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'.

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

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.