Words New and Old: An Unknown Glossary

I ought to warn you, already decades ago I submitted a paper about Tables of Contents as a Tibetan literary genre. It was finally published, but I still get push-back for it from people who think they know me and assume I must be joking. I just have to assert my sincerity and go on telling things as I have learned to see them. 

The spectrum of Tibetan literary genres is distinct from what we know in the modern Anglophone world. Things were divided up differently. There is no one-to-one correspondence to be found. Really, if you think about it, there never was a Tibetan novel, not until quite recently, just as the Anglos never had a namthar. Anyway, what does ‘literary’ mean? Is there such a thing as a minor literary genre? A sub-genre? If we’re going to go on splitting things up and then analyze why it was done... We’ll never finish work for the day if we have to answer all those types of questions.

So here we are delving into a different Tibetan genre we’ll call Old-New Glossaries. The title above already tells you the one we’ll talk about is unknown, but Laufer had heard about it, so others probably did, too, I just haven’t found evidence. Its poetic title is The Shining of Seven Horses. In case the metaphor doesn’t work on you, and we have to accept that possibility, the whole phrase could be reduced down to Sunshine. What? Were you not fully aware that the sun is the object that is drawn along by seven horses in Indian mythology? The title tells us the book will shine a light on obscure matters, something all compositions ought to do, ideally.

The book can very well be called a glossary or a vocabulary, although it doesn’t suit the definition of a dictionary. Its scope is much smaller. Its author intends to explain old and obsolete words to his contemporaries by using understandable contemporary language. 

You might be thinking such a work would tell us what “Old Tibetan” words mean. Well, okay, it can and sometimes does happen that you find help with a puzzling word you encountered in a Dunhuang document of the 8th-11th centuries by consulting this type of glossary. That would be unusual. 

Sparing you the arguments and details, the fact is that what are here meant by old words are items of vocabulary that were used in the pre-Mongol Second Spread era (or roughly 11th into 13th centuries) and later fell out of use. Sometimes in art studies they call this same period the Kadampa period, although I prefer to call it early Tibet as a fuzzy way of distinguishing it from the Old Tibetan imperial era. The century and a half in between (mid-9th through end of 10th) we can call the post-imperial era or period of fragmentation.

A somehow distinct emphasis in these works is on differences in terms used in old and new Tibetan translations of scriptures and treatises. Unlike Chinese Buddhists who saved everything in their canon collections, Tibetans simply abandoned earlier translations along with their vocabulary choices and replaced them with new ones to suit new standards. Their efforts were not entirely successful, so old translation terms still survive here and there, so there was at least this one reasonable use for Old-New Glossaries.*

(*I think the earliest examples, like the one by Dbus-pa Blo-gsal, were more strictly done in order to show how old terms had been, or ought to be, replaced by new ones. I don’t say this with complete assurance, it’s just an impression. Later examples were more likely to include old terms from non-canonical sources as well.)

Oddly enough, although no other mentions can be traced in the worldwide web,* Berthold Laufer did mention the Shining of Seven Horses (Seven Horses for short) in his famous and still useful essay, “Bird Divination among the Tibetans,” published way back in 1914, at p. 65, where he says that the 1899 Tibetan-Latin-French dictionary of Father Desgodins made use of it as one of its sources. I hope you’re taking all this in, taking notes if necessary.

(*Believe me when I tell you this Laufer reference was not located through any internet search, I found it in my own notes to Tibskrit. The link to Tibskrit is in the sidebar to your right.)

 

The title (click on it to enlarge)

What this tells us is that the Seven Horses manuscript scanned and posted by BDRC is our nearly unique evidence for the existence of this work. The only other mention of it is as a source of the Desgodins dictionary. This dictionary was very beautifully printed, but not well circulated to say the least. I couldn’t immediately find mention of our title in the front matter of the dictionary, but Laufer corresponded directly with the missionary and could have learned about it in that way rather than from the printed page. Apart from my mother, I know of no other person today who actually writes in handwriting, putting the paper in an envelope, and attaching postage stamps. You may have to take my word when I say it was once a very common method of communication. But enough distraction, let’s spare a few words about the author, as much as we can given the resources at our disposal today.

The name of the author as it appears in the colophon

I couldn’t immediately explain why BDRC lists the author’s name as Kun-bzang-padma-blo-ldan, while the small cursive letters in the colophon actually read dge-kyongs [~ dge-skyong] Padma-blo-ldan. The dge-skyong, or virtue keeping epithet may imply that the person named is a monastic, but it isn’t in any sense a proper part of the name, just an epithet. So the only author’s name we have here in the manuscript is Padma-blo-ldan, a person not very easily identified.

