Khu-sen in Tibetan Sources

In some Tibetan textual sources we come across the expression khu sen gyi slob dpon brgyad,¹ and it obviously means “eight ācāryas from/of Khu-sen.” To be sure, contextually, these eight ācāryas were holders of the Vinaya. But what is Khu-sen? Where is Khu-sen? The reference to the expression khu sen gyi slob dpon was known, for example, to R. O. Meisezahl, but he, too, had obviously no clue, for he stated “acht Lehrer (ācārya) aus Khu-sen (?), wie Puṇyasena and Saṃghasena.”² It now turns out to be that Khu-sen is one of the many names (or phonetic renderings) of “Kucha,” an “ancient Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin and south of the Muzat River. The area lies in present-day Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, China; Kuqa town is the county seat of that prefecture’s Kuqa County.”³ In Sanskrit, the name is said to be Kucina, but it needs verification. Although the Wikipedia information that I use here may not be reliable, it seems to serve the present purpose: “While Chinese transcriptions of the Han or the Tang infer that Küchï was the original form of the name, Guzan (or Küsan), is attested in the Old Tibetan Annals (s.v.), dating from 687 CE. Uighur and Chinese transcriptions from the period of the Mongol Empire support the forms Küsän/Güsän and Kuxian/Quxian respectively, rather than Küshän or Kushan. Another, cognate Chinese transliteration is Ku-sien.” As a reference to the Old Tibetan Annals, the article refers to Beckwith 1987: 50.⁴ Here, Beckwith does not explicitly mention our “Khu-sen” but only “Guzan,” but it seems to be clear that our Khu-sen is one of the many names (or phonetic renderings) of “Kucha.”

¹  See, for example, the Zhu chen gsan yig (vol. 2, p. 557.7). The bibliographical details: Zhu chen Tshul khrims rin chen, dPal ldan bla ma dam pa rnams las dam pa’i chos thos pa’i gsan yi ge don gnyer gdengs can rol pa’i chu gter, 2 vols. In Zhu chen tshul khrims rin chen gyi gsung ’bum, 11 vols. Kathmandu: Sachen International, Guru Lama, 2005, vols. 1 & 2.

²  R. O. Meisezahl, “Zur Klassifizierung der Kanonischen Übersetzungsliteratur des tibetischen Vajrayāna-Buddhismus im Peking- und Derge-Kanjur.” Oriens 29–30 (1), 1986 [pp. 335–350], p. 337.

³ Wikipedia (s.v. Kuchha).

⁴ See Chistopher I. Beckwith, The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia: A History of the Struggle for Great Power among Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese during the Early Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 50, n. 66. This reference is actually for the date of the Old Tibetan Chronicle. But the note does mention “Guzan” (not our “Khu-sen”) as one of the names of Kucha. It then refers to Pelliot 1920: 181 (which I have not seen yet).