I’d like to start with a story. Not one about myself, one told by David Snellgrove about his 1956 travels in Dolpo, Nepal, in his Book Himalayan Pilgrimage. Bear in mind, this was back when Nepal as a whole was just opening up to foreign visitors, but even then very few were able to travel to areas this remote.

I’d recommend reading the whole chapter, right now I will restrict myself to his description of a day at the Bön monastery of Samling. At the time the monastery only had a dozen houses and two permanent residents, one of them being the abbot. When rituals were held laypeople would come to join in, not just as audience, but as active participants. Snellgrove had already offered the abbot some eyedrops for his sore eyes, and meanwhile they had gotten better, so the abbot was at least trusting and appreciative. To be sure, the abbot was impressed when Snellgrove demonstrated an ability to read Tibetan letters. He even called him a “Bon Tulku.” Perhaps it was an extraordinary complement, perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek, we’ll never know. Here are some portions of his narrative. I have skipped through it to underline particular parts. 

Himalayan Pilgrimage, p. 119:

“We started with the ‘Mother’ (yum) in sixteen massive volumes. The pages with their gilt and silver letters on a black ground measured about 2 & a half feet long by 6 inches wide. There were three hundred or more pages in each volume, all wrapped in cloths and bound between carved half-inch boards. There was dust everywhere. This work is properly known as the ‘Great Sphere’ (khams chen) and corresponds to ‘Perfection of Wisdom’ section of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon, which is also nick-named ‘Mother’.”

... ... …

“Revered as the formal expression of absolute wisdom, they are read as a rite to give immediacy to wisdom’s innate power. Certainly the reading on this occasion was a perfunctory affair. Everyone present opened one of the volumes, flicked the dust out of the pages and began to read sonorously.”

... “The ‘Mother’ revealed itself as a complete imitation of its Buddhist equivalent.”

The next pages have many more statements like this, about how this and that scripture is ‘obviously’ just an imitation of Buddhist scriptures.

At pp. 122-23: 

“The day’s performance had fully served its purpose, for I now had a general idea of the contents of the collection and knew which books were worth looking at again.”

Saying so isn’t very helpful to the ideas I’m searching for, but I think today we naturally object to the rhetoric of “fully served its purpose,” since it’s so clearly not the purpose of the text reading to satisfy the research aims of foreigners, a kind of spywork. We’re likely to think of the controversies surrounding Fritz Staal’s Agni (he revived an extremely elaborate and costly Vedic ritual entirely in order to study it), but anyway... all this leads off into a different direction than I intended.

Anyway, I say: Give him a break. He did mention “Wisdom’s innate power,” and that couldn’t be more on the mark. Recall how L. Austin Waddell once purchased a small monastery and made sure it was filled by monks just so he could study what they would do there.  Was anyone harmed by this arrangement? It’s good to ask questions, but my questions lead off in a different direction.

This ritual observance —    the same one Snellgrove made into his ethnographic object only to make light of it (we have to ask, Was he consciously pandering to an imagined audience?) — is arguably a practice going back to the beginnings of Buddhism two and half millennia before present. And I suggest it may prove worthwhile to refocus our attention on this practice before passing judgements about how the Bön similarities and distinctions may have come about.

I’d like to mention an article by Franz-Karl Ehrhard on “reading authorizations” (ལུང་) because, on its page 209, there are examples of some intriguing ways of shortening lengthy readings, methods bearing names like “cutting off the wave.” Some apparently read only the beginning, middle and end. I just want to say that such shortcuts are known enough to get names of their own.

Inviting nuns and monks into your home for ritual readings has been a continuous practice in Tibetan Buddhism for at least the last millennium. Some famous early figures were known practitioners: such as Machik Labdron who as a young woman served as scripture reader/reciter in laypeople’s homes. And it continues today, as one might gather from jokes I heard in Bodhanath in Nepal in the late 1980’s. 

Here are two examples where a householder asks a question of one of the monk reciters:

Q: In the past whenever we invited the monks to our house to read the Perfection of Wisdom, we always heard the name of Rabjor repeated many, many times. Why haven’t we heard it today?

A: Wait! Here they are coming up right now, "Rabjor, Rabjor, Rabjor, Rabjor."

Another example:

Q: Why is it I see you move your head to the right only three times when you are reading!

