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Antiquities of Indian Tibet : vol.2 |
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2 ANTIQUITIES OF INDIAN TIBET [VOL. II
marked Glr. in his dictionary may be traced in the Tibetan text of Schlagintweit's
edition. But Jäschke's rendering is often different from that of Schlagintweit.
Dr. K. Marx, Moravian missionary at Leh, soon saw the insufficiency of
Schlagintweit's translation. At the same time he discovered at Leh two MSS. which
contained fuller accounts of the times subsequent to A.D. 1620. He even induced
a Ladakhi nobleman, Munshi Dpal-rgyas, to write the story of the Dogra war, as such
an account did not yet exist. Basing on this new material, Dr. Marx proposed to edit
a history of Ladakh (of the West Tibetan empire, beginning with King Ni-ma-rngon
in the tenth century) in three parts. The first part was to contain the history of
Ladakh from Ni-ma-m gon to Sen- e-rnam-rgYal (beginning of the seventeenth century);
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the second part, the history from Bde-ldan-rnam-rgyal down to the Dogra wars (1834) ;
and the third part, that of the Dogra wars. The first part of his work appeared in
the J.A.S.B., 1891, consisting of text, translation, and notes, exactly as intended by the
author, who had died a few weeks before its publication. Of the second part, the
Tibetan text being lost, an English translation only, with a few notes, was published
by Dr. K. Marx's brother, Professor G. Dalman. It appeared in the J.A.S.B., 1894.
The third part, text according to Ca MS., with a translation by my wife, sister-in-law
to Dr. K. Marx, appeared in J.A.S.B., 1902.
. This was the state of things when Dr. Vogel, officiating • Director-General of
Archeology in India, asked me to bring out a complete edition of the La-dvags-rgyal-
rabs. In spite of all the labour spent on this little work the edition of the text, as well
as its translation, had still many shortcomings. Not only was the text incomplete and
scattered over various journals in two languages, but also the translation in many parts
left much to be desired.
My first aim was, naturally, to recover those MSS. which had been intended by
Dr. Marx to serve as a basis for his second publication, viz. the history of Ladakh from
c. A.D. 1620 to 1834. These MSS. were called by Dr. Marx B MS. and C MS. Judging
from the description which Dr. Marx gives of the author of C MS., I came to the
conclusion that he might be Munshi Dpal-rgyas of Leh. My conjecture proved right,
and the Rev. G. Reichel of Leh was soon enabled to send me a copy of C MS., covering
that particular period of history. Munshi Dpal-rgyas, however, was not satisfied with
furnishing this little chapter. On the contrary, he offered me in addition his most
recent and most complete copy of his history of the Dogra wars. An examination
of this new account of the Dogra wars showed me the advisability of embodying it
in the La-dvags-rgyal-rabs. Not to miss the meaning of a number of difficult
passages in that chapter, I translated it at once into German. This German translation,
together with a note on the relationship of the three different accounts of the Dogra
war to one another, was published in the Z. D. M. G., vol. lxiv. All these different
versions seem to corne from Munshi Dpal-rgyas. It was more difficult to trace
Dr. K. Marx's B MS. As a description of the person who owned it about twenty
years ago had not been left by Dr. K. Marx, I tried to recover it by offering
a prize to the person who should find it. The prize, amounting to 10 Rs. only,
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