APPENDIX 1: INDIAN AND TIBETAN PRECURSORS TO MIPHAM’S TREATISE
INDIAN ANTECEDENTS
Mipham’s Treatise, in twenty-one chapters and 150 folio sides, is one of the longest classical works on the theory and practice of Buddhist kingship ever written in any Buddhist language. It is a complex work that deals with ethical self-cultivation, education, administration, law, punishment, taxation, rules of war, and much else. Amazingly, the Treatise is written entirely in verse. What would lead a Tibetan monk-scholar to write such a long and complex work on kingship? What would cause him to write it in verse? To answer these questions, we need to explore the Indian literary antecedents to Mipham’s Treatise.
Mipham’s work—A Treatise on Ethics for Kings: An Ornament for Rulers—belongs, as the title implies, to an Indo-Tibetan literary genre of verse works on practical morality called “treatises on ethics,” known as nītiśāstra in Sanskrit and lugki tenchö (lugs kyi bstan bcos) in Tibetan. The Sanskrit noun nīti (pronounced “neetee”) comes from the verb nī, which means “to lead” or “to guide.” In the present context, nīti refers to moral and practical guidance. Hence, a nītiśāstra, a “treatise on nīti,” is a work that provides guidance on how to lead an ethical, successful, and joyful life. It is sometimes said that among the four classical Indian “goals of life” or puruṣārthas—duty or righteousness (dharma), wealth (artha), sexual pleasure (kāma), and liberation (mokṣa)—the nīti literature is mostly concerned with the first two. I find this useful as a rule of thumb.
Nīti treatises are works on ethics or moral righteousness as well as on wealth, power, and the general material aspects of human flourishing. They deal only tangentially with love or sex, and although they frequently allude to religious ideals, they are not concerned with complex doctrinal issues. From the earliest times, some of the nīti literature dealt with kingship and statecraft: how kings in particular should lead their lives, and especially how they could become effective and just rulers. Nīti treatises often included explanations of the intellectual and moral qualities that a king should cultivate, the ethical principles that should guide him, and the ideals that ought to prevail in his kingdom. But the nīti works often included much else: theories of the origin of the institution of kingship, advice on how to constitute a functional administration and conduct foreign relations, the art of war, and so forth.
Sometimes, these polity-oriented nīti works were called rājanīti, or “ethics for kings.” However, some of the nīti texts on statecraft are simply called nīti, and contrariwise some of the texts bearing the title rājanīti are often as much aphoristic collections of folk wisdom as they are treatises on kingship and polity. For example, the Essence of Ethics (Nītisāra) by the scholar Kāmandaki,1 is mostly about polity and governance despite lacking any reference to kings (rāja) in its title, whereas Cāṇakya’s Treatise on Ethics for Kings (Cāṇakya Rājanītiśāstra)2 is, despite its title, as much a compendium of worldly wisdom as it is a treatise on statecraft. Mipham designates his text as a rāja-nīti work, a “treatise on ethics for kings,” and in this case the title is apt, for the work is almost entirely concerned with the theory and practice of kingship, and what general moral guidance it provides is mostly directed at the ruler.
Some of the oldest Indian literature contains speculation about the origins of kings. Ancient texts also suggest that kings often turned to sages or wise men for advice on affairs of state.3 Even the Buddha is described in the scriptures as occasionally giving advice to the rulers of his day.4 But all of these early accounts, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist, are relatively brief and nontechnical. This all changes in the fourth century BCE with the composition of the first major work of political theory, Cāṇakya’s Arthaśāstra, ostensibly a treatise (śāstra) on wealth (artha), but actually an encyclopedic text that covers all aspects of statecraft: economics, law, bureaucratic administration, foreign relations, military strategy, the management of spies, the design of the palace, and so forth.5 The Arthaśāsatra, which is mostly written in prose with some interspersed verses, is one of the great classics of Indian literature. It is the most important source for all subsequent Indian writings on statecraft and governance,6 including the nīti literature. Nīti texts are almost always verse works.
Treatises on kingship written in verse do not begin to appear until the turn of the common era. For example, the great Indian epic Mahābhārata contains embedded within its “Peace Chapter” (Śāntiparva)—probably compiled in the first centuries ce—a long section on the duties of kings (rājadharma).7 Dating to around this time, the Hundred Verses on Ethics (Nītiśataka) is attributed to the great grammarian and poet Bhartṛhari.8 Classical Indian scholars continued to write nītiśāstras throughout the medieval period and into modern times. For example, Somadeva Sūri’s Nectar of Ethical Discourse (Nītivākyāmṛta) dates to the tenth century,9 and the Ethics of Śukra (Śukranīti), whose eponymous title suggests its author to be the ancient, pre-Cāṇakyan sage Śukrācārya, was actually written, it seems, in the nineteenth century.10
All of these works were written in Sanskrit, and none of them were translated into Tibetan. However, several other Indian nītiśastras did make it into the Tengyur, the section of the Tibetan Buddhist canon that contains the translations of Indian treatises. One of these texts we have already mentioned, Cāṇakya’s Treatise on Ethics for Kings. Another is the Treatise on Ethics of Masūrākṣa (ninth century). Mipham explicitly tells us that he relied on both of these works as sources. The Indian nīti literature—like the Arthaśāstra, on which the genre is based—is diverse, containing general advice, specific rules, and different strategies for success in everything from health to conquest. Here are some verses drawn from Kāmandaki’s Essence of Ethics, one of the earliest works of advice to kings. The stanzas give one a taste for the diverse materials contained in these works.
The king should administer his state with equity and justice,
augmenting his treasury through lawful means.
He should deal sternly with persons
obstructing the cause of law. (6.6)
He should bathe in water
purified of poisons through antidotes;
use gems and jewels
capable of neutralizing poisons;
and eat food
only after it has been examined
in the presence
of toxicologists and physicians. (7.9–10)
He should never falsely accuse his allies
based on the allegations of others.
All those who create rifts among allies
should be forsaken. (8.79)11
Kāmandaki was not a Buddhist but a follower of the Brahmanical or “Hindu” tradition. His Essence of Ethics is concerned with lofty ideals (equity and justice), but also with nitty-gritty matters like protection of the king from assassins, foreign relations, and military strategies. Buddhist nīti works are much more concerned with broad ethical principles than with the world of realpolitik, although their insistence that the king not take undue risks and their ground rules for the conquest of other kingdoms also hint at the latter.12
McComas Taylor has noted that “nītiśastras fall into two broad and overlapping classes: practical textbooks on governance that resemble the Arthaśāstra, and collections of gnomic verses.”13 To understand the nīti literature, it is therefore necessary to understand what is meant by gnomic verses (subhāṣita). Gnomic or wise sayings—sometimes called “well-spoken” or “well-turned” verses—are clever stanzas of worldly wisdom that set forth fundamental truths about life and offer practical moral advice. Ludwik Sternbach describes subhāṣitas as:
pithy epigrams of proverbial philosophy—miniature word-paintings which contain deep thoughts masterfully incorporated into verse. They are scattered throughout Sanskrit literature. These epigrams, aphorisms, wise sayings, maxims and adages, however quaintly expressed, contain the essence of some moral truths or practical lessons. They are drawn from real life and give the fruit of philosophy grafted from the stem of experience.14
Bhartṛhari’s Hundred Verses is an example of a nīti work written entirely in the form of subhāṣita verses. It is a collection of gnomic aphorisms that have little to do with kingship or polity.
