Tsongkha History and Historiography: New Evidence and Reflections on Tibetan and Chinese Sources.

• Author: Sun, Penghao

INTRODUCTION

The eleventh-century Tsongkha kingdom endured for about a hundred years. (1) After the collapse of the Tibetan empire in the mid-ninth century, it was the first regime to develop on the northeastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau capable of uniting a majority of the local tribes of the region, and it served as a major player in the game of controlling the west end of the Silk Road from the early eleventh century. (2) Contemporary Song literati referred to Tsongkha by its capital city Qingtang [phrase omitted] (present day Xining) or by its founder Jiaosiluo [phrase omitted] (Tibetan *Rgyal sras, 996-1065). (3) Due to the lack of Tibetan sources, this Tibetan polity has been studied by modern scholars primarily through the lens of Song dynasty literati writings. (4) In the year 1099 Qingtang was visited by one such literatus named Li Yuan [phrase omitted] (n.d.), the author of the famous Qingtang lu [phrase omitted] or Notes on Qingtang, a text which was to become the most valuable firsthand report on this Tibetan kingdom. (5) Li Yuan expended much ink on his report regarding Tsongkha's devotion to Buddhism and respect for monks, and he vividly described some of the kingdom's Buddhist monuments. Moreover, he did all this without forgetting to use these descriptions to legitimize the war in which he was engaged, writing, "One grand Buddhist statue was constructed, gilded, and housed in a thirteen-storied pagoda to protect it. Aligu [Tsongkha ruler, 1040-1096, r. 1083-1096] extorted money from his people to construct this statue, [and] thereafter his people deserted him." (6)

For Li Yuan, Aligu was unworthy of his position in part due to his dedication to Buddhism at the expense of his people's livelihood. Tsongkha Tibetans were indeed known to Chinese officials for their Buddhist culture, so much so that the Song government entrusted monks with the diplomatic duty of dealing with Tsongkha, a strategy that proved to be successful. (7) The sheer number of records pertaining to Tsongkha's Buddhist activities found in Chinese sources makes its absence in Tibetan histories all the more curious. With the exception of some vague traces that are found in the great epic of Gesar, (8) the memory of this once mighty Tibetan polity seems to have been lost to Tibetan historical consciousness. Indeed, scholars have been hard pressed to find even the smallest nuggets of information within Tibetan sources to compare with those found in Chinese sources, (9) and they have yet to locate substantial materials that would allow a comparative study analogous to those that have been done on the Tibetan imperial period (mid-seventh to mid-ninth century) and the ninth- and tenth-century period of fragmentation--both of which are supported by primary sources from Dunhuang collections.

This lack of "conversations" between sources has resulted in a one-sided understanding of this Sino-Tibetan border. With this awareness in mind, we will now proceed to read the only currently known extant indigenous text from eleventh-century Tsongkha, which has, as I shall show, fortuitously survived in some editions of the Tibetan Buddhist canon. Not only does this document reveal some specifics about Tsongkha and Buddhism in eleventh-century Inner Asia, it also invites us to reflect on the treatment of this border region by contemporary Chinese literati and later Central Tibetan historians.

1. A NATIVE VOICE FROM TSONGKHA

   In each of the five Tengyurs--Derge, Cone, Narthang, Peking, and Golden (sigla D, C, N, P, and G)--that were produced in the eighteenth century, there is a text titled 'Jam dpal gyi mtshan yang dag par brjod pa'i 'grel pa (*Manjusrinamasamgitivrtti, D2542). (10) Its colophon claims that its translation took place in Tsongkha under the patronage of a btsan po (the title for the highest ruler in the Tibetan empire). The following is a transliteration based on the Derge Tengyur (variations in the other Tengyurs are noted in parentheses) and a translation: (11)

   sa pho spre'u dpyid zla tha chungs (tha chung NPG) yar gyi ngo tshes bco lnga la/ gza 'mig mar (mig dmar NPG) gyi nyin par dbang phyug dam pa'i mnga' bdag dpal (dpal/ / N; dpal/ PG) lha bisan po khri dbang phyug rin po che don thams cad sgrub pa 'i bka' lung gis/ rgyal mo sum bu za (sum bu bra C) lun gyi 'od zer (lun gyis 'od zer NPG) gyis (gyi NPG) sku gnyer mdzad nas/bkra shis kyi (kyis G) gdan sa chen po/ (/ / NPG) tsong ka (btsong kha NPG) ser to bla khar (bla mkhar NPG) gyi nang du bod kyi lo tsa ba khyung grags kyis 'jam dpal sgyu 'phrul dra ba bsgyur zhing (cing NPG) gtan la phab pa 'o/ / On a Tuesday (mig dmar), the fifteenth day of the waxing moon, in the final spring-month of the male-earth-monkey year, by order of the glorious almighty sovereign lha btsan po Khri dbang phyug rin po che don thams cad sgrub pa, with queen (rgyal mo) Sum bu za Lun gyis 'od zer serving as the project supervisor (sku gnyer), in the auspicious grand seat Ser to Palace (ser to bla mkhar) of Tsongkha, the [Central?] Tibetan (bod kyi) translator Khyung grags translated and finalized the 'Jam dpal sgyu 'phrul dra ba. This is a comprehensive description of the translation project: time, place, patron, and translator. The translator is an obscure figure, and we will consider him later. For now, we will proceed from the working hypothesis that this Tsongkha king lived during the eleventh century and will identify some of the key proper names in the text.

