Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3

by Charles Eliot

To the great majority of works in both collections is prefixed a title which gives the Sanskrit name first in transcription and then in translation, for instance "In Sanskrit Citralakshana: in Tibetan Ri-moi-mthsan-ñid[992]." Hence there is usually no doubt as to what the Tibetan translations profess to be. Sometimes however the headings are regrettably brief. The Vinaya for instance appears to be introduced with that simple superscription and with no indication of the school or locality to which the text belonged.

Although the titles of books are given in Sanskrit, yet all Indian proper names which have a meaning (as most have) are translated. Thus the name Drona (signifying a measure and roughly equivalent to such an English name as Dr. Bushell) is rendered by Bre-bo, a similar measure in Tibetan. This habit greatly increases the difficulty of reading Tibetan texts. The translators apparently desired to give a Tibetan equivalent for every word and even for every part of a word, so as to make clear the etymology as well as the meaning of the sacred original. The learned language thus produced must have varied greatly from the vernacular of every period but its slavish fidelity makes it possible to reconstruct the original Sanskrit with tolerable certainty.

I have already mentioned the presence of translations from the Pali. There are also a few from the Chinese[993] which appear to be of no special importance. One work is translated from the Bruza language which was perhaps spoken in the modern Gilgit[994] and another from the language of Khotan[995]. Some works in the Kanjur have no Sanskrit titles and are perhaps original compositions in Tibetan. The Tanjur appears to contain many such.

But the Kanjur and Tanjur as a whole represent the literature approved by the late Buddhism of Bengal and certain resemblances to the arrangement of the Chinese Tripitaka suggest that not only new sûtras but new classifications of sûtras had replaced the old Pitakas and Agamas. The Tibetan Canon being later than the Chinese has lost the Abhidharma and added a large section of Tantras. But both canons recognize the divisions known as Prajñâ-pâramitâ, Ratnakuṭa, Avatamsaka, and Mahâparinirvâṇa as separate sections. The Ratnakûta is clearly a collection of sûtras equivalent to a small Nikâya[996]. This is probably also true of the voluminous Prajñâ-pâramitâ in its various editions, but the divisions are not commonly treated as separate works except the Vajracchedikâ. The imperfectly known Avatamsaka Sûtra appears to be a similar collection, since it is described as discourses of the Buddha pronounced at eight assemblies. The Mahâparinirvâṇa Sûtra though not nominally a collection of sûtras (at least in its Pali form) is unique both in subject and structure, and it is easy to understand why it was put in a class by itself.

The translation of all this literature falls into three periods, (i) from the seventh century until the reign of Ralpachan in the ninth, (ii) the reign of Ralpachan, and (in) some decades following the arrival of Atîśa in 1038. In the first period work was sporadic and the translations made were not always those preserved in the Kanjur. Thonmi Sanbhota, the envoy sent to India in 616 is said to have made renderings of the Karaṇḍa Vyûha and other works (but not those now extant) and three items in the Tanjur are attributed to him[997]. The existence of early translations has been confirmed by Stein who discovered at Endere a Tibetan manuscript of the Śalistambhasûtra which is said not to be later than about 740 A.D.[998] The version now found in the Kanjur appears to be a revision and expansion of this earlier text.

A few translations from Chinese texts are attributed to the reign of Khri-gtsug-lde-btsan (705-755) and Rockhill calls attention to the interesting statement that he sent envoys to India who learned Sanskrit books by heart and on their return reproduced them in Tibetan. If this was a common habit, it may be one of the reasons why Tibetan translations sometimes show differences in length, arrangement and even subject matter when compared with Sanskrit and Chinese versions bearing the same name. During the reign of Khri-sroṇ-lde-btsan and the visit of Padma-Sambhava (which began in A.D. 747 according to the traditional chronology) the number of translations began to increase. Two works ascribed to the king and one to the saint are included in the canon, but the most prolific writer and translator of this period was Kamalaśîla. Seventeen of his original works are preserved in the Tanjur and he translated part of the Ratnakûta. The great period of translation—the Augustan age of Tibet as it is often called—was beginning and a solid foundation was laid by composing two dictionaries containing a collection of Sanskrit Buddhist terms[999].

The Augustus of Tibet was Ralpachan who ruled in the ninth century, though Tibetan and Chinese chronicles are not in accord as to his exact date. He summoned from Kashmir and India many celebrated doctors who with the help of native assistants took seriously in hand the business of rendering the canon into Tibetan. They revised the existing translations and added many more of their own. It is probable that at least half of the works now contained in the Kanjur and Tanjur were translated or revised at this time and that the additions made later were chiefly Tantras (rGyud). On the other hand it is also probable that many tantric translations ascribed to this epoch are really later[1000]. The most prolific of Ralpachan's translators was Jinamitra, a pandit of Kashmir described as belonging to the Vaibhâshika school, who translated a large part of the Vinaya and many sûtras[1001]. Among the many Tibetan assistants Ye'ses-sde and Dpal-brTsegs are perhaps those most frequently mentioned. These Tibetan translators are commonly described by the title of Lo-tsa-va. As in China the usual procedure seems to have been that an Indian pandit explained the sacred text to a native. The latter then wrote it down, but whereas in China he generally paraphrased whatever he understood, in Tibet he endeavoured to reproduce it with laborious fidelity.

The language of the translations, which is now the accepted form of literary Tibetan, appears to have been an archaic and classical dialect even in the early days of Tibetan Buddhism, for it is not the same as the language of the secular documents dating from the eighth century, which have been found in Turkestan, and it remains unchanged in the earliest and later translations. It may possibly have been the sacred language of the Bonpo[1002] priests.