Consider this example of a subhāṣita from Mipham’s Treatise, a stanza based on almost identical verses found in several Sanskrit subhāṣita texts:
The mind should be trained while one is still young.
The cow should be nourished during winter.
The fields should be sown when they are moist and warm.
These three are the conditions that ensure a good result.
The verse stresses the importance of starting to study while one is still young and the mind is flexible. The poet uses two examples drawn from pastoral life to drive the point home. Also, consider these two verses from Cāṇakya’s Treatise on Ethics for Kings in the version preserved in the Tibetan canon:
Someone who helps you is a relative even if he’s a stranger.
Someone who harms you is a stranger even if he’s a relative.
Someone who helps you is a rare medicine.
Someone who harms you is an illness growing in your body. (1.10)
The one who brings you joy is your wife.
The one makes you happy is your son.
The one who is trustworthy is your friend.
The place that nurtures you is your country. (1.12)
On the surface, the verses appear to be descriptive, but in actuality they challenge our ordinary understanding of what constitutes a stranger, a relative, and one’s homeland. They suggest that someone is a true relative or friend according to their deeds—whether they are helpful, bring you joy, are trustworthy, and so forth—and not because they happen to be related to you by blood or through a long acquaintance. Likewise, your true homeland is the one that nurtures and makes you flourish—and implicitly not the one in which you happen to be born.
A subhāṣita is a stand-alone verse. Other types of verses—for example, those found in narrative or philosophical literature—are part of storylines or arguments, and to understand their meaning requires an understanding of their context.15 But a subhāṣita can generally be understood on its own. There are tens of thousands of Sanskrit subhāṣitas. These verses floated freely, being passed down from one generation to the next, often orally.16 Erudition in classical India was measured, at least in part, by a person’s ability to recite a subhāṣita appropriate to a given situation. Later, the verses were compiled into anthologies (saṃgraha), which often grouped them into chapters according to themes: women, friends, food, learning, love, worthy people, villains, and so on.17 One of the most famous subhāṣita anthologies, The Jewel Treasury of Elegant Verse (Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa), was compiled by Vidyākara, a Buddhist monk (perhaps a hierarch) of the Jagaddala monastery in Bengal during the latter half of the eleventh century.18 Some anthologies (or their commentaries) identify the poets who composed specific verses, although there is often disagreement regarding who wrote which verses. More often than not, however, the authorship of individual verses was lost to time.
The dividing line between the nīti and subhāṣita literature is blurry at best, and many texts are referred to under both rubrics. Most of this literature was written in Sanskrit, but nīti and subhāṣita texts also exist in Prakrit, Tamil, Pāli, and other Indic languages.19 From India, the literature spread to Sri Lanka, Burma, and the rest of Southeast Asia, and of course to Tibet and Mongolia.20 None of the Indian subhāṣita anthologies were translated into Tibetan. But two important subhāṣita texts attributed to single authors—Ravigupta’s Treasury of Stanzas (Gāthākośa) and Vararuci’s Hundred Stanzas (Śatagāthā)—made their way into Tibetan. Mipham tells us that he consulted both works while writing his Treatise.21
To sum up, the Indian antecedents to Mipham’s Treatise are the Sanskrit nīti and subhāṣita texts, didactic verse works on how to live a moral life and achieve success in worldly matters. Some of the nīti texts contained sections on polity, and in several cases were almost entirely concerned with kingship and matters of statecraft. Although Mipham calls his own Treatise a nītiśāstra, the work also contains many verses typical of the subhāṣita genre. Indeed, the Treatise is sometimes classified as a subhāṣita work.22 We now know, in any case, why Mipham wrote his Treatise on Ethics for Kings in verse: he was following the model of the Indian nīti and subhāṣita texts. Writing the work in verse was simply a requirement of the genre.
All of the texts just mentioned—the nīti aphorisms of Cāṇakya and Masūrākṣa and the subhāṣita texts of Vararuci and Ravigupta—are non-Buddhist works. Why then should they have been translated into Tibetan and incorporated into the Buddhist canon? And why should Mipham have consulted these heterodox works? The fact that these texts were written by “Hindus” does not mean that they were unacceptable to Buddhists. The editors of the Tibetan canon placed them into a section of the Tengyur called “Common or Shared Treatises” precisely because, belonging to a shared tradition of moral and political speculation, most of what they teach is acceptable to Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike.
That is not to say that everything we find in the Hindu political or gnomic treatises is acceptable to Buddhists. For example, caste plays an important role in the Hindu nīti texts, but much less so (or not at all) in their Buddhist counterparts. The Hindu texts also generally sanction capital punishment, whereas Buddhist works are much more circumspect about such forms of punishment. Hindu works like Kāmandaki’s also pay a great deal of attention to topics like the protection of princes, the cultivation of allies, the management of spies, the different sections of the armed forces, and military strategy. Buddhist texts are much less concerned with these subjects. That said, the Hindu and Buddhist political and gnomic literatures do have a lot in common, so it is understandable that Mipham should have considered it appropriate to consult non-Buddhist texts.
Not all Indian literature on kingship and polity is, however, Hindu. Several Indian Buddhist texts also discuss these topics.23 Some of these works—specifically the sūtras (Pāli suttas)—have the status of “buddha’s word” (buddha vacana). Other texts were written by later Indian Buddhist scholars. Turning first to the Pāli Buddhist tradition, the Sutta on Beginnings (Aggañña Sutta) describes how human society devolves from a utopian state at the beginning of a cosmic cycle to an age in which crime (initially theft) necessitates the election of the first king, the “Great Elect” (mahāsammata), who is contracted to enforce the laws. The Sutta on Beginnings’ cosmogonic ideas are also found in the Sutta of the Lion’s Roar of the Cakkavati (Cakkavatti Sīhanāda Sutta). But instead of elaborating a “contractual theory” of kingship as the Aggañña Sutta does, the Cakkavati Sīhanāda outlines the duties of another kind of king called a cakravartin (cakkavatti), the universal monarch or “wheel turning” king. This is how such a king is admonished in that latter text:
Arrange proper shelter, protection, and defense for your family, for the army, for your noble warrior vassal(-kings), for brahmin householders, for town dwellers and country folk, for ascetics and brahmin(-renouncers), and for animals and birds. Let no wrongdoing take place in your territory; if there are poor people in your land, give them money. Go from time to time to the [righteous] ascetics and brahmins in your kingdom…and ask, “What, sir, is good? What is not good? What is blameworthy, what blameless? What is to be done, what not? What would lead to happiness and benefit for me in the long run? You should listen to them, and avoid what is bad; and instead take up what is good and do that.24
According to the Sutta, when a king disregards these principles, or when people exploit the king’s generosity and use the wealth they have received to selfish ends, violence increases and the society crumbles. Elsewhere, the Pāli scriptures speak of seven things that make a kingdom stable and invulnerable to external attack: having frequent meetings that are well attended, harmoniously attending to the affairs of state, adhering to the ancient traditions and laws, having respect for elders, respecting and protecting women, venerating shrines, and protecting and venerating saints.25 This tradition, which presumes a more diffuse model of political power, stresses social consensus and cultural continuity rather than putting the entire onus for the kingdom’s prosperity on the king.
