Chronological Conundrums in the Life of

Khyung po rnal byor: Hagiography and Historical Time

Matthew T. Kapstein
University of Chicago
and
cole Pratique des Hautes tudes

Abstract: Traditional sources attribute to Khyung po rnal byor, the founder of

the Shangs pa bka brgyud lineage, a lifespan of 150 years beginning in a tiger
year, usually thought to be 978 or 990. A careful examination of the chronological
indications given in his rnam thar, however, suggest that it is implausible to hold
that Khyung po was born prior to the middle years of the eleventh century. The
present communication surveys the relevant evidence for Khyung pos dating, and
demonstrates the reasons for which traditional historians regarded his career as
beginning a full half century or more earlier than it actually did. It will be seen
that the questions raised here are pertinent to the larger problems surrounding
the authenticity of Shangs pa origins overall.
The beginnings of Tibetan historical writing can be traced back to the period of
the Tibetan empire, during the seventh through ninth centuries.1 Bureaucratic

1
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for noting several points in the present essay requiring
correction or clarification. In addition, one general issue that the reviewer raised concerned my use of
the term historiography, which she or he thought might be interpreted pejoratively, as if I were saying
that the West has history, but others only the lesser practice of historiography. To avoid any
misunderstanding about this, therefore, let me stress here that in my view all human societies have
histories, but only some have historiography, by which I mean not only historical writings as literary
artifacts, but also the intellectual and institutional canons and practices whereby history is written.
Tibet, like the West, has a long and distinguished historiographical tradition in this sense; and indeed
this is one of the things that makes the study of Tibetan civilization deeply interesting. Of course, there
is another sense of history, one often associated with the markedly teleological concerns of Hegelian
and Marxist historiographies, that does often regard history as the progressive evolution of humanity
toward an end most characteristically disclosed in the civilization of the West. There are certainly
important questions to be raised in this connection, but they are entirely beside the point of the present,
modest Tibetological contribution.

Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 1 (October 2005): 1-14.
www.thdl.org?id=T1221.
1550-6363/2005/1/T1221.
2005 by Matthew T. Kapstein, Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, and International Association of Tibetan
Studies. Distributed under the THDL Digital Text License.

Kapstein: Chronological Conundrums in the Life of Khyung po rnal byor

record-keeping fostered the composition of state annals, and narrative traditions

relating to the monarchy were set down as chronicles. There is clear evidence of
the influence of Chinese historiography in the Tibetan imperial documents; we
know that the Book of Documents (Shujing) and the Annals of the Warring States
(Zhanguoce) were translated into Tibetan and that the Records of the Grand
Historian (Shiji) was as least to some extent known.2 The first traces of Tibetan
Buddhist historiography may be also found among the Dunhuang manuscripts,
and it is probably significant that the earliest Tibetan Buddhist hagiographical
writings now known are to be found in a Tibetan Chan text of the mid-ninth century
and in a short tantric work of the ninth or tenth century.3 On the basis of these
documents, it seems certain that both Chinese and Indian Buddhist hagiographical
traditions were becoming known and were already contributing to the formation
of indigenous Tibetan Buddhist hagiography. It is, however, only with the renewed
transmission of Indian Buddhism to Tibet during the late-tenth and eleventh
centuries that we see a real proliferation of hagiographical and auto-hagiographical
writing in Tibet. As Janet Gyatso has rightly argued in her Apparitions of the Self,
these developments were likely the product of the fragmentation of religious and
political authority in the wake of the empires collapse. This situation issued in,
in her words, a competitive climate in which the personal accomplishments of
the individual religious master became a centerpiece in the struggle to establish a
lineage and eventually an institution and a power base.4 Hagiography and lineage
histories thus gave literary expression to a multitude of competing claims of spiritual
authority. It is by no means surprising, therefore, that the emphasis in these works
is, in the first instance, on revelations, visions, prophetic dreams, miraculous
abilities and mystical attainments, and secondarily on the study and transmission
of authoritative Buddhist teachings and texts. Matters of historical circumstance
of the sort that we emphasize in much of modern historiography rank a poor third.
Nevertheless, over time a Tibetan Buddhist historiography did emerge and
hagiographical writing itself was not unaffected by this development. This is a
2
The Tibetan translations of these works and aspects of their legacy are studied in W. S. Coblin, A
Study of the Old Tibetan Shangshu Paraphrase, Journal of the American Oriental Society 111 (1991):
303-22, 523-39; Yoshiro Imaeda, Lidentification de loriginal chinois du Pelliot tibtain 1291
traduction tibtaine du Zhanguoce, Acta Orientalia (Hungarica) 34, nos. 1-3 (1980): 53-68; Rolf A.
Stein, Saint et Divin, un titre tibtain et chinois des rois tibtains, Journal Asiatique nos. 1-2 (1981):
231-75; Rolf A. Stein, Tibetica Antiqua I: Les deux vocabulaires des traductions Indo-tibtaine et
Sino-tibtaine dans les Manuscrits de Touen-houang, Bulletin de lcole Franaise dExtrme-Orient
72 (1983): 149-236; and Tsuguhito Takeuchi, A Passage from the Shih chi in the Old Tibetan
Chronicle, in Soundings in Tibetan Civilization, ed. Barbara Nimri Aziz and Matthew Kapstein (Delhi:
Manohar, 1985), 135-46. Dr. Imaeda has kindly informed me that recent Chinese scholarship regards
PT 1291 not as a translation of the Annals of the Warring States, but rather as derived from the
commentarial tradition of the Spring and Autumn Annals.
3
I am referring to Pelliot tibtain 996, a manuscript first studied in Marcelle Lalou, Document
tibtain sur lexpansion du dhyna chinois, Journal Asiatique 231 (1939): 505-23; and to Pelliot
tibtain 44, on which see F. A. Bischoff and Charles Hartman, Padmasambhavas Invention of the
Phur-bu: Ms. Pelliot tibtain 44, in tudes tibtaines ddies la mmoire de Marcelle Lalou, ed.
Ariane Macdonald (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1971), 11-28; and Matthew T. Kapstein, The Tibetan
Assimilation of Buddhism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 158-59.
4