A: We don’t go back empty!

So, we can see that not only Snellgrove, but Tibetans themselves could make light of the practice, but in a way that might actually serve to tell us how significant it is. To understand the jokes and find them funny, at least, requires familiarity with the practice. And, more to the point: These ritual readers have a long line of predecessors that plunges us far back into the history of Buddhist scriptures, back to the first centuries before they were even written down.

One book that impressed me so much in my early days that I still remember it well is a certain science fiction book. It moves in a different direction, but still I think it helps us think seriously about changing strategies in text preservation that might take place when the ‘text’ transitions into manuscript form.

Ray Bradbury’s famous novel is exactly as old as I am, but it is set in the distant future, in the 24th century. The main character Guy Montag works as a fireman, but this future kind of fireman doesn’t put out fires, since all houses had been made built to be fireproof. Instead he is called to incinerate books wherever they may be found. 

I would like to insert a little commentary: Bradbury wrote at exactly the time when televisions were first being installed in a large number of homes, and people voiced fears that the audio-visual media would be used for information control placed in the service of social control, but also that silly and pointless entertainment would take the place of moral edification and learning. 

So, going back to the novel: In the 24th century people have large flatscreen televisions that are oddly interactive, drawing the viewers into the narrative. I recommend reading the book if you haven’t, especially for the way it ends, which I will spoil for you by saying that Guy Montag, pursued as a criminal book owner, crosses over the river away from his familiar dystopian society, and joins a band of outcastes in the woods. Each of them embodies a particular book in their memory. In order to ensure its preservation, each one recites it to themselves, but also into the ears of an apprentice who memorizes it in order to pass it on to the next generation.

I’ve long thought that Bradbury was influenced by the Dharma Bhāṇaka who played such a leading role in Buddhism’s lengthy orality phase. I can’t tell you where he might have read or heard about it, but I believe he did.

Buddhism’s original orality has been nicely explored and explained in an essay by Peter Skilling, which I recommend as short and pithy summary with up-to-date information and plenty of bibliography.

The latest manuscriptology tells us that the earliest written examples of Buddha Word date from not too long — maybe a century, maybe two? two and a half? — before the time of King Kanishka.  His dates have long been a problem, but it seems he reigned in the first half of the 2nd century CE.

Kanishka is credited with sponsoring the “third rehearsal.” Before I read a passage from the long Deyu history dating to around 1261, I’d like to say a few things. The usual translation of saṅgīti is not “rehearsal” but “council.” This word council creates the false expectation that the reasons for holding them are the same as the councils of early Christianity, to decide which written books will be canonical and/or to confront unsettled doctrinal questions. It has to be emphasized that the more accurate translation of saṅgīti would be “communal recitation,” or even “chorus,” since the main aim of this meeting was not really to discuss differences even if that did occur in some infamous instances, so much as to ensure communal harmony in the monastic Community as well as to make sure they were on the same page, so to speak. On these important points, see Bhikkhu Anālayo’s essay “First Saṅgīti and Theravāda Monasticism” and his book published last year. (The book details are listed below.)

The following is from A History of Buddhism in India and Tibet: An Expanded Version of the Dharma’s Origins Made by the Learned Scholar Deyu, p. 317, in its account of the Third Council:

[King Kaniṣka] was not only intelligent and wise but he was also one with great faith who believed in the Dharma teachings. He investigated to find out if the Dharma teachings of the Buddha, the Word, had suffered interpolations or not. What he found was that they had decayed compared with their previous condition. Even after the compilation was done, there were some ordinary unenlightened people — people not favored with the dhāraṇi of never forgetting — who recited scripture with gaps and additions. That is why, at that time, they did what was necessary for making the Teachings of the Buddha remain for a long time and benefit sentient beings of the future. They committed the Baskets of the Word to texts with words written in letters. They inscribed them in palm-leaf bundles and sacred Volumes. There turned out to be five hundred incense-elephant loads worth of them, and after consecration, they were placed in the temple.

I want to emphasize, these meetings were supposed to ensure the continuity of the teachings through recitation and memorization.  Communal recitations were an opportunity to check for accuracy. They served purposes that might in book culture be filled by editors or editorial boards.

