tucci. Thus, the current use of all sources available (archive documents, epigraphy, indigenous literary narrative, historiography, etc.) makes possible the combined study of facts and beliefs.

Centering upon the first 14 lines of IO 506 , Stein translates and comments upon this literary piece, presumably also tainted with irony, and addressed to the taste (and strive . . .) for honorifences which characterizes at that epoch (as today . . .) officials and functionaries, and where the ensigns are in this case attributed to the brave religious following the Buddhist teaching and prescriptions. The descriptions of the precious material for ensigns and the images represented on seals are tropes that may be linked with other Dunhuang fragments, some of them attesting to the institution of grades among military and civil officers.7 Stein compares the methaphoric and administrative use of enseigns as found in the Dunhuang documents and their record in later narrative and stresses upon the common pattern shared by their use in administrative matter and their metaphorical use in poetry.

7 Cf. C. Scherrer-Schaub Revendications et recours hirarchique. Contributions lhistoire de a cu sous administration tibtaine, in Jean-Pierre Drge Etudes de Dunhuang et Turfan, (Genve: Droz, 2007), 257326.

xxviii introduction

In TA III, Stein proposes a re-reading of some fundamental ele-ments concurring to the royal theory as this may be gathered from some Dunhuang documents clustering round the Chronicles, and stud-ied by Ariane (Macdonald) Spanien in her groundbreaking essay Une lecture des P. T. 1286, 1287, 1038, 1047 et 1290. Essai sur la forma-tion et lemploi des mythes politiques dans la religion royale de Sron-bcan sgam-po.8 While Stein is right in underlining the importance and complexity of dating the Dunhuang manuscripts, a desideratum that still continues to be seriously considered, his review is, at least in part, tainted with ad hominem critique. Much of this attitude is due to his personal style that may at time sound abruptus, and expressed with acrimonia. Stein as we already saw is extremely cautious and in analyzing facts that are not limited to archive records but include also myths, legends, and stylistic forms he fixes his careful attention upon the elements of the theory in question. For him the study of docu-ments, narrative, historical sources, myths and narrative may reach a fair level of vraisemblance, not of truth. And the variety of sources although they may and shall be studied together, cannot be treated in the same way, and the conclusion that we may gather from them must be carefully balanced (p. 120) We may suppose it, but not affirm it. We must also take account of the vocabulary in a given era. One and the same word, perfectly Tibetan and early, may cover different notions, sometimes even foreign ones.

With Steins virulent critique of Ariane (Macdonald) Spaniens position concerning the pre-Buddhist religion (as opposed to the royal religion) termed by him populaire (pp. 124126) the reader is confronted with the extreme complexity of the problematic. It is here that one may wonder how far the vision dumzilienne9 could have been appropriate. Even apart from other consideration, this would imply the fact of discarding India, being an integral part of the Indo-Iranian area, thereby facing a paradox. Indeed, quite a number of the themes central to the problematic may be noted in India as well. It is here that the vision dumzilienne should be abandoned in favor of the vision largie evoked earlier and appealing to the analogy of the models considered with regard to the diversity of their applications.

8 tudes tibtaines ddies la mmoire de Marcelle Lalou (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1971), 166-391.

9 Cf. Michel Strickmann (1981: viiviii), and Kuo Liying (19992000: xvi).

introduction xxix

Stein, without his knowing, comes fairly near to this (cf. na. p. 128, n. 23): here everything is Indian and/or Indic. He admits not knowing the Indian text attesting mi chos and lha chos. Yet, he provides very interesting material that naturally leads to the answer, the treatment of which however far exceed the present scope.

As material contributing to clarify the complexity of the interrelation between indigenous tradition and foreign influences, the remaining essays concentrate upon the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet, the indigenous religion and the organized Bon po, and finally the pres-ence of Chinese Classics in the Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang. The last decades saw a renewal of the studies on Tibetan Dunhuang religious and secular documents, and new material is now accessible. Parallel to this, the so called Bon po studies are in full bloom, and the Buddhist multi-lingual communities of Dunhuang and Central Asia pierce the screen of anonymity. Leading scholars in these fields, such as Annemarie Blondeau, Anne Chayet, Samten G. Karmay, Kuo Liying, Per Kvaerne and Yoshiro Imaeda that the reader will find on his path through the essays presented here, have continued, enlarged and opened the work of their master Rolf A. Stein whose oeuvre, des-tined to last, represents an inextinguishable source of inspiration for Asian scholars, and more.

Cristina Scherrer-SchaubParis-Lausanne 9 August 2009

TIBETICA ANTIQUA* I

THE TWO VOCABULARIES OF INDO-TIBETAN AND SINO-TIBETAN TRANSLATIONS IN THE

DUNHUANG MANUSCRIPTS**

R.A. Stein

I. Everyone realizes the great activity of translation of Buddhist texts achieved by the Indian monks and Tibetan translators before and after circa 800 A.D. We also know that this activity was regulated by an edict of King Khri lde srong btsan (798 or 804815) dating from 814. He aimed to make uniform the Tibetan vocabulary serving to translate the Indian terminology and to impose it as a single model. In this edict, this vocabulary is called, perhaps, new (skad gsar bcad; cf. n. 1, 12). It was codified in a glossary in which the technical terms and proper names were classified thematically in a more or less logical order (except for a series of verbs and common names added pell-mell at the end).a This is the Sanskrit-Tibetan dictionary Mahvyutpatti (henceforth, Mhvy), of which all translators, contemporary (such as Ye shes sde, Dpal brtsegs and Chos grub, alias Facheng) and later (all ? or the majority, verification remains to be done) made use, and to which they all conformed, in the same way as all modern Bud-dhologists. This dictionary was complemented by a sort of commen-tary in which are explicated a certain number of terms (not all) by

* Under this collective title, the author hopes to publish a series of articles or notes on the problems posed by the ancient documents (Dunhuang manuscripts, inscrip-tions, etc.) relative to ancient Tibet (until c. 1000 AD) and its neighbors.