Janet Gyatso, Apparitions of the Self (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 116.

Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 1 (October 2005)

complicated story that so far is not very well understood, and for present purposes
a summary account will have to suffice. From the twelfth century onwards we see
a growing effort on the part of some Tibetan writers to address the history of Tibet,
or of Tibetan Buddhism, overall, not focusing solely on the continuity of a single
lineage.5 There seem to have been two important reasons for this shift in focus.
On the one hand, the history of the old Tibetan empire was now a matter of renewed
concern and interest, particularly among those whose own authority rested in part
on ancient claims, real or imagined. This resulted in an effort to reassemble available
documentation, including historical documents that were no doubt similar to what
we now know from Dunhuang.6 On the other hand, there was a strong tendency
within religious circles to pursue studies somewhat eclectically, so that in a given
individuals life and formation, differing lineages were frequently woven together
as distinct strands of a single cord. To recount ones lineage history now required
in fact narrating several lineage histories, so that one could not help but remark
upon those points at which the strands crossed, or came into conflict. To this we
may perhaps add that, with the reunification of Tibetan government under the
Mongol empire during the thirteenth century and throughout the successive
hegemonies culminating in the Fifth Dalai Lamas formation of a unified Tibetan
polity during the seventeenth century, a bureaucratic interest in precise
record-keeping once again came to the fore.7 Despite this, of course, the older
hagiographical emphasis on spiritual attainment was never lost. As a result, in
reading a masterwork of later Tibetan Buddhist autobiography such as the life of
the early nineteenth-century master Zhabs dkar, one is repeatedly struck by the
seamless course the author steers between visionary passages that would have not
been too foreign in tone to St. Theresa and quantifications of pennies saved and
earned that might well have given cheer to Ben Franklin.8
With these generalities in mind, I would like us to imagine ourselves for the
moment to be in the position of earlier generations of Tibetan Buddhist historians,
who had before them the records of differing lineages, that is, their hagiographical
collections, and to pose for ourselves the problem of how, on this basis, we might
construct histories. For, in a sense, we are in the same position today as was the
5
This is already the case in twelfth- and thirteenth-century histories such as Mkhas pa ldeu, Mkhas
pa ldeus mdzad pai rgya bod kyi chos byung rgyas pa, Gangs can rig mdzod 3 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs
bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1987) and Nyang nyi ma od zer, Chos byung me tog snying po
sbrang rtsii bcud, Gangs can rig mdzod 5 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang,
1988).
6
It is of course well known that, as late as the mid-sixteenth century, Dpa bo gtsug lag phreng ba
was still able to locate authentic sources dating back to the imperial period. Though there is sometimes
good reason to believe that earlier historical writers including, among others, Mkhas pa ldeu, Ldeu
jo sras, and O rgyan gling pa similarly incorporated elements of veritable early documents into their
works, they were unfortunately seldom so scrupulous as was Dpa bo gtsug lag phreng ba, who frequently
gives us clear indications when he relies on such materials.
7
The preservation in the Tibetan Archives in Lhasa of at least some official records dating back to
the Phag mo gru pa and Rin spungs pa regimes gives hope that the materials needed to clarify this point
with reference to the history of Tibetan bureaucratic practices may eventually become available.
8
Matthieu Ricard et al., trans., The Life of Shabkar: The Autobiography of a Tibetan Yogin (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1994).

