Thor bu - Curiosia Indo-Tibetica

Indian Buddhist Biographies (1)

2012-01-15T19:56:00.003+01:00

This very interesting blog entry posted on earlyTibet kickstarted some thoughts about Indian Buddhist biographies. I could not come up with that many off the top of my head, so Sam's assertion, namely that:

"The vast amount of biographical and autobiographical literature produced in Tibet over the centuries is an interesting phenomenon. For a culture so pervaded by the Buddha’s teaching of non-self, there is an awful lot of writing about the lives of individuals. And, interestingly, this is something that was not done to the same extent in India, the primary source of Tibetan Buddhism."

is probably correct. Note, however, that he did say "to the same extent in India". Indeed, "biographies" of Indian Buddhists do exist and some of them are absolutely fascinating. True, there are not that many. Here is one of my favourites from the time of Devapāla (most likely around 810-840 CE). The inscription is usually referred to as the Ghosrawa inscription. It celebrates the life, endowments, and career of one Vīradeva, a native of Nagarahāra (Nangarhar in today's Afghanistan).

Copy of an estampage as published in the Gauḍalekhamālā.

The text is remarkably rich in biographical details. We come to know that Vīradeva's father was one Indragupta, who became a confidante of the king (who is unfortunately not named). He had a faithful wife, Rajjekā (or perhaps: Rajjokā). Their son proved to be a very intelligent boy and he displayed lack of interest in this-worldly affairs from a very early age. After his Vedic studies he went to the Kaniṣka monastery (in today's Peshawar) and became a student of one Sarvajñaśānti. At some point he came to Mahābodhi to bow to the Vajrāsana. After he had done so he went to meet his compatriot monks at the Yaśovarmapura monastery (this toponym to my knowledge is still unidentified). He became so famous that he was venerated by Devapāla himself. Later on he was appointed to a high office at Nālandā and became a munificent donor for several important buildings.

(For editions see Kielhorn in Indian Antiquary vol. XVII - which I do not have at hand now -; the Gauḍalekhamālā, and Tsukamoto's wonderful collection of Indian Buddhist inscriptions. Here I tried to follow the estampage as much as possible, but several problems remain. Bear with me until I get hold of Kielhorn's article.)

@ śrīmān asau jayati sattvahitapravṛtta-
sanmānasādhigatatattvanayo munīndraḥ|
kleśātmanāṃ duritanakradurāsadāntaḥ
saṃsārasāgarasamuttaraṇaikasetuḥ|| 1

asyāsmadguravo babhūvur abalāḥ saṃbhūya hartuṃ manaḥ
kā lajjā yadi kevalo na balavān asmi trilokaprabhau|
ity ālocayateva mānasabhuvā yo dūrato varjitaḥ
śrīmān viśvam aśeṣam etad avatād bodhau sa vajrāsanaḥ|| 2

asty Uttarāpathavibhūṣaṇabhūtabhūmir
deśottamo Nagarahāra iti pratītaḥ|
tatra dvijātir uditoditavaṃśajanmā
nāmnEndragupta iti rājasakho babhūva|| 3

Rajjekayā dvijavaraḥ sa guṇī gṛhiṇyā
yukto rarāja kalayāmalayā yathenduḥ|
lokaḥ pativratakathāparibhāvanāsu
saṃkīrtanaṃ prathamam eva karoti yasyāḥ|| 4

tābhyām ajāyata sutaḥ sutarāṃ vivekī
yo bāla eva kalitaḥ paralokabuddhyā|
sarvopabhogasubhage 'pi gṛhe viraktaḥ
pravrajyayā sugataśāsanam abhyupetum|| 5

vedān adhītya sakalān kṛtaśāstracintaḥ
śrīmatKaniṣkam upagamya mahāvihāram|
ācāryavaryam atha sa praśamapraśasyaṃ
Sarvajñaśāntim anugamya tapaś cacāra|| 6

so 'yaṃ viśuddhaguṇasaṃbhṛtabhūrikīrteḥ
śiṣyo 'nurūpaguṇaśīlayaśo'bhirāmaḥ|
bālenduvat kalikalaṅkavimuktakāntir
vandyaḥ sadā munijanair api Vīradevaḥ|| 7

Vajrāsanaṃ vanditum ekadā'tha
śrīmanMahābodhim upāgato 'sau|
draṣṭuṃ tato 'gāt sahadeśibhikṣūn
śrīmadYaśovarmapuraṃ vihāram|| 8

tiṣṭhann atheha suciraṃ pratipattisāraḥ
śrīDevapālabhuvanādhipalabdhapūjaḥ|
prāptaprabhaḥ pratidinodayapūritāśaḥ
pūṣeva dāritatamaḥprasaro rarāja|| 9

bhikṣor ātmasamaḥ suhṛd bhuja iva śrīSatyabodher nijo
Nālandāparipālanāya niyataḥ saṅghasthiter yaḥ sthitaḥ|
yenaitau sphuṭam IndraśailamukuṭaŚrīcaityacūḍāmaṇī
śrāmaṇyavratasaṃvṛtena jagataḥ śreyo'rtham utthāpitau|| 10

Nālandayā ca paripālitayeha satyā
śrīmadvihāraparihāravibhūṣitāṅgyā|
udbhāsito 'pi bahukīrtivadhūpatitve
yaḥ sādhu sādhur iti sādhujanaiḥ praśastaḥ|| 11

cintājvaraṃ śamayatārtajanasya dṛṣṭyā
Dhanvantarer api hi yena hataḥ prabhāvaḥ|
yaś cepsitārthaparipūrṇamanorathena
lokena kalpatarutulyatayā gṛhītaḥ|| 12

tenaitad atra kṛtam ātmamanovad uccair
Vajrāsanasya bhavanaṃ bhuvanottamasya|
saṃjāyate yad abhivīkṣya vimānagānāṃ
KailāsaMandaramahīdharaśṛṅgaśaṅkā|| 13

sarvasvopanayena sattvasuhṛdām audāryam abhyasyatā
saṃbodhau vihitaspṛhaṃ saha guṇair visparddhivīryaṃ tathā|
atrasthena nije nijāv iha bṛhatpuṇyādhikāre sthite
yena svena yaśodhvajena ghaṭitau vaṃśāv Udīcīpathe|| 14

sopānamārgam iva{ṃ} muktipurasya kīrtim
etāṃ vidhāya kuśalaṃ yad upāttam asmāt|
kṛtvāditaḥ sapitaraṃ guruvargam asya
saṃbodhim etu janarāśir aśeṣa eva|| 15

yāvat kūrmo jaladhivalayāṃ bhūtadhātrīṃ bibharti
dhvāntadhvaṃsī tapati tapano yāvad evograraśmiḥ|
snigdhā lokāḥ śiśiramahasā yāmavatyaś ca yāvat
tāvat kīrtir jayatu bhuvane Vīradevasya śubhrā|| 16

Mahāpratisarā Mahāvidyārājñī (Hidas 2011)

2012-01-05T18:00:00.000+01:00

After many years of work, the critical edition of the Mahāpratisarā ("The Great Amulet, Great Queen of Spells") is finally out as the 636th volume of the Śatapiṭaka series.

Papers of Brian H. Hodgson

2011-07-28T22:34:00.000+02:00

A wonderful, much-awaited catalogue.

Lost and found

2011-06-24T23:58:00.005+02:00

[Make sure you read the UPDATE below] First of all, a small rant. Why can we not have something like this for Sanskrit manuscripts? Hats off to Prof. Witkam, especially since he scanned this book as well: The Art of the Book in India (you will have to scroll down the list to 'Jeremiah P. Losty'). The introduction of this very nice publication has a few things to say about copper plates as well and it is there that we find the image on the left of this text on p. 11. The caption reads: "Single copper plate issued at Monghyr in c. AD 854, with Pāla seal riveted on. Iveagh Bequest."

Get the book if you want to read some of the text, this image is not very good. On and off some akṣaras are legible on the paper version. For now you will have to believe me that the seal reads śrīdevapāladevasya. Yes, this seems to be the Monghyr copper plate of Devapāla, "the first Sanskrit inscription that was ever brought to the notice of European scholars" as Kielhorn says (Indian Antiquary, September 1892, p. 253 ff.). This issue of the IA is available at DLI, you can check the references given there for the first publication and other studies.

What is interesting here is that as of 1892 the plate got lost (again paraphrasing Kielhorn here, perhaps the plate was lost even earlier). Apparently it somehow made it into the Iveagh collection, where it was photographed by Losty. Why on earth would this collection of paintings (famous Rembrandts included) and other things have the Munghyr copper plate, I have no idea. But it seems to be there, just a few dozen miles away from me, at a place called Kenwood House in Hampstead. Stay tuned for more.

Meanwhile, to modestly celebrate the resurfacing (at least for me) of this inscription, here is one of my favourite verses from the edict:

bhrāmyadbhir vijayakrameṇa karibhiḥ svām eva Vindhyāṭavīm

uddāmaplavamānabāṣpapayaso dṛṣṭāḥ punar bāndhavāḥ |

Kambojeṣu ca yasya vājiyuvabhir dhvastānyarājaujaso

heṣāmiśritahāriheṣitaravāḥ kāntāś ciraṃ vīkṣitāḥ ||

And here is Kielhorn's translation (1892):

"In the course of conquest his elephants, roaming over their own Vindhya forest, met again with their kindred who shed plentiful tears (of joy); and, after he had crushed the power of other kings, his young chargers in Kamboja at last saw their mates, and it was a pleasure to hear them loudly neigh at each other."

And that of Wilkins (Esq.) (1799):

"He who, marching through many countries making conquests, arrived with his elephants in the forests of the mountains of Beendhya, where seeing again their long lost families, they mixed their mutual tears; and who going to subdue other princes, his young horses meeting their females at Komboge, they mutually neighed for joy."

Crying elephants: that sounds familiar.

UPDATE: Ok, forget about the whole thing. The plate was known to have resurfaced, cf. Bhandarkar's list and EI XVIII, pp. 304 f. and Pl.

Woe unto you, scribes

2011-06-21T23:08:00.006+02:00

Another Prajñāpāramitā ms., source here.

I have just finished reading "Bengal, Bihar, Nepal? Problems of provenance in 12th-century illuminated Buddhist manuscripts" published in two parts in Oriental Art, vol. XXXV (1989). In this otherwise extremely well-researched and interesting article J. P. Losty writes the following about an Aṣṭasāhasrikā ms. now held at the British Library (Or. 14268):

Its colophon, however, is worth quoting as it both suggests a date and offers food for intriguing speculations (Fig. 25). The ye dharmā verse is followed (after another verse expressing pious Buddhistic sentiments beginning with lokaṃ prāpayituṃ) by (f. 292v):

kāle[']smin bahudṛṣṭiśa[=sa]ṅkulakalau pāṭhe [']pi dūraṅgate

nānābhedam anekapustakagatan dṛṣṭvādhunā śraddhayā

kupyadvādigajendrakumbhadalane bhadreṇa yā śodhitā

lokārthaṃ hariṇā mayā parahitaiḥ seyaṃ budhair guphyatāṃ || [[...]]

Here the pious donation statement breaks off. A literal translation would be: "At this time in the Kali-era of tumult of many view-points, when the establishment of good readings is not possible on account of the many gaps in various books, now let this [MS], which has been edited for the general benefit with faith by me Hari who am skillful in breaking open the temples of enraged elephant-lords of debate, be strung by the well intentioned wise. [[...]]" [[...]]

Although at first sight a personal statement and not a scribal formula, one other manuscript is known to me which contains the identical verse along with its preceding one. This is Grierson MS 1 in the India Office Library, written in a very similar, if not identical, hooked Nepalese script of the same period, but this time with a donor, one Luṃṇībhāro, and with covers illuminated in the Nepalese style of the late 12th century. However, this seems to be the only other occurence of these verses, and I propose for the time being to treat them as personal scribal statements and not as standard formulae. It is difficult otherwise to account for his stating that his name is Hari, which is odd because this is a Hindu name and also because unaccompanied by the usual nāmnā. He also of course has no Buddhist monastic titles to justify his portrayal of himself as a skilled debater in Buddhist councils. Be that as it may, he must logically be either a Nepalese writing either in Nepal or Bihar, or an Indian who had gone to Nepal and adopted a typically Nepalese script.

As to dating, the scribe's gloomy remarks suggest a period of great upheaval. On palaeographic grounds, a date in the second half of the 12th century or early 13th is most likely by comparison with dated manuscripts using this script. The evidence of the miniatures suggests a date at the end of this period. Both India and Nepal experienced upheavals in the last decade of the 12th century. In Nepal, the so-called Ṭhakurī dynasty had collapsed, three claimants were fighting for the throne, and feudatories from outside the Kathmandu Valley were establishing their independence. [[...]] In India, of course, the Muslim armies swept down the Gangetic plain towards Bihar and Bengal, and the ferocious onslaught was such that the Buddhist monasteries with their great libraries were all destroyed by the early decades of the 13th century. Either event could be referred to by the phrase "in the Kali-era of tumult of many viewpoints," although so apocalyptic a phrase suggests the latter.

Our scribe tells us that he is a skilled debater, often victorious in the philosophical debates that took place at the great monasteries, and hence we would suppose him to be more than a humble copyist. The image comes irresistibly to mind of this famous debater sitting in the ruins of the library at Nālandā, piecing together from what was available the text of this famous scripture. It would, however, be sounder in fact to resist this image, as we must remember that our scribe is using a Nepalese script. It is difficult to see why a Nepalese scholar would have gone to India at such a time to copy such a well-known text. [[...]]

We could, however, suppose that our scribe was in Nepal, viewing events in distant India from the still unviolated Kathmandu Valley. But would a Nepalese scribe speak so slightingly of the libraries of the Buddhist vihāras of his own country, so that it was impossible to write the text of so well-known a scripture without recourse to the Indian libraries? This is unlikely. However, if the scribe were an Indian monk who had taken refuge in Nepal and was using a well-established Nepalese script (albeit with backslidings towards Siddhamātṛkā), then his feeling of cultural isolation, running even to peevishness in his final remarks, is perfectly comprehensible. [[...]]

Another possibility is that our scribe was not actually in the Valley itself, but in one of the towns outside, and hence he thought that it was not possible for him to establish good readings. [[...]]

No firm conclusions can be drawn as yet about the provenance of this manuscript in the light of the above speculations. However, the most likely seems to be a Nepalese scholar (or possibly an Indian) established temporarily in a town such as Dhulikhel in the period 1190-1200, earning a humble living as a scribe, fulminating about the disasters in both the Valley and India itself, [[...]]

To sum up: Losty argues that the statement in verse is made by the scribe of the manuscript. This man was called Hari, therefore probably a Hindu. His statement suggests turbulent times, which must be events at the end of the 12th century in India or Nepal, possibly both. However, he carefully points out that this is his (informed) speculation and no firm conclusions should be drawn from it.

The image of the fulminating scribe faced with tragic events is a very attractive one. Unfortunately (or fortunately), it is also untrue. For the rather clever verse hides not a Hindu scribe, but a famous Buddhist author who lived about four centuries before.

Let us take another look at the verse. The image of "breaking open the temples of elephants" is exclusively associated with lions in poetic imagery (they also extract a kind of pearl from there, but this is a story for another day). Bells start ringing that the author is trying to be clever, for "hari" does indeed mean lion. Is he trying to trick us anywhere else? Indeed, he does: "bhadra" is to be construed with the lion, therefore the name in hiding is Haribhadra.

I could not trace Grierson MS 1, but I would be very surprised if it were not a Buddhist ms. linked to the Prajñāpāramitā. The same verses also occur at the end of the Ratnaguṇasaṃcayagāthā (at least in Vaidya's edition, see Mahāyāna-sūtra-saṃgraha, part I, p. 397), although a little bit garbled. The present transmission is actually very helpful in emending that edition (especially after we read gṛhyatām for the unnatural guphyatām).

In other words, there is no fulminating scholar-scribe, these are the words of the 8/9th-century Haribhadra. The "crisis" described therein does not seem to refer to any real events. It seems that this is just a good old Buddhist cliché about our ever-decaying world.

The moral of the story is of course not that Losty was wrong. Actually, the reasoning is ingenious and we would be hard pressed to find a better one if we were not in possession of Haribhadra's works. The lesson seems to be that we must co-operate, textual scholars and art historians. It is difficult to believe that the text would not have rung a bell had it been exposed to Buddhologists (ok, I don't like the name either). Conversely, textual scholars must have written equally wrong statements based on superficial observations of artworks. I would know, I could not tell one miniature from the other even if I were to look at them for hours. The other lesson is never to trust secondary literature, even if it is written by the most eminent scholars of the field.

Help with numbers

2011-06-17T18:53:00.002+02:00

Dear readers,

I would really appreciate if you could give an honest opinion about this image. For the time being I will not reveal where it is from because I do not want to influence your judgement (however, I am very grateful to the person who scanned it and [s]he will be revealed in due course). Suffice to say that we are probably looking at the early tenth century. The words are samvat [XX]. What I'm really after here are the numerals [XX], especially the first one. Leave your vote in the comment field and my everlasting gratitude will haunt you.