** Chinese characters will be found at the end. The isolated words are classified in alphabetical order of [English] transcription. Phrases are enumerated, and their num-bers are placed between square brackets in the text [N.B.: in this edition, the Chinese characters are inserted directly into the texted.]. For authors cited in brief, see the bibliography, and for the works cited, see the bibliographical notices at the end.

a Stein failed to recognize the fact that the Mhvy is arranged according to Indian classical tradition, cf. C.A. Scherrer-Schaub Sa-cu: Quy a t-il au programme de la classe de philologie bouddhique? In Tibetan Studies. Proceedings of the 5th Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, ed. Ihara, Shoren and Yamaguchi, Zuiho, vol. I, 209220. (Narita: Naritasan Shinshoji, 1992), 216C.S.-S.

2 r.a. stein

quasi-scholarly etymologiesb which demonstrate how the translators analyzed the Sanskrit words and names, and how or why they were chosen as the new Tibetan translation. This is the Sgra sbyor (bam po gnyis pa, in two scrolls; Madhyavyutpatti, Peking Tanjur, Japanese ed., vol. 144, 5833).1

During the same epoch, the king(s), fervent protector(s) of Bud-dhism, ordered a general recension of all texts translated up to that time, the collective activity of which resulted in three catalogues named after the palaces in which they had been compiled (or where the collections were found?), Ldan dkar, Phan thang, and Chims Phu. Only the first is preserved in the Tanjur.c It dates to 812 (according

b As a matter of fact the composition and derivation of words that appear in the Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa, again, follow the Indian tradition, see P. Verhagen, A History of Sanskrit Grammatical Literature in Tibet. volume 1: Transmission of the Canonical Literature. (Leiden: Brill, 1994); Studies in Tibetan indigenous grammar (3): Sanskrit npata, Tibetan tshig-phrad. In Tibetan Studies. Proceedings of the 7th Conference of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995, ed. Hel-mut Krasser, Michael Torsten Much, Ernst Steinkellner, and Helmut Tauscher. (Wien: Verlag der sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1997), 10111022; C.A. Scherrer-Schaub Sa-cu: Quy a t-il au programme de la classe de philologie boud-dhique?, 211216; C.A. Scherrer-Schaub, Enacting Words. A Diplomatic Analysis of the Imperial Decrees (bkas bcad) and their Application in the sGra sbyor bam po gis pa Tradition, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 25, no. 12 (2002): 328330.C.S.-S.

1 Simonsson (1957), with the review by G. Uray (Acta Orientalia Hungaricae 8, no. 3) and de Jong (compte rendu de N. Simonsson, Indo-Tibetische Studien, 21619). Yamaguchi reprised the discussion concerning the two works. According to him, one should not speak of an edict, nor of a new translation (skad gsar), but of a ultimate decision (definitive establishment: sar bcad = tshar bcad) of vocabulary (cf. n. 12). I will continue here, however, to call the decision an edict since the king approved it, and the translations new since tradition designates them thus. Simonsson minutely compared passages of certain stras in their versions from the Kanjur and in certain old manuscripts (from Khotan and Dunhuang). Principally, he asserts differences in grammar, prosody and orthography, but he also notes some differences in vocabulary (p. 70, paryya regularly translated as gzung in the old mss, while the new transla-tion translation (Mhvy) is rnam grangs; pp. 105106, the deities bhsvara = kun snang dang ba in the old mss, but od gsal (lha) in Mhvy). I have verified that the vocabulary is almost always identical in the two cases (e.g. stra = mdo (sde)). But I have also found some examples of differences. P. 28, trthika: old mur dug vs mu stegs; pp. 59, 65 bhta and abhta (Mhvy 2621: true), old bden, myi bden vs yang dag (min); p. 82, good, well: old dgeo vs legs so; p. 89, otherwise: sngun shad vs sngon shad; p. 202203, stra: gtsug lag vs bstan bcos.

c At the time of Steins original publication, the Phang thang catalogue was missing. This is no longer the case. Recently, the Phang thang catalogue has surfaced and is now published, see Dkar chag phang thang ma, Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa. (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2003). It is indexed in Adelheid Herrmann-Pfandt, Die lHan kar ma: ein frher Katalog der ins Tibetische bersetzten buddhistischen Texte, kriti-sche Neuausgabe mit Einleitung und Materialien (Wien: Verlag der sterreichischen

the two vocabularies in the dunhuang manuscripts 3

to Tucci) or, more probably, to 824 (according to Yamaguchi Zuih).2 But Bu ston (12901364) already had the two others at his disposal, and he cited them.3 Whether it was a question of a new lexicon (skad gsar) imposed by an edict or a new (final) resolution relative to the lexicon (gsar bcad; sar chad), that decision implied that there was at that time one (or multiple) divergent lexica. Kimura Rytoku4 thought, with reason, that it could not be created ex nihilo, suddenly, on the resolution of the king. It must have existed prior to the edict (814). Kimura and other Japanese scholars before him (Ueyama, etc.) speak of new translations (xin yi ) and old translations ( jiu yi ). They always rely on the difference with the translations made from the Chinese, which we will speak of at length (cf. n. 5). We might think that the translations made from the Sanskrit before 814 also sup-port the differences of vocabulary with those which had been codi-fied by the edict (cf. Simonsson). In effect, numerous colophons from translations of Sanskrit texts, owing to the Indian masters and their Tibetan collaborators, affirm that these translations had been arranged (bcos) in conformity with the new vocabulary fixed by the edict.5

Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008); Eishin Kawagoe, dKar chag Phang thang ma, (Sendai: Thoku indo chibetto kenky kai, 2005). See also An Early Tibetan survey of Buddhist Literature: The Bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi od of Bcom ldan ral gri, ed. Kurtis R. Schaeffer and Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004); G. Halkias, Tibetan Buddhism Registered: A Catalogue from the Impe-rial Court of Phang Thang, The Eastern Buddhist 36 (2004): 46105.ed.

