Nice to hear from somebody interested in Tri Song Detsen. According to my stats pages, this is just about the least popular article I’ve posted – which was a surprise to me. Apparently the glamour of the tsenpos has little resonance these days.

Anyway, many thanks for the phyva reference. You must be right that the divine ancestors of the tsenpos are indicated here. I also recently read Samten Karmay’s article on PT1038, in which the phywa feature among the tsenpo’s forebears.

By the way, I like your translation of the Chronicle!

S.

Good find! I have one minor point to make at present on the translation of the interesting sentence phyva’i rgyal thabs mnga’ brnyes shing//chab srId gnam gyI lde mtshon can/

While phywa is similar to g.yang as “fortune”, the phywa are also the ancestral gods from which the Tibetan kings descended. In the songs of the Old Tibetan Chronicle, it is clear that the role of the king is to instantiate on earth the ways of the phywa in heaven. Indeed, the unswerving agenda of the Old Tibetan Chronicle, as a royalist document, is to aggrandize the king’s role as a world-ordering principle. I think it is in this sense that one should approach the phrase phywa’i rgyal thabs.

Here is a relevant passage from the song of Khri ‘Dus srong in the Chronicle where phywa is used in the above sense.

The subject—does he subjugate the lord,
Or does the lord subjugate the subject?
Our enemies above know!

The man—does he ride the horse,
Or does the horse ride the man?
Those who instantiate the order of the Pywa Gods know (pywa ‘I ni gtsug mkhan mkhyen)

Do the crops cut the scythe,
Or does the scythe cut the grass?
The narrow [earth] below knows!

From now up to the edge of heaven,
The sun and moon see with their eyes,
The blue heavens hear with their ears,
The order of the Pywa [Gods] will not change (pywa ‘I ni gtsug myi ‘gyur ).
The feathers will not fall from the arrow.

In my opinion “those who instantiate the ways of the pywa” (phwa ‘I ni gtsug mkhan) are the Tibetan kings themselves.

Thank you!