All the words below were written by a guest blogger Matthew Akester, translator and author of several books, including his Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo's Guide to Central Tibet, recently published by Serindia. -D
In response to the recent blogpost, Historian Father, Historian Son
With respect to the Nyang chos byung, I say there is no doubt that the section on Rva lung was written by ’Brug chen Padma dkar po. The complete title of his work, excerpted in Nyang chos byung, is gDan sa chen po Rva lung gi khyad par ’phags pa cung zad brjod pa Ngo mtshar gyi gter, and it is p.175-205 of the fourth volume of his collected works (Darjiling 1973).
Nyang chos byung is a compilation of accounts of the temples of the Nyang valley by different authors (and with some notable omissions). Whether it was compiled by Taranatha himself is in doubt, since we find no other examples of such things in his oeuvre, but I suspect the association with him is unmistaken.
This is because of a reference (on p.203 of the TAR Publishing House edition) to the relocation of Vairocana’s birthplace to the vicinity of Zur gsang sngags gling in Nyang smad, near gZhis ka rtse. This claim, and the so-called “Nyang smad skyid sbug” hermitage there was associated with a coterie of mostly rNying ma masters, including the resident Zur lineage holders, in the patronage of the gTsang pa sde srid (it was rejected, on good authority, by rNying ma and other masters of different political persuasions - see Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo’s Guide to Central Tibet, Serindia 2016 p.509 and p.539).
The passage occurs in a long eulogy of the gTsang pa sde srid’s capital bSam ’grub rtse and its environs at the end of the work, apparently composed during the reign of Karma bstan skyong dbang po (1620-42) - strong enough evidence for dating the manuscript in its present form. Taranatha mentions visiting Nyang smad skyid sbug in that period, and was quite a historian, as well as Lama of the gTsang pa sde srid, so he may have been interested in the compilation, even contributed parts of it, but I tend to think the slapdash manuscript we know was found among his papers, rather than counted among his compositions.
I say slapdash having compared the TAR-published edition with the manuscript collected by Charles Bell, now in the Liverpool Museum collection, of which it is a faithful copy (i.e., full of mis-spellings and lacunae).
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m a t t h e w
