Translating the Cult of the Book: Publishing and Performing the Fifth Dalai Lama’s The Wish-Fulfilling King from Lhasa to Beijing

Abstract

Abstract In 1673 the Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobzang Gyatso (Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, 1617–1682) composed The Wish-Fulfilling King (Yid bzhin dbang rgyal), a ritual manual for the worship of the seven buddhas of healing. In the first hundred years after its composition, the Fifth Dalai Lama’s ritual text was published in the original Tibetan in no less than five different woodblock editions. It had also been translated into Mongolian and Chinese and published in several woodblock editions in those languages. Most of these woodblock editions were produced by imperially sponsored Tibetan Buddhist temples in Beijing. The ritual described in the text was performed in monasteries and temples across central Tibet, Mongolia, and in Beijing. This article examines the history of this text, its transmission, and what those tells us about the culture of Tibetan Buddhist books in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly as they relate to the Mayāyāna ‘cult of the book.’