国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

4ANTIQUITIES OF INDIAN TIBET   [VoL. II

inentioned above. Dr. K. Marx gives the following description of Schlagintweit's

copy of the text (J. A. S. B., 1891, pp. 97-8) :—` It apparently was written in

dbu-can characters ; consequently, in all those cases where certain dbu-med letters

are apt to be confounded it may be taken for granted that, as compared with

dbu-med MSS., preference must be given to Schlagintweit's edition, as being

founded on an dbu-can MS. On the other hand, any MS. specially prepared by

a native of Ladakh for a foreigner is apt to be less reliable than others of

independent origin, for the reason—which would especially be true regarding

historical documents—that the copyist ,will have a tendency to slightly alter the

text, in the interest of his master, religion, or country, suppressing such facts as

may seem to be derogatory to their fame, and substituting for phrases liable to be

misunderstood others of a less equivocal character. As to Schlagintweit's edition,

it must be admitted that the lamas who wrote the copy for his brother did not

give way to any such tendency until they reached the 6th line of folio 30a ;

be it that they wished to súppress certain facts contained in the sequel,

or that they were of opinion that the " merit " of the presents extended no further :

certain it is that beyond this point the text is merely a meaningless jumble of

words, culled at random from the original, and put together in such a way that

only a careful examination of the text by one who knew the language could reveal

the fraud. These two and a half pages, therefore, which are supposed to embrace

the history of about two centuries, are really not fit for translation, ' and the

attempt can only conduce to results totally misleading. All the other parts of the

MS. seem to have been done fairly well. There are mistakes in spelling, and

here and there an omission or an addition of a word or phrase that did not belong

to the original ; but, on the whole, the MS. seems to have been better than many

one sees here.' Let me add a few words to Dr. K. Marx's description of the last

two and a half pages of S MS., embracing the history of Ladakh from Bde-ldan-

rnam-rgyal to the Dogra ar. It is not necessary to believe that ` the merit'

of Schlagintweit's presents extended no further, and that for this reason the royal

MS. was not properly copied. I have come to the conviction that the royal MS.

did not contain a better text. The royal MS. was one of those which close the

history of Ladakh with Sen-ge-rnam-rgyal's reign. Other MSS. of the same type

are K. Marx's A MS. and the London MS. (L MS.). Although the history

proper of S MS. and L MS. ended with Sen-ge-rnam-rgyal, a list of names of the

more recent kings, together with a few historical notes, was added by a later hand.

That King IIjigs-med-rnam-rgyal actually did not possess a better text of the

history of his country after c. 1620 A.D. becomes evident from the following incident :-

when his son, ex-King Bsod-nams-rnam-rgyal, on a recent visit to Khalatse,

discovered that the Tin-hdzin-pa family was in possession of a Rgyal-rabs which

contained full descriptions of the reigns of the last independent kings, he carried

away all these chapters on recent history, returning to the family only the first

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part of the history.