Daṇḍin's Kāvyādarśa, "The Mirror of Poetics," a classic treatment of Indian poetic theory, was first made known to the Tibetan scholarly world by Sa skya Paṇḍita Kun dga' rgyal mtshan (1182-1251), who translated major portions of its first and second chapters in his unprecedented treatise on the principles of learned discourse, the mKhas pa rnams la 'jug pa'i sgo, the title of which can be paraphrased as "An Introduction to Scholarship," composed between ca. 1220 and 1230 (see Jackson). The text of the Kāvyādarśa is divided into three chapters, the first of which delineates the general characteristics of ornate poetry and the features that distinguish the so-called southern from the eastern schools of literary composition. The second chapter catalogues and discusses those poetic figures that are based on the semantic relationships within a verse, and the third does the same for the poetic figures that have their origin in the phonological relations within a verse. It became the model against which Tibetan literary critics, such as there were, measured the poetic accomplishments of their fellow writers, after it was translated into Tibetan by Shong ston lo tsā ba rDo rje rgyal mtshan and Lakṣmīkara under the patronage and support of 'Phags pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan (1235-1280), Sa skya Paṇḍita's nephew, and grand-governor (dpon chen) Shākya bzang po (d. 1270?), sometime between 1267 and 1270. In course of time, new Sanskrit manuscripts of Daṇḍin's work found their way into Tibet, which resulted in improvements on, or variations of, the earlier translations. An example of this already appears in the first stanza of the Kāvyādarśa, which reads in Sanskrit (Shastri and Potdar: 1) [reduplication of consonants has been elided]:

Some Sanskrit manuscripts of the text have, in the third foot, the variant reading dirghaṃ, "long," for nityaṃ, "forever." The Tibetan translation of this stanza in each of the four canonical prints is:

It thus follows those Sanskrit texts that have dirghaṃ. However, the reading of nityaṃ is attested in the exegesis of sNar thang lo tsā ba of the year 1408 (see DGE: 25), for there the last two feet read:

To be noted also is the variant yid mtshor for yid la, which can to some extent also reflect Sanskrit mānase.

This process of successive reevaluation may be said to have culminated in the text-critical work on, and exegesis of, the text by the great linguist and Sanskritist Si tu Paṇ chen bsTan pa'i nyin byed (1699-1774) and his disciple the fourth Khams sprul bsTan 'dzin chos kyi nyi ma (1734-1779) of, respectively, 1772 and 1770 (see SI and KHAMS). In all, one can isolate some seven phases of its transmission in Tibet under the following Tibetan Sanskritists:

1. (1) Sa skya Paṇḍita
2. (2) Shong ston lo tsā ba / Lakṣmīkara
3. (3) dPang lo tsā ba Blo gros brtan pa (1276-1342)
4. (4) sNar thang lo tsā ba dGe 'dun dpal (ca. 1400), alias Saṃghaśrī
5. (5) sNye thang lo tsā ba Blo gros brtan pa (mid-fifteenth century)
6. (6) Zhwa lu lo tsā ba Rin chen chos skyong dpal bzang po (1441-1528)
7. (7) Si tu Paṇ chen and the fourth Khams sprul

Each of these phases is thus characterized by a renewed appraisal of earlier translations, one that was often undertaken in conjunction with the availability of new Sanskrit manuscripts. Not all of these ended up in subsequent editions of the canon, however. Of the four editions that are available, the Beijing and sNar thang recensions contain the text edited by dPang lo tsā ba, whereas the[page 397] sDe dge and Co ne have the edited text of sNye thang lo tsā ba. Moreover, the bilingual Sanskrit-Tibetan version published in Bhutan is the one that resulted from Zhwa lu lo tsā ba's studies of the text (see ZHWA).

