Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp in collaboration with Chen Yilan
Armed with a profound knowledge of Sanskrit and much else besides, Situ Paṇchen Chökyi Jungné (si tu paṇ chen chos kyi ’byung gnas, 1699–1774)[1] of Palpung Monastery (dpal spungs dgon) in central Khams, or present-day western Sichuan, was, among the myriad of other things in which he was engaged, one of the great interpreters of Daṇḍin’s (ca. 700) Kāvyādarśa or Kāvyalakṣaṇa, as it is also known.[2] Indeed, it is more than fair to say that his Sanskrit-Tibetan bilingual edition of Daṇḍin’s work for which he had printing blocks prepared at his see on December 16, 1772,[3] represents a milestone in the ongoing philological scholarship on and exegesis of this treatise of ornate poetry and poetics, in short, of belles-lettres.[4] Merely because of its posteriority, we cannot exactly say or presume that it was compiled in competition with the earlier bilingual edition that was purportedly prepared by Shalu Lotsāwa Chökyong Sangpo (zhwa lu lo tsā ba chos skyong bzang po, 1441–1528), another great translator (lotsāwa) and Sanskrit scholar.[5] But what we do know is that he was very much aware of its existence and that he used it for his edition, even if none of this is evident from the little information about its “biography” that can be culled from his diaries.[6] For more than two centuries, Shalu Lotsāwa’s works on Sanskrit grammar and lexicography, to a large degree his undated studies of the Tibetan grammars the Sumchupa (sum cu pa) and Takjukpa (rtags kyi ’jug pa), and perhaps also to some degree his edition of the Kāvyādarśa were the virtually undisputed go-to works for anyone in the Tibetan world who was interested in these subjects. And this would also hold for his famous manual for correct spelling (Dakyik, dag yig), his Bökyi dai tenchö lekpar shepa rinpoché (bod kyi brda’i bstan bcos legs par bshad pa rin po che’i za ma tog bkod pa) of 1514.[7] To be sure, much depends on the extent to which his oeuvre was disseminated, and this is something about which we know, well, virtually nothing! The extensive study of the Sumchupa (sum cu pa) and Takjukpa (rtags kyi ’jug pa) grammars of Tibetan by his junior contemporary Surkharwa Lodrö Gyalpo (zur mkhar ba blo gros rgyal po, 1509–after 1581) frequently cites his commentaries on the former as well as his Dakyik (dag yig), and it is perhaps telling that two centuries later the Third Changkya Rölpai Dorjé (lcang skya III rol pa’i rdo rje, 1717–1786) still found it useful to summarize his commentaries on the Sumchupa and Takjukpa.[8] It is still an open question whether there is any evidence that the appearance of Situ Paṇchen’s writings on these very same subjects displaced much of what Shalu Lotsāwa and his immediate disciples had wrought. If a displacement did in fact occur, and again much depends on the dissemination of their oeuvre, then we would be able to posit a pre- and post-Situ Paṇchen period of the studies of these relatively arcane subjects in the Tibetan area. And this would also hold for his difficult 1747 commentaries on the Sumchupa and Takjukpa. Recently, a significant dissertation was written on these very commentaries,[9] and it appears that neither drew much serious criticism from Situ Paṇchen’s successors.
The ensuing consists of three parts. In the first two, I discuss several aspects of Shalu Lotsāwa’s life as a scholar of Sanskrit and poetics, and this is followed by a brief survey of Situ Paṇchen’s reaction to some of his scholarship. In the third, I examine aspects surrounding Situ Paṇchen’s bilingual edition of the Kāvyādarśa and the all-pervasive role he played in the exceptional Kāvyādarśa commentary that his disciple the Fourth Khamtrul Tenzin Chökyi Nyima (khams sprul IV bstan ’dzin chos kyi nyi ma, 1730–1779) completed sometime during the second week of December of 1770. This commentary is filled with citations of Situ Paṇchen’s comments and answers to queries the Fourth Khamtrul had asked him about the text.
Shalu Lotsāwa was the only son of Samdrup Palsang (bsam ’grub dpal bzang). His patriline (gdung rus) belonged to the Gö (’gos) family (rigs), and Rinchen Chözom (rin chen chos ’dzom) was his mother.[10] He had three younger sisters. His father was an official who was affiliated with the administration of Shalu (zhwa lu) Monastery and its estates, and his son was in fact born on its monastic grounds. Nothing is related about his mother or her family. Shalu Lotsāwa is sometimes referred to as the fourth Gö Lotsāwa (’gos lo tsā ba). The tradition knows of four men, all of whom have been called Gö Lotsāwa. The first is Gö Lotsāwa Chödrup (’gos lo tsā ba chos grub, 9th c.). He is also known by his Chinese name of Wu Facheng (吴法成) and some scholars have suggested that he was ethnically Chinese and not Tibetan.[11] The second is Gö Lotsāwa Khukpa Lhetsé (’gos lo tsā ba khug pa lhas btsas, 11th c.), the third Gö Lotsāwa Shönu Pal (’gos lo tsā ba gzhon nu dpal, 1392–1481), and the fourth would be Shalu Lotsāwa.
The available biographical corpus that informs us of his life and authorship does not contain any information on when he might have begun his edition of Daṇḍin’s work or when he put the finishing touches to it. We will see below that we actually owe this edition to his disciple Kyoktön Lotsāwa Ngawang Rinchen Tashi (skyogs ston lo tsā ba ngag dbang rin chen bkra shis, late 15th c.–after 1536), who was also his biographer. Rich as it is with important information about Shalu Lotsāwa’s philological work and oeuvre as a whole and written as a “biography-cum-memorandum” (rnam par thar pa brjed byang), Kyoktön Lotsāwa’s biography of the master is so far extant in two different manuscripts, and it is dated the year wangchuk (dbang phyug). Two years may initially come into question, 1517 or 1577. We will see below that the evidence tends to support the year 1517. Among the many hats Shalu Lotsāwa wore, he was also an important exponent of the Kālacakra precepts[12] and it is for this reason that Ameshap Ngawang Kunga Sönam (a mes zhabs ngag dbang kun dga’ bsod nams, 1597–1659) included a biography of him in his large 1636 study of the transmissional history of its textual corpus. This biography is partly based on Kyoktön Lotsāwa’s work but adds many crucial details that are absent from it. Both biographies include references to an edition of Shalu Lotsāwa’s collected works (bka’ ’bum) and an earlier biography of the master by a Paṇchen Rinchen Chökyi Wangpo (paṇ chen rin chen chos kyi dbang po, ?–?), alias Paṇchen Bumtrak Sumpa (paṇ chen ’bum phrag gsum pa).[13] This man should not be confused, as is sometimes done, with Paṇchen Jampa Chödrak (paṇ chen byams pa chos grags, 1433–1504), whose nickname was also Paṇchen Bumtrak Sumpa. Rinchen Chökyi Wangpo (rin chen chos kyi dbang po) is equally known as Bum Rabjampa (’bum rab ’byams pa) and figures inter alia in two works written by the Fourth Shamar Chödrak Yeshé (zhwa dmar IV chos grags ye shes, 1453–1524) in 1513 and 1517. This might suggest that the year 1517 for the wangchuk year is too early. What would then be quite puzzling is the fact that Kyoktön Lotsāwa does not give a date for Shalu Lotsāwa’s passing. The somewhat later survey of his life in Dartö Dradul Wangpo’s (’dar stod dgra ’dul dbang po, ca. 1600) history of the study of the language domain of knowledge (sgra’i gnas rig), rightfully accords Shalu Lotsāwa a prominent place in his narrative and adds several details that are not found in Kyoktön Lotsāwa’s text.[14] These details include that he appointed his maternal nephew Lotsāwa Pema Karpo (lo tsā ba padma dkar po) to be his successor to the see of Drathang Monastery in 1527, which he had occupied since his fifty-fourth year, and that he passed away one year later.[15] Ratnabhadra, or Rinchen Sangpo (rin chen bzang po, 16th c.), another student of Shalu Lotsāwa and the author of a brief versified biography of his teacher, also implies that he passed away at the age of eighty-seven.[16] Ameshap follows suit but adds for good measure the exact month, day, and the time of day of his death when he writes:[17]
de yang mnyam med thub pa’i dbang po mya ngan las ’das pa’i tshul bstan nas lo nyis stong bzhi brgya dang lnga ’das pa/ me mkha’ rgya mtsho la drug cu phrag brgyad dang/ nyag ma so dgu ma long ba/ kun ’dzin zhes bya ba sa pho byi ba’i lo chu stod zla ba’i gnam gang gi snga dro’i char/ […] bdag po de nyid dgongs pa chos kyi dbyings su thim pa’i tshul bstan par gyur to//
Now, on the morning of the new moon day of the chu stod (*āṣāḍha) [6th] lunar month of the year of the earth-male-rat year [1528] called kun ’dzin (*sarvadhāri), amounting to eight sixty-year cycles and not having reached thirty-nineth year of a single cycle to the me mkha’ rgya mtsho [1027],[18] two thousand four hundred and five years having passed since the unequalled lord of sages [the Buddha] showed the way of going beyond suffering [ca. 878 BC][19]...that very master [Shalu Lotsāwa] showed the way in which his spiritual capacity (dgongs pa) merged into the reach and range of reality.
We learn from both Kyoktön Lotsāwa and Ameshap that Shalu Lotsāwa began his Tibetan language training under Netan [Lotsāwa] Lekpa Gyaltsen (gnas brtan [lo tsā ba] legs pa rgyal mtshan, 1375–1450) while he was still quite young and that at that time he also learned the rañjanā and the vartula scripts, two of the ornamental scripts in which Sanskrit can be written, from a Nepalese artisan who was working on decorating the murals of Shalu Monastery.[20] Not much later, when the same Netan used Śarvavarman’s (ca. 4th c.) Kalāpasūtra/Kātantra to teach him the elements of Sanskrit grammar, together with the commentary on that treatise by Narthang Lotsāwa Gendun Pal (snar thang lo tsā ba dge ’dun dpal, ca.1370–after 1439),[21] he apparently learned it in an extraordinarily short time. This was soon followed by his studies of Sanskrit prosody using Ratnākāraśānti’s (ca.970–ca.1040) Chandoratnākara and of course the poetics of the Kāvyādarśa in tandem with Pang Lotsāwa Lodrö Tenpa’s (dpang lo tsā ba blo gros brtan pa, 1276–1342) commentary. Again, it did not take him long to learn these treatises and other cognate ones as well. A sign of things to come, he soon experimented with his newly acquired knowledge by writing a praise poem in Sanskrit to the individuals in the transmission of the Kālacakra in which he used the wangpo dorjé (Tib. dbang po rdo rje, Skt. indravajrā) meter of quatrains with lines of eleven long and short syllables.
Shalu Lotsāwa was an extraordinarily prolific editor and perhaps less so an author, and his biographies include very substantial listings of the number of canonical translations that he had revised and edited, and of those treatises of which he was the original author. The former also includes the large number of bilingual editions he had prepared of which so far only a few have come down to us. Cases in point are the said edition of the Kāvyādarśa, and in the Tengyur, a good portion of Subhūticandra’s (ca.1050–ca.1120) Kāmadhenu commentary on Amarasiṃha’s (?7th c.) Amarakośa, the Chandoratnākara, and Kṣemendra’s (11th c.) Bodhisattvādānakalpalatā.[22] Dartö gives a lengthy list of the texts in question, and writes the following at the end of his register:[23]
[…] ’di rnams rgya dpe dang bod dpe sbyar ba’i brda thog tshig don la dpyod pa zhugs pas/ sngon gyi lo tsā ba rnams kyis chos bsgyur tshul/ rjes su dpag pa’i sgo nas rtogs par gyur pa lags/
[…] since he undertook to investigate these, in addition to the corresponding terms of the Sanskrit and Tibetan manuscripts, with respect to the wording and their meaning, he understood by inference the way in which earlier translators had translated religious texts.