The Mahāyāna scriptures, which generally postdate their Pāli counterparts, contain their own myths about the origin of the monarchy. They also elaborate typologies of kings and describe the ideal king’s qualities and duties. Mipham devotes three chapters of the Treatise to analyzing the political, economic, and ethical ideals found in three important Mahāyāna scriptures:
• The Sūtra on the Revelations of the Bodhisattva Truth-Teller (Satyakavyākaraṇa Sūtra)
• The Sūtra Establishing Recollection (Smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra)
• The Sūtra of the Perfect Golden Light (Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra)
Mipham also offers a lucid summary of a portion of the Ten Wheels Kṣitigarbha Sūtra (Daśacakra Kṣitigarbha Sūtra) that, among other things, prohibits the punishment of monks; and he incorporates into the Treatise some of the ideas found in Stanzas of the Nāga King Bheri (Nāgarāja Bheri Gathā), a text that contains, embedded within it, an important and little studied collection of Buddhist nīti verses. Mipham does not discuss kingship and statecraft in the Buddhist tantric or esoteric tradition. This is probably due to the genre. The Buddhist rājanīti literature is almost exclusively exoteric in nature. It would have been odd to write a nīti work that described how to obtain sovereignty over a kingdom using esoteric or magical means. In any case, Mipham’s synthesis of the Buddhist sūtra literature provides us with an unparalleled description of kingship and statecraft in exoteric Mahāyāna Buddhism.26 To my knowledge, no other work, Indian or Tibetan, ancient or modern, does such a thorough job of digesting this material.
In addition to the sūtras, the later Buddhist scholars of India—its great commentators, philosophers, and poets—also wrote on kingship, statecraft, and political ethics. These topics are treated in scholastic compendiums, in narrative literature, in texts of the nīti and subhāṣita genres, and in epistles (lekha). Many of these works date to the fourth or fifth century ce, the Gupta period, a time of great intellectual efflorescence in India. For example, Vasubandhu’s Treasury of Metaphysics (Abhidharmakośa), an important Buddhist scholastic treatise, describes four types of cakravartins, those who possess wheels made of iron, bronze, silver, and gold. They conquer from one to four “continents,” respectively, with the golden wheel king conquering all four human continents. The first two of these four kings conquer through the power of their charisma; while the last two must put on a display of their martial prowess to get people to submit, but end up conquering “without causing harm” (avadha).27 Another scholastic work of this same period, the Stages of the Bodhisattva Path (Bodhisattvabhūmi) attributed to Asaṅga, explains that bodhisattvas take rebirth as kings in the world in order to help those in need—for example, to protect beings who are under attack by a hostile army.28 More important, the Bodhisattvabhūmi sets forth these brief ethical guidelines for bodhisattva kings:
Bodhisattvas who are sovereigns rule their subjects without punishments and weapons.29 They collect revenue in a just manner. They enjoy the kingdom that they have inherited and do not forcefully and without warning invade a foreign country. Using all their abilities and powers, they cause beings to turn away from evil. They act as a parent to their subjects. They are naturally disposed to share wealth even with strangers, needless to say with those who are their own dependents. They avoid doing injury and speak truthfully. They have given up such forms of harm to sentient beings as killing, imprisoning, punishing, cutting off [limbs], and beating, etc.30
As we shall see, Mipham will not go quite as far as the Bodhisattvabhūmi in limiting the kinds of legal punishments that a king can use—for instance, he permits imprisonment and even corporal punishment (beating, etc.)—but then again, the Bodhisattvabhūmi’s somewhat idealistic stance is meant to govern the actions of not just any king, but of a bodhisattva king.
Like these scholastic sources, works of the narrative genre also treat the subject of kingship. These texts include the Tale of Aśoka (Aśokāvadāna),31 the story of the famous king of the Maurya dynasty who converted to Buddhism after conquering almost all of India in the third century BCE. Some contemporary scholars believe that the ideal of the cakravartin is modeled on him. The Tale of Aśoka is unusual in that its protagonist is a historical ruler, but there are countless other tales in which a mythical king figures prominently. Āryaśūra’s Jātakamāla, that dates to around the fourth century ce, is a collection of tales about the Buddha’s former lives. Many of them center on the figure of a king (often the Buddha in a past life) and take place in a royal court.32 The Jātakamāla is of mixed genre, containing both prose and verse. Many of its verses have a distinctively nīti flavor to them. Consider, for example, these verses from Āryaśūra’s Jātaka no. 22, the “Tale of the Goose King”:
Virtues bring joy and are blessed by praise.
There is no such prosperity in the perils of vice.
Knowing the nature of virtue and vice,
what sane person would stray from the path of benefit?
Neither power, treasury, nor good policy
can bring a king to the same position
as he reaches through the path of virtue,
however great his effort or expenses.
The glorious king of the gods himself heeds virtues.
Humility exists even in those eminent in virtues.
It is from virtues that fame arises.
The majesty of power depends on them.
Virtues are lovelier than the moon’s splendor.
They alone can appease the hearts of enemies,
however hardened by anger and pride,
however their envy is entrenched by deep hatred.
Protect the earth, guardian of the land,
her proud kings subdued by your power,
and use your discipline and other bright virtues
to awaken in creatures a passion for morality.
A king’s highest duty is the welfare of his people.
This path brings prosperity in this world and the next.
It will arise in a king devoted to goodness.
For people tend to follow the behavior of their king.33
Most of the ideas expressed in these lines—the importance of virtue, the fact that the king’s status depends on his moral qualities, the importance of the sovereign acting as a model of virtue for his subjects, and so forth—are all found in the nīti literature, and indeed in Mipham’s text.