I made myself a very long reading list at the beginning of the year, but unfortunately there was so much to read in English, not to mention Tibetan, that I didn’t get nearly as far as I had hoped. High in the list were works by Mark Allon and Eviatar Shulman, but I most recommend the recent book by Bhikkhu Anālayo, which I found quite interesting for its way of dealing with textual change during the era of orality. Still, my own area for exploration is first of all in the Mahāyāna, not the Theravāda, and secondly, mostly long post-dating the orality-only era.

I most recommend some recent Oxford Zoominars, all available for free viewing on the web:

Natalie Gummer, “The Dharmabhāṇaka’s Body and the Ontologization of Authority,” February  21, 2022, 6:00pm.

Robert Mayer, “Dharmabhāṇakas, Siddhas, Avatārakasiddhas, and gTer stons,” May 23, 2022, 6:00pm.

Ryan Overbey, “Theorizing Buddhist Revelation in the Great Lamp of the Dharma Dhāraṇī Scripture,” February 6, 2023, 5:00pm.

I’d like to especially draw attention to the third one by Ryan Overbey, concerning The Great Lamp of the Dharma Dhāraṇī Scripture. This text is available only in an end-of-sixth-century Chinese translation. It purports to transform the wielder of its dhāraṇī into a perfect Buddhist reciter/preacher: a Dharmabhāṇaka. Becoming a perfect Reciter entails entering “the Treasury of Tathāgatas,” a state in which the Reciter accesses the awakening of Buddhas. Ritually represensing the Buddha in the body of the Reciter, the Reciter’s sermons are authorized as the Word of the Buddha. Overbey says the Dharmabhāṇaka is the key figure in representing the Buddha in this text. And the text describes a kind of secret letter-code in 42 letters divided into three classes, the classes of vowels, consonants and nasals. The number of 42 letters suggests it would be identical to the Arapacana alphabet, the alphabet of Kharoṣṭhī script, and this shouldn’t be surprising in the least, since the text was translated into Chinese by a Gāndhāran monk.*

(*If this sentence made no sense, read the introductory chapters to Salomon’s book.)

Similar ideas about envisioning the Dharmabhāṇaka as ritual stand-in for the Buddha himself may be encountered in the Zoominar of Natalie Gummer, and also in some of her recently published articles. Her studies are based in better-known Mahāyāna Sūtras, the Suvarṇabhasottama and Saddharmapuṇḍarika. I should also mention here a 2011 article by David Drewes. Drewes surveys a large number of Mahāyāna Sūtras, and in doing so helps us visualize the social scene involved in the ritual in early centuries. Recitations were likely to take place on monthly fast days when laypeople were anyway most likely to visit the temples and monasteries. The Dharma Reciter, who could be a woman as we find made explicit here and there, would sit in an elevated place or even a throne, and the recitation itself could continue all through the night. 

I find this colophon page very charming and illustrative at the same time. See how the frame with the devoted patron figures — their names are given — flows almost seamlessly (see how the horse artlessly steps out of one frame into another, as if it were unconscious of crossing over a huge time gap) from the narrative of Sadāprarudita’s quest for the perfect Dharmabhāṇaka and the sacred Volume of the Perfection of Wisdom, here depicted on a stand in front of the patron couple, the same patrons who sponsored the scribing of it. The more I look at it the more meaning it seems to emanate. But on a critical note we should observe that the final chapters of the scriptures with the story of Sadāprarudita (རྟག་ཏུ་ངུ་) are absent in earlier Chinese translations. These same chapters might even be lacking in the earliest Tibetan translation, a matter that will need to be sorted out over time when close study of those translations will begin in earnest. 

In my dissertation of 1991 I looked into matters relevant to the Bön and Chö (བོན་ & ཆོས་) Wisdom Scriptures as one of several significant side issues in my pursuit of Shenchen Luga’s place in history. These issues included comparison of the 32 bodily signs of an Enlightened One, along with an initial exploration of stories about the earliest Prajñāpāramitā translations into Tibetan (look here).

