Minor Tibetan Texts: 1. The song of the Eastern Snow-mountain — John Shaqi
Minor Tibetan Texts: 1. The song of the Eastern Snow-mountain
Religion
Minor Tibetan Texts: 1. The song of the Eastern Snow-mountain
Buddhist literature, Tibetan; Prayer -- China -- Tibet Autonomous Region -- Buddhism; Tibetan language -- Texts
From this དགེ་འདུན་གྲུབ་ a small poem in praise of his teachers, the ཡབ་
སྲས་, has come to us, which we now publish. Of མཁས་གྲུབ་རྗེ་ it is said that
he founded a formal cult of his teacher Tsoṅ kʽa pa, and it may be that
his devotional attitude found a reflection in this poem, showing the
attitude taken by his own pupil towards him and his two other teachers
in his turn.
This poem occurs in a miscellaneous collection of religious matter
(said to comprise about 150 leaves), in a work ཆོས་སྤྱོད་ (‘Religious
Practice’), leaves 59, 60. I have not been able to see a complete copy
of this work. In this edition the text is fairly correct and clearly
legible. A small edition, complete in itself, of which I possess two
copies (not quite so legible), offers several different readings which
nearly all seem quite as good, and some decidedly better, than those of
the larger edition. The differences shown by the two texts are,
relatively to the size of the poem, so numerous and of such a nature as
to preclude the idea that mere copying can have led to them. One is led
to the conclusion that one of the two texts was produced from memory
and not by actual copying. We shall note the variants furnished by the
larger edition, marking them B., whilst following for our own text,
with one exception, duly noted, the smaller edition A. My two copies of
the smaller edition would seem to be prints from the same blocks but
for some difference in the last page. Whether the other pages are
printed from the same blocks, whilst only this one last block has been,
for one reason or another, renewed (and changed in the process) may be
left undiscussed for the moment. Enough to make the general statement
that great care should always be exercised before pronouncing Tibetan
prints as made or not made from the same blocks, and that, indeed,
interesting observations may be made on Tibetan typographical
practices.
The title ཆོས་སྤྱོད་ is a very frequent one in Tibet, and indicates, like
མདོ་མང་ (as in J. Dict., p. 273b, but not as on p. XXI a), a religious
miscellany. The particular ཆོས་སྤྱོད་ from which our poem is taken is said
to be one of the text-books which the Tashilhunpo tapas are required to
learn by heart. The book with the same title which Laufer (Verzeichniss
der Tib. Handschr. etc. zu Dresden, Z.D.M.G., 1901, p. 123, n. 135)
mentions, might or might not be the same. As I have not been able to
examine the title pages and final pages of the book, I cannot give any
further information about it. ཆོས་སྤྱོད་ is the marginal short title.
Another Gelukpa prayer of almost equal popularity and frequency as
those of the one quoted above, is the following which may be used as an
alternative to the former one. It is distinguished from it in that not
the ཡབ་སྲས་གསུམ་, but Tsoṅ kʽa pa alone is invoked in it. It runs:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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