Tibetan Renaissance Seminar > Student Generated Content > Blue Annals Chapter Reference Analyses > Reference Analysis Blue Annals Chapter 3

Reference Analysis Blue Annals Chapter 3

by Christopher Bell

Analysis

The third chapter of the Blue Annals concerns the early translation period of esoteric Buddhist texts during the renaissance era. As such, the following list of places notably provides a very diverse collection of locales. This chapter summarizes the time that immediately follows the period of fragmentation (bsil bu'i dus), a time of great religious and cultural ferment. This new activity is traditionally considered to have a come about after Buddhism was revivified in Tibet, when new monastic powers and religious leaders came into central Tibet from the west and east and founded or reestablished religious institutions. Through the efforts of such agents—like Atīśa, who came in through the west, and the vinaya monks of the east—Buddhist practice burgeoned alongside rigorous translation activity. The rapid translation of numerous Sanskrit tantric texts was taking place all over Tibet through the dedicated work of a growing religious monastic literati and their increasing lay patrons. The following table illustrates just how widespread this translation activity, and the flourishing Buddhist practices that followed, was. While a number of these locations are unknown, there seems to be an even spread all over cultural Tibet, with activity occurring in central, western, and eastern areas. Exceptions include west Tibet (Mnga' ris), which is only discussed once and in the context of Atīśa's time there, and north-east Tibet (A mdo). By contrast, Ü, Tsang, and Kham, provide the setting for a number of events. India and China are also significant, though China to a lesser degree. Geographically locating many of the unknown locations provided below, a difficult task to be sure, would immensely aid the creation of a geographic timeline that could chart the numerous venues of the new religious activity of this period. The difficulty of this task is augmented by the fact that many of these unknown locations no longer exist by these names, the administrative structuring of these regions having been reordered numerous times over the last eight hundred years. Furthermore, the possibility of orthographic error, misinformation, and multiple names for the same places is quite high. Nonetheless, it is quite ostensible, given the diverse and numerous locations discussed in this chapter, that Tibet was undergoing an intense religious revival at this time, and it was filtering into even the most regional of places all over its landscape.

Places