Mipham does not mention any scholastic treatises or narrative works as source material for his book, although he draws from the jātakas and avadānas—and even from Hindu didactic tales—to illustrate various points. He does, however, explicitly mention several of the Buddhist nīti/subhāṣita works that he consulted. Three of these are attributed to Nāgārjuna (second century CE):
• The Tree of Wisdom (Prajñādaṇḍa)
• A Drop of Nourishment for the People (Jantupoṣaṇabiṇḍu)
• The Hundred Verses on Wisdom (Prajñāśataka)
Mipham also mentions as sources three epistles:
• Nāgārjuna’s Precious Garland (Ratnāvalī)
• Matṛceta’s Letter to King Kaniṣka (Mahārājakaniṣkalekha)
• Buddhaguhya’s Letter to the King and Ministers of Tibet
Mipham does not specifically mention Nāgārjuna’s Letter to a Friend (Suhṛllekha), but I have shown in the notes to the translation that he seems to draw on this work as well. Contemporary Western scholars are skeptical about the authorship of some of these works, but whoever may have written them, there is no doubt that, with the possible exception of Buddhaguhya’s letter, they all have an Indic pedigree.
A great deal more could be said about the Indian antecedents to Mipham’s work, but this brief overview should suffice to give the reader a sense of the richness of this literature and of Mipham’s tremendous command of it. Only a scholar of Mipham’s erudition could have synthesized such a vast and diverse body of Indian texts, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist, into a clear and coherent whole. It has often occurred to me while reading through the Treatise how much it has in common with modern Buddhological scholarship, which, like Mipham’s work, is committed to the systematic examination of a wide array of texts and to the documentation of those sources.
TIBETAN ANTECEDENTS
As is well known, Tibetans scrupulously followed the Indian tradition in religious and literary matters. During the height of Tibet’s imperial period (mid-eighth to mid-ninth century), most of the energy of the Buddhist Church went into translating Indian texts. As a result, Tibetans wrote few texts of their own during this period. But as the empire collapsed and imperial sponsorship of translations ceased, Tibetans began to compose their own works. On the subject of ethics, one of the earliest such works, which might date to the ninth century, is a Dunhuang document called The Elder Brother’s Advice to the Younger Brother (Phu bos nu bos btams). Among other things, the text explains the michö (mi chos), literally the “people’s Dharma,” which is to say the tradition of worldly ethics.34 The work is written in the form of a dialogue between a younger brother (the questioner) and an elder brother (the respondent):
Younger Brother: What does it mean to be ethical and unethical? Elder Brother: To be ethical means to be upright and respectful, to be gentle and mild, to be compassionate, not to put others down, and to have honor and a sense of decency. It means to be humble and really diligent; to be wise and to consider things carefully. Whoever acts in these ways is held in high esteem and is trusted by everyone. To be unethical means to be crafty and cruel; to lack modesty, decency, and honor.”
The younger brother then inquires about what it means to be “upright,” “loving,” “compassionate,” “brave,” “noble,” and so on. The elder brother replies to each question in turn: “To be upright means to respect all the king’s righteous laws,” and so forth.
Elder Brother’s Advice also teaches worldly wisdom and ethical principles through comparisons: “An honest poor man is more noble than a rich [cheat]. It is better to be destitute than to be a thief.” Some of these comparisons have a witty, riddle-like, and even comical quality to them, reminiscent of what we sometimes find in nīti literature:
Q: What is the best and worst that one can find on one’s bed?
A: On the daybed, the best that you can find is a king, a chief, a wise man, an honest man, a scholar, a brave man, a great artist, a poet, and an orator. On the night-bed, the best is a good wife. On the daybed, the worst is a thief, an insincere person, a prostitute, a crook, a madman, a dissolute man, a coward, and a weakling. On the night-bed, the worst is a young virgin girl.
Some of the text’s discussions deal directly with politics and the law.
Q: What is the measure of an honest or upright man? How can you determine this without error?
A: Someone is called “honest” if he respects the king’s righteous laws. But even if you can’t figure this out from his attitude toward the laws, examine him to see whether he brags or exaggerates. This is how you determine unerringly [whether he is honest]. If you want to be a leader of men, be as impartial as the sky, and as honest or straight as the lever on a scale. Take no pleasure in exaggerating or boasting. Help everyone equally.
The text also urges tolerance when underage and immature people violate ethical norms or the law; but if someone is of age and mentally mature, punishment is permitted. The text even has sections on education and on the different types of honest occupations (commerce, farming, and so on). An important work that belongs to the earliest period of Tibetan indigenous literature, Elder Brother’s Advice to the Younger Brother has unfortunately received little scholarly attention in the West. There is no reason to believe that Mipham had access to this work, but many of the ideas found within it, forming part of the pan-Tibetan ethical tradition known as the “people’s Dharma,” are certainly consistent with a lot of what we find in Mipham’s Treatise.
Throughout the centuries, Tibetan lamas have written advice (gdams pa, bslab bya) to their disciples—sometimes even to kings. These short works can be in prose or in verse. Contemporary Tibetan scholars have sometimes considered this advice literature as a whole to belong to the nīti tradition. However, most advice texts are of a strictly religious and technical nature. They are the lama’s instructions—often in response to a disciple’s query—on how to understand a particularly difficult point of doctrine, how to practice a particular technique of meditation, how to understand a particular sign or vision, and so forth. Generally speaking, therefore, these works do not belong to the nīti literature, which is of a more mundane and worldly character. Atiśa’s advice to the Tibetan king Janchub Ö35—written in elegant and unusually long (fifteen syllable) lines—is an example of such an “advice” text. Here are some of the more practical lines in that work:
Educate yourself by paying respect to the learned and not being jealous of them.
Do not examine others’ faults, but rather examine your own faults, and expurgate yourself of them as if getting rid of bad blood.
Do not think about your own virtues; think about others’ virtues. Act respectfully toward everyone as if you were their servant….
Always speak to others sincerely, without anger, and with a smiling face and a loving mind.
If you engage in too much senseless speech, you become confused, so speak in a timely way and in moderation….
Because you have to leave your accumulated wealth behind, do not accumulate sin for the sake of wealth.36
However, apart from these few lines, most of the rest of Atiśa’s text is of a specialized religious nature, dealing principally with the tradition of “mind training” or lojong (blo sbyong). Therefore, generally speaking, the advice literature does not fall under the rubric of nīti.
There are, however, some notable exceptions. One is a beautiful work attributed to Atiśa’s main disciple, Dromtön Gyalwey Jungné (1004–1064) called Garland of the Main Points of the People’s Dharma,37 which is written in a style that is distinctively Tibetan. Here are some lines from the work:
No matter where or in which direction you go,
no matter where you settle or call home,
no matter what friends you have or cultivate,
getting along with others is the root of worldly ethics.
It is said to be the basis of all goals, so listen!
It is the ground rule of all activities, so listen!