Nice verses on a vidyādhara

2011-06-11T20:49:00.004+02:00

Third-type vidyādharas? Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

I came across these nice verses in the Pṛthivīrājavijaya of Jayānaka (ed. Ojhā). One of Pṛthivīrāja's ancestors is hunting in the forest when he comes across a white palace (actually, now I see that his was built by him) where he finds an odd fellow sound asleep. The king cannot figure out for a while what the man is, although the bees in v. 37 seem to give it away. The translations are idiomatic (traduttore trattore and all that).

puṣpasrajām amaralokabhuvām upāstim
ārabdhavadbhir alibhir madhuraṃ dhvanadbhiḥ |
vidyādharo 'yam iti kaiścana mūrtimadbhir
vidyākṣarair iva samāśritayāmikatvam || 4.37

Like formidable embodied syllables of a spell,
bees humming sweetly "This is a vidyādhara!"
were his night-watchmen as they started to worship
his garland of flowers from the world of immortals.

[...]

taṃ vīkṣya bhūpatir acintayad eṣa tāvad
asvapnatāṃ vyabhicaraty atha śeṣaśāyī |
devo 'yam etad api nāsti sa dṛśyate yais
teṣāṃ bhavanti na hi divyadṛśāṃ vikalpāḥ || 4.39

The king beheld him and thought to himself:
"Well, that's odd: he's asleep (therefore not a god)*;
I have it! It's the god [Viṣṇu], he sleeps on a snake!
But that can't be either: for those with a divine vision
would not entertain doubts after having seen Him."

*Gods do not sleep.

gandharvasiddhagaṇakiṃnaralakṣaṇāni
nātrāsate na ca manuṣyaviśeṣam enam |
saṃbhāvayāmi na ca vaiśravaṇasya yo 'pi
dhartā naraḥ spṛśati so 'pi mamopadhānam || 4.40

He does not bear any of the signs of gandharvas, siddhas,
kiṃnaras! But he is not some special human either.
Nor can he be that odd fellow who carries Kubera,
for he too touches my footstool (in obedience).

nāgo 'pi nāyam uragatvavibhinnayāpi
mūrtyā na hi vyabhicaranty ahayaḥ phaṇitvam |
lobhasvabhāvamalinā khalu jātir eṣā
ratnaṃ varākadhanavad vijahāti nāṅkāt || 4.41

No, he's no nāga. Though they shed their slithering bodies,
they could never hide their hoods. What's more: that lot
is well-known to be greedy, never would they cast away
precious jewels as if they were worthless. (But he does!**)

**In a previous verse some jewels seem to fall off the sleeping fellow.

vidyādharatvam api yad †dvija†pādalepa-
kaukṣeyakāñjanamalatrayakalmaṣaṃ syāt |
tat tāvad asya na bhavaty atha yaḥ prakāras
turyas tam asya mukhadarśanato vidhāsye || 4.42

(We all know:) vidyādharas would be smeared
on their feet, on their eyes, or else, carry*** a sword.
No sign of those on this fellow. Let me just check
his mouth whether he be of that fourth kind.

***This is weird. How can we take a sword to be a kalmaṣa? I also wish someone could tell me how to take 'dvija-' here.

Anyhow, the king does proceed to examine the mouth of the funny being. Just as he does so, the man's mouth opens slightly and his 'pill' (gulikā, later said to be a siddhagulikā) pops out and rolls under the king's foot. This was the source of his powers, and at the same time a sure sign to the king that he is a fourth-type vidyādhara (the ones who pop pills so to speak). The vidyādhara wakes up in terror as he realizes that his pill is gone. I find the next image quite funny: he bows his head in shame as if looking for places down here - he knows that his career as a high-flier is over. Well worth a read, Jayānaka is a good poet.

[By the way: if you do decide to download the book, DLI has it in several 'versions' (same book, multiple scans). One of them is legible, but there are pages missing. These can be recovered from the other version, which is an inferior scan. Finally, a third version cannot be accessed, the link is broken or something.]

JA 298/2

2011-04-28T19:51:00.002+02:00

The latest online volume of the Journal Asiatique is full of goodies. To wit:

pp. 389-420 Koichi Shinohara, "The All-Gathering Maṇḍala Initiation Ceremony in Atikūṭa's Collected Dhāraṇī Scriptures. Reconstructing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Ritual."
pp. 421-493 Isabelle Ratié, "Le non-être, une preuve de l'existence du Soi? La notion d'abhāva dans la philosophie de la Pratyabhijñā."
pp. 535-548 Christopher I. Beckwith and Michael L. Walter, "On the Meaning of Old Tibetan rje-blon during the Tibetan Empire Period."
pp. 549-571 Nathan W. Hill, "Personal Pronouns in Old Tibetan."

I especially enjoyed reading about the new interpretation of rje blon, something that sounded 'scratchy' back in the days when we read Old Tibetan inscriptions.

Nāgabuddhi's Vyavastholi[kā] sect. 1 ed. by Kimiaki Tanaka

2011-04-23T15:06:00.003+02:00

In case you missed it (as I have), here is a link to an article by Dr. Kimiaki Tanaka in which he edits the first section of a very important work from the Guhyasamāja tradition. The English abstract pretty much puts everything into perspective, so there is no need to repeat the background information here.

Two words about the name of the author and the title. The Japanese scholar in his earlier articles rather constantly referred to him as Nāgabodhi. This is based on the Tibetan rendering of the name, Klu'i byang chub. However, at one point it was noticed (sorry for not looking up the exact date) that the work from which Tanaka reconstructed much of Nāgabodhi's ouvre, the Vajrācāyanayottama of Rāhulagupta, does mention the name in the form Nāgabuddhi. I prefer to mention him in this form, however, it should be kept in mind that the Vajrācāryanayottama is a rather late work, and it is possible that the name is not the 'original', but a corrupted form. Earlier works mentioning this author must be awaited to settle this question.

As for the title, Dr. Tanaka consistently prints [Samājasādhana]vyavasthālī, although he does note that it is usually spelt Vyavastholi (e.g. the first verse has Vyavastholir nigadyate). It is to be noted that a later authority, the Gūḍhapadā, has a similar form: Vyavastholikā[yāṃ] (ms. 50v). While the first form is doubtless the 'correct' Sanskrit, it cannot be an accident that the Middle-Indic form pops up this often and it should probably be retained, especially as there does not seem to be any semantic difference.

If you have ever tried your luck with what seems to be the single surviving manuscript of this work (more precisely: the photographs thereof in Göttingen), you will know what an arduous task it is to make any sense of some of the blurry photographs Rahula Sankrtyayana took. We must therefore be extremely grateful to Dr. Tanaka for undertaking this work. In what follows I will try to offer some readings that might help to constitute a better text. This is in no way meant to criticize the edition (based on which I corrected countless mistakes in my own partial transcription).

p. 451 (48): tato yogānuyogātiyogamahāyogāḥ krameṇa mahāvajradharam ātmānaṃ niṣpādya ... It is probably better to read the visarga as -nu-, therefore: ... -mahāyogānukrameṇa ...

p. 449 (50): for syandante it is perhaps better to read spandante, and correct varddhamānā to varddhamānāḥ.

p. 442 (57): for yāvad āyanti sāmagrīn na labhate ... we should perhaps read: yāvad utpattisāmagrīn na labhate. In the same sentence we are probably dealing with clumsy scribal punctuation, hence for ... tiṣṭhatīti niścayam āha| we should read ... tiṣṭhatīti niścaya āha, that is to say: tiṣṭhatīti niścaya[ḥ| ]āha| with the āha introducing a new question by the disciple.

p. 441 (58): I wonder if we should conjecture idam idānīntanaṃ madīyakalevaram... for idānīn taṃ madīyaṃ kalevaram...

p. 441 (58) - 440 (59): anenotpattikramabhāvakair sā yogānuyogakrameṇa niṣpannadevatāmūrtir deśayati does not seem to yield any sense. I think we should rather read: anenotpattikramabhāvukānāṃ yogānuyogakrameṇa niṣpannadevatāmūrtiṃ deśayati|

p. 440 (59): for manuṣyāṇām arthaḥ kartun na śaknuta iti kṛtvā it would be better to read manuṣyāṇām arthaḥ kartuṃ na śakyata iti kṛtvā. On the same page we have: tathā 'ntarābhavastho 'pi saptāhātyaye(=je) nānādisvavikalpavāsanāprabandhodbhūtakarmaṇā saṃcodite saty utpatti gṛhṇāty ... Better read tathāntarābhavam api saptāhāt [saṃ?]tyajya anādisvavikalpavāsanāprabandhodbhūtakarmaṇā saṃcodita utpattiṃ gṛhnāty ...? [later add.: make sure you read the first comment for this]

p. 435 (64): for punsān read pumān.

Sources of the Sampuṭa/Sampuṭodbhava

2011-04-12T11:49:00.002+02:00

I greatly enjoyed the conference at LIRI. Here are some images from my handout.

Did Vajrapāṇi pass gas?

2011-03-30T21:26:00.003+02:00

The short answer is: he did not. So why do we think he did?

"Even more dramatic is the Bhūtaḍamara [sic!], which begins with the sly Śiva requesting that Vajrapāṇi kill all the evil ones in the world, a category that normally includes Śiva himself. However, Vajrapāṇi agrees that this is a good idea and instantly slaughters all the other gods (Indra, Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and other available deities), whom he immediately revives with an enormous passing of gas from his anus, a hilarious transformation of the gods into an object of farce." [Ronald Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism, p. 333]

Let us look at the incriminating passage in the Derge Kanjur (vol. Dza, 238a3-7, but I quote only the end):

de nas gsungs pa tsam gyis dpal Rdo rje 'chang gi shangs kyi bu ga nas rlung chen po ro 'tsho bar byed pa byung bar gyur te | [...]

A 'b' seems to make quite a lot of difference here. The reading is shangs, which of course means nostril, as opposed to bshangs, excrement. This is a small emendation then, but the note to the sentence (ibid. p. 416) does not tell us so (incidentally, the note again has Bhūtaḍamara).

Let us look at the Sanskrit then, before accusing Vajrapāṇi of uncouth behaviour:

athāsmin bhāṣita{|}mātre śrīvajradhara [=dharo] nāsikāt {||} mahāpavana[ṃ] mṛtasaṃji[¯]vani[ṃ] nisṛ[jati] sma || (Kaiser Library 244 = NGMPP C 27/3, 2r)

athāsmin bhāṣitamātre śrīvajradharanāsikātaḥ mahāpavana [=pavano] mṛtasaṃjīvanī niścarati | (Göttingen Xc 14/50 [1], 1v)

We could of course argue what emendations to propose. These are ad hoc, I have not studied the grammatical peculiarities of the Bhūtaḍāmara. The important bit is 'nāsikāt' and 'nāsikātaḥ', which both mean 'from the nostril'. Emitting 'wind' from the nostril to revive the dead is well-attested elsewhere (e.g. the Catuṣpīṭha 1.2.), but we do not have to go into that here. Vajrapāṇi can therefore be exonerated.

Yes, those are flames. Image borrowed from here.

Cāndravyākaraṇa in Copenhagen

2011-02-13T14:54:00.002+01:00

A very handsome Nepalese ms. of the Candrasūtra/Cāndravyākaraṇa can be viewed by clicking on the above link.

As far as I could see the date is not mentioned on the website. The versified colophon gives: muniyugasamudre ca (sic!), which would correspond to 7-4-4 = NS 447 = 1327 CE. The scribe also gives the time of the day, which is a bit unusual. I guess copying out a grammar is not an altogether unpleasant activity on a Monday night.

Liebster blog award

2011-02-04T18:32:00.000+01:00

The aim of the Liebster Blog Award is to bring recognition and exposure to small blogs who have less than 300 followers. If you accept the award, you then agree to tag three other small blogs that you would like to recommend to others. Thor bu received this award on http://konyhologia.blogspot.com, a site in Hungarian maintained by a dear colleague from back home.

So, to keep the ball rolling, I would like to nominate the following three blogs for the Liebster Blog Award:

1. Sārasvataṃ cakṣuḥ (http://pratibham.blogspot.com/)
2. Tibeto-logic (http://tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/)
3. Granthinām (http://www.danielstender.com/granthinam/)

A Prajñāpāramitā from the reign of Vigrahapāla III

2011-01-24T17:40:00.006+01:00

I have just browsed through the manuscript images made available online at himalayanart.org and came across this very attractive Aṣṭasāhasrikā (what else!). Though lacking pretty pictures, fortunately the last page with a fairly long colophon (actually, two colophons) is also displayed.

Here is the very first attempt of trying to crack it/them:

ye dharmā [etc.] deyadharmo [']yaṃ pravaramahāyānayāyinaḥ paramopāsaka-bhoesataṣo(?) Hāsillasya(?) (I'm in trouble here) yad atra puṇyaṃ [etc.] mahārājādhirāja-parameśvara-paramasaugata-śrīNayapāladeva-pādānudhyāta-śrīmadVigrahapāladeva-pravardhamāna-kalyāṇavijayarājye samvat 15 phālguna-kṛṣṇa-dvitīyāyāṃ niṣpāditam iti || || śrī[ma]n-Nālandāvasthita-dharmabhāṇaka-Ānandena likhitam iti || ||

Well, one always likes to see Nālandā smiling at the reader from a Sanskrit manuscript. It's also good to know that dharmabhāṇakas sometimes did copy manuscripts. As for the rest, nothing really new. We already know that Nayapāla was Vigrahapāla (III)'s precursor on the throne, and we know that Vigrahapāla ruled for at least 15 years - actually, much beyond that: the last figure I've seen was 26 years. However, the rest is rather interesting:

āryaprajñāprāmitāyai namaḥ||
āsīt sāttvikajāniko (hm...) guṇagaṇaiḥ prakhyātakīrtiḥ purā
nāmnā Boddharaṇaḥ samāhitayaśā sūnus tato [']bhūt priyaḥ|
yo 'sau nūtanakarmabhiḥ pratinavāṃ lokārthasaṃpādikāṃ
prajñāpāramitām akārayad imām Ūlūkanāmāhvayaḥ||
śrīmadGopāladevasya rājyasamvatsare 'ṣṭame|
niṣpādya saṃpratiṣṭhāpya prāptaṃ puṇyam anuttaram||
sādhu(?) yat tena puṇyena lokāḥ syur api bhāginaḥ|
prajñāpāramitopāyabodhimārgaparāyaṇāḥ || ||

So there was a man called Boddharaṇa, whose son, Ūlūka (rather unfortunate name nowadays), renovated (?) the manuscript during the reign of Gopāla, year 8, i.e. roughly 60 years later. We probably cannot see the restored pages (if this is what is talked about here), but it is rather strange that three generations later the scribe's hand is virtually the same as above.

UPDATE: note the two readings suggested by HI in the comments. I think the Tibetan scribble at the bottom says: dpal nā lan dar gnas pa'i chos smra [ba?] kun dga' zhes bya bas bris pa'o, a translation of the scribe identifying himself.

UPDATE 2 (Jun 19, 2011): This colophon has already been studied in Huntington & Huntington 1990 'Leaves from the Bodhi Tree' as item 58. Their readings differ somewhat.

Tsongkhapa vs. Nepalese vajrācāryas

2011-01-19T12:38:00.002+01:00

This rather catty remark comes from the fifth chapter of the Sngags rim chen mo (p. 192)*:

phyag dang sems bskyed pa'i yul gyi sems can so so ba rnams dang nga rgyal gzung ba dang bka' bsgo ba'i yul la sogs pa la so so'i nyams bton pa'i gar mang po byed pa Phreng ba'i lugs su 'dod pa ni| Phreng ba dang Man snye dang Kha sbyor gyi 'grel pa gzhan gnyis dang Sgyu dra'i 'grel pa gnyis la sogs pa'i gzhung khungs thub sus kyang ma bshad pas| spros pa la dga' ba'i bod [pa] 'ga' zhig gis bal po'i sngags pa mi mkhas pa kha cig la brten nas rang gi blos btags pa tsam du zad do||

*Rgyal ba khyab bdag rdo rje 'chang chen po'i lam gyi rim pa gsang ba kun gyi gnad rnam par phye ba, Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang 1995, based on the Sku 'bum Byams pa gling blocks.

Contemporary Indian literature in Hungarian

2010-12-21T13:00:00.000+01:00

A nice selection of contemporary Indian literature (poems, sketches, etc.) translated from the original languages into Hungarian can be accessed here.

A minimalist's Pratipattisāraśataka

2010-12-04T17:34:00.002+01:00

The second half of the Pratipattisāraśataka survives in the codex specified below. I know of no other available manuscripts for this work and as far as I know this fragment has not hitherto received any attention. The author is reputedly (an) Āryadeva*; for the Tibetan see Tōh. 2334; for a commentary by one Herukadeva see Tōh. 2335. The emendations offered here are of an ad-hoc nature, they do not reflect a deep reading of the text, or the translation, or the commentary.

*For the time being I distinguish three Āryadevas: i) the author of the CMP and perhaps the CVP; ii) the Catuṣpīṭha Āryadeva with several works; iii) the present, post-Hevajra Āryadeva.

National Archives Kathmandu I-1697 vi bauddhastotra 14 [= NGMPP B 24/27]
Ff. 3 (numbered 4 to 6), 30 x 6 cm, palm-leaf, Gauḍīya script (12-13th c.?).

[ ] - presumably missing
{ } - to be deleted
< > - addition in ms.
<| |> cancellation in ms.
(( )) difficult to read, suggestions welcome
x = number of missing verses / illegible akṣara
gemination, homorganic nasals standardized

Image from here.