Kapstein: Chronological Conundrums in the Life of Khyung po rnal byor

author of the Blue Annals (Deb ther sngon po), Gos lo ts ba, during the middle
part of the fifteenth century.9 This is not to say, of course, that the interests which
we bring to our interrogation of the hagiographical traditions are the same as his
were. Still, there are some matters about which our interests clearly do converge:
making sense of chronology is a case in point and we have a lot to learn from Gos
lo ts bas efforts to elucidate the chronological record. I dare say, in fact, that
without his efforts and those of his successors, we would be hard pressed to interpret
the relative and absolute chronology of Tibetan Buddhism in the eleventh through
thirteenth centuries today.
The particular case I wish to consider is the hagiography of Khyung po rnal
byor, the yogin of the Khyung clan, who was the founder of the Shangs pa bka
brgyud, considered one of the eight major practice lineages of Tibetan tantric
Buddhism.10 I have written about Khyung po rnal byor and the Shangs pa bka
brgyud tradition in a number of earlier articles and have been working for some
time on a book about the Shangs pa bka brgyud, which is concerned primarily
with the early history of the tradition and its distinctive teachings of dream and
apparition. One of the several problems that has forcefully emerged in the course
of this work involves the interpretation of the early hagiographies of the tradition
as historical documents. How far are we entitled to go in reading these texts as
historical sources? How do they speak to us of history?
We have access at present to four redactions of the Golden Rosary of the
Shangpa (Shangs pa gser phreng), the collected hagiographies of the Shangs pa
bka brgyud masters.11 These were compiled in different times and places, by quite
different branches of the Shangs pa bka brgyud. For the records of the early
masters, however, those who flourished no later than the beginning of the fourteenth
century, the four collections are closely similar, both in their selection of teachers
whose hagiographies are included, and in the actual texts themselves. Much the
same may be said of the condensed versions of the Golden Rosary of the Shangpa
we find in the Blue Annals and in another fifteenth-century history, The Archive
9
Gos lo gzhon nu dpal, Blue Annals, 2 vols. (Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1984);
G. N. Roerich, trans., The Blue Annals (1949; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976). As mentioned
below, it is evident that Gos lo ts bas account of the Shangs pa bka brgyud tradition is based upon
precisely the same lineage history preserved in the various versions of the Golden Rosary of the Shangpa
Kagy (Shangs pa bka brgyud gser phreng).
10
On this way of classifying the major lineages, see my gDams ngag: Tibetan Technologies of the
Self, in Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, ed. Jos I. Cabezn and Roger R. Jackson (Ithaca: Snow
Lion Publications), 275-89.
11
These are as follows. (1) Shangs-pa gser-phreng: A Golden Rosary of the Lives of Masters of the
Shangs-pa dKar[sic]-brgyud-pa Schools, Smanrtsis Shesrig Spendzod 15 (Leh: Sonam W. Tashigangpa,
1970). (2) as-pa bKa-brgyud-pa Texts: A collection of rare manuscripts of doctrinal, ritual, and
biographical works of scholars of the as-pa Bka-brgyud-pa tradition from the monastery of
Gsa-sags-chos-gli in Kinnaur, 2 vols. (Sumra, H.P.: Urgyan Dorje, 1977). (3) Shangs pa bka
brgyud bla rabs kyi rnam thar, Gangs can rig mdzod 28 (Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe
skrun khang, 1996). (4) A sixteenth-century xylographic version from Mnga ris gung thang preserved
in the National Archives of Nepal, in Kathmandu. An abridged, vulgar translation of the first version
is found in Nicole Riggs, trans., Like An Illusion: Lives of the Shangpa Kagyu Masters (Eugene, OR:
Dharma Cloud Publishing, 2000).

Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 1 (October 2005)

of China and Tibet (Rgya bod yig tshang), and in a later survey of Shangs pa bka
brgyud history written by the renowned Trantha.12 This, together with much
other evidence, reinforces the assertion of the Shangs pa bka brgyud tradition
itself, that it remained a tightly knit and highly secretive lineage until the
late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries, when its masters began to promulgate
its teachings much more widely than had been the case previously.13 These
circumstances further suggest that the early hagiographies were redacted in more
or less the form in which we now know them during this same period, and this in
turn would explain the remarkable consistency of these texts in the known versions.
It further suggests, however, that we must be rather cautious about attributing their
contents to the age of the earlier figures they treat.
All of the early Shangs pa bka brgyud hagiographies share a remarkable
emphasis on dreams and visions. In them, what we think of as ordinary waking
experiences, besides being frequently treated as matters of secondary importance,
are often not systematically distinguished from these other states. The contemporary
reader, even sometimes the Tibetan reader within the tradition, will be hard put at
points to say whether a given episode takes place in fact, in visionary experience,
or in dream. It is one of the hallmarks of later Tibetan writing that there are
well-formed conventions for distinguishing among these experiential modalities.14
Though the early Shangs pa bka brgyud hagiographies do often specify that certain
events are occurring in dreams this reflects in part the emphasis upon lucid
dreaming as a specialty of the Shangs pa bka brgyud contemplative system15 it
is also sometimes the case that we lose our bearings altogether and can only guess
as to the level of reality in which a given narrative unfolds.
Both the redaction history of the early Shangs pa bka brgyud hagiographies
and their internal phenomenology, therefore, give us prima facie reasons for
skepticism regarding their value as historical documents, except, of course, in as
much as they are documents that we may draw upon in our contemporary
constructions of the history of Tibetan mentalits. Nevertheless, some basic
historical questions must be asked, and if we cannot turn to these documents for
help, then we are left without any recourse at all.
12
(1) Gos lo gzhon nu dpal, Blue Annals. (2) Dpal byor bzang po, Rgya bod yig tshang chen mo
(Chengdu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1983). (3) The Shangs pa chos byung of Trantha is
found only in the editions of his gsung bum published in Dzam thang, Sichuan. One of these (the
lithographic reprint of the recent xylographic edition) has recently been scanned and issued on CD-ROM
by the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, New York.
13
For a sketch of the spread of the Shangs pa bka brgyud, refer to my The Shangs-pa bKa-brgyud:
An Unknown School of Tibetan Buddhism, in Studies in Honor of Hugh Richardson, ed. M. Aris and
Aung San Suu Kyi (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1980), 138-44. See, too, E. Gene Smith, The Shangs
pa Bka brgyud Tradition, in Among Tibetan Texts: History and Literature of the Himalayan Plateau
(Boston: Wisdom, 2001), chap. 4.
14
The stock phrase, frequently encountered in later hagiographical writings, is dngos snang rmi lam
gsum, the threesome of reality, pure vision (dag snang), and dream.
15

A very brief account of the Shangs pa bka brgyud system of tantric yoga may be found in Kapstein,
The Journey to the Golden Mountain, in Tibetan Religions in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 178-87.

Kapstein: Chronological Conundrums in the Life of Khyung po rnal byor

So let us begin with perhaps the most basic of historical questions: how do we
situate the Shangs pa bka brgyud in historical time? In particular, what can we
say about the time of Shangs pa bka brgyud beginnings? To reduce this to the
most pedestrian terms, just when was the Shangs pa bka brgyud founder, Khyung
po rnal byor, born, and when did he die? (Some may urge that an even more
primary question is: how can we know that there was even such a person at all?
But this is not in fact a real issue in the present case some of the evidence for
my asserting this will be at least implicit in what follows.)
Khyung po rnal byors hagiography does not provide us with precisely specified
dates for his life, nor do the hagiographies of his successors make up this lacuna.
Late Tibetan chronologies assert his birth to have occurred in either 978 or 990,16
but we shall soon see how they arrived at this calculation. The earliest Shangs pa
bka brgyud master whose dates are known with relative assurance is Sangs rgyas
ston pa (1219-1290),17 who was Khyung po rnal byors great-great-granddisciple.
Before his time, our dating of events in Shangs pa bka brgyud history largely
depends on relative chronology, for instance, when we find reference to persons
also known from non-Shangs pa bka brgyud sources, whose dates are reliably
known.
One of the few dates specified in Khyung po rnal byors hagiography, albeit
imprecisely, is the year of his birth: he is said to have been born in a tiger year, an
assertion that is strengthened owing to the name of his father, tiger-born (stag
skyes), reflecting the still-current custom in some Tibetan communities of addressing
a parent by an epithet derived from the name or birthdate of the first-born.18 Tiger
years, however, come around once in every twelve years. In seeking to determine
just which tiger year is at stake here, we may wonder just why late Tibetan
chronologists fixed their calculations on the tiger years 978 or 990; for there is
nothing at all in the narrative of Khyung po rnal byors birth and childhood that
would in fact support this, notwithstanding Snellgroves glib assertion that there
is no problem in accepting 990 as the tiger-year in which he was born.19 On the
contrary, Khyung po rnal byor is depicted at age ten as studying the Klacakra
here no doubt referring to the elementary mathematics taught in connection with

