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Tibetan scholars conventionally divide their canonical tantric literature under two major rubrics: the
old tantras (rnying ma) of the earlier spread of the
doctrine (bstan pa snga dar) and the new tantras
(gsar ma), of the later spread of the doctrine (bstan
pa phyi dar). The terminology developed after many
previously unknown translations of Indian texts
began to enter Tibet from the late 10th century
onward, becoming known as the new tantras: hence
the tantric traditions that had appeared before
became known as the old tantras.
This distinction applied only within the most esoteric types of tantras, mainly those that had begun
to appear after the 8th century, and which accepted
prominent use of charnel ground (kplika) symbolism. Doctrinally, they were associated with a
radical non-dualism, that could, if not understood,
be misconstrued as subversive of conventional
morality. Doxographical classification in tantric
Buddhism has never been uniform, so that precise
definitions are difficult. Nevertheless, at slight risk
of generalisation, one can say that the term old
tantras nowadays implies texts from the three
categories of mahyoga, anuyoga, and atiyoga,
indicating progressive gradations of subtlety and
inwardness: mahyoga focuses on deity meditation
and visualisation; anuyoga on more inward yogas of
subtle physical veins and wheels (ndi, cakra); and
atiyoga (also known as rdzogs chen) on the highest
formless meditations on the ultimate nature of reality. The term new tantras usually implies texts classified as rnal byor bla na med pai rgyud (equivalent to
the Sanskrit terms yogottaratantras, yogintantras,
or yoganiruttaratantras; Sanderson, 2009, 146). The
more exoteric tantras, which had appeared in India
in earlier centuries, categorized by different authorities in various ways and under various rubrics,
including kriytantras, carytantras, upyatantras,
ubhayatantras, and yogatantras, were, along with
the Mahyna and, in Tibetan parlance, so-called
Hnayna scriptures, mainly accepted as a shared
common heritage of all Tibetan Buddhism.
Issues of Canonicity
The distinction between new tantras and old
tantras is more than merely a chronological designation, since despite a considerable overlap
of shared materials and approaches, the old and
new tantric traditions can also reflect differences of
ethos and doctrine. While the new tantras adopted
a simple lexical approach to translation privileging
text autonomy, the old tantras reflect the earliest
efforts at transplanting tantric culture in a much
broader sense from India to Tibet, thus privileging
target audience needs, and involving a significant
degree of adaptive localization to Tibetan culture
and civilisation (Mayer, 1996, 1153). As a consequence, although they were compiled largely from
Indic materials and to Indic templates, there existed
in many cases no exact Indian equivalent texts from
which the old tantras had originally been translated. A related and more important factor was that
the old tantras persisted in celebrating an original
Indian tantric vision (Gray, 2010), of a canon that
was in theory unclosable, since infinite quantities of
tantras as yet unknown would always remain in the
buddha fields, whence they could be transmitted to
fortunate human siddhas (perfected masters) at any
time. A moderate number of new tantric scriptures
thus continue to appear within the old tantra tradition until the present day, amongst the revealed
treasure literature (gter ma). By contrast, and especially after the decline of Buddhism in India, the
new tantras eventually became associated with the
conception of a canon that was in theory closable, in
the sense that all the Buddhas teachings intended
for Tibet had already been uttered, even if a small
number might still remain to be collected.
As a result, the canonicity of the old tantras has
sometimes been questioned by those who believe
exclusively in a closable canon. Thus, very few old
tantras were included in the original redaction
of Kanjur (Bka gyur), the 14th-century scriptural
compilation which marked Tibets first effective
attempts at canonical closure. Partly inspired by
the decline of Buddhism in India, and partly by
the example of a s tate-regulated canon in China, at
least according to tradition the Tibetan Kanjur was
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within gter ma collections, the total number of different texts within the extant old tantra collections
per se has recently been estimated by the University
of Virginias online Tibetan and Himalayan Library
as 1,133, of which 478 are classified as rdzogs chen,
45 as anuyoga, 568 as mahyoga, and 42 as supplementary texts (kha skong). No other categories
of texts are included within the old tantra collections other than these three most esoteric types of
tantras, all of which are believed to record the utterances of or dialogues between enlightened buddhas. The modern study of the old tantra collections
is not so advanced as that of the Kanjur, and their
study is additionally hampered by the destruction
since the 1950s by the Chinese of about 95% of old
tantra collection witnesses (personal communication, E.G. Smith). While every Rnying ma monastery of substance once sought to own an old tantra
collection, nowadays, only 13 witnesses are known
to survive, all but two in Bhutan and Nepal. Collectively, they fall within six different doxographical
redactions (see below, where they are listed within
their groupings).