There is no question that he possessed that rare spark of a genius. Among his writings that are marginally germane to this essay, there is a general survey (spyi don) of the Sanskrit grammar of the Kalāpasūtra which he possibly completed on May 14, 1520 while he resided in Drathang Monastery.[24] According to its colophon, he wrote this work at the behest of Sakya Lotsāwa Jamyang Kunga Sönam (sa skya lo tsā ba ’jam dbyangs kun dga’ bsod nams, 1485–1533), alias the second Sakya Paṇḍita Kunga Gyaltsen (sa skya paṇḍita kun dga’ rgyal mtshan, 1182–1251), on the occasion of Thutön Chöjé Ngawang Sönam’s (thu ston chos rje ngag dbang bsod nams) memorial service (dgongs rdzogs), and also at the request of Jangpa Rabjampa Rinchen Sangpo (byang pa rab ’byams pa rin chen bzang po) and Kyoktön Lotsāwa himself. The printing blocks of this very clear xylograph were prepared by order of an unnamed miwang (mi dbang),[25] who was most probably a local ruler belonging to the Thu/Thon family that controlled the Yargyap (yar rgyab) area in which, I suggest, Lhunpo Gang (lhun po sgang) was located. The biographies by Kyoktön Lotsāwa and Ameshap include a substantial title listing of Shalu Lotsāwa’s oeuvre, whereby the first has in part the following sequence of his writings:[26]
[…] ka lā pa’i mtshams sbyor lnga bye brag tu bshad pa/ ming le yan gyi spyi bshad/ ka lā pa’i sa bcad/ me long gyi {No Date[b]: ba’i} bsdus don/ sdeb sbyor gyi bsdus don/ […]
By contrast, Ameshap’s source inserted the ka lā pa’i spyi don in this list:[27]
[…] ka lā pa’i mtshams sbyor lnga bye brag tu bshad pa[/] ming le yan gyi spyi bshad/ ka lā pa’i sa bcad/ ka lā pa’i spyi don/ me long gyi bsdus don/ sdeb sbyor gyi bsdus don/ […]
The absence of the 1520 Kalāpai chidon (ka lā pa’i spyi don) from Kyoktön Lotsāwa’s listing would further support the view that the year wangchuk during which he wrote the master’s “biography-cum-memorandum” indeed refers to 1517. A beautifully calligraphed manuscript of another one of Shalu Lotsāwa’s studies of the Kalāpasūtra, this time with numerous interlinear notes, sheds additional light on his deep connections with the Thu clan of Yargyap that, successfully or not, traced its line of descent back to Thu/Thon mi Saṃbhoṭa (?7th c.). The colophon reads:[28]
[…] ’di/ […] sa skyong dam pa kun dga’ bsod nams rin chen dbang gi rgyal po’i bkas bskul nas/ legs par sbyar ba’i skad kyis brda sprod pa’i gtsug lag phyogs tsam rig pa’i zha lu lo tsā ba dge slong dharma pā la bha dra zhes bya bas/ me mkha’ rgya mtsho la ’das lo drug cu pa phrag bdun dang ma ’ongs pa nyag zhe brgyad bsre ba shing yos kyi lo snron gyi zla ba’i dkar phyogs kyi tshes bcu’i nyin dben gnas dam pa dpal e vaṃ chos ’khor du grub par bgyis pa’o//
Having been ordered by Kun dga’ bsod nams rin chen dbang gi rgyal po, the noble world-protector…, Zh[w]a lu Lo tsā ba, the monk Dharmapālabhadra, who knows but an aspect of Sanskrit grammar, wrote this…in the holy hermitage of Lustrous Evaṃ chos ’khor on the tenth day of the waxing phase of the moon, the snron (jyaiṣṭha) [5th] lunar month, of the wood-hare year, add forty-eight future years to four hundred and twenty days of the last elapsed year (’das lo, *gatavarṣa) with respect to me mkha’ rgya mtsho [= June 2, 1495].
Kunga Sönam Rinchen Wangi Gyalpo (kun dga’ bsod nams rin chen dbang gi rgyal po) makes a cameo appearance in the second Pawo Tsuklak Trengwa’s (dpa’ bo II gtsug lag phreng ba, 1504–1566) chronicle, where he is mentioned as the “world-protector” who was a Governor (dpon chen) and who, upon his ordination as a monk, became known as the Omniscient of Evaṃ Monastery.[29] In the 1541 family history of the Yargyap ruling family by Ngawang Kunga Sönam Gyalpo (ngag dbang kun dga’ bsod nams rgyal po), we learn that he was born in 1450 and that he studied with his relative, the great scholar Jamling Paṇchen Sönam Namgyal (byams gling paṇ chen bsod nams rnam rgyal, 1400–1475).[30] He assumed control over his family estate of Lhundrup Ling in 1471 and a few years later, in 1477, he was given the office of pönchen (dpon chen) by the Phakmodru (phag mo gru) ruler Gongma Miwangpo Kunga Lek (gong ma mi’i dbang po kun dga’ legs, 1433–1483). In 1486, he had Evaṃ Chökhor Ling (chos ’khor gling) Monastery built on his estate where he promptly went into a spiritual retreat. His social position and no doubt the funds that he still controlled were such that he was able to invite several intellectual luminaries to the monastery. What he had studied with them was registered in his record of teachings heard/studied (gsan yig) that is unfortunately not available. He finally received his novitiate (dge tshul) vows in 1496 from the fourth Shamar who presided over the solemnities, and he was given the rather long name in religion of Ngakgi Wangchuk Sönam Lodrö Thupten Namgyal Sangpo (ngag gi dbang phyug bsod nams blo gros thub bstan rnam rgyal dpal bzang po) on this occasion. The newly minted novice stayed in Evaṃ Tharpaling and other monastic institutions only to pass away one year later in 1497.
Even if it has two little grammatical problems that are not uncommon to manuscripts, Shalu Lotsāwa’s short treatise about the survey of the sandhi rules of the visarga as contained in the Kalāpasūtra’s fifth section of the first chapter has a similar colophon as the one we just looked at, and it reads:[31]
[…] ces pa ’di ni legs bshad don du gnyer ba’i mdo khams pa/ dge ba’i bshes gnyen bsod nams dpal zhes bya bas bskul ba’i ngor/ sngon gyi lo tstsha ba chen po ’gos chos grub dang/ ’gos khug pa lhas btsas sogs dang/ rus gcig par skyes pa’i zha lu ba dge slong chos skyong bzang po zhes bgyi bas/ mi [read: me] mkha’ rgya mtsho la ’das lo drug bcu pa phrags [read: phrag] bdun dang nyag so bdun/ bsre ba khro mo’i lo chu stod kyi zla ba’i chos kyi ’khor lo bskor ba’i dus mchod kyi nyin grub par sbyar ba’o//
Because this aforesaid [work]…was written at the request of the spiritual friend Bsod nams dpal, the one from Mdo khams who pursues what is well-explained, by the monk Chos skyong bzang po of Zhwa lu, who was born in the same patriline of such earlier translators as ’Gos Chos grub, ’Gos Khug pa Lhas btsas, etc., it was written to completion on the holy day of the Buddha turning the wheel of the dharma of the chu stod (*āṣāḍha) [6th] lunar month of the khro mo year [1484], adding thirty-seven years to the seven units of sixty years, the expired year with regards to the me mkha’ rgya mtsho.
Given that the Phakmodru dynasty was Kagyüpa in terms of its religious orientation, it is quite probable that it and their subordinate allies followed the calendar of the four great holidays (dus mchod chen mo bzhi) that was authored by Phakmodru Dorjé Gyalpo (phag mo gru rdo rje rgyal po, 1110–1170), one of its greatest spiritual progenitors. His little treatise on the four special dates on which one should commemorate and celebrate crucial events in the Buddha’s life observed that this day fell on the fourth day of the intermediate summer-month (dbyar zla ’bring po’i tshes bzhi’i nyin zhag phrugs gcig).[32] Hence, Shalu Lotsāwa’s work was completed on June 12, 1484.
In his pioneering work, Verhagen examined the colophon of Shalu Lotsāwa’s translation of Candragomin’s uṆāder vṛtti that is contained in the Tengyur canon. Given the above new materials and the progress that has been made in the last three decades, I think we can now arrive at a better understanding of that colophon.[33] Without naming any names, Shalu Lotsāwa states that he found several different kinds of problems with two earlier Tibetan renditions of this work, and that having obtained what he called an accurate manuscript of the Sanskrit text, he took pains to translate it into Tibetan. These remarks are followed by two benedictive quatrains, after which he specifies the time and place of this work and the identity of his patron:
me mkha’ rgya mtsho la rab byung la sogs ’das lo drug cu phrag bdun dang nyag bzhi bcu rtsa bzhi bsre ba ’gal byed ces bya ba’i chu stod kyi dkar po’i tshes bco lnga la grwa phyis gzhis kha lhun grub gling du bstan pa’i sbyin bdag dpal ldan mi’i dbang po// dpon chen kun dga’ bsod nams rin chen rgyal po pa’i bdag rkyen la brten nas legs par grub pa’o//
[The translation] was well achieved with the main support of the patron, lord of man, the grand official Kun dga’ bsod nams rin chen rgyal po in Grwa phyi[s] of the Lhun grub gling estate on the fifteenth day of the first half of the chu stod (*āṣāḍha) [6th] lunar month of the ’gal byed year, adding forty-four years to seven units of sixty years to the expired year such as the rab byung to the me mkha’ rgya mtsho [February 24, 1491].
Now as far as Shalu Lotsāwa’s treatment of the Kāvyādarśa is concerned, the biographies register a Summary (bsdus don) of the Melong (Adarśa) as well as some unspecified editorial emendations.[34] But there may be more. Dartö goes one step further and writes that he had in fact written a commentary on the Kāvyādarśa.[35] None of these are currently available and, curiously, the later literature on Daṇḍin’s work does not breathe a word about Shalu Lotsāwa’s contributions to its understanding. This has changed a little for the better, for we do now have a brief work by him that he wrote on the ten special features (yon tan, guṇa) of ornate poetry as discussed in the Kāvyādarśa’s first chapter. It essentially consists of his own quatrains that he wrote to illustrate each of these ten features. The only verse that he cites is KD I: 41 in which these ten features are simply enumerated, and there KD I: 41c reads:[36]
don gsal ba dang rgya che ba// [arthavyāktir udāratvam]
D. Dimitrov’s exemplary edition of the Kāvyādarśa’s Tibetan text suggests that this reading is only found in the commentaries by Pang Lotsāwa and Bö Khépa Mipham Gelek Namgyal (bod mkhas pa mi pham dge legs rnam rgyal, 1618–1685).[37] On the other hand, absent in the previous translation of the Sanskrit, the bilingual text attributed to Shalu Lotsāwa [and Situ Paṇchen] duly translated -tva[m] and thus has:[38]
don gsal ba dang rgya che nyid//
I am unable to explain the discrepancy between the readings of KD I: 41c in this brief work and the edition of the Kāvyādarśa that is attributed to Shalu Lotsāwa. It may have been a scribal or editorial oversight. In any event, the little text closes with the following statement:
[…] ces pa ’gos rig[s] lo tsa ba/
dharma pā la bha dra yis/
ji ltar rnyed pa skad gnyis kyi/
rnam grangs phyogs mthun bkod pa’o/
The aforesaid […] was written in agreement with
whatever bilingual synonyms[39]
were obtained by Lotsāwa Dharmapālabhadra
of the ’Gos family.
