The expression rgyal rabs means something like "account/story of king(s)," and is perhaps best translated by "royal chronicle."13 As far as the rgyal rabs as a specific historiographic genre is concerned, the earliest ones that are presently available were composed by the third and fifth Sa skya pa patriarchs rJe btsun Grags pa rgyal mtshan (1147-1216) and 'Phags pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan (1235-1280).14 The latter's is dated to the year 1275. In addition to these two, there were also others that were written in the thirteenth century. Possibly dPa' bo but certainly the great Sa skya scholar Mang thos Klu sgrub rgya mtsho (1523-1596), in his study of the chronology of Buddhism in India and Tibet finally completed in 1587, have preserved several fragments of the rGyal po rabs phreng by U rgyan pa Rin chen dpal (1230-1309).15 According to bSod nams 'od zer's hagiography of U rgyan pa, the author wrote this work for Qubilai Khan (r. 1260-1294) as part of his attempt—his hagiographer and disciple states that he was successful—to dissuade the Mongol emperor from invading Nepal. While bSod nams 'od zer does not date this episode, evidence internal to the hagiography suggests that this may have taken place in the 1270s. This is now confirmed by the recent discovery of a thirteen-folio manuscript of U rgyan pa's rGyal po rabs kyi phreng ba, which is dated 1278.16 The still unavailable rgyal rabs is the rGyal rabs dpag bsam ljon shing[page 44] of 1286 by the elusive Byang ji ston pa Shes rab 'bum, which so far is first alluded to in Tshal pa Kun dga' rdo rje's extremely influential Deb gter/ther dmar po ("Red Book") (see TSHAL: 21a; TSHAL1: 45, Inaba-Satō: 103; Chen-Zhou: 41). The relevant passage states that his genealogy of Tibet's ruling families was for the most part taken from a summary of Byang ji ston pa's work, which had been written upon his request by a dPag thog pa Rin chen rdo rje or gSer thog pa Rin chen rdo rje.17

The Deb gter/ther dmar po, the earliest extant Tibetan example of an attempt at writing a global history, has so far been translated into Japanese and Chinese (see Inaba-Satō; Chen-Zhou; and also the papers of Bira, 1964, 1984). To be sure, its scope and the underlying conception of its composition can only be understood against the background of the Mongol conquest of Tibet in 1240 by Ögödei Khan (r. 1229-1241), the subsequent establishment of a central governing body under the 'Bri gung pa and Phag mo gru, and its inclusion into the Mongol empire. Under Qubilai Khan, Tibet became formally part of the Mongol empire in China, and the change of local government in the 1260s, headed this time by Sa skya, together with the preeminent position held by prelates from Sa skya, made it possible for Tibet, as during the imperial period, once again to make an entry onto the stage of world history, albeit this time of course not as a sovereign state, but under Mongol overlordship. The Mongol domination of Tibet from 1240 to 1368 had far-reaching effects on Tibet's religious and political institutions, as well as on the development of the Tibetan language and historiography. One of these was the adoption of numerous Uighur/ Mongol and Chinese loan words. Indeed, the very term deb gter/ther (gter and ther are homophonous) in the title of Tshal pa's work is an example of such a loan word; in fact, it is its first attestation in written Tibetan. It undoubtedly entered into the Tibetan lexicon from the Mongol debter which, in turn, ultimately derives from the Greek via the media of Persian and Old Turkish. While the introductory remarks in both recensions entitle it Deb gter dmar po, the chronicle is also known as the Hu lan deb gter/ther, where hu lan corresponds to Mongol ula'an/ulaghan, "red," a title which occurs at the very end of what may have been the original text (see TSHAL: 38b; TSHAL1: 149; Inaba-Satō: 194; Chen-Zhou: 128).

Tshal pa's notion of historiography is a traditional one, one which in another context Collingwood (257 ff.) has called the "scissors[page 45] -and-paste" approach to history, characterizing it as "...a kind of history which depends altogether upon the testimony of authorities." Tshal pa not only made use of a number of Indic and Tibetan sources, but also of treatises (originally) in Mongol and Chinese. A case in point of the former is the so-called Yeke tobčiyan ("Great/Large Records"), which, though they cannot be identified with any precision, could very well refer to the lost genealogical tables of the Mongol imperial family on which the relevant chapters of the Yuanshi are based, or perhaps even to the Dayuan tongzhi collection of legal documents.18 In this connection, we should note that for information on early Sino-Tibetan relations and for the royal/imperial genealogies of the Chinese, Xixia and Mongol empires, bLa ma dam pa, Yar lung pa, the chronicle of 1434 (with a few later interpolations) of sTag tshang pa dPal 'byor bzang po, alias Śrībhutibhadra, 'Gos lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal's (1392-1481) Deb gter/ther sngon po of 1476-1478, Paṇ chen bSod nams grags pa's (1478-1554) Deb ther dmar po gsar ma ("New Red Annals") of 1538, and dPa' bo depend almost exclusively on the relevant texts in Tshal pa's compilation. Of interest is that dPa' bo contains a translation from a Chinese work on the spread of Buddhism in China which, he takes special pains to specify, is not met with in the so-called Deb dmar (see DPA'2: 567-572; DPA': 1391-1396). In his remarks that preface the reproduction of this work, he writes that it was first translated from Chinese into Uighur by a Uighur monk called Og zo at the order of Emperor Buyantu (r. 1311 to 1320); subsequently it was rendered into Tibetan in Sa skya Monastery by a Puṇyaśrībhadra (= bSod nams dpal bzang po), who was probably a Uighur as well.19

At the outset of the Deb gter/ther dmar po, in his statement of intent, Tshal pa writes that what follows is "the first of three Deb gter dmar po [texts]"; unfortunately, the other two, if they were ever written, are wanting. However, Dung dkar Blo bzang 'phrin las, the editor of the Beijing recension, does observe that he wrote in addition to other works (which include two biographies) a supplement to a/the Deb gter/ther dmar po,20 a rgyal rabs entitled Deb ther khra po ("Multicolored Book"), and a catalogue of the so-called Tshal pa bKa' 'gyur, which bore the subtitle of Deb ther dkar po ("White Book").21 Of some interest is of course the use of color terms in the titles (or subtitles) of books. This was unprecedented in Tibetan historiography and is something that is very Mongolian indeed.