2 Lalou, Les texts bouddhiques au temps de Khri-sron lde bcan, 3; Yamaguchi, Toban koku bukky-shi nendai-k, 19.

3 The new translations had not eliminated the old. The latter did not remain hidden in a Dunhuang cave. Some of them were incorporated into the Kanjur and Tanjur. Examples of these texts have been found to exist in Tibet (this is also true for the old texts cited by Dpao Gtsug lag phreng ba) and were still available in the 13th and 14th centuries. This is the case with apocryphal stras translated from Chinese, with their old vocabulary, such as Net of Brahma (Fanwang jing ), King of Law (Fawang jing ), Bayang jing , Vajra Samdhi (Jingang sanmei jing ; see the bibliographical notes). Sa skya pandita (11821251) and Bu ston were aware of Chan treatises preserved at Dunhuang and knew that they had been redacted in preparation for the Bsam yas debate (Karmay, A Discussion on the Doctrinal Position of rDzogs-chen, 153). Cf. n. 5.

4 Kimura, Tonk shutsudo no Chibetto-bun Zen-bun no Seikaku, 453, 460.5 de Jong (here, n. 1) makes the remark that these colophons are sometimes contra-

dictory and subject to caution. He has indicated three colophons from texts translated from Chinese according to the catalogue of the Sde dge edition (Schmidt, Der Index des Kandjur). 1) Saddharmarja-stra ( 243 = Peking, 909 = Fawang jing ; mention: does not seem to have been arranged in new language); 2) yuhpatti-yathkra-pariprcch-stra ( 308 = Peking 947; mention: translated at the epoch of the first diffusion of Buddhism, had not been arranged according to the resolution

4 r.a. stein

This revision not being thus viewed solely from former translations of Chinese (Buddhist) texts, but also from translations made from Indian manuscripts from Central Asia or India, translations of which the Tibetan vocabulary and style were not yet fixed ne varietur. The majority of works included in the Ldan dkar Catalog are translations from an Indian language, but a certain number are called translations from Chinese.6

The Tibetan scholars have selected for discussion only the Indian side. The theory of the author of the Li shi gur khang Dictionary (written in 1536) has been translated by Taube (1978, 173). Here is the periodization that he proposes: 1) in the era of Thu mi Sa bo ta (Thon mi Sambhota) and of king Khri srong lde btsan, preliminary translation according to the first royal resolution (dang po bkas bcad kyis) namely the Buddhvatamsaka, the four gama (lung sde bzhi, the

on the (new) language, bstan pa snga dar bai tshe gyur ba las skad gsar chad kyis kyang ma bcos pao); 3) Rgyal bu Don grub kyi mdo ( 349, Thoku 351, Peking 1020 = Taish 152, 171; notice: it is the old language of the translations from Chinese, sngon Rgya las gyur bai brda rnying par dug). Undoubtedly, these notes are not con-temporaneous with the translations, but have been added much later (by Rig ral or Bu ston?; cf. n. 23). They indicate the opinion of the editor (it seems that, snang). For him, at least in the third case, Chinese vocabulary and old language are equivalent. But the revision into new language applies equally, and even more often, to the translation of Indian texts. Here are some examples of translations revised according to the edict of 814 by Ye shes sde: Peking Kanjur 148151, 156158, 135137. 137 had been arranged according to these norms much later by Atia. 138 had been revised by Dpal brtsegs, without mention of new language. Such mention is often missing, without apparent motive or pattern (e.g. 906, Ye shes sde, without the note, but 904, the very same [example], with it. For the Suvarnaprabhsa-stra, the note appears in the translation of Ye shes sde ( 175), but is missing in the translation (from Chinese) by Chos grub ( 174) which employs the Indian voc. As de Jong has stated (above, n. 1), a systematic study of the colophons in the various editions is essential. Simonsson (211212) has equally established that the statement translated by Ye shes sde cannot be taken literally.

6 Cf. Tucci (Minor Buddhist Texts II, 47, 49), who has uncovered the passage from the Chos byung Mkhas pai dga ston of Dpao Gtsug lag phreng ba (ch. ja, 105a) where it is said that at the beginning in Chos byung Mkhas pai dga ston Tibet, there were more translations of Chinese texts that of Sanskrit texts. Tucci remarks that few of these translations from Chinese have been discovered in the Ldan dkar catalogue. He also puts forward two translation periods: in the first, the translation of technical terms would have been inadequate, which would have necessitated a revision.

