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

III. The Kings of Gu-ge

According to the Dpag-bsam-ljon-bzan (p. 152)

It is not very probable that the original MS. 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 Glaṅ-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-
bzan, pp. 185–6, as well as other Tibetan and Mongolian works, contains detailed accounts
of Atīśa's mission to Tibet during the reigns of Ye-śes-ḥod and Byaṅ-chub-ḥod 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