“The Bstan-Hgyur is a compilation in Tibetan of all sorts of literary works, written mostly by ancient Indian Pandits and some learned Tibetans, in the first centuries after the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet, commencing with the seventh century of our era. The whole makes 225 volumes. It is divided into two classes, the Rgyud and Mdo (Tantra and Sútra classes in Sanscrit). The Rgyud, mostly on tantrika rituals and ceremonies, makes 87 volumes. The Mdo, on science and literature, occupies 136 volumes. One separate volume contains hymns or praises on several deities and saints, and one volume is the index for the whole.”[25]
In the year 1830, while Csoma Körösi was still pursuing his studies in the monasteries of Western Tibet, a Russian official, Baron Schilling de Canstadt, was beginning to look for Tibetan books in Eastern Siberia. His first visit, he says,[26] to the monastery of Tchikoï, twelve leagues from Kiachta, the town in which he was stationed, made him aware that it possessed a copy of the Kah-gyur, as well as other sacred books, which were ranged on either side of [[xxx]]the altar, wrapped in red and yellow coverings. As the Russian ecclesiastical mission to Pekin was then on the point of starting from Kiachta, he offered to obtain by its means from China such books as the priests might require. They gladly accepted his offer, and made out lists of Tibetan books, which proved of great service to him, especially after they had been supplemented by the additions which were made by a Lama who visited him at Kiachta. He still further ingratiated himself with the priests by presenting them with a lo or tum-tum, which he procured from the nearest Chinese town, as well as by the respect he showed for their sacred books. For when he was allowed to handle a volume of their copy of the Kah-gyur, he took care to touch the margins only of the leaves, not the holy printed part.
It happened that the chief of a tribe of Tsongols possessed a copy of a part of the Kah-gyur, and this he gave to the appreciative stranger, who rose still higher in the opinion of the natives when they found that he had ordered a silken wrapper to be made for each of the volumes presented to him. He himself was delighted, he says, at becoming “the proprietor of the first Tibetan work of any length which had up to that time passed into the hands of a European.” After all this he was well received wherever he went. A prediction had been made a year before that a foreign convert to Buddhism, destined to spread that religion in the West, was about to visit Mongolia, and this prophecy was interpreted in his favour. The Buriat Lamas even looked upon him as “a Khoubil-ghan, an incarnation of an important personage in the Buddhist Pantheon.” After a time he organised a band of copyists, sometimes twenty in number, who lived in tents in his courtyard, and frequently consumed as much as a hundred pounds of beef in a day, besides much brick tea, a caldron being kept always on the boil for their use. At the end of a year he possessed a collection of [[xxxi]]Mongol and Tibetan books, containing two thousand works and separate treatises.
Happening to visit the temple of Subulin, he found that the Lamas were manufacturing an enormous prayer wheel. He offered to get the printing of the oft-repeated prayer done for them at St. Petersburg, whereby their machine would be rendered far more efficacious than if they trusted to native typography. They accepted his offer gladly, and to prove their gratitude, presented to him, in the name of the tribe, a complete copy of the Kah-gyur which they possessed, having obtained it from a Mongol Lama. Both parties to this transaction were equally pleased; for when the printed leaves came from St. Petersburg, it was found that each of them contained 2500 repetitions of the sacred formula, and the words were printed in red ink, which is 108 times more efficacious than black; and the paper itself was stamped with the same words instead of bearing the maker’s name. So the Buriates were charmed, and so was the European bibliophile, who had got possession of what he had scarcely hoped ever to obtain, a copy of the Kah-gyur in 101 volumes, printed in the monastery of Nartang in Western Tibet. This copy, after the death of Baron Schilling de Canstadt, was purchased from his heirs by the Emperor Nicholas, and presented to the Academy of Sciences.
M. Vasilief, the well-known author of the “History of Buddhism,” which has been translated from Russian into French and German, says[27] that when he was at Pekin he made inquiries about the Kah-gyur and Tan-gyur, and he was shown the building in which they used to be printed. But no edition, he was told, had been brought out for some time. Some of the wood blocks were lost, others had suffered injury. However, a copy of each work was procured by the Chinese Government and presented to [[xxxii]]the Russian mission. These copies are now in St. Petersburg. The Mongol Buriates of Russia, M. Vasilief states, are even more devoted to their religion, and look to Lhassa more longingly than their kinsmen in Mongolia itself. They read their sacred books, or hear them read, in Tibetan, and are edified, even though they do not comprehend. Any one who wishes to command a reading of the Kah-gyur or Tan-gyur addresses himself to one of the monasteries which possess those works, pays a certain price, and provides tea for the Lamas. A reading of the Kah-gyur, it seems, used to come to about fifteen pounds at one of the monasteries, exclusive of tea. At a given signal all the Lamas flock together, and take their places according to seniority. Before each are placed a number of leaves of the work, and off they set, all reading at once, so that the entire performance occupies only a few hours, after which each reader receives his share of the offering made by the orderer of the function.