Surrounded by his students, he passed away in his beloved Drathang Monastery where, at least in c. 1920, his ossuary could be found and honored on the “Nepalese” floor.[40]
There is some evidence to suggest that aside from being his biographer, Kyoktön Lotsāwa functioned as a kind of literary executor of his master’s writings.[41] And it now turns out that he also wrote what amounts to a rather unusual introduction to the Kāvyādarśa to which he added an assortment of appendices.[42] The first of these appendices is a Sanskrit-Tibetan vocabulary of terms that he felt “are required for the composition of snyan ngag.” This is followed by a special Tibetan vocabulary of synonyms which is in part based on the Mu tig phreng ba (*Muktāvalī), that is, on the first half of Śrīdharasena’s (?12th c.) Viśvalocana that was translated by Shalu Lotsāwa,[43] and a short rather haphazard vocabulary of archaic lexemes and their updated equivalents (brda gsar rnying). Consisting of only six pages, the latter vocabulary contains several entries that are markedly different or absent from the well-known Lishi gurkhang (li shi’i gur khang) of 1536 that is attributed to him.[44] For example, for the very first entry bla mthang ni stod smad dam steng ’og the Lishi gurkhang has bla mthang ni stod med dam phyi nang, the fourth one zhan pa ni song ba is altogether absent from the Lishi gurkhang, and for the sixth ne’u ldang ni na mnyam the Lishi gurkhang has ne’u ldang ni na zla. This section concludes with the idea that archaic terminology (brda rnying) does have a role to play in the composition of nyenngak poetry and should therefore not be ignored or discarded. Armed with these essentials, Kyoktön Lotsāwa then gives a long series of illustrations of letters and lines written in nyenngak to many titled individuals and for a variety of special occasions or events, from the Karmapa hierarch to pieces celebrating each of the seasons. When his text comes to the terminology associated with translation, language, etc., it has the following which includes a gloss: “the best among those of speak” (smra ba rnams kyi mchog ‘rgya nag skad du lo tsā ba’i ming’ ta’i thong shri’i/).[45] As I was informed by my colleagues Li Zhiying 李志英 and Sun Penghao 孙鹏浩, Tibetan ta’i thong shri’i reflects Chinese datongshi 大通事, “senior translator/interpreter,” an expression that is used during the Ming Dynasty, and it is contrasted with the xiaotongshi 小通事, “junior translator/interpreter.” These offices were part of the Ming’s translation bureau (siyi guan 四夷馆), and Sun Hu 孙虎 published a useful paper on them.[46] Later, a note in the text—warning: the note is written in a telegram style and requires expansions that may lead to misinterpretation—has the following to say about the name of the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery that was built in the second half of the eighth century:[47]
yi ge la lar zab yangs zer ba dang/ da lta bsam yas zer ma dag/ zan zhes pa gsum dang/ g.yang zhes lugs kyi ming ste/ rgya nag gi skad yin pa/ dbu rtse rigs gsum mam/ lugs sum mi ’gyur lhun gyis grub pa’i gtsug lag khang zhes pa’i don yin par snang go//
In some documents, zab yangs is mentioned and that it is nowadays said to be bsam yas which is incorrect. “zan” (san 三) is a term for three and “g.yang” (yang 样) is a term for lugs; these are Chinese terms; it appears that these are in the sense of either Dbu rtse rigs gsum or Lugs gsum mi ’gyur lhun gyis grub pa’i gtsug lag khang.
Samyé Monastery has several different names and a quick search in the Buddhist Digital Archives[48] does come up with a number of them including Pal senyang migyur lhungyi drupai tsuklakhang (dpal zan yang mi ’gyur lhun gyis grub pa’i gtsug lag khang) and Pal luksum migyur lhungyi drupai tsuklakhang (dpal lugs gsum mi ’gyur lhun gyis grub pa’i gtsug lag khang). Tibetan zan for Chinese san 三 is often written zam, an example of which is found in the chronicle of the teaching (bstan rtsis) that Pökhangpa Rinchen Gyaltsen (spos khang pa rin chen rgyal mtshan, 1348–1430) completed in 1414 while he was residing in Serling Lhundrup Ding (gser gling lhun grub sdings) monastery in Upper Nyang/Myang. [49]
Several pages later, Kyoktön Lotsāwa’s text then transitions into a vocabulary for the months, days and years that are used for dating letters and official proclamations, and he provides trilingual relevant Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese vocabulary.[50] This portion of the text records a good number of unusual Tibetan lexemes, and these will be discussed elsewhere. Moreover, of interest is the Chinese dossier Kyoktön Lotsāwa provided for the terminology of the sexagenary prabhava cycle and the ways in which the corresponding Chinese lexemes are transcribed; the first five years and the last three are:
| Sanskrit | Tibetan | Chinese | Tibetan | |||||
| 1. | prabhava | rab byung | ting ma’u dingmao 丁卯 | me mo yos | ||||
| 2. | vibhava | rnam byung | wu gin wuchen 戊辰 | a pho ’brug | ||||
| 3. | śukla | dkar po | gya zi jisi 己巳 | sa mo sbrul | ||||
| 4. | pramāda | rab myos | ging wu gengwu 庚午 | lcags pho rta | ||||
| 5. | prajāpati | skyes bdag | zin wu’i xinwei 辛未 | lcags mo spre’u | ||||
| … | ||||||||
| 58. | rakta[akṣī] | mig dmar | gya tswi jiazi 甲子 | shing pho byi | ||||
| 59. | krodhana | khro bo yi | tshi’u yichou 乙丑 | hing mo glang | ||||
| 60. | kṣaya | zad pa | bing yin bingyin 丙寅 | me pho stag |
The first full-blown calendar the Tibetans encountered was the one they adopted from Tang China, and an undated document from Dunhuang testifying to this was the subject of an important article by Uray Géza.[51] Uray has shown that using the much earlier Sino-Tibetan designations for the year, the Tibetans generally took the rabchung (rab byung) year of the Kālacakra corpus—the term rabchung is used to designate the first year as well as the entire cycle—to correspond to the fire-female-hare (me mo yos) year of the Sino-Tibetan sexagenary cycle. In Tibet, the China-inspired sexagenary cycle began with the year jiazi 甲子, that is, the wood-male-rat (shing pho byi) year—this is the raktākṣī (mig dmar) year of the prabhava/rabchung cycle—and not with the fire-female-hare year. It thus begins three years earlier. In his studies on the taxonomy of the sciences and the Indo-Tibetan (skar rtsis) and Sino-Tibetan (nag rtsis) astral sciences of 1657, the fifth Dalai Lama, among others, correlated this cycle with what is found in treatises on naktsi (nag rtsis), the catarchic astrology based on alleged Tibetan translations or adaptations of Chinese (rgya nag) astrological texts.[52] In Tibet, there were several authors who equated the wood-male-rat year with the rabchung year. One famous author to have done so was Gö Lotsāwa in his significant treatise of 1442, Removing Errors in Astral Computation (rtsis la ’khrul pa sel ba), and he was immediately criticized for this by among others Draphukpa Lhundrup Gyatso (grwa phug pa lhun grub rgya mtsho, ca.1400–ca.1460) in the relevant passages of his large and highly influential work on the Kālacakra’s astral computation and the calendar which he completed in 1447.[53] Gö Lotsāwa did revisit his ideas in his attempt at their vindication when he wrote his brief In Pursuit of the Root of the Tree of Astral Computation (rtsis kyi ljon pa’i rtsa ba tshol ba), in 1475.[54]
Kyoktön Lotsāwa closes his work with a rubric that is headed by the phrase hūng la’i nga yig, where hūng la is a Chinese loanword that reflects hongla 红蜡, “red wax”, that is used for seals.[55] I am unsure how to interpret ’i nga yig, and I venture to guess that it refers to the identification of the writer (nga = I) of a given document. Thusfar, Kyoktön Lotsāwa’s reputation has stood in the shadow of this teacher Shalu Lotsāwa, but I think the treatise that we just briefly visited can dislodge him to some extent from that very shadow and allow him to emerge as a not altogether insignificant writer in his own right.