I went into those earliest translations once more in a blog of 2012, “1,200-Year-Old Perfection of Wisdom Uncovered in Drepung” after learning of an amazing new find. It had by then become known that two volumes from a 9th-century scribed set containing a late 8th-century version of the Hundred Thousand had surfaced in Lhasa. An inscription added to the first page tells us it had earlier been rescued from a fire in the now-destroyed temple of Karchung [where there was once a pillar inscription of Emperor Senaleg — སད་ན་ལེགས་], across the Kyichu from Lhasa. Kawa Sherab Zangpo reported on these Volumes at Königswinter in 2006, with the article appearing in 2009. He had found the third volume in June of 2003, and the second volume in October of the same year. In May of 2011, Sam van Schaik reported in his blog that the persons named as scribes of those two surviving Volumes were in fact scribes of Chinese and Tibetan ethnicities known from Dunhuang scribal colophons. That clearly shows that the Lhasa Volumes had actually been scribed in a workshop in Dunhuang.

I just want to remind you of a set of Volume-related practices, normally ten of them, found in a number of Pāli and Mahāyāna sources. As these lists always includes ‘writing’ they are surely post-dating the oral-written watershed, somewhere in the centuries close to the beginning of the Common Era. Here we see that the Khams-brgyad (Eight Elements) of Bön has similar ideas. It may be obvious, but the first three would only be relevant to a literate book culture, while the last three would be just as relevant to oral as to literate recitation practices. I have to emphasize the recitation practices continued. Book culture didn’t stop it, just added elements to it, most obviously paper, pens/brushes and ink. Even memorization practices continued more-or-less as before. And I would argue that contemporary practices such as Wisdom Scripture readings and reading authorizations (lung) as well can only exist because of the orality phase that preceded written scriptures.

Khamgyé  —  Eight Elements  —  ཁམས་བརྒྱད།

1. The Element of Coming to Be — སྲིད་པའི་ཁམས།

2. The Element of Continual Flow — རྒྱུན་གྱི་ཁམས།

3. The Element of Appearance — སྣང་བའི་ཁམས།

4. Element of Empti[ness] — སྟོང་པའི་ཁམས།

5. The Element of Clarifying Particulars — སོ་སོ་གསལ་བའི་ཁམས།

6. The Element of Awareness — རིག་པའི་ཁམས།

7. The Element of the Full Sphere — དབྱིངས་ཀྱི་ཁམས།

8. The Element of Evenness [Full Knowledge] — མཉམ་པ་ཉིད་ཀྱི་ཁམས།

Here you see the Eight Elements that broadly characterize the ’Bum section of Bön scriptures as a whole. More specifically, it serves as the most general outline of the 16-volume version of the scripture that likely derived its own title from the list, the Khamgyé, or Eight Elements. Each of the Eight Elements is covered by two of the 16 volumes, in the order given here. Not so obvious is the fact that the Eight Elements occur in conceptually joined pairs, with the first of each pair tending toward the objective spheres and the second tending toward the inward or subjective spheres. There is a strong streak of rationality in it. And at the same time I’m convinced after a little database-searching that these Eight Elements, whether individually and as a group, are not shared with the Chos Wisdom Scriptures found in our modern Kanjurs. They are unique to the Bön Wisdom Scriptures. Yes, there is something special about this Bön transmission of Buddhist text and text-related practice. I’m convinced the more we look the more we will find. Starting as we too often do from the normal sectarian polemical positions on the subject — nefariously motivated text alteration — we would never think it worth our while to look further. Since, assuming we are not the type of person who would build castles on the hot air of sectarian arguments, the historical circumstances are entirely dark for us, our best method is to pursue lines of enquiry that could possibly shed some light. These small works listed below are a good place to start searching for those cracks in the wall that could conceivably let in a little light.

The three Khamgyé texts by Lhari Nyenpo are these:

A. Khams-brgyad-kyi Zhun-thig Rnam-dbye Grangs-su Bkod-pa.  Thirteen topics.  

B. Khams-brgyad-kyi Phyi-mo Gsum-la Btug-pa’i Dag-yig.  On the three ‘grandmother’ texts or Vorlagen.

C. Khams-brgyad Gtan-la Phabs-pa’i Rnam-dbye Spyi-don Dgu-yis Bstan-pa.  Nine topics.

That was just a list the titles of the three very brief extracanonical texts by Lhari Nyenpo (ལྷ་རི་གཉེན་པོ་) that often accompany the Eight Elements scripture in 16 vols., the one found by Shenchen Luga in 1017 CE.* We’ll look at the initially confusing set of author names in the colophons in a moment and then say something about their content. First I want to go into the identity and the biography of the author a little. I have to thank Jean-Luc Achard for locating the biography for me when I was unable to do it myself.

