Some Remarks on the Textual Transmission and Text of Bu ston

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Buddhist scriptures. According to the Sba bzhed, this must have taken
place sometime between the years 733 and 737. Parenthetically, as far
as our Tibetan sources go, we only find this legation mentioned in
these texts, as well as in later writings that are expressly related to
them or one or other recension, and nowhere else, not even in Nyang
ral's work which, as is known, depends to a large measure on a version
of the Sba bzhed, or on another work that contained much of the
same information, for its narratives of the imperial period from Khri
srong lde btsan onward. Chinese sources note that diplomatic intercourse
between the two courts was a rather frequent affair but, not
unexpectedly, none contain the observations made in the Sba bzhed-s.
When the party arrived at the narrow pass of Ke'u lo/le, an expert
diviner (ju zhag mkhan) 99 of a certain governor (dbang po) of Bum
sangs, who himself was a courtier 100 of the Chinese imperial court,
related that in three months from today a Bodhisattva would arrive
as an envoy from Tibet, the Western region, whereupon he drew for
him what he would look like, the shape of his body, and his features.
The governor of Bum sangs brought this to the emperor's ear, and
the latter immediately sent an envoy, ordering him not to allow the
Tibetan party to be detained and to ensure that they be given offerings.
Upon their arrival, the Tibetan envoy(s) — the Sba bzhed texts
always use the singular, suggesting that Sang shi played the preeminent
role in this pentad which is not surprising when we keep in
mind that he appears to have belonged to the Sba clan — was honla
formation et l'emploi des mythes politiques dans la religion royale de Srong
btsan sgam po," Études tibétaines dédiées à la mémoire de Marcelle Lalou (Paris:
Adrien Maisonneuve, 1971), 379 ff.
For ju zhag = Ch. zhouyi, that is, Yiqing, Book of Changes, see R.A. Stein, "'Saint et
divin' un titre tibétain et chinois des rois tibétains," Journal asiatique CCLXIX
(1981), 261, 269, n. 87. In a note, The Blue Annals, tr. G. Roerich, 251, presumably
via his learned informant Dge 'dun chos 'phel (1903-52), already identified ju zhag
as a "system of prognostication," although it is not registered in his dictionary;
see Y.N. Roerich, Tibetan-Russian-English Dictionary with Sanskrit Parallels, ed. Y.
Parfionovich and V. Dylykova, Issue 3 (Moscow: Nauka Publishers, 1985), 171.
This expression is comparatively rare in Tibetan texts. Of the available dictionaries,
it is only listed in Dung dkar Blo bzang 'phrin las' Dung dkar tshig mdzod chen
mo (Beijing: Krung go'i bod rig dpe skrun khang, 2002), 874, though its status as
a loan word was not explicitly recognized. Be this as it may, it also occurs in
NYANG, 418 [NYANGb, 490, NYANGm, 451a] — the first has rgya nag gi ju zhag
mkhas pa, "Chinese diviner," the other two wrongly have: ...ju yag mkhas pa — in
connection with Khri gtsug lde btsan's (806-41) plans to build a temple along the
lines of the Gtsug lag khang, Bsam yas, and Skar chung, where the diviner
searched for an appropriate site. Thence, we encounter it in MES, 111.
Only SBp 5 [SBch 90] prefixes his name by spyan snga na, which Tong-Huang
(1990: 6) render by yuxian dachen, "grand-official." For the interpretation of bum
sangs dbang po that I tentatively follow, see Pasang Wangdu-Diemberger (2000:
49, n. 121-2).