In his day, Shalu Lotsāwa already enjoyed some renown as a Sanskrit scholar although we cannot even begin to estimate how far and how deeply his reputation had become part of the central Tibetan intellectual circles. The instances that I found where he does come up are in the oeuvre of Lowo Khenchen Sönam Lhundrup (glo bo mkhan chen bsod nams lhun grub, 1456–1532)[56] and Sakya Lotsāwa Jampai Dorjé (sa skya lo tsā ba ’jam pa’i rdo rje, 1485–1533), who each addressed one letter to him. Written in 1526, we can safely ignore for the moment Sakya Lotsāwa’s piece, if only because it is rather inconsequential.[57] The references to him in Lowo Khenchen’s writings are of greater immediate interest. The first is an undated letter containing a series of questions Shalu Lotsāwa was asked about the poetics of the seventh introductory verse and several lexical items of his translation of the Viśvalocana lexicon.[58] These indicate how finetuned and sensitive Lowo Khenchen was to lexicographical issues. The second consist of several references to him in his 1527 commentary on Sakya Paṇḍita’s Khepa nam jukpai go (mkhas pa rnams ’jug pa’i sgo). He acknowledges in the colophon that his knowledge of treatises of Sanskrit grammar and the language arts is not perfect and that, aside from having used the writings on the subject by reputed authors, he had also solicited Shalu Lotsāwa by mail (springs) for assistance. He received a reply, the substance of which he does not provide, but it may be that it included copies of three of Shalu Lotsāwa’s tracts on Sanskrit, that is, his commentaries on the difficult points in Cāndravyākaraṇa and the Kalāpasūtra, and what may be identified as his Nyegyur gyi perjö (nye bsgyur gyi dper brjod). [59] In addition, he also mentions the Lotsāwa’s grammatical interpretation of the famous line of Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgītī X: 2d: binduśūnyaḥ ṣaḍakṣaraḥ// (thig le stong pa yi ge drug//).[60]
It is of course a great pity that Shalu Lotsāwa does not appear to have left behind a detailed diary that could have illuminated so much about his life and his places of work that ranged from the monasteries of Shalu to Palkhor Chödé (dpal ’khor chos sde) in Gyal Khartsé (rgyal mkhar rtse), and of course to Drathang. His biographies are unfortunately rather flat and elicit more questions about his life than they provide answers. And if things had been different, we would certainly have gained important insights into the working environment of this tireless scholar. Thankfully, the exact opposite is the case with Situ Paṇchen who, with the posthumous assistance of his disciple Bé Lotsāwa,[61] bequeathed us with a diary that contains an enormous amount of crucial information about the many aspects of his life and activities and, on a larger scale, about the social and intellectual history of central Kham during the eighteenth century, and much else besides. Having felt unwell for a few weeks, his diary entries cease on April 5, 1774, which was the day on which this sublime scholar absorbed himself in a six-day meditation regimen. And his meditative equipoise culminated in his quiet passing on April 10, 1774. Little over three months later, on July 22 of that year, Bé Lotsāwa finished editing the volume that includes his diary and a supplement, an afterword of sorts, in which he added an informative coda that recapitulated some major events in Situ Paṇchen’s scholarly life and offered a long list of his many students.[62] He added a similar list to the biography of his master that he included in their joint masterpiece, a history of the main figures of the Kamtsang (karma kaṃ tshang) sect of the Kagyüpa school that is equally dated July 22, 1774.[63] Bé Lotsāwa also mentioned that his teacher had written an autobiography that ran up to his twenty-fifth year.[64] The 1990 reprint of the Palpung xylograph edition of the text suggests that the actual diary coincides with the beginning of the year 1724, and there is definitely a stylistic change that would suggest a transition from an autobiography with complete sentences to the point-form diary entries.[65]
Now the Kāvyādarśa editions of Shalu Lotsāwa and Situ Paṇchen are foremost based on multiple Sanskrit sources but, unfortunately, neither contain any specifics about the different readings they encountered in the course of their work. To be sure, there is every indication that both men were quite aware of many of these. Pointers to their awareness are found in their translations and writings on that very same subject [66] as well as in their major work on Sanskrit lexicography. Of course, what I have in mind is their monumental translation of Subhūticandra’s Kāmadhenu commentary in which both used the format of a bilingual text.[67] The colophon to Shalu Lotsāwa’s translation is remarkable for the information it provides about the sources of the Kāmadhenu and thus for its sheer length.[68] He rendered it at the express request of Ngakgi Wangchuk Drakpa (ngag gi dbang phyug grags pa, 1439–1495), the Chennga (spyan snga) hierarch of the Phakmodru dynasty
The colophon of Situ Paṇchen is more modest in scope. According to its colophon, he began working on it in 1748 when he stayed in Tsurphu Monastery, and he completed it two years later at Karma Lhateng Monastery in 1750.[69] His diaries do mention that he arrived in Karma Lhateng, sometime towards the end of 1750 and that he left it a few days after he had received news of the passing of the Dergé lama (sde dge bla ma) on August 22, 1751.[70] The colophon continues by stating that it was only some seven years later, to be precise on the fifteenth day of the nakpa (nag pa, caitra) [3rd] lunar month, that is, on May 4, 1757, that he put the final touches on his masterful translation at his see of Thupten Chökhorling (thub bstan chos ’khor gling) Monastery.[71] The day on which he crafted his last editorial corrections fell on a carefully chosen auspicious day which, as he writes, was “the festive day (dus chen) on which the Buddha had taught Sucandra the Mūlakālacakratantra.”
While there is no question that Situ Paṇchen reckoned Shalu Lotsāwa to be among the greatest Tibetan-Sanskritist translators, he was not always altogether sanguine about the veracity of his colleague’s translations or even of his ideas of the status of Tibetan vis-à-vis Sanskrit, as was pointed out to me by my colleague Li Xiaonan 李晓楠 when she was a visiting doctoral student at Harvard in 2021–2022. In the lengthy colophon of his translation of the Kāmadhenu, he made a rather critical reference to Shalu Lotsāwa’s efforts regarding his translations of the Amarakoṣa and the Kāmadhenu, and he did the same in his commentary on the Cāndravyākaraṇa, which he completed on August 5, 1756.[72] He also worked on the Sanskrit texts of Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakoṣabhāṣya and Yaśomitra’s (7th c.) Sphuṭārthā/Vyākhyā commentary on the former, and a diary entry for January 13, 1754 suggests that he conceived the idea to translate anew the Abhidharmakoṣa [AK] commentary.[73] And not entirely out of the blue, some ten years later he mentions in an entry for the year 1764 that Drukpa Yongzin Tulku Karma Thupten Ngawang (’brug pa yongs ’dzin sprul sku karma thub bstan ngag dbang) had given him a silver horse-hoof (dngul rta rmig) and put in a request that he write an Abhidharmakoṣa commentary. He agreed (zhes bskul te khas blangs) and began to make good on his promise a few months later.[74] During the last decade or so of his life, the Yongzin had been one of his main and trusted disciples, and I think this is not only borne out by the many references to him in his diary, but also by the fact that, as noted for late 1766, he had lent him his personal copies of the Sanskrit text of the Jangchen mai rabtu jepa (dbyangs can ma’i rab tu byed pa, *Sārasvataprakaraṇa) and Kyoktön Lotsāwa’s commentary on the Cāndravyākaraṇa.[75] This is not a gesture that one would readily associate with someone’s random student.
We learn from the diary that Situ Paṇchen’s marvelous study is replete with Sanskrit terms and quotations from and references to Shalu Lotsāwa’s translation of the capacious Tattvārthā commentary that is attributed to Sthiramati (6th c.).[76] The year in which Shalu Lotsāwa completed this huge task has been given as 1490. However, in his autobiography,[77] the Fourth Shamar registers that Shalu Lotsāwa had completed it after he himself had written his evocation of the five deities attending on Cakrasamvara sometime during the second half of the droshun (gro zhun, śrāvaṇa) [7th] lunar month, August 12–26, of 1489, as well as another work on the holy site of Tsa ri [tra],[78] and prior to January 21, 1490. Not wishing to be too fussy, it is thus quite possible that the work dates to the end of 1489. Shalu Lotsāwa’s translation of the Tattvārthā is a model of scholarly integrity that is as refreshing as it is unusual, even for the present when it is not unusual to see that sometimes passages are omitted in translations due to their difficulty without a note to this effect by the translator. Rather than making up what he did not understand in the manuscript, Shalu Lotsāwa properly decided to leave those Sanskrit passages with which he had difficulties stand as they were, albeit in their Tibetan transliteration.
Among Situ Paṇchen’s references to the earlier translation, there are only two instances where he suggested to read the Sanskrit text differently from what Shalu Lotsāwa’s had translated and he makes clear that he did so by using a Sanskrit manuscript (rgya dpe)[79] of the Tattvārthā that was in his possession.[80] These occur in his comments on AK III: 14a–b and 100a–b, the first specifically on the circa 800 Tibetan translation of Yaśomitra’s Gyalsé ma (rgyal sras ma)[81] commentary on the Abhidharmakoṣabhāṣya by Viśuddhisiṃha and Bendé Paltsek (bande dpal brtsegs). In the first, Vasubandhu speaks of the “divine eye” (lha’i mig, divyacakṣu) with which beings in the so-called intermediate state can be seen. Yaśomitra writes here that the divine eye is exceedingly pure, meaning that what is perceived by it is bereft of eleven faults (skyon, apakśāla) and he refers to an unnamed sutra in which these eleven (ekadaśa) are enumerated.[82] One of these eleven is styānamiddhi which, however, the Tibetan translators understandably rendered as rmugs pa dang/ gnyid dang/. This would make twelve faults rather than eleven, and this discrepancy was noticed by Situ Paṇchen’s keen eyes which prompted him to write[83]:
’dir rgyal sras mar/ rmugs pa dang/ gnyid dang/ zhes so sor bgrangs shing blo brtan gyi ’grel pa zhwa lus bsgyur bar yang de bzhin du bkod kyang/ blo brtan gyi rgya dper/ styānamiddhi [or middhaṃ]/ zhes styā na dang mi ddhi’i [or middha’i][84] bar du rnam dbye bsdus pas rmugs gnyid dag so so ma phye bar gcig tu bsdus par rtogs nas bdag gis ’di ltar bkod pa ste/ gzhan du na grangs bcu gnyis su ’gyur bas ’gal ba’i phyir ro//
Here, in the *Rājaputra, rmugs pa and gnyid are counted separately and it is also likewise written in Sthiramati’s commentary as translated by Zhwa lu.[85] But having realized that styānamiddhi [middhaṃ] in the Sanskrit text of Sthiramati is a unity in which the two (dag!) rmugs gnyid are not separated because the case was contracted between styāna and middhi [middha],[86] I wrote accordingly because, otherwise, the translation would contradict the text due to the faults being then twelve in number.
The second reference occurs in connection with the seed (sa bon, bīja) qua “wind,” that is, the special efficacy of the combined karma of sentient beings that gives rise to the universe. These seeds are five-fold, and here Situ Paṇchen writes:
blo brtan gyi rgya dper/ spho ṭa bī jaṃ zhes yod pa sngar gsheg pa’i sa bon dang zhwa lus ’gas pa zhes bsgyur kyang yan lag so sor ’byed pa’i don yin pas bdag gis ’byed par bsgyur cing/ […]
Although the expression sphoṭabījaṃ that is present in the Sanskrit manuscript of Sthiramati[’s treatise] was previously translated as gsheg pa’i sa bon and by Zhwa lu as ’gas pa[’i sa bon], I have translated it as ’byed pa, because it has the sense of dividing the limbs into different pieces.[87]
Situ Paṇchen kept close track in his diary on the progress he made over a period of some ten years, a figure that might just suggest that he was not too much in a hurry to bring his study to completion, let alone that he was very much inspired to write on the subject. And without foreknowledge of his imminent passing, close to the end of his life he relates that he had just completed his comment on the text’s fourth chapter. He noted this down sometime between February 6 and 9 of 1774 (mdzod gnas bzhi pa’i dge las kyi mgor sleb nas re zhig mtshams bzhugs).[88] Indeed, that he agreed to write an Abhidharmakośa commentary at all is a bit of an anomaly as far as what we know of his primary interests, and the promise to do so should strike one as a special favor shown to a close disciple. Reading through his diary and his oeuvre as I have done, one is struck by the fact that he showed virtually no interest whatsoever in the standard monastic curricula of his time that involved studies that focused on middle way philosophy (dbu ma, madhyamaka), logic and epistemology (tshad ma, pramāṇa), the religious philosophy of the transcending function of insight (shes rab pha rol tu phyin pa, prajñāpāramitā), and canon law (’dul ba, vinaya).
Circling back to the Kāvyādarśa, during the last two decades or so, Dimitrov contributed two path-breaking studies of the Indo-Tibetan traditions surrounding this text and its commentarial literature in which he impressively traced the trajectory of the ways in which these insinuated themselves in the Tibetan intellectual landscape.[89] In their comprehensiveness, he left preciously little room for further large-scale historical investigations into this field of inquiry. That there are still some patches left for exploration is due to the rich soil that enabled the reach and range of the Tibetan adaptation and enculturation of Daṇḍin’s work to continue to grow. Indeed, it is precisely owing to the numerous Tibetan studies and the attendant reconsiderations of the Tibetan translations of the verses by Tibetan scholars that there are still several details that can be harvested from the relevant literature and this essay constitutes but one of these.
