Fragments of the Testament of Ba from Dunhuang.

• Author: Schaik, Sam van

1. INTRODUCTION

   Tibetan historical literature may be conveniently divided into two groups. The first group comprises the Tibetan historical texts recovered from the library cave at Dunhuang, dating from the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang in the late eighth century to the sealing of the cave in the early eleventh century. (1) Foremost among this group are the royal records known as the Old Tibetan Annals and the Old Tibetan Chronicle. The second and much more substantial group comprises the histories preserved in Tibet in manuscripts and printed books, dating from the eleventh century through to the twentieth-century histories composed by Tibetan scholars still working in the traditional idiom. (2)

   It so happens that there is almost no chronological overlap between these two groups. This must be understood in light of the period of disruption that ensued after the collapse of the Tibetan dynasty and the empire that it had ruled over in the mid-ninth century. During this "period of fragmentation" (sil bu'i dus) as it is traditionally known, many of the records of the imperial period seem to have been lost. (3)

   Although some of the historical works from the second group are traditionally considered to have been preserved from the Tibetan imperial period, and thus might be counted as having survived through the period of fragmentation, modern historians have not been able to date them to any earlier than the eleventh century. Even the surviving history that is usually considered to be the earliest, the Testament of Ba, is of uncertain provenance. The Testament of Ba presents itself as a royal discourse (bka' mchid), and the core of the historical narrative is the story of the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet during the reign of the king Khri srong lde btsan (c. 754-797). These events are supposed to have been recorded by one of the figures at the king's court, Dba' Gsal snang. Though often thought to contain elements stemming from the imperial period, it has previously been thought to date back to the eleventh century at the earliest. (4)

   The only convincing evidence for the existence of the Testament of Ba before the eleventh century would be its appearance in the first group of historical works, those from the Dunhuang cave. Its presence there would show that these two eras of historical literature do overlap, and that there was significant continuity through the period of fragmentation. It is the purpose of this article to announce the discovery of two fragments of the Testament of Ba in the Dunhuang manuscript collections. The fragments were identified by the authors while cataloging the sequence of Chinese Dunhuang manuscripts originally kept in the British Museum. While it was known that this sequence also contained some Tibetan manuscripts, not all of them had been identified. Thus these particular fragments had gone unnoticed for nearly a century.

2. THE DUNHUANG FRAGMENTS

   The fragments comprise two manuscripts: Or.8210/S.9498(A) and Or.8210/S.13683(C). The first of these is the larger part, being 9.4 cm in height and 24.0 cm in width at the top, reduced to 6.4 cm in width at the bottom. The recto side contains six lines of Tibetan, written in black ink with red guidelines, while the verso is blank. The smaller fragment, Or.8210/S.13683(C), is 2.5 cm in height and 14.2 cm in width. It contains only one short line of text, but it can clearly be placed at the bottom of the larger fragment, as part of that fragment's sixth line of text. (5) A blank space and straight bottom edge after the sixth line suggests that this was a page in the traditional Tibetan pecha (dpe cha) format. The writing on the fragments is in dbu can script containing most of the archaic orthographic features found in the Dunhuang manuscripts, including the inverse gi gu, the da drag, the upper hook on the a chung, and the ya btags under the ma. The handwriting is very accomplished, and clearly the work of a practiced scribe.

   The fragments are from the Stein Collection at the British Library. This collection derives from the three expeditions undertaken by Marc Aurel Stein in Central Asia in the early twentieth century. The most famous manuscripts from this collection are those taken from the so-called "library cave" at Dunhuang. The manuscripts from the cave can be dated from before the cave was closed in the early eleventh century. They are written, and occasionally printed, in many languages, including Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Khotanese, Tangut, and Uighur. The Tibetan manuscripts, which are the most numerous after the Chinese, date from the late eighth century to the end of the tenth.

   Originally the Tibetan manuscripts acquired by Stein (along with the Khotanese and Sanskrit manuscripts) were sent to the India Office Library, whereas the Chinese manuscripts were sent to the British Museum. This distinction was not entirely thorough, and some Tibetan fragments did end up in the British Museum as well. The fragments we are considering here were among the latter. They were placed in the British Museum pressmark range Or.8210/S, which contains most of the Chinese manuscripts acquired by Stein from Dunhuang during his second expedition. Though both the British Museum and India Office Library collections are now housed together at the British Library, the Tibetan manuscripts that ended up in the British Museum have still not been thoroughly catalogued. The fragments have only recently been discovered during the authors' compilation of a catalogue of the Tibetan manuscripts from the British Museum collection.

   The date of the manuscript cannot be determined exactly, but it is unlikely to be earlier than the Tibetan conquest of Dunhuang in 786, and can be no later than the very beginning of the eleventh century, when the Dunhuang library cave was sealed. Thus we assign a general date to the manuscript of the ninth or tenth century. Unfortunately the text is fragmentary, with the beginning, end, and both sides missing. Nevertheless, it is clear that this fragment is part of the story of Santaraksita's journey to Tibet, which is found throughout the Tibetan religious historical tradition. The earliest Tibetan religious history is thought to be the Testament of Ba, and the text of the Dunhuang fragments is closer to this version of the story than to any other we know.

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3. THE TESTAMENT OF BA

   The Testament of Ba exists in several different versions. This is due to its specific history: never published in a printed version in Tibet, it was copied and recopied in manuscript form, leading to a plurality of versions differing from each other in more or less substantial ways. A number of recent scholars have addressed the problem of dating these versions; we will merely summarize their conclusions here.

   The version that is generally thought to be the earliest is the Dba' bzhed (its title distinguished by the 'd' prefix to the clan name). This version appears in a recently discovered manuscript, which was published in the year 2000 in facsimile, translated by Pasang Wangdu and Hildegarde Diemberger. The authors argue that this version dates back to the eleventh century at the earliest, although the manuscript they published is, they say, a revised copy of that early version. (6)

   The version that is generally considered to be the next earliest is the Sba bzhed, edited by Gonpo Gyaltsen from three manuscripts and published in Beijing in 1980. At least one of the three sources for this publication is considered to date back to the twelfth century. The latest version is known as the Sba bzhed zhabs brtags pa, the Supplemented Testament of Ba, designated as such by Tibetan historians because it contains substantial additions to the earlier versions. It is thought to...