The Biographies of Rechungpa: The Evolution of a Tibetan ...

Rechungpa’s strange illness and cure 125
Marpa’s instructions he then flew to the eastern land of Abhirati, where he was born as
the King’s second son. He renounced the kingdom for the last twelve years of his life,
dying in his seventieth year. He was then reborn into an artist’s family in Kathmandu, but
died in his thirty-seventh year, to be the reborn as Yonten Zangpo. 100
Though Yonten Zangpo was the pupil of many Kagyu masters, his biography is
primarily recorded in the Drigung Kagyu school. Whether this is an authentic record of
the first Karmapa’s pronouncement or not, it shows that the Darma Dodé re-animation as
Tipupa was not universally known or accepted within the Kagyupa tradition.
Gyadangpa does not specify who Tipupa’s teacher was, but does say that Tipupa
passes on the teachings of Maitripa, which agrees with The Blue Annals’ identification of
him as the latter’s pupil. Montsepa states that Tipupa received instructions from Maitripa
and also Ghayadhara [sic], who will be discussed latter.
Jamyang Chökyi Drakpa (‘Jam-dbyangs Chos-kyi Grags-pa) does not include the
pigeon story, but states that Tipupa was born to Gayadhara and a female attendant of
Nāropa’s.
Similarly, Lhatsun Rinchen Namgyal does not include the pigeon story. Instead,
Tipupa gives a description of his own family. He states that he received teaching from his
own (unnamed) father, who had received it from Ghayadhara [sic], who was a pupil of
both Nāropa and Maitripa. Lhatsun appears to make Tipupa of a later generation than that
of Maitripa’s pupils, perhaps to make Rechungpa’s life overlap more easily with his. In
fact Lhatsun states that Tipupa was a child when he received this instruction from both
his father and his father’s teacher, Ghayadhara.
There was a Gayādhara—the spelling in the Kangyur (bKa’—‘gyur) colophons—in
the Lamdré (Lam-‘bras) histories of the Sakya (iSa-skya). There is a Gayadhara (without
the lengthened vowel) who was a pupil of Avadhūti in the lneage of Virupa, the principal
source of the Sakya tradition. He was a principal teacher of Dromi Lotsawa (‘Brog-mi
Lo-tsā-ba, 992–1072) and therefore the source of the Lamdré that is characteristic of the
Sakya school founded in Tibet by a pupil of Dromi Lotsawa. This Gayadhara was
therefore a contemporary of Nāropa and Maitripa.
The identity of Gayadhara presents a problem, as Cyrus Stearns has demonstrated. He
appears to have been conflated with other masters, such as Prajñendraruci, who was the
other principal teacher of Dromi Lotsawa. Prajñendraruci was a teacher of the sexual
practices of Inadrabhuti and is much reviled in Tibetan religious history under such
names as Atsara Marpo (Ātsara dmar-po).
The seventeenth-century Karma Chamay (Karma Chags-med) demonstrates a weak
grasp of history by conflating Gayadhara with Śraddhākaravarman, the teacher of
Rinchen Zangpo (958–1055), while still crediting him with being the father of Tipupa. 101
It is probably a process of conflation that resulted in Gayadhara, who was Dromi
Lotsawa’s teacher and therefore a younger contemporary of Nāropa, (circa, 956–1040)
having his life extended as far as the early twelfth century, building up a number of
names and visits to Tibet.
It appears that Götsang Repa fused together two narrative traditions. In Rechungpa’s
earlier visit, he is told the pigeon story, as it occurs in Tsangnyön Heruka’s biography of
Marpa, but later, when Rechungpa is Tipupa’s pupil, there is no mention of it. Instead,
Tipupa’s father is said to be Ghayadhara [sic] himself, thus not adding an extra
generation as Lhatsun Rinchen Namgyal did. The obscure Candragarbha, who in The Life