The remark of Dpao Gtsug lag phreng ba also bears on the translations of texts from Li (Khotan ?, or perhaps the Dunhuang region, on account of a confusion of Lho Bal, the Dunhuang region, with Nepal, which also bears the name Li). It is without doubt based on the Sba bzhad text (73) which speaks of a first period of translations beginning with Chinese, Sanskrit, Nepali (Bal po, confused with Lho Bal?) and the language of Uddiyna. For Lho Bal, see below, 79.


vinaya) various texts (from the section of) stras and various stras from the Prajpramit (section); these works have not been edited in conformity with the new resolution (gsar bcad kyis gtan la ma phab). It follows a list of old words (e.g.: te por for very, many; this word is employed in the Sba bzhed; rdzogs sho in place of rdzogs so, etc.) and of orthographic particularities; 2) second resolution (bkas bcad gnyis pa) relative to a new, fixed language (skad gsar bcad) uti-lized up to (yan chad) Ral pa can by Dpal brtsegs, Ye shes sde, etc.; 3) third resolution concerning the rules established by lha bla ma Ye shes od, Rin chen bzang po, etc.

At this point, we will be concerned above all with the Chinese trans-lations and the difference of their vocabulary compared to that which was codified in 814. For more than convenience, I will designate them henceforth, with gross simplification, as Chinese vocabulary (hence-forth, Chin. voc.) and Indian vocabulary (Ind. voc.). As will be seen, the first utilizes solely the authentic Tibetan vocabulary. This is why I will sometimes cite, as a comparative title, from properly Tibetan writings.

II.1. Aside from Simonssons remarks, it is the study of Tibetan man-uscripts from Dunhuang relative to Chinese Chan which have revealed the existence of a Buddhist vocabulary totally different from that of the Mhvy. Marcelle Lalou7 was the first to publish and translate this genre of text. But, ignorant of Chinese, she was not able to avoid errors, and these translations must be amended. Many Japanese schol-ars have published remarkable works.8 One significant text is Note on the transmission, from master to disciple, of (the doctrine which claims authority from the) Lankvatara-stra (Chan ). It consists of a Chinese version and a Tibetan translation, both of which are mss from Dunhuang.9 The two have been studied by Ueyama Daishun.10

7 Lalou, Documents tibtain sur lexpansion du Dhyna chinois and Stra du bodhisattva Roi de la Loi (cf. Kimura, Tonk Chibetto-go Zen bunken mokuroku shoko, 118119 and below, n. 14).

8 For a listing, see Kimura, Tonk Chibetto-go Zen bunken mokuroku shoko, and Ueyama, tudes des Manuscrits Tibtains de Dunhuang, 292295.

9 Leng qie shi zi ji (see note) and Ling kai khan po dang slob mai mdo. As Ueyama (below, n. 10) showed, the Tibetan translation presumes a Chinese original a little different from the preserved ms.

10 Ueyama, 1968 and 1973. According to the author, the (unknown) Chinese text which corresponds to the Tibetan translation was prior to that which we have. The lat-ter has been augmented. Ueyama, Chibetto-yaku Tongo-shinsh-yketsu no kenky,

6 r.a. stein

One of the documents was surely translated in light of the Indo-Chi-nese debate at Bsam yas. The Chinese text was written circa 720 AD. Ueyama relates the history of the Chan master Jin Heshang () of Yizhou () who had received the Tibetan emissary Sang shi (c. 750) according to the Sba bzhed.11 Ueyama thought that the transla-tion was made at Dunhuang after the Tibetan occupation (c. 781) by a translator who did not know Chinese well. This is because its Tibetan vocabulary is different from the Mhvy. From this, he concludes that the translation is anterior to 814 and dates from the first period. Kimura Rytoko (1981, 100) thinks the same. This conclusion was reinforced by another work of Ueyama (1976) bearing on the text PT 0116.8, which is the translation of a Chinese Dunhuang ms. (P. Chin. 2799 and four others). It employs the Chin. voc., for which reason Ueyama considers (61) that it is prior to 814 (Mhvy). He also suggests that the translator of the text was extremely learned. And he accepts, as the title of a provisional hypothesis (623), that the Chin. voc. of the text studied represents the old translations as opposed to the new translations of the Mhvy. He also remarks that, for the most standard terms of Buddhism (buddha, bodhisattva, nirvna), the translation is identical in the two lexicons (but cf. below n. 30). He imagines that these words suggest themselves spontaneously or naturally accord-ing to the sense at an era older than the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet. This hypothesis does not appear satisfactory to me.

Another text of this genre is the apocryphal stra King of Law (Fawang jing , see note). It is extant in Dunhuang mss, in Chi-nese and Tibetan. Presently, the version preserved in the Sde dge Kan-jur (Thoku, vol. 66, 243, fol. 15b) carries the following colphon: old (text?) of the translation made formerly starting with the Chinese; does not seem to have been arranged (bcos) according to (the edict regarding) the new language.12 We will speak again of this stra (cf. n. 7, 14). The problem is complex.

has also thoroughly studied another Chan text, Chinese redaction and Tibetan transla-tion (PT 0116.8 = P.Chin. 2799 and S. 5644).