   (1) "Khri dbang phyug rin po che don thams cad sgrub pa." We may surmise that the "earth-monkey year" mentioned here could be that of 1068; this is due to the fact that the Tsongkha regime would have been gone by the following earth-monkey year, 1128, and did not exist at the time of the previous one, 1008. Therefore, this grand title must refer to Jiaosiluo's son and successor, whom the Chinese sources call Dongzhan [phrase omitted] (1032-83). Dongzhan succeeded his father as the ruler of Tsongkha following the death of Jiaosiluo in 1065. Unlike his father, Dongzhan's full title is never given in Chinese and some modern scholars have speculated that his name corresponds to that of the Tsongkha king "Don chen," who is found in Tibetan chronicles written during the fourteenth century. (12) Were that the case, we would have to assume that don thams cad sgrub pa is the long form of don sgrub--or perhaps even a corruption of the more common don grub (13) and therefore potentially interchangeable with don chen. (14) Another possibility is that whatever the Tibetan equivalent of Dongzhan was, it was simply a sobriquet like Jiaosiluo and those of many other Tibetan btsan pos, which would not necessarily have corresponded to their official titles. (15)

   (2) "rgyal mo Sum bu." The queen's name matches that of Guomu Xinmu [phrase omitted] in Chinese sources, which record her as Dongzhan's second wife, who was murdered by Dongzhan's adopted son Aligu sometime after Dongzhan's death in 1083. (16) We thus know that Guomu Xinmu is doubtless a semi-translation and semi-transcription of the Tibetan "rgyal mo Sum bu," with the Chinese term guomu "queen" standing in for the Tibetan rgyal mo and the Chinese sound xinmu for the Tibetan name sum bu. (17) The za in the colophon after Sum bu perhaps means bza' ("lady"), a common element in the titles of noble ladies.

   (3) "Tsong ka Ser to bla mkhar." The term bla mkhar "royal castle" indicates its high status. (18) Jiaosiluo relocated his capital from Miaochuan [phrase omitted] (present-day Ledu [phrase omitted]/Gro tshang) to Qingtang in 1032, and the latter was able to maintain its capital status in the kingdom. (19) As we shall see, the Tibetan name that was rendered into the Chinese Qingtang, which sounded like *[ts.sup.h]i[epsilon]i to/to in the Northwestern Chinese dialect around that time, (20) was likely from Ser to.

   With this identification of key proper names, let us return to the date. The combination of the four conditions, i.e., an earth-monkey year, a final spring-month, a full-moon day, and a Tuesday, does not give a result in the calendar that takes the third month as the final spring-month. (21) But if we consider another way of counting the four seasons, that is, to take the first month as the final spring-month, the result is January 22, 1068, which corresponds to the fifteenth day of the eleventh month of the earth-monkey year in later Tibetan reckonings (22) and to the fifteenth day of the twelfth month of the dingwei year in the Chinese calendar. This way of counting seasons is found in the treatises by Sde srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho (1653-1705) and Lo chen Dharmasri (1654-1717), (23) but when and where this tradition was practiced are not yet clear. Our colophon therefore might constitute the earliest textual evidence of such a tradition. (24)

   At the same time, another possibility cannot be ruled out. If we set aside the earth-element in the year notation (because later editors sometimes "completed" the early calendar by making a duodenary year notation into a sexagenary one (25)), we will arrive at the date of April 7, 1080 (full moon, Tuesday, third month, and iron-monkey year), which corresponds to the fifteenth day of the third month of the gengshen year (monkey year) in the Chinese calendar. (26) Neither date, 1068 or 1080, changes the identifications above, and I will take 1068/1080 to be the time of completion for this Tsongkha translation project.

   We thus arrive at a coherent set of identifications: the btsan po as Dongzhan, the king; Rgyal mo Sum bu as guomu Xinmu, the queen; and the Ser to bla mkhar as Qingtang, the capital. This colophon therefore constitutes the first indigenous voice from eleventh-century Tsongkha, and its content invites us to imagine vigorous religious involvement on the part of the Tsongkha king in spite of his deep engagement with political and military struggles. It further suggests that Dongzhan may have also tried to claim imperial...