National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

XI. The Chronicles of Ti-nan (Lahul)

When stationed at Kye-laṅ, Lahul, 1906–8, I heard a rumour that the chiefs of Ti-nan (or Gondhla) were in possession of a family chronicle. I did not, however, succeed in getting to see it. I therefore asked Miss Duncan, in 1908, to make efforts to procure it. She actually obtained the MS. from Hirā-cand, the present chief of Ti-nan. The greater part of the document was copied and translated for her use by Maṅgal-cand, brother of the reigning Jo of Ko-loṅ. Maṅgal-cand did not consider it necessary to copy the latter part of the little book, as it contained only the names of the guests who were present at the death-ceremony of the chief Ha-ri-ya, in the sixteenth century. As Maṅgal-cand's translation was not quite literal, I had a new one made in 1908. For the present publication of the Tibetan text I intended to reproduce Miss Duncan's copy of the document. Miss Duncan had died, too early for Tibetan archæology, in 1909, and her brother's efforts to procure the Tibetan text were in vain. I therefore asked Mr. Hettasch, of Kye-laṅ, to send my old munshi, Bzod-pa-Bde-chen, from Kye-laṅ to Ti-nan to copy it once more. After several fruitless attempts to get hold of the MS. the munshi succeeded, and the Tibetan text attached below is based on his copy. My hope that he would include the list of the 40 guests who were present at the Chief Ha-ri-ya's death-ceremony was, however, not realized. On the contrary, Bzod-pa stopped his work a few lines earlier than Maṅgal-cand. He believed that the chronicle proper ended there, and that the rest of the MS. had nothing to do with history. Bzod-pa's copy closely agrees with the translations made from Miss Duncan's copy of the text. A few names of chiefs, omitted in Bzod-pa's copy through some clerical error, were restored from the translations.

The principality of Ti-nan extends from the confluence of the rivers Chandrā and Bhāgā about 20 miles up the valley of the river Chandrā, and is of little importance. The language of its inhabitants is Ti-nan, and Manchat in a few villages. For specimens see my publication, Die historischen und mythologischen Erinnerungen der Lahouler, and Tabellen der Pronomina und Verba in den drei Sprachen Lahoul's (ZDMG., vol. lxiii, pp. 65 ff.).

TEXT

།གཞེར་ཅི་མེ་མོར་ཀྱག་འའི་ཆུམ་རབས་མཆུགས་མི་།།
༄༅། །ཨོཾ་མཱ། །ཨོཾ་གྱི་གྱི་མི་ཅི་།

སྒྱར་མཐུམ་མཚོ་དུ་གུར་འའི་སྒྱུར་འ་མགར་ཆུམ་[རང་] །¹
སྒྱར་མཀྲིས་གར་གཀྲགས་སྒྱུར་མཚར་རང་མོར་རོས།
སྒྱར་མཐུམ་ཅི་མཚོར་འའི་མར་འར་རྒྱུ་གྱི་སྒྱི།
ཆུམས་གཀྲས་རྒྱི་རྒྱི་མཀྲིག་མཀྲགས་གྱུམ་མི་མཀྲགས་མི་།།