560 shen weirong
zunsheng fomu xianzhengyi there are several lists of the transmission
lineages. Often the last transmitter of the text in the lineage was the
master who lived five generations after ’Phags pa bla ma. For instance,
the last transmitter of the text Jixiang xijin’gang ganlu quan was called
Janaluoshimi ( or Niyanaluoshimi )
which is clearly the Chinese transcription of the Sanskrit name
Jňānarasmi.^27 Jňānarasmi was the Sanskrit name of Zhi Guang
who was the most well-known Chinese Buddhist master in Early Ming.
Zhi Guang was a follower of the Indian (Kashimir) pandita Sahājaśrī
and went to Tibet as an official envoy sev-
eral times to invite Tibetan lamas to the Ming court. Zhi Guang and
his followers were called “Xitian seng” (monks from the west-
ern heaven) or “Xiyu seng” (monks from the western regions)
by their contemporaries.^28 It was a usual practice for them to have
a Sanskrit or Tibetan name (fanyu fa ming ). They trans-
lated both Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist texts into Chinese. It is thus
clear that bSod nams grags should have been one of “the monks from
the western heaven” belong to the Sangha community of Master Zhi
Guang. He could not be possibly a man of the late Yuan period, but
a great translator of the Ming period. Since bSod nams grags was the
translator of numerous texts of Sa skya patriarchs including Grags pa
rgyal mtshan, Sa skya pandita Kun dga’ rgyal mtshan (1182–1251) and
’Phags pa bla ma, it becomes evident that the path and fruit teaching of
the Sa skya pa tradition was continuously disseminated and practiced
in China proper during the Ming period. The spread of Tibetan tantric
Buddhist teachings and practices was not seriously interrupted by the
transition from the Yuan to the Ming. It is certain that many more
Chinese translations of Tibetan tantric Buddhist texts were created by
Zhi Guang and his disciples during the early Ming period.
(^27) Shanayiluo 2005, vol. 2.
(^28) Deng 1994, 34–43.