16
Thus, both alternatives are duly recorded in Tshe tan zhabs drung, Bstan rtsis kun las btus pa
(Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1982), 150-51.
17
Gos lo ts ba, in Roerich, Blue Annals, 746, frankly acknowledges the dating problem with respect
to the early Shangs pa bka brgyud masters. Nevertheless, given Sangs rgyas ston pas birth in a hare
year, his death at 72, and the birth of his leading disciple, Mkhas grub shangs ston, in 1234 (wood male
horse), the present calculation seems plausible.
18
In the Sherpa communities of northeastern Nepal, for example, a parent is often known as father
(or mother) of so-and-so (X-gi a pa / a ma). In everyday speech, however, the phrase mentioning the
parental relation is often left off, so that the parent is in fact addressed by the childs proper name.
19
David L. Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan Successors
(Boston: Shambhala, 1987), 501 n. Pace Snellgrove, I do not think that Roerichs calculation of the
date of Khyung po rnal byors birth as 1086 was a mere oversight, but most likely a tentative
conclusion drawn from the close study of the relations among figures mentioned in the Blue Annals.

Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 1 (October 2005)

the Klacakratantras astrological system and this was not at all likely to have
been current in Tibet before roughly the middle of the eleventh century.20
So why did the later Tibetan historians, who knew very well when it was that
the Klacakra was promulgated (indeed, they derived much of their system of
calculation from it!) reach back a full half century and more in their determination
of this particular tiger year? I have puzzled about this for a very long time and I
have only found one plausible explanation: Khyung po rnal byors hagiography,
though it does not state exactly the year of his death, does affirm that he lived for
150 years. Though this was certainly not always taken as literal truth,21 in a land
in which three-century lifespans were claimed for some sages, many were prepared
to accept a term of a century-and-a-half at face value. It is clear, at least, that not
a few later Tibetan historians thought in just this way.22 We may propose then, that
they sought to establish approximately the period of Khyung po rnal byors death,
and then calculated back to a tiger year occurring close to 150 years before. The
effort to determine the period of Khyung po rnal byors death, in fact, strongly
suggests that this is precisely what did occur.
Our best evidence for working out when Khyung po rnal byor was likely to
have died comes from the hagiography of his main successor, Rmog lcog pa. Rmog
lcog pa gives us sufficient information regarding his own age at various points in
recounting his studies, so that we can adduce that he was in his late twenties when
Khyung po rnal byor died.23 Whats more, tolerably precise references to certain
of his contemporaries within his hagiography strongly suggest that he had been
born close to 1110.24 This comports very well with the relative periodization we
can determine for another of Khyung po rnal byors leading disciples, La stod
dkon mchog mkhar of Gnas rnying.25 We are probably not far off, therefore, in
inferring that Khyung po rnal byor must have passed away in about the mid- or
20
The use of the expression dus khor in this manner does not seem to be documented in the available
Tibetan dictionaries. However, it is justified by the fact that the exoteric Klacakra system, which treats
of calendrical and astrological calculations, has basic numeracy as its prerequisite. Elementary education
in the Klacakra system was perhaps similar in India, as is suggested by the Klacakrvatra of
Abhaykaragupta (fl. late eleventh century), an introductory work on astronomical calculation.
21

See below, n. 31.

22

See, for example, Dpa bo gtsug lag phreng ba, Chos byung mkhas pai dga ston (Beijing: Mi
rigs dpe skrun khang, 1986), 2: 1373.
23

As a youth Rmog lcog pa had studied under Khyung po rnal byor for five years, leaving him at
the age of twenty-one to pursue his education elsewhere. He returned to Khyung po rnal byor five
years or so later and then spent one year and seven months as his chosen successor before the master
passed away.
24
The chief evidence for this is his discipleship under Sgam po pa (1079-1153), which seems to place
him in the same generation as the latters chief successors Phag mo gru pa rdo rje rgyal po (1110-1170)
and Khams pa dbus se, aka Karma pa dus gsum mkhyen pa (1110-1193).
25
La stod dkon mchog mkhar may be assigned to the early and mid-twelfth century, as the Gnas
rnying chos byung records him to have been a disciple and successor of Bre shes rab bar, one of the
leading students of Rngog blo ldan shes rab (1059-1109). I am grateful to E. Gene Smith for sharing
with me his transcription of the rare history of Gnas rnying, one of the few sources outside the Shangs
pa bka brgyud tradition that affords, in its account of La stod dkon mchog mkhar, a small but precious
element of independent testimony concerning Khyung po rnal byor.

