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

mentioned 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historical documents—that the copyist will have a tendency to slightly alter the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 suppress 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 war. 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 Seṅ-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 Seṅ-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 Hjigs-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 Tiñ-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
part of the history.