Table Of ContentTibetan Inscriptions
Brill’s
Tibetan Studies
Library
Edited by
Henk Blezer
Alex McKay
Charles Ramble
VOLUME 32
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/btsl
Tibetan Inscriptions
Proceedings of a Panel Held at the Twelfth Seminar
of the International Association for Tibetan Studies,
Vancouver 2010
Edited by
Kurt Tropper
Cristina Scherrer-Schaub
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2013
Cover illustration: “Stone cutter preparing an inscription near Bar yangs (Western Tibet)”. Photo by
Kurt Tropper, 2009.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
International Association for Tibetan Studies. Seminar (12th : 2010 : Vancouver, B.C.)
Tibetan inscriptions : proceedings of a panel held at the Twelfth Seminar of the International
Association for Tibetan Studies, Vancouver 2010 / edited by Kurt Tropper, Cristina Scherrer-Schaub.
pages cm -- (Brill’s Tibetan studies library, ISSN 1568-6183 ; 32)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-25069-7 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-25241-7 (e-book : alk. paper)
1. Inscriptions, Tibetan--Congresses. 2. Shalu (Monastery)--History--Congresses. I. Tropper, Kurt.
II. Scherrer-Schaub, Cristina Anna. III. Title.
CN1230.T55I57 2010
929’.5--dc23
2013009983
ISSN 1568-6183
ISBN 978-90-04-25069-7 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-25241-7 (e-book)
Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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CONTENTS
KURT TROPPER & CRISTINA SCHERRER-SCHAUB
(Vienna/Lausanne/Paris)—Preface…………………………………vii
KUNSANG NAMGYAL LAMA (Paris)—Tsha tsha
inscriptions: a preliminary survey…………………………………....1
KURT TROPPER (Vienna)—The Buddha-vita in
the White Temple of Tsaparang…………………………………….43
BENJAMIN WOOD (Victoria)—Misbehaviour and
punishment in a paper inscription at Zha lu
monastery: a preliminary report………………………..………….107
CRISTINA SCHERRER-SCHAUB (Lausanne/Paris/
Vienna)—Classifying, questioning and
interpreting Tibetan inscriptions……………………..…….…...…139
NATHAN W. HILL (London)—A new interpretation
of the mythological incipit of the Rkong po
inscription………………………………………….………...….....171
INDEX…………………...…………………………………………183
PREFACE
The papers brought together in the present volume are the outcome of
a panel on Tibetan inscriptions that was conducted by the editors at
the 12th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies
at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (15-21 August,
2010). It was the first epigraphy panel in the history of the IATS
seminars, and it is to be hoped that this somewhat neglected field
within Tibetan Studies will also play its due role in future such
events. While various factors contribute to the general neglect of re-
search on Tibetan inscriptions, arguably the most important consists
in the fact that it often entails field work in places which are not eas-
ily accessible for both geographical and political reasons. The situa-
tion in the regions of India and Nepal that are culturally Tibetan has
notably improved over the last one or two decades, but many of the
epigraphic sources in China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR),
Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan are still out of reach for West-
ern scholars. Since Hugh Richardson’s pioneering work on the early
inscriptions of Central Tibet only a very limited number of studies on
epigraphs located on Chinese territory have thus been published.
In light of this unfortunate situation, it is especially noteworthy and
welcome that two of the contributions to this volume deal with in-
scriptions that could be documented on field trips to TAR in 2009
and 2010 within the framework of a cooperation between the Aus-
trian Academy of Sciences (Vienna) and the Tibetan Academy of So-
cial Sciences (Lhasa): Benjamin Wood’s article deals with a “paper
inscription”1 in Zha lu that relates an enigmatic conflict in the history
of the monastery, and Kurt Tropper provides the edition and transla-
tion of an epigraphic cycle on the life of the Buddha found on the
walls of the White Temple in Tsaparang. Nathan Hill’s new interpre-
tation of the mythological beginning of the famous Rkong po inscrip-
tion also deals with an epigraph in TAR; it is one of the early inscrip-
tions first brought to the attention of Western scholars by Richardson
––––––––––
1 On this particular kind of inscriptions, see De Rossi Filibeck, Elena: Later In-
scriptions in the Tabo Gtsug lag khang. In L. Petech & C. Luczanits (eds) Inscriptions
from the Tabo Main Temple. Texts and Translations. Serie Orientale Roma LXXXIII.
Rome 1994: Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 180-206.
viii PREFACE
but the detailed photographic documentation of which is still a de-
sideratum. Kunsang Namgyal Lama adds a different facet to this vol-
ume by looking into the various kinds of inscriptions that are found
on tsha tshas, and Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, while analysing in a
broad perspective the function, role, and impact of the use of epi-
graphic records, identifies the fundamental elements that shall be
taken into consideration regarding the constitution of a comprehen-
sive database on Tibetan epigraphic material. Thus the five articles
presented here not only cover inscriptions on such diverse writing
supports as paper, temple walls, rocks and tsha tshas, they also span a
wide range in respect to the contents of the epigraphs they deal with.
The presentation of the individual papers at the panel was followed
by a round table discussion addressing, among other issues, the need
to work towards a standardised system in editing Tibetan inscrip-
tions. The potpourri of editorial signs used by different authors is one
of the minor but nonetheless vexing problems that one faces in this
field, and it is especially cumbersome when quoting from various
publications. While every inscription is unique and every author has a
different focus, a standardisation in the reproduction of at least the
most common particularities certainly seems expedient. It is to be
hoped that some day there will be a program that allows us to provide
a detailed rendering of the inscriptions’ uncertain readings, damaged
characters and other peculiarities in Tibetan script. For the time be-
ing, the participants of the panel have agreed to the use of the follow-
ing basic conventions and signs for their editions in transliterated
form:
{1}, {2}, {3} etc. beginning of a line
* dbu
/ shad
t uncertain reading (underlined letter)
= illegible ‘letter’2
––––––––––
2 Cf. Steinkellner, Ernst & Luczanits, Christian: The Renovation Inscription of the
Tabo Gtsug lag khang. In L. Petech & C. Luczanits (eds) Inscriptions from the Tabo
Main Temple. Texts and Translations. Serie Orientale Roma LXXXIII. Rome 1999:
Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 9-28. There, ‘letter’ is defined as “any com-
bination of letters in the Tibetan alphabet that occupy in vertical arrangement of the
letter sequence the space of a single grapheme”, while letter “refers to the single signs
for consonants or vowel modification only” (p. 15). Thus a ‘letter’ can be composed
PREFACE ix
- illegible letter(s) that formed part of a partly
legible ‘letter’, with one hyphen representing
up to three letters3
ṃ bindu (or sign used like a bindu)
xxx xxx / xxxpaxxx insertion below / above the line
pa
<1>, <2>, <3> etc. empty space, with the respective number de-
noting how many ‘letters’ fit into this space;
the more or less regular instances found at the
end of a line and in front, in between or after a
(double) shad are not indicated.
The editors would like to thank Jürgen Schörflinger for his technical
support with the layout and Sarah Teetor, who checked the English of
this preface and freely answered more specific questions related to
the contributions of the non-native speakers.
Vienna/Lausanne/Paris, January 2013
__________
of up to four letters. E.g., =ng chub sems dpa’ (partly damaged byang chub sems dpa’)
or bsod na=s (partly damaged bsod nams).
3 E.g., -gyal po (partly damaged rgyal po), -rub (partly damaged sgrub), -od (partly
damaged spyod) or s-rin (partly damaged sprin).
