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『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

III. The Kings of Gu-ge

ACCORDING TO THE DPAG-BSAM-LJON-BZAN (p. 152)

It is not very probable that the original 11-IS. of the chronicles of the Gu-ge kings

is still in existence. When the vassal kingdom of Gu-ge was separated from the West

Tibetan empire and annexed by Lhasa (c. 1650 A.D. ), the Lhasa government apparently

did its best to eradicate in the new province every reminiscence of the glory of the

former Gu-ge kings. Fortunately, a brief account of these important kings is still found

in Tibetan historical works. The part played by the early Gu-ge kings in the re-establish-

ment of Buddhism in Tibet, after Glan-dar-ma's persecution, was of too great importance

to be passed over in silence ; and for this reason no history of Lamaism was considered

complete without an account of the Gu-ge kings. The first to publish a genealogical

tree of them, from the Tibetan, was Schlagintweit in his Könige von Tibet. He gives

their names under Nos. 46-54 and 99-113 of his genealogical table I. He was, however,

not quite certain of the connexion between these two groups of names. He gives, in

addition, the Mongolian forms of the names of all those kings, from which circumstance

we learn that this genealogy had already found its way into the historical literature

of the Mongols. The Mongol names, as they occur in Schlagintweit's tables, completely

agree with those of the Bodhimör. But in Ssanang-Ssetsen's History of the Mongols

somewhat different Mongol names are used for the same kings. I. J. Schmidt, in

his translation of Ssanang-Ssetsen, was, in fact, the first to tell us something of the

Gu-ge kings. But I imagine that only very few persons were able to recognize this line

of kings in their Mongolian dress. In his notes Schmidt gives a translation of the

corresponding chapters of the Bodhimör. One line of the Bodhimör account is of

particular interest. We read in Ssanang-Ssetsen, notes from the Bodhimör, p. 369, as

follows :—` The above genealogy of chiefs is only a short extract. He who wants to

read the fuller history of these kings, their doings, and institutions, may look them up

in the various chronicles of their reigns.' This note proves that a number of more

detailed chronicles must at one time have existed in Gu-ge. Besides the short chronicle

given below, which is here for the first time translated into English, the Dpag-bsam-ljon-

bzaii, pp. 185-6, as well as other Tibetan and Mongolian works, contains detailed accounts

of Atīsa's mission to Tibet during the reigns of Ye-ses-hod and Byan-chub-hod of Gu-ge.

As translations of these chapters occur not only in Schmidt's Ssanang-Ssetsen

(pp. 425 sqq.), but also in S. Ch. Das' Indian Pandits in the Land of Snow (1893,

pp. 50 sqq.), it will suffice now to refer to those publications. The Tibetan text of the

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