11 Identified by Yamaguchi, Chibetto no bukky to Shiragi no Kin sho.12 Kimura, Tonk Chibetto-go Zen bunken mokuroku shoko, 119120 = PT

2105.2. According to Schmidt (Der Index des Kandjur, 40), the colophon states: it is an old (text) formerly translated from Chinese; it does not seem to have been cor-rected according to the new vocabulary; sngon Rgya las gyur bai rnying pa skad gsar gyis mi bcos snang. I have not been able to examine the Sde dge Kanjur. The phrase is strange. The word text is lacking. (Kimura translates furui mono). Perhaps rnying


Kimura (1981, 122128) analyzed many Tibetan Chan mss (ITJ 704.14, and 710.1) which introduced, at the same time, the doctrine of Chan (master Mahyna) and (for the purpose of critique) that of the Indians utilizing, for the latter, the Ind. voc. (e.g. mdo for stra and de bzhin gshegs pa for tathgata). And he concludes (125) that these texts must be prior to the controversy of 792794, and that the two doctrines of Tibet, properly called, had been studied. In his earlier work (Kimura 1980, 443, 453, 460) he had already reached the following con-clusions: 1) a Chan text (bsam gtan gyi yi ge), commanded or inspired13

pa is mistakenly used for snying po (summary)? The ms. PT 2105.2 ends with the note Ha sei gcan dvai to sen lyog Meng Pab hai gyis // Chos rgyal gyi mdo di/mjug chad pa Rgya i gpe (=dpe) las bsgyur pao //, translated by Pab hai . . . from a Chinese text. Kimura adopted the reconstruction in Chinese from Okimoto (cf. n. 14): He xi guan nei du seng lu (sha) men Fa hai [] and thinks like him that the title of the translator, an ecclesiastic of high rank, indicates the date of the second part of the 9th century. Okimotos reconstruction does not seem to me entirely acceptable: meng () cannot substitute for (sha) men. On the contrary, Meng (Chin. Meng) appears many times in the Dunhuang mss. as the name of a scribe (e.g. PT 0982). Okimoto (Zen-sh-shi ni okeru giky, H--ky ni tsuite, 32) renders the colophon thus: translated from a Chinese text as the definitive edition and is shocked that this high functionary uses old vocabulary. I think that mjug chad pa usually signifies of which the end is missing. In the Chinese mss of this stra, the beginning is missing in all (but is preserved in Tibetan) and the end is missing in a ms. preserved in Peking (Okimoto, 30). In a version of the Kanjur, the texts terminates in rdzogs so, the end. This note is missing in the ms. PT 2105.2, and for this reason: the end is without doubt lacking in the Chinese original.

13 lha btsan po Khri srong lde brtsan gi (sic!) mgur gyi phyag rgya og tu byung ba, appeared under the sign (or seal, mudr?) of the throat (of the speech) of the king . . . Kimura translates: by order of the king. But the Tibetan expression is aber-rant. Order is generally stated as bkas bcad pa. The expression sign (phyag rgya) is found in a Dunhuang ms. (ITJ 506, recto). There is at first (1. 110) question of various honorific insignia, distinctions or decorations. Besides the letters of gold, jade, etc. (the yi ge or yig tshang, certificates mark the hierarchy of officials, as is well known), also enumerated there are the decorations or images such as tiger neck-lace for the brave (or soldiers dpao) and eye (of a feather) of a peacock for certain monks. There follows (1. 1013) a series of six signs or symbols (phyag rgya = rtags), the first being a bird (bya phar ma ku kang), sign of the (royal) order (bkai phyag rgya). This series is consistent with another seven (6+1): Sumeru for the Body (sku), sun and moon for the face (zhal), ocean for the Heart, (Thought, thugs, of the king, undoubtedly), victory banner for the Sex (?, rtags), svastika for the order (royal, bka) and jewel for the Merits (yon tan). The seventh is the sign of the throat of the prince (or king), lha sras mgur gyi phyag rgya. It figures also (as a title?) at the begin-ning of this series. I hope to return to this text, which merits much extended research. [See TA IIed.] We may recollect the seals provided from images imposed on certain official letters (in Tibetan and Chinese) or decorations given as compensation. We see that the Chan Writing (ITJ 709.11) could not be written under order of the king, but with his endorsement. This case may be compared to Chinese ms. S. 3966, the colo-phon of a Buddhist text: this sample of the stra of the Ten Good Things, provided

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by the king Khri srong lde btsan who provoked the controversy (ITJ 709.11 = Kimura 1981, 127) is written in Ind. voc. But when he cites the Lankvatra-stra, translated from the Chinese, he preserves the Chin. voc. of that translation. From this, Kimura concludes that the text is not a translation, but a Tibetan composition, and that the Ind. voc. already existed before the edict of 814 side by side with the Chin. voc. The question is complicated from the fact that the title Chan Text is also given in the Ldan dkar Catalogue (Lalou, 613) with the note: translated from Chinese, oeuvre of the crya Bodhidharma-tara. Kimura (1981, 127) thinks that, given the Ind. voc. from ms. ITJ 709.11, there is very little chance that that it is a question of the same text. Evidently, the title is very general and able to designate different texts, but we can see that there are many translations from Chinese using Ind. voc.; 2) inversely, certain Dunhuang mss relevant to Chan are subsequent to the end of the Tibetan occupation (848 A.D.): they have been redacted by the Tibetans (e.g. PT 0699.1, Kimura 1981, 108); 3) to these considerations of chronology are added the criterion of a possible geographic or regional difference, texts written in Tibet and texts redacted in the Dunhuang region. Kimura demonstrates (443) that this criterion is not of absolute value, since Chos grub (Facheng) who worked in the region until 859 employs the Ind. voc. Certain of these translations are anterior to 824 (because they figure in the Ldan dkar Catalogue) or at least anterior to 841 (death of Khri gtsug lde btsan (r. 815841), dating to which the edict had without doubt lost the force of law).14

with a seal which is a proof of the btsan po of Great Tibet (Fan) . . . (; Fujieda, Toban shihai-ki no Tonk, 270).

