The Early Development of the Padmasambhava Legend in Tibet: A Study of IOL Tib J 644 and Pelliot Tibetain 307‪.‬

This article offers some new evidence on Padmasambhava, the Indian master who, according to legend, was instrumental in establishing Buddhism in Tibet. In the course of my research on tantra in the Tibetan manuscripts discovered near Dunhuang, I have found two passages relating to the early development of the legends surrounding this famous Buddhist master, neither of which have been studied to date. (1) The two passages are presented below in translation, and discussed in light of the other available early evidence. The results of this study reveal a mutability in the early biographies of Padmasambhava. The master's role in the Tibetan imagination grew and evolved in dramatic ways during the ninth to eleventh centuries, so that by the time of his first complete biography, the twelfth-century Zangs gling ma by Nyang ral nyi ma'i 'od zer (1124-1192), Padmasambhava had become the single most important figure in Tibetan narratives of their early conversion to Buddhism. The new evidence presented here contributes to our understanding of how these Tibetan conversion narratives grew over the early years. The present inquiry is therefore less concerned with Padmasambhava as a historical person than with his legend and the thematic lines along which it developed. (2) An evaluation of the early evidence helps to clarify both how Tibetans perceived themselves and how they understood their first encounters with the Buddhist religion.