Being largely excluded from the Kanjur does not
seem to have adversely affected the status or circulation of the old tantras. Their carefully honed
adaptations to Tibetan culture garnered popularity,
not only within the Rnying ma school, but across
the other traditions too. Although notionally based
upon the new tantras, the important Bka brgyud
traditions in particular have made copious use of
the old tantras, to the extent that in some cases, they
practice as much or even more old tantra than new
tantra. The Khon clan hierarchs, hereditary heads
of the Sa skya school which notionally upholds a
new tantra orthodoxy, retain the old tantra cycle
of Rdo rje Phur pa as their main meditational deity
(yi dam), and the great Dge lugs monastery of Se
ra, one of Tibets major institutions and notionally
based on the new tantras, also took the old tantra
cycle of Rta mgrin yang gsang (Hayagrva) as its
main meditational deity (Dreyfus, 2003, 348n48).
Several Dalai Lamas, notably the fifth, thirteenth,
and fourteenth, have been active promoters of
the old tantras, not least because the visionary old
tantra usage of Tibetan national narratives has rendered them a key element in attempts at national
reunification, throughout Tibetan history (Kapstein,
2000, 141162). So while some might assume Tibet
to have a notionally closed canon, the actual historical reality is more complex: the case was rather
that of a dual system in which notionally closed and
open tantric canons co-existed in parallel. If some
Historical Origins
Tibetan historiography associates the old tantras
with the great
state-sponsored introduction of
Buddhism that began in the late 7th century, when
Emperor Khri Srong lde btsan invited many famous
Buddhist teachers to Tibet, including some masters of Tantra. Yet the evidence from this period
is by no means unambiguous. More exoteric tantric systems were indeed translated, and some of
these were actively promoted, for example, the
Mahvairocanbhisabodhitantra as a part of state
ritual, and the Sarvadurgatipariodhanatantra as
a mortuary text to replace the traditional funerary
rite. However, the more esoteric forms of tantric
Buddhism (Vajrayna) that made prominent use of
charnel ground imagery, which were still relatively
new and controversial even in India at that time,
seem to have been controlled (Ishikawa, 1990, 4).
The two surviving official catalogues of texts translated (Phang thang ma and Ldan dkar ma/Lhan
dkar ma) show little sign of the vast repertoire of
highly esoteric mahyogatantras, anuyogatantras,
and atiyogatantras, which the later Rnying ma
tradition takes as its most prestigious and important
scriptures, and upon which it is founded (although
we cannot say whether some such texts might have
appeared in the third catalogue that is no longer
extant, the Mchims phu ma; Hermann-Pfandt, 2002,
129149; Halkias, 2004, 46105). Likewise, esoteric
Vajrayna translational terms were not systematically included in the official lexicographic tracts
prepared to facilitate and standardise translation.
One of them, the Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa of
814 ce, specified that such tantras should be kept
secret by order of the state because of their unsuitability for the spiritually immature, and then
observed that the existing translations of such
tantras had already caused damage through their
concealed meanings not being understood, so that
further translation should stop (Ishikawa, 1990, 4).
It is noteworthy also that an important early
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uncertainties about their origins, the old tantra traditions extant today do reflect at least some genuinely old traditions, including several that were
already well developed by the time the Dunhuang
caves were sealed in the 11th century; and moreover
that a small but important core of old tantra texts
did have close Indian counterparts, even if further
redactions might have been made to them in Tibet.
There are in fact direct suggestions within some
Dunhuang sources that early Tibetan tantric scriptures were deliberately redacted by Indian siddhas
to suit Tibetan audiences. PT44 describes Padmasambhava redacting the full textual corpus of the
Kla (Stake) deity that he had procured from the
Indian monastic university of Nland into a new
arrangement for transmission to his Tibetan and
Nepalese disciples, now redacted to incorporate
Himalayan protector deities that he himself had
newly tamed (Cantwell & Mayer, 2008, 4168). Likewise, IOL Tib J 321 seems to suggest Padmasambhava as the revealer of the Thabs zhags scripture
(Cantwell & Mayer, 2012, 9199). If so, this could be
of interest because it is the earliest known text to
introduce the distinctively old tantra form of the
winged Heruka. References to such winged Herukas
seem to be extremely infrequent in Indian sources,
unless in rare hybridized forms with Garua; yet the
classic old tantra form of Heruka is both independently winged and quite ubiquitous. This seems significant because birds, wings, and avian symbolism
in general, are fundamental to indigenous Tibetan
religion, so that the highly accentuated presence of
wings on the old tantric Herukas might have originated as a means of adaptive indigenization.