[ya](4recto1)t prajñopā[ya]yor aik[y]aṃ sarvākāraikasamvaram|
sāvadhūtī vidhūtātmā madhyamā pratipat [= pratipan] matā|| x+1

ādimadhyāntasaṃkalpasambandhānavadhonataḥ|
śuddhasphaṭikasaṃkāśaḥ prakā(4recto2)śaḥ sāvadhūtikā|| x+2

sarvākārasamākārapratyavekṣāvilakṣaṇā|
lakṣ[y]alakṣaṇasaṃkṣiptākāraikam avadhūtikā|| x+3

yatrānando gaganamahimādhīnasambodhaśuddhaḥ
sa(4recto3)rvākāropacitasakalābhogasambhogagamyaḥ|
bhāvagrāmaḥ samarasatayā svapnanirmāṇatulyaḥ
śāntājñānāvaraṇavi[´]sadā sāvadhūtī viśuddhā{ḥ}|| x+4

dha(4recto4)rmasambhoganirmāṇamahāsukham iti kramaḥ|
mahāsukhasvabhāvena samaṃ cakracatuṣṭayam|| x+5

saṃkhyāpi kalpanārūḍhā saṃkhyeyānavadhonataḥ|
dvayor e(4recto5)va viyogātmā samarasyā'mbaropamaḥ|| x+6

vyomny upādhibhedo [']pi nirvikāratayā na hi|
nānātṛṇatarau dagdhe vane kiṃ bhedalakṣaṇam|| x+7

tattvāsadṛśa(4recto6)rūpatvaṃ saṃvṛto bhedadarśanam|
saṃvṛttir yatra naivāsti tatra kā paramārthatā|| x+8

bhāvā eva svarūpeṇa niḥsvabhāvā iti sthiti[ḥ]|
na hi vandhyāsutādīnā[ṃ] svarūpasya vicāra(4recto7)ṇā|| x+9

aparam api yatroddiśyate sūkṣmarūpaṃ
na bhavati khalu tattvaṃ deśanāmātram etat|
paramasukha<|ka|>rasaikasvacchasantānabhāsaṃ
sphuradanubhavasāraṃ tattvam ālambya (4verso1) śūnyam|| x+10

ni[ḥ]svabhāvāḥ svarūpeṇa bhāvāḥ kalpitarūpakāḥ|
prakṛtiḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ ye cāsau niḥsvabhāvatā|| x+11

svecchāyattasamāveśavāsanābalaviplutāḥ|
vi(4verso2)kalpyate tu jāyante bāhya[¯]rthaphalitā iva|| x+12

aho viṣayavaicitryam ekakālam anekadhā|
kadambavādyadhvanivat kalpanām anugacchati|| x+13

ekasminn eva bhāve (4verso3) ca nānākārārthakalpanā|
na tasyāsti tadātmatvam icchā[mā]tropakalpit<|e|>am|| x+14

icchāpi bhrāntacittānām avastuny api jāyate|
pūrvapūrvamanaskārasaṃ(4verso4)skāraphalitātmikā|| x+15

svarūpānavabodhena cittaṃ bāhyeṣu dhāvati|
bālakasyaiva duṣparśa [= duḥsparśaḥ] svayaṃ spṛṣṭāni duṣyati|| x+16

tac cittaṃ kalpitākāraṃ bahi(4verso5)rarthaś ca kalpitaḥ|
anayoḥ kalpanāhānā[t] kalpitā gaganātmikā|| x+17

ajñānena hi bhāvānāṃ svarūpaṃ bimbabhāvatā|
[s]a[j]jñānena hi bhāvānāṃ svarū(4verso6)paṃ niḥsvabhāvatā|| x+18

niḥsvabhāveṣu dharmeṣu svacchandaṃ kriyate 'khilam|
kriyāptās tu vibhajyante kārak<|au|>opamatādṛśam|| x+19

kriyākārakasambandhaḥ kalpanāveśabhedi(4verso7)taḥ|
na kriyā kārako nāpi svarūpasyāvabodhataḥ|| x+20

na kāryaṃ vidyate kiṃcit kārako [']pi sa tādṛśaḥ
saṃketamātralabdho 'yaṃ karotīti [sa] kārakaḥ|| x+21

niḥsva(5recto1)bhāveṣu dharmeṣu heyopādeyatā kutaḥ|
svapneṣu se[!]mastadharmeṣu heyopādeyatā yathā|| x+22

sarvāḥ pāramitās tasmāt sevitavyā[ḥ] samantataḥ|
sarvā[!]pāramitājñānaṃ prajñā(5recto2)pāramitā nanu|| x+23

saiva cittam anābhogaṃ nirupādhi nirañjanam|
nirindriya[ṃ] nirādhāraṃ nirākāraṃ nirākulam|| x+24

pañca pāramitā etā ānande[=ai]karasātmikāḥ|
ānanda(5recto3)sya parijñānaṃ prajñāpāramitottamā|| x+25

ānanda[ṃ] phalam āsāṃ tu bodho [']sau niḥsvabhāvatā|
dvayo[r] nirbharanirbhinnaṃ ratir eva mahāsukham|| x+26

prajñākaruṇayo(5recto4)r aikyaṃ pradīpālokayor iva|
prajñākaruṇayor bhedaḥ pradīpālokayor iva{ḥ}|| x+27

idaṃ dvayam abhinnātmā cittasyaikarūpakam|
prajñopāyātmakaṃ tena cittaṃ (5recto5) Hevajrarūpakam|| x+28

ānando [']pi nirālambas tadbodho [']pi sa tādṛśaḥ|
evaṃ Hevajrarūpeṇa niḥśeṣam avibhāvitaḥ|| x+29

yoginyaḥ kalpanāḥ sarvā maṇḍalaṃ bhu(5recto6)vanatrayam|
tatra krīḍati Hevajro mahāsukharasotsavaiḥ|| x+30

bhuñja[¯]no ramamāno [']pi śayāno [']pi <| | |> hasann api|
[tat?]tadyogasamāyogād yogī Hevajrapūjakaḥ|| x+31

niḥśaṅke[=śaṅko] (5recto7) vicared yogī sarvabhāveṣu sarvadā|
nirlepaḥ paṅkamadhye [']pi saṃsāre nirvṛtāyate|| x+32

māyāvinirmitaśateṣu yathaiva tajjñaḥ
khedapramodasamatāsakalapracā(5verso1)raḥ|
nirbhī bhayaṃkaraśate [']pi sukhodaye [']pi
yogī tathaiva tathatānugatasvabhāvaḥ|| x+33

na bhāvyaṃ yūthagatrāsti[?] bhāv<|o|>ako [']pi na kaścana|
bhāvanāpi dvayā<|bhyā|>bhāvāt kevalaṃ sa(5verso2)matā gatiḥ|| x+34

dvayākāraparityāgabhā<| | |>gābhāgavibhā<| x |>gitam|
sattāmātraparijñānaṃ bhāvanā naiva duṣyati|| x+35

mantrajāpādayo ye te samataikasvarūpiṇaḥ|
atas te (5verso3) [']pi na bādhyante sahajaṃ hi jagat [=jagan] matam|| x+36

deho dbhantir[?] manaś ceti hūṃkāratritayātmakaḥ|
dhvanat[?]saṃkalpa[saṃ]mūḍhān niḥsaṅgo Herukopamaḥ|| x+37

kalpanāvṛ(5verso4)ttim āskandya yad a[ka]lpitadarśanam|
rah{as}as tad eva te mantrāḥ sarvasiddhipradāyakāḥ|| x+38

svapnopameṣu dharmeṣu yathā vāco [']pi pe[´]salā|
mukhayanti tathā (5verso5) mantrāḥ śāntikādau niyojitāḥ|| x+39

vastuśaktisvabhāvo [']yaṃ saṃvṛttāv api dṛśyate|
saṃvṛttivyatirekena kā nāma paramārthatā|| x+40

na kāṣṭhādima(5verso6)yatvena buddhabimbeṣu heyatā|
svabhāvaṃ budhyamānasya tatpraṇāmo na duṣyati|| x+41

mṛdādimayabimbāni na name[t] sahajātmakaḥ|
sahajasyāvabodhe hi tatpraṇāmo (5verso7) niruttaraḥ|| x+42

dharmadhātusvarūpatvaṃ trayā[.]nām api tanmayam|
tathāpi svapnanirmāṇasamāno [']sau balikramaḥ|| x+43

tathatārūpanirbhinnatraidhātukaikasaṃvidām|
sa<|ṃ|> yo(6recto1)ginām avacchinna ānande [']pi mahābaliḥ|| x+44

yāvanto bodhisambhārās tāvanto [']traiva nirmalāḥ|
prajñāpāramitā śuddhir anuttaraphalaṃ yataḥ|| x+45

pratiṣṭhāhomayāgādi(6recto2)kriyāḥ sarvāś ca nirmalāḥ|
prajñopāya{¯}samāyogāt kṛtaṃ sambodhisādhanam|| x+46

saiva samastabuddhānā[ṃ] pratiṣṭhāpi niruttarā{ḥ}|
nirbhinnākārasamvittau Vajrasattva(6recto3)sya yā sthitiḥ|| x+47

yāvantaḥ sukhasambhārāḥ krīḍāsaṃbhūtahetavaḥ|
tāvanto 'nubhavann evaṃ yogī sambhārapūrakaḥ|| x+48

ullasannasanno rambhā[?] j[val]atkeśa(6recto4)racāruṇā|
padmenācintyayogātmā pūjayet kuliśeśvaram|| x+49

rūpādipañcakāpoya[=āropa?]bhakṣaṇaṃ samayo mahān|
tadviśuddhyā viśuddhaṃ hi sarvaṃ sambo(6recto5)dhisādhanam|| x+50

kalpanāyā nirāsena nādhimokṣasya saṃbhava[ḥ |]
svasamvedyam idaṃ tena [s]phuṭābhaṃ ca mahāsukham|| x+51

pīyūṣeṇaiva tṛpyante kecit tatkatha(6recto6)ne[na] ca|
rasavīryavipākas tu pratyakṣānubhavātmakaḥ|| x+52

sālambe kena rajyante rūpāḍambarasa[ṃ]vare|
nirālambe nimajjante<|o|> viralās te tu sattamā[ḥ]|| x+53

kecit śūnyata(6recto7)yā [= kecic chūnya˚] mugdhāḥ kecin nītiparākramāḥ|
kecit mahā[=kecin mahā˚]sukhollāsabhāsino 'traiva yoginaḥ|| x+54

kṛtvā prasādasaralaṃ pratipat[t]isāra[ṃ]
labdho mayā ya iha puṇyavi(6verso1)śuddharā[´]siḥ|
loko [']stu tena paridhūya vikalpajālaṃ
saṃbodhisaṃbhūtiparaḥ pratipattisāram<|ḥ|> [?]|| x+55

dṛṣṭāntaikarasātimūḍhamanasāṃ dārṣṭāntikadyotane
[?] vidye (6verso2) sphuṭam uttarottaragatau prajñānayo yady api|
labdho[d]deśam ananyabodhakalitaṃ tantrāntarā vajriṇas
tadvittipratipattisāraśatakaṃ śrīHerukenoditam || @ || x+56

(6verso3) pratipattisāraśatakaṃ samāptam|| @ ||

kṛtir iyaṃ Āryadevapādānām iti||

Mahāpratisarāvidyāvidhi published

2010-12-01T16:15:00.001+01:00

As an update to an earlier post I am glad to announce that the text is now published by Dr. Gergely Hidas in Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung. Volume 63 (4), 473–484 (2010).

Eating manuscripts

2010-11-25T12:56:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I received some distressing news regarding yet another detrimental factor for the survival of manuscripts. As if neglect, fire, water, white ants, and the lot were not enough, it seems that some (I hope: very few) contemporary Tibetans consume manuscripts bit by bit if they cannot read its contents or if they consider it unfit for any other purpose. The point seems to be to absorb directly the blessings embodied in such texts.

For a split second I did toy with the grotesque idea of a menu: I'll have some unknown Hevajra exegesis for starters, followed by the codex unicus of the Herukābhyudaya with shavings of rare yogatantra works. Desert? Oh, we'll decide that later.

Image from here.

Avacūrikā

2010-10-29T12:25:00.001+02:00

A new and highly recommended blog described as: Glosses on classical Indian literature and the history of premodern South Asia.

Don Quixote in Sanskrit

2010-10-24T13:20:00.002+02:00

In spite of other obligations I spent a good part of last night browsing this site with some very nice trivia about the life of Marc Aurel Stein. Make sure to check out the Bodleian mss. of smaller works of Kashmiri interest here. The circumstances of a Sanskrit and Kashmiri translation of Don Quixote (!) are here. I am quite sure this was a well-known fact but it came as a surprise to me. For yet another nice site about Stein click here.

Durbar catalogue online

2010-10-21T13:51:00.001+02:00

Some of you might be interested in this: Shastri's catalogue of the Durbar collection (vol. 1 and vol. 2) is online at archive.org.

Of the sons of donkeys and sows (a note on bureaucratic vulgarity)

2010-10-11T01:04:00.002+02:00

Perhaps because of having dealt with so many wonderfully absurd bureaucratic situations Thor bu loves a bit of vulgarity in official documents. Apparently those good old Biharis (and Tibetans, on which a bit later) also loved a non-veg joke in their documents. This image comes from a grant dating to the early 13th century. A local king, the rather nebulous Aśokacalladeva, and/or his ministers built a small vihāra and left some endowments. The language of the document is pretty horrible. If you want to read more about it I suggest you download Epigraphia Indica 12. There are several other publications on this inscription, but unfortunately they are not available to me at the moment.

If you are reading Tsukamoto's Indo bukkyo himei no kenkyu ('A Comprehensive Study of the Indian Buddhist Inscriptions') you will perhaps get excited at the sight of one Kashmiri Abhayaśrī being mentioned. Unfortunately he is not. I still can't figure out what the name of Kashmiri fellow is, but I'm willing to wager a good bottle of wine that it is not Abhayaśrī.

Back to the image. Here is the bigger picture:

Apparently those good old Victorian gentlemen did not share the sense of humour of the people they were studying. Here is the same inscription in Sir Alexander Cunningham's Mahābodhi:

Notice the difference? Indeed, no more unlawful carnal knowledge between... but what are they? Well, we could argue about it, but I'm pretty sure it is a donkey and a sow (or more precisely a wild boar sow). But it's not because I'm so good at zoology; I could not tell you the difference between a boar and a badger (whatever those are). It's because the - I think rather well-executed - sketch is a somewhat unusual representation of an imprecation, which is, however, almost standard at the end of land grants. An inscription dating from 32 years later from the same location says:

vaṃśe madīye yadi ko 'pi bhūpaḥ
śiṣṭo 'thavā duṣṭataro vinaṣṭaḥ |
vyatikramaṃ cātra karoti tasya
tātaḥ kharaḥ sūkarikā ca mātā ||

"And should any king of my lineage,
be him learned/superior or wickedly damned,
violate [the terms of] this [donation], his
father is a donkey and his mother a sow."

So, what the image is saying is: 'I gently remind you to respect this here donation' (take that, semiotics!). Other standard verses, more common on Pāla grants, promise rebirth as a worm in excrement. Why can't we have things like this on our contracts? [sigh]

What about the Tibetans? Well, I came across this image some time ago in here.

I even remember having somehow deciphered some of the writing under the smudge, but I lost the higher resolution images some time ago. Maybe you will have more luck. The young scribe no doubt expressed how he felt about scribbling for the zhang blon, or for the other chap, who had nothing better to do but bother him with dictating a letter about how his yearly crops went on what I imagine to have been a sunny afternoon.

Grandpa sends the elephants home

2010-10-06T00:13:00.002+02:00

This lovely little verse comes from the Monghyr copper plate of Devapāla:

vijitya yenājaladher vasundharāṃ
vimocitā moghaparigrahā iti |
sabāṣpam udbāṣpavilocanān punar
vaneṣu bandhūn dadṛśur mataṅgajāḥ ||

[yena = Gopālena, who was Devapāla's grandfather]

Crying elephants!

The martyrdom of Karuṇāśrīmitra

2010-09-30T02:14:00.003+02:00

Roughly one thousand years ago a roughly similar sight greeted a marauding army from Bengal. For reasons best known to themselves they came here - the great monastery of Somapura - to set it on fire. We know of this because four academic generations later a monk called Vipulaśrīmitra commissioned an inscription describing how the fountainhead of his lineage met his end in this sad event.

"For example, we find construction in honor of the martyrdom of the eminent monk Karuṇāśrīmitra, who went to the Buddha's heaven after having been burned to death by a Baṅgāla army while he was trying to save his monastery of Somapura. A disciple in his line constructed statues and monasteries in several locales around North India, including a monastery specifically dedicated to his Vinaya lineage, the Mitras. The interesting part, though, is the inscription celebrating this in the proximity of the Nālandā grounds, where it was set up so that its message might gain greater response and achieve the public appreciation that was its due."

Ronald Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism (p. 110)

There are several problems with these statements. It seems that the inscription was not commissioned to commemorate Karuṇāśrīmitra's martyrdom, but rather the collective achievements of Vipulaśrīmitra himself and possibly his masters beginning with Karuṇāśrīmitra. That an army should burn monks is not unusual, attrocities are committed everywhere and against everyone. But here it seems that Karuṇāśrīmitra simply refused to leave the hall which was burning around him. Instead he clutched the feet of the Buddha (most likely an image) and died, presumably consumed by the fire. He did not go to "the Buddha's heaven", this somewhat odd collocation is the result of miscontruing a genitive. The text simply says in a polite manner that 'he died', lit. 'went to heaven'. Whether he was trying to save the monastery or not is unclear. I do not see any strong evidence for this in the verse. There are more problems with the paragraph, but I'll leave it here for the moment. Instead, here is the stanza in question:

śrīmatSomapure babhūva Karuṇāśrīmitranāmā yatiḥ
kāruṇyād guṇasaṃpado hitasukhādhānād api prāṇināṃ[|]
yo Vaṅgālabalair upetya dahanakṣepāj jvalaty ālaye
saṃlagnaś caraṇāravindayugale Buddhasya yāto divam|| [2]

"There was in majestic Somapura an ascetic/a devotee called Karuṇāśrīmitra, who - because of his compassion, abundance of virtues, as well as his dedication to act for the welfare and happiness of beings - when the armies of Bengal arrived and started a conflagration, passed away in a burning hall clutching the lotus-feet of the Buddha."