The Kāvyādarśa was also the object of numerous lengthy commentaries which, commencing with a series of glosses by Shong ston lo tsā ba himself, reached their zenith, from a philological point of view, in the magnificent commentary of the fourth Khams sprul. The earliest extant exegesis—the published manuscript is unfortunately incomplete—is owed to dPang lo tsā ba (see DPANG). The enormous impact of Daṇḍin's text on Tibetan letters in general is also apparent from the fourteenth century onward, where one can discern a conscious use of its poetic figures—these fall into two classes: poetic figures based on semantic considerations and those based on phonological ones—in virtually every literary genre, whether it be in eulogies, biographies, chronicles or dissertations on medicine, astrology and so on. Several important exegeses of the text were written during the present century, and we may mention here the one by Mi pham rNam rgyal rgya mtsho (1846-1912) of 1909, and those by the contemporary scholars bSe tshang Blo bzang dpal ldan and Dung dkar Blo bzang 'phrin las (see MI, BSE and DUNG). All of the writers mentioned thus far are Buddhist, but this does not mean that only Tibetan Buddhist scholars were interested in poetry and poetics. An example of a Bon po writer on this subject is the late Tshul khrims rgyal mtshan (1898-?), although his work, virtually a précis of the Kāvyādarśa, is indistinguishable from its Buddhist counterparts (see TSHUL).

Already the earliest Tibetan commentaries on the Kāvyādarśa provide evidence that two Indian commentaries, namely those by Ratnaśrī and Vāgīśvarakīrti, had penetrated into Tibet's literary consciousness (see van der Kuijp, 1986). It was in these glosses that further information on the fate of Rāma and Sītā came to be transmitted to Tibet. And it is essentially with this state of affairs in mind that we must view the first prose adaptation of a portion of their story by dMar ston Chos kyi rgyal po, a disciple of Sa skya Paṇḍita, in his commentary on a gnome (number 321) in the eighth chapter of his master's Legs bshad rin po che'i gter ("A Treasury of Elegant Sayings"), a work Sa skya Paṇḍita completed sometime[page 398] between 1215 and 1225 (see DMAR: 190-196).2 However, the most famous author of a Tibetan adaptation of this story is arguably Zhang zhung Chos dbang grags pa (1404-1469), whose work of 1438 is written in highly ornate poetry, using a great variety of Daṇḍin's poetic figures (see ZHANG). There is no doubt that Zhang zhung emulates the poetic style for which his master mKhas grub dGe legs dpal bzang po (1385-1438) has become notorious, for his diction is at times rather obscure and turgid, and always extremely intellectual. A commentary on this work, written by Ngag dbang bstan pa'i rgya mtsho of bKra shis 'khyil Monastery, was also recently published (see NGAG). It includes an identification of the poetic figures employed by Zhang zhung as well as a number of text-critical comments anent the corruptions that had crept into manuscripts and blockprints of Zhang zhung's work. To give an idea of the text and its exegesis, we have translated the first verse with which Zhang zhung begins his actual poem, together with Ngag dbang bstan pa'i rgya mtsho's comment (see NGAG: 90-91). It depicts rNga yab (Cāmara), the land of the demons, ruled by king Daśagriva, the abductor of Sītā, and contrasts it with 'Dzam gling (Jambudvīpa), the world as we know it.

The one following the goose *Jambudvīpa,

Is *Cāmara, the leader of gander[s].

Desiring the rising red one (dmar ba),

The one who followed it is Adi's [read: Ādi's] youngster.

The meaning: *Cāmara and *Dvicāmara (or: Paracāmara) are associate isles of *Jambudvīpa and, insofar as the demons live in Cāmara, the leader of gander[s] who follow after the goose *Jambudvīpa, the great continent, that is, chase after it, is *Cāmara, the associate isle which is the demon abode. That very item is likened to this [scenario]: For instance, [propelled] by the force of desiring the beauty of the red lustre of the rising sun, Adi's [read: Ādi's] youngster, that is, Adi's [read: Ādi's] son, who followed or follows it, has the same quality as the sun. "Aditya" [read: Āditya], that is, Mi sbyin skyes [in Tibetan] is said to be the name given to [his] mother. In this [verse, the author] set up *Jambudvīpa and *Cāmara as metaphors for a goose and gander, and then set up their corresponding similes, namely the rising red hue is a simile of the former and the sun a simile for the latter. In this fashion, the stanza is a comparison-metaphor (upamārūpaka, dpe'i gzugs can), because it is similar to the statement in the Kāvyādarśa [II: 89],[page 399]

This moon-like countenance suffused,

With a reddishness through intoxication,

Vies with the moon,

Rising and of excellent redness.