Kapstein: Chronological Conundrums in the Life of Khyung po rnal byor

late-1130s. And, from this conclusion, it is immediately apparent how the dates
of 978 or 990 were determined.
Now the real fun begins. How do the events of Khyung po rnal byors life, to
the extent that they appear to refer to persons and circumstances we can situate,
map onto a life that spanned circa 990-1140? We have already seen that his
childhood studies involved material suggesting an education during or after the
mid-eleventh century and certainly not the late-tenth or very early eleventh. As
matters turn out, almost everything about the hagiography supports this.
Khyung po rnal byor was born to a Bon po family and claims himself to have
become an adept and successful teacher of this tradition before becoming a Buddhist
adhering to the Rnying ma pa teaching of the Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen), in
which he similarly claims to have enjoyed great success. Unfortunately, none of
the figures mentioned as his teachers and students within these traditions has been
so far securely identified,26 so that there is no chronological evidence at all to be
derived from the tales of his involvement in them. But there is one curious detail
we find in connection with his study of the Great Perfection: he includes among
the topics that constituted his training the three classes of the Great Perfection
mental, spatial, and esoteric instructional. The precise origins of this classificatory
scheme are not known, but there is strong reason to suspect that it entered into
currency in connection with a particular system of Great Perfection teaching, that
of the Snying thig, whose promulgation dates to the period of Zhang ston bkra shis
rdo rje (1097-1167) or shortly before.27 If the reference indeed does go back to
Khyung po rnal byors early career and is not an elaboration added late in his life
or even afterwards, then it seems to support our suggestion that the period of
Khyung po rnal byors youth could not have been earlier than the mid-eleventh
century.
It is with the introduction of Khyung po rnal byors third major teacher, the
Mahmudr master Skor ni ru pa, that the approximate temporal location of the
events of Khyung po rnal byors early career seems to be fixed. But be forewarned:
almost everything connected with Skor ni ru pa is so strange that this is rather like
triangulating the position of an illusion by reference to a mirage. In point of fact,
Khyung po rnal byors hagiography tells us that after his involvement in Great
Perfection he was still unsatisfied and, leaving his disciples, went on pilgrimage
26
Nevertheless, Dan Martin, Unearthing Bon Treasures (Leiden: Brill, 2001), does offer some
suggestions regarding Khyung po rnal byors Bon po associates. It has not so far been possible for me
to consider these in detail.
27
David Germano, Architecture and Absence in the Secret Tantric History of the Great Perfection
(rdzogs chen), Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 17, no. 2 (1994): 203-335,
surveys aspects of the early history of the Snying thig tradition. See, too, Jean-Luc Achard, LEssence
Perle du Secret: Recherches philologiques et historiques sur lorigine de la Grande Perfection dans
la tradition rnying ma pa (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999). For a traditional account, refer to Dudjom Rinpoche,
Jikdrel Yeshe Dorje, The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism: Its Fundamentals and History, trans.
Gyurme Dorje and Matthew Kapstein (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1991), 1: 554-74. The association
of the tripartite classification of the Great Perfection systems with the Snying thig in particular is due
to the reference, in traditional Rnying ma pa doxography (e.g., Dudjom, Nyingma School, vol. 1, 319)
to the A ti bkod pa chen po section of the Bi ma snying thig as the proof text in this context.

Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 1 (October 2005)

to Lhasa. During the course of this journey he met Skor ni ru pa, who transmitted
the Mahmudr and other tantric teachings to him, praising him as his best disciple.
I will leave to one side the questions that might be raised about the actual nature
of Khyung po rnal byors relation with this teacher, assuming that indeed there
was such a relation, and the role his claim about this may have played, or not, in
authenticating his own attainments. Whatever else one may propose in the way of
interpretation with respect to this, Khyung po rnal byors hagiography is clearly
asserting that the period of his early career corresponded with the period of Skor
ni ru pas teaching. It is here that we owe a debt of gratitude to Gos lo ts ba and
his Blue Annals, for by the fifteenth century Skor ni ru pa had already faded into
obscurity, so that Gos lo ts ba saw this as good reason to preserve in his history
all that he knew of this figure and to attempt to rectify his dating with care.28
According to Gos lo ts bas calculation, Skor ni ru pa lived for forty-one years
from 1062 to 1102. This corresponds well with the other synchronizations we have
proposed. However, we must wonder just what sources Gos lo ts ba had at his
disposal for his record of Skor ni ru pa, particularly because Skor ni ru pa was, in
effect, the Lobsang Rampa of eleventh-century Tibet, a Tibetan yogin whose body
had been taken over by an Indian saint. To the historical uncertainties of visions
and dreams, then, we must also add possession!
Despite this last complication, a pattern of sorts is beginning to emerge: Khyung
po rnal byors youth and early career belong probably to the beginning of the
second half of the eleventh century, not earlier. Those among his Indian teachers
whom we can identify with some certainty for instance, Maitripas disciple
Atulyavajra, or Amoghavajra of Vajrsana similarly belong to the mid- and late
eleventh century. Khyung po rnal byor claims to have studied, too, with Maitripa
himself. Because the tradition sometimes gives the death year of this master as
1088,29 we can perhaps accept this without much upsetting our chronological
assumptions, that is, if we accept that Khyung po rnal byor did indeed meet
Maitripa himself. One further detail is worth noting here: Khyung po rnal byor
states that he received his final ordination as a bhiku under the renowned Bka
gdams pa preceptor Glang ri thang pa, who was born in 1054, founded Glang thang
Monastery in 1093, and passed away some thirty years later, in 1123.30
All that we have seen up to now convinces us that the period of Khyung po rnal
byors discipleship and search for enlightenment must have taken place during
the last part of the eleventh century, perhaps even the beginning of the twelfth,
and that, in effect, he represented matters in this way by constant reference to
28