Still we can know things of significance about the author without peering anywhere outside the colophon itself (see the discussion at the head of the Reference list, below). What is sure is that he was a Nyingma belonging to the 17th century. Even if less sure, he likely lived and worked in Kham in Eastern Tibet.

Maybe another time someone will go into the content of this under-utilized work in detail and tell us how well it corresponds with previous works of its genre. A good text for comparison would be the most famous one, known by the short poetic title Li shi'i gur khang by the translator Skyogs-ston. It could help with a number of discussions and arguments we might want to have or make. For now, to close with, I would like to look briefly at something near the end. This might supply enough of a taste of it for now.

After the ending of chapter 30, after the end of the alphabetic series, on folio 17 verso, there is a special section on borrowings from non-Tibetan languages, starting with the most obvious group, borrowings from Sanskrit (or more broadly Indic) language. The reason for going into this is this: Tibetans might very well encounter words that they don’t immediately understand and rush to the conclusion that they are Old Vocabulary terms, when in fact they are borrowings. 

While that motive is surely there, we may also see, mainly in this Indic section, that certain terms underwent local adaptations within Tibet often making them difficult to recognize as borrowings. I call this process “Tibetanization.” Mostly well known examples are given, like Indic pustaka meaning book, evolving into po-ti in Tibet. Another example is Tibetan form bram-ze for Sanskrit brahmaṇa, or, as we say in English, brahmin, meaning the priestly caste.* 

(*Yes, it is true what you may be thinking, we may well imagine Prakritic or colloquializing forms intervening, so at least some of the change could have already taken place in India, no doubt.)

I see a lot of drama in the Tibetanization of the Indian woman saint’s name Lakṣmīṅkarā — Legs-smin-kā-ra — since the first two syllables are transformed into meaningful Tibetan syllables that could be translated well ripened. Our author sees all these things as mistakes Tibetans have made in Sanskrit, rather than seeing the ways they had fun with Sanskrit. I hope you’re having fun, but let’s move ahead to the next bit about Chinese borrowings. 

Here he says that there are instances in which people want to take Chinese borrowed words as being Old Terms. Examples of more-or-less direct borrowings he gives are grum-tse [seating mat], cog-tse [table] and zing-zan [zang-zing as a term for food or meat?]. But also there are calques from Chinese terms like gser-zhal and gser-yig.* All of these items come together with added small-letter explanations in red ink, even if not all are easily read. Gser-zhal [‘gold face’] is glossed as face of the king. Gser-yig [‘gold letter’] is bang-chen-pa [‘one with great messages’], usually understood to mean an imperial envoy. 

(*My impression is these two calques only entered Tibetan usage during the early days of Yuan Mongolian influence.)

But then it’s the next thing that most interests me (fol. 18v.2). We all of a sudden switch from language borrowings and calques to terminology of a different religion. What exact religion might be here intended by Bon we will return to again and again in some other place. The line reads like this (with the glosses in parentheses, all red letters given here in red font):

gnam (mchod rnam legs pa la) gshegs (li shi na ’ang) lor bon po’i brda.

Let me do my best to unpack this rather than straight-up translating.  It’s telling us there is such a thing as Bonpo vocabulary, with one example being gnam gshegs, meaning passing [to] heaven, glossed as being in the sense or context of finely made offerings. Then the second gloss says, just before the syllable lor that must mean as reported, “as also in the Clove, the Li shi.”*

(*This could provoke lots of discussion, not least of all because the expression[s] given aren’t really special Bon terminology in the sense that only Bonpos would understand them, and, less relevant here yet a truth that needs telling, the fact is that Bon writings have carried very many early Tibetan terms into modern times when everyone else had practically forgotten them in around the 13th century.)

This mention of Clove or Li shi is meant as a clue to have a look at the Clove Canopy of Skyogs-ston. The Clove Canopy does in truth end its vocabulary listings in much the same manner as the Seven Horses, by discussing clusters of items that might be misconstrued as Old Terms. The latter work doesn’t just reproduce what’s in the former, but appears for most part to supplement it. Significantly for us right now, it does have a discussion of passing [to] heaven [p. 22]:

kha cig bon po'i brdar yod de / legs pa la gnam mchod pa dang / mi shi ba la gnam du gshegs pa dang / bsod nams che ba la gnam gyis bskos pa zhes pa dang / dbang che ba la gnam sa'i bdag ces pa sogs shin tu mang zhing...

In some cases we have words of the Bonpos. For something that is quite fine, they say sky offering (gnam mchod-pa), and for a person who has died they say he has gone to heaven (gnam-du gshegs-pa). For someone of superior merits, they say he is sky appointed (gnam gyis bskos-pa), and for someone of superior power, they say lord of sky and earth (gnam sa'i bdag).