Before I examine the background of Situ Paṇchen’s edition, we need to make a few preliminary remarks about the transmission of the Tibetan version of the Kāvyādarśa. For now, I will leave to the side the question why the translation of the Kāvyādarśa should have become part of the Tibetan Buddhist Tengyur canon, that is, how did the Kāvyādarśa come to be identified as a Buddhist text or a text written by a Buddhist? Instead, let me make a few remarks on the colophons of all the available canonical translations that are contained in the four xylograph editions of the Tengyur and in one manuscript edition of the same, which all date from the eighteenth century. These colophons register Pang Lotsāwa who, aided by the interpretation of Ratnaśrījñāna’s late tenth century commentary on the Kāvyādarśa, made some corrections to the very first translation of the text that had been prepared one generation earlier by the team of Lakṣmīkara and Shongtön Lotsāwa Dorjé Gyaltsen (shong ston lo tsā ba rdo rje rgyal mtshan, ca.1250–ca.1290).[90] These two learned men had translated the text at the request of Pönchen Shākya Sangpo (pon chen Shākya bzang po) and Phakpa Lodrö Gyaltsen (’phags pa blo gros rgyal mtshan, 1235–1280), at the time Central Tibet’s two most influential and powerful individuals. Phakpa addressed the members of this team in two short letters that were included in his collected works.[91] Written while he was at the Mongol court in China’s Zhongdu 中都 (rgya nag cong to), that is, more or less present day Beijing, and dated April 23, 1270, the one he addressed to Lakṣmīkara states that he had heard from Shongtön Lotsāwa about his learning in the language arts and philosophy. Otherwise, it is a rather flat and uninformative piece. The letter to Shongtön Lotsāwa is undated and equally flat and uninformative. To be noted is that Shongtön’s name in religion is not given in either letter. In other words, the eighteenth-century xylograph editions of the Peking and Narthang Tengyurs and the eighteenth-century manuscript edition of the same ostensibly contain the text of the Kāvyādarśa as transmitted through Pang Lotsāwa. We are told that the latter somewhat edited the earlier translation by using Ratnaśrī[jñāna]’s commentary. Their colophons simply affirm that this is the case. On the other hand, the text of the Kāvyādarśa that is contained in the eighteenth-century Dergé and Coné xylograph editions of the Tengyur suggests that Pang Lotsāwa’s text was once more filtered through the efforts of Nyethang Lotsāwa Lodrö Tenpa (snye thang lo tsā ba blo gros brtan pa, mid-15th c.). He had apparently made several emendations to Pang Lotsāwa’s earlier revision, but there is no mention on what basis he had made them.
When we examine the earliest catalogs of manuscript editions of the Tengyur, there is a slight problem with the attribution of the first translation of the Kāvyādarśa to Shongtön Lotsāwa Dorjé Gyaltsen, the Tibetan member of the team. This has to do with the fact that there were two translators active in the late thirteenth century who were both called Shongtön or Shongtön Lotsāwa, namely, Shongtön Dorjé Gyaltsen and his maternal nephew Shongtön Lodrö Tenpa (blo gros brtan pa).[92] And this appears to have caused a minor conundrum. Üpa Losal Tsöpai Sengé (dbus pa blo gsal rtsod pa’i seng ge, 13th–14th c.), a scholar affiliated with Narthang Monastery, included the Tibetan translation of the Kāvyādarśa in the manuscript canon for which he wrote an undated catalog, one that he must have written before the year 1326 at the latest. In his catalog, the translator’s name is simply given as Shongtön.[93] We then find the same in Butön’s 1324–1326 title catalog of translated scripture and in his later 1334 catalog of the Shalu Tengyur manuscript. It records both members of the team, Lakṣmīkara and, again, just Shongtön.[94] One of the two catalogs of Tengyur manuscripts written by the Third Karmapa Rangjung Dorjé (karma pa III rang byung rdo rje, 1286–1338) includes the Tibetan translation of the Kāvyādarśa and only states that it was translated by Shongtön Dorjé Gyaltsen.[95] A wrench is thrown into this scenario when both the Tengyur catalog attributed to Dratsepa Rinchen Namgyal (sgra tshad pa rin chen rnam rgyal, 1318–1388) and Jonang or Ngaré Chöjé Choklé Namgyal’s (mnga’ ris chos rje phyogs las rnam rgyal, 1306–1386) undated, later catalog of the Ngamring Tengyur manuscript, attribute the translation to Lakṣmīkara and Shong [tön Lotsāwa] Lo [drö] Ten [pa].[96] And the catalog that Ngorchen Kunga Sangpo (ngor chen kun dga’ bzang po, 1382–1456) composed in 1447 for the Tengyur manuscript of Drakar Thekchen Ling (brag dkar theg chen gling) monastery in Lowo Mönthang (glo bo smon thang) also only records Shongtön [Lotsāwa] Lo [drö] Ten [pa].[97] On the other hand, the Kāvyādarśa commentaries by Pang Lotsāwa, Jamyang Khaché Sönampel (’jam dbyangs kha che bsod nams dpal, ca. 1400) and Narthang Lotsāwa all register Shongtön Lotsawa Dorjé Gyaltsen as the Tibetan translator.[98] And this very attribution is then followed by all the commentaries that are known to me. So, I think we can put the variant to rest, since it appears that when those authors who were unaware of, say, Pang Lotsāwa’s commentary were confronted by only Shongtön, and thus had to make a choice between Dorjé Gyaltsen or Lodrö Tenpa. Finally, we should not forget to mention the existence of a manuscript of the Kāvyādarśa that purports to contain the original translation of Shongtön Lotsāwa to which are added as glosses those verses that Pang Lotsāwa had translated differently.[99]
To be sure, all these men who left their mark on the Tibetan versions of the Kāvyādarśa were outstanding Sanskrit scholars in their own right. Of these, Shongtön Lotsawa, Pang Lotsāwa, and Situ Paṇchen had the added advantage of having been able to work, interact, and communicate with native pundits. But of these, only Situ Paṇchen left us with some details of such interactions in his diaries in which are inter alia narrated his two visits to the Kathmandu Valley during which time he met and studied with several such men.[100] And we can speculate with some justification that the time he must have invested in this edition ran parallel to the obvious effort he put into the production of his bilingual editions of the Kalāpasūtra’s Dhātukāya, the Amarakośa, etc. and the Vajramahākālāṣṭakastotra with its elaborate critical apparatus.[101] And this is another indication of how like-minded Shalu Lotsāwa and Situ Paṇchen were in their quest to provide adequate bilingual editions of treatises that they deemed important.
Now none of the three bilingual editions of the Kāvyādarśa that are currently available have a critical apparatus, and the annotations of the one that has no colophon merely indicate in smaller letters the Tibetan equivalents of the Sanskrit words by joining them with dotted lines. The colophons of Shalu Lotsāwa’s and Situ Paṇchen’s editions are identical in wording until their conjunction cing that concludes the attribution of the revision made by Pang Lotsawa. Adding the conjunction cing, Shalu Lotsāwa’s edition continues:[102]
[…phyis dpang lo tsa bas kyang ’gyur bcos cung zad mdzad] cing yang zha lu lo tsa dharma pā la bha dras rgya dpe gnyis dang ’grel pa’i rgya dpe la gtugs te rnam par dpyad nas shin tu dag par bcos so//
[…subsequently Dpang Lo tsā ba, too, somewhat emended the translation] and furthermore, Zh[w]a lu Lo tsa [read: tsā ba] Dharma pā la bha dra [Dharmapālabhadra] quite correctly revised it after having linked the two Sanskrit manuscripts [of the Kāvyādarśa] and the Sanskrit manuscript of the commentary [to Dpang’s translation] and reflected on it and added some annotations as well.
On the other hand, the colophon of Situ Paṇchen’s edition substitutes bdag gi bla mas for zha lu lo tsa dharma pā la bha dras and then has:[103]
[…] cing bdag gi bla mas rgya dpe gnyis pa dang ’grel pa’i rgya dpe la gtugs te rnam par dpyad nas shin tu dag par bcos te/ mchan bu ’ga’ yang ’debs par mdzad do//
[…]
’di yang chos kyi rje thams cad mkhyen pa’i slob dpon chen po dpal zha lu lo tsā ba yid bzhin gyi nor bu lta bu’i bshes gnyen rin chen chos skyong bzang po’i zhal snga nas kyi phyag dpe las/ rje de nyid kyi bka’ drin la brten pa shākya’i btsun pa dpal rin chen bkra shis zhes bya bas rang gis lag bris pa’o/
…and my teacher quite correctly revised it after having linked the two Sanskrit manuscripts [of the Kāvyādarśa] and the Sanskrit manuscript of the commentary [to Dpang’s translation] and reflected on it and added some annotations as well.
[…]
Now, based on the kindness of the venerable one himself, the Buddhist monk Dpal Rin chen bkra shis copied this in his own hand from the manuscript of the lord of religion, the great all-knowing master, Dpal Zha lu Lo tsā ba Rin chen chos skyong bzang po, the spiritual friend who is like a wish fulfilling jewel.[104]
And this is followed by the last part of the colophon, which is Situ Paṇchen’s, where he says that he used Sanskrit manuscripts of two commentaries, one by Ratnaśrījñāna and the other by the still elusive *Vagiśvarakīrti. Now the phrase “by my teacher” (bdag gi bla mas) led Dimitrov to speculate that Situ Paṇchen may have considered Shalu Lotsāwa as his teacher. This is extremely unlikely and there is no precedent for this in the other treatises that comprise Situ Paṇchen’s oeuvre. The problem is easily solved when we realize that this part of the colophon of his copy of Shalu Lotsāwa’s text must refer to the colophon that Shalu Lotsāwa’s disciple Kyoktön Lotsāwa had added since he writes that he had copied the text from his master’s copy with his own hand. This is not unprecedented in his case, for, as we have seen, there is ample evidence that he on occasion functioned as his teacher’s literary executor.
Now a modern edition of Bö Khepa’s Kāvyādarśa commentary of 1678 includes, aside from two shorter pieces of illustrative poems, an edition of the text of the Kāvyādarśa which differs from the ones that have thus far been under discussion. For example, it contains numerous glosses and offers here and there different readings of the text from the other editions. KD I: 43 is a case in point where lines [d] and [f] are not found in the other editions:[105]
śliṣṭam aspṛṣṭaśaithilyam alpaprāṇākṣarottaram/
śithilaṃ mālatīmālā lolālikalilā yathā//
| /sbyar ba lhod pas ma reg pa’o/ | [a] | |
| /srog chung yi ge mang ba ni/ | [b] | |
| /lhod pa mā lā tī mā lā/ | [c] | |
| /(lhod pa dza ti’i me tog phreng)/ | [d] | |
| /lo lā lī ka li lā bzhin/ | [e] | |
| /(sred pas bung ba ’khor ba ’dod)/ | [f] |
What complicates matters a little is that even if this edition of the Kāvyādarśa has the very same colophon as the one that was prepared by Situ Paṇchen, it includes a printer’s colophon that was written by a Lodrö Gyatso (blo gros rgya mtsho),[106] and the text of the Kāvyādarśa differs in several places from Situ Paṇchen’s edition. I am unable to explain this conundrum.
