Other historiographic texts, that are sometimes styled, or that sometimes incorporate, smaller texts variously called lo rgyus, rgyal rabs, or chos 'byung, would be a limited number of so-called treasure-texts (gter ma) (see Gyatso, in this volume). A case in point is the bKa' chems ka khol ma, putatively Srong btsan sgam po's (?-649/50) testament (bka' chems), which was allegedly retrieved from a hole in a pillar (ka khol ma) by Atiśa (982?-1054?) in ca. 1049. It figures among the earliest such treasure-texts, and a number of particulars of its textual history were delineated by Vostrikov (28-32) and recently by Eimer (1983a). Although two versions were published some years ago, the best recension appears to be the one that was issued a few years ago by sMon lam rgya mtsho on the basis of two handwritten manuscripts, one at the Central Institute of Minorities, Beijing, and one written in silver on dark blue paper that belongs to the library of bLa brang bKra shis 'khyil Monastery in A mdo. In the colophon, the text elicits the following course of its transmission: Atiśa; Bang ston [Byang chub rgyal mtshan]; sTod lung[s] pa [Rin chen snying po] (1032-1116); sPyan snga ba [Tshul khrims 'bar (1033-1103)]; sNe'u zur pa [Ye shes 'bar (1042-1118/19)]; 'Bri gung pa [read here ?"lHa (chen) 'Bri sgang pa"]24; rGya ma ba; Rwa sgreng pa; dKon [mchog] bzang [po]; rDo rje tshul khrims25; "me." Who is this "me"? Obviously, he must be one with strong ties to the bKa' gdams pa school and he must have flourished sometime towards the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century.

The bKa' chems ka khol ma contains a great deal of interest concerning the reign of this first Tibetan religious king, and also contains a number of prophecies in the sixteenth chapter. It served as a primary source for later Tibetan accounts of that period, including, it would appear, the narratives of Thon mi Sambhoṭa's alleged invention of the Tibetan script and the arduous journeys to,[page 48] and sojourns at, the Nepalese and Chinese courts by the minister mGar sTong btsan yul bzung for purposes of escorting a lady of their ruling houses to Tibet for betrothal to Srong btsan sgam po. Although it is supposed to be the work of the latter, it contains some information which perhaps impeaches the veracity of this imputation. For one, it mentions the date in which he passed away to the exact day and includes a number of prophecies in its sixteenth chapter that most of us would consider to be evidence for much later compilation, since Atiśa is mentioned in them!26

Of the twelfth and thirteenth century chronicles known to date, the text is only mentioned in the works of Nyang ral and mKhas pa lDe'u. The latter, if he is indeed to be placed in the second half of the thirteenth century, refers to it in passing just prior to his narrative of the building of the Ra sa phrul snang, the gTsug lag khang temple in the center of Lhasa.27 While he does not explicitly cite it in his account of the life and times of Srong btsan sgam po (although there can be no doubt that he must have used one or another recension of this work) Nyang ral records a few details of its retrieval in the bibliographic remarks at the end of his chronicle.28 There he writes that the document (yi ge) of the rGyal po bka' chems was of difficult access, and that Atiśa retrieved three works from a central beam (gdung bar) of the Ra sa phrul snang temple, namely the "bKa' rtsis chen mo written by the kings, the Dar dkar gsal ba'i me long written by the queens, and the Zla ba'i 'dod 'jo written by the ministers." He furthermore appears to hold that these three are known together as rGyal po bka' chems, which in turn seems to refer to the bKa' chems ka khol ma. This might be confirmed by what may be the best recension of the text itself, the first chapter of which states that Atiśa and two assistants excavated three scrolls (shog dril) from atop a jug-shaped pillar, or a (hollow) pillar containing a jug within it (ka ba bum pa can gyi steng nas), where the first and the third, here noted as the Zla ba 'dod 'jo and the bKa' chems kyi yi ge, are described as being lo rgyus.29 In addition to these texts, the bKa' chems ka khol ma also signals the existence of several other early treatises on which it may be based.30 A detailed study of this highly significant work, which perforce needs to include a comparative analysis of the various recensions (at least three are known to me) that have come down to us and the various recensions of the Maṇi bka' 'bum, is one of the many urgent desiderata in the area of Tibetan historiographic research.

[page 49] Of course, because gter ma texts are considered to date from Tibet's imperial period, many came to be considered crucial sources for this period in later historiographic works. A case in point is Nyang ral's chronicle, for not only is its discussion of the life and times of Srong btsan sgam po largely based on the bKa' chems ka khol ma, but Nyang ral also incorporated into it significant portions of the Zangs gling ma biography of Padmasambhava, a gter ma in its own right, which he himself had retrieved earlier.

As has hopefully become evident, the earliest Tibetan historiographical materials are extremely diverse and, regrettably, to a large extent still unpublished. Investigations into the literary sources used by authors of those texts that are available to us are also in their infancy, as is, consequently, research into the particular ways in which they have made use of them. This renders it particularly difficult to determine the original contributions made by these early authors in terms of how they interpreted them when they were not simply incorporating large portions of their sources into their own work.