Gos lo ts ba, in Roerich, Blue Annals, 849-55. But consider, too, Kurtis R. Schaeffer, The
Religious Career of Vairocanavajra A Twelfth-Century Indian Buddhist Master from Dakia Koala,
Journal of Indian Philosophy 28, no. 4 (2000): 361-84, esp. 371, on Vairocanavajras meeting with
Skor. Schaeffers conclusion would argue either for a readjustment of Skors dates, or for discounting
the meeting as apocryphal. As Khyung po rnal byor is associated with both of these figures, it may
well be that the former conclusion is to be preferred.
29
See Mark Tatz, The Life of the Siddha-Philosopher Maitrgupta, Journal of the American Oriental
Society, 107, no. 4 (1987): 695-711.
30

Roerich, Blue Annals, 270-71.

Kapstein: Chronological Conundrums in the Life of Khyung po rnal byor

10

Tibetan and Indian teachers who, we know, were active during just the same period.
As we have seen above, his death certainly occurred in about 1135-1140. If we
assume, then, that he was in fact born circa 1050, he would have been approaching
ninety at the time of his death. It is not at all uncommon in traditional societies to
add a few decades to the ages of elderly persons; two well documented examples
well within the memory of living persons are the Tibetan teacher Ani lo chen, or
Shugs gseb rje btsun ma, who probably lived into her mid-nineties but whose
disciples thought she was well over 130 at the time of her death, and Baba Allaudin
Khan, the virtuoso musician and father of the renowned sarodist Ali Akbar Khan,
whose age was similarly exaggerated. Khyung po rnal byors claimed span of 150
years was a stretch, but nevertheless seems to exemplify a similar phenomenon.
Gos lo ts ba certainly saw matters in this way, and remarked in the Blue Annals
that 150 had to be understood here symbolically.31
Nevertheless, despite our best efforts to elaborate an appropriately rationalized
time-line for the events recounted in Khyung po rnal byors hagiography, there
are a number of points at which the attempt simply comes undone. The most
important of these occurs after Khyung po rnal byors second journey to India. If
the assumptions guiding us so far have been correct, this could not have taken
place much earlier than the mid 1080s. Here is how he narrates his return to Tibet:
[Upon arriving in Tibet] I went to Tho ling accompanied by the translators Bklan
dharma blo gros and Gaydhara. Since some of my Indian texts had begun to rot
(rul), I thought, I must go back to India. The paita Dpakararjna (=Atia)
was also staying there at that time. He said to me, [Your Indian texts] are in
accord with my own [copies]. It will suffice to appoint Rin chen bzang po to
translate them, and they were translated by Rin chen bzang po and the translator
Bklan dharma blo gros.32

This is followed by an extensive list of the teachings he subsequently received

from Atia.
This is all quite problematic. The translator Glan dar ma blo gros is a shadowy
figure who turns up at a number of interesting places in connection with Khyung
po rnal byor and the texts he collected in India.33 But he is mentioned occasionally
elsewhere as well, particularly in connection with the Indian tantric scholar
Vairocanarakita, who seems to have flourished during the early and mid-twelfth
century.34 Glan dar ma blo gros, therefore, would appear to have indeed been
Khyung po rnal byors contemporary according to the arguments already adduced.