As is expected, Situ Paṇchen’s diary provides us with a first-hand insight into his varied day-to-day doings, the immense effort and commitment this great scholar invested in whatever he did, as well as a scintillating panoramic view of the intellectual, religious, and social environment in which he flourished. Even if he did not write a study of the Kāvyādarśa or experimented with the poetics of the text by writing a series of poems that illustrated groups of its poetic figures that flowed from the pens of many Tibetan, Mongol, and Bhutanese intellectuals, it played a significant role in the range of his many interests. His diary thus contains numerous notices of when the much younger Fourth Khamtrul asked him pointed questions about the text, a process that apparently began as early as December 23, 1753, when the Fourth Khamtrul was a mere thirteen years old.[107] Situ Paṇchen mentions that having returned from the Lhathok area to his see of Palpung the day before, he taught the Kāvyādarśa to the Fourth Khamtrul and Bé Lotsāwa and in doing so used the Sanskrit manuscripts of two Indic commentaries. These must be the ones by Ratnaśrījñāna and by the still very much elusive *Vagiśvarakīrti, which remain unavailable. He writes that this took place two days after the winter solstice of December 21. This marked the beginning of their numerous encounters—in person or by mail—in which we witness, especially during the last decade of his life, Situ Paṇchen conscientiously answering their questions about the text and Sanskrit prosody. The entries in his diary of December 9 (mgo nya’i tshes gcig) and December 10, 1764, indicate that he finished editing the still elusive Gungthang Lotsāwa Dewai Lodrö’s (gung thang lo tsā ba bde ba’i blo gros) Kāvyādarśa commentary of the mid-fourteenth century,[108] that he began editing what appears to have been two manuscripts of the Kāvyādarśa, and that he dispelled some concerns the Fourth Khamtrul had with the text.[109] A few months later, the Fourth Khamtrul traveled to Palpung shortly after the Tibetan New Year, which fell on February 20, 1765, to request Situ Paṇchen for instructions in the Abhidharmakośa, at which time he also prevailed on his teacher to gain further clarity about some unspecified aspects of the Kāvyādarśa.[110] We come to the last notice of the Fourth Khamtrul receiving such instructions in an entry in his autobiography for the autumnal eighth lunar month (ston zla brgyad pa) of the earth-ox year [1769]. Situ Paṇchen’s diary contains several entries for the last three or four months of that year and in 1770, where we learn that he answered a series of unspecified questions the Fourth Khamtrul had asked him.[111] And he would sometimes use these occasions to translate passages from Ratnaśrījñāna’s text. It is thus arguably the case that the Fourth Khamtrul’s flurry of questions had everything to do with him being in the middle of completing his commentary.
I suspect that Situ Paṇchen’s thorough and consistent mentoring of the Fourth Khamtrul in the Kāvyādarśa and his own reflections on Daṇḍin’s work that went in tandem with this mentoring, as well as the several Sanskrit and Tibetan commentaries that he had at hand and frequently consulted, may very well have inspired him to prepare a new bilingual edition. Nonetheless, it is perhaps remarkable that with his intimate knowledge of the Kāvyādarśa’s poetics, Situ Paṇchen himself never wrote a study of Daṇḍin’s work in toto. But then, perhaps it is not so astonishing when, judging from the entries in his diary he had found a most willing disciple to do just that in the Fourth Khamtrul. We learn that he worked on the Sanskrit edition of the text on October 14, 1772, that he finished editing the text up to the third and last chapter at the end of October, and that he finally completed his editorial work on the Kāvyādarśa together with his emendations of the translation (snyan ngag gzhung zhus dag dang ’gyur ba bcos tshar) on November 10, 1772.[112] Roughly one month later, he had printing blocks prepared for it, thus insuring a potentially widespread circulation of his edition.
While the Fourth Khamtrul, his protégé and student of the language arts, does not let us in on what had motivated him to write his work in the first place, he does divulge in his autobiography that he completed the first three of the opening verses of worship (mchod brjod) in February of 1770 and that he had finished the commentary sometime around the end of September of that same year.[113] He must have therefore based himself on what amounted to a preliminary version of Situ Paṇchen’s new edition of the Kāvyādarśa/Nyenngak Melong. Often called the Khamdrel (khams ’grel) by later generations, this magnificent work was in part the concrete result of the auspicious meeting he had with Situ Paṇchen way back on December 23, 1753. As a youth of nine, he had first briefly met the master in 1739. Brief as it was, this meeting of the two hierarchs of the Kagyü school, the senior one from the Kamtsang and his junior from the Mé Drukpa (smad ’brug pa) sect, turned out to be very consequential; Situ Paṇchen registered it in his diary and Khamtrul did the same in his autobiography.[114] To be sure, the Fourth Khamtrul does mention him slightly earlier in his autobiography in an entry for the year 1738 in connection with a smallpox epidemic of the most malignant “black” variety, that is, the smallpox that is caused by the variola major, that had raged throughout the Dergé region. He writes, possibly through hindsight:[115]
skabs’ dir lha thog dpon tshang gi sras sku mched sogs ’ga’ zhig la kun mkhyen si tu rin po ches rgya nag lugs kyi lag len la brten te ’brum pa ’dzugs pa gnang bas de rnams btsug ’brum pa la brten nas thor pa las thar/
On this occasion, the all-knowing Precious Situ, basing himself on a Chinese therapy, inoculated several people such as the son and siblings of the ruler of Lha thog[116] etc. against smallpox (’brum pa ’dzugs pa), so that they would be free [immune] from the pox (thor pa thar) due to the smallpox inoculation.
It appears that if the Fourth Khamtrul had not actually put his pen to paper and began to write his study of the Nyenngak Melong in 1754, when he was twenty-four, then he certainly had, with Situ Paṇchen’s prompting, conceived the idea of doing so at this time, as he tells us in the notice to this effect in the colophon of his commentary and in the passage on Daṇḍin’s work and its vicissitudes in Tibet that we encounter in his autobiography.[117] The Fourth Khamtrul completed his work some sixteen years later in Pal Phuntshok Chökhorling (pal phun tshogs chos ’khor gling), the monastery that his precursor the Third Khamtrul Ngawang Kunga Tenzin (khams sprul III ngag dbang kun dga’ bstan ’dzin, 1680–1728) had founded but which, beginning in 1746, he completely overhauled and refurbished, and to which he also added several structures.[118] He also mentions that printing blocks were being carved for his work in early 1773.[119] Of interest is that the manuscript that was published in Bhutan and, I believe, the later Palpung xylograph from printing blocks that were prepared in 1933 mention Situ Paṇchen’s bilingual edition of 1772, which must therefore be a later interpolation, even if it is not marked as such, that was included just prior to the preparation of its printing blocks. I think that there can be no doubt that it is the most accomplished study of the text to appear anywhere, whether in the Indian subcontinent or in the Tibetan area. And it is safe to say that it is in many respects unthinkable without the looming presence of the master. Indeed, ex- or implicitly, Situ Paṇchen appears on almost every page of this commentary, and we find him noting in his diary that he continued writing replies to the Fourth Khamtrul’s questions about Daṇḍin until well into 1773![120]
At least a good portion of Situ Paṇchen’s numerous replies to the Fourth Khamtrul’s queries is preserved for posterity in several collections of his “Replies to Questions,” or Q&A (dris lan), that is contained in the Palpung xylograph edition of his collected writings. A mix-up of some of these Q&A occurred during the preparation of these printing blocks. The main source for the Q&A with the Fourth Khamtrul is his Drilen natsok norbu ketaka (dri len [sic!] sna tshogs nor bu ke ta ka), which contains an undated set of eighteen Q&A and is followed by a second set of seven Q&A. Q&A no. 7 comes to an abrupt halt at the end of page 474 with …de ltar bstan par, and page 475 begins with kyang don mdor bsdus na/.[121] The continuation Q&A no. 7 is found in another work, the Gyatsen tulkü drilen lungshin dompai nyentsik (rgya tshan sprul sku’i dris lan lung bzhin ’doms pa’i snyan tshig), and ends with Q&A no. 11.[122] It turns out that kyang don mdor bsdus na is part of Q&A no. 26 of the Gyatsen tulkü drilen lungshin dompai nyentsik.[123] The Fourth Khamtrul often cites them in his commentary with surprising accuracy and sometimes without being properly sourced.
Let me close this essay with a little bit of speculation about the personalities of Shalu Lotsāwa and Situ Paṇchen that I believe transpires from what we now know or think we know about these two luminaries. From the foregoing it should be clear that the former was a staggeringly prolific editor and creator of bilingual editions of canonical texts, and we can also rest assured that he was far less occupied by the numerous duties that fell on Situ Paṇchen’s shoulders not least because of the latter’s position as the senior hierarch of the Karma Kagyü sect. Situ Paṇchen’s restless mind and ongoing curiosity made it impossible for him to focus solely on Sanskrit studies and philology, let alone to stay in one place for a long time. His diaries make it plain that he did quite a bit of traveling. What is more, his geographical proximity to the Chinese Han culture of Qing China and to the Naxi culture of Lijiang created a “multicultural” environment that was so very different from the relative isolation that Ü Tsang (dbus gtsang) afforded Shalu Lotsāwa. The latter is not known to have traveled much and it appears that he was content to stay put in Central Tibet for his entire life. He apparently did not even consider it worth his while to make a trip to the Kathmandu Valley or to interact and create valuable contacts with native Sanskrit scholars who worked in the Valley. In fact, he lived a rather cloistered life, and it is also telling that, as far as I can gather, not very much is related about him in the contemporary Tibetan literature. Thus, the personalities of both men seem to have differed in profound respects. One might even be tempted to surmise that Situ Paṇchen’s personality was of the outgoing kind and he easily befriended people, whereas Shalu Lotsāwa was perhaps more of a private person, and possibly even somewhat shy. Situ Paṇchen was certainly one of the greatest experts in Daṇḍin’s poetics to appear in the Tibetan world, but it was but one of the many fields of study in which this remarkable man could virtually claim scholarly sovereignty. He was also a painter and a designer of paintings and other artwork,[124] a physician, a herbalist, and an astrologer.[125] There is no question that he was one of the greatest scholars of eighteenth-century China even if he remained unknown to her intelligentsia at large, let alone to the intellectual Han communities of Sichuan, the province where he was born and which he called his home.
*. A Chinese translation of this article has been prepared by Ms. Chen Yilan who is currently completing her Peking University doctoral dissertation on Shalu Lotsāwa’s translation of Subhūticandra’s Kāmadhenu commentary on the Amarakoṣa. In the course of her translation, she noticed a number of typos, infelicities, and omissions in the original version of this essay. These have now been corrected and it is only fitting that she is mentioned as my collaborator on this essay. We are also grateful to the anonymous reader who read the essay with obvious care and made especially valuable observations regarding Situ Paṇchen’s criticism of the first passage on a translation in the Tibetan Abhidharmakoṣa literature that is cited below, something Ms. Chen and I also discussed at some length.
1. On him, see Jackson 2009, the articles in Debreczeny 2013, the overview of his scholarship in Verhagen 2017, 166–172, and the excellent large-scale study of him and his times in Yao 2022. An idealized portrait of him at around the age of sixty was studied in Jackson and Debreczeny 2023. And van der Kuijp 2024 detailed his year of birth and his parentage.
2. Two editions of the Kāvyādarśa—the context will make it clear whether I speak of the Kāvyādarśa or the Nyenngak Melong—plus a host of commentaries and treatises using its poetry (snyan ngag) were published in twenty volumes in a re-typed format in Khrom thar ’Jam blo 2016. Each volume contains a lengthy introduction that offers inter alia a history of the Tibetan translations and editions of this work.
3. All the dates that are in one or another connected to Situ Paṇchen are calculated using the tables of the so-called Tsurphu (mtshur phu) calendar that he used; for these tables see the late E. Hennings’ kalacakra.org/calendar/tiblist2.htm.
4. I will hereafter employ KD when I refer to the verses of the Sanskrit or the Tibetan text. For the Kāvyādarśa and its far-reaching influence, see now the state-of-the-art contributions in Bronner 2023. For the influence of Daṇḍin in the Tibetan area, see Pema Bhum and Gyatso 2023; for the influence of Sanskrit poetics in East Asia, see now the survey in Li 2023. Politically safe, there are of course numerous articles on the Kāvyādarśa published in Chinese and Tibetan journals, and He 2016 is a Chinese translation of the entire text.
