'Gos Lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal's Extensive Commentary on and Study of the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā

{{Article
|ArticleLayout=Academic Layout
|ArticleTitle=&#39;Gos Lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal&#39;s Extensive Commentary on and Study of the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā
|AuthorPage=People/Mathes, K.
|PubDate=2002
|ArticleSummary=In this paper I present some preliminary observations on 'Gos Lo tsā ba Gzhon nu dpal's (1392-1481) commentary on the ''Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā'', which I am editing and evaluating as a part of my habilitation project. Three years ago I gained access to a photocopy of a 698-folio-long handwritten ''dbu med'' version of this text.<ref>'Gos ''Lo tsā ba'' Gzhon nu dpal: ''Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma'i bstan bcos kyi 'grel bshad de kho na nyid rab tu gsal ba'i me long'', 698 fols. (''dbu med''),
unpublished.</ref> Like the Indian ''vyākhyā'', the commentary is divided into five chapters. Their headings are listed together with the folio numbers on a cover page, which bears the seal of the Zhva dmar pa and assigns the letter ''ha'' to the volume containing Gzhon nu dpal's commentary. It is thus reasonable to assume that the original was kept in the library of the Shamarpas in Yangpacan, probably already from the time of the famous Fourth Shamarpa Chos kyi grags pa (1453-1524), who was a disciple of Gzhon nu dpal. After the war with Prithivi Narayan Shah in 1792, Yangpacan was seized by the Gelug government and the text found its way to Drepung, where many other Kagyu texts were kept. Recently I received a photocopy of a Yangpacan block-print from Tibet with the same text on 463 folios. This could be the text described by A khu ching Shes rab rgya mtsho as having 461 folios.<ref>See Lokesh Chandra (1963.1:523.11341), l am indebted to B. Quessel, British Library, for this reference.</ref> The numbering starts anew with each chapter; thus a small calculation mistake could explain the difference of two folios. (Mathes, introductory remarks, 79)
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|ExtraCategories=Brill's Tibetan Studies Library
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