Manuscripts and Travellers: The Sino-Tibetan Documents of a Tenth-century Buddhist Pilgrim

256 Pages·2011·26.191 MB·English

by  Sam Van Schaik, Daozhao, Imre Galambos

Sam van Schaik/Imre Galambos
Manuscripts and Travellers
Studies in Manuscript Cultures
Edited by
Michael Friedrich
Harunaga Isaacson
Jörg B. Quenzer
Volume 2
De Gruyter
Manuscripts and
Travellers
The Sino-Tibetan Documents
of a Tenth-Century Buddhist Pilgrim
by
Sam van Schaik
Imre Galambos
De Gruyter
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Van Schaik, Sam.
Manuscripts and travellers : the Sino-Tibetan documents of a tenth-century
Buddhist pilgrim / Sam van Schaik, Imre Galambos.
p. cm. -- (Studies in manuscript cultures ; 2)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-3-11-022564-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Buddhist pilgrims and pilgrimages--China. 2. Buddhist pilgrims and pilg-
rimages--Tibet Region. 3. Dunhuang manuscripts. I. Daozhao, 10th century. II.
Galambos, Imre. III. Title. IV. Title: Sino-Tibetan documents of a tenth-century
Buddhist pilgrim.
BQ6450.C6V36 2011
294.3‘43510951509021--dc23 2011030781
ISBN 978-3-11-022564-8
e-ISBN 978-3-11-022565-5
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.
© 2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Unless stated otherwise, all images are © The British Library
Typesetting: Dörlemann Satz GmbH & Co. KG, Lemförde
Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
www.degruyter.com
Contents
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Part I Cultural Context and Historical Connections
2 The Dunhuang Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3 Buddhist Pilgrimage to the West in the Tenth Century . . . . . . 35
4 Tibetans of the Borderlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Part II The Manuscript
5 The Structure of the Manuscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
6 From the Gantong Monastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
7 The Baoenjing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
8 The Tibetan Tantric Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
9 The Letters of Passage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
10 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Acknowledgements
This book is the result of several years’ work, over the course of which
many people have contributed advice and assistance. The period of writing
coincided with a five year project on Chinese and Tibetan palaeography
funded by the Leverhulme Trust, and the book is a product of their support.
We would also like to acknowledge the British Academy, which provided a
grant that enabled us to follow in the footsteps of our pilgrim. We are grate-
ful to the director of the International Dunhuang Project (IDP), Susan Whit-
field, for her constant support and encouragement, and we also thank our
other colleagues at IDP and the British Library. At the Bibliothèque natio-
nale de France, Thierry Delcourt and Nathalie Monnet have kindly assisted
our research in the Pelliot collections. The staff of other institutions holding
major collections of Dunhuang manuscripts, including the National Library
of China, also facilitated our access to manuscripts and reproductions.
At an early stage in the writing of this book, Imre Galambos spent a
year in Kyoto at the invitation of Ryu¯koku University, and he expresses his
thanks to Yoshihiro Okada, Kazuyuki Enami and Shouji Sakamoto. During
this time he also received valuable suggestions for the book from Ko¯ichi
Kitsudo¯ and Toshio Tamura. He attended Tokio Takata’s seminar on Dun-
huang manuscripts at Kyoto University, and benefitted from the comments
and ideas of the participants, especially Yu Xin of Fudan University. On
other occasions, Tokio Takata read the manuscript and offered a number
of insights. Also at Kyoto University, To¯ru Funayama gave much helpful
advice on Chinese Buddhist texts.
Others were also kind enough to read the book, in full or in part, and offer
their advice. Tsuguhito Takeuchi and Kazushi Iwao contributed their ex-
pertise on Old Tibetan manuscripts and culture. Imre Hamar offered many
suggestions on the Buddhist context. Dan Martin and Nicole Willock, Gá-
bor Kósa and Wang Ding pointed out a number of useful sources. Finally,
we would like to express our particular thanks to Michael Friedrich, who
not only read and commented on the manuscript, but also undertook the
publication of the book in the series Studies in the Manuscript Cultures of
Asia and Africa.

