i was wondering if anibodi aware of jain influences in tibet?

i remember i read once that some indians complained to gotama about his disciples carelesness about insects and that he agreed and that was the reason for the vassa, the summer retreat

later i could not find the book in the librari

anione aware of this stori and could give me sources?

thx and peace and love

Insects r quite fascinating and just like me it seems thei do not want to die.

some sai praiers might help but i have no direct knowledge of it while i can hardli doubt i see mani insects protecting their life

to go to the other shore of absolute ahimsa seems a long wai

peace and love from guangzhou

At the end of this interesting tour, from feather-garbed Bonpos to bark-clad Hari Krishnas, I feel that our little philological enquiry can now rest in a kind of equilibrium between “wood” (leaf or bark derived) and felt clothing, both of which had ascetic connotations.

But let’s not overdo the ascetic bit — cups of tea all round!

Sam

http://vedabase.net/v/valkala

And there are even some tips for cleaning bark robes:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe14/sbe1446.htm

Try pressing here too!

There’s quite a bit more out there to google for. (…for which to google).

I imagine it’s not machine washable (but first read the label for further instructions).

Charms!

Dan

*Ray’s main point is that only Mahâyâna texts have this particular dhūta-guṇa for wearing felt (or, he thinks, wool), and it is missing in Theravâda lists. So it must have something to do with Mahâyâna being in colder climates (I think the opposite, assuming it’s supposed to be a somewhat unpleasant asceticism!).

Together you have made a convincing case that “wooden” clothes might not be so bizarre after all, and indeed could be rather comfortable — whether derived from leaves, as J-L suggests, or bark, as Dan suggests. Well, I suppose after all that paper is made from trees, and even today disposable undergarments are made out of paper. With no personal experience of these, I can only assume that they are reasonably comfortable.

Jean-Luc’s lines from Shardza make this a very convincing interpretation, that works on the Bonpo side — but does it also work with the way the Buddhist historians understood the name, as illustrated in the story I quoted in the post? When Snubs says, to give it a more literal rendering, “Hey, it’s like having a (shing glag), this strictness!” (e shing glag can ‘dra ba gyong po ‘di zer ba) he must be invoking an image of extreme or ridiculous asceticism. It’s not that Grum is said to have actually had a (shing slag), it was as if he did. Well, perhaps in medieval Amdo “tree cloaks” could have been something like “hair shirts” in medieval Europe.

But just before we stop there, what about the other renderings of the name in Tibetan histories? Nyang ral’s rlag pa can makes little sense (though let’s not blame Nyang ral; it’s surely a scribal ‘correction’). And then there’s the Sba bzhed zhabs rtag ma with phying klag can. Well, according to Dan Martin’s dictionary, this is an old term meaning “felt” (Zhi-byed Coll. II 295.7). Now the idea of a monk wearing a felt cloak is very easy to accept.

Have we been barking up the wrong tree?

J-L’s idea that Bonpo monks consciously made their slag (cloaks/coats) from non-animal products never occurred to me, but it surely rings true with what I think I might know.

I can identify Shardza’s scriptural text, the Rgyu ‘bras rnam par ‘byed pa’i mdo as the 23rd chapter of the Gzi-brjid (for reference, see p. 6 of D. Snellgrove’s book The Nine Ways of Bon).

Btw, I just checked the Mahâvyutpatti bilingual glossary, and find there at no. 5844 the Sanskrit equivalent[s] of slog-pa is carmacolaḥ ; carmacala.

Both carmacola & carmacala should probably be read as the same as carmacela, which means (according to Monier-Williams’ dictionary it’s a word used in Buddhist texts) “a garment with the hide turned outwards.” The carma element most definitely means leather or hide. I see that cola can mean ‘jacket.’ Cela can mean a garment.

I want to say, too, that shing-slag may not necessarily mean ‘wooden jacket,’ since the shing may stand for shing-bal, or ‘wood wool,’ which means cotton. This is just an idea that I think ought to be considered, not that I’m sure of it. It’s possible, too, that it is short for shing-shun, which is also a cloth-making material. On this, see M.B. Emeneau, Barkcloth in India, Sanskrit Valkala, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 82 (1962), pp. 167-170, where the author argues that it must mean a kind of cloth made from bast fibers obtained from the soft inner bark of trees. So, Early, don’t act so surprised that wood can be made in to cloth. It’s not all that unlikely, I’m thinking.

Meanwhile, J-L, I’d like to know more about the dangers of tea, since I think it’s great stuff, and I’m off to have some right now. I doubt that any of Shardza’s arguments will persuade me not to drink it, but try me.

Cheerios!

Dan

“Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”

I understand why you might bridle at the phrase “later histories” and your point is well made (or “well taken”) as they say in the US. In fact, I’ve argued your position myself, elsewhere. As someone who has spent many, many hours translating a traditional history from the 20th century, it’s not me you need to convince! In fact it seems perfectly feasible that Lhalung Palgyi Dorje fled to Amdo. I also think that once the idea was circulating, it was so good for the narrative that it would have been difficult for historians to leave it out — whether it “really happened” or not.

You’re right of course that there are no contemporary historical accounts. But we do have contemporary manuscript sources from Dunhuang, including many vinaya-related manuscripts. I hope to write a bit about these in a follow-up to this post.

Anyway, thank you for the pointer to the Lde’u histories, which I didn’t have to hand when writing this by no means definitive account. (Note though that Ronald Davidson does draw on them in his discussion of this period.) And of course Pawo Tsuglag Trengwa always has something interesting to say about these thorny issues.

The passage from the Lo rgyus chen mo is fascinating. Different refugee monks, and clearly placing Drum between them and the men of central Tibet. I would think that this is still viable, in terms of a chronology that spans the century or so of the eclipse of the dharma in Central Tibet.