14 In her work on the apocryphal stra King of Law (Fawang jing ), Okim-oto (Zen-sh-shi ni okeru giky, H--ky ni tsuite), has already expressed analo-gous views: 1) the distinction between new translations (from 814) and old would not come down to a simple difference of chronology; 2) she often refers to the diver-gence between translations of Indian and Chinese texts; 3) the new translations have not eliminated the old 4) certain differencesbut not allmay by explained by the locus of translation (Tibet or the Dunhuang region). 5) The Chinese translations seem maladroit; we may suppose that the translators did not know Chinese well. For Chos grub and the translation of the Lankvatra-stra, cf. Takasaki, Some Problems of the Tibetan Translations from Chinese Material, and for his translation of Mdzangs blun, cf. J. Terjk, Fragments of the Tibetan stra of The Wise and the Fool from Tun-Huang, Acta Orientalia Hungaricae, 22.3 (1969): 289334; 24.1 (1970): 5583.


The materials relative to Tibetan translation of Chinese texts are in truth very complex. For the moment, we should guard against prema-ture conclusions and simplistic reasoning.

The example of the stra King of Law (Fawang jing ) is significant in this regard. According to Okimoto and Kimura (and earlier Ueyama 1968, 199200), the translation preserved in the Kan-jur (Peking, 909) and that of the majority of Dunhuang mss are identical, except the ms. translated by M. Lalou (PT 2105.5). The first have kept the Chin. voc. (whence the colophon from the Kanjur, cf. n. 12), whereas the latter employs the Ind. voc. The latter is signed by a high ecclesiastical official from Dunhuang, and undoubtedly dates from the second half of the 9th century, a time when that area was under Chinese administration and the Tibetan royalty were under stress. The regional criterion does not seem to apply here. We have seen that Chos grub (Facheng), who still worked there under the Chi-nese regime, used the Ind. voc. Did the edict of 814 still have the force of law? It is hardly probable, but the Mhvy might henceforth serve as a model. Among the Dunhuang mss, there figure many prayers for sub-sequent kings, not only for Glang dar ma (Ui dun brtan, r. 84142), but similarly for his successor Od srung (842/3890; PT 0999 and PT 0130 for Khri btsug lde btsan, PT 0134 for Bui dun brtan [= Ui dun brtaned.], PT 0131 and PT 0230 for Od srung). The ties with Tibet had thus not ruptured.

But there is more. The vocabulary of the translations of the Fawang jing is not uniform. Those of the Kanjur and multiple Dun-huang mss (e.g. ITJ 223) often employ Chin. voc. in the text (e.g. chos kyi yi ge for stra, etc.), but in the title they employ the Ind. voc. (mdo for stra). Such is also the case in the Ldan dkar Catalogue (Lalou, 155) which, moreover, does not locate this stra among the Chinese translations. The same title (Chos kyi rgyal poi mdo) is also cited in a work from the Tanjur (Peking, 2001, p. 84) for which the trans-lation dates circa 800, and in the ms. PT 0116.5 (Lalou Catalogue). Contrariwise, in the ms. PT 0624, the title is cited with yi ge (= chos kyi yi ge, Chin. voc.).

There are other analogous cases. For one and the same text (Saddharmapundarka), the old version from the Khotan ms. (cf. n. 1) frequently has the same Ind. voc. as that of the Kanjur (due to Ye shes sde, circa 800 A.D.), but also occasionally utilizes the Chin. (or old) voc.: mur dug and gdzung. It is the same in the Lexicon of

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Dpal dbyangs (see note).15 We find there, side by side, the Chin. voc. (e.g. mur dug = waidao and yang dag par gshegs pa = rulai ) and the Ind. voc. (as in Mhvy, e.g. fol. 8, the twelve literary genres = Mhvy 1266). The mixture is very narrow. The eight exemplary ways (fol. 89; phags pai lam brgyad as Mhvy 996: the terms are identi-cal in their second part, lta ba, etc., but the epithet which precedes is always g.yung drung (gi), Chin. voc., in the Lexicon PT 1257, whereas it is yang dag pa in the Mhvy; see below).

Another case which leaves us perplexed: Chan Writings (ITJ 709.11) studied by Kimura (see above). This text utilizes the Ind. voc., but preserves at the same time the Chin. voc. from the translation of the Lankvatra-stra when it cites it. However, in that same citation it gives the title in Ind. voc. (phags pa).16 The two vocabularies coex-ist, sometimes even in the translation of the same Chinese text, with a preponderance of one and some elements of the other. Such is the case with the Kanjur version of the Bayang jing (see below); mdo in the title, but yi ge and dharma17 in the text, next to mdo. It rep-resents a mixture of the two vocabularies. As previously mentioned, Chos grub (Facheng) always employs the Ind. voc., but sometimes he

15 Sometimes, the Tibetan term seems to be a literal translation from the Chinese (e.g. I, fol. 2, 1. 12 gcig las brtses (= brtsegs) pai gzhung = [] (Taish 125) Ekottaragama whereas in the Ldan dkar Catalogue we have gcig las phros pai lung; II, fol. 10, 1. 12: bsod rnams kyi sku (sambhogakya) = baoshen , body of frui-tion, and fol. 7, 1. 20: spyi bo nas blugs, anointed on the sinciput = guanding ,whereas in I, fol. 1, there is the usual term dbang bskur (= bkur) pai mdo, Da Guan-ding jing).

