Some Remarks on the Textual Transmission and Text of Bu ston

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Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines
stalled in the Gtsug lag khang or Jo khang in Lhasa, roughly some
three thousand and five hundred years had passed since the Buddha's
nirvāṇa. The transmissive instability of the passage that they
used for this calculation is quite evident when we juxtapose and
compare the readings of the four different recensions of the Bka'
chems ka khol ma that are so far more or less widely available. 30 'Gos
Lo tsā ba, too, was keenly aware of this instability and the presence
of different manuscripts having inconsistent readings. For one, it led
him to comment that, while the original manuscript (dpe ngo bo) of
the text had been placed in the reliquary chapel (gdung khang) of Bya
yul [monastery and was therefore no longer accessible], the extant
copies suffer from various interpolations and elisions, so that roughly
dating the Buddha's nirvāṇa on its basis cannot be said to be reliable
(yid brtan pa ma yin) and that for this reason the number of
elapsed years cannot be calculated with a measure of authority. 31
More than four centuries hence, Brag dgon Zhabs drung Dkon
mchog bstan pa rgyas (1802-after 1871) said as much in his celebrated
1864 history of Buddhism in Amdo. 32 This raises such questions as
30
31
32
The passage in question can be found in Chos [b]rgyal srong btsan sgam po'i bka'
chems, The Literary Arts in Ladakh, vol. 1 (Darjeeling: Kargyud Sungrab Nyamso
Khang, 1972), 379, Chos rgyal srong btsan sgam po'i bka' thems [= chems] bka' khol
ma, Ma 'ongs pa'i lung bstan gsal ba'i sgron me, vol. 1 (Leh, 1973), 640 ff., Bka'
chems ka khol ma, ed. Smon lam rgya mtsho (Lanzhou: Kan su'u mi rigs dpe skrun
khang, 1989), 31 ff., and Srong btsan sgam po'i rnam thar bsdus pa, tbrc.org, 14a ff.
Needless to say, the readings of these four texts are often at great variance with
one another. For remarks on this work, see Chab spel Tshe brtan phun tshogs,
"Lha sa gtsug lag khang gi lo rgyus bshad tshul zhib mjug byas pa," Chab spel
tshe brtan phun tshogs gyi gsung rtsom phyogs bsgrigs (Beijing: Krung go'i bod kyi
shes rig dpe skrun khang, 1993), 34-60 — my thanks to my student Ian J. Mac-
Cormack for this important reference —, H. DeCleer's review of J.I. Cabezón and
R. Jackson, eds., Tibetan Literature. Studies in Genre (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications,
1996) in The Tibet Journal 23 (1998), 77-91, and R.M. Davidson, "The Kingly
Cosmogonic Narrative and Tibetan Histories: Indian Origins, Tibetan Space, and
the Bka' chems ka khol ma Synthesis," Lungta [Cosmogony and the Origins, ed. R. Vitali]
16 (2003), 64-83. For a Chinese translation of the Lanzhou "edition" of this
work, see now Lu Yajun, tr., Zhujian shi - Songzan ganbu de yixun (Beijing:
Zhongguo zangxue chubanshe, 2010).
The full text reads in 'GOS, 18b: de yang bka' chems kyi yi ger grags pa ni mang po la
grags pas bkod pa tsam ste / rgyal po srong btsan sgam nyid kyis bkod pa'i yi ge gtsang
ma yin na shin du bka' btsan pa yin mod kyi / ding sang gi yi ge rnams la mang nyung
dang gzhung mi mthun pa mang du mthong zhing / jo bo rjes ka ba bum pa can dang
nye ba'i gdung las phyung ste bris pa'i dpe ngo bo bya yul gyi gdung khang du btsud
nas da ltar gyi yi ge ni gzhan gyi blo la rags rim zhig gnas pa bris pa yin no / zhes kyang
'byung bas shin du yid brtan pa ma yin phyir lo grangs rnams tshad mas grub pa ma yin
no //.
BRAG, 694; for his marvelous work, see now G. Tuttle, "Challenging Central Tibet's
dominance of history: The Oceanic Book, a nineteenth century politicoreligious
geographic history," Mapping the Modern in Tibet, ed. G. Tuttle, Beiträge