It is said to be a teaching that pacifies gods and nāgas, so listen!
Among the teachings, it is the best one on worldly ethics….
No matter what virtues you may have,
lessen despising others and treating them with contempt.
Even if you have great attachment to wealth,
decrease your tendency to quarrel over others’ wealth.
Even if you are skilled in works and plans,
lessen your disregard for the general laws.
Even if it is money that you yourself have saved,
diminish your tendency to horde it by hiding it from others.
Even if others consider you authoritative,
lessen the pride that thinks, “That’s me.”
Even if you are superior to all others,
get rid of your arrogance, at least a little.
Infused with both a distinctively Tibetan voice and with the spirit of the Kadampa tradition that Dromtönpa founded, the Garland is an example of an advice text that could easily be considered a part of the nīti tradition.
Another early and important collection of advice texts that falls under the nīti rubric is a group of works by the Sakya hierarch Pagpa Lodrö Gyaltsen (1235–1280) written in the form of counsel to various Mongol princes.38 A some verses drawn from his Advice to Prince Jibig Temür give one a sense of Pagpa’s style:
Because you are already so rich,
what is the point of offering you the gift of wealth?
Instead, I offer you the gift of Dharma,
which is like jasmine illuminated in the winter moon,
No matter how much wealth you possess,
unless you have the wealth of Dharma,
it is like eating good food mixed with poison;
it only brings you suffering.
And even when one possesses the wealth of Dharma,
if one lacks material wealth,
like a precious stone that is rough or uncut,
it cannot serve the welfare of others.
But whoever possesses both kinds of wealth
can accomplish both great goals.
A gem that has been skillfully polished
beautifies both self and other.
Thus, focus your mind on what I have said,
so that, possessing both religious and material wealth,
you achieve the result in its totality.39
Or consider these verses from Pagpa’s Advice to Prince Maṅgala:
Immediately repay the kindness
of your parents, your clan,
and anyone who has helped you in the least.
Not only does this increase the virtues you already have,
but because others will follow your example,
it increases everyone’s virtues, both your own and others’….
The practices of worldly virtue—
not drinking beer, having a pure livelihood,
never harming anyone, worshipping who or what is worthy of worship,
and protecting the poor through acts of charity—
were all taught by Ārya Nāgārjuna himself.
Use your conscience and sense of shame to restrain yourself.
Abandon the activities that everyone despises;
and exert yourself in acts that are praised.
When people see these remarkable deeds,
it will cause their hair to stand on end in amazement.
When you do not harm anyone, help everyone,
and build temples, stūpas, gardens,
and dwellings for the poor,
your banner will fly in the ten directions.40
They are not the kind of specialized religious advice that a lama might offer to a monastic disciple. They are the kind of practical ethical counsel to royalty that is characteristic of the rājanīti literature. Mipham’s Treatise advises Buddhist kings in much the same ways as Pagpa does in these verses.
Neither the Dunhuang texts, nor Dromtönpa, nor Pagpa call their works nītiśastras. As far as I know, the first Tibetan work to explicitly use the words nītiśastra in its title is the Treatise on Ethics: An Analysis of Fools written by the great Bodong Paṇchen (1376–1451), the most prolific scholar in Tibetan history.41 Bodong’s nīti work, which is in ten chapters, is about one third the size of Mipham’s text. A little-known work, it is currently being translated and studied by Miguel Alvarez Ortega. Is it a coincidence that two of the most prolific authors in Tibetan history—Bodong and Mipham—should have written texts that they explicitly identify as nītiśāstras? Probably not. Both Bodong and Mipham were polymaths. Their writings cover all of the subjects of classical Indian learning. Not to have written at least one text of the nīti genre would have represented a lacuna in their oeuvre. One wonders, therefore, whether they saw the composition of such a text as a kind of requirement, for the completeness they both sought (whether intentionally or not) to achieve in their literary life’s work required the composition of at least one nīti text.
From the time of Bodong up to the time of Mipham, few Tibetans wrote any texts that they actually called nītiśāstras,42 but despite that, a number of works clearly fall into this genre, or into its sister genre, the subhāṣita or legshé (legs bshad) literature. Interestingly, one of these works is ascribed to a Tibetan Muslim: Advice of Khache Palu.43 But this is the exception. All of the other subhāṣita texts in Tibet were written by Buddhists. In fact, most were written by Gelugpa scholars who hailed from the Amdo region of eastern Tibet. I will not discuss these works in any detail because an anthology containing translations of several of them will appear shortly in The Library of Tibetan Classics. The following list, which is by no means exhaustive, highlights some important examples:
• Panchen Sönam Dragpa (1478–1554) was an important early Gelug scholar who was the fifteenth Holder of the Ganden Throne, or Ganden Tripa, as well as abbot of Drepung Monastery. He was the author of A Cluster of White Lotuses: Eloquent Verses of the Geden Tradition, a Treatise Examining the Wise and the Foolish (Mkhas pa dang blun po brtag pa’i bstan bcos dge ldan legs bshad padma dkar po’i chun po). The work, in some 125 stanzas, is the earliest legshé text of the Gelug tradition.
• Changkya Ngawang Lozang Chöden (1642–1714) was the second Changkya incarnation, abbot of Gönlung Monastery in Amdo, and imperial preceptor to the Chinese Kangxi Emperor from 1693 to 1697. He wrote Eighteen Delightful Admonitions That Clarify What to Accept and Reject in the Two Systems (Lugs gnyis kyi glang dor gsal bar byed pa’i bslab bya gces pa bco brgyad).
• Sumpa Khenpo Yeshé Peljor (1704–1788), abbot of Gönlung Monastery in Amdo, was author of A Beautiful Flower Garland: An Ethical Treatise on the People’s Dharma (Mi chos lugs kyi bstan bcos me tog phreng mdzes). It is the only one of these Gelug works that contains the word nītiśastra in its title.
• Gungtang Könchog Tenpey Dronmé (1762–1823), the third Gungtang Rinpoche and the twenty-first abbot of Labrang Monastery in Amdo, composed: (1) Wood Treatise: The Two Systems with Its Hundred Leaves and Branches (Shing gi bstan bcos lugs gnyis yal ’dab brgya ldan), and (2) Water Treatise (Chu’i bstan bcos), with the same subtitle.
• Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra (1772–1851), an important Gelug scholar and hermit, wrote Crystal Mirror of Precious Advice, Providing Unerring Instructions on What to Accept and Reject as Regards the Joint System (Lugs zung gi blang dor ’dzom med du ’doms pa’i bslab bya rin po che’i do shal).