16 Other examples, p. 832 (Imaeda, Documents tibtains de Touen-houang concer-nant le concile du Tibet, 130 and Kimura, Tonk Chibetto-go Zen bunken moku-roku shoko, 114). It is a Chan text (questions and responses) which corresponds to old questions from the dossier of Wang Xi (Demiville, Le concile de Lhasa). Imaeda thought that it ought to date from the end of the 8th century. The majority of its vocabulary is Indian, but Chin. voc. is used when it cites a Chinese stra (Siyi jing , T. 586): myi bden pai du shes for discursive thought (wangxiang ) vs Mhvy rnam par rtog pa, and chos kyi sgo (literal translation of famen ) in place of chos kyi rnam grangs (dharmaparyya). The same stra is cited in the Chan text ITJ 709.5 where we find Chin. voc. yang dag par gshegs pa, yon po (in place of log pa), skye shi (samsra, but also Ind. voc. khor ba). Likewise in ITJ 709.6, Chan text, de bzhin gshegs pa (Indian), but chos kyi sgo. Contrariwise, Chan texts ITJ 709.14 and ITJ 709.8 are entirely in Ind. voc.: phags pa, khor ba, mu stegs can.

17 On this word, see below, 47. It is Sanskrit, but its meaningnot dharma, but strais peculiar to the Chin. voc. [Ususally. However in this case, the spelling is darma (and not dharma)C.S.-S.]


has recourse to the Chin. voc.18 Sometimes he seems to be helping himself to a Chinese version and to a Sanskrit text at the same time (cf. n. 23). It is impossible to decide if it is a question of chronological or regional differences. Political reasons or various contingencies may play a role.

For the Chan text which should have served as preparation for the controversy at Bsam yas (perhaps also for the apocrypha), a simple reflection arises. Each of the two protagonists should have understood the vocabulary of the other (an idea already expressed by Ueyama 1976, 64). If not, how could they debate? For the Chinese, this is evi-denced by the citations from Chan texts. For the Indians, we have seen a few examples attesting to the two vocabularies at the time (n. 1). But we are mistaken if the old ms. represents the translation of a Chinese original or a Sanskrit text. The translation or Tibetan paraphrase of the Rmyana (see note) also combines words from the Ind. voc. (mtho ris, bsod nams, etc.) with expressions characteristic at the time of Chin. voc. and to idiomatic Tibetan (chos lugs, etc.). For that which is from Chan and from the controversy, Ueyama (1976, n. 10) pro-posed a slightly different solution. In order to debate together before the King, the two parties would have furnished written reports and would have benefited from Tibetan translations.

But, as previously stated, the problem is more complex. The Japa-nese authors have mainly considered the works of Chan and the stra King of Law which was surveyed. The question is complicated if we take account of other translations from Chinese, apocryphal stras and Confucian texts, as well as writings redacted directly into Tibetan.

II.2. The example of Bayang jing (see note) is particularly instructive. As it has not yet been utilized for the problem which occu-pies us and which I have studied in detail, it is time to present the material which it furnishes. This is an apocryphal dhran stra which combines old elements relative to the series of Seven or Eight buddha saviors with the purely Chinese speculations and practices which are characterized as heretical. The old Buddhist theme was reinterpreted

18 Ueyama (Chibetto-yaku Ryga-shishi-ki ni tsuite, 200) indicates that he at one time translated fanyu ordinary and stupid men by blun po as in the Leng qie shi zi ji , Chin. voc., in place of byis pa = bla in the Ind. voc. One other exception is found in his Chinese version of the Prophesy of Khotan (see note). See further, Vocabulary I, 17, xiangfa = gzugs brnyan.

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from a vijnavdin and tantric point of view.19 Attested in China toward the end of the 7th century and by the Buddhist catalogues of 730 and 764, it exists in three numbered Dunhuang mss (complete and fragmentary) in Chinese, in Tibetan and in Uighur.20 When and where it was translated into Tibetan is unknown. Fairly numerous copies of the Chinese text date from the 9th century (and one from 855 A.D.). A long Tibetan transcription from a Chinese text demonstrates the inter-est that the Tibetans took in it (to understand the Chinese? or in order to correctly recite it as a charm?). These mss must have been pro-pounded in the region of Shazhou, in proximity to the Uighurs. The Uighur translation comports with the clarifications or paraphrases. It must have benefited from explications furnished by the Chinese. Curi-ously, Bu ston states: the dhran (stra) called Eight Appearances (Snang brgyad = Bayang ), translated (from the language) of Li, is accepted as correct speech (an authentic stra) in the Pang thang (Catalogue), but it remains to examine (further this question).21 We no longer have this catalogue,d and the Ldan dkar Catalog does not mention this stra. If Bu ston is justified, the Tibetan translation must have existed prior to 824 A.D. It is also possible that Bu ston refers here only to the (unique) mantra from this stra, since he mentions it after a series of dhran (gzungs) and of buddha names. A Dunhuang ms. (PT 0043) gives, in effect, this mantra indicating that it is that of the Snang brgyad (stra).22

19 R.A. Stein in Annuaire du Collge de France, 19801981.20 See the bibliographical note.21 Bu ston, chos byung, xyl., fol. 166a (gsung bum, ed. Lok. Chandra, vol. Ya, 24,

p. 981; information that I owe to Samten G. Karmay). Li ought not indicate Khotan, China. In the Chin. voc. from the translation of the Leng qie shi zi ji, Tang dynasty (Tangchao ) is translated by Rgya rje Li, sovereign of China Li and Songchao by Rgya rje Song. On that usage of Li, cf. Stein, Saint et divin, un titre tibtain et chinois des rois tibtains, 240. Cf. also Rgya rje ni Bsam glang (= Xuanzong) in the Old Tibetan Chronicle (Bacot DTT, 113), Li Bsam glang in ITJ 742 and Rgya rje Li in the treaty of 8212, East, 1.21.

d This is no longer the case. See note, supra, 2.ed.22 Beginning: m, a ka ni, a ka nidi ni Snang brgyad kyi sngan yin o. There

follows the mantra tsa ni tsa which is the buddha kyamuni. Then the note: in Chinese one speaks thus (?, Rgyad skad la di skan (= skad ?) zar (= zer ?) o; it is Myi lig hur. The last name is the transcription of the Chinese name of Maitreya Mile fo (*mjie lok bjut). The transcription hur for fo was preserved in the Sba bzhed (5), where it is a question of Chinese Buddhism (Rgyai Hur zhes bya bai gtsug lag).


