112 Kano
We have pointed out, based on relevant passages scattered in historical
sources that Retreng is on record as having possessed a large collection of
Sanskrit manuscripts in Tibet from the 11th to the 17th century.
After the upheavals of 1947 (looting by troops of the Tibetan government)
and 1967 (destruction in the Cultural Revolution), the manuscripts went miss-
ing. Fortunately, we were able to locate a title list of the collection in Lhundrup
chöpel’s monastic chronicle, a source of rich information relating to the time
before the monastery’s destruction (or before the beginning of the 20th cen-
tury; see footnote 73). The list contains 29 works once in the possession of Atiśa
and the Translator (i.e. Nagtsho).
Finally, we have been able to identify the current location of three items
from Atiśa’s Sanskrit manuscript collection. According to Luo Zhao’s cata-
logue descriptions, two sets of paper manuscripts (Box A, 191 fols. and Box B,
155 fols.) in the Potala have scripts labelled ‘Retreng’ (Tib. Rwa sgreng); some
colophons in these sets mention Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna’s former ownership of
them, while some titles correspond to ones in Lhundrup chöpel’s list. The third
item is the Aṣṭasāhasrikā manuscript from Vajrāsana currently preserved in
the Potala. In summary, we have confirmed the existence of Atiśa’s manuscript
collection, which has long been a matter of some doubt. Furthermore, 24 folios
from Sanskrit manuscripts gifted from Dalai Lama XIII to the Russian emperor
Nicholas II (currently preserved in the Russian Academy) turn out to come
from the same collection.
That the manuscript material is paper may raise some questions. The
manuscripts directly brought from Vikramaśīla by Atiśa may well have been
palm leaves, but they were very likely copied in Tibet, where the use of paper
as writing material was already widespread.86 If so, when were they cop-
ied? Judging from the script used in the Third Bhāvanākrama manuscript,
which displays the archaic shape often seen in Nepalese palm-leaf manu-
scripts, it cannot have been much later than Atiśa’s lifetime. There are some
examples of paper Sanskrit manuscripts in Tibet dating from the 13th cen-
tury: e.g. one containing Manorathanandin’s Pramāṇavārttikavṛtti, copied by
Vibhūticandra (ca. 1170–1250),87 and another one containing Prajñākaragupta’s
86 There are, to be sure, examples of Tibetan manuscripts written on palm leaves. See, for
instance, Zhang Hanyi 張涵毅, Shicong Pan 潘世聰, Kelin Yang 楊克林, Xizang Budala
gong: shijie wuji shang de gongdian 西藏布達拉宮: 世界屋脊上的宮殿 [Potala Palace
of Tibet: the Summit Palace on the Roof of the World] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin mei-
shu chubanshe, 1982), 88–89.
87 Sāṅkṛtyāyana, “Search for Sanskrit Mss. in Tibet,” 33 n. 1: likhiteyaṃ paṇḍi(ta)-
vibhūticandreṇa.