1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pilgrimage is a point at which several different spheres of activity, often
considered in separation, intersect. While the religious aspect of pilgrimage
might be considered primary, pilgrimage usually involves the realms of
commerce and politics as well. Pilgrims often travel with merchants, where
there is safety in numbers, and may engage in some trade themselves, such
that it is often difficult to distinguish the pilgrim from the merchant. Equally,
political factors become involved as soon as the pilgrim plans an extended
journey, since travel over long distances invariably entails crossing political
borders. In these circumstances pilgrims need to obtain official permission
to travel, or the support of local authorities in the form of an escort or a
letter of recommendation.1
The manuscript that forms the basis for this book is a record of the pilgri-
mage of a Chinese monk in the late tenth century. The manuscript was one
of thousands that were sealed in a cave in Dunhuang, in Chinese Central
Asia, in the early eleventh century AD. The cave contained multitudes of
Buddhist texts, and a smaller but significant amount of ephemeral material
as well, including old contracts and letters. The cave was opened in the
early twentieth century, and its contents taken away by explorers to several
major institutions located in different countries. One of the major deposito-
ries of the Dunhuang material today is the British Library. It is here that our
manuscript is now located.
The Chinese monk who owned the manuscript was on a pilgrimage to the
Buddhist holy land of India. The main part of the manuscript (Manuscript A)
is a scroll containing the monk’s letters of passage for his journey through
Tibetan regions of what are now the Chinese provinces of Qinghai and
Gansu.2 This scroll was found glued together with two other manuscripts
1 On the overlapping of mercantile and religious activities see for example van Spengen
1998 on Tibetan pilgrims and Clarke 1998 on Hindu trading pilgrims.
2 Here “Tibetan regions” refers to the fact that these areas were dominated politically and
culturally by Tibetans and Tibetophone peoples like the Azha (Ch. Tuyuhun 吐谷渾).
It includes much of the Hexi corridor 河西走廊, the trade route that connects Central
China with the trade routes to the west. The region is known to Tibetans as Dokham
(mdo khams) or Amdo (a mdo).
2 1 Introduction
that the pilgrim acquired on his travels. The longest part is what we call
Manuscript B, with a Chinese su¯tra on the recto and Tibetan tantric texts on
the verso. Finally, the smallest part is Manuscript C, which has a Chinese
text commemorating the building of a monastery near Liangzhou, which
turns out to be a copy of an inscription from the early seventh century. Cru-
cially, the colophon to this manuscript states that the copy was made in 968
by the monk Daozhao, thus providing us with a date and a name.
These three manuscripts together form a single record of a pilgrimage.
They are referred to throughout this book as the “Daozhao manuscript”,
after what was probably the name of the monk himself.3 The manuscript is a
unique record of a pilgrimage, its multiple nature opening up for us the mul-
tifarious purposes of pilgrimage and the many functions of the manuscript.
It also sheds light on a crucial period of history, the second half of the tenth
century, when both China and Tibet were just beginning to attain some level
of stability after more than a century of fragmentation.
1.1 Passports and letters of passage in China
The passport has a long history in China.4 Passports are attested as far back
as the beginning of the first century AD, during the Han dynasty. Among the
wooden documents from the Etsin-gol region there are several permits for
travel, in which the issuer of the passport requests that the holder be allowed
to pass through official boundaries, primarily customs posts.5 By the third
century Silk Road trade was flourishing, and numerous traders, especially
Sogdians from the Iranian regions, travelled east to Central Asia and China.
The biography of an official from the Central Asian town of Dunhuang,
Cang Ci 倉慈 (fl. 227–232) relates how he helped Sogdian traders complete
their journeys.6 The biography states that previously such merchants had
3 The manuscript is IOL Tib J 754. As we will see below, the name Daozhao 道昭 ap-
pears in the colophon of part C of the manuscript. It is quite possible that this is the
name of the pilgrim monk, although it might equally be the name of a scribe hired by
the monk. In calling this manuscript the “Daozhao manuscript” we intend to give it a
memorable name, but the reader should keep in mind that the application of the name
Daozhao to the pilgrim monk is only a hypothesis.
4 On the history of the passport in general, see Torpey 2000, Alter 2003, and Lloyd
2003.
5 At this time passports appear to have been known by various names. By the end of the
Han dynasty (206BC–220AD), guosuo seems to have become standard. The term guo-
suo was then used through to the end of the Tang dynasty.
6 Sanguozhi 三國志: 512.