UPDATE: for a high-resolution b/w image of the inscription click here.

The date of the Gūḍhapadā (updated)

2010-09-25T21:03:00.007+02:00

Much can be said of the Gūḍhapadā, and doubtless much will be said once we get down to work on this massive (180-folio!) commentary on the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṅgīti [henceforth MNS]. The only known ms. of this work is kept at the Royal Asiatic Society as no. Hodgson 34. There is no Tibetan translation, or if there is, it is certainly not canonical. The author is named as one Advayavakra(!), perhaps a slip for Advayavajra. The colophon (see the image) says that 'he came here, to Kashmir'.

Until today I thought that the work had gained little currency (only one ms. survives, no Tibetan translation) and was not at all influential (nobody seems to mention it or quote from it). I am happy to report that I was very wrong.

Leafing through the so-called Vanaratna codex (see Isaacson 2008) I noticed that the colophon (40r) of the Amṛtakaṇikā (henceforth AK), Raviśrī's commentary on the MNS, contains two verses not attested elsewhere (that is to say the mss. used in the Sarnath edition and the Cambridge ms., Add. 1108/13). I am not very familiar with the script, so I will not give the full reading, only pāda b of the first verse, which says:

'ślāghyā* gūḍhapadāśritādbhutabṛhatkāśmīrapañjī sakhā(?)'

[*make sure you read the comments by HI on how to construe this]

In other words Raviśrī not only mentions the title, but also tells us that it is a Kashmirian work. Moreover, he seems to have been a fan ('ślāghyā'* [see above]), and openly admits to have drawn upon it. Oh, and he also says that the work is 'massive'. Everything seems to match.

As far as I know Raviśrī's dates are not settled with satisfying certainty. However, he must precede roughly 1200 CE, because the Uddyota, Vibhūticandra's sub-commentary to the AK, by definition must have been written after the AK. The mahāpaṇḍita came to Tibet for the first time in 1204 (see Stearns 1996), therefore Raviśrī should roughly date to the middle/second half of the twelfth century or before.

Since our Advayavajra not only knows the Kālacakra, but also quotes lenghtily from the notorious Ādibuddha, he must date after roughly the mid-11th century. Therefore the date of the Gūḍhapadā must fall between cca. 1040 to cca. 1160 CE.

Well, maybe I should have entitled this entry 'The (very rough) date of the GP'.

Isaacson 2008 -- Harunaga Isaacson, "Himalayan Encounter: The Teaching Lineage of the Marmopadeśa (Studies in the Vanaratha codex 1)". (pdf) Manuscript Cultures Newsletter 1.

Stearns 1996 -- Cyrus Stearns, "The Life and Tibetan Legacy of the Indian Mahāpaṇḍita Vibhūticandra". JIABS 19.1.

UPDATE: One more thing. I have somewhat incautiously regarded the two verses transmitted in the Vanaratna codex as auctorial, simply because they sounded like it. Here is some further evidence to back that up: Vibhūticandra has some lemmata from the verse we are interested in, including the line mentioning the GP. The end of the Uddyota is unfortunately not very legible on the only ms.* I have at hand, which is Tokyo Univ. Lib. 18 (see for yourself here - you will have to navigate to the end of the codex by yourself). The Sarnath edition gives: ...... dapadam āśritā|

But if you squint a little you can almost make out: + ślāghyā gūḍhapadām āśritā| I would be happier if it read gūḍhapadā āśritā or gūḍhapadāśritā, but there we are. I think this shuts the case. The remaining question now is: why on earth did other mss. of the AK decide to get rid of these two verses?

*A plea: if you happen to have the other two mss. of the Uddyota (1. Āśā sāphu kuṭi DH 366, or 5254 in the catalogue • 2. NAK 3-655 = NGMPP A 117/10) I'd be very grateful if you could tell me what they read just before 'ślāghyā'.

Gautama 'Buddha' Siddhārtha, M.Phil. (Nāl.)

2010-09-23T01:42:00.001+02:00

Nālandā is being rebuilt, which is good news.

The bad news is that:

- one can write in a [semi-]prestigious newspaper that the Buddha was a visitor here (visiting research fellow?) and an alumnus (I gave him an M.Phil. by default);

- that there does not seem to be too much money for this;

- that the revival project is trying to get past bureaucrats;

- not to speak of the fact that "Chinese sensibilities will have to be respected" (whereas one usually does not? or is it the case that one does not respect other nations' sensibilities?) or else " the university will be a non-starter";

- that the Bihari government promises to provide security;

- that the as yet non-existent university already revives the Bengal-Bihar/Mithila thing;

- that Amartya Sen seems to think that Nālandā taught economics and public health;

zhes bya ba la sogs

Kīli kīlaya

2010-09-23T01:13:00.002+02:00

viditam astu bhavatām that Rob Mayer and Cathy Cantwell have opened a blog with a rather fascinating first post and hopefully many more to come.

Kindred spirits

2010-07-30T13:05:00.002+02:00

"... at the time of his [Dharmakīrti's] composition of the Seven Treatises, he was so deeply engrossed in the subject-matter of these that even when *tikta ([a] bitter [herb?]) was put into the curry, he could not detect it."

Tāranātha's History of Buddhism in India (1608) Ch. 26 : The period of Śrī Dharmakīrti, p.237

"I got a letter from him [Wittgenstein] written from Monte Cassino, saying that a few days after the Armistace, he had been taken prisoner by the Italians, but fortunately with his manuscript. It appears he had written a book in the trenches, and wished me to read it. He was the kind of man who would never have noticed such small matters as bursting shells when he was thinking about logic. ... It was the book which was subsequently published under the title Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus."

The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1968) Ch. 9 : Russia, p. 330

The Āryamahāpratisarāyā vidyāvidhiḥ of Ratnākaraśānti

2010-07-10T20:26:00.009+02:00

[post formerly had *Mahāpratisarācakralikhanavidhi]

Looking through prakīrṇapatras is always rewarding and well worth the frustration of trying to make sense of numeration, scripts, etc. NAK 4-130 = NGMPP B 24/20, although catalogued under the generic title `Varṣapaṇavidhamaḥ' (that is varṣāpaṇavidhayaḥ, `rituals of rain-making'), is one of these bundles with all sorts of works, most of which are indeed linked to nāgas and/or rainmaking.

To my knowledge the *Mahāpratisarācakralikhanavidhi (Tōh. 3118) attributed to the famous pundit has not been traced in Sanskrit. It is highly doubtful that this is indeed the work of Ratnākaraśānti, as so many works seek fame and authority by linking themselves to his prestige. The ms. mentioned above begins with two folios (only three pages are written) of this work, and I do not think that the short vidhi extended beyond a fourth. I have not checked the other folios thoroughly, so it's not impossible that the evasive third is hiding somewhere in the same bundle.*

The work begins with a scribal obeisance:

namo bhagavat[y]ai āryamahāpratisarāyai{ḥ} ||

Then the maṅgala/pratijñā:

natvā pratisarāṃ bhaktyā sarvabuddhābhinanditām |
vibhūtyai sarvasattvānāṃ taccakraṃ likhyate mayā ||

Which in the Tibetan runs as follows:

| sangs rgyas kun gyis mngon bstod pa'i |
| so sor 'brang ma la btud de |
| sems can kun la bsrung ba'i phyir |
| de yi 'khor lo bdag gis bri |

Notice the omission of `bhaktyā' and taking `vibhūtyai' as `bsrung ba'. There are several other inconsistencies in the translation as you read along. The rest of the work concerns itself with drawing an amulet on birch-bark or a cloth with the proper distribution of mantras and dhāraṇīs. And here for some reason I recall a quote from Valéry, something along the lines of: `My work is a work of patience executed by an impatient man'.

*Update: behold, it is there. The title preserved in this ms. is: Āryamahāpratisarāyā vidyāvidhiḥ. No author is given.

**Update 2: The text has been passed on for editing. We'll keep you posted.

The tormented life of a `Buddhist abbot'

2010-04-06T13:32:00.003+02:00

Protestant missionary, Anglican priest, British MP, spy (double or triple), Nazi, pacifist, fraudster, businessman in Balkan oil, adviser to several Chinese warlords, mystic, Buddhist abbot. Any combination of the above would suffice to make one famous or infamous, and yet Ignatius/Ignaz/Ignác Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln Chao Kung managed to be all of the above and more. He was born in 1879 in Paks, Hungary (now best known for an atomic power plant) to an Orthodox Jewish family, and died as a Buddhist abbot (apparently the first Westerner to achieve this) in Shanghai while the war was in full swing in 1943. In between lies a life that is tormented to say the least. The Wikipedia references are enough for an amusing and sometimes shocking read should you have half an hour to spare.

His links to Tibet are equally strange: he at one point claimed to be the simultaneous incarnation of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, and threatened Nazi Germany that if they don't stop the war three wise men of Tibet will appear and reduce them to a pulp with powers unimaginable. All this while chasing nuns, plotting to overthrow British India at the head of a Buddhist army, condemning Japanese aggression on China, and - just for good measure - working for the Japanese.

Sounds like a pulp fiction hero? Well, if you are Hungarian, chances are that that's where you met this strange man for the first time. The `real' Trebitsch giving all that good advice to a certain sailor who managed to become the king of Happiness Islands? Sounds a bell?

Musings on a hat (+update)

2010-03-29T17:27:00.005+02:00

A ms. now at the British Library (formerly of India Office Library, Thomas 7740) Mss Eur Hodgson vol. 26 (formerly 31/3h) is a comprehensive description of a thang ka (Skt. paṭa, N. paubāhā) from gZhis ka rtse (Shigatse for you and I, Jikhāche for the author). It was compiled by Amṛtānanda for Brian Hodgson, and it lists no less than 95 deities (plus consorts where applicable). This is the pratijñā as it were: uttarāpaṃthe jikhāche nāma pradeśe likhitāyāṃ paṭapratimāyāṃ nepālabhāṣayā paubāhā iti prakhyātāyāṃ likhitānāṃ devadevīgaṇānāṃ mūrtidhyānanāmāni likhyaṃte||

Aside from the intrinsic interest of this work (and indeed, the entire collection of Hodgson's papers) and aside from the fact that this painting seems to have disappeared, there is one small problem I wish to address here. A few of these `deities' are actually lamas (Tib. bla ma, lāmājū for the author) sporting something called an `ūrdhvajñāna...topikā' (p. 4, l. 1: ... ūrddhvajñānābhidhatopikābhṛt ...; l. 34: ... ūrddhvajñānākhyatoṣikayā ... [sic for topikayā, probably just a smudge]). I may be terribly ignorant here, but I'm still puzzled by this word.

Topi - if you learned Hindi or some similar language - is obviously `hat'. Lamas - or at least some of them - wear paṇ zhwas. Hazy memories from my undergraduate days somehow reminded me that Sum pa mkhan po has a story on how these hats came into fashion: de dus Bhaṃ ga la'i Tsa ti gha bo'i grong khyer gyi paṇ ṭi ta Pi ha ra zhes pa'i gtsug lag khang du mu stegs pa'i rgol ba zhig byung ba'i tshe rgan mo zhig gi kha la nyan nas tsher ma lta bu'i rtse can gyi zhwa gyon nas rtsod pas rgyal ba las paṇ zhwa rtse ring dar ro|| (Dpag bsam ljon bzang, p. 109). Das seem to identify Tsa ti gha bo with Cittagong.

Now what if Amṛtānanda somehow knew about this and produced a fake Skt. ūrdhva-jñāna from taking `gong' to be a Tibetan word for `ūrdhva', and `sems' or `tsi tta' a synonym for `jñāna'? For the time being this is the only way around this problem, but it seems almost too funny to be true.

UPDATE: It seems that I was (almost) entirely mislead. In light of MS Eur Hodgson vol. 26, pp. 89-91, another description of a paṭa from Tibet we find more about the puzzling ūrdhvajñāna hat. In this text we have an ūrdhvajñāna-rumuci, which is probably a re-Sanskritization of ye shes bla ma rin po che. For those versed in things rNying ma pa, here is an appetizer: there is a story here which Amṛtānanda claims to be a 'popular myth'. Ūrdhvajñāna-rumuci (who looks like Padmasambhava from the description, except that he is holding a vajra and a kīla) was an incarnation of Gorakṣa, disciple of Matsyendra. He appeared in this form on his master's command in order to defeat Śaṅkara (son of a widow and Viśveśvara-Rudra of Benares), who was rather miffed about losing a debate with Nāgārjuna and started persecuting Buddhism by disposing of their books. Rumuci defeats him repeatedly in debate and magical contests, the final battle taking place in a place called Guru-bharu. Yet another beautiful 'Himalayan encounter'!

A fragment from Vanaratna's Acalābhisamaya

2010-02-28T20:01:00.011+01:00

Perhaps some of you will be interested that this work, the ``Acalābhisamayaḥ hṛṣṭābhidhāna'' (obviously not the original title but a Tibetan reconstruction, see Tōh. 1783), survives for the most part (ff. 2-9 out of probably not more than 10) as Göttingen Xc14/40b. Unfortunately the pictures are not very clear.

This completes the identification of works contained in Xc14/40 (40a has long been known as perhaps the oldest ms. of the Kriyāsamuccaya), since Kazuo Kano in 2004 and 2005 has established that 40c is a fragment from the *Suvarṇavarṇāvadāna. You can read about that in the following articles:

Kazuo Kano, ``Göttingen shozō no Rāhula Sāṅkṛtyāyana satsuei bonbun shahon Xc14/1, Xc14/57 ni tsuite'' (The Photocopies of Sanskrit Manuscripts Photographed by Rāhula Sāṅkṛtyāyana preserved in Göttingen, Xc14/1 and Xc14/57). Mikkyō Bunka 212 (2004) 35-54.

Kazuo Kano, ``Two folios from Sthiramati's Triṃśikābhāṣya in Sanskrit Photographed by Rāhula Sāṅkṛtyāyana: Diplomatic and Critical Editions of Göttingen Xc14/1e''. WZKS XLIX (2005) 113-149.

For a magnificent painting of the `last pundit in Tibet', see here.

Sanskrit Manuscripts from Tibet

2010-01-12T17:46:00.006+01:00

Sanskrit manuscripts from Tibet; (1) Vimalaprabhā commentary on the Kālacakra-tantra, and (2) Pañcarakṣā, reproduced by Lokesh Chandra. — New Delhi, Aditya Prakashan, 2010, 144p., 29x43cm. (Sata-Pitaka Series; Indo-Asian Literatures, Volume: 629) ISBN 9788177420944. US$ 33.50 (or 1500 rupees in situ).

Before I begin to say a few words about this new publication it should be noted that this is not a review, but rather a small number of reminders for myself and anyone interested of what I saw yesterday at Biblia Impex Pvt. Ltd. (Daryaganj, Ansari Road 2/18, just behind the OUP store). Sanskrit Manuscripts from Tibet (dated 2010!), edited by Lokesh Chandra, contains reproductions of what the editor believes to be two manuscripts. I merely browsed through the introduction and I don't recall seeing anything hinting at where LC came across these manuscripts.

The first is a well-written Vimalaprabhā, but don't feel too excited: unfortunately this also breaks off right in the commentary to the fourth chapter. The elusive fifth paṭala thus continues to be attested in a single ms. at the Asiatic Society (which is now unavailable "because it broke in half", as reported earlier on this blog). I would not be surprised if it had disappeared altogether since then; the venerable Society is in shambles. But perhaps we have the elusive fifth somewhere in Beijing?

The second is 'a' Pañcarakṣā, but it is immediately obvious that the collection is not the work of the same scribal hand, and perhaps not even the product of the same century. LC oddly dates the collection to the 9th century, but I don't believe this for a minute. The earliest of the lot seems to be the Mahāsāhasrapramardinī.

Before I could take more notes the friendly salesman pushed a catalogue in front of me, and later produced the Sarnāth edition of the Abhayapaddhati. But this is a story (not altogether pleasant) for another time.

Manuscripta Buddhica 1

2010-01-12T15:46:00.002+01:00

Most of you will probably have read about this already on several mailing lists. I think I'm not alone when I say that this series should continue to flourish until the end of the kalpa.

Gibberish

2009-11-07T20:25:00.007+01:00

Hát tudd meg, ez az ember feltalálta a halandzsanyelvet. Értelmetlen szavakat kever bele a mondatba, és amikor az ember félig megőrült, hogy nem érti, öt koronát kér kölcsön." [Karinthy Frigyes - Halandzsa]

Well, be advised that this man invented a gibberish language. He mixes nonsensical words into a sentence, and when you're half out of your wits that you don't understand what he's saying, he will ask you for five quid.

