Report On Kanjur Of Ta Pho

Author(s): Ernst Steinkellner
Publisher: Ernst Steinkellner

Page 16

7. A Fragmentary Manuscript of the Pañcavimsatikā
This manuscript was chosen for extraction from the bundles because its various characteristics made it easily recognizable: middle weight and soft, absorbent paper of light colour, with binding circles and holes, a rather large format of 66 x 21 cm (60.5 x 16 cm) with 13 lines. There is no beginning and no end, but a number of chapter endings are present.
This manuscript was dispersed among 58 bundles within the whole 60-bundle library, with sometimes no more than one or two folios found in a single bundle. It is now wrapped in a cover and has been added to LII.
The reason for taking out this manuscript was -- aside from the ease in identifying its leaves — the need to procure a basis for answering the following questions: is this material, which dates from a period even before the beginning of serious bka''gyur editorial efforts and long before the late available editions proper, really up to our expectations? Is this an example of the Pancavimšatika in Tibetan translation as it was transmitted in the 11th to 12th centuries? And how much and in what ways does it differ from the editions available so far? Answers to these questions and more detailed information will be given after a more thoroughgoing study by E. De Rossi Filibeck (cf. her contribution to this volume).
8. Some Hypothetical Remarks on the Genesis of the Library and the Causes for Its
Present Condition
The more or less homogeneous character of the library's oldest parts, i.e. the fact that they mainly contain Prajñāpāramitā texts, and the great number of manuscripts with the same content (40) both suggest that the two assumptions made by Tucci are very likely correct, namely: firstly that the original nucleus of the library consists of texts, the translations of which had been made in Western Tibet by Rin chen bzan po and his school (Tucci 1935: 88). In Rin chen bzan po's biography, the information is conveyed that the teacher had seven copies of yum and three copies of mdo man (41) given to each temple he founded (42). The nucleus of the library, therefore, consisted
(40) In bundle I, e.g., there are 30 different manuscripts of the Astasahasrikā with the volume signature 'red ka' and 7 with black ka'.
(41) Here to be understood only as a generic term (comparable to the information on the deposit of a complete Tripitaka to Rad nis, cf. Tucci 1933: 70 and below, fn. 43).
(42) In the biography of Rin chen bzan po by his disciple Guge Khri tan pa Ye ses dpal which is extant in two versions (Collected Biographical Materials about Lo chen Rin-chen-bzan-po and His Subsequent Reembodiments, ed. Rdo-rje-tshe-brtan, Delhi 1977, texts nos. 3 and 6) it is reported that Rin chen bzan po provided three sets of Sūtra collections (mdo man cha gsum) and seven sets of the Satasähasrikā Prajñāpāramita ('bum cha bdun) to the 21 smaller places (yul chun) he had founded (ibid.: 96, 2-4; 262, 3-6; cf. also ibid., text no. 5: 179, 3-5). I owe these references to Dr H. Tauscher.
Snellgrove's translation of the passage in text no. 3 above (Snellgrove & Skorupski 1980: 92; for the
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