Rnying ma Tantras
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Bibliography
Primary Sources
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Rnying ma Tantras
the monastery by fire in February, 2012 (Almogi, forthcoming), but have not been made available for distribution.
(6) Sangs rgyas gling: Rnying mai rgyud bum manuscript
editions preserved by Sangs rgyas gling Temple, Tawang,
Arunachal Pradesh. Digital images were made in 2013
2014 by Ngawang Tsepag and Rob Mayer, and are in process of being made available from the Bodleian Library,
Oxford, and from the TBRC.
(b) South-Central Tibetan recension in 33 volumes, with two
extant manuscript witnesses:
(7) Gting skyes: Rin ma rgyud bum reproduced from the
manuscript preserved at Gting skyes Dgon pa byang Monastery in Tibet, under the direction of Dingo Khyentse
Rimpoche, Thimbu, 1973. An electronic version is available from the TBRC, under the title Rnying ma rgyud bum,
gting skyes (W21518). It is also available online, linked to
its detailed catalogue by THL, at http://www.thlib.org/
encyclopedias/literary/canons/ngb/catalog.php#cat=tk.
A detailed print catalogue was published in Roman Wylie
transcription with Japanese discussion (Kaneko, 1980).
(8) Rig dzin Tshe dbang nor bu: the Rig dzin Tshe dbang nor
bu edition of the rNying mai rgyud bum. 29 volumes are
held at the British Library, with the pressmark, Or.15217.
Volume Ka is held at the Bodleian Library Oxford at the
shelfmark, MS. Tib.a.24(R). Microfilm is available from
the British Library, and the Bodleian Library for volume
Ka. Title folios to volume Ga and volume A are held at the
Victoria and Albert Museum, accession nos.: IM 3181920
and IM 3171920. A detailed electronic inventory was made
by Cathy Cantwell, Michael Fischer, and Rob Mayer, originally on ngb.csac.anthropology.ac.uk, but currently in
process of transfer to the University of Viennas Resources
for Kanjur and Tenjur Studies https://www.istb.univie.
ac.at/kanjur/xml3/xml/index.php.
(c) Tibetan-Nepalese borderlands recension in 37 volumes,
with two extant manuscript witnesses (but many of its
texts descend from the same exemplars or near ancestors
as texts from the South-Central Tibetan Tradition, so that
for t ext-critical purposes, one can sometimes more fruitfully regard it as a subbranch of the S outh-Central Tibetan
tradition; see Cantwell & Mayer, 2007, 7078; Almogi,
forthcoming):
(9) Nubri: manuscript edition of the Rnying mai rgyud
bum from the Nubri area, held by the National Archives,
Kathmandu. Monochrome microfilm was made by the
Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project in 1993,
and can now be digitised to order: NGMPP Reel Nos. L
426/4L 448/1.
(10) Kathmandu: manuscript edition of the Rnying mai
rgyud bum from the Khumbu region, held by the National
Archives, Kathmandu. Microfilm is available through the
Nepal Research Centre of the Nepalese-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project. The short title is Rnying ma
rgyud bum, ms. no.22, running no. 17, reel AT12/3AT13/1.
(d) Sde dge xylograph in 26 volumes (a conflated single
witness):
(11) Sde dge: the Sde dge edition of the Rnying mai rgyud bum.
Twenty-six volumes, K
a-Ra, plus Dkar chag, volume A,
Sde dge par khang chen mo.
Secondary Literature
Rnying ma Tantras
Nyi-ma-
od-zer, Mnga-bdag, Bka brgyad Bde
gegs dus pai chos skor: A Reproduction of a Manuscript
Collection of Texts from the Revelations of M
a-bdag
a-ral
i-ma-od-zer, vol. I, Dalhousie, 1977.
Ogyan Tanzin, P., The Six Greatnesses of the Early Translations according to
Rong-zom Mahpandita, in:
C. Cppers, R. Mayer & M. Walter, eds., Tibet after Empire:
397
Robert Mayer