Without reading this passage from the Clove Canopy, I fear we would never be able to see the point of the corresponding passage in the Seven Horses. True enough. But let me make the point I want to make here in connection with some arguments in a recent blog entry with the title “Nam, an Ancient Word for Sky.” Both the Clove Canopy and the Seven Horses can come to our aid,* seeing that these expressions making use of the concept of gnam. In the minds of these glossary writers, gnam belongs to a non-Buddhist “Bon” context that would likely feel alien or archaic to your typical Tibetan Buddhist reader of their times.

(*Along with still other sources like the well known quote, falsely attributed to the Nel-pa history, about how Bonpos “like the sky.” See the discussion under “Nel-pa” in the list below.)

 

Reference list

For more on Tibetan-language lexical tools, see our July 16, 2015 blog “Lexical Euphoria: Good News on Dictionaries.”

In the list you can see below, I’ve included several works known to me that belong to the genre of Old-New Glossaries. I had no idea to make a complete list. One way you can look for still more examples is to do a search at BDRC/BUDA, where you can even find their subject heading for it together with its own independent listing (try this link). Alternatively, do a more general search of BDRC using the terms “gsar rnying brda” or “brda gsar rnying” or “brda’ rnying.” You can try the same in a worldwide web search, but make sure to include the double quote marks when you do.

Before typing up the bibliographical list, let me give the details for the Seven Horses:

The full title-page title is: Bod yul gyi skad gsar rnying gi rnam par bzhag pa rta bdun snang ba [zhes bya ba bzhugs so legs so ngo mtshar mchog lags]. A Sanskrit title is also given in Tibetan script. The title page verso has a slightly variant title: Bod yul gyi skad gsar rnying gi rnam par dbye ba rta bdun snang ba [zhes bya ba].

It can be found here at this page.

But it can also be found here at this page.

Both manuscripts end on the verso of folio 19, even if the number of folios is stated differently. They are for all purposes identical. BDRC gives its author’s ID as P5081, along with three forms of his name: [1]  Kun-bzang-padma-blo-ldan. [2] Stag-ras-pa. [3] Stag-ras-pa Kun-bzang-padma-blo-ldan. Thanks to Google and its help finding the article by Cantwell (q.v.), I could find a mention of one by the full name (no. 3), as author of a biography of Bdud-’dul-rdo-rje. BDRC is as correct as it can be about the date of the work. It must be 17th century because it names the author’s teacher as Padma-blo-gros, holder of the treasure lineages of Bdud-’dul-rdo-rje and Mi-’gyur-rdo-rje. The former is the very well known tertön by that name who lived from 1615-1672. The latter, a still more famous tertön, lived from 1645-1667. Both were particularly active in Khams, and had their early main followers there.

The author’s teacher is identifiable as Stag-bla Padma-ma-ti (aka Padma-blo-gros), whose dates are 1591 to 1637. The author held this teacher’s lineages from both of the just-mentioned tertöns. The person who actually requested that the work be written is given as the fully ordained monk Blo-gros-nyi-ma, also known as the Yogin Tshul-khrims-rgyal-mtshan, and further described as my own root Lama. I haven’t been able to make a definitive identification of the root Lama yet. What we can know is that the author belonged to the 17th century and a Nyingma milieu, and even if it isn't so sure, he likely lived and worked in the eastern parts of the plateau we normally know as Khams. In any case our single available manuscript was scanned in Khams, in a particular monastery within the modern county called Kardze.

 

° ° °

A-lag-sha Ngag-dbang-bstan-dar (1754-1840), Gangs can gyi brda' gsar rnying las brtsams pa'i brda' yig blo gsal mgrin rgyan. A 52-folio woodblock print listed as part of the collection of the Oriental Institute, St. Petersburg, nos. B6744/27, B8922/4. It is also findable in his Collected Works, vol. 2 [KHA] (New Delhi 1971).

A-myes-zhabs Ngag-dbang-kun-dga’-bsod-nams (1597-1659), Gsar rnying brda'i rnam dbye legs par bshad pa gsung rab kun la lta ba'i sgron me. The text is available (see BDRC).

Blo-bzang-bsam-’grub (1820-1882), Dpe chos rin chen spungs pa'i btus ming shes rab kyi mig gsal byed kyi sgron me. Woodblock print in 28 folios. Vocabulary from the Dpe chos, an early Kadampa work. The author’s name is given in the colophon as Sngags-rams-pa Chos-rje Lcam-sring-skyabs. Its poetic title could be translated, Lamp that Lights Up the Eye of Insight. A distinct New-Old Glossary by this same Mongolian author, Gangs can bod kyi brda gsar rnying las brtsams pa'i brda yig blo gsal mgul rgyan, in 66 folios, is listed in Materials for a History of Tibetan Literature, no. 10164. I have no idea about its present availability.

