Some Remarks on the Textual Transmission and Text of Bu ston

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Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines
you would have been respectfully received, without
having come to harm. Also the Zhouyi expert of the
governor of Bum sangs had said that you would come
as a wondrous manifestation of a Bodhisattva. Even a
clairvoyant monk has saluted you. In connection with
your behavior as well, it is certain that the prophecy
in a text of the Buddha that at the end of five hunderd
years a spiritual friend will come who will give the
source of the holy dharma in the land of the red faced
ones, is you. I, too, shall assist you." And he gave him
a text (chos) of a thousand bam po in length, which was
written with gold ink on dark blue paper.
Given this passage, Bu ston's allegation that the Sba bzhed identified
gdong dmar gyi yul with rgya [nag] was therefore justifiably criticized
by Dpa' bo II, who concludes, after paraphrasing a passage from the
Sba bzhed, that the text's gdong dmar can gyi yul is unequivocally Tibet.
104 Bu ston's citation of the prophecy of Vimalaprabhā is one of an
apparent, but still not identified, canonical source, which undoubtedly
because of its relative vagueness enjoyed great contextual versatility
among Tibetan historiographers. To date, the earliest source to
make a reference to this passage and land that can be dated is Bsod
nams rtse mo's history which refers here to a passage from the
*Vimalaprabhāparipṛcchasūtra. 105 Subsequently, 'Gos Lo tsā ba quoted
it in full, together with a few additions made by Bsod nams rtse mo's
nephew Sa skya Paṇḍita, and criticized it severely in his Rtsis la
'khrul ba sel ba. 106
Lastly, it is only the supplemented Sba bzhed that has an opening
phrase in which the author pays homage that is followed by a line
indicating what the subject-matter will be, and it is precisely there
104
105
106
bshes gnyen yong par lung bstan khyod yin par nges : ngas kyang grogs bya'o zer nas :
mthing shog la gser gyi bris pa'i bam po stong gnang byar dga' ches :.
DPA'(p), 169 [DPA', 168]; see also Huang-Zhou (2010: 12) where bu was rendered
as zi, instead of being identified as a reference to Bu [ston]. As is evident from
DPA'(p), this passage occurs in an interlinear note. Of interest is that, in this particular
reference, the latter but has Rba bzhed, whereas we know from the other
quotations found in his lengthy analysis of the reign of Khri srong lde btsan that
he had access to perhaps as many as five or more versions of the text.
The Lha mo dri ma med pas zhus pa (*Devivimalaprabhāparipṛccha) is cited in the
Chos la 'jug pa'i sgo, SSBB 2, no. 17, 343/1/3, to the effect that Buddhism will come
to the "land of the red face[s]" two thousand and five hundred years after the
nirvana of the Buddha. This very same text and passage — the only variant is
"two thousand five hundred or eight hundred"— is cited in NYANG, 165 [NYANGa,
245, NYANGb, 186, NYANGm, 105a].
See, respectively, the Bla ma rje btsun chen po'i rnam thar, 147/1-8/2, and 'GOS,
12a-4b, 19a-20a.