རྦ་བཞེད་ (Ziling 2011) : Annotated Transcription

This text is a transcription of the རྦ་བཞེད་ reproduced as a photo-lithograph facsimile in volume 36 of Bod gyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs gnyis pa, published from Ziling in 2011 (see BRC W1PD153537). The facsimiles are also available in digital form here: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3359897. This text is closely related to the Dba' bzhed (published from Vienna in 2000). The palaeography and the narrative correspond in the two versions and the actual copies of both manuscripts were probably made in the fourteenth century. They have a similar library notation on the first folio. The narrative in the text given here runs parallel to the Dba' bzhed up to folio 4v., after which the རྦ་བཞེད་ breaks off and turns to events in the life of the Buddha. This suggests the text was already a fragment, married to a Buddha narrative, in the exemplar. The transcription given here was completed before the untimely death of Tsering Gonkatsang on 27 April 2018. The study of this copy of the text was carried out under ERC synergy grant no. 609823.