Blo-gros-rgya-mtsho and Bkra-shis-dngos-grub, Brda rnying tshig mdzod gsar bsgrigs, Bod ljongs mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Lhasa 2011), in 381 small-format pages. This is a modern-day compilation of various works of the Old-New Glossaries genre. I’ve always found the Btsan-lha dictionary more useful.

Btsan-lha Ngag-dbang-tshul-khrims, Brda dkrol gser gyi me long, Mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Beijing 1997). The great virtue of this dictionary is that it combines a large number of early Old-New Glossaries (along with still other lexicographical genres). It lists their titles at the end of the volume, at pp. 1040-1063. Although the author is surely quite advanced in age by now, I understand he has been working on a much expanded version, something students of early Tibet would be right to anticipate. Meanwhile the 1997 edition has gotten more and more difficult to find.

Cathy Cantwell, “Reincarnation and Personal Identity in the Lives of Tibetan Masters: Linking the Revelations of Three Lamas of the Dudjom Tradition,” a 32-page essay, apparently only available as a draft on the internet at this URL. On its 19th unnumbered page, you can see a very rare instance of a mention of our author, only here he is author of a biographical work on Bdud-’dul-rdo-rje:

“A much longer list of the previous incarnations of Düdül Dorje is given in a namthar (rnam thar, ‘hagiography’) compiled by Takrepa Künzang Pema Loden (Stag ras pa kun bzang padma blo ldan, 1997), apparently a direct student of Düdül Dorjeʼs.” 

Chos-ldan-rgya-mtsho, Brda gsar rnying gi rnam gzhag legs par ston pa'i reg gzigs gsar bu'i nyer mkho. Listed in Btsan-lha, no. 1052, but I suspect confusion with the work by Rje-drung Lhun-grub-blo-ldan, q.v.

Co-ne Grags-pa-bshad-sgrub (1675-1748), Snyan ngag mngon brjod brda gsar rnying gi rnam gzhag mdor bsdus blo gsal yid 'phrog. A woodblock print in 12 folios. Signed “shākya'i dge slong bshad sgrub ming can.” Composed at G.yar khral. Oriental Institute, St. Petersburg, nos. B5660/2, B8487/23. See Leonard van der Kuijp's article about bam po in Journal of Tibetology, at p. 120, where he comments that this work cannot be found in its author’s collected works.

Dalai Lama VII Skal-bzang-rgya-mtsho (1708-1757), Tā go shrī dge slong shes rab rgya mtsho'i dogs sel dris lan dang brda gsar rnying gi brda chad 'ga' zhig gi dris lan. Listed in Btsan-lha’s dictionary, p. 1052. Answers to inquiries about archaic vocabulary items.

Dbus-pa Blo-gsal (ca. 1265-1355), Brda gsar rnying gi rnam par dbye ba.  For the Otani University manuscript, click here. This is the same one used in the studies by Mimaki, q.v. Other editions have since become available, just search for them in BDRC.

Auguste Desgodins (1826-1913), Dictionnaire thibétain-latin-francais par les missionnaires du Thibet, Imprimerie de la Société des Missions Étrangères (Hong Kong 1899). Look here, although I was unable to make the .tif files open on my computer. Perhaps you will have better luck? You might also try here. As I said, there doesn’t seem to be any direct mention of the Seven Horses in this publication, but either it or another book like it is alluded to on p. vi: “nous indiquons par (A. = R. ancien égale récent), les mots qui ne se trouvent guère que dans la langue sacrée ancienne...” Oh, and notice that the Bibliothèque Nationale de France has this interesting page about Desgodins with lists of his publications and letters. Their own Gallica website offers what appears to be a superior scan of the dictionary, click here to get started (the download button is findable on the right side of the window; it is very slow, but worth the wait).

Dngul-chu Ngag-dbang-rdo-rje (1720-1803), Brda gsar rnying gi khyad par bstan pa gsar bu'i blo gros skyed byed. A work in 6 folios. This has been published a number of times in various formats, just do a search for it at BDRC.

Gnya’-gong Dkon-mchog-tshe-brtan, Bod kyi brda rnying yig cha rtsa chen bdams bsgrigs rnams kyi tshig don kun nas khrol bar byas pa rab gsal me long, Kan su’u mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Lanzhou 2001). This work is unlike the others, [1] in the first place because it studies a number of works, listing their vocabulary items separately, and [2] because it intends to explain the old terminology to be found in Dunhuang documents (documents unknown to post-imperial Tibet up until the 20th century) along with stele inscriptions of imperial times (inscriptions in large part available, and to some degree known to and studied by Tibetans in past centuries).