(*All three texts have been transcribed in an Appendix at the end of this blog. Among the several versions of the three texts I could find, there is even an eBook version placed on Scribd website that can be downloaded if you or a friend has a subscription. I have to thank Gendun Rabsal for providing the texts as found in the 1975 Indian publication as preserved in Indiana University Library, which is the one I prefer.)

The biography of Lhari Nyenpo is by one Dmyal-ston Lha-rtse, a direct disciple of his. It tells us Lhari Nyenpo was born in a Mouse year with no further specifications. His birth was predicted ahead of time by the famous Khro-tshang ’Brug-lha, known to Bönpos for his divination methods and for revealing the Chamma (བྱམས་མ་), or “Outer Mother Tantra” literature. His mother died when he was ten and his father sent him to study with the three main disciples of Shenchen Luga, the main representatives of the Southern Treasures (ལྷོ་གཏེར་), despite the fact that his ancestors had followed the Northern Treasures (བྱང་གཏེར་), and not the Southern. He broke off his studies at one point to go to Tingri Langkhor, where he circumambulated the shrine for Padampa Sangyé. That he did so is less surprising when we remember that Khro-tshang ’Brug-lha was well known for his association with Padampa. But Lhari Nyenpo’s visit to his shrine must mean Padampa had died already when the former was a young man. This suggests a later date for Lhari Nyenpo, perhaps 60 years later, but then it appears Padampa’s own death date may need moving back by at least twelve years or so from the usual Blue Annals date of 1117 to 1105, so the chronological situation is muddier than we would like. This isn’t at all unusual for pre-Mongol figures who usually only made use of the twelve-year animal cycle for dates.

After several years of travel and study he returned to his home valley of Shang (ཤངས་) and to his father. At 23 years of age he married, but had no child before age 40. He became a teacher in his own right and much of the remainder of the 48-page biography is related to his students and teaching activities. All three of his teachers, belonging to the Spa, ’Bru and Zhu clans, attended his father’s funeral. This would have taken place when he was in his 30’s but before he turned 40, when his first son, the first of two, Khorlo Gyelpo (འཁོར་ལོ་རྒྱལ་པོ་) was born.  Now the Spa teacher was born in 1014, the Zhu in 1002, and the ’Bru lived from 996-1054. In the case of ’Bru, the Horse year of his death as given in our biography does fit the year 1054, for what it’s worth.

Despite our hopes, no specific mention of the three small texts that interest us right now could be found in the biography. The only thing I could find is at p. 40, line 6, is a mention of the Hundred Thousand as one of the many subjects about which he made commentaries and outlines. Unfortunately, I know of only one further work by him that survives today, a Bardo Prayer.

On the way to Ü, the central province, he stopped in Nyemo (སྙེ་མོ་) Valley where the local Bönpos awarded him a place called Zangri (བཟང་རི་). In effect he founded this significant monastery as we know from many other sources. He died in a Sheep year, in his 72nd year.

This information on the earliest manuscripts of the Eight Elements is from the 2nd brief text by Lhari Nyenpo. As it says already in the title, it intends to compare the three direct copies from Shenchen’s treasure manuscript. I believe this would be the first Tibetan-authored text-critical study of any Wisdom Scripture manuscript. The treasure manuscript was copied by Chogla Yungdrungkyi (ཅོག་ལ་གཡུང་དྲུང་སྐྱིད་) who, after copying it offered a copy to Shenchen Luga that was called Hardened Leather Cover. The same person made a further copy for himself called Red Hundred Thousand. The Great Eight Elements in Tiny Black [Letters], scribed only with black ink was a ‘son copy’ on basis of the treasure manuscript that is preserved even today in Zhu Rizhing (ཞུ་རི་ཞིང་) Monastery. It makes use of this Tibetan word,

and this is the very word I want to concentrate on for the rest of the time: drekang (འགྲེས་རྐང་).* After many years I still don’t have a satisfying English translation for it. I’ve sometimes felt the urge to throw away all my dictionaries, useless things that they are when you need them the most. You may know the feeling. All the same, I do have ideas about what it means. It means the repeated statements you find in the Wisdom Scriptures, with each repetition inserting a different element from a long list of dharmas or böns both sangsaric and nirvanic. The list is, keeping its original order, collated one-at-a-time into empty slots in repeated portions of prose or verse. For convenience, until I find a more appropriate term, I’ll just call them ‘repetition statements.’ Conze recognized this phenomenon and described it long ago in his 1978 monograph entitled Prajnaparamita Sutras, p. 10:

“These three texts [the 18,000, 25,000 and 100,000 Prajnaparamita Sutras] are really one and the same book. They only differ in the extent to which the "repetitions" are copied out. A great deal of traditional Buddhist meditation is a kind of repetitive drill, which applies certain laws or principles to a certain number of fixed categories. If, for instance, you take the statement that "X is emptiness and the very emptiness is X", then the version in 100,000 lines laboriously applies this principle to about 200 items, beginning with form, and ending with the dharmas, or attributes, which are characteristic of a Buddha. Four-fifths of the Satasahasrika, or at least 85,000 of its 100,000 lines, are made up by the repetition of formulas, which sometimes (as in ch. 13 and 26) fill hundreds of consecutive leaves. An English translation of the Large Prajñaparamita, minus the repetitions, forms a handy volume of about 600 printed pages (see p. 37). The reader of the Sanskrit or Tibetan version must, however, struggle through masses and masses of monotonous repetitions which interrupt and obscure the trend of the argument.” 

(*I recommend this blog entry by Dorji Wangchuk posted at Philologia Tibetica in February of 2020. It is by far the most useful discussion of the term I know about.)  

Moving over quickly to the Bön Hundred Thousand, in its first volume, at the point where it first introduces the concept “sangsaric and nirvanic böns,” it lists them all. What you see just above is its list of the sangsaric böns, since they all fit on the same page. These are the terms that are slotted into the repeated statements. I’ve made a compilation of lists of sangsaric and nirvanic böns and dharmas from many different sources, but I leave those aside for now thinking I have already provided you with too much opportunity to practice the Perfection of Patience.

Now I’m moving back to the first of the three Eight Elements commentarial texts by Lhari Nyenpo. This is the very passage that initiated my bewilderment and fascination with the word drekang, although it appears a few other times in the three texts. I’ll try to translate this brief passage. The mchan-notes, because they are rubrics, I put in red letters and in square brackets. These originally appeared in smaller letters on a different line of the text connected by dots that may or may not be very visible. For all I know the rubrics are by the original author:

“When they are all added up, there are 126 [the list of both sangsaric and nirvanic böns], while the (Nine) Yungdrung Limbs are neither listed nor put in repetition statements [missing in the lists and the repetition statements, they were added.]”

Here in this pre-Mongol era Tibetan text we find the basic vocabulary for the two things involved in the text-generation process for making those lengthy repetition passages found in all the longer versions of the Wisdom Scriptures: first the ennumeration or just the ‘list,’ and secondly the ‘repetition statements.’

I don’t want to say that Lhari Nyenpo was the first to use the term drekang without qualifying the statement. It’s easy to check this by doing first an exact and then a fuzzy search in the Kanjur and Tanjur database from Vienna. Doing so establishes that the term appears only once as such in the Kanjur and Tanjur, and this is in a work by the Kashmir Buddhist master Dharmaśrī. We don’t know much about him, just that he came to Tibet as a student accompanying the Indian Buddhist master Vajrapāṇi, b. 1017 (Blue Annals, p. 859), which does help verify the 11th-century date for him and his Tibetan co-translator Ba-reg Lotsāwa. Dharmaśrī wrote nothing other than these two interesting Prajñāpāramitā commentarial works, the one in question here (the second one listed just below) being on the Hundred Thousand. It’s quite a significant passage that deserves more attention, just not right now.

 — Prajñāpāramitākośatāla (Shes-rab-kyi Pha-rol-tu Phyin-pa’i Mdzod-kyi Lde-mig). Tôhoku no. 3806. Dergé Tanjur, vol. DA, folios 228r.4-235r.7. Translated by Ba-rig (i.e. Ba-reg).

 — Śatasāhasrikāvyākhyā (Stong-phrag Brgya-pa’i Rnam-par Bshad-pa). Tôhoku no. 3802. Dergé Tanjur, vol. TA, folios 204r.3-270r.7. Authorship given with a question mark.

