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

The biographies of Rechungpa 6
principal event in those teachers’ lives, even someone familiar with the sūtra could have
opted to borrow ‘liberation’ (rnam-thar) as the term for a religious biography.
Thus, while early biographies in the Sakya (Sa-skya) tradition are normally termed
‘histories’ (lo-rgyus), the term ‘liberation’ (rnam-thar) is used in the early Kadampa
biographies of masters such as Rinchen Zangpo, Atiśa and Dromtön. It could be argued
that these are later interpolations, but we find that Gampopa, the earliest Kagyu
biographer, whose literary activities are the fruit of his Kadampa training, uses this term
for his biograsphies of Tilopa, Nāropa, Marpa and Milarepa. .