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

8

In addition to the Indian Vaṃśāvalis, Tibetan historiography may have been influenced in very early times by Chinese historiographers. Rockhill may be right when he compares the seven Tibetan Khri (heavenly throne) kings with the twelve celestial sovereigns of the Chinese Sanhwang; the six Tibetan Legs with the eleven terrestrial sovereigns of the Chinese; and the eight Tibetan Lde with the nine human sovereigns of the Chinese. Possibly the Tibetans were not at once furnished with sufficient names to satisfy a Chinese historian. Therefore they had to manufacture new names or classes of names, and insert them in their lists. This may account for the repeated beginning in the Rgyal-rabs, part iv, as we have it at present. Thus we find two kings of the name of Spu-rgyal. Of the palace of Phyi-dbaṅ-stag-rtse, which was stated in the chronicles to have been in existence during the reign of the first king, we hear again, ten or eleven generations later, that it was then built as the first palace of the country. Then, although the country is described as having been in a high state of civilization under its first king, a first introduction of civilization is attributed also to several of his successors. From the Chinese the Tibetans probably learned history-writing in prose. In this connexion, however, we must not forget that the Tibetans are ethnically related to the Chinese. It is not impossible that both these nations had inherited their lists of mythological kings from their common ancestors. And this may account for the similarity between their lists of mythological kings.

But a really intelligent form of prose-writing was not acquired before the fifteenth century, when quite a new way of recording facts made its appearance. This last and best form of chronicling was probably learnt from the Muhammadan writers of the period.

The man who compiled the story of the kings of Yar-luṅ, Rgyal-rabs, part iv, did not derive his information only from chronicles in prose or verse, but also made use of the folklore of his time, and thereby added a new charm to his chapter of the history. Thus we find an old proverb placed at the beginning of the chapter, and popular ditties, referring to the reigns of Spu-de-guṅ-rgyal and Khri-sroṅ-lde-tsaṅ. The first song in part iii is probably a verse from Buddhist literature which had become popular, whilst the second song was taken from the Lalita-vistara. It is interesting that in Dr. K. Marx's B MS. (part viii) also an ancient popular song is found, which it was the historian's endeavour to turn into prose. My attention was drawn to this interesting fact in the following way :—I told my Tibetan assistant, Bzod-pa-phun-tshogs of Khalatse, to read through the third chapter of Schlagintweit's text of the chronicles, to see if he could find poetical parts in it. He read it and said that he had not found anything, because the old song of Ali Mir, which was contained in Dr. K. Marx's Rgyal-rabs, was omitted in Schlagintweit's copy. He said that he had often heard people sing a song of Ali Mir. When I examined Marx's text, I could see at once that seven lines of the old song could be easily restored by making only very slight alterations in the text. It then runs as follows :—