Chapter 3 To the Place Where Tea Comes from: Gyi-ljang’s Trip to China
In: Sino-Tibetan Buddhism across the AgesSearch for other papers by Penghao Sun in
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Abstract
This chapter provides a close reading of a Khara Khoto fragmentary manuscript in order to better understand two questions: how the economic and spiritual road between Central Tibet and Tibet’s eastern cultural border was understood by Tibetans of different periods, and whether there were hitherto little-known local communities that played a significant role in the Tibeto-Tangut dissemination of Buddhism. The one-folio fragment has been identified as the Buddhist ritual manual known as the Sher snying bdud bzlog. The attributed author, and the central figure of the ritual tales depicted in the fragment, is Gyi ljang Dbu dkar ba, an eleventh-century translator. Both Gyi ljang’s trip to China as depicted by later Tibetan historians and the ritual tales themselves offer us opportunities to investigate representations of the Sino-Tangut-Tibetan road. The fragment also presents a different transmission lineage than other extant transmitted texts; the last person in this unique lineage identifies himself as “I,” indicating that the manuscript was made around the late twelfth century. The three unidentified persons at the end of the lineage support the hypothesis that there existed a local community that functioned as the nexus for the propagation of Tibetan Buddhism eastward.