History of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism by Dge Ye Tshul Khrims Seng Ge (Book Review‪)‬

History of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism by dGe ye Tshul Khrims seng ge: A Critical and Facsimile Edition of the Tibetan Text with Summary and Index. Edited by KHETSUN, SHINTCHIRO MIYAKE, MAHO IUCHI, AND SHOKO METAKA. Otani: OTANI UNIVERSITY SHIN BUDDHIST COMPREHENSIVE RESEARCH INSTITUTE (SBCRI), TIBETAN WORKS RESEARCH PROJECT, 2007. Pp. xii + 154. With this publication, the editors and the Shin Buddhist Comprehensive Research Institute (1) have made available an extremely rare, quite interesting, and potentially very useful document of Tibetan religious historiography: the Precious History of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism of Geye Tsultrim Senge (dGe ye Tshul khrims seng ges mdzad pa'i rGya bod kyi chos 'byung rin po che). Written in or around 1474, (2) this work--which also bears the more elaborate title Biographies of Holy Persons: Play of the Faithful Swans in the Ocean of Learning (Skyes bu dam pa'i mam thar thos [pa] rgya mtshor dad pa'i ngang mo mam par rtse ba)--is the only work of this author that seems to have survived to the present. As a consequence, Geye Tsulseng has heretofore been little noted in modern scholarship on Tibetan history and culture. The publication of this volume thus sheds important light on the genre of Tibetan historiography in the fifteenth century and provides the first primary source material from an author otherwise known only from scattered literary references.