There has been a great deal of dissent regarding the authorship of the sMra sgo and its commentary (see, for example, Almogi 1997; Verhagen 2001; Sad-mi-mi-bzhi 2018: 78–79). Relevant information found, for example, in Si-tu’s Mu tig phreng mdzes and Tshe-tan-zhabs-drung’s Thon mi’i zhal lung, too, should be taken into account. Leaving aside the intricate issue, I wish to merely note that the hypothesis that the commentary was composed by Rong-zom-pa seems to be supported by a couple of things. The strongest of these seems to be Rong-pa Me-dpung’s list of Rong-zom-pa’s writings (Almogi 1997: 16, 58, 82, 221; Sad-mi-mi-bzhi 2018: 78–79). And if the “master himself” (bla ma nyid) in the colophon who is stated to have checked and annotated the list had indeed been Rong-zom-pa himself (Almogi 1997: 226), we can be pretty sure of the authorship of the commentary. This attribution is the earliest and perhaps predates most of what has been said regarding the authorship of the commentary.
My actual concern here is the identity, or, rather the identification of a source that is mentioned in the commentary, namely, a certain bDe spyod kyi mdo in the context of explaining the mahāprāṇa. Some witnesses seem to read sde for bde. This has to be examined more closely. If bde has been the original reading, the change to sde by an editor or scribe may have been motivated by the assumption that the source occurs in the context “phoneme classes,” or, “classes of sounds” (varṇa) (Wezler 1994: 227–228), and that it should refer to the vargas (sde). No scholar thus far seems to have shed light on the identity of the source in question.
The question is: What did Rong-zom-pa, whom I consider to be the commentator, mean by bDe spyod kyi mdo? For want of a better solution, I propose that he meant the Śivasūtra (in the sense of Monier-Williams 1899: “N. of the 14 Sūtras with which Pāṇini opens his grammar (containing a peculiar method of arranging the alphabet or alphabetical sounds, said to have been communicated to him by the god Ś°”). Would it be justified to translate śiva as bde spyod? If we look at the various semantic shades of the word śiva, some at least, such as “happiness,” “welfare, ” “prosperity,” and “bliss” seem to be not all too remote from bde spyod. If bDe spyod kyi mdo cannot be Śivasūtra, what else can it be then?
Bibliography
Almogi 1997 = Orna Almogi, The Life and Works of Rong-zom Paṇḍita. Magister Thesis. Hamburg: Universität Hamburg, 1997.
Monier-Williams 1899 = Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary: Etymologically and Philologically Arranged with Special Reference to Cognate Indo-European Languages. Compact edition greatly enlarged and improved with the collaboration of E. Leumann C. Cappeller and other scholars. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899. Reprint: Tokyo: Meicho Fukyukai Co., 1986.
Sad-mi-mi-bzhi 2018 = mKhan-po bKra-shis-rdo-rje, mKhan-po O-rgyan-rig-’dzin, mKhan-po dPal-bzang-dar-rgyas & Slob-dpon-ma Karma-dbyangs-can, sNang ba lhar sgrub pa’i tshul la brtag pa | rong zom pa’i mdzad rnam dang | snang ba lhar sgrub chen mo’i zhib dpyad zhu dag | de’i brjod bya rjod byed la brtag pa |. sNga-’gyur-rnying-ma’i-zhib-’jug 1. Bylakuppe, Mysore: Ngagyur Nyingma Research Centre, 2018.
Verhagen 2001= Pieter Cornelis Verhagen, A History of Sanskrit Grammatical Literature in Tibet. Volume 2: Assimilation into Indigenous Scholarship. Handbook of Oriental Studies 2, India 8–2. Leiden/Boston/Cologne: E. J. Brill, 2001.
Wezler 1994 = Albrecht Wezler, “‘Credo, Quia Occidentale’: A Note on Sanskrit ‘Varṇa’ and Its Misinterpretation in Literature on Mīmāṃsā and Vyākaraṇa.” In Studies in Mīmāṃsā: Dr. Mandan Mishra Felicitation Volume, edited by R.C. Dwivedi. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1994, pp. 221–241.
Pratisaṃvid 