5. For these two works, see Si tu 1990a and Zhwa lu 1976. Situ Paṇchen himself oversaw the carving of the printing blocks for his edition, whereas Shalu Lotsāwa’s text is an undated manuscript. We can assume that this text passed through a series of different scribal hands until it was frozen in the so far unique manuscript that is now available to us. Daṇḍin 1981 is yet another bilingual manuscript with additional annotations but has no colophon. Dimitrov 2002, 112–118, 118–121 has given a painstaking survey of the transmission of the Tibetan text of these three bilingual texts and their connections with the canonical versions.
6. Si tu 1990b. The original manuscript is not [?yet] available, so that all we can do is hope that Bé Lotsāwa Karma Tsewang Kunkyap (’be lo tsā ba karma tshe dbang kun khyab, 1718–?1790) of Zurmang Monastery was not the kind of a literary executor that Max Brod was for the diaries of Franz Kafka.
7. See Zhwa lu No Date[a]—some twelve years later, in 1526, he added a number of annotations to his text to prepare it for printing at Rabtan lhunpo gang (rab brtan lhun po sgang) in Yartö (yar stod)—and Laufer 1898. The first must be a reprint since it has Tibetan and Chinese pagination in the margins. A critical edition of this work is a desideratum since it is extant in several xylographs and manuscripts, and it should be placed in the context of the genre of dag yig texts whose earnest study has yet to begin. Pema Bhum 2023 draws our attention to one of these that is titled dag yig nyer mkho bsdus pa. As I pointed out elsewhere, there is some evidence that this little treatise has been wrongly attributed to Ngok Lotsāwa Loden Sherab (rngog lo tsā ba blo ldan shes rab, c. 1059–1109). The evidence for this is that the word hor ’dra, “Mongol-like,” occurs in it and this word, which refers to a low-level and somewhat despised official, dates from the period when the Tibetan area was occupied by the Mongols from 1240 to 1368.
8. See Zur mkhar ba No Date and Lcang skya III 1995. The latter work was translated into German and Japanese.
9. Graf 2019.
10. For very sympathetic accounts of Shalu Lotsāwa and his scholarship, see Verhagen 1994, 146–151 and Schaeffer 2009, 44–53. His capsule biography in Thinlay Gyatso is not always reliable.
11. Tibetan ’gos reflects the Middle Chinese pronunciation of Chinese wu 吳. Hence, ’gos chos grub reflects 吳法成.
12. Dated 1485, he translated Bodhibhadra’s Kālacakragaṇitopadeśa, for which see Bstan 120, 1588–1615, and he may have authored a short tract on various go la, planetary “orbit[s],” for which see ?Zhwa lu 2022. This work includes several glosses, one of which is identified as stemming from Serdok Paṇchen Shākya Chokden (gser mdog paṇ chen shākya mchog ldan, 1428–1507) in connection with his interpretation of Abhidharmakoṣa III: 61a–b; see de La Vallée Poussin 1971, 157.
13. Skyogs ston No date[a], 46b, 51a; No date[b], 37b, 41b and A mes zhabs 2012a, 246, 252.
14. ’Dar stod 1987, 311–319. Dartö’s work has been wrongly attributed to Mangthö Ludrup Gyatso (mang thos klu sgrub rgya mtsho, 1523–1596) who in fact was one of his teachers.
15. For his connections with Drathang (grwa thang) Monastery, see Khu byug 2020; for the monastery, see Vitali 1990, 37 ff. In imitation of Samyé (bsam yas) Monastery, its main building originally had three stories in accordance with three (?) stylistic traditions (lugs): the ground floor was “Chinese”, the middle floor “Nepalese”, and the third floor was “Indian”. See Kaḥ thog Si tu 1972, 170–171.
16. Ratnabhadra 1971, 687.
17. A mes zhabs 2012a, 240–241; in fact, the passage beginning with de nas glang lo and ending in gzhan yang rje thams cad mkhyen pa nyid kyi in A mes zhabs 2012a, 234–241 is altogether absent from Kyoktön Lotsāwa’s biography of the master.
18. This the second epoch value (rtsis gzhi) of the Kālacakra tradition. The expression me mkha’ rgya mtsho is a symbolic representation of the number 3 [me] 0 [mkha’] 4 [rgya mtsho], which must be read backwards as 403. It is added to the Islamic Hijra year [622], which was wrongly calculated to 624, so that it gives us the year 1027; for details, see Newman 1998 and Henning 2007, 223-24. This year is called prabhava (rab ’byung, rab skyes) and is the first year of the sixty-year cycle with the same name.
19. Améshab must have been following another source for this calculation of the Buddha’s A[nno] N[irvanae] rather than repeating the traditional Sakyapa (Sa skya pa) point of view, which is c. 2133 BC, as for example in his own 1629 history of Sakya Monastery and her ruling families; see A mes zhabs 2012b, 452. I am not sure about its exact relevance here, but the year ca. 878 BC for the AN is associated with the Nyingmapa (rnying ma pa) monk Yungtön Dorjé Pal (g.yung ston rdo rje dpal, 1284-1365); see Jo 2016, 42.
20. For what follows, see Skyogs ston No Date[a], 3b, 8a–b; No Date[b], 2b–3a, 6b–7a and A mes zhabs 2012a: 188–189 and 194–195.
21. The Kalāpasūtra is attributed to Śarvavarman, but there are significant problems with his name, for which see Verhagen 1994, 193–194. For Narthang Lotsāwa’s (snar thang lo tsā ba) writings on the language arts, see van der Kuijp 2023.
22. For some incisive remarks on the re-production of the latter by the Fifth Dalai Lama Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (Dalai Lama V ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, 1617–1682) in 1664–1665 and the colophons of its xylograph editions, see Lin 2011, 58–65 and 146–148.
23. ’Dar stod 1987, 315–316. In the colophon of Shalu Lotsāwa’s undated work on illustrations of verbal prepositions (nye bsgyur, *upasarga), there is a substantial list of Sanskrit and Tibetan manuscripts/texts (dpe) that he used for this work; see Zhwa lu No Date[b], 293–294.
24. Zhwa lu No Date[c]. The date given is rnam gnon zhes bya ba lcags pho ’brug gi lo dbyar zla ra ba’i nyi shu bdun gyi nyin.
25. I believe that this mi dbang must be distinguished from the Great Lord of Heaven and Earth, the Lord of Mankind, the Governor, the Great One up High (gnam sa thams cad kyi bdag po chen po mi’i dbang po dpon sa gong ma chen po) who is mentioned in A mes zhabs 2012a, 236 in a passage that may only slightly predate the fourth lunar month of 1525. Given the epithet gong ma chen po, this man was most probably the Phakmodru (phag mo gru) ruler Gongma Ngawang Tashi Drakpa (gong ma ngag dbang bkra shis grags pa, 1488–1564).
26. Skyogs ston No Date[a], 46a and No Date[b], 37a–b.
27. A mes zhabs 2012a, 245.
28. Zhwa lu No Date[d], 115a. For a study of colophons in indigenous Tibetan texts, see Dorji Wangchuk 2022 and the literature cited therein; for detailed remarks on the Tibetan canonical colophons, see Almogi 2020, 101–221.
29. Dpa’ bo II 1986, 1138; see also the detailed notes on him in Fermer 2017, 82–83.
30. What follows is based on Ngag dbang No Date, 43a–45b.
31. Zhwa lu No Date[e], 15b.
32. Phag mo gru pa 2017, 303.
33. Verhagen 1994, 113–114, 279–280, the latter reference is anent Bstan 108, 1316–1317.
34. Skyogs ston No Date, 46a, 48b and A mes zhabs 2012a, 245, 249.
35. ’Dar stod 1987, 318.
36. Zhwa lu No Date[f], 2a.
37. Dimitrov 2002, 175; see also Dpang 1981, 312 and No Date, Pdf 41; and Bod 2004, 152 and No Date[b], 33a. Oddly, Dpang No Date is not paginated.
38. Zhwa lu 1976, 8; see also Si tu 1990a, 636.
39. Commenting on Longchen Drimé Öser’s (klong chen dri med ’od zer, 1309–1364) phrase rgyan rnams kyi mtshan nyid dang rnam grangs bstan pa […], Pema Bhum ingeniously suggests that rnam grangs may be a substitution for dper brjod, “stating the illustration;” see Pema Bhum and Gyatso 2023, 330, n. 82.
40. Kaḥ thog Si tu 1972, 171.
41. Verhagen 2001, 102–104.
42. Skyogs ston 2016. While it does not have a colophon, and the final sentence merely states that the manuscript had belonged to a Gyalsé Jikmé (rgyal sras ’jigs med), this work certainly merits a closer study than can be afforded here. It is a pity that either the original manuscript was rather faulty, that it was sloppily retyped, or both.
43. Jamspal with Wayman 1992–1995.
44. Skyogs ston 1981. This work is problematic for several reasons. Firstly, immediately after the obligatory expression of homage it begins with de yang; secondly, it suddenly has “secondly” (gnyis pa) where “firstly” is missing; and thirdly, its opening statements are no doubt ultimately indebted to the treatise on linguistics that was written by Darma/Chökyi Gyaltsen (dar ma/chos kyi rgyal mtshan, 1227–1305), alias Chomden Raldri (bcom ldan ral gri); see Dar ma rgyal mtshan 2006, 16–17. Skyogs ston 1981, 18 acknowledges a debt to the latter.
45. Skyogs ston 2016, 527.
46. For these translators/interpreters, Tibetan lo tsā ba includes both senses of the term, see Sun 2019.
47. Skyogs ston 2016, 541.
48. Operated by the Buddhist Digital Resource Center and accessible at https://library.bdrc.io/
49. Spos khang pa 2019, 368. In the colophon, he describes himself as a monk of the Khyung clan.
50. Skyogs ston 2016, 561–564.
51. Uray 1984.
52. Dalai Lama V 2009, 438 and, using Kālacakra’s skar rtsis and nag rtsis notations, see the painfully accurate date of this work on pages 483–484; see also van der Kuijp 2022 on skar rtsis and nag rtsis and the literature cited therein.
53. See, respectively, ’Gos Lo tsā ba 2016a, 274 ff. and Grwa phug pa 2002, 27, 39 ff.
54. ’Gos Lo tsā ba 2016b, 336.
55. Skyogs ston 1981, 22 where it is said to mean rgya, “seal.” See also Laufer 1916, 444, 514.
56. For his life and works, see Kramer 2008.
57. Sa skya Lo tsā ba No Date.
58. Glo bo Mkhan chen 2018a.
59. Glo bo Mkhan chen 2018b, 96, 246.
60. Glo bo Mkhan chen 2018b, 246; see Wayman 1985, 107.
61. His dates are taken from a computer generated, incomplete manuscript of his autobiography in ’Be Lo tsā ba No Date[a], 598; see also the barely legible manuscript of his autobiography in ’Be Lo tsā ba No Date[b]: 6. Situ Paṇchen’s diary refers to him by a variety of names, Kungyab (kun khyab), Bé Kungyab (’be kun khyab), Lama Kungyab (bla ma kun khyab), and Surmang Kungyab (zur mang kun khyab).
