352 sven bretfeld
all,^28 it is nevertheless quite possible that his efforts to invite Indian Bud-
dhist masters and to send Tibetans to study Indian traditions were at
least partly due to the existence of Buddhist groups within his domin-
ion, who used to perform practices suspicious to the king. It seems that
Rin-chen bzang-po composed a “refutation of false tantras” (sngags-log
sun-’byin) after his return, but this text is no longer available. As Kashmir
was a well-known centre of Buddhist learning in the tenth century and
the part of India best accessible from mNga’-ris, Ye-shes-’od and his
successors established close connections to the Buddhist culture of this
country. This was manifested in the Kashmiri style of architecture and
artwork of many early religious buildings of Western Tibet.
Information on Rin-chen bzang-po’s life and work is not consistently
transmitted.^29 The sources agree that he took up the life of a Buddhist
monk at the age of 13 (970 AD) and at the age of 18 he was sent to
Kashmir, where he studied under various Buddhist masters for nearly
10 years. When he returned to Tibet in 985 he began his great project
to translate Buddhist texts into Tibetan. A great number of the transla-
tions that were later included in the Tibetan Buddhist canon (bKa’-’gyur)
bear his name or those of his disciples in the colophons. It seems that
Rin-chen bzang-po was mainly interested in Prajñpramit literature
and, above all, tantric texts. The “Great Translator” (lo-ts-ba chen-po),
as he was nicknamed later on, was highly patronised by the rulers of
Pu-hrangs: lHa-lde, the son (or nephew) and successor of Ye-shes-’od,
appointed him as his Vajra Master (rdo-rje slob-dpon) and Head Priest
(bdu’i mchod-gnas); this king also sponsored the construction of a large
number of monasteries in Western Tibet and Ladakh for Rin-chen
bzang-po, as well as two further travels to India, from where he
returned in the company of Buddhist scholars, artists and craftsmen.
If this information is reliable, Rin-chen bzang-po’s merits for the “later
spread” of Buddhism in Tibet cannot be overestimated. Some of the
monasteries he established all across the Western Tibetan country^30
gradually developed into centres of monastic learning and gave home
to translation groups collaborating in the work of translating Buddhist
(^28) Martin 1991, p. 142.
(^29) Cf. Tucci 1988 for a detailed discussion of the sources. Chapters on his life in
later historical works like the Blue Annals are based mainly on a biography (rnam-thar)
composed by dPal-ye-shes, one of his disciples (edited in Tucci 1988, translated in
Snellgrove & Skorupski 1980). 30
The sources speak of the suspicious number of 108 monasteries founded by
Rin-chen bzang-po.