The Transmission Of Sanskrit Manuscripts 103
in the publication by Obermiller.61 Three or four letters in both the right and
left margins have broken off.62 This paper manuscript is very likely the manu-
script once preserved at Retreng (no. 26 above), as we shall discuss in the next
paragraph.
5 Identifying the Current Location of the Collection
We have gained a rough idea of the contents of the collection from Lhundrup
chöpel’s list and other historical sources. Are the manuscripts still in existence
somewhere? If so, can we locate them?
As Steinkellner notes, the Chinese army brought religious treasures from
local monasteries to Lhasa in Tibet during the 1960s.63 Sanskrit manuscripts
61 Obermiller, Eugene Evgenyevich, Kamalaśīla Bhāvanākrama: Traktat o sozercanii
(Moscow: Izdat. Vostočnoj Literatury, 1963).
62 Before the text of the Bhāvanākrama, there is a passage in the beginning part of
the first folio (1v1): ya / ity api sa bhagavāṃs tathāgato ’rhan samyaksaṃbuddho
vidyācaraṇasampannaḥ sugato lokavid anuttaraḥ puruṣadamyasārathiḥ śāstā devānāñ ca
manuṣyānāñ ca buddho bhagavān // This is a stock phrase found in the Divyavadāna etc.
Tucci, who edited the Third Bhāvanākrama, said that he used a Sanskrit manu-
script different from the one published by Obermiller (Kamalaśīla Bhāvanākrama), but
his assertion is probably mistaken (as pointed out by Yuyama Akira 湯山明, “Review:
Giussepe Tucci, Minor Buddhist Texts, Part III: Third Bhāvanākrama. Roma: IsMEO, 1971,”
Indo Iranian Journal 17.3–4 (1975): 268); the Third Bhāvanākrama is a codex unicus.
63 Steinkeller, Ernst, A Tale of Leaves: On Sanskrit Manuscripts in Tibet: Their Past and their
Future (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2004), 20–23.
According to Luo Zhao, “The Cataloguing of Sanskrit Manuscripts Preserved in the TAR:
A Complicated Process that has Lasted More Than Twenty Years,” in Sanskrit Manuscripts
from China: Proceedings of a Panel at the 2008 Beijing Seminar on Tibetan Studies October
13 to 17, ed. Ernst Steinkellner, Duan Qing, and Helmut Krasser (Beijing: China Tibetology
Publishing House, 2009), 229, some Sanskrit manuscripts of Sakya (Tib. Sa skya) were
moved to Lhasa in 1962. The catalogue by Luo Zhao lists two Sanskrit manuscripts brought
from Sakya (Northern Sa skya?) on 18 August 1976 (Luo Zhao, Luobulinka, 66, 106). It also
lists manuscripts from Gorum temple (Tib. sGo rum lha khang) of Sakya (a temple in the
Northern complex) currently preserved at Norbulingka and Drepung (ibid., pp. 91, 130;
cf. pp. 41, 64–65). On the other hand, Sanskrit manuscripts of Chagpe temple (Tib. Phyag
dpe lha khang) in Sakya South (Tib. Lha khang chen mo), which was left undestroyed
during the Cultural Revolution, seem to still be in Sakya today. For a list of manuscripts
preserved in Gorum temple and Chagpe temple in the 1930s, see Sāṅkṛtyāyana, “Sanskrit
Palm-Leaf Mss. in Tibet,” 42–43; Sāṅkṛtyāyana, “Second Search of Sanskrit Palm-leaf Mss.
in Tibet,” 21–32; dGe ’dun chos ’phel, gSer thang, 28–30. For photographic images of Sakya
manuscripts preserved at IsIAO, see Sferra, “Sanskrit Texts,” 48–50.