• Lozang Jinpa (1821–1891), a scholar of Trashi Lhunpo Monastery in Tsang, and the abbot of Kyilkhang Monastery, was the author of two texts: (1) the Air Treatise: Elegant Verses to Make the Banner of the Joint System Flutter (Lugs zung ba dan g.yo ba’i legs bshad rlung gi bstan bcos), modeled, according to the author, on Gungtang’s Water Treatise and on Namgyal Zöpa’s Earth Treatise and Fire Treatise.44 Lozang Jinpa states that he composed the Air Treatise to complete the quartet of works based on the four elements (earth, fire, water, and air) started by his predecessors; (2) Moon Treatise: Elegant Verses That Clearly Expound Advice Related to the Worldly People’s Dharma (’Jig rten mi chos dang ’brel ba’i bslab bya gsal bar ston pa’i legs bshad zla ba’i bstan bcos), which he states is modeled on Gungtang’s Wood Treatise.
• The Sixth Paṇchen Lama, Lozang Tubten Chökyi Nyima (1883–1937), authored Wood Treatise: A Garland of Jewels Radiating Light onto the Two Systems (Sa’i bstan bcos lugs gnyis ’od brgya ’bar ba’i dbyig gi phreng ba).
• Ngawang Lozang Tendzin Gyatso (1882–1954), abbot of Yershong Monastery in Amdo, was the author of three legshé texts: (1) Jewel Treatise (Rin po che’i bstan bcos), (2) Fire Treatise (Me’i bstan bcos), and (3) Iron Treatise (Lcag kyi bstan bcos)
All of these works except for the first were written after the Gelugpa consolidation of power under the fifth Dalai Lama in 1642. The “two systems” or “joint system” spoken of in several of these titles can refer to worldly and religious ethics, or more specifically to religion and politics. The Ganden Potrang, the government of the Dalai Lamas from the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama, considered itself, just as prior regimes had, to be the “union” of Buddhism and politics.45 It is not surprising to see Gelug authors preoccupied with the two systems from the late seventeenth century, when the Gelug Church came to dominate the political affairs of Tibet.46 That so many of these writers hailed from Amdo is due, on the one hand, to the flourishing of the literary arts in that part of the Tibetan world, something that is true even today; on the other hand, several of these figures had ties to both the Ganden Potrang and to the Qing court, which means that questions of religion and political power were always on the horizon for them.
All of the authors in the above list, except for the last two, predate Mipham. Whether Mipham was familiar with any of these earlier Gelugpa legshés, or whether the later Gelug authors were familiar with Mipham’s Treatise is something that remains to be investigated. Clear parallels exist between several of these legshé texts and Mipham’s Treatise, but Mipham does not mention any of these scholars or their texts by name. In fact, the only legshé text that Mipham acknowledges is the Elegant Verses of the Sakya Tradition,47 written by Sakya Paṇḍita Kunga Gyaltsen (1182–1251), the uncle of Pagpa and one of the greatest scholars in Tibetan history. The Sakya Legshé, containing more than 450 verses, is the first book-length subhāṣita work written by a Tibetan; its influence on all subsequent Tibetan legshé literature cannot be overestimated.
I have offered this admittedly incomplete overview of the indigenous Tibetan nīti and subhāṣita literature to give the reader a sense of the richness of this tradition prior to Mipham’s time. Apart from the Sakya Legshé, Mipham tells us only that he consulted “various nītiśastras composed by Tibetan sages.” The task of determining precisely who those “Tibetan sages” were still lies ahead.
1. Mitra and Mitra, The Nītisāra by Kāmandaki, and Manmatha Nath Dutt, Kamandakiya Nitisara, or The Elements of Polity. The dates of the work are contested. Some claim that Kāmandaki (or Kāmadaka) was a direct disciple of Cāṇakya, which if true would mean that the work belongs to the third century BCE. Others date the Nītisāra to the Gupta age, that is, to the fourth century ce or later. See K. V. Rangaswami Aiyangar, Rājadharma, 85.
2. This work is preserved in Tibetan, having been translated in the tenth century. It is one of a number of collections of aphorisms attributed to Cāṇakya (fourth century BCE) in Sanskrit. The different editions of Cāṇakya’s aphorisms have been studied by various scholars, including the great Ludwik Sternbach in his Cāṇakya-nīti-Text Tradition, 5 vols. See also Sternbach, Cāṇakya-Rāja-Nīti. Scholars are dubious of whether the aphorisms attributed to Cāṇakya were actually written by the author of the Arthaśastra, the great Sanskrit treatise on politics. Sternbach has shown that most of the stanzas found in the Tibetan version of the Cāṇakya Rājanītiśāstra are also found in the Garuḍa Purāṇa (ca. tenth century) and in the Bṛhaspati Saṃhita (seventh century?), a version of which is found in the Garuḍa Purāṇa (in sections 1.108–115). See Sternbach, “The Tibetan Cāṇakya-Rāja-Nīti-Śāstram,” 99–122. Sternbach also discusses all prior scholarship on the Tibetan Cāṇakya Rājanītiśastra.
3. For a list of early Indian texts that discuss the origin of kingship, see Deborah P. Bhattacharyya, “Theories of Kingship in Ancient Sanskrit Literature,” 111.
4. Some of these sermons—especially the ones preserved in Pāli—are realistic and practical. Others, like the Mahāyāna sūtra called Instructions to the King—Rājadeśanāma Mahāyāna Sūtra, Rgyal pa la gdams pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo (Toh. no. 214)—which is a teaching to Bimbisāra on impermanence, karma, and nirvāṇa as the highest felicity, are of a more religious and idealistic character. Another sūtra by this same name, Advice to the King (Rājadeśa, Toh. no. 215), is even more idealistic and even supernaturalistic. In this second work, the Buddha sees that the time has come to convert Udāyana, the king of Vatsa, and goes to meet him just as he is about to wage war against the kingdom of Kanakavatī. Udāyana gets angry at the Buddha for meddling, and considers his presence on the battlefield to be inauspicious. So, in anger, he shoots an arrow at the Buddha to kill him! The arrow circles in the sky instead of hitting its target, and as it whirls in space, it sounds out a verse: “Anger only generates suffering. In this life, fighting and quarrel just exhaust you. In the next life, they bring about the suffering of hell. So abandon anger, fighting, and quarrels.” When Udāyana witnesses this miracle, he generates faith in the Buddha, who then preaches to him a sermon on the evils of warfare—which he calls “the fight against the little enemy”—and on the necessity of defeating the true enemies, the mental afflictions, and the grasping at self.
5. Cāṇakya (a.k.a. Kauṭilya) and his Arthaśastra are often dated to the reign of Candragupta Maurya (r. 321–297 BCE), the grandfather of the Buddhist king Aśoka (r. 268–232 BCE). However, like most important classical Indian works, the Arthaśāstra was likely modified and expanded throughout the centuries. The work has been edited and translated by R. P. Kangle, The Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra, 3 vols.; and more recently by Patrick Olivelle, King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India: Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra.
