84 Kano
Both attempts proved fruitless.3 A monk of the monastery told Kawaguchi that
the manuscripts he was interested in might have been consumed by fire 450
years earlier during the Mongolian attack of 1240. A piece of information that
will prove very valuable was provided by the regent, who described the manu-
scripts to Sāṅkṛtyāyana as being “half burnt.”4
Religious treasures of the monastery were later looted by troops of the
Tibetan government headed by Shuköpa (Tib. Shu bkod pa, fl. 20th century),
who had been sent from Lhasa in May 1947 for suppressing a rebellion there
and restoring order, while still later, in 1967, the monastery itself was destroyed
by the Chinese army. Today we find no trace of the collection in the monastery,
restoration of which was started in the 1980s.5
2 Tracing the Origin of Atiśa’s Manuscript Collection
After describing his visit to Retreng in 1934, Gendün chöpel, in his Grains of
Gold (Tib. gSer gyi thang ma),6 discusses the manuscript collection that he
himself was unable to inspect. His observations contain valuable hints regard-
ing the contents of the collection:
3 For details of the challenges involved, see Kano, “Rāhula,” 123–136.
4 Sāṅkṛtyāyana, Rāhula, Merī Jīvan-yātrā (Īlāhabad: Kitāb Mahal, 1950), vol. 2, 247, 252;
Sāṅkṛtyāyana, Rāhula, “Sanskrit Palm-Leaf Mss. in Tibet,” Journal of the Bihar and Orissa
Research Society 21.1 (1935): 24: “I had heard from Re-ḍing-rin-po-che, the Regent King of
Tibet, that his monastery possesses a half-burnt palm-leaf MS. which originally belonged
to the collection of books which the Ācārya Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna (982–1054 AD) brought
with him from India”; ibid., p. 25: “I was informed that it was a half-burnt copy of the Prajñā-
pāramitā”; Kano, “Rāhula,” 128, 131.
5 See ’Jam dpal dge ’dun et al., dPal gyi ’byung gnas rwa sgreng chos sde chen po’i lo rgyus skal
ldan dang ba ’dren pa’i pho nya [Messenger who Inspires Devotion for the Fortunate Ones: An
Account of the Great Religious Seat of Retreng, which is the Source of Glory] (no place: no
publisher, no date), (composed in the 2000s), 32–33, and Kano, “Rāhula,” 135.
6 For the details of the gSer gyi thang ma, see Kano Kazuo 加納和雄, “Gendun chonphe
cho sekai chishiki kō ōgon no heigen dai isshō wayaku: 1930 nendai no chibetto
ni okeru bonbun shahon chōsa kiroku (1) ゲンドゥンチュンペー著『世界知
識行・黄金の平原』第一章和訳―1930 年代のチベットにおける梵文写本調
査記録―(1) [An Annotated Translation of the First Chapter of dGe ’dun chos ’phel’s gTam
rgyud gser gyi thang ma 1],” Mikkyobunka kenkyūjo kiyō 密教文化研究所紀要 [Bulletin of
the Research Institute of Esoteric Buddhist Culture] 23 (2010): 63–103 and Thupten, Jinpa,
and Lopez, Donald S. Jr., Grains of Gold: Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveler (Chicago: Univ of
Chicago Press, 2014).