A Letter to the Editors of the Buddhist Canon in Fourteenth-Century Tibet: The "Yig mkhan rnams la gdams pa" of Bu ston Rin chen grub

Abstract

In the summer of 1364, at the monastery of Zhwa lu in midwestern Tibet, Bu ston Rin chen grub, scholar, artist, teacher, abbot, and zealous collector of manuscripts containing the word of the Buddha, died at the age of seventy-four.' During the elaborate rituals of homage and mourning, the Bka' 'gyur, that part of the Tibetan Buddhist canon which contains the Buddha's word in translation, was recited three times. There could have been no more appropriate act of devotion toward Bu ston, for he had dedicated a large part of his life to the compilation and production of Buddhist canonical collections and had designed the temple at Zhwa lu Monastery in which the Bka' 'gyur was housed.2 While his physical remains were distributed as relics throughout Tibet, India, China, and Nepal, the physical manifestations of his religiously motivated scholarly efforts were eventually to spread as far (farther even) in the form of the Tibetan Buddhist canons. Bu ston's love of learning and his desire to propagate the teachings of the Buddha and the Buddhist masters through textual scholarship-just one facet of his contributions to the spread of Buddhist culture in Tibet-are discussed by his biographer and close disciple Sgra tshad pa Rin chen rnam rgyal (1318-88) in A Handful of Flowers. Sgra tshad pa repeatedly stresses his master's passion for and expertise in such matters. We are told that at the age of four or five, he learned to read perfectly the Tibetan printed script under the tutelage of his mother, not by using a speller as it seems was the norm, but through copying out and thereupon immediately reciting the Atajidi Sitra. 3 The five-year-old Bu ston then strove to learn the cursive script, and was so distraught when he could not do so that his patron deity, Mafijughosa, showed him favor and blessed him with the ability to read this version of the Tibetan script.4 Sgra tshad pa elaborates on the theme of textual learning and scholarship in Bu ston's life in a number of ways. He evokes visions of a scholar at work in the center of his entourage: Even surrounded by all the scribes and creating many different types of translations and compositions, [Bu ston] dictated without faltering so that the hand of each [scribe] was not