A certain confusion (willingly?) maintained on the subject of the language of origin, as Bu ston has it, is perhaps in rapport with the appearance of translations in new language (Ind. voc.) in relation to those made in the Chin. voc. The Bayang jing exists in fact in two sorts of translations utilizing one or the other of two vocabularies. Still, many mss and the Kanjur version indicate the title to be a Tibetan transcription from Chinese, proceeding from the note: in the lan-guage of India and in employing the Ind. voc. It is possible that the authors of these translations may have wished to camouflage the Chi-nese origin of the stra. Other cases could be explained in the same way.23 On account of a great number of translations utilizing the two vocabularies, the study of Bayang jing is particularly useful. Here is a provisional list, which does not pretend to be exhaustive:

23 PT 0743, Rgya gar gyi skad du Par yong shin jiu kyed (= kyeng)/Bod skad du Phags pa Snang brgyad . . . (PT 0744 nearly identical). PT 0745, Rgyad skad du // Par yong shing (sic!) dzu (sic!) kyang. The text from the Kanjur begins like PT 0743 and stops the translation after Bod skad du, but it gives it in the colophon and recovers the title at the beginning of the text with another translation which is a sort of paraphrase relying on an interpretation: sangs rgyas kyi chos gsal zing yangs pa. The word Bayang (eight clarities) was interpreted twice: 1) an allusion to the eight buddhas and 2) clear knowledges (gsal bar rig pa), a sort of commentary on snang pa.

For the confusion between India and China, there are other examples. 1) Suvarnaprabhsa. The title from the Kanjur is a transcription from Chinese, but in one version (IIIa from Nobel, vol. II) it is preceded with in the language of India, whereas in another (IIIb) the editor has corrected to language of China; 2) Peking Kanjur, 1022, notes: in the language of India, but the Chinese title is given in transcription: Tai phan pen hvo pao ngin ging = Taish 156, Da fang bian bao en jing (after Pelliot, Notes propos dun Catalogue du Kanjur, 138 and 141-2, the phonetics of that tran-scription suggest that the translation dates from the Tang); 3) Shan wo yin guo jing; Taish vol. 85, 2881 (Dunhuang ms.?). It exists in Sogdian translation (Gautier and Pelliot, Le Stra des Causes et Effect du Bien et du Mal; Sogdian, Chinese and Tibetan) and another in Tibetan (Kanjur 1023), with the note: translated from the Indian, though there is the question of a translation from Chinese (= mss ITJ 220, 298), to compare with 1024 (different translation without indication of origin). Then, Bu ston (chos byung, xyl., fol 138a) states that this stra had been translated by Chos grub from Indian and Chinese books (Rgya gar dang Rgyai dpe las bsgyur ba), a phrase which figures in the colophon of the Sde dge edition (Schmidt, Der Index des Kandjur, 53). Other stra exist in two translations employing one or the other of two vocabu-laries: 1) Fawang jing ; Chin. voc. in the Kanjur, Ind. voc. in certain mss; 2)Fanwang jing , the two vocabularies mixed; 3) The stra Great Liberation, Da dong gang guang jing exists in two versions, that of the Kanjur ( 930, 931) is in Ind. voc., that of ms. PT 0092 in Chin. voc.; 4) inverse situation for the apocryphal Vajra Samdhi stra, Jingang sanmei jing , Kanjur version ( 803) in Chin. voc., that of ms. PT 0623 as well (see notes and Obata, Chibetto no Zensh to Z-yaku gikyo ni tsuite).

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Ind. voc. Mixed Chin. voc

PT 0106, 0730, 0743, 0744, 0745, 0454, 2110;ITJ 0458, 0463

Kanjur, PT 0126 PT 0742, 0746, 0747, 0748, 0749(compare with the Uighur)

An important finding results from this example. While the Chin. voc. is evidently characteristic of translations from Chinese, the Ind. voc. may equally serve these translations; it is not reserved for transla-tions from Sanskrit. We also recall that, sometimes, one and the same translation employs the two terminologies.24 The simplest supposition would be that the Chin. voc. is old and the Ind. voc. new (as Bu ston seems to have thought, cf. n. 5). One must prove the need to place the anterior translations with Chin. voc. into accord with the edict of 814. But each objective criterion does not allow this to be affirmed. The regional criterion must also enter into account. A project like the Tibetan transcription from the original Chinese is partially explained only in the Dunhuang region. An older example (second part of the 8th century) illustrates the contacts in that region. This is the ms. PT 0992 (Lalou, 1939; Kimura 1981, 1189) which describes the activity of the Chan masters, Chinese and Tibetan, in the region of Kokonor (Khri ga = Tsong ka and the Gansu corridor). The monk Ye shes dbyangsfrom Spug, ordained between 742 and 797, worked for fifty years at Khri ga in the company of Indian, Chinese and Tibetan masters. Con-tacts and exchanges were therefore established in this region, and the

24 For hell (di yu ), we have myal ba in Ind. voc. (PT 0106, 0730), but sdig yul in Chin. voc. (PT 0748). PT 0742 combines the two: sdig yul mchams myed pai sems can dmyal ba (T., p. 1425a: a bi wu jian di yu ). This passage is miss