What a life

2009-10-31T18:18:00.005+01:00

mantāṇa tantāṇa ṇa kiṃ pi jāṇe

jhāṇaṃ ca ṇo kiṃ pi guruppasāā |

majjaṃ piāmo mahilaṃ ramāmo

mokkhaṃ ca jāmo kulamaggalaggā ||

[sngags dang rgyud rnams ci tsam nga mi shes |

bla ma'i byin gyis brlabs las ye shes min |

sngags ni 'thung zhing bud med dang yang rtsed |

mya ngan 'das kyang rigs kyi lam gyis rnyed||]

avi a–

[ci ste]

raṇḍā caṇḍā dikkhia dhammadārā

majjaṃ maṃsaṃ pijjae khajjae a |

bhikkhā bhojjaṃ cammakhaṇḍaṃ ca sejjā

kolo dhammo kassa ṇo bhāi rammo ||

kiṃ ca |

muktiṃ bhaṇanti HariBahmamuhā vi devā

jhāṇeṇa veapaḍhaṇeṇa kaükkiāhiṃ |

ekkeṇa kevalam Umādaïeṇa diṭṭho

mokkho samaṃ suraakelisurārasehiṃ ||

[Rājaśekhara: Karpūramañjarī]

Vajrayāna off-limits in two apologetic works

2009-10-05T11:56:00.006+02:00

After a long silence and too many bzhad gad entries let us look at two fascinating little works hiding deep in the bowels of the Tengyur.

The section between Tōh. 3707 and 3729 houses what I informally think of as the 'essayistic' part of the Canon. Some works here are better known than others, with famous items such as the Tattvasiddhi (a new and complete edition by Toru Tomabechi, forthcoming), the Gurupañcāśikā (of which we now have a new manuscript, see Szántó, forthcoming), and Jñānaśrī's *Vajrayānāntadvayanirākaraṇa (recently studied by Taiken Kyuma and Ryugen Tanemura in Genesis and Development of Tantrism). But there are other works here which merit the same attention, such as the oft-quoted Nayatrayapradīpa, the *Triyānavyavasthāna of Ratnākaraśānti [?], and the *Yoganiruttaratantrārthāvatārasaṃgraha of Śraddhākaravarman.

And there are yet others which are read only on rainy days such as these two: the *Tattvasārasaṃgraha (TSS) of *Dharmendra (Tōh. 3711), and the *Mantranayāloka (MNA) of Mtho-btsun btso-yags (Tōh. 3710). Note the inversion in cataloguing, which suggests that the Tibetan compilers haven't read them with due attention either. The two obviously constitute a pair, since the author of the MNA clearly states that he wrote in defense of a claim made by his master in the TSS. So to get the timeline right: we had *Dharmendra write his TSS, which became controversial, and his disciple wrote the MNA to straighten out things. Both works were translated by Rin chen bzang po (the TSS with Janārdana, the MNA with Padmākaravarman). Hence Mtho-btsun btso-yags is either earlier or contemporary with Rin bzang, and *Dharmendra preceded both. However, I cannot help suspect that master and disciple wrote much earlier, perhaps a century or so, for reasons I will give below.

What was *Dharmendra's controversial claim then? You have to read through the work to find it. The TSS flows neatly in a Q/A format discussing several intriguing questions about the Mahāyāna. The conscientious objector asks at the end (98a1-99a2): surely, if the Buddha said that the Vajrayāna is the most efficient way for enlightenment, why is it that you do not speak about it here?

*Dharmendra does not deny that the way of Mantras exists as a valid revelation. Instead, he states that there are simply no suitable people in our day and age to practice it. The Buddha knew this very well and he actually prohibited *lokottara (understand, antinomian) practices. To this effect he quotes an obscure work, the Gsang sngags kyi theg pa tshul:

| shes rab de ni mi shes {99a7} shing |

| ngar 'dzin dri mas spags pa rnams |

| de yi 'jig rten 'das spyod pa |

| dmyal bar 'gro ba kho nar zad |

These people do not know wisdom and

mix [their practices] with the defilement of egoism–

their practices 'transcending this world'

result in nothing else but going to hell.

And again, from the same work:

| thabs bzang rnam par spangs nas ni |

| 'gal ba'i dam tshig la sogs pa |

| gang zhig gzhan du byed pa dag |

| de ni {99b1} ngu 'bod dag tu 'tshed |

Those people who behave perversely,

who turned away from good practices,

and adopted contradictory vows and the such

will roast away in the Howling Hell (raurava).

| dper na 'di na rab 'bar mer |

| rtsva dang shing la sogs pa'i tshogs |

| bcug pa thal ba nyid 'gyur gyis |

| slar ni rab tu skye mi 'gyur |

Take as an example a roaring fire:

heaps of grass, wood, and the such

are reduced to ashes when thrown in,

and will never resume their form.

| de bzhin de nyid rnam bral bar |

| shin tu rmad byung las byed pa |

| ji srid nam mkha' gnas par du |

| shi nas {99b2} dmyal bar 'gro bar 'gyur |

In the same way, those who are bereft of Truth

and [adopt] these strange practices,

will die and and go to hell

for as long as the sky abides.

There are two more quotes more or less to the same effect. *Dharmendra closes his work saying that since the Buddha prohibited such practices, he will follow suit and not speak a word about Vajrayāna.

Well, it's easy to see how this succinct treatment of such a sensitive topic could have elicited outrage. And elicit outrage it did. Enter Mtho-btsun btso-yags (sometimes spelt mtso-yags, tso-yag):

| dus kyi bdag nyid ngan pa dang |

| 'gro ba 'ang skal ba med pa dag |

| gzigs nas bdag gi bla ma yis | {76a6}

| gsang sngags tshul bshad bkag pa yin |

My master saw that times are bad

and people are unqualified,

hence he prohibited explaining

the way of Mantras.

| 'di ltar de nyid kyis mdzad pa'i |

| De nyid snying po bsdus par ni |

| de[r] ma bshad pa'i rigs pa dang |

| dgongs pa yang ni bstan pa yin |

And he did so in his work,

the Tattvasārasaṃgraha.

I shall now teach the unstated but intended

meaning and the reasoning behind [this claim].

| gang yang blo dman kha cig ni |

| der des ma rtogs pa nyid dam |

| phrag dog yin par {76a7} dogs byed cing |

| rmongs pa yis kyang de brnyas byed |

Some people of low intelligence

either did not understand what he said there,

or they were just jealous and thus objected,

and deluded ones even spoke ill of him.

| de spang sdig pa'i me nang du |

| phye ma leb ltar ji srid ni |

| ltung bar ma gyur de srid du |

| de skyob pa la bdag 'bad do |

Our endeavour then is to refute this

and save them from the fire of sin,

lest they should fall in it like a moth.

The work goes on to criticize in detail these practices he and his master found unacceptable. The verses drip with sarcasm which in itself makes it a pretty enjoyable read, but what is most interesting for our immediate purposes is the prima facie view he quotes as reported by his adversaries:

«'on te de nyid rnal 'byor pa |

| bdag cag la ni kha zas {76b5} dang |

| spyod lam sogs kun ci dga' bar |

| Rnal 'byor rgyud las skyob pas gnang |

But for us, yogins of the Truth / true yogins,

the Lord allowed in the Yogatantras

to take food, adopt conducts,

and so on as we please.

«de yang 'di ni gsal nyid du |

| Zla gsang thig le la sogs las |

| rnal 'byor ba yis mi bya ba |

| ci yang med ces gsungs pa yin |

This is clearly stated in texts

such as Guhyendutilaka, to wit:

there is nothing that a yogin

is not allowed to do.

Well now, this is intriguing. Yogatantras and the Guhyendutilaka to justify antinomian practices? Why not yoginītantras? It doesn't get any more antinomian than that! And where have we seen this combination before? Yes, the prize goes to anyone who said Tattvasiddhi first. Could we be looking at the same environment?

The continuation of the rebuttal is just as exciting, but this is pretty much all I wanted to say to whet your appetite for reading these two texts. A couple of more interesting points to be noted: one of the punishments the author of the MNA has in view is that of temporal rulers–

| phyin ci log gi las byed na |

| re zhig 'jig rten smod byed la |

| de bzhin rgyal po la sogs kyi |

| chad pas rmongs pa 'jig par 'gyur |

If you perform perverted deeds

you will not only elicit scorn from the public,

but your delusion is sure to be cured

by the punishment of the king and others.

And just to give you an idea about the author's arguments:

| bkres skom tsha grang rmugs pa dang |

| gnyid sogs kyis rab gdungs gyur pa |

| snang na de ru khyod kyi ni |

| dngos po med pa gang du song |

[Everything is immaterial you say,]

but when hunger, thirst, hot, cold,

depression and torpor hit you

where is your 'immateriality'?

To wrap up, it should also be noticed that the MNA is not quite so dismissive as his master's work. He simply calls yogins to examine their attitude and their practices better.

PS: all translations were made ad hoc and without much thought. Suggestions are welcome.

Two parallels to commentarial Sanskrit

2009-09-19T13:51:00.003+02:00

Message runs as follows:

"When you come to-morrow, bring my football boots. Also, if humanly possible, Irish water-spaniel. Urgent. Regards. Tuppy."

'What do you make of that, Jeeves?'

'As I interpret the document, sir, Mr Glossop wishes you, when you come to-morrow, to bring his football boots. Also, if humanly possible, an Irish water-spaniel. He hints that the matter is urgent, and sends his regards.'

'Yes, that's how I read it, too.'

II.

'What is an Irish water-spaniel?'

'A water-spaniel of a variety bred in Ireland, sir.'

'You think so?'

'Yes, sir.'

[P.G. Wodehouse, The Ordeal of Young Tuppy]

IIGRS programme

2009-09-18T20:08:00.002+02:00

The IIGRS programme is now online. Thanks to all those who registered and will attend.

Christian Aiśa

2009-08-04T14:55:00.002+02:00

Seen on on Manakula Vinayagar Covill Street, Pondicherry.

Who's your daddy?

2009-07-26T07:45:00.002+02:00

aiśvaryamadamatto 'si mām avajñāya vartase|

upasthiteṣu bauddheṣu madadhīnā tava sthitiḥ||

(Udayana, Nyāyakusumāñjali)

Yet another Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa?

2009-06-17T19:21:00.004+02:00

I did not have the time to follow up this one, but perhaps there are some of you out there who are interested. Today I picked up by chance D. K. Kanjilal & K. Kanjilal, Sanskrit and Allied Manuscripts in Europe (Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, Calcutta), apparently a recent acquisition of the Bodleian. The book is a long list of pretty confused notes about various manuscript libraries the authors had the chance to visit in the U.K. and the continent (and there is no index... and there are many typos... but let's forget about all that, it seems like a very useful book).

The author reports a list of Nepalese mss. at the Chester Betty [sic!] Library in Dublin. It's mostly Pañcarakṣās and dhāraṇīs, but one item - he says - is a Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa. Although he says that the ms. is 'very old', he also gives the 17th century as an estimated date. Does anyone happen to know more about this? It sounds like a false lead to me, but you can never know for certain.

An inscription from Spu hreng

2009-06-10T18:11:00.009+02:00

Sam of earlytibet fame posted a very interesting article recently. In the comments thereon I suggested that the text was defaced in order to 'recycle' the text. Today however this interesting little inscription came to my attention which should perhaps be added to the argument, although this defacement (if it is one) is of an entirely different nature.

It has been some years that Precious Deposits has been published and shame on me for not browsing through its five volumes earlier. Volume one (amongst many other fascinating things) has a picture of this Avalokiteśvara statue (p. 173, sorry about the quality; I could not take out the book from the library so a bad photocopy-scan will have to do). According to the caption the statue was found in Zhi bde village in Spu hreng county.

Then there is this dedicatory inscription (p. 172) with all kinds of good wishes from the donor. I will not transcribe it since it is quite legible in the book.

But here is the interesting part: who is the donor? The right side says Seng ge zhang chen po 'Bro(?) khri(?) brtsan sgra||(!) mgon po rgyal, (?) meaning that you can barely make out the letters. The other side has a slight variant for the name: zhang 'Bro(?) khri(?) brtsan sgra mgon po rgyal. Notice how the clan name 'Bro and the khri are almost illegible in both cases. Furthermore, is khri some kind of pretense of royalty (at any rate, is that what the vandal thought)? But then why is he calling himself zhang and zhang chen po?

Below you will find the names. I might just be paranoid, but it is highly unlikely that someone vandalizes two sides of an inscription in exactly the same places where the donor identifies his clan and possibly arrogates to himself the royal khri. Quite clearly, this guy had a problem with the 'Bros. And who would those be? Well, who did not have a problem with them?

Suggestions/comments are highly welcome.

evam āryamiśrān vijñāpayāmi

2009-06-09T23:19:00.010+02:00

The moment we have all been waiting for is here: the hilarious, the scandalous, the outrageous... Quartet of Causeries is here. Read some of the excerpts. Here is what our critics say:

"I knew these guys, but I thought they were just joking around at the pub. It's actually not bad poetry." [Kālidāsa, notoriously elusive poet]

"The Caturbhāṇī taught me everything I know. Never leave home without it." [Dāmodaragupta, award winning author of A Courtesan's Confession]

"When I'm down and need a good kick I read the Pādatāḍitaka." [Kṣemendra, acclaimed author of The Idiot's Guide to Making Fun of Bengalis]

"The Dhūrtaviṭasaṃvāda brings back into public awareness the topic of the pimping subaltern other. It is ruthless against Sanskritic society and the greatest thing about it is that it's done with the enemy's weapon: brilliant Sanskrit. Not as if I could read Sanskrit, only colonialists can and do." [very famous post-colonialist, name withheld]

"The Dhūrtaviṭasaṃvāda coaxes from out of the shadows the subject of the subaltern as the "Pimp". It is excoriating in its critique against Sanskritic society while at the same time formulating its diatribe with the favored weapon of the oppressive literary minority: erudite Sanskrit. As Foucault points out: "Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society." (What's with all the gibberish that is printed on the left side? Surely this is a colonialist expropriation of the Other's voice. Hold on... the Other here is the oppressive literary minority! I'm confused.) [very famous post-colonialist's student, name withheld]

Bsam yas rdo ring

2009-06-02T20:42:00.004+02:00

The attractive new coating. I guess it makes it a little bit more legible but they should have used some pink and neon green I feel.

A note on Dharmasvāmin's travels

2009-05-29T14:55:00.007+02:00

As most of you will have observed I am not quite up to date with secondary literature (nor with primary literature for that matter), so whatever I say here may have been discovered already. Jinajik tells me that there is an annotated Japanese translation of the first part of Chag lo the younger's priceless rnam thar. This is unavailable to me and I do not read Japanese (unfortunately).

The passage we are concerned here is from the second chapter of Dharmasvāmin's life (let's keep the re-Sanskritized name, although it is thoroughly unjustified in my view). When he - through his disciple - speaks of Thaṃ vihāra, he states:

"Further, in Nepāla there is a Vihāra called Thaṃ, also called the "First Vihāra" [note 10: ka pa'i gtsug lag khang], or the "Upper Vihāra" [note 11: Gong gi lha khang]." (p. 55 in Roerich's translation)

You will find the Tibetan on p. 6.:

yang Bal yul na Thaṃ bi ha ra Ka pa'i gtsug lag khang ngam Gong gi lha khang zer|

As far as I can tell Roerich read the ms. correctly here, but the translation is problematic. I know of no tradition that would call the Thaṃ bahi (or Vikramaśīla mahāvihāra if you prefer the Sanskrit) the 'first' or the 'upper' monastery.

It is not difficult to see the Newari Kwāpā dyaḥ behind ka pa'i gtsug lag khang. It should then follow that the expression gong gi gtsug lag khang is a corruption of *ā gaṃ [/gi] gtsug lag khang, rendering Newari āgaṃ dyaḥ. I am not quite sure how this might have happenned if it is indeed a corruption. Chances are that 'gong' or 'gi' originally read *gaṃ and the *dang a (instead of 'dang ā') was somehow misread '-ng ngam'. All this can happen quite easily in dbu med and one can play further with adding or deducting a few strokes. But the syntax is still unsatisfactory. zer does indeed seem to suggest that we are dealing with alternative names here. Perhaps Chos dar did not quite understand what his master was trying to explain?

Granthinām is back!

2009-05-28T07:52:00.002+02:00

A third avatāra of Daniel Stender's great blog is back, revealing the following secret mantra between the lines: "backup, backup, backup..."

Canons for all

2009-05-28T07:30:00.004+02:00

Thanks to Dan for pointing out this blog entry. In short TBRC has decided to make canonical collections free for all to view. Their laudable decision will be followed by a string of lawsuits from Tibetologists all over the world (causing endless sleepless nights, exhaustion, spectacular breakdown of their non-canonical social life, etc.) However, for the time being many thanks are due.

Yum bu bla mkhar

2009-05-26T13:55:00.007+02:00

Chances are that you will arrive quite exhausted to the Yum bu bla mkhar. Do not be fooled by the approach, which is very cleverly constructed. If yours truly managed to be at the gate in thirteen minutes from the bottom of the hill, you will certainly do better.

Here is a close-up of this magnificent building. Some fifteen hundred years ago Lha tho tho ri was taking his afternoon stroll up there just to be knocked on the head by some sūtra.

That's the newly constructed bus station with the usual tourist rip-offs such as one yuan for the bathroom (raw silk sanitary towels and complimentary Chanel no. 5 included).

The rest of the view is, however, breathtaking (quite literally). The Yar lung valley is lush. It was for the first time I really understood the eulogy of P.t. 1026.

Note the walled area on the left. According to legend this was the first parcel to be worked upon after the self-planting, self-growing grains were gone.

The small stele marks the spot of the first settlement created by the sons of the good monkey and the brag srin mo.

