Oldal 407 [407]
OCR
MA GCIG LAB SGRON Ma’s Many LIvEs and which (with regard to school affiliation) gcod teachings were first brought from Tibet to Mongolia. In the Mongolian context, such issues are a bit more difficult to explore because in the dGe lugs pa religious histories written by Mongolian authors the non dGe lugs pa schools and traditions are rarely specified, but usually clumped together under the umbrella term “red tradition.” I am well aware that the puzzle of the early history of the gcod tradition in Mongolia is not easily solved. As long as there is no “hard” textual evidence of the presence of gcod in the 13" and 14" centuries, we can only speculate as to the history of its transmission to Mongolia. But we may be able to find out more than what we already know by having a closer look at the biographical (which simultaneously are historical) texts of the gcod tradition which circulated in Mongolia. These texts contain a wealth of data about individual gcod lineage holders that we can often, albeit not always, historically contextualize within a certain Buddhist school. In the gcod transmission lineages some names keep turning up that have a close historical connection to Mongolia. In this way, we may tentatively trace possible early ways of gcod into Mongolia. The Biography of Ma gcig lab sgron ma in the Ernst Collection I will start my investigation into the early history of the gcod tradition in Mongolia with the close examination of a text only recently come to light. Among the works that build the Collection of Tibetan and Mongolian block-prints and manuscripts of Professor Richard Ernst, the Swiss Nobel Laureate in Chemistry of 1991,’ I found two Tibetan-language block-prints, one complete, one incomplete, of a biography of Ma gcig lab sgron ma. The two copies of the Ernst Collection originate, as the majority of the texts of this collection, from Mongolia, and bear witness to the popularity of the gcod teachings in pre-revolutionary Mongolia. Both texts of the Ernst Collection are printed from the same printing blocks, therefore I will only deal with the complete copy. This text consists of 509 folios of small format (21.59 cms). It bears the title Ma gcig lab kyi sgron ma’i rnam thar dang gcod kyi chos skor ma ‘ongs lung bstan bcas bzhugs so (‘The Biography of Ma gcig lab kyi sgron ma, together with the Cycle of gCod Teachings and Prophecies about the Future’). According to the colophon? the author is Gangs pa. His identity, however, is difficult to determine. The generic name gangs pa, “snowman,” refers to the blackhat-wearing gcod practitioners who were named after the hermitage of Sham po gangs situated in Yar klungs. The tradition originated with the “snowman” Thod 7 Kollmar-Paulenz, Karénina: Eine Schweizer Sammlung mongolischer Handschriften und Blockdrucke. Zentralasiatische Studien 38 (2009), pp. 211-226. Ma cig gi rnam thar mgo smos tsam dang/ khyad par lus la mchod sbyin byed pa’i tshul dang/ ma ‘ongs par lung bstan pa dang bcas pa/mdor bsdus pa tsam gyi rnam bshad chen mo ‘di ni/ phyi rabs rnams la phan pa’i slad du le’u bcu pa’i tshul du byas nas/ gangs pa bdag gis yi ger bkod pa’i dge ba des/ pha mas gtso byas sems can rnams/ nyon mongs bdud las rab rgyal nas/ rgyal yum go 'phangs ‘di nyid la/ bde blag nyid du thob par shog/ (££. 506v—507r). 8 405