Kun-bzang-rdo-rje, ed., Chos skad brda gsar rnying gi rnam gzhag sbrang rtsi'i bum pa, Rdzong kha gong 'phel lhan tshogs (Thimphu 2011), in 159 pages.

Berthold Laufer, “Bird Divination among the Tibetans (Notes on Document Pelliot No. 3530, with a Study of Tibetan Phonology of the Ninth Century),” T'oung Pao, series 2, vol. 15 (2014), pp. 1-110. As part of a very useful discussion of Old-New Glossaries, he has these words on p. 65:

“There is, further, a work under the title Bod yul-gyi skad gsar rñiṅ-gi rnam-par dbye-ba rta bdun snaṅ-ba, which has been carefully utilized in the “Dictionaire thibétain-latin-français par les Missionnaires catholiques du Thibet” (Hongkong, 1899).” (The footnote attached to this passage is also of considerable interest.)

Berthold Laufer, “Loan-Words in Tibetan,’ contained in: Hartmut Walravens, ed., Sino-Tibetan Studies: Selected Papers on the Art, Folklore History, Linguistics and Prehistory of Sciences in China and Tibet, Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi 1987), vol. 2, pp. 483-643 [originally published in 1916], at pp. 523-524, or pp. 443-444 in the original 1916 publication. 

After posting the blog, but on the very same day, I noticed Laufer, back in 1916, made a translation of the passage about Chinese loanwords from the Clove Canopy that I had translated on the basis of the shorter corresponding passage in Seven Horses, so it’s interesting to compare them, even if I won’t do that here and now.

Mimaki Katsumi, “dBus pa blo gsal no "Shin Kyu Goi Shu" — Kôtei bon Shokô [The brDa gsar rñiṅ gi rnam par dbye ba of dBus pa blo gsal — A First Attempt at a Critical Edition],” contained in: Asian Languages and General Linguistics: Festschrift for Prof. Tatsuo Nishida on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday (Tokyo 1990), pp. 17-54. This contains a critical text edition in Roman transcription (with numbers inserted so that one may first locate words in Mimaki's alphabetic index, and then locate them in the critical text edition).

Mimaki Katsumi, “Index to Two brDa gsar rñiṅ Treatises: The Works of dBus pa blo gsal and lCaṅ skya Rol pa'i rdo rje,” contained in a special issue of the Bulletin of the Narita Institute for Buddhist Studies (Naritasan Bukkyôkenkyûjo kiyô), vol. 15, no. 2 (1992), pp. 479-503.

Mimaki Katsumi, “Two Minor Works Ascribed to dBus pa Blo gsal,” contained in S. Ihara and Z. Yamaguchi, eds., Tibetan Studies, Naritasan Shinshoji (Narita 1992), vol. 2, pp. 591-598. Discussion about an existing text, at Otani University, of his Brda gsar rnying gi rnam par dbye ba, as well as his Rtags kyi 'jug pa'i 'grel pa.

Nel-pa Paṇḍi-ta, Sngon gyi gtam me tog gi phreng ba, "a 13th century source on the history of Tibetan kings and rulers by Ne'u Paṇḍi-ta Grags-pa-smon-lam-blo-gros, with other rare historical texts from the library of Burmiok Athing," T.D. Densapa, LTWA (Dharamsala 1985).

Nel-pa is at times credited with the statement that Bonpos “like the sky” (gnam-la dga'). However, this one edition of the text I have at hand reads, at p. 14 line 1:  gnam las babs par smra ba ni / bon pos lhad bcug par yin no. “This saying that they [the books, etc.] fell [onto the palace roof of the Tibetan Emperor Lha Tho-tho-ri Gnyan-btsan] from the sky is to be explained as an interpolation by the Bonpos.” I should go check the German of Helga Uebach’s translation and see how she understood it. Here it is on her p. 87: “Das Gerede des Vom-Himmel-Kommens ist eine Verfälschung seitens der Bon-po.” I suppose “falsification” suits the tone of it well enough. Just try doing a Googlebook search for “gnam la dga’” and you will see there is a problem of quote attribution by earlier writings in both Tibetan and English that needs fixing. Right now I think those words like the sky were first pronounced much later on, in the mid-16th century history the Scholars’ Feast, but I’ll put that difficult discussion on hold for another time, another blog. Finding the truth of the matter is one thing, but tracing back the sources of error can be even more laborious and challenging (and somehow revealing on occasion).

