Papers of Brian H. Hodgson

A wonderful, much-awaited catalogue. 

The date of the Gūḍhapadā (updated)

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'.

Musings on a hat (+update)

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'!