31
Roerich, Blue Annals, 733; Gos lo ts ba, Blue Annals, 2: 859. The term translated by Roerich as
symbolically is dgongs pa can.
32
Shangs pa bka brgyud bla rabs kyi rnam thar, 39. The clan designation bklan is elsewhere most
often given as glan. The printed text cited here is also unusual in its transcription of the proper name
dar ma as dharma.
33
34

See, for instance, n. 37 below.

Vairocanarakita is an alternative name of the Vairocanavajra studied by Schaeffer, The Religious

Career of Vairocanavajra.

Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 1 (October 2005)

11

The three remaining figures, however, all were active much earlier: Gaydhara
visited Tibet probably during the 1040s, Atia was there from 1042 until his death
in 1054, and Rin chen bzang po likewise died in 1055.35 The last two were both
in residence in Tho ling only during the mid-1040s. Khyung po rnal byors account
of his meeting with them is, therefore, credible only if we assume that he travelled
backwards in time!36
It appears, then, that one of the key events reported in Khyung po rnal byors
hagiography is in conflict with the chronology that I have proposed, that is, a life
spanning roughly 1050-1140. That event, however, may best be read as a fiction
inserted into the hagiography for apologetical reasons. Why had his texts begun
to rot? This would be an unusual development in Tibet, where eleventh- and
twelfth-century palm-leaf manuscripts have been preserved in immaculate condition.
Could it be that the rot is metaphorical, alluding to the fact that the texts in
question were apocryphal works created by Khyung po rnal byor himself and not
at all the writings of his Indian masters? In fact, this is probably just what did occur,
but my detailed arguments about this must be reserved for another occasion.37
Still, lets hold on here for a minute. If the episode in question is a fiction, found
in a hagiographical account that seems to be largely constructed of dream and
fiction, why on earth should we not suppose the episodes we have chosen to provide
us with reliable chronological coordinates to be fictions as well? In that case, all
that we have said in regard to Khyung po rnal byors probable dating has no more
substance to it than the proverbial city of the gandharvas. I really have no way to
answer this objection except to suggest, once again, that even in this case we are
nevertheless considering fictions that, for the most part, index themselves to a
particular period in time.
Earlier on, I summarized the manner in which the early traditions of Tibetan
hagiographical writing, though never entirely supplanted, did nevertheless have
to make room for an emerging historiography that was relatively more interested
in time and circumstance than early Tibetan hagiography had generally been.38
35
I know of no other record that places Gaydhara in Tho ling together with the others mentioned,
though, as noted by Roberto Vitali, The Kingdoms of Gu.ge Pu.hrang According to mNga.ris.rgyal.rabs
by Gu.ge mkhan.chen Ngag.dbang.grags.pa (Dharamsala: Tho ling gtsug lag khang lo gcig stong khor
bai rjes dran mdzad sgoi sgrigs tshogs chung, 1996), 238, n. 336, Gaydhara is supposed to have first
met his Tibetan disciple Brog mi in 1042, the year of Atias arrival in Tho ling.
36
Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, mistakenly assumed that the purported meeting of Khyung
po rnal byor with Atia at Tho ling could have taken place any time up until the latters passing in
1054, forgetting that he was no longer in Guge after 1045.
37
Namely, my edition and translation of the Tibetan text of the Sgyu ma lam rim and its
autocommentary, both attributed to the yogin Niguma and translated by Glan dar ma blo gros at the
request of Khyung po rnal byor. For an introduction to these texts, see my The Illusion of Spiritual
Progress, in Paths to Liberation, ed. Robert Buswell and Robert Gimello (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1992), 193-224.
38

Despite this, some relatively recent authors remain frustratingly vague when it comes to dates. A
case in point is the autobiography of the late nineteenth early twentieth-century Amdo Rnying ma
pa master Bdud joms rdo rje rol pa rtsal, on whom see my The sprul-skus Miserable Lot: Critical
Voices from Eastern Tibet, in Amdo Tibetans in Transition: Society and Culture in the Post-Mao Era,

Kapstein: Chronological Conundrums in the Life of Khyung po rnal byor

12

Some of the hallmarks of the new historiography were its concern with the linearity
of time and with the regularity, and hence measurability, of its flow.39 The evolution,
moreover, of such categories as those of outer, inner and esoteric biography,
together with the refinement of the literary conventions used to relate both mundane
and marvelous events, tended to clarify the once inexplicit boundaries between
reality, vision and dream. No doubt, the difficulties confronted by Gos lo ts ba
and others in retrieving the hagiographical traditions for their own historical writing
were among the factors contributing to this development. But in Tibet the older
traditions of hagiographical writing never died, though in some respects they did
begin to fade away. What is perhaps most striking is their persistence, their refusal
of disenchantment when pierced by the straight and unidirectional arrow of time.

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