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

The biographies of Rechungpa 22
The printer’s colophon gives the text a slightly different title: The Hundred-thousand
Teachings of Great Ras-pa Mila of the Upper Snows, compiled by the twelve Repa
Siddhas (Gangs-stod Mid-la Ras-chen gyi bKa’-‘bum Chen-mo Grub-thob Ras-pa bCugnyis
kyis bsGrigs-pa). The printer is named as Gu-na-ma-ti, that is, which is
the Sanskrit for Yonten Lodrö (Yon-tan Blo-gros), who was ‘a great repa of the upper
snows, a yogin from the Dakpo region in the east’. The text was printed in ‘the solitary
place of Shambu snow-mountain’. 65
This edition of the text must therefore be the source for the title of Twelve Sons (Buchen
bCu-gnyis), as reported by Deshung Rinpoche.
It appears to have 276 folios. The text was read and photocopied in the 1980s by
Gudrun Hegardt, Its present where abouts is unknown. I was, thanks to the efforts of
Hakan Wahlquist, the present curator with responsibility for the Tibetan collection, able
to obtain an incomplete photocopy, from the collection itself and Gudrun Hegardt’s
uncatalogued texts in her possession. Almost all the photocopies have the extreme end of
the lines on each page is missing. On going to press, two further editions have become
available at the TBRC.
The Authorship of The Life and Songs of Glorious
Shepay Dorje
An examination of the colophon, identical in all three versions, establishes that the title of
the Stockholm xylograph is erroneous in attributing its compilation to twelve great repa
pupils of Milarepa.
The colophon 66 states:
This Life [of Milarepa] has been written down, for the benefit of worthy
meditators, as the words of Ngendzong Tönpa (Ngan-rdzong sTon-pa)
Bodhirāja 67 and the other twelve great [spiritual] sons.
rnam thar ′di skal ldan sgom 68 chen rnams kyi don du/ 69 ngan rdzongs 70
ston pa bodhi 71 radza 72 la sogs pa′i ras pa bu chen bcu gnyis kyi yig ger 73
bkod-pa.
Bodhirāja is Sanskrit for Changchub Gyalpo (Byang-chub rGyal-po), which was
Ngendzong Tonpa’s personal name. Ngendzong Tönpa was the source of the Demchok
Nyengyu (bDe-mchog snyan-rgyud) lineages. This emphasis upon him is an indication of
the background for the creation of The Life and Songs of Glorious Shepay Dorje. In fact,
the The Life and Songs of Glorious Shepay Dorje includes within itself four short texts,
complete with their titles and colophons, one of which was written by Ngendzong Tonpa
alone, and the other three written by him in partnership with another of the twelve repa
sons—Shiwa Ö (Zhi-ba-′od). In the above colophon, the term ‘twelve great repa sons’
(ras-pa bu-chen bcu-gnyis) is qualified by the genitive particle, not the instrumental.
They are not stated to be the compilers of this text (as the title of the Stockholm edition
declares), rather it is their words, whether written or orally transmitted, that have been
compiled. However, it is not purely written works that the compiler used to form The Life
and Songs of Glorious Shepay Dorje, otherwise he would not have written of the danger