Although there is, in this [verse], no explicit word indicating similarity in the last foot, by implication [we] consider the reading [of the third foot] in the gTsang blockprint [= the bKra shis lhun po xylograph of Zhang zhung's work, see ZHANG: 2a] of his text,

Desiring the rising speech (smra ba),

to be corrupt.

Apart from Zhang zhung's epic poem, there are at least two pieces in prose that were equally inspired by the Rāmāyaṇa. Both of these date from the eighteenth century. The first is a work on the ten incarnations of Viṣṇu—Rāma is the sixth of this series—by the fourth Khams sprul (see KHAMS1: 709-715), composed after his commentary on the Kāvyādarśa. The second constitutes a brief chapter in the commentary on a versified autobiography of Ngag dbang brtson 'grus (1648-1722) which his subsequent reembodiment dKon mchog 'jigs med dbang po (1728-1791) completed in 1777 (see DKON: 641-648). Contrary to the prevailing opinion that the Rāmāyaṇa was translated into Tibetan by Tāranātha (1575-1635)—this was based on a misreading of a passage in his autobiography which merely relates that he had read the text with Paṇḍita Purṇānanda and Pryamānanda (sic) in the year 16033—the first complete Tibetan version is owed to the labors of dGe 'dun chos 'phel (1903-1951), whose manuscript copy in four volumes has survived and is currently being prepared for publication in Lhasa. Motifs from the Rāmāyaṇa sometimes turn up in the most unexpected places. A case in point is an occurrence in a work on epistemology and logic by gSer mdog Paṇ chen Shākya mchog ldan (1429-1507), where a philosophical issue is likened to the epic's twin brothers, Bha li (= Vālin) and mGrin bzangs (= Sugrīva) (GSER: 552). In connection with further influence exerted by the Indian epic literature on Tibetan belles-lettres, we should also mention the late reworking of the ordeal of the five Paṇḍava brothers of the Mahābhārata epic by Dza sag lHa smon Ye shes tshul khrims, who flourished during the second half of the nineteenth century (see DZA). His primary source (or sources) still need to be ascertained.[page 400]

Very common experimental writings among the educated elite were those in which each of the poetic figures relating to the semantic, and not the phonological, make-up of the Tibetan version of the Kāvyādarśa was given an illustration. A huge number of such compositions survive and these are representative of the best in Tibetan ornate poetry.4 Outstanding early published examples of this genre are the writings of Klong chen Rab 'byams pa Dri med 'od zer (1308-1364), the second Zhwa dmar mKha' spyod dbang po (1350-1405) and Bo dong Paṇ chen Phyogs las rnam rgyal (1375-1451).5 Two of Klong chen pa's longish poems were recently translated into English (see Guenther), and both are inconceivable without Daṇḍin. Bo dong Paṇ chen, himself also a commentator on the Kāvyādarśa, was one of the greatest poets of his time, and the indigenous catalogues of his writings list a substantial number of original compositions, manuscripts of which the vast majority still remain to be located. The ones that have been published to date are his magnificent allegory entitled sNyan dngags gi bstan bcos yid kyi shing rta ("A Treatise of Ornate Poetry, A Vehicle of the Mind") (according to his biographer dKon mchog 'bangs, he wrote it in 1397 at the age of twenty-two), the dNgul dkar me long ("The White-Silver Mirror"), and the Phun tshogs bcwo brgyad ("The Eighteen Excellences"), an ornate eighteen-verse eulogy-cum-biography of his patron, Rab brtan kun bzang 'phags (1389-l442), the ruler of the principality of rGyal mkhar rtse in Central Tibet, located between Lhasa and gZhis ka rtse (see BO, BO1, BO2). This work later served as the poetic framework for the prose of the so-far anonymous biography of this enlightened ruler (see DNT). A biography written along mixed lines, stylistically speaking, was not the first of its kind, however. Already in 1387, Tsong kha pa Blo bzang grags pa (1359-1419) wrote a poetically conceived, ornate biography of his patron and teacher sPyan snga Grags pa byang chub (1356-1386) that belongs to the so-called mixed literary genre in that was written in alternating poetry and prose (see TSONG). The all-pervasive influence of Daṇḍin's dicta is abundantly apparent in each and every one of these writings.