Ngag-dbang-chos-dar, Brda gsar rnying, Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Xining 1980), in 217 pp. A modern work, based on the Gangs can gyi brda gsar rnying las brtsams pa'i brda yig blo gsal mgrin rgyan by A-lag-sha Ngag-dbang-bstan-dar, q.v.

Rje-drung Lhun-grub-blo-ldan (19th century), Brda' gsar rnying gi rnam gzhag legs par ston pa gsar bu'i nyer mkho, Pleasure of Elegant Sayings Press (Sarnath 1966), in 118 pp. For a scan of a beautiful woodblock print in 37 folios, click here. The statement naming the author is found in the woodblock’s colophon at folio 36 recto, line 5. Perhaps this has to do with the similarly titled text by Chos-ldan-rgya-mtsho, q.v.

Rnam-rgyal-tshe-ring, Bod yig brda rnying tshig mdzod, Krung go'i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang (Beijing 2001), in 678 pages. A Tibetan-Tibetan-Chinese dictionary, the preface is written in Chinese. It doesn’t seem to state what its sources were, but you do notice an uncommonly strong emphasis on Old Tibetan words from Dunhuang documents.

Ulrike Roesler, “Der dPe chos rin chen spuṅs pa'i btus miṅ — eine Quelle zur tibetisch mongolischen Lexographie und Schriftkunde,” contained in: D. Dimitrov, U. Roesler and R. Steiner, eds., Śikhisamuccayah: Indian and Tibetan Studies, Collectanea Marpurgensia Indologica et Tibetica, Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien (Vienna 2002), pp. 151-173. This is a study of the work by Blo-bzang-bsam-’grub, listed above.

Skyogs-ston Lo-tsā-ba Rin-chen-bkra-shis (student of Zha-lu Lo-tsā-ba), Brda gsar rnying gi rnam gzhag li shi'i gur khang (=Bod kyi skad las gsar rnying gi brda'i khyad par ston pa legs par bshad pa li shi'i gur khang), ed. by Mgon-po-rgyal-mtshan, Mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Beijing 1981, 1982). It must have been written in 1476 (the preface wrongly states 1136, and still other dates have been put forward). This is by far the most-mentioned work of the genre, and has been republished numerous times. The advantage of this edition is that it first gives the text in its original form, then once again with the vocabulary items rearranged in Tibetan alphabetic order. If you would prefer a searchable unicode version of it, click here.

Sman-rgyal Sangs-rgyas-rin-chen, Gsar rnying brda'i legs bshad bai ḍūrya yi gur khang gi don gsal nyi ma. Listed in Btsan-lha, p. 1062.

Manfred Taube, “Zu einigen Texten der tibetischen Brda'-gsar-rñiṅ-Literatur,” Asienwissenschaftliche Beitrage (Berlin 1978), pp. 160-201. This isn’t available to me at the moment.

Zhabs-drung Chos-rje Ngag-dbang-tshe-ring (=Wa-ghin-da, fl. 1840), Brda gsar rnying gi rnam bzhag. Listed in Materials for a History of Tibetan Literature, no. 6618.

Zhe-chen Padma-dri-med-legs-pa'i-blo-gros (1901?-1960), Brda gsar rnying gi bye brag rtogs byed. Listed in Btsan-lha, p. 1052.

§  §  §

PS (December 31, 2023, Happy New Year!):

I just found that Padma-blo-ldan's glossary called the Light of Seven Horses, exists in the form of an 18-folio manuscript posted this year in the digital scan version of Nebesky-Wojkowitz’s Tibetan collection.  Just go to this URL

https://hav.univie.ac.at/collections/nebesky/node/573/

and see it for yourself.

The Innermost Treasury and Zhangzhung Language

Yes, I know what you are thinking. I am supposed to be on some kind of working holiday like I announced with such exaggerated drama not so long ago. But I feel constrained to put this blog entry up in fulfillment of a promise. Afterward I really will be disappearing from view for awhile.  

Just yesterday a two hundred and fifty page dictionary of the Zhangzhung language was put up as an issue of Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines.*

(*Go to the link, click on issue no. 18, meaning the issue for April 2010, and the PDFs should be there ready to download, but be warned the files are rather large for machines that are not well connected). 

I don't guarantee how useful this dictionary will be for you, particularly if you are not numbered among the hardcore Tibetarazzis. For one thing, the entries are in Tibetan alphabetic sort order. But I do want to recommend it to specialists in Tibeto-Burman linguistics and general Tibetanists. I like to imagine that the introduction would make sense to just about anyone.