Of the Russian scholars who availed themselves of the presence of the two editions of the Kah-gyur at St. Petersburg, the most enthusiastic and industrious was the late Professor Anton von Schiefner. From the Dulvā, the first of the seven divisions of that work, he translated into German the legends and tales, an English version of which is contained in the present volume. His German versions all appeared in the “Mélanges Asiatiques tirés du Bulletin de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg” (tom. vi.–viii.), with the exceptions of Nos. 2 and 5, which were published in the “Mémoires” of that Society (series vii., tom. xix., No. 6). Professor Schiefner, if he had lived another year, would have doubtless supplied a number of additional notes, and would have written an Introduction to the work. His lamented death on November 16, 1880, has deprived the present volume of what would probably have been one of its most interesting parts. It was at Professor Schiefner’s express wish that the present translation was undertaken. It [[xxxiii]]must be a subject of universal regret that he did not live to witness its appearance in print. The following tribute to his merits as a scholar was contributed, soon after his death, by Professor Albrecht Weber to “Trübner’s Record.”
“Professor F. Anton von Schiefner was a distinguished scholar of most various attainments. His specialty, however, was Tibetan, and more particularly the investigation of Buddhist legends of Indian and Occidental origin, a collection of which in English will soon be published by Messrs. Trübner & Co. He had, moreover, devoted himself with rare perseverance and disinterestedness to the utilisation and publication of the labours of two scholars whose own restless activity would, without him, have been almost entirely lost to the scientific world—namely, those of the Finnic linguist, Alexander Castrèn, and of the Caucasian linguist, Baron von Uslar. One might—sit venia verbo—almost say that both men had found in Schiefner their Homer. He edited the labours of Castrèn almost wholly from the posthumous papers of that brave and modest man, who, from 1838 to 1849, explored, under the greatest privations, the inhospitable regions of Norway, Lapland, and Siberia, where the tribes of the Finnic race are seated. Castrèn’s Reiseerinnerungen and Reiseberichte, edited by Schiefner, present a vivid picture of the hardships Castrèn had to go through, and which finally caused his premature death, in 1852, at the age of thirty-nine. We have lying before us the twelve volumes of his Samoyedan and Tungusian Grammars and Vocabularies, as well as those of the languages of the Buryats, Koibals, Karagasses, Ostyaks, &c.; his ethnological lectures on the Altaic races, and those on Finnic mythology—all worked out by Schiefner’s deft hand, and edited by him from 1835 to 1861. In connection therewith Schiefner also made a German translation of the Finnic national epos Kalevala, and also one of the Hero-Sagas of the Minussin Tatars. Schiefner was more advantageously situated in [[xxxiv]]working up the collections of the estimable Caucasian linguist, Major-General von Uslar (1816 to 1873), written in the Russian language, with whom, until the General’s death, he was always able to confer directly. While Schiefner’s own and entirely independent work on the Thush language (1856), by the accuracy with which a hitherto quite uncultivated and altogether strange department was opened to linguistic investigation, had obtained for the author general appreciation, the united efforts of both scholars have furnished surprising results as regards these highly peculiar languages of the Caucasian mountaineers—the Avares, Abchases, Tchetchenzes, Kasikumüks, Kurines—which by their extraordinary sounds, as well as by their most singular grammatical structure, produce so very strange an impression. The personal intercourse with soldiers of Caucasian origin, garrisoned at St. Petersburg, was herein of high importance to Schiefner. His amiable and open manner in personal intercourse, characteristic of the whole man, bore him excellent fruit in this case. Science, and especially the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, has by Schiefner’s death sustained a heavy, indeed a quite irreparable, loss.”[28]
The edition of the Kah-gyur on which Professor Schiefner worked appears (says M. Vasilief, the author of the “History of Buddhism”) to have been that in 108 volumes, printed at Pekin during the eighteenth century, and presented to the Asiatic Museum of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences by the Asiatic Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had received it, about the year 1850, from the Russian Mission in China. [[xxxv]]
The notes to the present volume signed S. are by Professor Schiefner. A few others have been added, consisting for the most part of extracts from Professor Monier Williams’s Sanskrit Dictionary. The forms of Indian names adopted by Professor Schiefner have been retained in the English translation, with certain modifications—y being substituted for j, for instance, ch for tsh, and j for dsh. It ought to be stated that Professor Schiefner made several important corrections on the sheets which he prepared for the use of his English translator, and therefore the English version will sometimes be found to differ materially from the German text.[29] [[xxxvi]]