An exact search finds nothing else in the Tanjur. Still, if we do a fuzzy search for the phrase grangs ’gres (a contraction of the longer phrase grangs dang ’gres rkang) as we find in Lhari Nyenpo’s text, we do find significant passages that are in the same semantic ballpark. Enough of that.

I’ve finished giving my conclusions, as far as I’m going to give any today, but I do want to end with a quick tour of the Chos literature on drekang. That way I hope you will be able to take away with you a memory of the word drekang and the idea that it is one mechanical memory tool among still others in the toolboxes of ritual reciters intending to generate a consciousness of the unstable, ineffable, insubstantial, relative, interdependent, interconnected, unreifiable, unquantifiable, insubstantial and indeed empty nature of all the dharmas of sangsara and nirvana. This tool went right on working from somewhere during the half millennium of orality through two millennia of book culture until today. And today we don’t know where we are unless (because?) we’re in front of a screen, almost as if Fahrenheit 451 has come true a few centuries earlier than its author predicted.

§   §   §

Appendix on the Most Relevant Tibetan Literature

Continue only if you are interested in [1] later literature relevant to the earliest Tibetan translations of Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand Lines and [2] the Gelugpa literature about drekang. I’ll ask whoever doesn’t find the subject compelling to go find something better to read.

I may have been first to introduce this Rongtön text to the academic world when I spoke of it in my 1991 dissertation (on basis of a 1985 Indian reprint), and since then nobody else seems to mention it. That is not only odd but also a pity since it has to be crucial for anyone interested in the Wisdom Scriptures in their Tibetan forms, but also for the history of textual criticism or ‘philology’ as a Tibetan practice and, needless to say Manuscriptology. 

Even if I won’t make much hay out of it, Rongtön was educated as a Bönpo in the far eastern extreme of the high plateau until age 18 when he was sent to study in Central Tibet. He would in his later years become one of the most prominent Tibetan intellectuals, as a member of the Sakya School, basing himself in a monastery in Penpo (འཕན་པོ་) Valley north of Lhasa. Modern-day Bönpos regard him with much respect.

Rongtön identified five different text-historical levels in the translations of the Hundred Thousand, some of them preserved in manuscripts kept in specific places. He names no less than 65 locations where named and/or described manuscripts could be found. And he distinguishes them for us by identifying their different numbers of chapters, among other things.

The next text I only stumbled upon, quite recently, in one of those enormous sets of early Kadampa works compiled and reprinted in recent years by the Peltsek group in Lhasa. It was written at an unknown date by a person I haven’t positively identified yet, but I think it may be as old as Rongtön’s text, or even a century or two older. It was, if you can read the small cursive letters on the slide, specifically written because of the need to edit the Tibetan text of the Hundred Thousand. For most of it the author goes chapter by chapter reporting to us about specific additions and omissions that characterize particular existing manuscripts. Believe it or not, he says he consulted with no fewer than 184 old examples of the Hundred Thousand. What comes next is still more amazing to hear if you are a Tibetan manuscriptologist: He says that the birchbark manuscript lists 160 Samādhis, while the others have no more than 119, and some as few as 12 or 21. Who imagined there might have been birchbark manuscripts of the Hundred Thousand in Tibetan? We do know of birchbarks with Tibetan on them, but only short dhāraṇīs enclosed in imperial era images as part of their consecration rites. Well, there is that one seemingly exceptional bound codice made of birchbark that was displayed (and may still be displayed) in the modern Tibet Museum in Lhasa, but it's in Sanskrit written in an Indic script.

Anyway... It shares similar aims with Rongtön’s, uses similar editorial vocabulary including drekang and related terms. And perhaps most intriguing for us, this text, too, mentions that one particular Hundred Thousand manuscript once kept at the Imperial period Karchung Temple. This is the one I mentioned before, the one that survived a fire only to be rediscovered in the 21st century. Just look at p. 382, where it is discussing a section of a repetition statement in the bam-po section no. 10 that is missing in some examples. It then says we can know this because "it is actually to be found in other examples such as the Hundred Thousand manuscript that was not burned in the fire at Karchung."*

(*Kawa, in his article, says this should be the one known elsewhere as Sbug-’bum, that would have had four volumes only. But Rongtön calls this Karchung set the Yugs-’bum, and says it has six parts (dum-bu), listing it among 17 then-existing examples of medium-lengthed imperial translations, all of them in either four or six parts.)