There, in the introduction, I promised to make available two works that I consider to be by far the most important source works for the study of Zhangzhung. The first is the Mdzod-phugs (I like to translate this as Innermost Treasury, although Primordial Treasury could also work), and the second is the Zhangzhung glossary compiled by the Yogi of the Zhu Clan Nyima Dragpa (Zhu-yi Rnal-’byor Nyi-ma-grags-pa).

The Innermost Treasury is (no longer) here
(instead try here).

And the Zhu glossary is here.

Some links will lead you to “New Tibetological,” the sister site of Tibeto-logic. Others will take you to a Dropbox file. Let me know if you have trouble with the loading of the pages, and I can try to do something about it, although I'm no expert in these matters, rest assured (or, OK, be worried if that’s what you do). I fear it is true, even more than it is with the dictionary, that these files will be next to impossible for people who haven’t studied Tibetan to use. What use are they? Using them as searchable electronic references makes it possible to find Zhangzhung words in their context immediately and with ease. The work of recovering Zhangzhung and deciphering may be partially done, but it’s still continuing. It’s a work in process.

OK, now I’ll be quiet.  This job is done here.  Your work is just beginning.

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The frontispiece shows a Bon scriptural volume done on indigo daphne paper with black sizing.  The huge raised gilded letters, with their protective cloth cover pulled up out of the way, read “Zhang-zhung skad-du,” which means In the language of Zhangzhung.

Here at the end is a photo of a rock face from Petra in Jordan (Petra means ‘rock’), which as far as I can know may have had trade relations with Zhangzhung. I'm not saying it’s a proven fact, mind you. But you should hear some of the other wobbly ideas that are floating about! Well, Petra was, and to some still is, an ancient mysterious hidden country that would be very exciting to discover. Sound familiar?

Readers of Tibeto-logic may be shocked to see an advertisement. It’s true, I don’t “monetize” as a rule. I try not to steer readers to commercial-laden sites if at all possible and do my best to keep the google-ads at bay. I try to make things available freely and for free. But here I make an exception. Dagkar Geshé Namgyal Nyima’s dictionary can be difficult to get ahold of. People are always asking me where they can get a copy.

That’s why I was happy to see that Ligmincha, one of a very few spots on the internet with a Zhangzhung-language name, has made it available for purchase. If you are hoping to become a Zhangzhungologists, you are really going to need it. If you already are one, you must already have it. Press HERE to go there. Considering its reference value, the price is a very reasonable 50 USD. And I don’t know anyone else who offers it, do you? Is it possible you are smug enough to think you can find a copy in your local library? Let me see. I guess you can find copies if you live in Berlin, München or Washington D.C. Otherwise I’m thinking you are fresh out of luck.*

(*Note on Christmas 2023: The links to Namgyal's book are driving you and me both crazy and mad as hell, so I can only suggest that you search for "Zhangzhung-Tibetan-English Contextual Dictionary” on the internet.  This is likely to land you on some iffy-looking Russian language site. Just remember that the Russian word for "download" is скачать.)

Oh, I should warn you. There is an English-language introduction, and the entries have English translations from the Tibetan. But the Zhangzhung words are placed in Tibetan alphabetic order.  So unless you have studied a little Tibetan in the past, or at least in a past lifetime, you are not going to be able to make quick use of the dictionary itself.*

(*NN's dictionary has an introduction in Tibetan, in Tibetan script. However, there is no Tibetan script to be seen in the dictionary itself. That means that even some Tibetans [few of whom see any value in romanizations — and why should they?] will have some problem about using it.) 

(Update in April 2013: I believe this book may no longer be available, although I'm sure it will come back into print.  It must.  WAIT, I may have spoken too soon.  Look here.  But no, why bother? Links go dead almost the minute I link them.) 

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If all this talk about Zhangzhung sounds like Yavana Bhasha to you, you might try the Wiki entry, which is only misleading in some of its more minor details.  

The historically significant Haarh dictionary,* as published in Acta Jutlandica in 1968, has not been put up in its entirety on the internet as far as I know. For some reason the introduction can be accessed only in bits and pieces in PDF format (try here, and still, in 2023, this problem has not been remedied!). Still, it may be worth your reading if the original publication is out of reach, as it is likely to be. Perhaps a schmoogle search will turn up something. Give it a try.

If you see the name Jangshung (as you are bound to if you will just try searching for it), ignore it. My opinion? It's just an error that has been repeated all over the internet and it may prove impossible to get it out of the system during the next millennium, as if anyone were trying. Garbage in, garbage out. You can get a job being a translator from it. Hell, even the Christians seem to believe in it. So why shouldn't I be convinced? Do you have any idea why?**

(*It is basically Zhu's glossary in Tibetan alphabetic order with added English translations based on Zhu's Tibetan equivalents of the Zhangzhung words.  Update (April 2013):  Although made available in snippet view only, which seems petty, you can find those snippets of Haarh by using the search box found here.  **I think it makes its first appearance in Ethnologue of 1996, although some credit an Indian language census of 1981. One clue to the probability of its nonexistence is its absence in George von Driem's huge survey of Tibeto-Burman languages, or is that an argumentum ex silencio? Its thoroughness an illusion? I can't help wondering.  So many languages are dying, I guess it's not all that surprising that there would be a few ghost languages floating about free of any speakers whatsoever.) 