Yonder a small chapel holding the throne of Atīśa.

A view best enjoyed with good friends.

The old man will insist that you offer bsangs to the gods. Don't resist, he's very nice.

Have a dog

2009-05-25T16:28:00.007+02:00

Some recent memories of Tibet (TAT).

Please horn for avalanche of the Kharo la.

A rare Gaza Strip venture on the same pass.

On Mentsikang road in Lhasa one is offered vagarious ice cream. Did not try.

At the Potala you are greeted by this welcome warning.

At Shigatse renovations are on. You are warned to be responsible whilst producing everyone. (God?)

Gyantse has traditional ties to French haute cuisine. As we all know, the yak is an essential ingredient.

Ceci n'est pas une no photo sign.

Nakartse, famous for its snowland...

This here will become an all time favourite of mine. Seen at the 7th dalai lama's palace in the Norbulinka.

The Lukhang apparently sits on top of dragon king poo. The official ticket says so.

The 'cool & sex' condom is certified by some agency with a very unfortunate logo choice.

This piece smuggled to Tashidzong (about 50km before Everest base camp) from the '42 German-Russian border?

A letter from the past

2009-05-01T22:48:00.008+02:00

My partner came across this letter quite by accident: between the pages of a book she had ordered online. I do not think that much more needs to be said. Note the author's barely concealed excitement in the second paragraph of the letter.

Sanskrit College
Calcutta, February 19, 1907

Your Honour,

As Commander I beg
to send herewith the Sanskrit
College copy of Mr Tawney's
translation of the Mālavikā-
gnimitra a drama by the
greatest of Indian poets, Kalidāsa.

Your Honour will be glad to
hear that His Excellency the
Prime Minister of Nepal, whom
I saw on Thursday last, will,
when I go to his country, give
me every facility for my
work in connection with the
search of Mss.

Your Honour's most
obedient
Haraprasād Shāstri

Here we go again

2009-04-24T17:29:00.001+02:00

New research on the Indus Valley 'script'.

The 'Serampore' Dictionary

2009-04-24T00:01:00.005+02:00

Google has digitized the pre-Csoma dictionary which was not widely available until now. Very entertaining. Note that the fonts are the same as used in Csoma's works.

Speaking of Csoma: here is a new archive (for the time being only in Hungarian) containing his complete works and loads of related material.

Vijayacandrasya

2009-03-28T22:10:00.003+01:00

A new find in West Bengal.

Gade and the Mickey Buddha

2009-03-07T01:57:00.004+01:00

So if it worked one way, why not the other way around? Meet Gade...

Sakya resource center

2009-03-06T18:15:00.005+01:00

The good people in Hamburg put up another very interesting and promising site: The Sakya Resource Center.

Māraṇa on live TV

2009-03-05T22:51:00.011+01:00

Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Rationalist International, challenged a Tantric magician to kill him on live TV by supernatural means. This went on for some time...

And then some more (notice the invocation of Bagalāmukhī to up the game a notch):

Then the homa pit comes out. The uttarasādhakas seem a bit confused for they recite mantras to paralize the man's speech, tongue, and mind (oṃ hrīṃ hrīṃ klīṃ bagalāmukhe sarvaduṣṭānāṃ vācaṃ mukhaṃ pādaṃ stambhaya jihvāṃ kīlaya 2 buddhiṃ vināśaya 2 hlīṃ oṃ phaṭ svāhā):

This may come as a surprise to some, but Surendra Sharma failed miserably. The explanation, in my humble opinion, is tantalizingly simple: Sanal Edamaruku was obviously protected by even more powerful mantras! Besides, every fool knows that a māraṇahoma is to be done in a triangular kuṇḍa...

In praise of Yamāri and Cāmuṇḍī (addendum)

2009-03-05T19:09:00.006+01:00

In a previous note I said that the author of the acrostic about Yamāri might be the first Dalai Lama. I have now had the opportunity to consult his collected works. The work can be found on pp. 304-306 in vol. 6. (and the verses on Cāmuṇḍā follow thereafter). The blockprint version also has verses for Ka, Kha, Ga, and Nga, hence this is an omission in the Mongolian manuscript. Thus:

hūṃ

kā la rū pa rab brjid drag po'i sku |
kha nas khrag 'dzag mi mgo'i 'phreng ba yi |
ga sha rab 'phyang mi bzang bdud dpung gi |
nga rgyal dregs pa 'joms pa khyod la bstod ||

It is a bit surprising that the Mongolian scribe left this out but there you are. Never trust a scribe. Especially when he left out the first verse of the second hymn as well. Thus:

bhyauḥ (bhyo)

ma skyes mi 'gag chos dbyings klong yangs nas |
ma hā kā li srin mo khros pa'i sku |
ma rungs 'dul phyir rtse gsum thod khrag 'dzin |
ma mo chen mo Tsā mu ṇḍi la bstod ||

NB: the 'sample preview' allowed freely by the TBRC covers both works.

In praise of Cāmuṇḍī

2009-03-02T17:21:00.004+01:00

And here is the second part of the manuscript with the praise of Cāmuṇḍī, where all quarter-verses begin with 'ma'.

ma he'i gdong can gshin rje' dga' ma khyod ||
ma rungs dgra la kha gdangs mche ba gtsigs ||
ma lus btud (bdud) kyi srog gcod bshan ba mo ||
ma yengs bstan pa'i bsrung ma'i khyod la bstod ||

ma gcig 'dod pa'i khams la dpang bgyur ma (dbang 'gyur ma) ||
ma mo mkha' 'gro sde brgyad 'khor dang bcas ||
ma mo'i dal yams la sogs chos bphrul ('phrul) gyis ||
ma tul ('dul) gtul (gdul) dka' 'joms ba khyod la bstod ||

ma bcos (3r) rang bzhin dag pa'i chos kyi dbyings ||
ma rtogs bdud kyi chos 'phrul ci byung yang ||
ma chen khyod kyi ming nas bos pa'i tshe ||
ma g.yel myur du byon lam mthu rtsal skyang ||

ma rungs rnams la rab tu khros gyur kyang ||
ma ltar rtse bas bstan 'dzin skyong ba khyod ||
ma sring chung ma bran ma'i tshul bzung nas ||
ma bskul bar yang mthun ba'i las kun bsgrubs ||

ma nor lam mchog ston pa'i bla ma dang ||
ma rig mun sel rgyal pa'i bstan ba la ||
ma dang log bar bgrub pa'i gong dang bgegs ||
ma bsgrub ba rnams chos gyi dbyings su sgrol ||

(3v) ma lus 'gro ba'i don du rnal 'byor ngas ||
manydzu gho ṣa'i go 'phang dam pa de ||
ma thob de srid nag mo chen mo khyod ||
ma g.yel ma g.yel 'phrin las tshul bzhin sgrubs ||

ma mo chen mo bstod cing bskul bas bdag ||
ma rig 'khrul pas bskyed pa'i 'khor pa 'de ('di) ||
ma stongs bar du bstan pa 'dzin pa la ||
ma hā kā lis rtag tu grogs byed shog ||

ma mo chen mo tsa mu ṇti la bstod pa 'de ('di) ni || dge slong Rdo rje 'dzin pa Dge 'dun grub pa dpal bzang pos | dpal byang chub chen po'i dben nas (gnas) theg chen pho brang du spyar (sbyar) ba'o || bkra shis par gyur gchig (cig) | sarba mga laṃ (mangga laṃ) |||

In praise of Yamāri

2009-03-02T13:02:00.005+01:00

While writing on the 'turtle manuscript' yesterday, I came across this old input of another manuscript from my humble collection. Maybe there is something in this turtle divination, since I thought I lost this file long ago. The ms. contains two praises, one for Yamāri and one for Cāmuṇḍī. The colophon attributes them to Dge 'dun grub, who is probably the first Dalai Lama. Since I am away from my TBRC access, I could not check this. The poem is in fact an acrostic which spells out the Tibetan alphabet from Ca to A (no idea why Ka-Nga is missing) plus two lines signing off with stating the purpose of writing the poem. If this is the first Dalai, then the inspiration probably came from his master, Tsong kha pa, who also wrote such poems, one of them a notoriously difficult piece where each line starts with A - lots of obscure words in the dialect of Amdo.

chos rgyal Gshin rje' rgya mtshos brgyan ba 'bul ma mo chen mo
Tsa mu ṇti la bstod ba zhes bya ba bzhugs so | | (1v)

ca cos che ldan rdo rje'i glu dbyangs dang ||
cha shas yongs su rdzogs pa'i gtor ma ni ||
ja chang phud dang dgra bgegs sgrab pa'i sha ||
nya sha khrag zhag rgya mtshos brgyan ba 'bul ||

Arias of the thunderbolt accompanied by clamor,
Bali-offerings spotless, with all their parts intact,
Choice tea and liquor, enemies' flesh in piles,
Donned in seas of fish, blood and fat - all this I offer.

ta thā ga ta'i bstan la gnod byed pa'i ||
tha chad dgra bgegs rtul du rlog pa dang ||
da nas bzung ste rnal 'byor bdag cag gi ||
na rga 'chi ba'i 'jigs pa 'joms la bstod ||

Enemies hurting the Tathāgata's teaching,
Foul rivals, impediments - brush them all away!
Grant us, praising yogins, from this day onwards
Health, youth, immortality, and escape from fear.

pa ba sangs ltar rab dkar mche pa gtsigs ||
pha rol 'joms pa'i spyan rtsa glog ltar 'khyug |
ba spu dus mtha'i me chen 'bar ba yis ||
ma lus bgegs dpung bsregs pa khyod la bstod || (2r)

[and so on, you get the idea]

tsa mu ṇti sogs ma mo kun gyi bdag ||
tsha zer rab tu rgyas pa'i gzi brjid can ||
dza zhes 'phrin las bsgrub la gos pa'i tshe ||
wa skyes lta bu'i bgegs 'joms khyod la bstod ||

zhwa ltar 'byung bo kun gyis spye (spyi) bos bsten ||
za byed ma he khros pa'i zhal bdangs shes ||
'a 'ur ngar ngar sgrog bas sa chen g.yo ||
ya las skyes pa'i thod dbyug 'dzin la bstod ||

rwa dang rmig pa rno ba'i ma he dang ||
la la rlu nag tshub ma zhon pa'i 'khor ||
sha ka li dang gshin rje' mas sogs ||
sa gsum 'byung po'i 'khor gyis bskor la bstod ||

ha ha drag tu bzhad ba'i dpal (2v) yon can ||
A rghaṃ la sogs mchod ba bzhes nas kyang ||
dpal ldan Gshin rje'i gshed kyi spyan snga ru ||
zhal bzhes dam bcas g.yel pa med par mdzod | |

Speaking of turtles

2009-03-02T00:12:00.008+01:00

Turtles are the talk of town. Here is one more handbook from my collection which once helped the good people of Mongolia find their lost things with the help of the friendly local lama. Apparently Inner-Asians lost their things quite frequently and have been doing so at least since Tibetans came to Tunhuang. There are doubtless hundreds of such manuscripts in specialized libraries. And if you are a lama, it's good to know another lama with such a manuscript, since you never know when you might lose yours.

Changing bodies in Braj

2009-02-27T20:55:00.006+01:00

Jayatarāma composed the Jogapradīpyakā in 1737 CE (Saṃvat 1794, Āśvina śukla 10) while the earliest dated manuscript dates from Saṃvat 1766. It is a compendium of haṭhayoga practices, which is not uncommon for his time. But this is written in the vernacular (a Braj-like old-ish Hindi dialect to be more precise). A further unusual feature (at least for me) is that it contains a short passage on changing bodies (parakāyapraveśa), the older Hindu cousin of grong 'jug. Here is what he says:

।। अथ परकाया प्रवेसन ।।

परपकजोग जबै सधि अावै, जोगी सिधि अागम की पावै ।

अपनी इच्छा विचरै जोई, करै भगंगम की क्रिया सोई ।। ७९२ ।।

सकल पवन अपने वसि अाई, नारी गोप्य रही कोई ।

मन की वृति न छानी कोई, जा जा समै चलत है सोई ।। ७९३ ।।

सकल सरीर दिव्यता पाय, अावर्ण सब ही गयो पलाय ।

वायुरूप जीव कौ जानौ, जहां वाय तहां करै पयानौ ।। ७९४ ।।

ताते जोगी यह मत पावै, परकाया प्रवेस करावै ।

जो कोई मृतक तन को देषै, अरू पुनि अपनी इच्छा पेषै ।। ७९५ ।।

करै प्रवेश तास में जाई, गुरु की क्रिपा जुक्ति सो पाई ।

सकल पवन मन सहित चलावै, अपने कंठि अनि ठहरावै ।। ७९६ ।।

बहुरौ मंन्त्र पढै ता वारा, जाकौ गुरु ते लहयौ विचारा ।

काक चंचवत मुष करि लेवै, अपने प्राण मृतक मुष देवै ।। ७९७ ।।

मरै अाप मृतक उठि धावै,पूर्व देह की समृत्य पावै ।

बहुरि जु अपना मन मैं चहै, यह तन छाडि वहै तन गहै ।। ७९८ ।।

।। दोहा ।।

परकाया परवेस नो, गुरुमुष पावै धीर ।

जयतराम जीर्ण तजै, जों तन गहे सरीर ।। ७९९ ।।

।। इति परकाया परवेसन ।।

Since I am not a specialist in mediaeval Hindi, I cannot pretend that I understand more than the average Sanskritist. The general outline of the procedure seems clear (manipulating breath, introducing it into the corpse's body through the mouth). I especially enjoyed 798ab: "You yourself will die, and the dead will arise running, [but] you will retain the memory of your old body."

Source: Jogapradīpyakā of Jayatarāma, critically edited by Swāmī Maheśānanda & Dr. B. R. Sharma, Shri G. S. Sahay, Shri R. K. Bodhe, Kaivalyadhama S.M.Y.M. Samiti, Lonavla 2006.

With thanks to Jason Birch for bringing this edition to my attention.

Silent reading

2009-02-25T23:19:00.003+01:00

Augustin wrote this on St Ambrose's odd habit of reading silently:

sed cum legebat, oculi ducebantur per paginas et cor intellectum rimabatur, vox autem et lingua quiescebant. saepe cum adessemus (non enim vetabatur quisquam ingredi aut ei venientem nuntiari mos erat), sic eum legentem vidimus tacite et aliter numquam, sedentesque in diuturno silentio (quis enim tam intento esse oneri auderet?) discedebamus et coniectabamus eum parvo ipso tempore quod reparandae menti suae nanciscebatur, feriatum ab strepitu causarum alienarum, nolle in aliud avocari et cavere fortasse ne, auditore suspenso et intento, si qua obscurius posuisset ille quem legeret, etiam exponere esset necesse aut de aliquibus difficilioribus dissertare quaestionibus, atque huic operi temporibus impensis minus quam vellet voluminum evolveret, quamquam et causa servandae vocis, quae illi facillime obtundebatur, poterat esse iustior tacite legendi. quolibet tamen animo id ageret, bono utique ille vir agebat. (Confessiones 6.3.3.)

"Now, as he read, his eyes glanced over the pages and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. Often when we came to his room--for no one was forbidden to enter, nor was it his custom that the arrival of visitors should be announced to him--we would see him thus reading to himself. After we had sat for a long time in silence--for who would dare interrupt one so intent?--we would then depart, realizing that he was unwilling to be distracted in the little time he could gain for the recruiting of his mind, free from the clamor of other men's business. Perhaps he was fearful lest, if the author he was studying should express himself vaguely, some doubtful and attentive hearer would ask him to expound it or discuss some of the more abstruse questions, so that he could not get over as much material as he wished, if his time was occupied with others. And even a truer reason for his reading to himself might have been the care for preserving his voice, which was very easily weakened. Whatever his motive was in so doing, it was doubtless, in such a man, a good one." (Translation from here)

Is this issue ever treated in Indian or Tibetan literature?

(Some volumes of the) Hōbōgirin online

2009-02-05T17:32:00.004+01:00

Hōbōgirin : dictionnaire encyclopédique de bouddhisme d'après les sources chinoises et japonaises, Volumes 1 to 3 (A to Chi) can be downloaded from archive.org, an otherwise very useful repository of materials.

Some recently discovered blogs and sites

2009-02-02T20:48:00.005+01:00

There are some new interesting sites out there:

• A Tantric Reader seems to be under preparation, this is a blog and a website dedicated to the project initiated by Chris Wallis.

• Some new entries on the blog maintained by the Janabahaa Society aiming to restore the famous temple of Lokeśvara/Matsyendra in Thamel.

• Andrea Acri's beautiful site on things Indonesian.

• Venetia Ansell's site on Sanskrit literature with interesting posts on how the modern world and an ancient language interact.

• Mark Dyczkowski's thoughts on "Kashmir Shaivism".

• Mrinal Kaul, who maintains the blog A Cashmirian Sanskritist has a new site with an interesting project to wake up manuscript library officials from their uncooperative stupour.

• Finally, if you read Hungarian, Olivér Kápolnás decided to open a blog on his finds in Mongolia. The Gravediggers' Diary is an interesting read for lovers of archaeology. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences has scanned some of its old proceedings.

• Sadly, Jinajik decided to go offline again.

And in view of current events, an old joke rehashed: "What are the four biggest impeding factors of British public transport?" "Spring, summer, autumn, and winter." (The original was for Soviet agriculture). And another one from London's foremost public entertainer: it's the right kind of snow in the wrong quantities.

