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

The biographies 25
anyone else. This is made clear by the final colophon, which employs words and phrases
from Ngendzong’s colophon: 96
This admonition would certainly have contributed to the text remaining for a considerable
time in rare hand-written manuscripts, even after the publication of Tsangnyön Heruka’s
works. Thus it has remained one of the rarest of Tibetan texts, even though one would
expect it to be amongst the most popular, as I am sure it will be when it is eventually
translated into English. Ironically, it was the primary source for Tsangnyön’s The Songs
of Milarepa, which repeated much of the text almost verbatim and was carved as
blockprints to ensure a widespread distribution. Therefore, the ‘secret’ contents of The
Life and Songs of Glorious Shepay Dorje have now become one of the most widely
available literary works of Tibet, and have been translated into western and other oriental
languages.
The date of The Life and Songs of Glorious Shepay
Dorje
The Life and Songs of Glorious Shepay Dorje possesses elements that are the result of a
narrative evolution that has taken place over a few generations of transmission at least.
The text served as a source for Tsangnyön Heruka (1452–1507), who refers to it as
The Songs of Venerable Mila (rJe-btsun Mi-la’i ‘Gur-‘bum [sic]) in his A Commentary
97
on the
Extracts were also derived from it by the
eighth Karmapa, Mikyö Dorje (Mi-bskyod rDo-rje) (1507–54) for his An Ocean of Kagyu
Songs (bKa’-brgyud mGur-mtsho). 98 Thus, it is evidently earlier than the late fifteenth
century
The text is a source for A River of Blessings, which appears to date from the later half
of the fifteenth century at the latest. A River of Blessings is based upon a particular
edition, entitled ‘A Dark Treasury’ (mDzod Nag-ma), made by the principal scribe of the
fourth Shamarpa (1453–1524). This edition became available as this book was going to
press. In it a lama by the name of Mipham Gönpo (Mi-pham mGon-po) is quoted as
attributing the authorship to the third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje, though without any
apparent justification. 99
The text must be later than The Dialogue at Khari (mKha’-ri zhus-lan), the earliest
terma to identify Milarepa as an emanation of Mañjuśrīmitra, an important Indian
antecedent for the Nyingma Dzogchen lineage, and thus belongs to a period of Nyingma
and Kagyu syncretism. Unfortunately I have not been able to ascertain the date of this
terma, though the prophecy reappears in termas from the seventeenth century, as
described in Chapter 3. The Life and Songs of Glorious Shepay Dorje appears to be of a
later stratum of narrative development than that found in Gyadangpa, which suggests that
it is more likely to be from the fourteenth rather than the thirteenth century.
The [Old] Red Annals (Deb-ther dMar-po)
Author: ‘Lord of Men’ Kunga Dorje (Mi′i bDag-po Kun-dga′rDo-rje). Date: completed in
1346. 100