6. This is not to say that there did not exist earlier Sanskrit works on polity. Cāṇakya acknowledges earlier schools of political thought—e.g., those of Bhṛgu and Śukra, and of Aṅgiras and Bṛhaspati—but these figures are quasi-mythological and whatever work has survived that bears their names is of questionable authorship.
7. Some portions of the purāṇas also contain sections on ethics and the duties of kings, although these works are much later. The classical tradition also considers didactic fables like the Pañcatantra and the Hitopadeśa to be nītiśastras, although as McComas Taylor notes, “if we take the mainstream members of the nītiśāstra genre as a guide, it [the Pañcatantra] can at best be considered a distant outlier of the nītiśastric archipelago.” McComas Taylor, The Fall of the Indigo Jackal, 129.
8. Kamayani Mahodaya, ed. and trans., Bhartṛhari’s Śatakatrayaṃ (Delhi: Chaukhamba Sanskrit Pratishthan, 2011), 4–50. The dates of the work range from the first century BCE to the first century ce, although some scholars claim that it belongs to the fifth century ce or even later. See M. R. Kale, The Nīti and Vairagya Śatakas of Bhartṛhari, viii–xi. Unlike the Arthaśāstra and the rājadharma section of the Mahābhārata, Bhartṛhari’s Nītiśataka has little to do with politics, being instead a more general work on ethics and worldly wisdom.
9. The work has been edited and translated in Sudhir Kumar Gupta, Nitivakyamritam.
10. A Śukra Nītiśāstra in some 2200 verses has come down to us, but it is now widely considered to be a nineteenth century “forgery.” See K. Satchidananda Murty, “Sanskrit and Philosophical Thought in the Vasco da Gama Epoch,” 794. The Śukranīti has been translated into English by Benoy Kumar Sarkar, The Sukranīti.
11. The translation of these verses are slightly modified versions of those found in Mitra and Mitra, The Nītisāra by Kāmandaki.
12. Skilling, “King Sangha, and Brahmans,” 195, has noted that in Thailand there are a number of works (not actually called nīti, by the way) that are concerned with things like troop formations, and how to achieve victory in war. Interestingly, some of these texts refer to Kāmandaki’s Nītisāra as their source.
13. Taylor, The Fall of the Indigo Jackal, 128.
14. Ludwik Sternbach, Subhāṣita, Gnomic and Didactic Literature, fasc. 1, 1.
15. As Daniel Ingalls states, “a subhāṣita (well-turned verse) is a rather special product….Not only should a subhāsita carry mood [rāsa] and suggestion [dhvani]; it should carry them even when torn from its context. The requirement of mood and suggestion rules out didactic and narrative verse, of which Sanskrit contains a vast amount. The second requirement [i.e., context independence] rules out still more.” Daniel H. H. Ingalls, An Anthology of Sanskrit Court Poetry: Vidyākara’s “Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa,” 88.
16. In a real tour de force, Ludwik Sternbach and his colleagues have attempted to compile all known subhāṣitas into their own compendium, detailing where each verse is found. This is the Mahā-subhāṣita-saṃgraha, 8 vols.
17. Most of these anthologies are quite late, dating to the second millennium ce. As an example, see A. N. D. Haksar, Subhāshitāvali. The compiler of this work was a certain Vallabhadeva, and the anthology is usually dated to the fifteenth century.
18. The work has been translated into English by Ingalls, An Anthology of Sanskrit Court Poetry.
19. Prakrit collections of subhāṣita verses include the Seven Hundred Stanzas (Sattasaī) of Hāla (its dates are unknown, but it was probably written between the third and seventh centuries). The Ways of the World (Vajjālaga)—originally compiled by the Jain scholar Jayavallabha (eighth century) but likely added to over the centuries—was influenced by the work of Hāla. Sternbach (Subhāṣita, 10) considers these two works “the oldest subhāṣita-saṃgraha known to exist in India.” The Tirukkuraḷ of the Tamil poet and philosopher Thiruvalluvar (first centuries BCE) is an important and early work of the nīti-subhāṣita genre. Its three parts provide guidance in (1) ethics or virtue, (2) “property,” meaning “worldly affairs,” which includes sections on kingship and polity, and (3) love or matters of the heart. Although purportedly a single-author work, Sternbach (Subhāṣita, 41) states that the Tirukkuṛal and the other Tamil subhāṣita collections Nālaṭiyār and Nīti-venpā “contain many verses of Sanskrit origin,” which suggests borrowing.
20. See Sternbach, Subhāsita, 41–3 for an overview. The Pāli Lokanīti of Burma has been translated in James B. Gray, Ancient Proverbs and Maxims from Burmese Sources, or the Nīti Literature of Burma.
21. As we have seen, Mipham lists all of the works that he consults at the end of the Treatise. The reader will find more information about each of these works in the notes to that portion of the book.
22. For instance, Mipham’s Treatise is anthologized in a recent collection of subhāṣita literature published in Tibet: Legs bshad bstan bcos phyogs bsgrigs, 6 vols.
23. For a brief overview, see Pankaj Mohan, “Kingship,” in Robert E. Buswell, Jr., Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. 1: 467–68.
24. The translation is slightly adapted from that found in Steven Collins, Nirvana and other Buddhist Felicities: Utopias of the Pāli Imaginaire, 604. See also Ven. Dr. Mahinda Deegalle, “The Analysis of Social Conflicts in Three Pāli Canonical Discourses,” www.undv.org/vesak2015/paper/analysis_social_conflicts.pdf. Deegalle also discusses the Kūṭadanta Sutta (Dīgha Nikāya 5, PTS I, 127–49), which advocates for the “fair distribution of resources…aimed at eliminating poverty through the promotion of agriculture.”
25. See, for example, Mahāparinibbāna Sutta (Dīgha Nikāya 16, PTS 2.72–78).
26. Mipham also mentions three other canonical works in passing as relevant for the study of Mahāyāna views of kingship, statecraft, and ethics: the Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī, the Root Tantra of Mañjuśrī (Mañjuśrī Mūla Tantra), and the Ākāśagarbha Sūtra.
27. The discussion is found in the third chapter of the Kośa, vv. 94–96. See Abhidharmakośa-Bhāṣya of Vasubandhu, French translation by Louis de la Vallee Poussin, English translation by Gelong Lodrö Sangpo, vol. 2, 1100–05.
28. Ārya Asaṅga, The Bodhisattva Path to Unsurpassed Enlightenment, translation by Artemus B. Engle, 583–84. Even then, the text continues, the bodhisattva king will repel the attack “peacefully and using skillful means.” All of the translations I cite here are Engle’s. The Bodhisattvabhūmi also states (p. 212) that although bodhisattva kings may engage in vast acts of generosity, they never give “the child or wife that belongs to one person…to someone else,” nor do they “offer to someone from another [kingdom] an entire village or town.”