More from Bombay

2009-01-24T20:24:00.004+01:00

The garden of the Museum is very nicely kept, as indeed most of the city. On your right you can see the booth of 'check-ticket-again-and-apply-metal-detector-again-and-look-mean' guy.

This exquisite Chandela Mahiṣāsuramardinī is unusual (at least for me), because it does not have the trident nicely plugged into the buffalo as is seen on other images. Although this was not made clear in the exhibition, the bit on the picture below seems to be the lower part of the same statue (note the absence of the triśūla).

This is more like it. Yet, this is an old image as well, since the little man-demon is not peeping out of the buffalo (experts tell me that's important). A touch of comedy here (maybe unintentional): Caṇḍī's lion is biting the, well, you get the picture.

As a bonus:

Angry archaeologist

2009-01-20T20:05:00.011+01:00

I must apologize in advance, some of you may find this post a bit vulgar. Nevertheless, I'm sure that many more will actually enjoy this fine piece of Hungarian cultural history.

It so happenned that during the hot summer of 1903 in an obscure corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire some good people found a spur. Since in the legendary bureaucracy of the aforementioned empire nothing went undocumented, the find (who knows, it could have been the spur of king Attila!) was referred to the local archaelogical authorities. They were puzzled. Shunning responsability in good bureaucratical fashion the matter was forwarded to the capital. Dr Réthy (pictured on the right), eminent linguist (i.a. learned Sanskrit in Vienna!) etc., in charge at that time, gave them this kind answer:

506/1903.
Tekintetes kultúrmérnöki hivatal
Pécsett.

Tegnapi póstával érkezett 1090/1903 sz. hivatalos okiratukra,
melyben azt kérdik, hogy a Nagy-Berki község
határában lelt régi sarkantyúval mi történjék?
hivatalos tisztelettel azt válaszolom, hogy
basszák meg az urak a sarkanytyújukat, mert
35 Reaumur höségben ilyen szarságokkal
nem foglalkozhatunk.

Budapest 1903 aug 18.
Teljes tisztelettel
lófasz a seggükbe
Dr. Réthy László

m. n. muz. érem és régiségosztályi
igazg.-helyettes.

A XIV. ker. m. kir. Kulturmérnöki hivatalnak
Pécsett.

506/1903.
[To] the honourable department of cultural engineering
[In] the city of Pécs

With reference to the official document no. 1090/1903 which I received in today's mail and in which you enquire about what is to be done with the old spur found in the outskirts of Nagy-Berek, I answer with due official respect that the good gentlemen should f**k their spur, since in this heat of 35 Reaumur [= 43.75 Celsius = 110.75 Fahrenheit!] we cannot be bothered with such s**t.

Budapest 1903 August 18.
With the utmost respect,
[and wishing] a horse's c**k up your a*s
Dr. László Réthy
vice-princ[ipal]
Department of Coins and Antiquities, H[ungarian] N[ational] Mus[eum]

[To] the department of cultural engineering of the King[dom] of H[ungary], district XIV
[In] the city of Pécs

If you have ever tried working your way through Hungarian official documents the question you must be asking is: gosh, whatever went wrong?

Worn or nicked?

2009-01-18T20:19:00.003+01:00

The link above will take you to the highly interesting report submitted by Haraprasād Śāstrī to the relevant authorities in 1911. This paragraph on page 5 caught my attention:

When the manuscript [of the Haramekhalā] was first shewn to me, the unusual thickness of the last leaf roused my suspicions. I dipped it in water, and with a little manipulation found that two leaves were glued together into one. The glued pages contained a panegyric on Pratāpa Malla. The inference was irresistible that some one stole the manuscript and, to prevent detection, glued together those pages which would reveal the name of the real owner.

Let us consider another irresistible inference: sure, the first and last folios are the first to go on account of wear and tear, but how come the rest of many manuscripts are in a surprisingly good condition? Could it be that the last folio was sometimes conveniently lost together with the name of the scribe/owner?

The empty plantain tree

2009-01-17T16:28:00.004+01:00

asārāpi kadaly amṛtopamaṃ phalaṃ sāraṃ phalati yathā, tathā niḥsāramantradevatābījādikaṃ bhāvyamānaṃ saṃbodhyādilakṣaṇaṃ sāraṃ phalaṃ phalati. (Bhavabhaṭṭasya Catuṣpīṭhanibandhe)

Virūpa incognito in Bombay

2009-01-17T10:52:00.006+01:00

The Prince of Wales Museum of Western India (now Chatrapati Shivaji "Vastusaṃgrahālaya") in Bombay (now Mumbai) has a small but rather exquisite collection of Nepalese and Tibetan art. Sadly, the identification tags of many exhibited items are off the mark. Above is one example. I am no expert, but this jovial fellow with his hands raised (to stop the sun, or so they say) seems - to me at least - more of a Virūpa than a Kṛṣṇapāda.

That said, the place is still worth a visit if you are in town. Flash a student card at the entrance and you get in for 10 rupees as opposed to 200 for simple phirangs or 15 for locals. Photography costs 200 moneys and flash is not allowed by order. After all, sudden bursts of light could damage stones irreparably.

Madan Mohan, the pawned deity

2009-01-16T13:33:00.014+01:00

Bishnupur (Viṣṇupura for you and me) in Bankura district boasts one of the finest collections of terracotta temples in West Bengal. Amongst them Madan Mohan may not be the most spectacular, yet it has a curious little story attached to it.

When this image greeted me at the entrance I instantly knew that I was going to like this place.

Madan Mohan was perhaps some kind of local divinity who later became incorporated into/conflated/homologized with Kṛṣṇa. The strangest thing was that I already knew a Madan Mohan temple in North Calcutta. It turned out that this is not a coincidence at all. Early into the last century the temple in Bishnupur was in dire need of money and they pawned (!) their central deity to the wealthy and mighty Mitras of North Calcutta. The Mitra house still stands, although the owners have been evicted for some reason. One of the upper floors, obviously a former living room, is now converted into a place of worship. Every evening devotees come and sing bhajans in front of the image (this is a Kṛṣṇa playing the flute accompanied by Rādhā by the way). Presumably the Bishnupur temple is not interested in honouring their debt anymore, since now they have a perfect copy of the original enshrined in their Madan Mohan.

And here is the inscription (in śārdūlavikrīḍita) on the Bishnupur temple:

śrīrādhāvrajarājanandanapadāmbhojeṣu tatprītaye |
mallābde* phaṇirājaśīrṣagaṇite māse śucau nirmmale |
saudhaṃ sundararatnamandiram idaṃ sārdhaṃ svaceto'linā |
śrīmaddurjanasiṃhabhūmipatinā dattaṃ viśuddhātmanā ||

*The Mallas of Viṣṇupura had an era of their own starting with 694-5 CE, the coronation date of their first (legendary) king. The date is written with numerals at the bottom (1000 Malla era), that is 1694-5 CE. Phaṇirāja is of course Śeṣa, who is a thousand-headed serpent, hence: 'In the year of the Mallas numbering the head of the Serpent Lord'. I'm not sure I understand ceto'linā.

Here are a couple of images from the Mitra house, now known as a 'temple'. These pictures were taken two years ago just before Durgāpūjā, hence the clay idols in the making in the courtyard of what must have been a very imposing residence in its time.

No prinagi

2009-01-10T13:47:00.004+01:00

Seen on Ramakrishna Lane, North Calcutta. The series of metatheses should give a hefty headache to linguists who will discover this door as an artefact in two-three hundred years' time.

Bad-tempered ghee

2009-01-08T04:42:00.007+01:00

Best and testy. (seen on B. B. Ganguly Road, South Calcutta)

gaṇā iti– mikimūṣādaya iti subodham

2009-01-02T19:05:00.009+01:00

Panchugopal Sadhukhan is a relatively unknown artist. In fact, this is the first (and probably last) time I heard of him. I spotted his work today, in a small lane just off Bag Bazar Road in North Calcutta, on a building which was some kind of religious establishment.

The panel has the following: on the left a perfectly respectable Harihara (half-Viṣṇu, half-Śiva), on the right Kṛṣṇa minding his herd (not portrayed, you have seen this already). Below a band of gaṇas being merry, beating drums, the usual business. However, they are sporting the heads of the phirang deities (usually worshipped by children, but not exclusively): Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and what looks like Goofy. I guess this is what anthros call 'cultural translation'?

A day in the life of a zip-fasteners smuggler

2008-12-30T18:26:00.005+01:00

I return today, probably for the last time this year, with another prahasana-fragment recovered from Delhi and greetings for the new year. The day starts at four in the morning in a certain country in the Wild East of Europe. Flight takes me to London. So far so good. Some friends don't show up for a meeting. No matter. I peruse the Asian collection at the British Museum, about which I will have to say more another time. Very nice. Still have to kill the day, my flight to Delhi is at ten in the evening. This much I can take. After all, if you can't find things to do and places to go in London, you are hopeless. I am one of those people, so I show up early at Heathrow, which in retrospect seems like the friendliest and best organized airport ever. After a few minor glitches big bird flies back to where I came from (carbon footprint!) and several thousand more miles towards the south-east.

And then, the monster. The extreme interfaces of Indian airports are nice. People at the check-in desk are nice. Stewardesses are nice. Now, in between these two lies no man's land, an amorphous mass, a gigantic belly that devours and spews up things and people at random. Four different people tell me seven different things about where I have to go next: 1) go through immigration; 2) don't go through immigration, never ever, you'll never get back; 3) go to transit above; 4) go to transit below; 5) wait for Air India ground staff (nowhere to be found); 6) go to domestic terminal; 7) drop dead (ok, no one said this, but it's by far the easiest way out). So I go through immigration, after all, that guy _is_ the one who is supposed to know the rules. Sir, you go pick up your bag. Am I in the right place? Yes, yes, go retrieve your luggage. Am I in the right place. He insists on my being reunited with my luggage. But London checked-in my bag all the way to Calcutta. In spite of this, I find it in a pile next to a belt which was already spitting out the next flight's cargo.

Time for a cigarette. But for this you have negotiate Cerberus Kumar Singh at the gates. He takes a look at my exotic passport and shouts at me in Hindi. C. Singh thinks it's the most obvious thing on the planet that anyone holding a Romanian passport can speak Hindi. No surprise shown when I answer in Hindi. His doubts have been cleared. My Bollywood is great. Getting out was fairly easy, but getting back proves to be more difficult. I have to go upstairs. I beg to differ. Upstairs. I object. He shrugs and takes the next boarding card. I'm not important anymore. And I'll be damned: I did have to go upstairs!

Although the flight is not listed anywhere, this is the right place, gate H, I am told by a nice person. At least he knows. But there are about 70% of staff whose jobs are utter mysteries: take-boarding-pass-seven-yards-after-the-gate-guy, stamp-vigorously-boarding-pass-and-look-mean-guy, check-boarding-pass-and-nod-guy, give-out-customs-forms-ten-yards-and-a-half-behind-escalator-guy (we'll return to this later). Cerberus Pramod Singh fails to understand why I'm at the International Terminal when I'm flying domestic. I share his worries. He lets me through nevertheless. He doesn't tell me I'll never get out of there.

Aimlessly wondering about is nice. Especially when you haven't slept for about 38 hours by now. Perhaps another cigarette would take the edge off this boredom. Cerberus Kartik Singh thinks otherwise. I'm not allowed to leave the terminal. He's got a gun and is increasingly angry. Isn't there any way? Go to gate one (he probably has an old rival there, let him get into trouble). Being able to get out at gate one (all the gates lead to the same forecourt) proves to be an illusion. I return to look for my flight. Few hours later Air India counters show sings of life. And they actually know about a flight to Calcutta. Counter-guy admonishes me: "you were never supposed to leave transit, what are you doing here?" I recount my odd-ysey. "Sir, I am telling you now, you should be in transit."

And here comes the best part, the one that made all this and what is to come, worthwhile. I get a slip: "Declaration of domestic passengers travelling by Air India flight". I will bury this and let next generations of epigraphists wonder what on earth this was supposed to mean. I have to declare items for which I do/do not possess valid customs clearance documents. 1) Watches, watch movements or parts thereof. 2) Transistors and diodes. 3) cameras etc. (fair enough so far, although diodes might strike you as a bit odd). Item number 6), however, is the most bizarre entry ever: Zip fasteners (for effect: जिप फस््नर्स). I ask the person whether I have to declare the ones that are on my person (and whether anyone wishes to inspect these personally, in which case I shall protest), or the two-thousand others that I am smuggling in from Hungary to ruin the Indian zip-fastener industry in a day's time. A blasé wave tells it all: there will be someone in charge of zip-fasteners, after immigration. It's his problem.

I eagerly embrace the prospect of meeting zip-fastener-guy and rush through passport control. This person I have to meet. Sadly, no-one is interested in your zippers after passport control. Not a soul. To my utter disappointment zip-fastener-guy fails to show. To my utter despair, so does my flight. In this, yet another, level of what makes Dante's purgatory and Buddhist hells seem like a pleasant weekend outing activity, no one has ever heard of a flight to Calcutta. Helpdesk even claims that they don't work with Air India and sends me to gate 1. Gate 1 sends me to helpdesk. After all, why should the airport of the capital know where government-owned flights are operating from?

At least they do have a smoking area. I retire here to mull over what to do next. Since lighters and matches are prohibited items, the smoking room is thoughtfully equipped with the modern reincarnation of the supari-wallah's 'electronic lighter'. This device, which I perceived in Pondicherry to be an ancient remain from the time matches were a luxury, is basically a piece of wolfram (I think) which, when a button pushed and electricity allowed to heat up the metal, glows, and thus becomes able to light a cigarette. Naturally, such complex devices (perhaps a software glitch) break down often, and it's out of order. I break the law as I pocket a box of matches I see on a table, but I do so for other than selfish reasons. I increasingly have the feeling that if one was so inclined one could easily hijack the entire airport with a toothbrush, let alone a box of flammables.

Few more hours passed and I was lucky to be at a particular gate where a man shouted 'passengers to Calcutta'. The loudspeaker was silent of this affair. A bus took us to the most obscure corner of the airport where a plane proudly wearing an "Indian Airlines" inscription in late 70's devanāgarī turned out to be Air India no. xyz. From here everything became normal again. Well, save half of Calcutta cooking under your window and fake Bauls screaming their lungs out on heavy-duty loudspeakers right across Jay Ma Kali Cyclestores. But if you think that I will drop my current business and take up the study of Nordic Sagas in order to visit only efficient and spotless Scandinavian airports, you're very much mistaken.

Sanskrit, guv

2008-12-11T23:14:00.005+01:00

[fragment from a prahasana performed at Luton Airport, today]

- (cockney accent) Do you live in this country Mr erm?
- (undefinable accent, hence social status, place of birth, supported football club, and favoured newspaper uncertain) Sorry?
- Do you live in this country?
- Yes.
- Working? Student?
- Student.
- What are you studying?
- Sanskrit.
- Sorry?
- Sanskrit.
- Sanskit?
- Sanskrit?
- Sanskirt as in ...
- Sanskrit as in ancient Indian language Sanskrit.
- I'm sorry, can you spell that?
- S-A-N-S-K-R-I-T!
- Hm, perhaps if you could write this on this piece of paper here.
- ...
- Cheers.
- ...
- S-a-n-s-k-r-i-t, hah! Next please!

Nāgārjunagarbha

2008-11-23T21:45:00.004+01:00

As is usually the case, there seem to have been more than one person behind this name. The one I'm keen to find out more about is the author of a commentary to the Guhyasamāja. Although I haven't looked very carefully, secondary literature available to me seems to be quite silent about him. This may come as a surprise, since his huge commentary takes up an entire Bstan 'gyur volume (Sa, Tōh. 1784). The Tōhoku catalogue ascribes this work to Nāgārjuna, but this must be a mistake. The author actually states his name in the closing verses.

And he has more to say:

dpal ldan rgyal po De gzhon nu| dus su lo ni bco brgyad la| 'Phags pa lha yis byas pa 'i[|] Dpal ldan gnas ni shar phyogs su| dge slong rnams kyi gtsug lag khang gi phyogs gzhan gyis gsal bar btab pas| Rdo rje sems dpa'i drin gyis bdag gis rgyud 'grel 'di ni rnam par brtsams||

The text is of course quite clearly corrupt. But what he seems to be saying is that during the 18th regnal year of De gzhon nu (perhaps Bde gzhon nu for *Ānandakumāra?) he composed through the grace of Vajrasattva this commentary to the [Guhyasamāja]tantra east of a place called Dpal ldan gnas (*Śrīsthāna or something similar) founded by Āryadeva. The rest is obscure to me. Perhaps what he means that this place was illuminated by the presence of chapels and monks?

Find out more about this king and the place, and we may just have a pretty solid date for the notoriously evasive exegetes of the Guhyasamāja. etat tu yuṣmābhir eva kartavyam.

In the window of a sweet shop

2008-11-21T19:44:00.013+01:00

The rather pompous National Mission for Manuscripts is like a sweet shop which will never open, but will distribute leaflets about how great their candies and pastries are. Furthermore, they will have a small sample in the window you can drool at. Then the only thing you can do is walk away in frustration after seeing the perennial 'opening soon' sign. The owner will never pick up the phone and if he does he will be full of promises. In fact, he will pretend that the store is open, and you're some kind of idiot for failing to notice this fact.

