Dr. Pascale Hugon (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna): Putting Recently Recovered Early Tibetan Epistemological Works on the Map The Epistemological Summary Ascribed to gNyag

7 July 2021

17:00 July 07, 2021. Due to the coronavirus pandemic conducted online via Zoom.

In the last two decades, research on the Tibetan tradition of logic and epistemology
(tshad ma) has entered a new era, following the recovery of a large number of hitherto
inaccessible and even in great part unknown works. In particular, the facsimiles of 40
manuscripts of epistemological works by bKa’ gdams pa authors—most of which
had been preserved in the gNas bcu temple of the monastery of ’Bras spungs as part
of the private library of the Fifth Dalai Lama Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho
(1617–1682) and were no longer in circulation since the 17th century—were
published in the bKa’ gdams gsung ’bum (Chengdu, 2006–2015), opening the way for a
large-scale exploration of the early phase of the Tibetan epistemological tradition in
the 11th–13th centuries. The bKa’ gdams gsung ’bum provides access to works by a
number of famous influential figures—such as rNgog Blo ldan shes rab (1059–1109),
Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge (1109–1169), and other scholars associated with the
monastery of gSang phu Ne’u thog—but also features contributions by lesser known
scholars, as well as a number of anonymous texts. The extant early bKa’ gdams pa
epistemological corpus includes commentaries on Dharmakīrti’s treatises as well as
independent compositions illustrating various forms of composition that were newly
devised in Tibet.
In the introductory part of my talk I will present a general survey of this new textual
material. I will then consider in detail a specific text: a short (8-folio) epistemological
summary whose author is referred to as “gNyag” in the colophon. After briefly

describing the manuscript and laying out the text’s contents, I will explore the issue
of its authorship from various angles. I will, in particular, examine what citations in
the text reveal about the religio-philosophical orientation of the author, and
demonstrate how one can integrate this thus far unidentified figure into the networks
of 11th–13th-century Buddhist philosophers in consideration of specific features of
his discussion of key epistemological topics.

• Click here to download the invitation [PDF]

The lecture is held online via Zoom. For those who whish to participate, please write a short mail to Prof. Dr. Wangchuk: dorji.wangchuk@uni-hamburg.de

Prof. Dr. Dorji Wangchuk (Director)
Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship (KC-TBTS)
Abteilung für Kultur und Geschichte Indiens und Tibets, AAI, Universität Hamburg
Alsterterrasse 1, D-20354 Hamburg