Yes, that is interesting. Several Dunhuang documents refer to Bde khams, which seems to have been the administrative region for the Tibetan Empire’s northeasterly territories. I’m not aware of any mention of a Tsong ka Bde khams [*note it's a ka, not kha, in the old spelling] in the imperial period, so I wonder if it was a new formation after Tsong ka became a locus of power in the region in the tenth-eleventh centuries.

Anyway, thanks for the reference!

S.

This is a manuscript that seems to have been personally written by Vanaratna, which was brought back to Nepal at some point (by the author himself?). The explanation of why it was effaced is my own.

So you’ve found something quite remarkable here. Why would a prayer for the protection of Tibet have need to have Tibet removed from the picture? It’s kind of self-defeating. If you can find any similar instances of defacement, the idea that it was censorious could gain weight.

I agree with you that some kind of recycling/repurposing seems the more likely option. My reason for thinking that the ancient reader might want to erase the idea of bod khams – Tibet – itself was that he or she could well have been Chinese, and the alterations could date to after the end of the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang, during which time the Chinese inhabitants were forced to wear Tibetan clothes and adopt Tibetan customs (according to the Tang Annals) and learn to read and write Tibetan. So the defacement of the manuscript could be a reaction to that. But as I said, I’m not terribly convinced by this. After all, by the end of the Tibetan empire many of the Chinese inhabitants of Dunhuang had Tibetan names, and the Tibetan languages was used as a language of official communication and Buddhism long after the end of the occupation.

Whether even the Tibetans of Dunhuang considered themselves to be part of bod khams proper is a very interesting question to which I don’t know the answer. I would think that they did – at least during the imperial period – consider themselves part of what is called “Great(er) Tibet” in the Sino-Tibetan treaties and some other documents.

As for the pre- or proto- tantric nature of the prayer, it is quite true that in the period in which the prayer was written (assuming for now that the author was Kawa Paltseg) fully “tantric” materials were available to Tibetans. But there is good reason to believe that the Tibetan government limited the translation of this material and suppressed its circulation (this is mentioned in several historical texts including the Dba’ bzhed). Buddhist texts produced in by the Tibetan imperial court tend to skirt around the existence of tantric Buddhism. For example, the “Differentiating the Views” (Lta ba’i khyad pa) also attributed to Kawa Paltseg, gives detailed explications of the views of the various philosophical schools of Indian Buddhism, and goes in detail into the three kāya system, but avoids mentioning the tantras and their doctrines entirely.

I.S. – Interesting to hear about a Sanskrit manuscript with the erased ‘bhoṭa’? Do you know why the word ‘bhoṭa’ was there in the first place?

As for the defacement, why would a Tibetan speaker want to erase the ‘idea’ of Tibet? I second PDSz’s suggestion that this may be connected with as a ‘repurposing’ (to use an awful neologism) of the text for some other region. But I agree that none of the proposed solutions are really satisfying. To what extent did Tibetans in Dunhuang consider themselves part of ‘bod’ proper, and at what times?

There is at least one likely instance, by the way, of the word ‘bhoṭa’ being rubbed off a palmleaf Sanskrit manuscript, probably in Nepal. For most of their history Newars wanted nothing to do with Tibetan teachings, though this attitude softened throughout the late medieval period, and changed substantially in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Very interesting post! Censorship could be hostile, but perhaps we should not outrule the possibility of ‘recycling’. That is, when Bod khams has ceased to be, someone could have seen good use for the prayer by making it one ‘for all weathers’, for any country. Much like the famous ‘devadatta/lhas sbyin’ where one simply supplies the name of the actual target.

Just an idea.

Ys,

p

I won’t bite the very tempting bait and try to explain the evolution of the names of Amdo & Kham. The late Yönten Gyatso of Paris had a very detailed historical explanation. Perhaps it’s in one of his history books. If not, perhaps the latest and biggest Amdo history, by Hor-tshang ‘Jigs-med, will go into it. I expect so. You can hear all about it, in Tibetan, at U-Tube:

Thanks again for your fine geo-bibliographical insights.

S.

PS: Has anyone explained the transformation of Mdo-khams to A-mdo in recent times?

Was just looking up Bod-khams in the OTDO site and found that it only pops up in the De-ga Yu-tshal text of monastery foundation prayers (?), which bears some typological resemblances to this “Monk Dpal-brtsegs Offering Chapter.” This text also has what must be an early instance of the geographic term Mdo-khams (in the form Mdo-gams-kyi khams) which would in more recent centuries supply the “Mdo” to the name of A-mdo.

I also did some checking in the Statements of Ba (Sba-bzhed, full-text at THL), and Bod-khams seems to be commonly used there. It is one the main forms of the name of Tibet in this text (Bod-yul, Bod-kyi Yul, and simply Bod also appear frequently).

In the Lde’u history, I located something very strange. On p. 256, you find the geographical triad of Mdo-khams, Bde-khams and Tsong-khams. But in a parallel passage a little later on at p. 269, the reading is: Mdo-khams, Bod-khams, & Tsong-khams. This makes me say hmmm — maybe your theory of an alter[n]ation between Bde-khams and Bod-khams could be going somewhere?

Should check the original manuscript, meaning the photographed version, which has been published. OK, I just checked the published photographs, on pp. 289 & 301 (in the added pagination of the photographic reprint), and actually, the passage on p. 269 I just mentioned could have been read Bde-khams, too (in the cursive original, the difference between ‘e’ and ‘o’ can be quite subtle! It’s a judgement call, so maybe if you are interested you could have a look and decide for yourself…)

And yes, the passage on p. 256 could have been read Bod-khams (the photograph, showing the so-called ‘a-chung before khams, reads: ‘khams).

The bibliographical reference to the published photographs of Mkhas-pa Lde’u looks like this (I give THANKS to Nathan Hill for it):

Mkhas-pa-ldeʾu, Mkhas pa lde’us mdzad pa’i rgya bod kyi chos ‘byuṅ rgyas pa / Diwu zongjiao yuanliu, Lanzhou daxue chubanshe (Lanzhou 2003).

Maybe you have a copy in that fine library of yours. If not, you could probably complain. Cheers!

Yours,
D.