29. The Indian commentary glosses this as “without confiscating property or putting subjects to death.”
30. Asaṅga, The Bodhisattva Path, 588, with minor modifications to the translation on my part.
31. See John S. Strong, The Legend of King Aśoka.
32. To give another example of the centrality of kings to the Jātaka literature, in a collection of 150 Jātakas compiled by the Tibetan scholar Loter Wangpo (Blo gter dbang po, 1847–1914), one of Mipham’s teachers, roughly 40 percent of the all of the tales have some reference to royalty (king, prince, etc.) in their title. Skilling (“King, Sangha, and Brahmans,” 195) has also noted that the Jātakas are an important source for royal policy in Thailand.
33. Āryaśūra, Garland of the Buddha’s Past Lives, vol. 2, 76–77. I have cited Meiland’s translation from the Sanskrit here, but for the Tibetan—which suggests some alternative readings of the Sanskrit—see Skyes pa’i rabs kyi rgyud, Sde dge ed., fol. 81a.
34. The discussion that follows, and the passages from the text that I translate, are based on the analysis and sample passages cited in Chab ’gag rta mgrin’s very valuable Bod bstan po’i dus kyi rtsom rig, chapter 2. The Elder Brother’s Advice is written in prose and not in verse, but Chab ’gag rta mgrin goes on (p. 215f) to discuss a different Dunhuang text that he also considers another early Tibetan nīti work, namely Teachings of the Magical Monk to Later Generations (’Phrul gyi byig shus phyi ma la bstan pa’i mdo), which is written entirely in verse. It deals with such topics as forsaking power and wealth in favor of virtue, the inevitability of death, the uselessness of piling wealth in tombs, the law of karma, the importance of practicing virtue so as to experience happiness in the next life, avoiding the ten nonvirtues, not killing living beings, not drinking alcohol, being respectful to parents, and so forth. Is this work a text of the nīti genre? While the Teachings of the Magical Monk is written in verse and clearly has an ethical agenda, it strikes me as being more of a catechism than a nīti or even proto-nīti work.
35. Atiśa was one of the greatest Indian Buddhist scholars of his day. He was invited to the court of Gugé-Purang in western Tibet by King Yeshé Ö (ca. 959–1040). Traditional accounts state that the king died before Atiśa arrived. The letter was requested by Yeshé Ö’s grandnephew, Jangchub Ö on the eve of Atiśa’s departure back to India. Mnyam med jo bo chen po rgya gar la phebs khar lha bla ma byang chub ’od la zhal gdams su btsal ba, 367–74.
36. Mnyam med jo bo chen po lha bla ma byang chub ’od la zhal gdams, 371–73.
37. ’Brom ston rgyal ba’i ’byung gnas, Mi chos gnad kyi phreng ba. It was requested by Nagtso, another of Atiśa’s main students, who said, “Give me something practical to think about on the road,” as Dromtönpa was escorting him at the time of his departure. The work is found in Cha ris skal bzang thogs med and Ngag dbang snyin pa, eds., Blo sbyong nyer mkho phyogs bsgrigs, 374–80.
38. The Tibetan texts are found in ’Phags pa blo gros rgyal mtshan, ’Gro mgon chos rgyal ’phags pa’i gsung ’bum, Dpe sdur ma ed., fol. 115. Excerpts from some of these works have been translated in Christopher Wilkinson, Chogyal Phagpa: The Emperor’s Guru, 203–29. Adam Krug’s study of one of these works, “History, Ideology, and the Construction of a Tibetan Buddhist State Identity in ’Phags pa’s Advice to Prince Jibik Temür,” is forthcoming in a special issue on kingship in Cahier d’Extrême Asie.
39. ’Phas pa blo gros rgyal mtshan, Rgyal bu ji big de mur la gtam du bya ba nor bu’i phreng ba, in ’Gro mgon chos rgyal ’phags pa’i gsung ’bum, Dpe sdur ma ed., vol. 4: 115–16.
40. ’Phags pa blo gros rgyal mtshan, Rgyal bu mangga la la gtam du bya ba, in ’Gro mgon chos rgyal ’phags pa’i gsung ’bum, Dpe sdur ma ed., 136–37.
41. The full Tibetan title of the work Byis pa ’jug pa’i sems kyi bslab pa bstan par lugs kyi bstan bcos blun po brtag pa, and it is found in Bodong’s Collected Works.
42. There is a work preserved in the collection of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives called Inexhaustible Treasure: A Treatise on Ethics (Nītiśāstra), Precious Instructions to All of Humanity (Skye bo kun la gdams pa’i rin chen lugs kyi bstan bcos mi zad pa’i gter). The work is missing the final page, so we do not know who wrote it or when it was written. It is a long work, over 160 folio sides in small pecha (dpe thung) format. I received the images of the text just as this book was going to print, so I have only had a chance to glance at it, but from this brief perusal, it seems to be a compilation of several works and is not a continuous nīti treatise. My thanks to Lobsang Shastri for making the images of the work available to me.
43. The dates of the author are unknown. The full title of the work is Palu-the-Muslim’s Advice on Evaluating the Effects of Actions in the World. It is perhaps the only premodern Tibetan work written by a Tibetan Muslim. The text has been translated in Dawa Norbu, Khache Phalu’s Advice on Art of Living. For references to other literature on this text, see http://tibetica.blogspot.com/2006/06/khache-phalu-tells-it.html.
44. It is unclear to me who Namgyal Zöpa (Rnam rgyal bzod pa) might be. Lozang Jinpa writes about him as if he were his teacher. Nor have I found texts with the names Earth and Fire Treatise that predate Lozang Jinpa.
45. An excellent resource for understanding the Tibetan notion of the “union of politics and Dharma,” is the recently published collection of essays, Christoph Cüppers, The Relationship Between Religion and States (chos srid zung ’brel) in Traditional Tibet.
46. Max Oidtmann has shown, for example, that the “two systems” was very much on the minds of Amdo Gelugpa hierarchs in the early nineteenth century because of new forms of Manchu political intervention in Tibetan affairs. Max Oidtmann, “A Case for Gelukpa Governance: The Historians of Labrang, Amdo, and the Manchu Rulers of China,” in Greater Tibet, 111–48. Oidtmann shows how in 1819 Belmang Paṇḍita (1764–1863), the twenty-fourth abbot of Labrang and a contemporary of Gungtang, was arguing for a form of government based on a system of Buddhist laws. He sees Belmang’s famous History, where he laid out these arguments, as a kind of “prince’s manual”—in part a response to Qing policies, and in part an attempt to show why the Gelug Church ought to be privileged in the administration of the political affairs of Tibet.
47. This is the famous Sakya Legshé (Sa skya legs bshad), which has been translated with commentary in Davenport, Ordinary Wisdom.