318 karénina kollmar-paulenz
When the ministers came to a positive conclusion of their investiga-
tion which dispelled their suspicion the king met ntarakita for the
rst time and was taught the fundamental principles of the Buddhist
doctrine. According to the dBa’-bzhed the emperor acquired great faith
in the new religion, but then disaster befell Tibet:
[ The king] thought about translating many doctrinal treatises (dar ma) of
India, but then [the royal palace of] ’Phang ’thang was ooded, the royal
castle of lHa sa was struck by lightning and burnt down, great famine
as well as epidemics affecting people and animals occurred. All the great
zhang blon considered [the calamities] as the consequence of practicing
the doctrine and [the bTsan po], growing suspicious, decided to abandon
it for a short while.^22The struggle for power and in uence at the royal court of the Yar-lung
dynasty is thus described in symbolic language.
ntarakita was a learned Mahyna scholar, and the doctrine he
taught was mainly concerned with philosophical issues about the right
way to salvation. His language of thought was Sanskrit, a language
which over many centuries had developed a rich and differentiated
philosophical terminology. The Tibetan language of the time was lack-
ing in this sophisticated terminology. As already stressed, the rst texts
to be written down in the Tibetan language were of a legal nature,
and many of the documents discovered at Dunhuang were concerned
with administrative and legal matters. Even the texts Ariane Macdon-
ald examined and used as the basic source material for her amazing
description of an indigenous Tibetan religion, allegedly highly structured
and organised and propagated by the kings of the Yar-lung dynasty,^23
by close examination talk more about a moral way of life and political
wisdom. That is to say, they present a kind of common good which
the king had to adhere to in order to reign successfully,^24 rather than a
religion. In the early times of the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet
two divergent aspects that even nowadays determine the religious life
of the Tibetans, were already apparent: on the one hand a pragmatic
attitude towards religious issues, and on the other, the focus on sote-
riological ideas. The pragmatic orientation reveals itself in the need
(^22) dBa’-bzhed, fol. 8r, see Wangdu & Diemberger 2000, p. 46. The term zhang-blon can
denote (1) “uncle-minister” and (2) “uncles and ministers”, see the detailed explanation
in Wangdu & Diemberger 2000, p. 29 n. 36. 23
Macdonald 1971, pp. 90–321.
(^24) Cf. Stein 1985, pp. 83f.