. tantric buddhism in ming china 559
lator. Evidently, he did not just rely on one single text, but welded
several texts of the same kind into one new text.^26
Texts discovered in the rare book collection of the National Library
of Beijing are of two groups. The first group consists of eight texts which
are all related to the Path and Fruit teaching of the Sa skya pa. They are
either commentaries on The Root Text of the Mārgaphala (Lam ’bras
rdo rje tshig rkang) or texts concerning the eight subsidiary cycles of
practice of the path and fruit teaching. The second group consists of
eighteen sādhana texts of Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. Several of them
are clearly attributed either to the Indian Master Mitrayogi or to the
third Karma pa bla ma Rang byung rdo rje (1284–1339). Thus, these
texts were transmitted by the bKa’ rgyud pa. The surprisingly large
number of these newly discovered Chinese texts of Tibetan tantric
Buddhist scriptures reflects the extent of the dissemination of Tibetan
tantric Buddhism in Ming China. It testifies that Buddhist teachings
and practices of both the Sa skya pa and bKa’ bgyud pa traditions were
often spread among Chinese followers in Ming China. It is worth-
while mentioning that the existing Chinese texts of Tibetan tantric
Buddhism are evidently only a small part of all texts of the same kind
translated during the Ming period. Within the texts preserved in the
National Library of Beijing there is a text entitled Mili woba daoguo
juan , i.e. the Volume of the Path and Fruit Teaching
of Virūpa. According to the note of the text it is only the tenth volume
of the whole compendium of the Path and Fruit teaching of Virūpa,
while most of other nine volumes are unfortunately no longer extant.
From this fact alone we can imagine how great was the number of
texts of Tibetan tantric Buddhism translated into and disseminated
among Chinese.
The Ming origin of these texts can be assured by the fact that the
best known translator of the time bSod nams grags must have lived
during the Ming. bSod nams grags was the translator of numerous
texts including two texts preserved in the National Palace Museum of
Taiwan, five of eight texts in the National Library of Beijing and nine
other Sa skya pa texts, mostly works of the third Sa skya pa patriarch
Grags pa rgyal mtshan, included in Dacheng yaodao miji
. He was often mistakenly considered a man of late Yuan period.
However, in both Jixiang xijin’gang ganlu quan and Rulai dingji
(^26) Cf. Shen and An, forthcoming.