Postscript (January, 2012):  I just noticed that someone put back up on the web that old Ligmincha posting of the Zhang-zhung Dictionary (April 1997 version).  You might look for it here, although I would no longer recommend it.  Seeing it makes me get all nostalgic... for the 20th century. It may have been, in some ways, a simpler time, this old version of the dictionary being one not very noticeable example.

Note, too:  I tried to fix some of these links, at least the more important ones, in April 2013, but found to my surprise that some of the linked pages may have disappeared out of embarrassment, especially the ones with the ghost language. Is it possible Tibeto-logic is having minor effect on other equally remote spots in the internet universe? No, dismiss that idle thought. It's so self-idolizing, not to mention obsequious.

Three Tibetan Voices to Hear

Today I'm blogging for no good reason except to send you off to read a newspaper interview with an extremely intelligent person working in Tibetan studies in Georgia these days. Although he has accomplished many other things, and I mentioned his book about Tibetan festivals in an earlier blog, Tsepak Rigzin (Tshe-dpag-rig-'dzin, born in western Tibet in 1957) is perhaps best known for compiling one of the essential reference works for anyone learning to read Buddhist texts in Tibetan. It was published by the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala in 1986, with a revised and enlarged version published in 1993. So, without further ado, just go away from here and read the story at the Meyul website. It won't take long.  I'm always on the lookout for testimonies about the Tibet situation by seasoned experts in Tibetan studies, and will keep you posted as I come up with more.

In a category all its own, I vigorously encourage you go to Agam's Gecko blogspot and view the video of a 40-minute Dalai Lama interview by Ann Curry of NBC.

If you have trouble with the video formats, you can read the complete transcript of the interview here.

Then if you have any time left follow Agam's link to the editorial by Isabel Hilton (if you would like to know more about her, look here) in the April 12th Guardian.  It's still worth going back to read one of her older editorials, here.  Rare among journalists writing about Tibet these days, she has actually written an entire book on the subject, even quit her job to write it, The Search for the Panchen Lama.

Today this story by Barbara Demick about "patriotic [re-]education" appeared in the Baltimore Sun.  It quotes from Tibetologist Ronald D. Schwartz (author of the book Circle of Protest: Political Ritual in the Tibetan Uprising), and mentions the open letter to Hu Jintao signed by Schwartz and "more than 200 other Tibet scholars ... calling for the Chinese government to negotiate over Tibetans' grievances." I just went to the webpage a few minutes ago. There were 78 signers of the original petition before it was posted on the internet. With a few exceptions these are professional Tibetologists. That means people with research jobs involving teaching and/or research in the field of Tibetan studies. More people signed online since then. In this second list there is the problem of several duplicate names (some people clicked the button twice), but I simply downloaded the list and eliminated the doubles, coming up with 448 people who signed it online (this number includes quite a few professors, too, but also graduate students and Tibetologists without academic affiliation). This comes to a grand total of 526. This is far more than 200.  

It might not need pointing out, although I will do it anyway, that while nearly if not quite every professor, researcher, language instructor and grad student in the field of Tibetan studies in the globe (regardless of their national identity and personal background) did sign this petition, there is one group that is entirely absent. That group of Tibetanists lives and works inside the Peoples Republic of China. I won't insult your intelligence by telling you why that might be.

Oh, and one last but not least thing.  Here's an opportunity to hear an audio file that includes a fairly long interview with Lobsang Sangay (Blo-bzang-sangs-rgyas; his name could be translated 'Good Mind Enlightened One') about the current situation done for Minnesota Public Radio. Lobsang-laa is very articulate in at least two languages, and manages to make considerable sense of Tibetan discontents and their background.  This program in particular addresses questions not even brought up elsewhere.  I had an opportunity to see him speak in person several years ago, and was quite impressed by what I heard. 

I'm sure we'll be hearing more from him.  He's a senior fellow in the Harvard Law School these days, although he is destined for greater things.

* * * * *

"The Chinese media spin the story as anti-Chinese riots instead of anti-government riots. They try to make it something against the Chinese people. It is not against the Chinese people."

—Tsering Wangdu Shakya, Chair in Modern Tibetan Studies, University of British Columbia