I don't know if anyone had noticed this before (if so, I sincerely apologize), but this particular piece here is a sample of that huge and rather delicious cake which is the Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa. A gut feeling tells me that this is none other but the Trivandrum manuscript, or at least the right half of three of its folios (the first corresponds to a portion in chapter 36). I sincerely hope that the thing is still joined with its left half which was perhaps left out here for effect. The sad truth is, however, that in Cochin I saw astrological manuscripts sawn in half (or third) so that tourist sahab looking for nice coffee table item could carry it out easier, and for the antique dealer to make double/triple profit.

Gajaśikṣā

2008-11-20T12:45:00.006+01:00

One of the earliest account of things Indian in my homeland comes from the 'Hungarian Encyclopedia' of the Transylvanian polyglot Apáczai Csere János (1625-1659). This is not a first hand account. I can envisage him sitting in a tavern somewhere in the Low Countries (where he studied, fell in love, etc.) listening to sailors' stories and taking notes. The entry on elephants is a bit bizarre. I don't have the text in front of me but I clearly remember the statement that these magnificient beasts can 'talk as humans' and their 'chief' agrees to some kind of contract with whom we now call a mahout to work for them for a specified amount of food for a fixed timespan and so on.

Now, in the following I was to write about a curious little śāstra I just found, but I see that it is widely available online so you can read it for yourself (and I can go back to work):

E.R. Sreekrishna Sarma (ed.), Gajaśikṣā by Nāradamuni, With the Commentary Vyakti of Umāpatyācārya, S.V.U.O. Journal Vol. XVIII, Sri Venkateswara University, Oriental Research Institute, Tirupati, 1975. - available here.

"the whole self-journey thing"

2008-11-19T20:27:00.004+01:00

Geoff Dyer a little bit out there on bhang lassi–

Later, as the light faded, I saw the goat again, the one with the clean white coat and the cute black socks. The one I had thought was going to speak to me. As I passed by, he began walking beside me. As I passed by, he began walking beside me. He smelled a bit of cheese, goat's cheese. I felt something touch my leg. He was butting me gently with his head. I looked down at his goat-face.

'Sah, boat?' he said.

'No, thank you,' I said.

'Very cheap, sah.'

'No, thank you,' I said.

'Sah want boat?' the goat repeated.

'I walking. No want boat.'

'Very cheap,' said the goat.

'No, thank you,' I said.

I had slowed down and the goat, sensing my hesitancy and interpreting this as a willingness to be detained, tried a different approach.

'Sah, you think is nice being goat here in city? Life here hard for me. I have children. I offer you boat, but what I most want is to engage in conversation, a little philosophical discourse.'

I stopped walking so that I could give the goat the attention he obviously craved and deserved.

'OK. What would you like to talk about?'

The goat paused and then said, 'You take boat, sah?'

[Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi - to be published]

Nirukti not dead

2008-11-07T19:30:00.005+01:00

Rushing through Cornmarket today I heard a preacher, sermon custom made for Oxford and all. "Get your Ph.D. from Jesus! What does that mean? The Power to Heal and Deliver!" Unfortunately I did not have the time to stick around for the niruktis of B.A. (bomb atheists?), M.A., and M.St.

Life and Works of rNgog Blo ldan shes rab (1059–1109)

2008-10-29T19:37:00.002+01:00

For some misterious reason Ralf Kramer's book on rNgog lo is now available online. Thanks to Y.B./rten for the tip!

Online worship

2008-10-28T21:36:00.003+01:00

The miracle is not that such a site exists, the miracle would be if it hadn't. They even send you 'after-Puja-things'.

Rāhularuci

2008-10-26T19:39:00.005+01:00

The Khaḍipadā image inscription is largely overlooked in historical studies of Vajrayāna, yet it seems to be tremendously important. The publisher of the inscription, A. Ghosh, assigns it to the seventh century on palaeographical grounds (Epigraphia Indica XXVI 1941-42, pp. 247-248). The short inscription was found on the left edge of a Padmapāṇi statue. It records the name of the king under the rule of which the donation occured, the name of donor, and the name of the craftsman who incised the inscription:

oṃ śrī-śubhā(or śuhā-?)karadeva-rājye mahāmaṇḍalācārya-paramaguru-rāhularucināṃ tasya dedharmmo yaṃ | utkīrṇṇaṃ kuḍhā(?)-sūttradhāreṇaḥ ||

The rendering is a bit uncertain. As Ghosh suggests, de dharmmo obviously stands for deyadharmmo, and we should probably ignore the visarga in sūttradhāreṇaḥ. Ghosh proposes rāhularucināmā for rāhularucināṃ which is also feasible, but I'm not really convinced. So the text must means something along the lines of:

Oṃ. During the reign of śrī Śubhākaradeva [of the Bhaumakara dynasty, there was a man] called Rāhularuci, a chief maṇḍalācārya and royal preceptor. This is his pious gift. Incised by Kuḍhā, the craftsman.

Niceties aside, the most important facts are that there was a guy called Rāhularuci, a very Buddhist name, who was a 'paramaguru', a title reserved for the royal chaplain, and he was also a (mahā)maṇḍalācārya. This, as far as I know, is the earliest occurence of the term maṇḍalācārya. The fact that the royal preceptor is a Buddhist also seems quite unique. The Bhaumakaras should be given much more attention.

PS: due to an unfortunate data transfer I lost the link to Mori's website which had a photo of this particular Padmapāṇi statue. I'd be very grateful if someone could post it.

Granthinām re-enters e-Saṃsāra

2008-10-23T17:06:00.002+02:00

Granthinām is back, so please adjust your links to this.

TibSkrit 2008

2008-10-22T11:43:00.005+02:00

It's a bit difficult to find if you're not looking for it. Go to the great blog, tibeto-logic. Then scroll down until you find this cat on the right side. Above it a link: Tibskrit 2008. And while you're there, read the new stuff on Pha dam pa.

Co ne bla ma online

2008-10-21T12:36:00.006+02:00

A subproject of the good people of the ACIP have released scans of the complete works of Co ne bla ma grags pa shes grub, a famous master from Eastern Tibet. Personally I prefer the 'letter stack' download, this makes a pdf on letter paper size fitting as many folios as possible on a page.

The circle of religion

2008-10-12T12:11:00.004+02:00

If you are a goat, the best place to hang out is probably not one where every Saturday the adjoining river runs red with the blood of your brethren. And yet, this fearless specimen of Caprinae not only did that, but actually proceeded to munch on the wreaths adorning the image of Dakṣiṇakālī.

FIISSR reviewed

2008-10-11T11:44:00.005+02:00

I almost forgot to tell you that I very much enjoyed the Fifth International Intensive Sanskrit Summer Retreat which took place this year in Kőszeg, Hungary. No pictures I'm afraid, I forgot to bring my camera. Here is a Hindi review of the happening. In light of current events the last sentence seems especially appropriate. It was written by Mrs Gita Kumar and pointed out to me by Dr Mária Négyesi. Many thanks to both.

Red tape chokes Hungarian Oriental Studies

2008-10-09T14:08:00.007+02:00

Hungarians are a funny sort. Whereas most normal languages express things with particles, agglutination is a national sport. We have our surnames in front. When the post-communist world was trying to pick up the pieces amidst chaos, Hungary was the wonderchild of Eastern Europe. When the neo-European countries were booming, we suddenly discovered that the economy is about to collapse. Then we have an unusual knack for screwing up things that work and pumping money into things that don't and never will, to wit, soccer.

So it was high time for the glorious red tape to choke some of the good things still left in the country. This year the all-powerful Hungarian Accreditation Committee decided that studies concerning about half of the planet is totally useless beyond a BA. Kind of ironic for a nation of less than ten million. Thus, beginning from next year the following disciplines will not offer MA courses at ELTE University: Indian Studies, Chinese Studies, Mongolian Studies, Korean Studies, and Japanese Studies (Tibetan was successfully wiped out earlier).

Well, fine and dandy, a small country can't afford such 'luxuries'. Never you mind that Tibetan studies should be on the list of national treasures since it was sort of invented by a Hungarian. To hell with India and China which happen to be on the way to becoming superpowers of this century. Japan is going down anyway. Mongolian? Oh well, 50 years of spearheading research should not bother us.

Surprise, surprise, however: Turkic studies, Arabic studies, Hebrew studies, Assirian studies, Iranian studies, and Altaic studies (in Szeged) passed. I'm not saying that they don't deserve it, they are just as valuable as all the above if not more. Surely, it's only a fortunate coincidence.

I think that members of the accreditation committe deserve our thanks and appreciation for taking this burden off the country's shoulders. I'm sure that the process was long and exhausting, hence I would be glad to pay them a long vacation to discover some of the more obscure parts of Xinjiang Uighur. One way tickets will suffice.

Insured against God?

2008-10-06T22:29:00.005+02:00

It's a psychological condition I guess. I have to read everything that comes into my field of vision, especially if it's a boring bus trip back from London. This time it was the 'AppleCare Protection Plan' (75% discount if you are a student). Get a life you might say, but it actually paid off since encapsulated in the legal mumbo-jumbo which at times sounds like the Pañcarakṣā mantras there are some hidden gems.

If you live in the Netherlands, then: "Apple is in particular not responsible for the plan being apt for your purposes." So, if it's good for me, it's not their problem.

If you live in Italy: "Without prejudice to any other applicable legislation, Articles 1519bis - 1519-nonies [sic] of the Italian Civil Code apply to this Plan, [...]"

In Belgium, France and other Catholic countries you are entitled to 'repent' according to the Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act of 14 July 1991. The end is truly nigh.

But this one takes the cake: "The Plan does not cover: [...] (ii) Damage to the Covered Equipment caused by accident, abuse, neglect, misuse [...], unauthorized modification, extreme environment [...], extreme physical and or electrical stress or interference, fluctuation or surges of electrical power, lightning, static electricity, fire, acts of God or other external causes;"

Hence I've decided to introduce the following scheme: should you feel uncomfortable about your computer not being insured against the whims of the Almighty, drop me a cheque of say 20 quid per annum and I guarantee I will replace your equipment, whatever it was, however much it cost, provided that you bring irrefutable evidence. After all, getting a Nobel for a lousy 17" MacBook Pro is not a bad deal. And if it's good for you, it's not my problem.

kim ucyate bhavān?

2008-10-05T16:19:00.014+02:00

I will not reveal* where that phrase was uttered since our topic of the day is scribal Sanskrit. My first exposure to scribes was reading a wonderful little work by István Ráth-Végh called "The Comedy of the Book" (as far as I know unfortunately not translated into English, but a German translation seems to be around). This witty collection of anecdotes and other curiosities had an entry on rather personal scribal marginalia on mediaeval codices, such as "I've got a bad headache today", or "Let a good cow be given to the scribe", or even "Let a nice girl be given to the scribe". I found this very amusing and little did I know then that I'll be spending the rest of my life constantly trying to pry what was going on with scribes on that particular day when they chose to copy a particular work. Baffling mistakes, eyeskips, etc. could be put down to external pressure: chatty wife, screaming children, equivalent of Bollywood music in the streets, bad weather. We'll never know. But as you all know, many scribes had absolutely no inkling what they were copying.

Enter Sarvārthasiddha of Maitrīpura mahāvihāra (the Kwa Bahal of Kathmandu just within the old city**) affixing this note to a manuscript of the Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa now kept in the Bodleian Library (ms. Hodgson 2). Note that it was probably great weather in āśvina 1823 as the monsoon just ended, so bad Sanskrit is not to be put down to the rain.

yadā dṛṣṭaṃ tadā likhitaṃ lekhako nāsti doṣakaṃ |
jadi śuddhaṃ m-aśuddhaṃ vā śuddhanīyo mahadbudhīḥ ||

When (i.e. the way) I saw it then (i.e. just the same way) I wrote it, there ain't no fault with the scribe! If anything is clear or unclear [in the readings], the big-headed ones correct it!

Sorry for the colloquial translation, I just couldn't resist. It's a bit puzzling (amongst many other things) why the wise ones should correct good readings. But this seems to have been a trope. Here's another one from 1281 māgha (again nice and cool weather):

jādisaṃ pustakaṃ dṛṣṭā tādisaṃ likhitaṃ mayā |
jadi sudham asudhaṃ vā mama dokho na dīyate ||
udakānalacorebhyo musikebhyo tatheva ca |
rakṣatavya payatnena mayā kaṣṭena likhite ||

I wrote this just the way I saw it in a book. If anything is clear or unclear [in the readings], don't put the blame on me! I copied it in the midst of hardships, so it should be kept away from water, fire, thieves, and mice.

This guy was particularly bad: he even managed to misspell the name of his king (Anaṃtamīla for Anantamalla) and wrote 'Thoysday' for 'Thursday' (vyaśapati for bṛhaspati).

And there are doubtless many more. Please feel free to add your finds.

* I heard the anecdote from Prof. Sanderson.
** The fact that this Bahal is still within city bounds is Kashinath Thamod's discovery.

Buffaloes on parade

2008-10-04T22:48:00.006+02:00

So, as Iain had already reported, there was a nice little riot in Basantpur over the buffalo sacrifice and we happened to walk straight into it.

At first it felt almost like home, but then the storm-troopers jogged in:

Although they were quite harsh, one could see that years of riots gave them ample training. Whereas in Hungary two years ago the police sent in a water canon without cover (any child below six or so who's ever played CS will tell you that the strategic value of a canon in this case becomes roughly equal with that of a trolley bus).

The rathyapuruṣa however did not seem phased. Back to the alleyways around Dharmapath and Basantpur, regroup, move out. In the end the tear-gas did it. Never you mind, the next day there was yet another protest, this time nightclub owners and their employees. Yes, that's right. Strippers however did not throw stones and stuff and they got bad reviews the next day in the papers.

Of course a secular government that Nepal aspires to have should not dabble in matters of religion. However, the protesters did not seem to me like politically motivated intellectuals. Then again, the French Revolution wasn't started by middle-aged white collar workers out for a bit of mêlée after a hard day at La Bourse either.

But we should not judge what's going on. Our task is to understand, not to like or dislike. So, the only remaining thing is to start wondering which songs will be voted for "best to listen to during a riot" in Nepal should the protesters be able to afford iPods. Guess what won in Hungary? Rage Against the Machine of course.

Dhūmrapān niṣedh

2008-10-02T23:54:00.008+02:00

[The 'smoking temple' in Pilgrims, Thamel]

India has finally banned that most disgusting and filthy habit: smoking in public spaces. Pan-chewing and its attractive trails of red spit actually add some colour to the streets (it's also good for your teeth)- but those cigarette butts littered all over are a nasty sight, especially that there are rubbish bins every fifty feet or so all over the country. Indians will awake tomorrow to the natural scents of rose-water and sandalwood emanating from the countryside into the cities, cigarette smoke shall pollute the public sphere no more. Citizens of Delhi and other cities will now be able to walk briskly to work in the refreshing morning air, taking large puffs of rich oxygen. The number one menace to your lungs removed, large sums of the National Health Service will be rerouted to other sectors badly in need of funds: government jeeps and nuclear warheads. Cigarette vendors can finally pack up and/or close shop and go home and look after their stocks and other investments. Those number one selling face masks can now be dropped off at your local Red Cross/Crescent agency to be exported to such still obstinate and backward places as Austria (not to mention Hungary and Romania). We salute the Government for this highly original and no doubt popular move. India is now truly on her way to becoming a glorious Westernized nation.

Back from Kathmandu

2008-10-01T14:28:00.005+02:00

The funny pictures again:

All sorts of weird signs in Thamel.

Mbrdry (I might have already posted this).

Public convenience at Dakṣiṇakālī.

Is this some special form of utkrānti I've never heard about before?

Home again?

2008-09-30T19:28:00.006+02:00

دوستوں دیکھا تماشا یہاں کا بس

تم رہو اب ہم تو اپنے گھر چلے

he mitrā, alam aihikacitradarśanena.
tiṣṭhata, vayaṃ tv adhunā gṛhaṃ gacchāmaḥ.

[Mīr Dard iti kaviḥ. tatrabhavān Somadevaś chandasi racayiṣyatīty āśā. asmadanuvādas tu yathā tathā.]

Granthinām enters Bardo

2008-09-09T12:02:00.003+02:00

Daniel Stender's excellent blog will be out of order for a while providing the author with some necessary breathing space. All we can do is wish him a happy vacation and a speedy return to e-saṃsāra.

Rats and luminaries

2008-09-06T15:58:00.005+02:00

Here is a nice quote from Vijay Prakash, secretary of the Welfare Department in Bihar, on his new proposal to alleviate local food shortages:

We can save about half of our food-grain stocks by catching and eating rats. [They're] quite rich in nutrition.

[source: originally this week's Newsweek 'Perspectives', but I now also found it on BBC, the Telegraph, etc.]

Holy port

2008-09-05T10:10:00.011+02:00

Being a great fan of port, I have long entertained suspicions that there must be something holy about it. Now we have irrefutable evidence from "Dpal Zha lu Gser khang khra mo dgon gyi ngo sprod rags bsdud - A brief description to the Shalu Monastery". The book is available from a small table on the right side of the lane leading to Zhalu (make sure to taste their original Red Bull as well, although that drink is not so holy).

Many treasures kept at Zhalu are related to holy port. Here are two examples:

Caption reads: "Bumchu Nyongtrol: beings will be liberated from the Samsara (suffering ocean) when they have some water* drops from this holy port." [*NB: 'water' is probably a contamination.]

'dir ma zad. Apparently Bu ston was also a great fan of port since there is a statue of him holding 'Life-port' at his abbatial seat.

Caption reads: "Buton Tshebuma (Buton Life-port Holder)"

Za khang ja khang chang khang in Zhalu is for the time being the exclusive distributor for Zhalu holy port. Coming soon to an Oddbins near you.