62. Si tu 1990b, 726–741.
63. ’Be Lo 1990, 636–638. For their work, see now the informative essay in Dell 2023.
64. Si tu 1990b, 740.
65. Si tu 1990b, 124; see also Lewis and Jamspal 1988, 203.
66. For Situ Paṇchen’s translations and revisions of earlier translations, see Verhagen 2001, 107–136, 161–180.
67. For Subhūticandra and his Kāmadhenu, see van der Kuijp 2009, 8–14, 47–49 and Deokar 2020. Si tu 1990b, 121 suggest that he first came across a manuscript of the text in 1723 during his first stay in the Kathmandu Valley; see also Lewis and Jamspal 1988, 200 and Verhagen 2013, 321.
68. Bstan 110, 879–822.
69. Si tu 1990b, 272 does not mention Tsurphu. Rather we learn there that he arrived in Nakartse (sna dkar rtse) on May 16, 1748—it is located on the western shore of Lake Yamdrog (yar ’brog) and thus not all that close to Tsurphu—and that he started his translation on the following day.
70. Si tu 1990b, 305–306. Karma Lha steng was one of the earliest monasteries of the Karma sect of the Kagyü school and was founded by the first Karmapa Düsum Khyenpa (dus gsum mkhyen pa, 1110–1193) in 1185.
71. Si tu 1990c, 420; this is not found in the entry for the year 1757 in his diaries for which see 1990b, 352–353, which transitions from the dbo to the snron month without even mentioning the months nag and sa ga.
72. Respectively, Si tu 1990c, 420; 1990d, 767 and 1990e, 336, and 673; for the latter, see Verhagen 2001, 177–178. Another reference to Shalu Lotsāwa that concerns us, his translation of the Vṛddasaṃbandha by Drang songjin (drang srong byin [*Ṛṣidatta]), is found in Si tu 1990f, 366 ff.; see also Verhagen 2001, 102, 111. In the colophon of his re-translation of this work—it is dated “during a break in my meditations (thun mtshams) in the rgyal (pauṣa) [12th] lunar month of the year dbang phyug [end of 1757 or beginning of 1758]”—Situ Paṇchen writes that he suspects that its author was a Buddhist based on the line of homage and some of the examples of the grammatical forms; see Si tu 1990g, 465. There is no entry for this translation in his diary for that month; see Si tu 1990b. 365–366. That said, it is registered in Si tu 1990b: 347, in an entry in which he relates that he had begun to translate this work in the month smin drug (kārtikka) [10th] of 1756 at the request of Bé Lotsāwa.
73. Si tu 1990b, 327.
74. Si tu 1990b, 478, 492.
75. Si tu 1990b, 533.
76. An outline of the complex history of two Sanskrit manuscripts of the Tattvārthā is given in Kano and Kramer 2020, 112. Situ Paṇchen does not mention whether the manuscript to which he had access was complete or not. The interesting background of Shalu Lotsāwa’s translation was briefly described in van der Kuijp 2007, 281–282, and Kano and Kramer 2020, 113–114 provided a few additional notes on the translation as such.
77. For what follows, see Zhwa dmar 2009a, 969 and 2009b, 723.
78. In this connection, he mentions his presentation of Cāritra (Tsa ri tra yi gnas kyi rnam gzhag), the title of which he gives as Rdo rje ’dzin pa’i zhal gyi lung, which I have not been able to trace in the incomplete 2009 edition of his collected writings.
79. Although I have done so in this and other essays, it may not always be correct to render rgya dpe by “Sanskrit manuscript.” It is often better to render this by “Indian manuscript,” which then would be a shorthand for “Sanskrit manuscript from Rgya [India].” But even “India” for rgya gar is not unproblematic. For example, Butön Rinchen Drup (bu ston rin chen grub, 1290–1364) differentiates in his enormous 1342 study of Buddhaśrīśānti’s and Lotsāwa Rinchen Sangpo’s (lo tsā ba rin chen bzang po, 958–1055) translation of Anandagarbha’s Vajrodaya between the different readings of what are obviously Sanskrit manuscripts from Kashmir, the Kathmandu Valley, and Rgya; see Bu ston 1968, 270–271.
80. What follows is taken from Si tu 1990h, 348, 479, who comments on the passages in de La Vallée Poussin 1971, 46, n. 2 and 210, n. 2.
81. Owing to his alleged family ties, the Tibetan translation of Yaśomitra notes in the concluding words of his commentary—see Yaśomitra in Bstan 80, 1651—that he was a rgyal sras, that is, rgyal po’i sras, “prince,” a rājaputra, and his work is thus often called the Rgyal sras ma, “treatise associated with [or: by] the rgyal sras.”
82. Yaśomitra 1981, 1, 423 and Bstan 80, 628.
83. He liberally refers to the Abhidharmakośa commentary of the Eighth Karmapa Mikyö Dorjé (karma pa VIII mi bskyod rdo rje, 1507–1554), but does not mention that twelve instead of eleven are enumerated in it as well; see Karma pa VIII 1975, 482: the tshom dang/ yid la mi byed pa dang/ lus kyi gnas ngan len pa dang/ rmugs pa dang/ gnyid dang/ rgod pa dang/ brtson ’grus brtsams drags pa dang/ sems la lo ba dang/ bag tsha ba dang/ ’du shes sna tshogs dang/ smra ba mang ba dang/ ha cang sgom drags pa zhes bya ba skyon bcu gcig go//. For the Karmapa’s study, see now Dorjee Wangdi 2023.
84. The alternate corrections between the brackets in the Tibetan text and in the English translation were suggested by the anonymous reader because while middhi is not found in Sanskrit, middha is a good Sanskrit word. I also owe greater elegance of the English translation to the same reader.
85. Bstan 118, 835 and 1017
86. In conversation, Ms. Chen convinced me that here Situ Paṇchen is at best overly nitpicky and at worst not entirely correct.
87. Bstan 118, 1003 has the following five-fold typology of seeds: rtsa ba’i sa bon, sa bon gyi sa bon, ’bras bu’i sa bon [Beijing and Snar thang Tengyur xylographs have ’gas pa’i sa bon], sdong bu’i sa bon, and mdo’i sa bon. Si tu 1990h, 479 has rtsa ba’i sa bon, ’byed pa’i sa bon, sa bon gyi sa bon, rtse mo’i sa bon, and sdong po’i sa bon, and singles out agra and kāṇḍa as the Sanskrit equivalents of rtse mo and sdong po.
88. The relevant entries in his diary of the progress he was making in writing this study are the following Si tu 1990b, 501, 587, 589, 631, 634, 635–638, 645–648, 651, 671, 697, 701, 705, 708, 711, 718.
89. Dimitrov 2002 and 2011.
90. Dimitrov 2002, 32–33; see also Dimitrov 2011, 37–86, and especially the very informative “Philologische Bemerkungen” on Ratnaśrījñāna’s text in Dimitrov 2011, 461–545. For Ratnaśrījñāna’s work, see Ratnaśrījñāna 1957.
91. ’Phags pa 2007, 356–358.
92. For these men and their capsule biographies, see ’Dar stod 1987, 296–298, 298–299.
93. Dbus pa Blo gsal 2015. 98, no. 1295.
94. Bu ston 1971a, 973 and Bu ston 1971b, 628.
95. Karma pa III 2006, 589.
96. Sgra tshad pa (sic!) 1971, 558 and Jo nang 2010, 169. In van der Kuijp 1994, 140–142, I claimed on the evidence of this catalog’s long colophon that Dratsépa had naught to do with this catalog and that Taisitu Jangchub Sengé (ta’i si tu byang chub rgyal mtshan, 1302–1364) was the sponsor of this Tengyur and that a triumvirate of scholars was responsible for the edition; hence (sic!).
97. Ngor chen 2010, 300c.
98. Dpang 1981, 501 and No Date Pdf 285, ’Jam dbyangs Kha che 1985, 356, and Snar thang 1976, II, 520.
99. See Anonymous No Date.
100. Lewis and Jamspal 1988, 194–205, 205–210 which is a translation of Si tu 1990b, 113–126, 265–269.
101. Si tu 1990i; see also Verhagen 2017, 175–222.
102. Zhwa lu 1976, 98.
103. Si tu 1990a, 731.
104. This very same colophon is also contained in Daṇḍin No Date, 57a–58a and 2004, 74–75.
105. Daṇḍin No Date, 5a and 2004, 5. The commentary by the Fourth Khamtrul, Situ Paṇchen’s star disciple of ornate poetry and poetics, provides some interesting philological details on this verse which he does not attribute to his master; see Khams sprul IV 1933, 70a–71b and 1976, 119–122. For a brief survey of the Fourth Khamtrul’s travels in Nepal as related in his autobiography, see Quintman 2014, 89–92 ad Khams sprul IV No Date, 250–273, see also Ehrhard 2023. On page 273, the Fourth Khamtrul refers his reader to the logbook of his travels in Nepal as his bal po’i dkar chag. There are several editions of the latter and it was translated into French and English; for these, see MacDonald and Dwags po Rin po che 1981.
106. Daṇḍin No Date, 58a.
107. Si tu 1990b, 326–327. There are of course a good number of entries for unspecified “letters of request” (zhu yig) that he received from the Fourth Khamtrul to which he wrote equally unspecified “replies to requests” (zhu lan).
108. He was a student of Pang Lotsāwa; for several of his writings on poetics and literature, but not his Nyenngak Melong commentary, see Gung thang 2016.
109. Si tu 1990b, 490. The expression that is used for the latter—snyan ngag me long gi dogs dpyod [read: ?gcod] mdzad—uses the honorific mdzad which he would not use for himself and probably points to an editorial intervention by Bé Lotsāwa. The latter was occasionally party to these clarifications as well; see Si tu 1990b, 327.
110. Si tu 1990b: 496; see also Khams sprul IV No Date: 365. Situ Paṇchen notes that he twice dispelled the Fourth Khamtrul’s doubts about the Kāvyādarśa (snyan ngag dogs gcod gnang ba)!
111. Khams sprul IV No Date: 387 and Si tu 1990b: 604 ff., 615, 628.
112. Si tu 1990b, 694–695.
113. Khams sprul No Date, 389–390; see also the colophon in Khams sprul 1933, 429b–30a and 1976, 700–701. He also signs it with his poetic nom de plume Drayang Dawa Dütsi Langtso (sgra dbyangs zla ba bdud rtsi’i lang tsho).
114. Situ Paṇchen 1990b, 186 and Khams sprul IV No Date, 95.
115. Khams sprul IV No Date, 90. Situ Paṇchen mentions this epidemic in his diary in an entry for the years 1739–1740; see Si tu 1990b, 188–189.
116. For this kingdom in northern Khams, see Holmes-Tagchungdarpa 2014, 26–33.
117. Khams sprul No Date, 206–207.
118. Khams sprul No Date, 135, 151.
119. Khams sprul No Date, 402.
120. Si tu 1990b, 672, 681, 687–688, 691, 694, 699, 700, 714. Several of these notices do not specify that the Fourth Khamtrul had asked him about Daṇḍin, so that these may very well have involved questions on other subjects.
121. Si tu 1990j, 460–472.
122. Si tu 1990f, 331–334.
123. Si tu 1990f, 330.
124. See Jackson 2009 and the articles by Tashi Tsering and Karl Debreczeny in Debreczeny 2013a, 125–192 and Debreczeny 2013b, 193–276.
125. For his interest in and contributions to astrology, see van der Kuijp 2024.