Xīzàng Lǎmá sùyuán 西藏剌麻溯源
Tracing the Origins of the Tibetan Lamas
compiled by 守一 (Shǒuyī, fl. Qīng, 編輯)
About the work
A short Qīng-period treatise in one juan on the origins, lineages, and titles of the Tibetan Buddhist lamas (剌麻 / 喇嘛, bla-ma), compiled by the monk 守一 (Shǒuyī). Preserved in the Manji Xuzangjing (X88 no. 1668). It belongs to a small genre of late-Qīng Han-Chinese Buddhist works on Tibetan Buddhism, written for a Chinese-language audience as the Qīng court’s institutional and political engagement with Tibetan Buddhism intensified through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Abstract
The text supplies a brief account of the origins of Tibetan Buddhism — beginning with the seventh-century introduction of the Dharma into Tibet under King Srong-btsan sgam-po, the further establishment under Khri-srong-lde-btsan, and the foundation of the major monasteries — and then surveys the principal Tibetan Buddhist lineages: the rNying-ma, Sa-skya, bKa’-brgyud, and dGe-lugs (here named Huánjiào 黃教 “Yellow Teaching”, Hóngjiào 紅教 “Red Teaching”, etc., after the colour of monastic headgear, in the conventional Chinese parlance of the period). It identifies the Dalai and Panchen lamas in their canonical lineage and explains the institution of incarnation-lineages (tulku, 活佛 huófó).
守一 is otherwise little documented; he was active in the Qīng dynasty and the work is transmitted only through the late-Qīng / early-Republican Buddhist canon collections. The work’s value is as a Chinese-Buddhist self-presentation of the basic institutional framework of Tibetan Buddhism, written from the Qīng Han-Chinese vantage point.
Translations and research
- No substantial secondary literature located. Work on Qīng-period Han-Chinese Buddhist representations of Tibet (e.g. Gray Tuttle, Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China, Columbia, 2005) makes occasional use of such texts but the Xīzàng Lǎmá sùyuán itself has not received a dedicated study.
Links
- CBETA: X88n1668